“Shut the transpolar air routes down. All of them!” Zhdanov ordered. “And closely monitor any aircraft still in our skies. If any of them deviates from its filed flight plan to the slightest degree, I want that plane intercepted immediately and forced to land for closer inspection. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Rogozin agreed. He hesitated again. “But if the crew is defecting or if they’re crazy enough to launch a sneak attack on the Americans or the Chinese, the PAK-DA stealth bomber could already be well beyond our borders.”

“If they’re defecting, our forces will hunt Petrov and Bunin down later and kill them—no matter where they’ve fled,” Zhdanov said coldly. “I will not show mercy to traitors.” He stood up. “But in case they have lost their minds and are trying to start a war or launch some sort of half-assed coup, we’ll evacuate our key people. Starting now.”

His movement sparked a general push toward the doors. Elevators ran deep underground from the National Defense Management Center. They connected with a secret labyrinth of subway tunnels built during the long Cold War. In the event of any attack on Moscow, trams were always on standby to hurry Russia’s top civilian and military leaders to safety in one of two heavily protected command bunkers kilometers outside the city.

“It might be wise to contact Washington and Beijing by hotline to brief them on this situation,” Rogozin pointed out carefully. “To avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings.”

“Absolutely not!” Zhdanov snapped. “I will not humiliate myself in front of the Americans or the Chinese. Not until I have no other choice.”

Seventeen

Emergency Conference Room, National Military Command Center, under the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

A Short Time Later

The Emergency Conference Room lay buried several levels beneath the Pentagon. Roughly the size of a small theater or a school auditorium, it was dominated by a long, rectangular table. Every position at this central conference table had its own secure communications links to different military and intelligence commands around the globe. Large digital screens mounted on the far wall could be configured to show everything from orbital satellite views to live video streams from combat units, ships, and aircraft anywhere in the world. During any major crisis, the ECR served the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other defense and intelligence officials as a war room, allowing them to make high-level command and control decisions on the basis of the best available information.

Late in the evening, Eastern Standard Time, Director of National Intelligence Jonas Murphy entered the ECR at a rapid walk. The room was filling up fast as Pentagon officials and senior officers representing all six uniformed military branches arrived for this hastily convened meeting. Murphy waved the two aides who’d accompanied him over to a row of chairs reserved for staff and took his own seat among the decisionmakers at the central table.

He nodded politely to Bill Taylor, the secretary of defense, who would chair this meeting. The other man’s thick, black-framed glasses and unkempt white hair made him look a bit like an absent-minded professor, but anyone who judged him on his appearance was in for a shock. A highly successful tech entrepreneur before coming to D.C., Taylor possessed a razor-sharp mind, one capable of juggling enormous amounts of detail without losing sight of the bigger picture. Murphy privately saw him as a huge improvement over the last incumbent at the Defense Department, a slick corporate type who’d seemed far more interested in self-promotion and favorable media reviews than in military readiness and the national interest.