Tom Clancy - Locked On

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.

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 ensuing 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.