by Tom Clancy
Over Clark’s headset a call came through: “Delta team to Rainbow Six.”
“Go for Rainbow Six.”
“We are at site 104. We have opened the payload container and have accessed the nuclear device. We have removed the fuses and rendered the weapon safe.”
“Very well. Losses to your men?”
“Two injured, both noncritical. Eight enemy killed.”
“Understood. Well done.”
Chavez looked to Clark; he’d heard the exchange in his headset as well. “I guess he wasn’t bluffing.”
“Guess not. One down, one to go.”
A full minute later, a second transmission came over the net. “Zulu team to Rainbow Six.”
Clark grabbed the radio. “Go for Six.”
A Canadian nuclear munitions expert said, “Sir, we’ve breached the Space Head Module and opened the payload container.”
“Roger that. How long until the weapon is rendered safe?”
A pause. “Um, sir. There is no weapon.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying there is no device at 106?”
“There is a device, but it’s definitely not a nuke. There is a tag on this thing, let me clean this so I can read it. Wait one … Okay, it’s in English. From the markings on this device, I do believe that what I’m looking at here is a 1984 Wayne Industries, S-1700 school bus engine.”
At launch control, Clark turned to Chavez, their eyes met. A moment of panic.
Ding stated the obvious in a breathless whisper. “Fuck me. We’ve lost a twenty-kiloton nuke.”
Clark’s head swiveled over to the injured man on the floor. The Rainbow medic was tending to him still. The Dagestani had a bullet wound in his chest that, Clark could tell from having been around others with such an injury, would be excruciatingly painful. He had a second hole in his upper arm. Georgi’s breath was shallow, and his face dripped sweat. He just stared up at the older man standing above him.
The American put his hand on the shoulder of the medic. “I need a minute.”
“Sorry, sir. I am just about to sedate him,” the Irishman said as he swabbed Safronov’s forearm.
“No, Sergeant, you are not.”
Both the medic and Safronov looked up at John Clark with wide eyes.
The Irishman said, “Aye. He’s all yours, Rainbow Six.” And with that he stood and walked off.
Now Clark knelt over Georgi Safronov. “Where is the bomb?”
Georgi Safronov cocked his head. Through his short wheezes he said, “What do you mean?”
Clark drew the SIG in his coat with his left hand and shouted, “Goin’ hot!” to the men in the launch control room. He then fired four rounds into the concrete under the large wall displays, just past where Safronov lay. The injured man shuddered with new fear.
But Clark wasn’t shooting at Safronov. He was, instead, rendering the tip of his pistol’s barrel nearly red-hot from the expulsion of explosive gases.
He took the hot barrel, grabbed Safronov by his right arm, and jammed the barrel into the jagged bullet wound in his biceps.
Safronov screamed like a banshee.
“No time to fuck around, Georgi! Two rockets! One nuke! Where is the other fucking bomb?”
Safronov finally stopped screaming. “No! Both Dnepr-1s were armed. What are you talking about?”
“We aren’t idiots, Georgi. One of them was armed with a goddamned bus engine. You didn’t think we’d have armament experts here to—”
Clark stopped talking. He could see it on Safronov’s bloodstained face. A look of confusion. Then a look like … like what? Yes. Like a man who just realized that he had been betrayed.
“Where is it, you son of a bitch? Who took it?”
Safronov did not answer; he seemed overcome with anger, his pale face speckled with this fury.
But he did not answer.
“Going hot!” Clark shouted again, and pointed his pistol at the wall so he could turn it once again into a searing torture device.
“Please, no!”
“Who has the bomb?”
81
Jack Ryan Jr. looked through the thermal binoculars at the warehouse a hundred fifty yards away. He’d just gotten off the phone with Sam Granger, who told him Clark and Chavez, along with Rainbow, had ended the terrorist incident at the spaceport in Kazakhstan. He’d relayed this to Mohammed and Dom, who were both elated. Now they were concentrating on making sure whatever Rehan had in store here did not come to pass.
