ROGUESTATE, page 4
Parvez’s fire burned hotter than either he or the Iranians could have predicted. Perhaps, if the construction short cuts had been discovered and corrected, or if the desire for an eloquent statement of Soviet dominance had been resisted, the fire might have been contained. Instead, the steel spars superheated to a apple-red glow and thick smoke poured into the sky visible to planes landing at Moscow’s International Sheremetyevo twenty miles distant.
The fire consumed the maintenance room and roared through the kitchen and restaurant. The observation deck became an inferno, and everything that could burn ignited, feeding the 1500-foot torch. Chunks of ferro-concrete dropped from both the 1500- and 1000-foot levels. They exploded like fragmentation bombs on the hard ground below.
The Moscow Militia evacuated the broadcast studios and offices within seven hundred meters of the tower. After the guide wires securing the tower melted and snapped in a rippling steel lasso that almost decapitated two fire fighters, the orders were given to let the fire burn itself out. The elevators leading to the fire quit working and, for a while, seven fire fighters were trapped, diverting precious resources from saving the tower to saving the men.
Flames raced up and down the tower following the electrical and transmission wiring. It found new places to burn and frustrated the efforts to extinguish the conflagration. The elevators that remained on the upper levels became flaming bombs and eventually rode down the damaged shafts to explode in the visitors’ lobby. The elevator shafts breathed smoke like a dragon reborn from Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Helicopters outfitted with water buckets capable of lifting fifteen tons of water were waved off as structural engineers determined the water might cause the weakened structure to fold over and collapse in a mangled heap.
Television signals to twenty million households, and the broadcast signals for the six national networks blinked off. Radios carried a useless static hash. Cellular phone and paging services dropped offline. The tower had only been burning for five hours.
Vladimir Putin recognized the public relations problem instantly. While he had been roundly criticized for insensitivity to theKursk disaster, the loss of television signals and the daily fix of American soap operas fueled a visceral and dangerous mood in the capitol.
Communication Minister Leonid Reiman’s initial statement that television signals might be out for as long as sixty days was quickly retracted. The highest levels of the Russian Government scratched their heads to ensure the daily drivel of soap operas and game shows reached the masses. Revolutions had started for less, and the Kremlin’s masters were well aware of history’s lessons.
When the fire finally burned itself out, the Ostankino Tower remained a blackened spike swaying in the wind. The structural steel was weakened by the heat. The cables and electrical conduits were little more than husks. Instead of symbolizing technical competence, the Ostankino Tower was transformed into a symbol depicting the Russian Federation’s sorry state.
Putin, an avid student of the doublespeak practiced by the current crop of American Presidents and British Prime Ministers, managed to conjure virtue out of the disaster. However, even casual observers recognized the words were about as sturdy as the tottering Ostankino Tower.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chechnya,London Telegraph,Nigel Turner, February 23, 2000 –The iron noose around the embattled and besieged Chechen rebel army suffered another setback. At Grozny, Russian Federal forces successfully stampeded several hundred freedom fighters into minefields. At least seventy mines exploded killing many and wounding others. Amongst the dead were field commandersLecha Dudayev, Khunkarpasha Israpilov, and Aslambek Ismailov. Akhmed Zakayev and Shamil Basayev were wounded.
Moscow, Russian Federation
Monday, August 28, 2000
2:00 A.M. (GMT + 3:00)
Parvez used the remote control to click on the television. It showed only snow on the six major networks available to Muscovites. It caused a sly grin to lace along his lips. The Ostankino Tower was a red hot, black shrike thrusting upwards on the Moscow skyline and it continued to burn into the night. He had even managed to kill a handful of Russians.
It had been a good day.
