“Hang on!” Ryan intervened. “Do we really want to hit this airfield? If thereisradiological material on-site, a strike with air-to-ground munitions, even small smart bombs, could release a radioactive cloud. Double that for a cruise missile strike. There’s a village nearby that’s got to be full of civilians.” No one countered the President’s logic as he cuffed a hand to his chin. “All right, the choices we’re coming up with all have drawbacks. But sometimes there’s no easy solution. Let’s instructFordto prep a strike packagefor launch. Load up and stand by. And have her make best speed toward the area while we decide how to tackle this.”
“Yes, sir,” the SecDef replied.
Admiral Kent ended his call. “I’ve got that range circle for a Shahed-151 drone. This assumes a one-way flight with a partial fuel load to account for a big payload.” He typed on a keyboard and a green circle was scribed on the map, centered around Al-Jaghbub Airfield. It touched Tripoli to the west, Greece to the north, and the Sinai to the east.
“Not a lot of oil fields in that ring,” Kent said. “Libya has recovered some production since the civil war quieted, but in the greater market it’s only a minor player. Egypt pumps even less. And in either case, it doesn’t matter what these ten drones are carrying—they couldn’t shut down a large enough area to make a dent.”
“It’s not an oil field,” Mary Pat said.
“No, it’s not,” Ryan agreed, seeing it at the same time. “The target is a choke point.”
He stood abruptly and tapped a finger on the waterway that formed the western edge of the Sinai Peninsula.
“The Suez Canal,” said van Damm.
“Last estimate I saw,” said Mary Pat, “roughly ten percent of seaborne oil and LNG pass through the canal. Most of it goes to Europe. A sudden, long-term shutdown? It’d be the market equivalent of throwing a flare into a fireworks factory. You’d only have to contaminate a few square miles—and it molds perfectly with Malenkov’s investment scheme.”
It was a rare event that the National Security Council, in the heat of a Situation Room crisis, reached complete accord. This was such an occasion, with one exception. The holdout was Jack Ryan.
He said, “I agree to a point. The canal has got to be the target.”
“But…” Mary Pat prompted.
The President’s head canted, as if searching for a different perspective. “Cui bono?” he asked. It was a Latin term that often arose in criminal prosecutions.Who benefits?
As was usually the case, Mary Pat’s thoughts aligned most quickly. “Malenkov is a given…but there has to be more. Nobody undertakes an attack of this magnitude to fuel an investment scheme.”
“At some level,” Ryan said, “this has got to be state sponsored. And the prime suspect is obvious.”
“Russia’s economy is hanging by a thread and sagging oil prices have been killing them. Shutting down the canal, possibly for a decade or more—it would be a trillion-dollar flip on revenue. Europe could be forced to turn back to Russia for crude oil and natural gas. And with Arctic routes becoming more accessible, Russia’s influence on shipping would skyrocket. There’s no way this wouldn’t help them.”
“Maybe the Russians duped us,” said Adler. “Maybe Malenkov is still heading SSD.”
Ryan said, “Or maybe he’s running a new division we don’t even know about. One that pushes instability to the next level.”
“All of what we’re suggesting is possible,” said Mary Pat. “But it’s also highly speculative. If this is some new GRU subsidiary that’s literally going nuclear, there’s no way we can prove it in the next hour. The important thing is to stop this attack.”
“Maybe we can do both,” the President said. He lasered in on Burgess. “I’d like to know if the Russians have any navy ships in this area.”
The question stilled the room.
“The eastern Med?” Burgess asked. “Why would that matter?”
“Humor me.”
58
Flight Level 410
10 Nautical Miles South of Valletta, Malta
2336 Local Time
“And what exactly are we supposed to do when we get there?” Ding asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Clark replied.
The cabin of a Gulfstream business jet was a small space for a meeting. To Clark it felt even smaller after he’d explained the situation to his team. He’d incorporated everything Klaus had told him, as well as the murky plan from the White House for them to proceed to the airfield outside Al-Jaghbub.
