Tom Clancy: Locked On

But that plan, like a lot of plans in a military and intelligence career as long as Ding Chavez’s, had failed before it even began. Now he could only breach the LCC all by himself, make his way down, and hope for the best.

Twenty Rainbow operators had parachuted from a massive Mi-26 helicopter at a height of five thousand feet, their drop zone was the rear parking lot of the LCC. Their jump was timed so that Chavez would have the opportunity to remove the sentries from the roof of the building, but they were cutting it so close they could not be certain he would succeed. For this reason they all carried their MP-7s on their chests with the suppressors attached and the weapons ready to bring to bear on any threats, even if they had to fight while still on the way down.

Of the twenty jumpers battling the winds and poor visibility, eighteen hit the rear drop zone, a respectable feat. The other two had equipment problems on the way down and ended up far from the LCC and out of the fight.

The eighteen Rainbow men split into two teams and hit the side loading dock and the back door, blowing open both sets of steel doors with shaped charges. They fired smoke grenades up the hallways and then fragmentation grenades fartheron, killing and wounding Dagestanis at both entry points.

The former hostages entered the side door of the helicopter but then were immediately rushed out the door on the opposite side. They were confused, some did not want to go back outside, they shouted at the pilot to get them the fuck out of there, but the Spetsnaz and Rainbow operators there kept them moving, sometimes by force. They ran past soldiers who had already filed out of the far side door of the helo when it landed and had now taken up prone firing positions in the dark on the far edge of the parking lot.

The civilians were directed with soft red flashlights to run out into the snowy steppes, and as they ran men ran with them, passing out heavy body armor. The soldiers helped them put it on as they continued out into the desolate landscape.

A hundred yards from the rear of the chopper was a small depression in the ground. Here the civilians were told to lie in the snow and keep their heads down. A few Spetsnaz men with rifles guarded them there and, as the gunfire at the LCC picked up, they continued to order the civilians to tuck tighter together and to remain as still as possible.

Safronov had made it back to the control room. He heard explosions and gunfire all around the lower level of the LCC. He kept two gunmen with him; the others he’d sent up to augment the security on the roof and down to the three entrances to the building.

He ordered the two men to stand at the front of the room, alongside the monitors, and point their weapons at the staff. He himself moved between the tables so he could see the work the men were doing. The twenty Russian engineers and technicians looked at him.

“Launch sequence for immediate launch!”

“Which silo?”

“Both silos!”

There was no system to send two Dneprs simultaneously, so it would have to be all done manually. They had the launch link to 104 in place at present, so Georgi ordered that silo to deploy first. He then ordered a second team of men to finalize launch prep on the second silo, so he could send that missile skyward close behind the first.

He pointed his Makarov at the assistant launch director, the highest-ranking engineer in the room.

“One-oh-four clears its silo in sixty seconds or Maxim dies!”

No one argued with him. Those with nothing left to do sat there, panicked that they would be shot because they had outlived their usefulness. Those with last-second duties to prepare the launch worked furiously, arming the power pressure generator and checking each of the three fuel stages of the LV for the correct readings. Georgi and his pistol were right behind them through the entire sequence, and all the launch engineers knew that Safronov could have been sitting in any one of their places doing their job. No one dared attempt to do anything to thwart the launch.

Georgi would see through any trickery.

“How long?” Safronov screamed as he rushed to the control panel with the two launch keys. He turned one, then put his left hand on the other.

“Twenty-five seconds more!” screamed the assistant launch director, nearly hyperventilating from panic.

A large explosion boomed in the hallway just outside. Over the radio one of the Dagestanis said, “They are in the building!”

Georgi removed his hand from the key and took his walkie-talkie from his belt. “Everyone come back to the control room. Hold the hallway and the rear stairs! We only need to keep them back for a few moments more!”

Chavez was halfway down the rear stairwell, turning at the landing, when the door to the LCC opened below him. He leapt back, out of view. He could hear gunfire throughout the lower floors of the building, and he was also receiving the Rainbow teams’ transmissions in the comms set in his ear. Two of the three teams were in the hallway on the other side of the LCC, but they were being kept at bay by over a dozen terrorists who held fortified positions in the hall.

Ding knew that the president of the Russian rocket company — he hadn’t bothered to learn the son of a bitch’s name — could launch the missiles with little preparation.

Clark’s operation orders to all the men on the mission were cold. Even though there would be a dozen unwilling participants in the launch control room, Clark had stressed that they were not innocents. Chavez and Rainbow were to assume that these men would launch the missiles that could kill millions — under duress, maybe, but they could launch them nonetheless.

Chavez knew that it was up to him.

For that reason Ding had been outfitted with six fragmentation grenades, an unusual load-out for a mission involving hostages. He was authorized to kill everything that moved in launch control to assure that the Dnepr rockets did not leave those silos five miles to the east.

But instead of reaching for a frag, he quickly took off his sub-gun, placed it silently on the stairs, then quickly climbed out of his chest gear, only taking his radio set from it and hooking it to his belt. Removing his vest made him lighter and faster and, he sure hoped, quieter. He drew his Glock 19 pistol from his right hip and quickly spun the long suppressor onto the barrel.

He carried special Fiocchi 9-millimeter subsonic ammunition for his handgun; he and Clark had discovered it when training in Rainbow and he knew that, when fired through a good suppressor, it made his Glock as close to whisper-quiet as a firearm could ever be.

Clark had stressed that the entire operation hinged on speed, surprise, and violence of action — Ding knew he needed all three of these factors in spades in the next sixty seconds.

He lifted the Glock to eye level and took one calming breath.

And then he kicked his legs over the railing, spun one hundred eighty degrees, and dropped through the air toward the men in the stairwell below.

Fifteen seconds to launch of 104!” shouted Maxim. Even though Safronov was only five feet away, Georgi could barely hear over the gun battle raging in the hallway.

Safronov stepped to the remaining launch key and put his hand on it. While doing so he turned and looked over his shoulder, across the dozen Russian engineers, and at the two exits across the room. On the right, two Jamaat Shariat stood inside the doorway to the rear stairs; two more men were out in the stairwell guarding access from the first and third floors.

And on his left was the door to the hall. Two men were positioned just inside the doorway here, and whatever remained of Jamaat Shariat was outside, martyring themselves in the fight to give Safronov every second he needed to get at least one of the nukes in the air.