He stayed at the Radisson, which was a far cry from the caves, sewers, and cellars where he had been living for the last fifteen months. The static and snow running across the television screens proved the Russian Bear was not invulnerable, and in the new democratic Russia, people dared to criticize the military bureaucracy. His act caused the entire world to notice the angry Chechens. Subway and building bombings had lost their dramatic effect. The Western press treated the continued annoyance like local city burglary reports. They dutifully reported the statistics buried inside the want ads. The Ostankino Tower and the loss of theKursk represented a new chapter.
Vladimir Putin’s government faced a crisis it was unprepared to handle. The idea that military family members would publicly criticize the Ministry of Defense, or express surprise to learn their son or brother had been assigned duty on theKursk, was unprecedented in modern memory. The secrecy cult and iron-fisted people management, successively handed down like a sacred legacy from the NKVD to the KGB to today’s FSB, failed to keep the Internet and satellite news channels silent.
It took less than thirty-six hours for theKursk ’s details to slip into the chaotic digital chatter. Faced with the prospect of admitting that one of the newest submarines in the Northern Fleet had exploded and sunk with all hands, the organs of state security commenced a disinformation campaign.
Putin continued his vacation unaware of the public relations storm thundering on the horizon. Great Britain, Norway, and America had already extended back channel inquiries regarding a rescue using the Deep Sea Rescue Vehicles (DSRV) and mini-subs developed for precisely such a disaster. Brazenly, the Russian Federation declared theKursk was down in three hundred fifty-four feet, and life sustaining air and heat were being funneled to the stricken crew. The officers aboard the two AmericanLos Angeles class attack boats knew this was another fabrication. The likelihood that theKursk survived the massive underwater explosion was a thin hope. CNN and BBC cameras recorded the flotilla of Russian surface ships clustered over the cold tomb below. The Russian Federation called it a rescue attempt.
The Putin Government discovered rescue was a popular item. They quickly assured a news-hungry world that all one hundred eighteen men aboard theKursk were alive and well. It was a declaration that made more than a few Western experts scratch their heads. Still believing the old Soviet model would hold, the Putin government expanded on the rescue mission and suggested a diving bell was on the scene. It would be a simple matter of attaching to one of the three hatches and evacuating the men to the surface.
Doubts were voiced across a thousand Internet sites. An enterprising Norwegian stringer discovered the Americans had supplied very specific information, and the earthquake watchers returned to their seismographs to discover the largest measurement ever recorded between the Kola Peninsula and North Cape occurred at 11:28 local time on Saturday, August 12, 2000—an astounding 3.5 on the Richter scale.
Environmental damage to one of the richest fishing grounds in the world has never been a major concern to the Russians. However, it was one of the more contentious issues between Norway and the Russian Federation. Over one hundred nuclear reactors were abandoned by Russia to the depths of the Barents Sea or buried on the Kola Peninsula.
The Norwegian government asked a bit more pointedly as to whether or not one of the reactors on theKursk had exploded. The Russians parried their query with the incredible declaration that a foreign submarine had collided with theKursk, causing the anomaly on Norway’s sensors. The Americans quietly suggested they had been observing the Northern Fleet’s exercises, and none of their ships were involved. The doubters emerged in chat rooms along the digital highway. The second submarine tale pointed the finger of blame at the Americans and British. Yet, if a submarine had collided with theKursk , then it stood to reason parts of that boat would be scattered across the bottom of the Barents Sea.
Tuesday following the disaster came with a new story. TheKursk must have hit one of those pesky mines left over from the Great Patriotic War. At least this explanation provided some basis for the Richter scale readings. It was a prevarication that served to raise even more questions than it answered.
Again, information found its way into the story’s intercourse that there were two explosions—a small pop followed by a much larger blast. For those who read between the lines, it was a warning to the Russians to tell the truth. The United States Navy was not prepared to take the blame for a Russian disaster. The silent sentinels remained on station listening to the Russian diving bell’s futile attempts to attach to the horribly twisted wreck. Only later in unclassified CIA documents did the United States quietly acknowledge two attack boats were listening under the polar waters at least fifty knots north of the fleet exercise area.
