Countdown to Midnight, page 14
Flynn leaned forward and pulled up their map on the multifunction display. He studied the territory shown ahead of them, thinking fast. The Meraj-4 radar system was an expensive piece of hardware. Deploying one anywhere except to watch over high-priority targets like nuclear installations, airfields, and naval bases wouldn’t make much military sense. “My bet is that radar is positioned to cover the approaches to Bandar Abbas,” he told Van Horn.
Her mouth tightened. “Which puts us what? About a hundred and ten nautical miles away?”
“About that,” he agreed. “And getting closer all the time.”
Van Horn nodded. “No point in fooling around, then,” she said. “We need to really get down in the dirt.”
Flynn stared at her. “Our altitude’s only a hundred feet right now. That’s not down in the dirt?”
“Nope.” She pushed the stick forward and the BushCat dove again—dropping until its undercarriage almost seemed to be brushing against the earth. A little cloud of dust and sand kicked up by their propeller and the wind of their passage swirled away behind them. When a massive boulder loomed up through the windshield, she pulled back just far enough to skim a few feet above its cracked and pitted surface before lowering the aircraft’s nose again.
“Holy crap,” Flynn blurted out before he could stop himself. Instinctively, he grabbed again for the cabin strut over his head.
“Now this is flying in the dirt,” Van Horn said with satisfaction.
“No radar pulses detected,” the Predator’s remote pilot reported from her post at the Zaranj airport. “We’re masked by the terrain.”
“See?” She said with a rictus grin. “Piece of cake.”
Flynn kept his mouth shut. The sweat streaking her face told a different story.
Almost an hour later, they emerged from the last band of mountains on their flight path. A large barren plain opened up to the west, bordered on three sides by more rugged hills and ridges. A few scattered lights in the darkness pinpointed small villages, most of them built along a north-south, two-lane highway at the mouth of this basin. A patchwork of small fields and orchards surrounded these little clusters of flat-roofed buildings.
With the Predator right on its tail, the BushCat turned due west and flew on, still almost hugging the ground. They crossed the empty, unlit highway in the middle of a mile-wide gap between two of the towns.
Van Horn glanced to her left. The ground there rose in folds and ridges, climbing several hundred feet above the basin floor. Those hills would block any impulses from the Iranian air defense radars deployed south of them, near Bandar Abbas. She raised the BushCat’s nose and gained some altitude.
Flynn breathed out in relief.
“I was starting to wonder just how long you could hold your breath,” Van Horn observed wryly.
Even a couple of hundred feet gave them a much better look at the terrain they were flying over. Clumps of small shrubs and bare rock dotted the sprawling plain, but its most distinctive features were several alluvial fans that spread northward from the higher ground along its southern edge. These were the accumulations of sand and gravel which had been washed down off the hills over centuries and millennia and then deposited in triangle-shaped patterns across the basin.
Van Horn banked back north and flew low along one of these formations, closely studying the lay of the land through her goggles. The Predator peeled away from behind her and started slowly circling over the valley. At last she nodded. “Okay, this spot looks doable.” She glanced at Flynn. “But this could be a little rough,” she warned.
“I am in your hands, O great pilot,” he said solemnly.
She laughed. “Yeah, don’t you wish . . .”
Aware that he’d gone red, Flynn was suddenly very glad that their night vision gear only showed shades of light and dark.
All business now, Van Horn circled back the way they’d come and lined up with a shallow wadi at the heart of the alluvial fan. She reached up and pulled a control handle. The BushCat’s wing flaps came down, offering more lift, as she simultaneously throttled back.
Smoothly, they slanted down out of the sky and touched down on the sand surface with a jolt and a little bounce. The little plane shook and rattled, jarred slightly from side to side as it rolled down the dry streambed, with bigger rocks and clumps of brush blurring past on both sides. Plumes of dust and blown sand kicked up by its landing gear trailed behind the tail. Carefully, Van Horn throttled all the way back and applied her brakes gently. The BushCat came to rest a little under four hundred feet from its touchdown point. Its propeller slowed and stopped turning.
