Blood Covenent, page 44
Saddam Hussein overstepped his bounds by first attacking the Iranians, then the Kuwaitis. He drove a wedge into Arab unity by threatening the Saudi oil fields and causing the Americans to react violently. Perhaps Hussein believed the Americans would hold their hand if he stopped north of the Saudi oil fields. The threat to the oil flow proved intolerable to the West and George Bush crushed the Iraqi strong man.
Qadaffi learned the lesson of overreaching. The Americans were quick to punish him for his participation in a series of terrorist attacks aimed at American servicemen in Germany and Italy. Ronald Reagan sent twenty-eight F-111 fighter-bombers and was willing to take casualties to drive home his determination that Qadaffi cease his terrorist activities. Since that night, he never slept in the same place two nights in a row.
Damascus lacked the oil revenues to pose any serious threat to the West. Hafez Assad’s Syrian army was little more than an over-used punching bag for the Israeli Defense Force. Without money, the armaments and logistics could not be purchased to create influence, and influence ultimately purchased leadership. Assad liked to believe he was a player in the Middle East, and he took advantage of Secretary of State George Schultz during the Gulf War when America swallowed its pride to bring the Syrians on board with the coalition. Qadaffi considered him little more than a hollow bag of air.
The Iranian clerics were crazy. They were actively purchasing missile and weapon technology from the North Koreans, the breakaway Russian Republics, and the Chinese, but they were also dancing close to the line where the Americans would once again rattle their saber. He suspected sooner or later they would attempt something too audacious for the West to ignore. Their rabid fundamentalism would be their undoing. Besides, he was the true leader of the Arab world, not a bunch of shuffling holy men.
Some said he was unstable and prone to unpredictable actions. Some suggested he was a madman who should be put down like any other dangerous animal. Everyone agreed he was crazy. They just were not sure whether he was crazy nuts or crazy like a fox.
He wiped his tinted glasses and looked across the camp. The tent flaps flipped up as a ragtag band of Palestinian nationals emerged. Qadaffi had other camps scattered across the desert serving as homes to the Abu Nidal, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Fatah Revolutionary Council, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Japanese Red Army, the Red Hand Commandos, and the Shining Path. Qadaffi used his oil riches to build the terror machines, and that investment was moderate compared to the failed path Saddam Hussein pursued. After all, what were small arms, some explosives, and some surplus tents compared to the fourth largest tank army in the world. He could buy a lot of tents for what the American Air Force shot up in Kuwait.
Qadaffi floated out of the middle car. His personal guard fanned out around him. They were Bedouin as himself and sworn to die on his behalf. They reflected his strength and his strength came from his desert birthright. He learned the lesson of waiting and biding his time. He no longer challenged the Sixth Fleet as they sent their carriers through the Gulf of Sidra to enforce the right of free passage in the sea. Perhaps the time for waiting was over.
Aswad loped across the ground between, them resembling a trained hound more than a man. The acne-scarred man rubbed his hands together and bowed at the waist. Qadaffi waved his hand. Aswad found the weapon and Qadaffi supplied the money. Selling some additional natural gas and oil to the West could make up the twenty million dollars he spent for the bomb. They supplied the money to fashion their noose. Qadaffi was simply searching for a tree with sturdy enough branches to hang them from.
His personal guard formed a ring around the two of them as they walked towards the tent in the center of the camp. Two men on either side of the tent’s entrance were dressed in body armor and Cuban jungle fatigues. Castro wanted to keep his hand in the war against America. They were armed with the best rifles belonging to Aswad’s cell. Neither Aswad nor Qadaffi had any doubts about what the consequences of discovery would bring down upon their heads. More than one camp had been wiped out by a nighttime visit from British and American warriors. Although the Western powers did not admit to such actions, Qadaffi, Hussein, and the rest of the Arab world understood the threat was palpable.
