Tom Clancy - Locked On

Safronov had spent the last hour speaking by phone and walkie-talkie to the technical director of the processing facility, explaining exactly what was to be done at each launch site. When the man protested, when he refused to carry out Safronov’s wishes, Georgi ordered one of the technical director’s staff shot. After the death of his colleague, the technical director had given Georgi no more problems.

“Cut the feed at 109,” Georgi ordered, and the screen in front of the men at launch control went blank.

He did not want the men in the room with him knowing which silos had the bombs, and which rocket contained the remaining satellite.

Now Safronov was about to explain everything to the staff here at the LCC.

“Where is Aleksandr?” asked Maxim Ezhov, Kosmos’s assistant launch director, the first man brave enough to Àspeak.

“I killed him, Maxim. I did not want to, but my mission required it.”

Everyone just stared at him as he explained the situation. “We are putting new payloads into the SHC’s. This will be done at the launch sites. My men are overseeing this now, and the technical director of the processing facility is leading his men. Once he says he is complete, I will go out to the launch silos and check his work. If he has done what I asked him to do, he and his entire staff will be free to go.”

The launch team stared at the president of Kosmos Space Flight Corporation.

“You do not believe me, do you?”

Some of the men just shook their heads no.

“I anticipated this. Gentlemen, you have known me for many years. Am I an evil man?”

“No,” one of them said, a hopeful note in his voice.

“Of course not. Am I a pragmatic, efficient, intelligent man?”

Nods all around.

“Thank you. I want to show you that I will give you what you want, if you give me what I want.” Georgi lifted his radio. “Let everyone Russian and Kazakh remaining at the processing facility go free. They may take their personal vehicles, of course. I am sorry but the busses will have to remain. There are many more people here who will require transport from the facility when this is all over.” He listened to his subordinate acknowledge the order, and then said, “And please, ask them all to call the switchboard here when they are out of the spaceport to tell their friends here at the LCC that it was no trick. I have no desire to hurt anyone else. The men here at the Cosmodrome are my friends.”

The launch control facility personnel relaxed in front of him. Georgi was feeling magnanimous. “You see? Do what I ask and you will live to see your families.”

“What will we be doing?” asked Ezhov, now the de facto leader of the hostages in launch control.

“You will do what you came here to do. You will prepare to launch three rockets.”

No one asked what was happening, though some had their suspicions about what was going to be loaded on their space vehicles.

Safronov was just as he said, an efficient and pragmatic man. He allowed the staff at the processing facility to go free because he did not need them any longer, and he needed his troops guarding the staff at processing to move to the launch silos to protect them from Spetsnaz. And he also knew this show of goodwill would make it more likely the launch control personnel would follow orders.

When he did not need the controllers any longer, however, he would have no incentive to let them live. He would kill them all as part of his statement to the infidels in Moscow.

The ESOC in Darmstadt reported the attack to its counterparts in Moscow, among others, and Moscow notified the Kremlin. After an hour of discussions over the phone, a direct link with the Kremlin was established. Safronov found himself standing in launch control with a headset on, conversing with Vladimir Gamov, the director of the Russian Federal Space Agency, who was at the Kremlin in a hastily organized crisis center. The two men had known each other for as long as Safronov could remember.

“What is going on over there, Georgi Mikhailovich?”

Safronov answered, “You can begin by calling me Magomed Dagestani.” Mohammed the Dagestani.

In the background on the other end of the line Safronov heard someone mumble “Sukin si.” Son of a bitch. This made him smile. Right now it would be sinking into everyone in the Kremlin that three Dnepr rockets were under control of North Caucasus separatists.

“Why, Georgi?”

“Are you too stupid to see? To understand?”

“Help me understand.”

“Because I am not Russian. I am a Dagestani.”

“That is not true! I have known your father since we were at Saint Petersburg. Since you were a child!”

“But you met my father after I was adopted from Dagestani parents. Muslims! My life has been a lie. And it is a lie that I will rectify now!”

There was a long pause. Men mumbled in the background. The director went in a different direction with the conversation. “We understand you have seventy hostages.”

“That is not correct. I have released eleven men already, and I will release another fifteen as soon as they return from the silos, which should be within a half-hour at most.”

“At the silos? What are you doing to the rockets?”

“I am threatening to launch them against Russian targets.”

“They are space vehicles. How will you—”

“Before they were space vehicles they were R-36s. Intercontinental ballistic missiles. I have returned them to their former glory.”

“The R-36 carried nuclear weapons. Not satellites, Safronov.”

Georgi paused for a long moment. “That is correct. I should have been more accurate in my words. I have returned two of these specimens to their former glory. The third rocket does not have a warhead, but it is a powerful kinetic missile nonetheless.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying I have two twenty-kiloton nuclear bombs, loaded into the Space Head Modules of two of the three Dnepr-1 delivery vehicles in my possession. The missiles are in their launch silos, and I am in launch control. The weapons, I call them weapons because they are no longer mere rockets, are targeting population centers of Russia.”

“These nuclear weapons you speak of…”

“Yes. They are the missing bombs from Pakistan. My mujahideen fighters and I took them.”

“Our understanding from the Pakistanis is that the weapons cannot detonate in their current state. You are bluffing. If you even have the bombs, you cannot use them.”

Safronov had expected this. The Russians were so dismissive of his people, after all. He would have been stunned if it were any different.

“In five minutes I will send an e-mail to you directly, and the subdirectors of your agency, that is to say, men more intelligent than you. In the file you will see the decoding sequence we used to render the bombs viable warheads. Share it with your nuclear experts. They will attest to its accuracy. In the file you will also see digital photographs of the altimeter fuses we stole from the Wah Cantonment armaments factory. Share them with your munitions experts. And in the file you will also see several possible trajectory ploÀts for the Dnepr rockets, in case you do not believe I can return the payloads to earth wherever I want. Show that to your rocket engineers. They will spend the rest of the day with their calculators, but they will see.”

Safronov did not know if the Russians believed him. He expected more questioning, but instead, the director of the Russian Federal Space Agency just said, “Your demands?”

“I want proof that the hero of the Dagestani revolution, Israpil Nabiyev, is alive. You give me this, and I release several more hostages. When you release Commander Nabiyev, and he is delivered here, I will release everyone else here except for a skeleton crew of technicians. When you remove all Russian forces from the Caucasus, I will take one of the nuclear-tipped Dneprs offline. And when myself, Commander Nabiyev, and my men have safely left the area, I will relinquish control of the other weapon. This situation that you find yourself in can be behind you in a matter of a few short days.”