With a sense of relief at being back on solid ground, even if it was deep inside hostile territory, Flynn unbuckled his safety harness and unlatched the aircraft’s soft-sided door. He dropped lightly out onto the wadi’s sand-and-gravel floor and drew his pistol. Then, ducking back under the wing, he moved up the side of the dry stream. At the top, he went down on one knee—checking their surroundings through his night vision goggles. There was no sign of movement. And no new lights showed in any of the villages several miles to the east. From the looks of it, none of the locals—most of whom should be soundly asleep anyway—had noticed their landing.
Turning, he gave Van Horn a thumbs-up signal.
She nodded and radioed the Predator circling overhead. “Tomcat, this is Tiger Cat. We’re clear. The winds on the ground are very light, just occasional gusts from the west at less than five knots. Make your drop when ready.”
“Right that, Tiger Cat,” McCulloch answered from her remote station back at Zaranj. “Stand by.” The Predator broke out of its orbit and flew a short distance to the west, climbing to around five hundred feet. “Dropping now.”
Abruptly, the streamlined cargo container slung under the drone’s long fuselage detached. It plunged toward the ground. A moment later, a parachute blossomed above the falling container, dramatically slowing its descent. It slid downwind and thumped to the ground in a puff of dust about fifty yards from the BushCat. The parachute canopy immediately collapsed, fluttering only a little in the light winds.
Flynn sprinted over to the grounded container. It was about eight feet long, four feet wide, and four feet high. He knelt beside it and reeled in the parachute, compressing it into a compact, easily handled bundle at the same time.
Van Horn joined him just as he finished undoing the straps that held the cargo container shut. She helped him pull it open. Mesh netting and more restraints secured five, five-gallon fuel cans at one end. They took up about a quarter of the interior. “Well, gee, I guess I get to fly out of here after all,” she remarked with a note of quiet relief. The nearly four hundred nautical mile trip here had almost completely drained the BushCat’s relatively small gas tank. Refueling with supplies flown in by the Predator had been their only hope of allowing the light aircraft to make it back to Afghanistan.
Flynn nodded. “And my next ride’s intact, too.” He patted the small motorcycle fitted tightly into the rest of the cargo container. It was a battered-looking Austrian-made KTM 250 XC-F dirt bike. Motorbikes were a common mode of transportation in Iran’s cities and countryside, so this one shouldn’t draw undesirable attention.
The next hour passed in a flurry of hard work—carting fuel cans back to the BushCat and emptying them into its gas tank, and then hastily camouflaging the empty cargo crate with dried brush and dirt. With that done, Flynn wheeled the motorbike over to the grounded plane.
Van Horn handed him his small suitcase. She watched while he strapped it precariously onto the back of the dirt bike. “Well, Señor Duarte,” she said quietly. “I guess this is where we say goodbye.”
He nodded soberly. His Persian wasn’t fluent enough for him to masquerade as a native Iranian, so he’d opted to stick with his cover as a Venezuelan, although this time with a passport and travel documents that identified him as a minor official in the South American nation’s Ministry of Petroleum. Caracas’s revolutionary government was a close ally of Tehran’s dictatorial regime, so travel between the two countries was reasonably common.
His forged documents, produced by the Quartet Directorate’s top experts, were excellent. They were so good, in fact, that in almost any other country, he could have simply flown in aboard a regular commercial flight, trusting that his false identity papers would pass inspection. Unfortunately, Iran’s Islamic government now required every foreign traveler to obtain a special computer-generated visa authorization code before arriving. This new process gave its security officials plenty of time to break anything but the most elaborate and detailed cover story—something that Four had no time to develop for him. Without a genuine code, Flynn would have been arrested the moment his phony papers were scanned at an airport or other point of entry. As it was, he’d have to be extremely careful not to attract close scrutiny from any Iranian authorities. One simple computer check would doom him.
