Major Andre Pushkin hit the dial button on an exact replica to the cellphone that Katerina had and was instantly connected to General Borodin. The state of the art handset piggybacked onto the Russian Glonass Satellite Navigation system and as such bypassed all American technology in favor of Russia’s own.
“Major, you received my message?” asked the General, no need for preamble.
“Yes Sir, General.”
“You understand the importance of your mission?”
“Of course, General!’
“Where are you now?”
“We are securing the property’s boundary and ascertaining the location of the target.”
“Is he not there?”
“It appears not, we have two heat sources on our infra red, one too small and the other has recently arrived and was not the target. We are assuming the wife and another unidentified male.”
“The child?”
“No heat source suggests a child is on site, General… wait a second, General…”
Major Pushkin listened to his number two report the news picked up by their radio operator.
“I’m sorry General we have reports coming through of a CIA assassin in the area having just competed a mission nearby. Our target perhaps.”
General Borodin almost choked on his vodka as the Major relayed the information.
“Sorry,” he spluttered. “You are picking up a radio broadcast of a CIA operation?”
“Sorry, we are not picking up a CIA broadcast, General. It is a local news channel reporting the information,” clarified Pushkin.
“Vasiliy get in here!” shouted Borodin for the world to hear.
“Pushkin, I’ll call you back!” informed the General before killing the connection.
Vasiliy rushed to his General’s command and stood ready for whatever he needed.
“I’ve just heard that the local news station is reporting a CIA assassin’s involvement in Laredo. I actually thought for a moment we were able to listen to encrypted CIA broadcasts but that’s another matter,” he digressed before coming back on subject. “ Find out what is happening!” he ordered.
“Of course, General.”
Captain John Kenny had been monitoring and analyzing the Glonass system pretty much since its reinstatement by President Putin as a top priority for modern Russia. The original system had caused great concern at the time of its inception in the late 70s and had been a fairly major priority for NSA at that time. Rooms of data on the structure and capability of Russia’s own network of Global Positioning Satellites had been filled many times over. However, with the fall of the wall and the downturn in the Russian economy in the 90s, it fell into disrepair. Putin’s reinvestment lifted some eyebrows within the NSA but nothing like the interest generated in the cold war era.
Captain Kenny was fascinated by the system and had pretty much followed it as a hobby during his normal duties at Lackland Air Force Base within the NSA’s Texas Cryptology Center. He was convinced the structure and original plans were to create something far more powerful than a simple navigation system. However until that night, he had not an ounce of evidence to support such a suggestion. In the previous two hours, all of that had changed. Two anomalies had occurred that had triggered a small program John had written to alert him to any such nuances. Two signals had been sent to the system that was far more advanced than anything that had ever been sent before and the signals had emanated not from Russia but from Texas itself. It seemed all his efforts to convince the hierarchy of an advanced communication tool, far beyond anything the US had even considered possible of the Russians, was a reality.
He grabbed his phone and immediately called the duty officer at Fort Meade, he needed to speak to Vice Admiral Kenyon, Head of the NSA immediately.
General Borodin picked up the new fangled phone and hit the dial button. He was connected to Pushkin almost immediately.
“You are right, it seems a CIA operative has been active in the area. Although our intelligence believed the target was no longer with the Agency. The coincidence would presume he is your target.”
“Do you have his new location?” asked Pushkin, keen to fulfill his orders.
“From the reports, he is in a police facility at the border.”
“What should we do?” asked Pushkin.
Borodin paused as he considered the options. Pushkin’s team was more than capable of taking out a police station; it was whether the situation required it.
“You said the woman was still there?”
“Yes, General.”
“He’ll come back, be ready when he does!” he ordered before killing the line.
As Captain John Kenny was being put through to a very sleepy and grumpy Vice Admiral Kenyon, his program reported a further nuance. Three in the space of two hours and two of those in five minutes.
“What in the name of God is it Kenny?”
“I was right Admiral, the Glonass is an advanced communication system!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Russian equivalent of our GPS system, they are using it for communications.”
“And this couldn’t wait until the morning?!” he answered with some anger.
“Well that’s just it, Sir. They’re communicating from here!”
“The US?”
“Yes, the US, in fact right here in Texas!” explained Kenny excitedly.
“So you have hunch about a system developed in the eighties by the Soviets that it has some amazing uses nobody else agrees with and it just so happens the first proof you get is on your doorstep? Of all the places in the world the first location is where you are?!” The final sentence had Captain Kenny moving the handset away from his ear.
Before Captain Kenny could respond, the admiral hung up. The call was over and the duty officer came back on line.
“Hmm, I think you should start packing your bags, John. I would imagine your next post will be even more remote than Texas!”
“Just file my report!” demanded John as he himself hung up. He knew he was right, just as he had been three years earlier when his pestering had resulted in his transfer from Fort Meade to Texas.
The report of suggested advanced level Russian communications emanating from the state of Texas to the Glonass satellite navigation system was filed in the intelligence report for the day. Linked into the United States intelligence community network, it would be available for all 16 members of the community to view and cross check against their own reports and analyses.
The moment the reference to Russia and Texas hit the system, an alarm triggered at the CIA headquarters at Langley. A call was placed to the former Head of CIA’s Moscow office and friend of Vincent Black, Mike Ritter, who just two hours earlier had requested any information pertaining to Russia, Sean Fox or Laredo, Texas. On receiving Vincent’s earlier call Mike had climbed out of bed and on Vincent’s request had headed straight to Langley. Vincent wanted somebody with first hand knowledge looking into what the hell was going on. And as far as Vincent was concerned, nobody understood the region or its history better than Mike, having spent almost his entire career in Moscow during the cold war and beyond.