Primary Command

She paused, took a deep breath, and looked at the page in front of her. Then she launched into her story.

* * *

“Earlier today our time, yesterday their time, the Russians seized the American research submersible Nereus from international waters in the Black Sea. The confrontation took place about one hundred forty-five miles southeast of the Crimean resort of Yalta. Yes, where the famous World War Two meeting took place between FDR, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin.”

Ed Newsam smiled. “That’s some deep history right there.”

“FDR?” Swann said. “The guy who got assassinated in, uh… Denver?”

Trudy smiled. She almost seemed to blush. Luke shook his head and almost laughed out loud. Tough crowd for a history lesson.

“Nereus was a sitting duck. A Russian destroyer tracked its location from the time it dropped from its mother ship. The destroyer and two smaller ships from the Russian Coast Guard converged on Nereus. Once they had it hemmed in, they dropped three bathyscaphes, which surrounded Nereus at close quarters, and escorted it to the surface. They also took the crew into custody.”

“Who are they?” Luke said.

Trudy sifted through her files and brought a different paper to the top.

“A crew of three. The sub’s pilot is forty-four-year-old Peter Bolger, official residence Falmouth, Massachusetts. Graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, class of 1983. Four years in the Coast Guard, honorable discharge 1987, rank of lieutenant. Spent nearly a decade piloting ships for Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, in cooperation with numerous colleges, universities, and aquariums. Hired by Poseidon Research International, November 1996. To the naked eye, this is a civilian who has spent his entire adult life on the water, much of that conducting research. The presence of someone like Bolger is probably meant to give PRI a veneer of reality.”

“He’ll probably be the weak link when it comes to getting them out,” Luke said.

Trudy nodded. “According to his dossier, he is five foot nine, and weighs two hundred thirty or two hundred forty pounds.”

“How does he fit in the sub?” Swann said.

Ed shrugged. “Could be all muscle.”

Now Trudy shook her head. “It isn’t.” She held up a photo of Peter Bolger. He wasn’t morbidly obese, but he wasn’t going to run the hundred-yard dash, either.

“Next,” Luke said.

Trudy brought the next sheet to the top.

“Eric Davis, twenty-six-year-old graduate student from the University of Hawaii, on a research fellowship to Wood’s Hole. Where do they come up with this stuff? He’s really a twenty-eight-year-old Navy SEAL named Thomas Franks. Naval ROTC at the University of Michigan, graduated magna cum laude. Entered the Navy upon graduating, and immediately applied for BUD/S. Tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, one each, as well as classified missions under Joint Special Operations Command. His mission here was to protect the other two men, and to scuttle the Nereus in the event of an accident or other mishap. Clearly, he didn’t do any of that.”

“Clearly,” Swann said.

“He’s our strongest link,” Luke said. “If we get to these guys, and they’re alive, it will be good to get a weapon or weapons into his hands. The major danger with Franks is that he may prematurely engineer some sort of escape attempt on his own, or acquire a weapon and come out shooting. Okay, next.”

Trudy brought up the last piece of paper. “Reed Smith, thirty-six-year-old mission commander,” she said. “A ghost. Total wild card. His true identity and age are Top Secret. I have nothing on him at all, other than he’s been employed as a research associate at PRI for the past six months. Where he came from, and what he’s been up to, is anybody’s guess. He is the man that the CIA and the Pentagon are most concerned about. There are apparently a lot of secrets inside that little head of his.”

Swann looked at Luke. “Black ops. I’m surprised he and Franks haven’t toppled the Russian government by now.”

Luke smiled. “I love your sense of humor, Swann. That’s why I let you live.”

He looked at Trudy. “I’d like a little context, if you have it. Where they took the Nereus, and the Russian state of readiness when… if… we go in there.”

Trudy nodded. “I have some. The Nereus was taken into the holds of an old shipping freighter and has been brought to the Port of Adler, just south of the Black Sea resort city Sochi, and just north of the Russian border with Georgia. They are attempting to hide the Nereus and pretend they don’t have it. They’re acting as though the freighter has made a normal call into port. And at least as of when we left Washington, there was no evidence they’ve moved the Nereus crew to another location. There’s been very little action on those docks at all.”

