Tom Clancy - Locked On

“Lift your arms in the air, please.”

“I am sorry?”

“Please, friend.”

Safronov did so, unsure. The two young men approached him and frisked him thoroughly but with no obvious intentions of disrespect.

Once this was complete, the older man bade Safronov to sit on a worn sofa against the wall. Both men sat down, and glasses of orange soda were placed on a table in front of them.

“Mr. Safronov, you may call me General Ijaz. I am a general in the Pakistani Defense Force.”

Georgi shook the man’s hand. Pakistan? Interesting. Slowly Suleiman Murshidov’s words downstairs began to bear some context.

Rehan asked, “You are Dagestani? And a faithful Muslim?”

“I am both of these things, General.”

“Suleiman promised me you were just exactlre ze="y the man I need to speak to.”

“I hope I can be of service.”

“You are in charge of Russian space operations?”

Safronov started to shake his head. That was a gross oversimplification of his role as president and main shareholder of Kosmos Space Flight Corporation. But he stopped himself. Now was no time to equivocate, though he did explain further. “That is almost true, General Ijaz. I am president of the company that owns and operates one of Russia’s best space launch vehicles.”

“What do you deliver into space?”

“We deliver satellites into orbits, primarily. We made twenty-one successful launches last year, and expect twenty-four next year.”

“You have access to the missiles to launch the vehicles?”

Safronov nodded, proud of himself and the company he had grown over the past fifteen years. “Our principal space delivery vehicle is the Dnepr-1 Space Launch System. It is a converted RM-36.”

Rehan just stared at the Russian. He did not like to admit that he did not know a fact. He would wait silently until this little man explained himself.

“The RM-36, General, is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia… I should say the Soviet Union, used this to deliver nuclear missiles. It was only in the 1990s when my company reconfigured the system into a civilian space rocket.”

Rehan nodded thoughtfully, feigning only mild interest when, in fact, this was an incredible piece of news.

“What can be put inside of this missile, Mr. Safronov?”

Georgi smiled knowingly. He understood from Murshidov’s questions what was happening here. He also understood it was his job to sell this idea to this stern-faced Pakistani in front of him.

“General, we can put in it whatever you have for us that will fit inside the payload envelope.”

“The devices I am considering are 3.83 meters by.46 meters.”

“And the weight?”

“Just over one thousand kilograms.”

The Russian nodded happily. “It can be done.”

“Excellent.”

“Are you prepared to tell me what this device is?”

The man Safronov knew as General Ijaz just looked him in the eye. “Nuclear bombs. Twenty-kiloton yield.”

“Bombs? Not the warheads of a missile?”

“No. These are air-dropped bombs. Is that a problem?”

“I know very little about bombs, more about Russian missile warheads from my time in the military. But I do know the bombs can be removed from their cases to make them smaller and lighter. This will not affect the yield of the blast. We will need to do this to put them in payload containers for our missiles.”

“I see,” Rehan said. “Tell me this. Your missiles… where can they go?”

Now Safronov took on a guarded expression. He started to speak but stopped himself. Stammered a bit.

Rehan said, “I am only curious, friend. If I decide to give these devices to your organization, then they are yours to do with as you wish.” Rehan smiled more broadly. “e bid, Although I’d prefer you did not target Islamabad.”

Safronov relaxed a little. For a moment he worried this operation was to be some sort of job for the Pakistanis. Safronov would not do this for money. He would only do this for his cause.

“General Ijaz, my missiles will go anywhere I tell them to go. But there will be no debate. One of them will land in Red Square.”

Rehan nodded. “Excellent,” he said. “Finally Moscow will beg at your feet for mercy. You and your people can have what you have long desired. An Islamic caliphate in the Caucasus.”

The thin Russian with the boyish flop of hair on his forehead smiled, the rings of his eyes reddened and moistened, and the two men embraced there in the cold attic room.

As Riaz Rehan hugged the smaller man, the Pakistani general himself smiled. He had been marshaling zealots and criminals since he was a fourteen-year-old boy, and he was very, very good at it.

After the emotional embrace, Rehan returned to the business at hand. “Mr. Safronov. You may, in the coming days, hear faint rumors of strangers asking questions of you, your history, your background, your education, your faith.”

“Why is this?”

“First and foremost, I will have to look into you very carefully.”

“General Ijaz. I understand completely. You and your security service may look into me all you wish, but please do not take too long, sir. There is a scheduled launch at the end of the year. Three Dnepr-1 rockets carrying three satellites for United States, British, and Japanese companies will be launched on three consecutive days.”

“I see,” said Rehan. “And you will be there?”

“I had already planned on it.” Safronov smiled. “But you give me additional incentive.”

The two men went over details for the rest of the afternoon, and then into the evening. They prayed together. By the time he returned to the Volgograd airport, Rehan was ready to hand the bombs over to the energetic Dagestani partisan.

But first he had to acquire the bombs, and for this he had a plan, yes. But he also had much work still to do. Operation Saker, a plan that he had been working on for years and thinking about for well over a decade, needed to begin as soon as he returned to Pakistan.

Jack Ryan Jr. breathed out a long, slow breath, and with it a small measure of his anxiety.

He dialed the number. With each ring, half of him hoped there would be no answer on the other end. His blood pressure was up, and his palms perspired slightly.

He’d gotten the phone number from Mary Pat Foley. He’d written several e-mails to her over the last few days, but each one he’d deleted before hitting that irrevocable send key. Finally, on perhaps his fourth or fifth try, he’d written Mary Pat a succinct but friendly message thanking her for the tour around the office the other day, and, oh, by the way, he was wondering if she would pass on Melanie Kraft’s phone number.

He groaned when he read his message, he felt more than a little foolish, but he sucked it up and hit send.

Twenty minutes later a friendly message came back from Mary Pat. Mary Pat said she had enjoyed running out for frsushi, and she had found their conversation exceedingly interesting. She hoped to be able to add to the conversation soon. And at the end, following a simple “Here you go,” Jack saw the area code 703, Alexandria, Virginia, preceding a seven-digit number.

“Yes!” he shouted at his desk.

Behind him, Tony Wills spun around, waited for an explanation.

“Sorry,” said Jack.

But this was all yesterday. Jack’s initial excitement had turned to butterflies, and he was doing his best to fight them as Melanie’s phone continued ringing.

Shit, Jack thought to himself. It wasn’t exactly a gun battle in central Paris he was facing here at the moment. Why the nerves?

A click indicated that someone had answered. Shit. Okay, Jack. Play cool.