SAMSONwaited for them—a cold malevolent steel cylinder ticking towards the moment when it would ignite the power of the sun. It was still packed in the original case. The stainless steel alloy sealed against the years and the battery pack still charging as it always had. The bomb was in perfect functioning order, with the small exception of the LED display. During the firefight in Tele Aviv, as the Jericho Protocol was put into action, the concussion of the explosive charges designed to blow in the walls without dropping the ceiling jarred the LED display loose. The tolerances on the case itself were such that a screwdriver was required to pry the display loose, but the actual coupling between the 8080’s motherboard had cracked.
Sometime during the early morning,SAMSON awoke from its twenty-year slumber and commenced a seven-hour countdown. The random seed generator came up with 24,563 seconds. TheJew’s simple program was preparing to exterminate a great enemy, just not the one David Kudrik originally envisioned.
Qadaffi and Aswad shared dates and tea. They discussed the weapon’s potential, and on a portable television/VCR combination unit, they watched the satellite imagery from the Connecticut weapon’s detonation. It stunned Qadaffi that the Americans managed to blur the truth and successfully claim it was a natural gas pipeline explosion. It caused him to consider the need for an announcement. The problem of how to accomplish this without inviting nuclear fire troubled Qadaffi. He kept his concerns to himself.
He stood over the case running his fingers along the burnished cylinder. He would have to find more of these weapons and turn them towards other targets. A CPU makes no sound. The silicon brain has no compassion or soul. It is a mindless lump of sand rushing heedlessly forward to a final conclusion. Qadaffi did not appreciate how close he stood to death.
They walked together along the camp’s perimeter discussing various targets. Aswad wanted to hit Israel. It was his passion and dream to bring about the Jewish state’s downfall. Qadaffi never said yes or no. Israel was easier to hit and the logistics of moving the bomb to her borders were considerably less than the daunting task of crossing the Atlantic. However, America was the target. America was the true enemy, and for years, he had suffered her taunts and insults. During the Reagan presidency, the Sixth Fleet regularly shot down his expensive Soviet strike fighters.
He came to understand that Aswad was not the man to accomplish the mission in America. Perhaps Aswad would come to an untimely end in the desert, but for now, he could be the guardian of the weapon. Aswad could keep the secret here in the desert.
After another hour, Qadaffi bid Aswad goodbye and walked back to his Mercedes. The ever-present personal guard shadowed him under the hot noon sun and everyone was thankful for the cool air conditioning streaming through the vents. The caravan wound its way around the camp and headed back into the desert. Aswad and his terrorist cell returned to the normal routine, which was to rest during the heat of the day. Only the Japanese camps were foolish to train during the hot afternoons.
The three-Mercedes caravan was aimed towards the road thirty kilometers distant. The road would take them west to Waddān and a small jet waiting to make the trip back to Tripoli. Five kilometers short of the road, the three cars shuddered as the desert rumbled ominously. A stiff wind followed the shaking and sand rushed by the caravan scarring the car’s high gloss paint.
For some reason, Qadaffi turned to look back towards the camp. The spiraling gray and black cloud rose from the canyon sheltering the camp. For the second time that day, he removed his tinted glasses and stared into the desert.
* * * *
Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
General George Carnady read through the report. The intelligence analysis suggested one of the HAMAS camps run by Qadaffi was on the permanent missing list. The spectral signature identified the weapon asSAMSON. Carnady wondered if they had identified the wrong people runningHarlequin. How did Qadaffi get his hands on one of the weapons? Everything pointed to Ayatollah Kambiz Abbasi.
* * * *
Tel Aviv, Israel
Chaim Wanberg read a similar report three days later. He flipped open Aswad’s file and wrote in the margin:Eliminated 99-Nov-16. He slid the file next to the transcript supplied by Rachel Denisov, the dossier on Major Yevgeny Yarovitsin, and the operational report describing the acquisition of the weapon. His only regret was that Qadaffi escaped death again,but his day would come.
CHAPTER 43
Zhelenogorsk, Siberia
Monday, December 20, 1999
The early days in December greeted the world with a freak Alpine avalanche that swallowed an entire town in rock, ice, and snow. Over four hundred fatalities were estimated, and considering the extraordinary amount of snow, it would be spring before any reasonable rescue could be attempted. A blizzard accompanied the avalanche and it was four days before a damage assessment could even be attempted.
