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Back War with Russia Save as PDF
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Foreword
  4. Preface
  5. Prologue
  6. PART ONE
  7. Kharkiv, Ukraine
  8. The President’s weekly defense and foreign policy meeting, The Kremlin, Moscow
  9. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC), Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Belgium
  10. Briefing Room, Boryspill Air Force Base, Ukraine
  11. The Kremlin, Moscow
  12. Washington, D.C.
  13. Residence of DSACEUR La Belle Alliance, Erbisoeul, Belgium
  14. North Atlantic Council Conference Room, NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  15. Banks of River Daugava, Riga, Latvia
  16. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  17. Riga, Latvia
  18. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  19. Ādaži Training Camp, Latvia
  20. NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  21. National Armed Forces Joint HQ, Riga, Latvia
  22. Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Mons, Belgium
  23. Central European Time 1600 hours, Eastern Standard Time, The White House, Washington, D.C.
  24. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  25. Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia
  26. Camp David, Catoctin Mountains, Maryland
  27. British Embassy, 5, J.Alunana Street, Riga, Latvia
  28. The Russell Arms, Butler’s Cross, Buckinghamshire
  29. HMS Queen Elizabeth Middle Slip Jetty, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth
  30. National Defense Control Center, Moscow
  31. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  32. Somewhere in the forest, Gauja National Park, Latvia
  33. 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London
  34. HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Baltic Sea
  35. Control Room, Kilo Class submarine Krasnokamensk, Baltic Sea
  36. PART TWO
  37. Prime Minister’s Office, House of Commons, London
  38. The Presidential Dacha Barvikha, Odintsovsky District of Moscow Oblast
  39. The White House, Washington, D.C.
  40. NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium
  41. Gauja National Park Forest, Latvia
  42. PART THREE
  43. “The Tank,” Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
  44. North Atlantic Council NATO Headquarters, Brussels
  45. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Cheltenham, England
  46. GCHQ, Cheltenham, England
  47. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  48. Headquarters, Kaliningrad Special Region, Kaliningrad
  49. The President’s Office, The Kremlin, Moscow
  50. Forest south of Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad, Russia
  51. Comprehensive Crisis Operations Management Center (CCOMC) SHAPE headquarters, Mons, Belgium
  52. Command Bunker, Iskander Missile Battery Pravdinsk, Kaliningrad
  53. Over Wroclaw, Poland
  54. Forest north of Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  55. 25,000 feet above Kaliningrad
  56. Close to the Pravdinsk Iskander Battery, Kaliningrad
  57. Epilogue
  58. Glossary
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. Notes

“And I’m heading back to link up with my guys at the embassy. Good luck and I hope we meet again,” he said to Bertinetti, who watched as he turned and walked out of the Operations Center with the striking blonde girl. He anticipated that the other F-16s would be landing soon. Given the new sense of palpable concern in the Operations Center, his gut instinct told him that they couldn’t come fast enough.

At that moment the radar picture in the Air Operations Coordination Center, the digital map image in the Operations Center and all the computers flickered, faded and then went black. The watch keeper spoke into his microphone. But there was nothing. He tried his telephone. Again nothing. The hackers had struck again.

The lights flickered and went out. In the dark they heard a generator kick in somewhere and a faint wall light slowly pierced the darkness. “Let’s go,” exclaimed Bertinetti. “NOW!”

0100 hours, Sunday, May 21, 2017

Lielvārde Air Base, Latvia

IT HAD BEEN a tortuous drive from Riga thanks to the chaos caused by the latest cyber-attack. Bertinetti had left the Latvian Armed Forces Joint Command HQ with Teteris, the Lielvārde Air Base commander, in a desperate hurry to get back to the airfield. The radar picture they’d seen in the Air Operations Command Ops Room, before it had gone blank, was ominous. It had shown a major concentration of radar icons around Pskov, the Russian aviation base 175 kilometers east of Riga, and Bertinetti wanted to reassure himself that the remainder of his F-16s—which were expected any minute now—were refueled, armed and ready to go in the event of a surprise Russian attack. As they finally drove through the main gate of the air base at one o’clock in the morning, the loud wailing of sirens shattered the quiet of the night.

“That’s the attack signal! I’ve got to get to my command post!” Teteris was already accelerating past the gate guard who, recognizing him, waved him through, a look of near panic on his face as he clearly wondered what on earth was happening. Screeching to a halt and not bothering to shut the car door, Teteris ran into the Station HQ.

Bertinetti followed him, mind racing. If the base was under imminent Russian attack, he had to get himself and his jets airborne and out of Latvia. Much as it galled him to cut and run, he’d had it drummed into him on being tasked to this assignment that his mission was to deter an attack, and if Russian and American pilots went head-to-head in combat, then a potential world war might follow.