Chapter 17
The American President was a habitual early riser.
After showering and dressing, he would head to the Oval Office, arriving so early that the only people present were the overnight staff and security personnel.
He would often take a mug of coffee and spend some time chatting with these men and women.
Political topics and international events were strictly avoided.
Instead, they spoke about weddings, graduations, and new babies on the way.
If it was a Monday in the fall, they would discuss football.
If it was summer, baseball was never far from his mind.
He was keenly interested in how their children and grandchildren were doing at school and in life.
If he ever wrote a memoir, he would call this the hour of normalcy, the brief blip of regular life he had during an endless procession of international news, economic conferences, and high-pressure meetings that would go on throughout the day.
He treasured this hour, and for that reason reacted sourly to the arrival of his chief of staff long before the beginning of the normal workday.
“To what do I owe this displeasure?”
“New information,” the chief said.
The grim look on the chief’s face suggested bad news. The hour of normalcy was cut short, and the two men walked to the Oval Office in silence, shutting the door behind them.
The chief laid a dossier on the President’s desk. “The Russians are moving.”
The President took the folder, broke the seal, and opened it.
He read the first paragraph of the briefing and then skipped directly to the satellite photos.
Half the Russian fleet was sailing from Murmansk.
Destroyers, patrol boats, coast guard ships.
Anything with a sonar array. Another photo showed helicopters streaming from an air base.
The next page was a map covered with yellow highlights showing the paths of a dozen reconnaissance flights that had been tracked by a NATO radar.
“Word is obviously out,” the President said. “I’d hoped we could hide it a little longer. How far away is the salvage fleet?”
“They left Norfolk in the middle of the night,” the chief said. “But it’s six days of sailing to Norway.”
“Six days of the Russians scouring the sea for our plane with everything they have,” the President said grimly. “Any word from NUMA?”
“Some,” the chief admitted. “Most of it bad. They’ve covered seventy percent of the signal line and found nothing. They also took a side trip and got in a tangle with the Chinese.”
The President almost laughed. Of course they did. “What did they find?”
“Turns out the Chinese were waiting for the arrival of the plane. They’d carved a runway in the ice. The only good news is, they don’t have it, either.”
The President found photos of the Chinese icebreaker and runway in the back half of the dossier. He studied the underwater images of the cables, but wasn’t entirely sure what they represented. He put them away. It didn’t really matter, they were empty.
The chief waited for him to look up and then spoke again. “It’s possible the NUMA excursion caused the Chinese to alert the Russians. They may be working together now. This is why I didn’t want NUMA up there. They’re always doing the unexpected.”
“Considering it’s them against the Chinese and the whole Russian navy, they’d damned well better do the unexpected,” the President snapped. “They can’t win—meaning we can’t win—if they follow the standard playbook.”
The chief took this reprimand with surprising humility. “I understand, Mr. President. We might as well get whatever help Norway and Finland can provide into the search area.”
The President thought that sounded reasonable, but he had misgivings. “What for? No point in finding the plane if we can’t get down to it for six days.”
“We should still increase our presence.”
The President looked back at the map with the highlighted courses on it. He noticed the planes were hugging the coastline. He asked if that was the case or just a false impression.
“They are,” the chief said. “So are the Russian ships.”
“Why?”
“Shallow waters,” the chief said. “They must think that’s where the plane went down.”
“So, they have information we don’t have,” the President realized. “From where?”
“Unknown,” the chief said. “The CIA is looking into it. But they’ve developed no intel yet. Should I have NUMA move their search toward the coast?”
The President continued staring at the map, trying to take it all in at once. “No,” he said. “NUMA’s our best hope to actually find the plane. Keep them on the signal line until they’ve cleared it. We can best help them by distracting the Russians.”
The chief looked uneasy. “How do you intend to do that?”
“Shallow waters,” the President said, repeating what the chief had said earlier.
He leaned forward to share his view of the map.
“Find a shallow area around one of these islands,” he began, pointing out Bear Island and then Spitsbergen.
“Send a couple of recon flights over it, have them fly a search pattern and drop sonar buoys. Make it look good. And then ask the Norwegians to send out a ship or two in support. I want the Russians and Chinese to think we know something they don’t.
I want them to consider that shallow waters can be found somewhere other than the Norwegian or Russian coasts. ”
The chief gave an approving grunt. “And if NUMA clears the signal line without finding the plane?”
“Then send them anywhere on earth they want to look next.”