The helo at site 109 lowered to just above the earth, and twenty operators fast-roped to the concrete pad. These well-trained killers had better luck finding and engaging the enemy throughout the site than the Mi-17 had.
Site 109 was cleared in under a minute, as there were only four Jamaat Shariat mujahideen there. As the chatter of gunfire continued from the other sites, each nearly a mile distant over the steppes, the Alpha Group men at site 109 raced toward the silo, frantic to carry out the next phase of their mission in time.
The soldiers could not disable the nuclear weapon; they wouldn’t even be able to get to it inside the Space Head Module without wasting considerable time. But they had been instructed on how to take the Dnepr offline from here at the launch site, to cut its umbilical cord to the LCC, so to speak, so they rushed forward at a breakneck pace.
The men used lights on their helmets and their rifles as they peered into the deep silo, the only part of the 110-foot-long rocket visible was a large green conical fairing with the white letters KSFC. Below this was the Space Head Module, and below this were the three rocket stages. The men used their lights to identify a massive iron lid a few feet from the open silo; it looked like a giant manhole cover. They got the hatch open, and two of the men began descending down a metal ladder, racing for the support equipment level, a catwalk just a dozen feet down where they would find a second ladder, which would take them down another level. Here they could gain access to the three-stage launch vehicle itself and disable the communication linkage that wired the launch vehicle to ground control.
As they ran across the catwalk and started down the second ladder, the two men knew they had little time.
Are we ready?” Safronov shouted to the two men at the launch control board. When they did not answer, he screamed at them, “Are we ready?”
The redheaded man on the left just nodded curtly. The blond on the right said, softly, “Yes, Georgi. Launch sequence complete.”
“Launch 109!” The two launch keys were already in their locks.
“Georgi, please! I cannot! Please do not—”
Safronov pulled his Makarov and shot the blond man twice in the back. He fell to the floor writhing in pain, screaming in panic.
Georgi turned to the launch engineer seated next to the dying man. “Can you do it, or will I do it myself?”
The Russian man reached over, placed his hand on one of the keys at the top of his control board, and then closed his eyes.
He turned the key. Then, looking up at the pistol in his face, he quickly turned the second key.
Above him, Georgi Safronov said, “Swords into plowshares, and now back into swords.”
Safronov pressed the button.
At site 109, the two Alpha Group operators tasked with decoupling the communications linkage had just left the ladder, and they ran up the small hallway toward the base of the Dnepr-1, frantic to take the LV offline before the madman at launch control blasted the rocket into the stratosphere.
They did not make it.
A loud metallic click below their feet on the catwalk was the last input their brains ever registered.
A power pressure generator below the rocket contained a black powder charge held at pressure, and this ignited below their feet, creating a mass of gases that expanded instantly, firing the 110-foot-tall rocket out of the silo like the cork from a popgun. The two men were incinerated in the blink of an eye as the missile pushed out of the silo and the hot expanding gases pushed out across the tunnel toward small exhaust vents.
The rocket itself rose quickly, but it slowed as the gases that propelled it out of its silo dissipated. With the bottom of the lowest stage of the launch vehicle just sixty feet above the frozen launch silo, the huge craft hung in midair for a moment.
The eight Spetsnaz operators stood below it, staring at the bottom of a space rocket that was about to launch just over their heads.
One of the men mumbled, “Der’mo.” Shit.
With a pop like a Champagne cork, explosives pushed the protective cap off the bottom of the first stage, exposing the rocket exhaust system.
Then the first stage ignited, scorching the earth and all those on it below with flaming rocket fuel.
All eight men died within two seconds of one another. The Mi-17 helicopter had been hovering at one hundred feet. The pilot yanked the controls hard, saving the lives of himself and his crew, but the helicopter itself was too low for such a maneuver. He crashed in the snow, a survivable crash, though the copilot broke both of his arms and the men in back suffered various injuries.
The Dnepr-1 rocket rose into the night sky, moving faster with each second, smoke and steam and flame behind it on the launch pad and in the air. A screech filled the air and a thumping vibration shook the ground for miles in all directions.
The 260-ton machine achieved a speed of 560 miles an hour in less than thirty seconds.
As it rose, all Russian forces abandoned their attack on the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
73
Safronov had programmed the flight telemetry himself using data derived from the working group he’d assembled a few months back. The group had no idea they were working on a nuclear attack, their understanding was that they were to reinvestigate the plan to send rescue boats and other emergency aid via rocket launch. The LV had instructions loaded onto its onboard software that controlled pitch and yaw and burn time, all to direct it toward its destination.
It was the ultimate “Fire and forget” weapon.
The first stage of the launch vehicle separated and fell back to earth, landing in central Kazakhstan just eight minutes after launch.
Moscow was tracking the trajectory, and everyone in the know realized within a few short minutes that their former R-36 missile was on course to Moscow itself.
But there was no running away. No leaving the city. The weapon would hit in under fifteen minutes.
