by Tom Clancy
Dom said, “What I’d give to know that fucker’s plan.”
Chavez jumped alone from the rear ramp of the Antonov An-72 at twenty-four thousand feet. He pulled his ripcord within seconds of exiting the aircraft, and within a minute of leaving the plane he was checking the GPS and altimeter on his wrist.
The winds immediately became a problem; he fought hard to stay on course, and he realized he was having trouble bleeding off the altitude fast enough. The op called for him on target right as the Mi-8 helicopter landed in front of the LCC, which meant he needed to time it just right. As it stood, he planned to be under canopy for just over twenty-two minutes.
He looked below — somewhere down there would be his target — but he could see nothing around him except for an impenetrable soupy blackness.
He’d executed dozens of these high-altitude, high-opening jumps in his Rainbow days, but the men currently assigned to Rainbow, while competent jumpers, did not have enough nighttime HAHO experience as far as Clark and Chavez were concerned. They would still be parachuting into the target in these swirling winds. Their role in this op was no picnic, but Clark’s mission called for someone to land on the roof of the LCC covertly, which meant a different type of jump.
There was another reason Chavez decided to jump alone. The sniper/spotter team watching the LCC had reported movement on the roof of the building — sentries scanning the sky for parachutes.
With the bad weather, Clark and Chavez were banking that one man could make it undetected, at least until he was in position to engage targets on the roof. But the chance of success for a covert jump onto the target declined with each additional chute in the air.
So Ding flew his ram jet chute through the snow alone.
The video feed showing Nabiyev in the back of the Mi-8 came online when a crewman boarded the chopper at the airport, shortly before takeoff. Nabiyev could speak directly with Safronov in the launch control room, though the video and audio were understandably a little choppy. Still, the camera served its function. It scanned around the helicopter to show just four men on board other than Israpil himself, who had been taken out of his handcuffs and dressed in a heavy coat and hat. Georgi asked him to look out the window and confirm when he could see the lights of the LCC, and the Dagestani prisoner positioned himself to do that.
The Rainbow sniper recon team that had been watching the LCC all day had moved from one thousand yards’ distance to only four hundred under cover of night. Now they were positioned deep in the grass with eyes on the rear of the LCC. They watched the building through their scopes. The intermittent lighting and the snowfall made the view through their glass confusing, but the spotter noticed a pair of long shadows moving against a steel heat exhaust unit on the north side of the roof. After tracking the movement for a long time, he saw the head of a man come into view for just a few seconds before it moved below his sight line. The spotter confirmed this with his sniper, then fingered the send button on his radio.
“Romeo Two, this is Charlie Two, over.”
“Romeo Two, go.”
“Be advised, we have two sentries on the roof.”
Nine hundred fifty feet above the LCC roof, Ding Chavez wanted to reply to the German-accented spotter that he couldn’t see shit. Only the GPS on his arm was directing him toward his target. It was down there somewhere, and he’d deal with any shitheads on the roof when he got there. Unless… “Charlie Two, Romeo Two. I’m not going to see those guys till I land on them. Are you in position to engage?”
Back on the ground, the sniper shook his head, and the spotter replied on his behalf, “Not at this point, Romeo, but we’re trying to get a target.”
“Roger that.”
Chavez felt for the UMP on his chest. It was there, in position, right over his body armor. He’d have to use it as soon as his feet touched the roof.
If his feet touched the roof. If he missed the roof, if some miscalculation took him off course or if some low-level gust pushed him away at the last second, then the entire mission would be in serious jeopardy.
And if a gust came at the wrong time, pushing Ding to the eastern parking lot, where the big chopping rotor blades of the Mi-8 were spinning, Chavez would not stand a chance.
He checked his altimeter and his GPS and then pulled his toggles, adjusting the canopy of his ram-air chute above him to turn him slightly to the south.
At 10:30 on the nose, the Mi-8 approached the LCC. Safronov was still watching the video comm link to the helicopter, and Nabiyev saw the big bunker-looking building with the large bright lights on the roof. He took the camera from the cameraman and positioned it against the window so that Safronov himself could see. Georgi told Israpil that he would meet him inside the front door in minutes, and then Georgi ran out of the launch control center with several of his men. They descended the stairs, crossed the dark entry hall, and opened the blast-proof iron doors.