“What is your plan, you son of a bitch?” he whispered softly.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he grabbed it. “Go for Ryan.”
“It’s Clark.”
“John! I just heard from Granger. Great work!”
“Listen to me. You have problems.”
“We’re okay. We’ve tracked Rehan and his men to a warehouse at the Lahore Central Railway Station. They are in there now and we are waiting on more SSG soldiers to arrive so we can take him down.”
“Jack. Listen! He’s got a nuke!”
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, softly, he said, “Oh, shit.”
“He switched out a bomb with Safronov. It must be with him right now.”
“Do you think he’s about to—” Jack could not even say it.
“Kid, you’ve got to work on that assumption. When he learns the Baikonur attack failed, he may reason that the Pakistani government might hold on to power. He will be desperate to start a bigger war so the Army can take control. If a nuke flattens Lahore, Pakistan will retaliate immediately with their own weapons. Both countries will be devastated. Rehan must have a place he can go wait it out.”
Again Ryan tried to speak, but there were no words. “What can we … What do we … None of us know how to deactivate a bomb, even if we could get past the ISI and LeT men holding it. What the hell are we going to do?”
“Son, there is no time for you guys to get out of there. You have to go after the bomb. Just gain control of the weapon and our experts here will talk you through removing the detonators.”
Jack Ryan Jr. just muttered, “Understood. I’ll call you back.”
Just then, Ryan heard the low thumping of helicopter rotors approaching from the west.
Caruso was by his side. “I only heard one half of that conversation, but it sounded bad.”
Jack nodded, then called out to al Darkur, “Mohammed. We need the best nuclear munitions expert we can find in the area to get their ass here right now.”
Al Darkur had heard enough of the conversation to put it together. “I will call Islamabad and get my office to work on that, but I don’t know if we have time.”
Riaz Rehan stood behind Drs. Noon and Nishtar from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. The two scientists leaned over the bomb; it was still housed in the wooden crate marked “Textile Manufacturing, Ltd.” The bearded men made final adjustments to the detonator. They had bypassed the fuses, and now, with the press of a button, a countdown clock would begin running backward from thirty minutes.
When the clock reached zero, the northern half of the city of Lahore would cease to exist.
Rehan had devised Operation Saker’s fallback plan some months back. From the very beginning he had known that there were only two ways to ensure that the government of Pakistan would fall. If a stolen Pakistani nuclear device was detonated, anywhere on earth, there was no question that the prime minister and his cabinet would be forced from power in disgrace.
And if a shooting war with India broke out, there was no question that the Army would declare martial law, push out the prime minister and his cabinet, and then quietly sue for peace.
The first event, that Safronov and his militants blew up a bomb, was, of course, preferable, but the second event meant war, nuclear war. It would leave Rehan and the Army in power, but facing the possibility that they would rule only over nuclear ash.
Safronov had failed, so Operation Saker was possible now only with war. D
etonating a nuke in Lahore in the midst of the current crisis would start this war. It was a pity, but Rehan knew that Allah would forgive him. Those good Muslims who died here would die a martyr’s death, as they had helped to create the Islamic caliphate.
That said, Rehan himself wasn’t planning on going out in a mushroom cloud. He looked at his watch as the thumping of the helicopter rotors filled the sky. His Mi-8 was here to pick him and his men up. He, Saddiq Khan, and the four other JIM men with him would leave via air, they would race to the north, and they would be safe from the blast in plenty of time. From there they would continue on to Islamabad, where Army units were already amassing in the streets.
The general thought it likely a military coup could be under way by daybreak tomorrow.
The helicopter landed outside, and Rehan ordered the PAEC doctors to initiate the detonation sequence.
Nishtar and Noon were honored to be the ones who cleared the pathway to the caliphate.
With a press of a button Noon said, “It is done, General.”