America and Britain stepped up public pressure with offers of assistance. Their offers were not entirely humanitarian. More than one government hoped to catch a glimpse of aShkval torpedo. The Russians drifted back to their claims of a mystery submarine, and reported the underwater currents were extraordinary in a zero-visibility environment. Therescue operation was going poorly.
The stormy weather over the Barents Sea began to clear, but the public relations storm gathered force. Specific damage to theKursk appeared in the Western press: Massive damage to the boat’s bow, extensive flooding, buckled hatch covers, and bent railing. How could one hundred eighteen men still be alive? It was question mouthed by mothers and wives, and captured on CNN. Vladimir Putin returned from his Black Sea vacation at the same time the Ministry of Defense admitted no tapping had been heard from theKursk for several days.
It was late Thursday before the Russian Federation asked the British to send their mini-sub and assist in the rescue. It was little more than good television. The British, through their American cousins, already knew the tapping had ceased before the Russians ever admitted theKursk was down. Headlines shouted: TIME RUNNING OUT FOR SUB.
Incredibly, the Russians admitted they did not have qualified divers to conduct operations. Norway supplied divers to augment the British mini-sub crew. By Saturday, the Norwegian rescue team confirmed what the world already suspected. All hands lost, theKursk was grievously damaged.
Putin’s seeming indifference to the lives of his sailors, and the Ministry of Defense’s continued disinformation, broke in an angry wave of screaming mothers and distraught wives. Irate accusations were hurled at the Russian government. When the cameras recording Russia’s summer of discontent captured a syringe plunging into the neck of a distraught woman, the pent up rage and frustration with the Russian Federation exploded in a broad, critical shriek.
The Ostankino Tower fire slammed into the Russian Federation two weeks later. The Putin government, off balance from theKursk disaster, was hardly ready to deal with the loss of international prestige and national honor brought about by the tower fire. The fire demonstrated the Russian Federation’s ineptitude and bad luck. There was no ocean to hide the disaster in as twenty million television sets clicked to a static hash, and most radio signals became little more than futile pops.
For the moment, Putin and his ministers believed the Ostankino Tower fire was another bout of bad luck. Their perception would change in the next few days. The Chechen War was about to enter a new and far more intimate phase. TheKursk and Ostankino Tower fire testified to a capability formally assigned to the late Chechen President—Dzhokhar Dudayev.
Parvez celebrated his success with a bottle of French champagne, a fine steak dinner, and a couple of whores. He spent the money the Iranian watchers provided for the operation with the lavishness of a Japanese businessman. He reveled in his decadence, unaware that Ayatollah Kambiz Abbasi maintained a constant vigil on his activities.
Two Iranian watchers shadowed Parvez. They had strict orders to observe and evaluate the young American turned Chechen rebel fighter turned Russian terrorist. No one expected him to be a saint or refuse the fleshly fruits available in Moscow. They kept him bracketed inside a surveillance pocket and relayed their reports through secure, encrypted satellite phones to the Ayatollah.
Parvez had succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. TheKursk was on the bottom of the Barents Sea, and the Ostankino Tower was a superheated, ruby-red marker on the skyline. The aggressors in Afghanistan had been taught a vital lesson. Tomorrow it would be time to continue the lesson and bring the warning anew to the Kremlin dwellers regarding their treatment of the Chechen Muslims.
In 1995, a similar threat arrived at Boris Yeltsin’s doorstep. The Berlin Wall’s Collapse, the Soviet Union’s dissolution, and the Warsaw Pact’s burial resulted in a fire sale on Soviet weapons. Moscow lost control over part of its nuclear arsenal, and the dark side of the Russian military machine was up for sale. Chemical and biological weapons whose existence was never acknowledged found their way into Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China. The United States State Department coined these items Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and promptly issued terse statements indicating everything was under control. As usual for the Clinton State Department, rhetoric rarely matched reality.
