The Seventh Angel (19 page)

He held out a green cardboard folder. “Here’s the patient’s medical file. It covers his treatment following the shooting. In addition to the paper file, the folder contains digital copies of all x-rays, pre-op and post-op photos, lab results, MRIs, what have you. We need to talk to this patient, doctor. We need to ask him a lot of questions, and he has to be conscious enough and healthy enough to answer. That’s your job.”

Hogan accepted the folder without opening it.

“
You can look that over, and start making your list of personnel,” Ross said. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s meet in Mr. Hugo’s room in an hour.”

“
Agent Ross?” Hogan’s voice was nearly a croak. “What if your cover story doesn’t keep the lid on?”

Ross shrugged. “Then the guys who shot your patient are going to come knocking. And a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt.”

WHITE HOUSE

PRESIDENTIAL EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER

WASHINGTON, DC

FRIDAY; 01 MARCH

9:24 PM EST

President Chandler nodded toward the television screen. “Run it again, Greg.”

National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven pointed the remote control toward the oversized television and punched a button.

White House Chief of Staff Veronica Doyle, Secretary of Defense Rebecca Kilpatrick, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—Army General Horace Gilmore—sat in silence as the video disc chapter-skipped to the beginning and the recorded news feed began again.

The screen filled with an establishing shot of Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov, framed against the giant statue of Lenin in the park at Ploshad Lenina. A light snow was falling, adding to the thick blanket covering the ground. A pair of uniformed soldiers stood behind the newly self-proclaimed President of Kamchatka,
Nikonova
assault rifles held at port arms, their breathing marked by plumes of vapor.

The ticker at the bottom of the screen flared with the CNN logo and a graphic depicting a map of the Russian Federation with the Kamchatka peninsula broken off like a piece from a jigsaw puzzle. A snippet of the Russian national anthem played as the words ‘
Crisis in Russia
’ scrolled below the graphics.

The camera zoomed in for a close-up until Zhukov filled the screen. Dressed in a double-breasted greatcoat of dark wool and a black Ushanka hat, he looked like an old Soviet hardliner, which indeed he was.

Zhukov stared into the camera and began speaking in Russian. The voice of the CNN interpreter cut in a few seconds later with the English translation.

“
I speak now to the people of the
Rodina
—the great land of Russia, who is mother to us all. You have learned by now of the events unfolding in this small corner of our great nation. Perhaps you have heard our struggle described as an uprising, or an insurgency.” He shook his head. “Those are the wrong words. Those are the words of weak-willed fools who would have you believe that what happens here is the act of a handful of delinquents and miscreants.” His heavy eyebrows came down like hammers. “No! This is not an uprising. This is not a riot among criminals. It is a
revolution
. It is a spark to ignite the flame that will illuminate the world!”

Zhukov turned his head to the left and then to the right. “Look around you, people of Russia. Look at what we have become. Look at how far the great Russian empire has fallen. A few short years ago, we were the greatest country this earth had ever seen. And now we are the largest third-world nation in history.”

His voice climbed to a shout, nearly eclipsing the voice of the CNN translator. “Where has our greatness gone? Where has our power gone? Where has our honor gone? And the will of the great Russian people? I will
tell
you where they have gone! They have been
stolen
from us. They have been leached away from us by treachery and fraud.”

Zhukov lowered his voice. “The West could not defeat the Soviet Union with tanks, and missiles, and soldiers. Our might was too great. Our courage was like iron. So they defeated us with lies, and with lust for material objects. They were afraid to face the naked power of the Soviet military, so they attacked our national ideals instead. They whispered their capitalist perversions into our ears until our minds were clouded. They eroded our internal values, made us lust after designer jeans and cellular telephones until we lost all touch with our moral center.”

His eyebrows drew even tighter. “And it worked. We stumbled blindly into their velvet-lined trap and we were destroyed.”

“
Look at us,” he said again. “Look at the Rodina, the great land of Russia, the invincible Soviet empire. We are nothing. We are
less
than nothing. We have traded our national identity, our strength, and our self-respect for microwave ovens and video games. We made a whore’s bargain with the enemies of our country, and now we lay in the gutter, violated and bleeding, wondering how we could have fallen so far.”

He pointed a thick index finger toward the camera. “It stops
here
! It stops
now
! Like Vladimir Ilyich before me, I
DECLARE
THE REVOLUTION! I have raised the sword and drawn the blood of the true Russia’s enemies. There will be more blood, I am certain. But no price is too high for reclaiming Russia’s rightful place in the world.”

“
What has happened here is only the first step,” he said. “I proclaim the independence of Kamchatka. As of this moment, Kamchatka is a sovereign country, entitled to the recognition and rights enjoyed by all nations. And I will make this new nation the cornerstone of the reborn Russia.”

Zhukov’s features softened. “My fellow Russians, I do not raise my fist against you. We are brothers and sisters, children of the Motherland. Together we are the rightful inheritors of the Russian dream, and together we will seize that dream and return our nation to its former greatness. I invite you, all true people of Russia, to join me in taking back that which is rightfully ours.”

His voice changed pitch, became lower and harder. “To the false government in Moscow, I say this … You cannot stop what has begun here. You are not the leaders of this nation, no matter what titles and honors you have conferred upon yourselves. You are parasites and fools. You have betrayed the very people you were sworn to protect. You have brought Russia to her knees. Now I order you to stand aside as the true patriots of this country lift their beloved mother to her feet.”

Zhukov lifted his right hand and clenched it into a fist. “If you attempt to interfere, the will of the Russian people will rise up to crush you. And I, Sergiei Mikhailovich, will be the instrument of their anger.”