The twelve LeT men knew their role, as well. They would remain behind to guard the weapon, and in so doing they would be shahideen. Martyrs. Rehan embraced each man quickly with the charisma that had been getting men like these to do his bidding for more than thirty years.
The ISI men walked quickly toward the door, with Rehan the nucleus of the entourage. The thumping of the rotors just outside was nearly deafening as the Mi-8 landed in the parking lot. Colonel Khan pulled the metal door open and stepped out into the night. He beckoned the rest of the group forward, but his eyes shifted up quickly at the shouting of an alarm from one of the Lashkar operatives in the second-floor window. He spun back toward the rail yard in front of him, and he saw what had drawn the guard’s attention. Two dark green pickup trucks bearing the logo of Pakistan Railways raced across the access road of the tracks, approaching the helicopters.
Khan turned to Rehan. “Get in the helicopter. I will get rid of them.”
The trucks stopped just twenty-five yards shy of the chopper and fifty yards from the front loading dock of the warehouse. They parked next to a pair of full coal carrier cars left parked on a spur of track at the edge of the access road, and several men climbed out of the trucks. Khan could not see how many, since their bright lights were in his eyes. He just waved to the men, motioned for them to turn around and go away, and he pulled his ISI credentials out and held them up to the light.
A man stepped in front of the beams and walked closer. Khan squinted, tried to make him out. He gave up, just reached out his hand with his ISI credentials, and told the man to turn around and forget what he saw here.
He never did see the man’s face, and he never did recognize Mohammed al Darkur, and he never did see the pistol in the major’s hand.
He saw a flash, he felt the ripping in his chest, and he knew he’d been shot. He fell backward, and as he fell, al Darkur’s second shot caught him under the chin and blew out his brains from below.
As soon as al Darkur killed Colonel Khan, Caruso and Ryan, both having just climbed onto the coal carrier next to the trucks, opened fire on the windscreen of the helicopter with their booming G3 rifles.
While they fired at the helo, Mohammed’s two officers flanked to the right. They ran to the corner of a small switching station on the edge of the tracks. Here they opened fire on the men in the windows of the warehouse.
The LeT gunman quickly had al Darkur’s men sighted, and one of the two officers was killed with an AK blast across his legs and pelvis. But the second officer took out the sentries, and when al Darkur made it over to his position and picked up his fallen comrade’s G3, they suppressed the men firing at the loading door to the warehouse.
Ryan and Caruso’s heavy gunfire killed the pilot and copilot of the Mi-8 almost immediately. Their bullets—each man fired a full thirty-round magazine through the aircraft—also tore through the cabin, killing and injuring several of the ISI guards who had already boarded. Rehan himself was at the chopper’s door, and the gunfire, just barely heard above the sounds of the Mi-8’s engine and rotors, made him dive to the parking lot, and then roll away from the helo. His men returned fire on the gunmen on the coal carrier, five ISI men against two attackers, but the ISI men were armed with only pistols, and Jack and Dom picked them off one at a time.
Rehan climbed to his feet, ran behind the helicopter, and raced down an alleyway to the west of the warehouse. A surviving member of his protection detail ran behind him.
Caruso and Ryan dropped from the coal container. Jack said, “You and the others go for the warehouse. I’m going after Rehan!” The two Americans ran off in separate directions.
82
Jack turned down three darkened alleyways before he caught sight of the fleeing general and his bodyguard. Rehan was in good condition, as evidenced by the way he ran, and the way he knocked others to the ground as he did so. Sporadic groups of civilians, laden with family possessions, rushed through all parts of the railway station, looking for conveyance out of the embattled city. Rehan and his younger goon pushed past them or barreled over them.
Jack dumped the big cumbersome rifle in favor of the Beretta pistol, and he sprinted with it, alternately finding and then losing and then finding Rehan in a warren of outbuildings and warehouses and disconnected rail cars across the tracks from the busy train station.