High above central Russia, the second-stage powered flight ended, and after the second stage separated, it crashed onto a farm road near the town of Shatsk on the Shacha River. The third stage then flipped in flight and began traveling backward, and within minutes the fairing jettisoned back to earth. Soon the third-stage rockets extinguished and a protective shield released and fell. This released the Space Head Module from the upper platform stack where the payload container was attached, and this piece, a green cylinder with a payload container holding the device, began returning to earth, a ten-foot-by-ten-foot object weighing in excess of two tons.
The payload dropped in an arc, the heavier atmosphere affected the trajectory somewhat, but Georgi and his scientists had solved for a great number of variables, and the device pushed through the friction at terminal velocity.
The men and women in Moscow who knew of the launch held their children or prayed or cried or hoped or cursed everything Dagestani. They knew there was nothing else they could do.
At 3:29 a.m., while the vast majority of the huge ice-covered city was asleep, a low boom echoed across the southeastern district of Moscow. Nearby residents were shaken from their beds a second later when a larger explosion erupted, windows blew from buildings, and a rumbling vibration rolled across the entire city like a small earthquake.
Those in the city center could see the glow to the south. It rose higher into the air like a sunrise out of the predawn, reflecting off ice crystals on the rooftops of the metropolis.
At the Kremlin’s crisis center they could see the rising fire, a savage inferno just miles away. Men screamed and cried as they braced for what was still to come.
But nothing came.
It took minutes to be certain, but eventually they had reports from the area of the impact. Something had fallen from the sky into the Gazprom Neft Moscow Refinery, a 200,000-barrel-per-day facility southeast of the city center.
It had struck the gas oil vacuum distillation tanks and created a massive explosion that killed more than a dozen people at the refinery instantly, and more died during the ensuin
g fire.
But it clearly was not a nuclear device.
Clark woke to the sound of a low boom in the distance.
He had a crick in his neck from sleeping sitting up. That his sore cervical joints were the most annoying sensation of the moment was telling. After several days of “rough stuff,” he would have thought that Ӏhe would be hurting more from the—
Oh, yeah. There it was. The pain in his jaw and his nose and the dull throb in his head. It took a minute for the mind to accept the assaults to the nerves, but his mind was processing everything nicely now, and the pain receptors were working overtime.
After the boom he heard nothing else from outside. He thought that maybe an electrical transformer shorted out somewhere, but he could not be sure.
He spit more blood, and a molar loosened. He’d bit the inside of his cheek somewhere along the way, as well, and his mouth was swollen on both sides.
He was growing tired of this.
The door opened again. He looked up to see which of the Frenchies were coming for a chat, but he did not recognize the two men who entered.
No, the four men, as two more came through the door now.
Moving with speed and a distressing efficiency the four young men cut Clark’s bindings and ordered him to his feet in Russian.
Clark stood on shaky legs.
Two more men appeared in the doorway. They carried Varjag pistols in their right hands; they held them low but menacing. Their clothes were civilian, but their thick dark jackets and utility pants made them look, to a trained eye like Clark’s, as if they were part of some sort of special unit of military, police, or intelligence officers.
“Come with us,” one of them said, and they walked him through a large house, right past the French detectives, and into a van.
On the surface, Clark realized, perhaps he should have been glad. But it just didn’t smell to him like a rescue operation.
No, this had an “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” feel.
They blindfolded him and drove for an hour. No one spoke to Clark, nor did the men in the van speak to one another.
When they stopped he was led out of the vehicle, still under his own power. The air was freezing cold, and he felt thick snowflakes on his beard and lips.
Into another building, this with the smell and feel of a warehouse, and he was placed on a chair. Once again, his hands and legs were tied. The blindfold came off and he squinted into a bright light for a moment, before finally opening his eyes.
Three men stood before him, just in the shadows outside the light above. Two wore blue jeans and track-suit tops, their heads shaved and their wide flat Slavic faces cold and unfeeling.
The third man wore pressed slacks and a black ski jacket that looked to Clark like it might have cost several hundred dollars.
A table nearby, just out of the direct light, contained a pile of tools, stainless-steel surgical instruments, tape, wire, and other items John could not make out.
Dread filled the American and tightness entered his stomach.
This wasn’t going to be like playing punching bag for a group of French detectives. No, this looked like it was about to get ugly.
Clark also heard noises farther away in the warehouse. Armed guards, it sounded like, from the occasional shuffling of feet and the rattling of rifles on slings.
The man in the ski jacket stepped forward, under the light. He spoke excellent English. “My father sayӀs you are looking for me.”
“Valentin.” John said it in surprise. From the little he knew about the young man, he did not take him for someone that would make a house call to what, by all indications, seemed to be a torture facility. “I said that I wanted to talk to you.” Clark looked at the table and the square-jawed men. “This is not exactly what I had in mind.”