Four Jamaat Shariat gunmen took positions in the open doorway, but Georgi himself stood to the side; he only looked around the iron door, lest someone lurking out in the snow try and take a shot at him.
Behind them the foreign prisoners were led into the hall, then huddled against the wall by two guards.
The Russian helicopter landed at the far end of the parking lot, seventy yards from the blast-proof doors of the LCC, directly in the spotlight beams from the roof.
Safronov looked out the door into the swirling snow illuminated by the lights. He radioed his men on the roof and told them to be ready for anything, and to not forget to keep an eye out toward the back of the building as well.
The small side door of the chopper opened, and a bearded man in a hat and coat appeared. He covered his eyes against the light and slowly began walking across the hard-packed snow in the parking lot.
Georgi was already thinking about what he would say to the military commander of Jamaat Shariat. He would need to make certain the man had not been brainwashed, even though he had noticed no evidence of that in their previous conversations.
Chavez watched the chopper land, then turned his focus back to the roof of the LCC, two hundred feet below his boots. He would make his landing, thank God, though he would land faster and harder than he wanted. As he descended with a sharp bank to the south he made out one… two sentries posted there.
One hundred fifty feet down.
Just then the roof access door opened below him, sending more light across the roof. A third terrorist came through the door.
Fuck, thought Chavez. Three tangos, each on a different compass point from his landing site. He’d have to take them in rapid succession, nearly impossible when dealing with a rough landing, spotty lighting, and a weapon that he could not even bring to bear until he cut away from his canopy before it pulled him over the side of the roof.
One hundred feet.
Just then, Ding’s headset came to life.
“Romeo Two, Charlie Two. Have one target in sight on northwestern roof. Will engage on your command.”
“Waste him.”
“Repeat last command?”
Fucking Germans. “Engage.”
“Roger, engaging.”
Chavez turned all focus away from the man on the northwestern portion of the roof. That was no longer his responsibility. If the sniper missed, well, then Ding was fucked, but he couldn’t think about that now.
Twenty feet.
Chavez flared his chute and landed at a sprint. He kept running, pulled the disconnect ring on his chute and felt it drop free from his body. He grabbed his suppressed HK and spun toward the man at the access door. The terrorist had already lifted his Kalashnikov in Ding’s direction. Chavez dropped to the roof, rolled over his left shoulder, and came out of his roll on his knees.
He fired a three-round burst, catching the bearded terrorist in the throat. The AK flipped into the air, and the tango fell back into the doorway.
The suppressed gunfire, while certainly not silent, would not be heard over the sound of the Mi-8�
��s rotors.
Ding had already shifted focus to the right. As his eyes spun, he caught a distant unfocused image of a sentry on the northwest corner as his weapon rose, and then the left side of the sentry’s head exploded and the man dropped where he stood.
Chavez focused, though, on the man at the eastern portion of the roof now, just twenty-five feet or so from where the American knelt. The terrorist did not have a weapon up, though he was looking right into Ding’s eyes. As the Dagestani struggled to bring his sights to this new target who had just dropped out of the night sky, he shouted in fear.
Domingo Chavez, Romeo Two, double-tapped the man with two.45-caliber rounds to the forehead. The man backpedaled a few steps as he fell.
Ding stood, relaxed just slightly now that the last threat had been dealt with, and he reached for a fresh magazine for his UMP. While doing so he watched the stumbling sentry, waiting for him to fall onto the cold concrete roof.
But the dead man’s body had other plans. His rearward momentum continued to carry him back, and Chavez recognized in an instant of horror that the body would fall off the roof. He would land in a heap right in front of the door below, right in the lights illuminating the man walking from the chopper.
“Shit!” Chavez sprinted across the roof, desperate to catch the sentry before he tumbled off and gave away the entire operation right at its most vulnerable point.
Ding let go of his HK, launched off the ground, and in the air he reached at full extension for the dead man’s uniform.
The Jamaat Shariat gunman fell backward over the edge of the roof.
79
Israpil Nabiyev climbed out of the helicopter and stepped into the light. Before him the huge building sat in the snow. The thirty-two-year-old Jamaat Shariat leader squinted and took a step on the hard snow, then another, each step bringing him closer to the freedom that he had sought for these many long months he’d been held prisoner.
