46
Oval Office
The White House
Washington, D.C.
0741 Local Time
“This is what caused the crash,” said Admiral Kent.
The JCS chairman had come in early to give the President a vital update. Mary Pat Foley and Arnie van Damm were also present, the latter wearing a grossly askew tie.
Kent clicked a remote, and on a portable monitor photos appeared of the hardware that had been retrieved by Task Force 99. A sequence of images showed the contraption with various panels removed, exposing racks of wiring and circuitry. The device was large, and Ryan tried to imagine how Clark and his team had removed it from the wrecked GAZ and hauled it aboard an aircraft. It had to be a good story, and the next time he saw Mr. Clark he would drag it out of him.
“The team from Wright-Patt have been working nonstop since they arrived,” Kent continued. He pointed out various components that had been identified by the engineers. Power supply, RFamplifiers, voltage-controlled oscillator, frequency synthesizer chips, antenna.
“How much of this hardware is sourced from Russia?” Ryan asked.
“Some but not all. The VCO and voltage regulators are definitely of Russian origin, but the synthesizer chips and control motherboard were manufactured in China. The generator is actually an American item licensed for production in Vietnam. As to where it was all slapped together, our technicians can only speculate. It does bear certain hallmarks of work done by KRET, one of Russia’s big state-run defense contractors. Of course, that’s only an engineering analysis. KRET would never stencil their name on something like this, especially if it was an experimental device, which appears to be the case.”
“So we can’t consider this hard evidence of Russian involvement,” Ryan surmised.
“No, sir, we cannot.”
Ryan was frustrated but not surprised. Muddied global supply chains had made the provenance of weaponry harder than ever to nail down. Bad actors knew it and took advantage at every turn. And it wasn’t only hardware. These days you had to interpret a world where North Korean troops rode Iranian scooters beneath Chinese drones to attack trenches in Ukraine. It was a quagmire of obfuscation, of autocratic collusion that seemed to accelerate by the day.
Mary Pat rescued the President from his gloomy reflections by saying, “I think the equally important question is, could this device have taken down our flight?”
Kent replied without hesitation. “On that point, the engineers are in complete agreement. They’ve been in constant contactwith the on-site investigators, and between their analysis of this device and the readings from the aircraft’s black boxes, we are definitely talking about sabotage.” For emphasis the admiral tapped two fingers on the screen. “This GPS meaconing device brought down SAM 719.”
The room fell quiet for a long moment. By the end, all eyes were on the President.
“Okay,” Ryan said, “we’re convinced this device took the airplane down. But we can’t say for certain where it came from or who employed it.”
“Aside from the Russians,” asked van Damm, “what other suspects do we have?”
Mary Pat said, “The fact that Gunther Klaus was supposed to be on this jet…that’s got to be more than a coincidence. He claimed to have information that would be extremely damaging to the Russians. We also have links to Andrei Malenkov. He’s supposedly a free agent now, but his ties to the Russian regime run deep. And given his background, I don’t doubt that he could acquire a device like this.”
“It has to be one of those two,” Ryan agreed. “Malenkov was acting on his own, or as Yermilov’s agent.”
“There’s only one way to figure out which scenario applies,” said Mary Pat. “It goes back to what we’ve been saying for days. We need to find Gunther Klaus.”
The President nodded thoughtfully. “I agree.”
“There’s no guarantee we’ll find him first,” cautioned van Damm.
“True,” said Ryan. “But if the Russians beat us to that punch, there might be another way.”
“Which is?”
“I call Nikita Yermilov and demand an answer.”
“Accuse Russia of bringing down a jet carrying a cabinet member?” questioned Mary Pat. “Without hard evidence?”
“If that’s what it takes. Not long ago I saved his ass from being booted out of power—he owes me one.”
“You really think he would come clean about something like this?”