This mission was a high-wire act from beginning to end. Over the equivalent of a pool of molten lava. And all without a net, he realized uneasily. Once the BushCat took off, he would be completely on his own.
Van Horn must have read his gloomy thoughts. She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him down for a deep, fierce kiss. “You take care, Nick,” she said sternly, stepping back. “Do not piss me off by getting yourself killed.”
Taken completely by surprise, Flynn grinned almost unwillingly. “I’ll do my best to avoid that,” he promised. “On my honor.” He held up his right hand, palm out, with the middle three fingers vertical and his thumb holding the little finger down.
She raised an eyebrow at the gesture. “You were a Boy Scout?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Somehow that just figures,” Van Horn said with a headshake. “Okay, then, I’ll hold you to your pledge.” After one final searching look at him, she climbed back into the light plane and started it up.
Five minutes later, Flynn sat astride the dirt bike, watching as the BushCat lumbered down the wadi, steadily gathering speed in a cloud of prop-blown sand. At last, seeming almost reluctant to break contact with the earth, the small aircraft lifted off. Slowly, it climbed away, already banking around to head east. He raised an arm in farewell and saw its wings rock back and forth once in response.
Within moments, the BushCat, again trailed by the Predator UAV, was only visible as a tiny dot in the night sky. And then, quite suddenly, it was gone.
Sixteen
Shahrud Missile Test Facility, Northeastern Iran
The Next Day
One hundred and forty kilometers southeast of the Caspian Sea, the Shahrud Missile Test Facility sat in a desolate wasteland. A steep, rocky ridge rose above the complex of blue-roofed rocket assembly buildings, concrete blockhouses, and solid-fuel storage facilities. They were surrounded by protective earthen berms and office and headquarters facilities. From the air, it didn’t look like much, scarcely a dozen individual buildings set in a square grid pattern that was little more than seven hundred meters on a side. The rocket launch site itself—a large concrete pad, gantry, and flame trench—was located five kilometers away.
Appearances, though, as with so much else in Iran, were deceiving.
Like an iceberg, nine-tenths of the Shahrud Test Facility was hidden from sight—concealed in vast, bombproof tunnels dug into the adjoining ridge. Two green-roofed sheds hid the main entrances to these tunnels from satellite and air observation.
Captain Leonid Kazmin stood in the shade provided by one of these sheds. He felt uncomfortable in the baggy drab green fatigues his Iranian Revolutionary Guard “hosts” had provided to replace his immaculately tailored Russian uniform with its distinctive 12th Main Directorate atom-and-mace unit badge. A frown creased his pale, narrow-nosed face. How long was he going to have stand here, waiting around like an ill-dressed buffoon?
Irritated, he swung toward his two minders. One of them was a slim, almost dandyish major in the Revolutionary Guards. The other, burly and wide-shouldered, was one of Voronin’s Raven Syndicate “specialists.” Which was really nothing more than a polite euphemism for a hired killer, Kazmin thought with contempt. His mind immediately danced away from the awkward realization that the same epithet could just as easily be applied to him—with the sole difference being that while the other Russian’s violent acts might be calculated in terms of small-caliber pistol and rifle rounds fired, his own would be measured in hundreds of kilotons of explosive power. “Well?” he demanded waspishly. “What’s the delay now?” He checked his watch. “We have less than three hours until the next American reconnaissance pass.”
“Patience, Captain,” the Iranian major said soothingly. “Everything is still on schedule.” He smiled. “My superiors are well aware of our adversaries’ spy satellite orbits. And we are quite used to working around them.”
As if in answer, klaxons blared suddenly.
Startled, Kazmin spun back toward the huge entrance dug into the ridge. A massive steel outer door swung ponderously open, revealing a brightly lit tunnel leading deep underground. Almost before the door stopped moving, a long convoy of vehicles rumbled slowly out of the enormous passage.