He slowly lowered his fist. “You have read your reports by now. You know what I have at my disposal. But what you do not know—what you
cannot
know—is that my resolve is stronger than you can imagine. If you test me, I
will do that which you fear above all things. I will use the weapons at my disposal.”

His eyebrows came down until his eyes were nearly slits. “I do not bluff, and I will not negotiate. The revolution is
now
, and it is utterly unstoppable. Your choice is simple. Step aside, or die.”

The camera held on Zhukov’s face for a few seconds as the English interpretation wound down, then the scene cut to the CNN studio where a grim-faced news anchor began the inevitable follow-up commentary.

The national security advisor thumbed the remote again, and the screen froze. “That’s about it, Mr. President. The rest of the news cycle amounts to speculation and tail-chasing.”

President Chandler closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. He opened his eyes and let out a deep breath. “Somebody please tell me that this lunatic is bluffing.”

The secretary of defense nodded. “He may very well
be
bluffing, sir. The Russian Ministry of Defense says he’s full of hot air, at least with regard to his thinly-veiled threats about going nuclear. Our satellite imagery confirms that Zhukov’s rebels were only able to put one ballistic missile submarine to sea. The other two ballistic missile subs are still tied to the pier at Rybachiy naval station, possibly because he couldn’t find enough nutcases among the Russian sailors to crew more than one submarine. But whatever the reason, all of Zhukov’s eggs are in one basket. If the Russians can take out that one missile sub, Mr. Zhukov’s nuclear threat evaporates.”

The White House chief of staff leaned back in her chair. “Madame Secretary, how sure are we that the Russians
can
knock out that missile sub?”

“
The Russians are pretty confident,” the secretary of defense said. “Their attack submarine, the
Kuzbass
, is in an excellent position to intercept and destroy Zhukov’s ballistic missile sub before it reaches the Sea of Okhotsk.”

The president made a steeple of his fingers. “So we’re waiting for
one
Russian submarine to destroy
another
Russian submarine? Do we have a fallback plan?”

“
We don’t think we’re going to need one,” General Gilmore said. “Mr. President, the
Kuzbass
is an
Akula
class attack sub. Fast, quiet, and very
very
good at hunting other submarines. The missile sub, the
Zelenograd
, is an older Delta III class boat. Her missiles are deadly against land-based targets, but the Chief of Naval Operations assures me that she won’t last ten seconds in a shooting match with an
Akula
.”

Gregory Brenthoven smiled, “
His
missiles.”

The General frowned. “Pardon me, sir?”

“
Russian ships and submarines are male,” Brenthoven said. “But never mind that. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please continue, General.”

The general scratched his chin. “That’s about it, sir. The
Kuzbass
will sink the missile sub. If that doesn’t work, the Russian Navy chases the missile sub under the ice pack, where they can hunt it down and kill it at their leisure. I guess that’s our fallback plan: let the Russian Navy trap the missile sub if they can’t kill it outright.”

Veronica Doyle glanced at her palmtop computer. “And we’re absolutely certain that this submarine can’t launch missiles through the ice?”

Brenthoven nodded. “The Delta III has no ice penetration capability. Once that submarine is under the ice, it won’t be able to launch.”

“
There could be millions of lives at stake here,” the president said. “I’m not comfortable with any plan that amounts to chasing the snake into a corner and tossing a blanket over it. And I’m not particularly crazy about leaving it up to the Russians to do the work.”

“
Understood, sir.” the secretary of defense said. “But our options are fairly limited at the moment. Moscow has made it unmistakably clear that U.S. involvement is
not
welcome. Their diplomatic language is only about two notches short of outright threats. If we insert ourselves into what they regard as an internal situation, we may find that
both
sides are ready to shoot us in the head.”

“
What you’re basically telling me,” the president said, “is that we sit on our hands and hope nobody decides to push the button?”

“
We’re not happy about it either, sir,” General Gilmore said. “The Navy has ordered a pair of stealth destroyers into the area to keep an eye on things, and the Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office are getting us all the satellite coverage we need. We’d like to get one of our own subs up there, but—with Russia trying to kill Zhukov’s sub, and Zhukov's insurgents trying to kill Russian subs—that could easily blow the lid off the powder keg. Both sides in this conflict are ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Any direct involvement on our part is likely to provoke the kind of response we don’t even want to
think
about.”

“
Which brings us back to sitting on our hands,” the president said.

The door opened and a young Marine lieutenant walked in, carrying a red and white striped folder. He went directly to General Gilmore, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and spoke softly to the general as he handed over the folder.

General Gilmore opened the folder and read the short document it contained. After a few seconds, he laid it on the table in front of him. “Mr. President, we’ve just received word from the Russian Ministry of Defense. The
Kuzbass
has been destroyed.”

The president’s eyebrows shot up. “
What
? How did an aging missile submarine manage to get the drop on an
Akula
class hunter-killer?”

“
It wasn’t the missile sub,” General Gilmore said. “Apparently the
Kuzbass
was destroyed three days ago, during a scheduled training exercise with a TU-142 anti-submarine warfare aircraft based out of Yelizovo. The exercise was scheduled as a non-firing event, but early assessments suggest that the TU-142 dropped one or more torpedoes on the
Kuzbass
.” He looked down at the folder. “The timing of the exercise appears to correspond to an unidentified explosion recorded by our Navy’s acoustic surveillance arrays in the region.”

The White House chief of staff cocked her head to one side. “The Russians are just
now
finding out that one of their submarines was destroyed three days ago?”