The thirty-five-year-old Russian just shrugged. “You and I are both here under duress, Mr. Clark. If I had a choice in the matter I would be anywhere else, but you are causing problems for my government and they have selected me to meet with you to resolve the problem. The Kremlin has given me free rein to deal with you.”
“Sounds like a job for your father.”
Valentin smiled mirthlessly. “This is not his job, nor his problem. I need to know everything about your current employer. I need to know who you spoke with in Moscow. We found the telephone that you called, but it had been dumped in a landfill, so we learned nothing.”
Clark breathed a hidden sigh of relief.
Valentin continued, “The information I need can be extracted from you in many ways. Many humane ways. But time is short, so if you resist we will have to seek other avenues. Less humane avenues, shall we say?”
Clark sized the young man up instantly. Kovalenko was uncomfortable in this role. He’d likely been in his element creating a political scandal for the incoming U.S. President by leaking info from Laska, but standing here with tough guys in a frozen Moscow warehouse, getting ready to cut a prisoner to get him to talk … This was not his realm.
Clark could not reveal the existence of The Campus to the Russians. He could have held out indefinitely with the French, at least until he died from beating, but Russians had other means. They allegedly possessed a drug, known as SP-117, that was a cut above other truth serums.
Clark knew nothing about the drug other than what he had read in open source. Russia as a threat had been off the ex–CIA operative’s radar for a while.
But why was the drug not here? Why were there only torture devices and tough-looking guys present? Where was the medical facility, the doctors, the FSB psychologists who would normally do this sort of thing.
Clark understood.
John looked at Valentin. “I get it. You are working for Paul Laska. I have a feeling he has something on you, personal or professional I do not know, that is making you do this.”
Valentin shook his head no, but he asked, “Why do you suggest this?”
“Because this is not your world. That you are here in person tells me you could not get FSB support. You are SVR, foreign intelligence. FSB has the interrogators here in Moscow that could do this, but where is the FSB? Why have you brought me into a fucking warehouse? You don’t have a government facility for this sort of work? No, Valentin, your own ass is on the line, so you are breaking rules. You’ve scrounged up a couple of ex–Spetsnaz guys here, am I right? But they don’t know how to do a proper interrogation. They will bash my fucking skull in before I talk.”
Valentin was not accustomed to being outsmarted; Clark could see this in his eyes. “You have been at this since before I was born, old man. You are a dinosaur like my father. But unlike my father, you still retain a little spark in you. I am sorry to say that I will be the one to extinguish that spark. Right now.”
Clark said nothing. The kid did not have state backing for what he was about to do, but he was no less motivated to do it.
Not good.
“Who are you working for, Mr. Clark?”
“Fuck you, sonny.”
Kovalenko’s face seemed to grow slightly pale. He looked to Clark as though he was not feeling well.
“Very well. You force my hand. Shall we begin?” He said a few unintelligible words to his two men, and they stepped over to the instruments on the table. While the thought of doctors in white lab coats was disconcerting to Clark in an interrogation environment, the concept of big men in track suits applying surgical instruments to his body was something beyond horrifying.
Kovalenko said, “Mr. Clark. I have degrees in economics and political science. I have studied at Oxford. I have a wife and a beautiful little girl. What is about to happen has nothing to do with me, with my world. Quite frankly, just the thought of what I am about to do to you makes me want to retch.” He paused, then smiled a little. “I wish I had my father here for this. He would know exactly how to ratchet up the pain. But I will try my own methods. I will not begin with something benign, I can see that the men of Fabrice Bertrand-Morel Investigations have
already failed with that tactic. No … tonight we will begin by devastating your body. After this you will be out of your mind with pain and distress, but you will see how incredibly prepared I am to inflict the ultimate damage upon you, and you will not want to see where I go with phase two of my interrogation.”
What the fuck? thought Clark. This kid did not play by the rules. The men stepped behind Clark, they had blades in their hands. One grabbed the American by his head, the other took hold of his right hand.
Valentin Kovalenko knelt over John, looked him closely in the eyes, and said, “I have read your dossier multiple times. I know you are right-handed, and I know that gun hand of yours has served you well, ever since your nation’s silly little war in Vietnam. Tell me who you contacted in Moscow, tell me who you work for, or I will have my associate here cut off your right hand. It is as simple as that.”
Clark grimaced as the man on his right touched the skin on his wrist with a large cleaver. John’s heart pounded against his rib cage.
Clark said, “I know you are just trying to clean up this mess that Laska made, Valentin. Just help me bring down Laska, and you won’t need to worry about him.”
“Last chance for your hand,” the Russian said, and John saw that the young man’s own heart was pounding. The pale white skin on his face was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat.
“We are both professionals. You do not want to do this.”
“You do not want to make me.”
Clark began taking short, rapid breaths of air. It was inevitable, what was about to happen. He needed to control his heart’s reaction to it.
Valentin saw Clark resigned to his fate. A vein throbbed in the center of the Russian’s forehead. Kovalenko turned away.