Ryan held his hands up. “It’s not a theory, Jay. It’s a hunch. I can’t back it up enough to raise it up to theory status. But what if Russia is using its reach through the FSB to orchestrate all these events?”
Adler cocked his head. “To make money?”
Ryan shook his head. “No, to increase their power. Look how bad the energy sector has fallen. If Russia recoups ten to twenty percent of that, it makes them ten to twenty percent stronger. And if they reach out into Lithuania, or into Poland… it’s only going to cost Europe that much more to confront them.”
Adler wasn’t buying it. “They are sending FSB out around the world to boost oil prices, so when they attack Lithuania NATO won’t respond, because that would be too expensive? I don’t know, Mr. President.”
Ryan just shrugged now. “I don’t know, either. Maybe I’m reaching. But the shooting in Germany showed us an FSB officer and a group of armed unknown operators in cahoots with a Spanish eco-terrorist. We know Russia has done false-flag ops in the past.”
His conclusions were met by stares around the room.
He looked to Mary Pat Foley.
Mary Pat knew this look well. “Yes, Mr. President. As details from these events come out, we’ll look into your hunch.” She didn’t sound any more convinced than Canfield or Adler had.
Jack said, “I know you will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to call an angry and grief-stricken sultan in Saudi Arabia and then run off six hours late to see an angry and disappointed wife in Maryland.” He stood. With a slight bow he said, “Thanks for coming in on your Saturday. I sincerely wish you all a better weekend than I have in store for myself.”
28
The DataPlanet truck sat on the loose shoulder of a winding gravel road to the east of the town of Pabradė, Lithuania. Within fifty feet of the road both to the north and south, tall, ramrod-straight pine trees shot up seventy-five feet into the air. While Herkus Zarkus pulled rolls of fiber-optic cable out of the back of his vehicle and set them up in neat stacks, Ding Chavez attached a toaster-sized optical laser surveying station to an already positioned tripod, turned it on, and pointed it along the road to the east.
Twelve miles beyond the next bend was the nation of Belarus, and just beyond that was Russia. There, Russia’s Western Military District, numbering thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of men, could be in position to attack Lithuania within days. There was no notice from the CIA that the Russians were on their way here, but the two Campus operators not so far from the border of Russia’s closest ally were taking the events there seriously, to say the least. They knew at any point they might be relying on that little DataPlanet van on the side of the road to outrun tanks and Mi-24 attack helicopters.
Caruso, Chavez, and Zarkus all wore identical uniforms, blue cold-weather coveralls, reflective vests, and orange helmets. Their vest had the name of their company written across the back, and they each wore a utility belt adorned with radios, tools, phones, and other gear.
While Chavez stood next to Caruso, he consulted a tablet computer with the geo-coordinates sent by Mary Pat Foley’s office. Next to the GPS location, a small icon of an arrow directed him to move the tablet computer to the right two meters. He stepped the corresponding distance on the wet grass, and this put him just inside the tree line. The GPS coordinates on his tablet turned green.
“Right here,” Dom said.
Ding moved the tripod to exactly where Dom stood, and he turned the laser surveying device slowly, from left to right. The display on the device gave him a 360-degree reading of the direction of the lens, and Dom told him to turn to heading 098. Ding complied, and the heading marker turned green the moment he pointed his camera in the correct direction.
“On it,” he said.
“Mark it,” Dom instructed, still looking at his tablet.
Chavez pressed a button on a remote device in his hand, the camera inside the laser surveying station took a series of high definition images, and Dom’s tablet signaled the data had been received with a green checkmark.
“Got it,” Dom said.
Ding called out to Herkus, who was just fifty feet away by the truck. “That’s it. Load it up.”
While the Lithuanian American threw his rolls of cable back into the van, the two Campus men began breaking down their equipment, a process that they’d perfected in the past two days of long shifts. While Ding lifted the legs of the tripod out of the soft earth he said, “What was that, forty-nine?”
Dom corrected him. “No. That’s an even fifty. We’ll hit sixty by the end of the day.”
“Which means, at this speed, we’ll be done in ten days.”
Dom helped Ding carry the big device back up a little rise toward the truck. “I hope Lithuania has ten days. I wonder if it would make us work faster if we knew what the hell we were doing.”
Ding said, “I’ve been thinking it over.”
“Any conclusions?”
“Obviously, this is some sort of survey of the battle space. Not sure why they are just doing it now, or what’s different about this that makes it so classified. Normally, with an area like this they’d just have local forces send back images for the military planners. I don’t get all the subterfuge, but that’s not the thing that really confuses me.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, if the Russians come, we assume they will take the Kaliningrad Corridor from Lithuania.”
“Right. So?”
“So we’re about thirty miles north of the corridor. That stretch of Belarus over there isn’t the quickest route to Lithuania’s capital, and it isn’t the closest point to link up with the Kaliningrad side.”
“So your question is… why are we here?”
Ding loaded the tripod, turned around in the road to remove his helmet, and started back for the front passenger seat. He looked up and said, “I have a feeling that is their question, too.”
A four-door Toyota drove up the gravel road from the distant bend. Herkus started for the driver’s seat, but Ding said, “No, let’s take our time. Talk to these people and feel them out.”
The car pulled up and three men and one woman climbed out. They were of varying ages, but they all looked confident.
And suspicious.
“Labas rytas,” Herkus called out to the group. Good morning.
One of the group, a short, fat man in his fifties, waved back idly. Speaking Lithuanian, he asked, “What are you boys doing here?”
Dom and Ding were both looking for the telltale signs of weapons printing under their jackets. Neither man saw anything, but with the thick coats the locals were wearing, it was difficult to be sure.
Herkus said, “Fiber-optic maintenance and survey. We’re putting in super-high-speed Internet cables.”
The man in charge of the little group nodded distractedly, still looking at the men and the equipment.
“Is this your property?” Herkus asked.
To that the man responded, “Do you have some identification?”
The woman and two other men stood in the road, and their body language showed the Campus operators that they were most definitely on guard.
Herkus pulled out his employee badge. “Some kind of a problem?”
The man didn’t even look at the badge. “Where are you from?”
“USA, but my parents are from here. Used to spend my summers near here when I was a kid.”
The man nodded. “And them?”
“We’re all Americans. Look, friend, what’s the—”
“Tell them to say something in English.”
Herkus cocked his head. “What?”
One of the men in the road let his right hand slip inside his open coat. Dom saw this and moved close to the man, ready to drop him with a punch to the jaw if he saw a gun. “Don’t try it, asshole.”