The first out were seven four-wheel-drive, Iranian-built Raksh armored personnel carriers. Three were equipped with 12.7mm heavy machine guns. Two more carried 30mm autocannons. And the remaining pair were armed with 23mm antiaircraft guns already pointed skyward. All of the APCs were crowded with well-armed soldiers, a mix of Revolutionary Guards and Voronin’s former Spetsnaz troops. All of these wheeled fighting vehicles fanned out around the mouth of the tunnel in a protective arc.
A flock of smaller Safir utility trucks, modeled on America’s famous World War II–era Willys Jeeps, emerged next. Some carried stern-faced Iranian officers and more soldiers. Others were filled with missile technicians from the Shahrud facility.
Last out of the tunnel were four very large trucks. Three of them towed heavily loaded flatbed trailers. Thick canvas tarpaulins shrouded the long cylindrical shapes tied down aboard these trailers. The fourth big rig hauled a freight container whose doors were tightly sealed and padlocked. It braked to a stop right beside Kazmin and his two minders.
The Iranian major stepped forward and opened the cab’s passenger side door with a flourish. “Please get in quickly, Captain,” he said politely. He smiled thinly. “As you rightly point out, our schedule is very tight. We have no time to waste.”
Kazmin fought down an urge to protest the other man’s obvious insolence. For all the fanatical dreams and desires of Iran’s theocratic rulers, the sophisticated rockets built at their orders were still only longer-ranged versions of the Nazi V2s that had pummeled London, Antwerp, Paris, and other Allied cities during the Second World War. Deadly as Hitler’s vengeance weapons had been on a small scale, they could not change the course of history. Nor could any of Iran’s ballistic missiles. Without the combination of his expertise and the special device aboard this truck, the Iranians might as well plan on throwing rocks at their greatest enemy.
Awkwardly, he pulled himself up into the truck cab. Too late, he recognized the other passenger already seated next to their driver. Short, stocky, and white-bearded Dr. Hossein Majidi was the chief missile engineer for Tehran’s unconventional weapons programs. And Kazmin had been doing his best to dodge the other man’s probing questions ever since arriving at Shahrud. His orders from Voronin required him to cooperate with the Iranians, but only to the extent necessary to make sure MIDNIGHT succeeded. He had not planned to instruct them on the complete details of one of Russia’s most carefully guarded nuclear weapons technologies. But now he was trapped.
Still smiling smugly, the Revolutionary Guard major slammed the door shut and stepped back. Then he raised a clenched fist in a signal and brought it down fast. From near the front of the convoy, the deep, echoing blaaat of a truck air horn replied. Fitfully at first, with quick stops and starts, the long line of trucks and smaller vehicles lurched into motion. Three of the Raksh armored personnel carriers moved out to take the lead. The rest fell in behind the larger vehicles.
Twin rotors whirling, two armed Agusta Bell 212 helicopters, export versions of the U.S. military’s UH-1N Twin Huey, clattered low overhead. They flew onward across the empty desert, scouting out in advance of the slower-moving vehicles. Minutes later, they circled back to orbit slowly over the convoy, watching over its flanks and rear. One by one, the trucks and other vehicles turned onto an access road that would take them south to connect with a wider highway.
Kazmin slumped back against the bench seat. This was only the beginning of an arduous trek south to the Shahid Darvishi shipyards outside Bandar Abbas. Completing the 1,200-kilometer-long journey would take them at least two full days—especially with the need to hide their trucks in tunnels or under special shelters erected along the way whenever foreign reconnaissance satellites were overhead.
Beside him, Dr. Majidi pulled out a notebook and a pen. With a genial smile, the white-bearded scientist leaned closer. “Since we now we have a considerable amount of time on our hands, Captain,” he said politely, “I wonder if you could brief me more thoroughly on how to set parameters for the various environmental sensors inside the warhead—so that it will detonate precisely as planned? After all, when the great moment arrives, this will be one of my most important tasks.”
