But the XO took the other side of the bet. He couldn’t imagine the U.S. Navy missing out on the PR boon of taking part in such a high-profile public interest mission.
Hagen nodded as he read, then summarized the order for Lieutenant Commander Kincaid. “You called it, XO.”
A minute later, Commander Hagen wore a headset and patched himself into 1-MC, the shipboard PA system. He punched the transmit button, sending his voice throughout virtually every space on the ship. “This is the captain speaking. All hands give me your attention for a minute.
“Some of you might not be aware that at around oh-eight-thirty Zulu time today, approximately two and a half hours ago, a Swedish passenger jet traveling from Stockholm en route to Dubai collided with a Russian military surveillance aircraft over the Baltic Sea, roughly one hundred ten nautical miles from our position. We have been ordered to make best possible speed toward the crash of Swedish Air 44 and assist with search-and-recovery operations.
“This is going to be a grim job for all of us, to put it mildly, but it’s damn important. We owe those victims our best work, whether we rescue anyone alive or only recover remains.”
He stopped transmitting for a moment while he ordered his thoughts, then pushed the button again. “While we are in the process of this recovery, we cannot and we will not allow ourselves to lose focus of our larger mission here in the Baltic. The tension between the Russian Federation and other national actors in the area was plenty high before this incident. It will only get higher. We might find ourselves called upon at any moment to… to respond to threats. The James Greer will suffer no loss of mission readiness while we are assisting in the recovery mission. None at all.”
After he finished his address he put his comm set back in its cradle on the desk in his stateroom, then looked up at Phil Kincaid. “You know, XO, there’s one thing about this mission that I really don’t care for.”
“That we’re heading due west when Russia is due east?”
Hagen shook his head. “It’s not that. No, I guess our politicians haven’t noticed it just yet, but we are smack dab in the middle of a potential war zone, and we are operating in an AO that also contains naval combat forces of our adversary.”
The XO nodded. He finished the thought. “And we’re about to go to a fixed spot on the water and let everybody in the world, including the opposition in the area, know where we are.”
“That’s it. By the time we get on scene there will be zero chance for survivors, even if someone managed to live through a midair collision and impact with that cold water. So we’ll be there to pick up wreckage and bodies. Yeah, it’s important, but I sure as hell wish surface ships that aren’t going to be called to fight the Russians in a shooting war would spend their time on victim recovery, while the James Greer stays a hell of a lot more low-profile. Once the bad guys know where we are, it’s going to be hard to slip them if the time comes.”
The XO just nodded.
Hagen shrugged and stood up, heading for the passageway. “Nobody is asking us, so let’s head up to the bridge and get this ship hauling ass toward that well-publicized point in the middle of the ocean.”
35
The most-watched news channel in Russia was Channel Seven, Novorossiya, or New Russia, and the most-watched program was Evening News with Tatiana Molchanova. The striking raven-haired broadcaster was not only the favorite television news personality in the nation, it was clear she was also the favorite of Russia’s president. Volodin spoke to any journalist who managed to get a mike in front of him when he was out and about, but when he had either information or spin he wanted to deliver to the nation, he almost always went to the Evening News to sit live with Molchanova.
It had become such a routine that Tatiana had taken for granted that Valeri Volodin would come to her, but in the past six months things had changed. Yes, she still got exclusives with the president, but he no longer appeared in her studio — now she, and her production team, had to go to him.
Before the change in the arrangement between interviewer and interviewee, there had been difficulties of a logistical nature every time the Kremlin called the Evening News and said Volodin was on his way for an on-camera interview, because rarely did the TV station have more than an hour or two to prepare for his arrival. But the producers, the technicians, and Molchanova herself looked back to those days fondly now, because these days, the arrangement was significantly more difficult for them.
Now a call would come to a senior producer from one of Volodin’s trusted inner circle, and notification would be given that the president was requesting Molchanova and her crew to arrive either at his offices in the Kremlin or, and this had been the case exclusively in the past three months, at his personal residence in the suburbs.
Tonight was the fourth time the entire crew packed into a pair of helicopters and made the twenty-minute flight, landing on the lawn of a neighbor’s property and then rolling equipment to the gate in the wall of Volodin’s presidential residence. From here everyone was frisked and X-rayed before being loaded back into a van kept on the property for transporting deliveries up the hill to the main house. From the driveway they were led into a living room. Furniture was carefully moved, light stands were erected, audio and video equipment was plugged in and tested.
The satellite truck would pull up outside an hour after the helicopter arrived, and usually with only a half-hour or so to spare.
While the techs and producers worked together to assemble the set, Molchanova was led by one of Volodin’s female attendants into a bathroom off the kitchen, and here she took care of her own makeup. While doing this she listened to one of her producers through her earpiece while he read her intro and the few questions they had prepared. Tonight, as was often the case, she demanded some changes.
The questions were softballs by design. The crew of the Evening News had no specific knowledge of why they had been summoned by the president, so they needed to have only a few general setup questions ready to get the ball rolling. But even in the simple prepared opening, Tatiana Molchanova thought the tone wasn’t right.
She changed her opening because she had noticed a change in her president in the past three months or so. He seemed more defensive, more nervy and testy with her questions. Gone were the days of the easy sly smile and the subtle sexual tension she felt during the interviews. Now he was on guard, ready to take issue with the smallest point.
She knew her role — people joked that Channel Seven was “Volodin’s Megaphone,” after all — so she had never hit him particularly hard in her interviews, but now she wore kid gloves during their time together. And tonight, after the plane crash, she expected her president would be especially touchy.
At six-thirty Volodin entered the living room and strode past nearly two dozen attendants, inner-circle confidants, and Channel Seven employees on his way to the lighted set. He greeted Tatiana with a friendly kiss and a smile; outwardly, this looked much the same as it had for his entire presidency, but Tatiana could see a change in the look, feel a difference in his touch.
This used to be both business and pleasure for Volodin. Now it was all business.
He looked older to the reporter than he had the last time they saw each other, just a month earlier, at the opening of a new restaurant in central Moscow.