Reconnaissance photographs supplied by the United States to the Swiss and German governments showed the brilliant white disaster. The storm clouds moved on, and the winds died down allowing the sun to illuminate the vale where the town lay. A comparative analysis provided by the National Reconnaissance Office evaluation group estimated a snow depth in excess of 100 meters. The village had a history stretching back twelve hundred years and final preparations were being made for the millennium celebration.
It was a story lasting little more than twelve hours before something more graphic and bloody took its place. After all, the population fed by the twenty-four-hour news cycle did not care about a remote village peopled by Swiss and German residents buried under a mountain of snow. There was no blood or gore to capture the imagination, no rescue attempts to follow, no aftershocks or raging fires to film, just the solid white snow dotted by broken pine trees and jutting mountain pieces. The few roads leading into and out of the region were closed for the season and some speculated they too were victims of the accident. Six months hence people would know the answers, but no one cared.
It was Christmas time and the shopping season gripped America, Europe, and Asia. Four hundred Alpine villagers were quickly forgotten amongst the business of the season, stories about how retail shops were competing with Internet E-commerce sites, and difficulties being experienced in war-ravaged Kosovo and Serbia muffled the terror on an Alpine Mountain most people never heard of. Scant notice was spent on the real reason for the season. The PLO took advantage of their occupation of Bethlehem to show pilgrims how responsible they had become. The President uttered banalities as he threw the switch and lit the National Christmas Tree. The Washington press corps followed him and the First Lady on their shopping expeditions.
There were Christmas pageants, the usual fuss between the ACLU and a city council that wanted to erect a manger scene in the town square, and Hanukah—the Festival of Lights. The world with all its glitz and glamour missed the most significant story of the year at a small Alpine village in Switzerland. The American Defense Support Program satellites circling the globe never saw the flash under the severe blizzard. No NUDET notification was sent to the North American Aerospace Defense and US Space Commands.
The accident was not a natural spasm. One of threeSAMSON devices hidden in a cave four hundred meters above the village detonated. The detonation caused the side of a mountain to collapse and fill the entire lower valley with debris. Spring would reveal an awesome disaster, and no attempt would even be made to excavate the site. The GermanBundesnachrichtendienst had failed to track down the weapons. The people responsible for the weapons were all dead. Research into the issue revealed they had each died violently in a car accident and a bank robbery. Whatever secrets they still kept followed them to their graves. The three weapons remained missing. It was troubling, because the rest of Yevgeny’s list was accurate and credible.
* * * *
Colonel Feognost rubbed his hands together. His breath formed heavy white clouds as he walked across the frozen tarmac in Central Siberia. Zhelenogorsk had once been known—when it was known at all—as Krasnoyarsk-26. During the Stalinist era of closed cities, this place had vanished from the maps as well.
Feognost stamped his feet. The icy temperatures crept through his patent leather shoes and thin Italian socks. He had forgotten about Siberia’s bone chilling temperatures. Even Moscow was tropical compared to the enveloping cold.
Krasnoyarsk-26 was officially listed as a reprocessing facility. It was one of three plutonium production reactors that had been converted to reprocess spent fuel, and reprocessed fuel was a source of hard currency for the Russian Federation. No one worried about environmental impact statements or pollution. There were no Greenpeace demonstrators picketing for the rights of Siberian workers, nor did anyone inquire too closely about the possibilities of slave labor still being employed on the verge of a new century. Surely, such barbarisms were just a terrible rumor slandering the enlightened Russian leadership.
The breakaway Republics and the European Union needed someone to perform the dirty and dangerous job of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. The going rate was $285 per kilogram of nuclear fuel. The Russian Federation and the Russian Mafia were difficult to separate when such lucrative profits could be realized. A natural partnership formed and something would have to be done about Ukraine’s sudden reluctance to pay for current production costs.