While the American State Department courtedrosy scenario and the remnants of the KGB lined their Swiss bank accounts, the Chechen resistance threatened to light off a nuclear bomb buried somewhere in Moscow’s Gorky Park. The Kremlin took the threat seriously, because former Air Force General Dzhokhar Dudayev had signed the letter. The threat was immediately ranked OF SPECIAL IMPORTANCE—Russia’s most secret and sensitive classification. TheFederal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB), the inheritor of the KGB’s internal responsibilities, came to the frightening conclusion that a weapon with a potential yield between two and five kilotons was missing.
The National Security Agency (NSA), cloistered at Fort Meade, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, plucked the information from Russia’s crumbling communication’s infrastructure, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later learned that as many as eighty-four weapons were missing. The weapons were known asSAMSON , and in the hot summer of 1999, ten of the bombs emerged from their hiding places in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. The proliferation of an aging and highly secret Russian technology brought the sharp end of the spear to the American heartland.
Ayatollah Kambiz Abbasi discovered to his immense agony that one of those weapons had found its way into the Tehran suburbs. Unlike the American weapons, the Tehran bomb was not found in time and the cataclysmic fireball ripped through the heart of Iran’s largest city. Abbasi surveyed the damage on the day of the explosion in an orange protective suit. The three-hundred-meter-wide epicenter was a blackened blister of wrecked buildings and torn streets. It was an act demanding a response. The weapon bloodied the Iranian city, but eight months later the worst of the wreckage had been removed and the rebuilding process begun.
Abbasi knew the origin of the weapons to be Soviet. After all, he had approved the purchase of eleven weapons from a rogue KGB officer. He suspected the complicity of the Americans in the Tehran tragedy, but the ruling council of Mullahs could not get away from the fact that a Russian weapon had been used to devastate their city. They could not forget the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, Dagestan, and Chechnya. Blood demanded blood. Abbasi had been charged with finding a suitable weapon to execute their revenge. The ruling council had every expectation of becoming the dominant regional power.
In 1995, the FSB came to similar conclusions much faster than their American counterparts. While they had no idea where the weapons were located, no one deluded the Russian leadership with fairy tales that a bomb was not planted inside Gorky Park. Officially, the Russian Federation’s Foreign Ministry in concert with the American Secretary of State issued joint declarations that the existence of such weapons was nothing more than the overactive fantasies of cheap novelists trying to make a buck. Curiously, the Americans never challenged the assertion until the spring of 1998.
Unwilling to chance nuclear immolation inside the center of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin ordered the Red Army to back away from Grozny. The first Chechen war came to an uneasy truce and the Gorky weapon was never officially retrieved. The thirty or so Chechen clans reverted to kidnapping, drug smuggling, and car jacking. It kept people like Shamil Basayev satisfied for a time. No one in Moscow or Grozny ever believed the war was over—it was merely on hold.
It would be another four years before a new Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, sent his army to crush the Chechens and leave Grozny little more than a smoking ruin. Putin appeared to be a man pledged to the destruction of the Chechen rebels. It was the kind of thinking employed by the Stalinists. Putin was not opposed to genocide, especially, when the victims were filthy Muslim Chechens. He had read the intelligence reports and bristled angrily when Yeltsin caved in to their demands.
Putin despised the weakness demonstrated by Gorbachev in allowing a Hollywood actor playing President the opportunity to derail the Soviet Empire, and Yeltsin for his seeming indifference to Japanese bankers and Texas oilmen. He was determined to arrest the notion that the Russian Bear was enfeebled and toothless. Russia’s ability to force its way into conflicts across the globe was severely impinged; dealing with the Chechens a mere one thousand miles away was an entirely different venue.
TheKursk disaster threatened to become a black mark on his governance. Putin instructed the FSB to aggressively identify the foibles of his political opponents and render them useless. If political blackmail could work in the hallowed chambers of the United States Senate during a Presidential impeachment, there was no reason it could not work in the dingier hallways of the Russian Parliament.
