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PROLOGUE

N ATIONAL M ILITARY C OMMAND C ENTER

T HE P ENTAGON

An airman first class peered at the message on her screen and announced, “Estonian Air Defense is tracking five Russian military aircraft launched from Soltsy air base, Novgorod Oblast. Currently heading due south.”

The watch commander set his coffee down and sat up straighter in his chair. “That’s part of Russia’s 22nd Heavy Bomber Division,” he announced. “I want a screen up in the next sixty seconds with everything we’ve got on their inventory. Also, grab whatever geospatial is live and feed it to the big board.”

As the first airman got to work on her orders, another chimed in with an update, “Latvian Air Defense is confirming the launch. Looks like an Antonov AN-124 cargo aircraft accompanied by four Sukhoi Su-57 fighters. Took off eight minutes ago.”

“57s?” the watch commander repeated.

“Yes, sir,” the second airman replied. “That’s what the Latvians are saying.”

“Destination?”

“Unknown.”

“Payload?”

“Also unknown,” the second airman stated.

The watch commander looked at the screens. What kind of cargo could that Antonov be carrying that required an escort of Russia’s newest and most sophisticated fighters?

“Ping the National Reconnaissance Office,” he ordered. “I want all the overhead satellite imagery from Soltsy air base for the last seventy-two hours.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

Within twenty-minutes, the NRO had uploaded the imagery to the DoD’s secure cloud. The watch commander was just about to dig in when he received another update.

“According to the Latvians, all five Russian aircraft have just entered Belarusian airspace,” the first airman stated.

“Lithuanian air defense confirms same,” said the second airman.

“All right,” said the watch commander, “let’s see where they go.”

After twenty more minutes, the planes began to make their descent and the Pentagon watch team had their answer.

The Russian aircraft were on approach for Machulishchy air base, twenty kilometers outside of downtown Minsk.

Once the planes had touched down, the team watched as the cargo aircraft taxied to a large hangar and disappeared inside. Shortly thereafter, the Su-57 fighter jets took off and headed back to Russia.

The watch commander entered everything in the logbook, wrote up a report, and submitted it to his chain of command.

Two days later, standing in front of what appeared to be some sort of military storage facility deep in a forest and surrounded by military vehicles, the president of Belarus made the following statement to the Russian state TV channel Rossiya-1 and the Belarusian state news agency’s “BelTA” Telegram channel, “The Republic of Belarus has now received from Russia shipments of both missiles and bombs three times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

With those words, alarm bells began going off around the world.

If the assertion was true, the nuclear doomsday clock had just clicked one minute closer to midnight.