Jack turned back to the west; other than the light of a sliver of moon it was completely dark here, and he jogged between two sets of parked and dormant passenger trains. He’d made it no more than fifty feet between the trains when he sensed movement ahead. In the dark a lone man leaned out from between two cars.
Jack knew what was coming; he dove headfirst to the ground and rolled on his shoulder just as the crack of a pistol shot filled the air. Ryan continued his roll, came out of it on his knees, and he returned fire twice. He heard a grunt and a thud, and the darkened figure fell to the ground.
Jack shot the still man a third time before moving forward, warily, to check the body.
Only when he got close enough to roll the man over on his back was he able to tell that this was the bodyguard and not General Rehan.
“Shit,” Jack said. And then he ran on.
Ryan saw Rehan in the distance a moment later, then he lost him again as a long passenger train lumbered past, but when it continued on he saw the big general moving one hundred yards on, toward the crowded train station.
Jack stopped, raised the Beretta, and aimed it at the distant figure in the dark.
With his finger on the trigger, he stopped. A hundred-yard shot for a pistol was optimistic, especially now that Jack was breathing heavy from the run. And a miss could send a round right into a building chock-full of hundreds of civilians.
Ryan lowered the handgun and sprinted on as trains approached in both directions.
Dominic Caruso and the surviving ISI captain kicked in a boarded window on the south side of the warehouse. The boards crashed onto the floor, and immediately the two men dove out of the way of gunfire. The captain reached around with his rifle and fired several semiauto shots inside the building, but Dom gave up on this entry point and ran around the warehouse, finding a disused side door. He shouldered in the door, it broke at the hinges, and he fell to a dusty floor.
Immediately heavy gunfire from the center of the warehouse erupted, and sparks and dust kicked up all around Dom. He leapt to his feet and scrambled back out of the doorway, but not before a bullet fragment from a ricochet off the wall tore through his right butt cheek.
He stumbled to the concrete outside, grabbing onto his burning wound. “Motherfucker!”
He stood again slowly, and then looked around for some other way to get into this building.
Mohammed al Darkur grabbed a Kalashnikov dropped by a dead LeT militant near the front door to the warehouse. With it he fired a full magazine at a cluster of men crouched behind a large crane and a large wooden container near the center of the room. Several of
his rounds tore into the box; splinters flew in all directions.
Al Darkur spun the dead man over and took a rifle magazine out of his pocket and reloaded, then leaned around and started firing more selectively. He thought it possible the box contained the nuclear device, and he did not feel great about shooting the contraption with an assault rifle.
He’d killed two of the Lashkar terrorists, but he saw at least three more close to the box. They returned fire on Mohammed’s position, but only sporadically because they were also taking fire from two other directions.
The major worried that they were all in for a protracted gunfight. He had no idea how much time he had until the bomb went off, but he figured that if he was going to be crouched here much longer he, and much of Lahore city, was going to be incinerated.
General Riaz Rehan climbed onto the first occupied platform of the Lahore Central Railway Station that he reached after his long run. Crowds of passengers were boarding an express train to Multan in the south of Pakistan. The general pulled his ISI credentials and pushed his way into the masses; as he gasped for breath, he shouted that he was on official business and everyone needed to get out of his way.
He knew he had only twenty minutes to get out of town and clear of the blast. He needed to be on this train when it moved, and when it moved, he needed to make sure the conductor kept the train going through Lahore without stopping at any other stations.
Whoever the hell had just attacked him was still fighting it out with the Lashkar-e-Taiba cell back at the warehouse; Rehan could hear the persistent gunfire. He’d seen only a couple of shooters, and they looked like local police. Even if they did overrun his cell, he was sure that no gang of street cops was going to disarm his bomb.
He made it onto the train, still pushing and wheezing, and he shoved his way through the phalanx of passengers standing in the aisles. He needed to get up to the front car, to wave his credentials or his fist or his gun in the conductor’s face to get the train out of here.