“They know we’re watching,” Swann said.

“That seems to be the case,” Trudy said.

“And the rest?” Luke said. “How ready are they?”

Trudy pursed her lips. “I can give you my own theory.”

“Tell me,” Luke said.

“It’s a little involved.”

Luke waved a hand. “It’s not my bedtime yet.”

Trudy nodded. “Vladimir Putin is playing whack-a-mole with debacles of various kinds. The Kursk disaster. The Beslan school massacre. Who knows when that will stop? But in the meantime, he is making progress on numerous fronts. He has cemented his iron grip on the government. The Russian economy, while still a shambles by our standards, is enjoying more prosperity than it’s seen in fifteen years, primarily because of high worldwide oil and natural gas prices. Pentagon threat assessments suggest that the military is better funded, somewhat better trained, and the soldiers are getting better pay than they’ve seen in a long while. They are modernizing some weapon systems, especially ballistic missile systems.

“Russia is on a long, hard road back to its former place in the world. There’s no telling if they’ll make it. But there’s also no doubt that since Putin took over, they are in fact on that road. Previously, they were upside down in a ditch by the side of the road.”

“What does this mean to us?” Luke said.

“It means they took that sub to put us on notice,” Trudy said. “The Black Sea was indisputably theirs for generations. Except for the Turkish coast, it was a Russian bathtub. We barely even put ships in there for years on end. They’re telling us they’re back, and they’re not going to let us put spy ships in there any time we like.”

“Yes, but is it really true?” Luke said. “Are they back? If we go in there and try to rescue those men, are we going to walk into a buzz saw?”

Trudy shook her head, offering the ghost of a smile. “No. They’re not back. Not yet. Morale is still low. Command and control is still poor. Corruption is rampant. Lots and lots of infrastructure and equipment are degraded or nonfunctional. With a clever enough plan, and a fast-moving attack, I think you’ll catch them flat-footed. I don’t say this lightly, but I think we can get the men out of there.”

Luke stared at her. He thought of her plan for taking out the renegade American military contractor Edwin Lee Parr and his ragtag militia in Iraq, and her optimistic assessment of the odds of doing so. At the time, Luke had been dismissive of her, her plan, and her assessment.

Then the whole thing turned out very similar to how she had described it. Luke and Ed still had to go in there and do it, but that part was a given.

“Boy, I hope you’re right,” he said.

* * *

Luke had fallen into a restless sleep. His dreams were strange, frightening, and rapidly shifting. A night skydive. As he fell, his parachute wouldn’t open. Below him was a wide expanse of dark river. Alligators, dozens of them, watched him fall from the sky. They converged on him. But his leg was attached to a bungee cord. He bounced, a long slow-motion bounce, just above the water, his arms hanging down, the alligators lunging and snapping at him.

Then it was daytime. A Black Hawk helicopter had been shot out of the sky. Its tail rotor was gone, the chopper spinning out of control and coming down hard. Luke ran across a field, an old, empty soccer stadium, toward the chopper. If he could just get there before it hit, he could catch it and save those men on board. But the grass was growing all around him, reaching up, twisting, pulling at his legs, slowing him down. His arms were out, reaching… He was too late. He was too late.

God, the chopper was coming down sideways. Here… it… came…

He bucked awake in the midst of midair turbulence—the plane shuddered, then rode the unsettled air like a roller coaster. Luke glanced around. The lights were out. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was asleep or awake. Then he noticed the rest of his team, sprawled out unconscious in various parts of the darkened cabin.

He gazed out his window—he couldn’t see anything but a blinking light on the wing. Far below, the ocean was vast, endless, and black. The sun was far behind them now, the day long gone.

They’d been flying for hours, and they had more to go.

Hours from now, as they moved further east, the sky would begin to brighten. He checked his watch. Just after midnight back in DC, which meant that in Sochi, it was a little after eight a.m. Morning already.

Watching the clock gave him the sense of events surging out ahead. The Russians could move those men any time they wanted. They could have already moved them during the night.