Before the Soviet Empire’s collapse, Krasnoyarsk-26, along with Tomsk-7 and Chelyabinsk-65, was the major bomb-grade plutonium production facilities. They formed a nuclear waste dump encompassing roughly one thousand square miles following the Ob and Yenisey Rivers into the Kara Sea and ultimately the Arctic Ocean. Chelyabinsk-65 leeched into the groundwater more than three times the amount of radioactive waste that Cernobyl did when the roof blew off its graphite reactor and spewed a lethal radioactive cloud across Europe.
The ground surrounding Krasnoyarsk-26 is littered with lead-lined concrete casks buried at various depths depending on the presumed lethality of their contents. There are gray, pockmarked lids marking some of the locations. The lids—many less than twenty-five years old—are supposed to hold back the nuclear monsters for thousands of years. The marked locations are identified with faded and tattered red flags fluttering off cheap wire masts. There were other, earlier locations lost to the memories of workmen who buried the waste half a century earlier. The Russians were not required to build holding ponds, nor did they seem terribly concerned about poisoning the local population. Waste ended up in ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.
Colonel Feognost believed he had found Andropov’s secret storage facilities. Who would notice another vault in the ground where something deadly was buried? No one familiar with the horrors of radiation sickness, cancers, or blindness tarried long. Andropov, while still KGB Chairman, had been circumspect and secretive about the development of theSAMSON weapons at Arzamas-16. He needed a place where his adversaries would not discover his arsenal by intent or accident. Once he became General Party Secretary, Andropov moved three of the storage sites to a more regulated and proper facility—a place where he would direct Yevgeny Yarovitsin.
Kolokol led them to the computerized depots and theSAMSON weapons. The ones Yevgeny never deployed or sold were recovered—a dusty group of miniature coffins. Kolokol arrived with his own combat troopers and brought Feognost along as a courtesy. Feognost assumed Kolokol wished to keep his eye on the FSB man and subtly threaten him with the firepower at his disposal. His own men took over security arrangements for the train trip to Zlatoust-36. Zlatoust-36 was a warhead production site in the Ural Mountains used for final assembly. It was likely theSAMSON weapons had been built here or at Arzamas-16. Zlatoust-36 became the final destination for these weapons.
Feognost did not intend for these weapons to meet the same fate. Kolokol had his nuclear arsenal. He commanded rockets, missiles, and bombers. He held one of the highest military commands in Russia, Feognost was merely a colonel. He understood the temptation and lure of the money that the weapons represented. If the documents were correct, then he would soon control fifty nuclear weapons; enough fire power to adequately and completely cripple the growing Islamic threat to the south. Properly employed, he could spark a war between India and Pakistan effectively neutralizing those factions. He certainly could generate enough money to retire. His retirement would be more certain than Yevgeny’s.
He clapped his hands together as the front-end loader pried the mushroom-shaped cap out of the frozen tundra. The concrete cap flipped over on its back and broke in two, revealing the reinforcing rods laced as a mesh. Feognost leaned forward and peered down a dark, slanted hole slicing through the hard-packed snow and inch-thick ice. There were rusted steel steps leading down to a hatch.
He grabbed a torch from one his men and shined it into the hole. The stairway was steel, ending some twenty steps below in a shallow hollowed out spot. He clambered down the steps impatient to findhis bombs. He reached the bottom and found himself standing in a mixture of grease, ice, and something green that refused to freeze. The gunk slurped over his Italian loafers. Four locking bolts were pushed into the stone on each corner at forty-five degree angles to secure the hatch. He waved the torch around noting the reddish black rust. He tried one of the bolts, but it held fast. The air was thick and tight in the hole.
Feognost ordered two workmen into the hole. His handpicked border guards formed a perimeter defense about the hole. The cask locations were far enough apart and the appearance of armed guards to accompany fuel rods, reprocessed material, andother items was not unusual. The Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission was formed to develop a solution for the pollution and the danger the rabid environmentalists feared Russian practices posed to the world. It took three years before an agreement was hammered out regarding the decommissioning of Russian plutonium production reactors. As with so many agreements, it called for US inspectors to periodically visit the site.