The butt of a rifle struck Nabiyev in the back of the head, sending him tumbling onto the snow. The blow dazed him, but he climbed back up to his knees, tried to get up and walk again, but two of the guards from the helicopter grabbed him from behind and secured his wrists with metal cuffs. They turned him around and pushed him back onto the chopper.
“Not today, Nabiyev,” one of the men said over the whine of the helicopter engines. “The LCC for the Rokot system looks a lot like the LCC for the Dnepr system, doesn’t it?”
Israpil Nabiyev did not understand what was happening. He did not know that he was fifteen miles west of the Dnepr facility, and had been duped into thinking he was being handed over to Safronov and Jamaat Shariat. The helicopter lifted off again, it turned around at a hover, and then it flew off, away from the bright lights.
Georgi Safronov holstered his Makarov and motioned for the prisoners to be sent out to the waiting Russian Air Force helicopter. The American, British, and Japanese men and women, all bundled in heavy coats, filed past him and out into the light. In front of them, the bearded man came closer; he was just thirty meters away now. Georgi could make out a smile on the man’s face, and this made Georgi himself smile.
The prisoners moved faster than Nabiyev, Safronov noticed, and he motioned for his countryman to pick up his pace. Georgi wanted to shout to him but the chopper engine was too loud, even here.
He waved his hand forward one more time, but Nabiyev did not comply. He did not look injured — Georgi could not understand what was wrong.
Suddenly the man stopped in the parking lot. He just stood there, facing the building.
In a heartbeat Safronov went from elation to suspicion. He sensed danger. His eyes scanned the lot, the helicopter behind, the prisoners rushing to it.
He saw nothing, but he did not know what danger lurked in the dark out past the lights. He took a step back deeper into the hallway, tucking himself behind the door.
He looked to Nabiyev, noticed the man had begun to move forward again. Safronov was still suspicious. He squinted into the light, stared at the man’s face for a long moment.
No.
This was not Israpil Nabiyev.
Georgi Safronov screamed in rage as he unholstered his Makarov and held it low behind his back.
Chavez’s gloved left hand grasped the iron post holding the spotlight. The fingers ached and burned, because Ding’s body hung off the building, and his right hand held the pants of a dead terrorist just above the ankle. One hundred forty pounds of dead weight wrenched Ding’s shoulder nearly out of its socket.
He knew he could not pull himself back up onto the roof and continue his mission without tossing the body, and he could not toss the body without exposing the mission.
He could not imagine his situation getting much worse, but when he saw that the Russian FSB operator disguised as Nabiyev had stopped dead in his tracks to stare at the spectacle twenty feet above Safronov and his gunmen at the front door, Chavez just shook his head over and over, hoping to get the man moving again. The man did move again, fortunately, so Ding went back to concentrating on not dropping the body or losing his own grip.
Just then, above him in the snowy sky, he saw the movement of several shapes.
Rainbow operators under their chutes.
And below him, twenty feet from the tips of his swinging boots, he heard gunfire.
Safronov ordered one of his men to go out to Nabiyev and check him for explosives. The Dagestani gunman complied without question; he ran out into the lights and the snowfall with his rifle in his hand.
He made it ten feet before he spun on the soles of his boots and fell dead to the pavement. Georgi had seen the flash of a sniper’s shot in the darkness on the far side of the helicopter.
“It’s a trap!” Georgi shouted as he raised his Makarov and fired it at the imposter standing alone in the center of the parking lot. Safronov emptied the gun of its seven rounds in under two seconds.
The bearded man in the snow himself pulled a gun, but he was hit over and over in the chest and stomach and legs by the.380 rounds from the Makarov, and he staggered and fell.
Georgi turned away from the door. He began running toward the LCC, his pistol still in his hand.
Two gunmen Safronov left at the doorway raised their AKs to finish the writhing man off, but just as they readied to fire, a body fell across their line of sight. It was one of their comrades from the roof. He slammed into the steps in front of the door, right in front of them, and it took their eyes out of the sights of their rifles at a critical moment. Both men looked at the body quickly, then resighted their weapons on the injured imposter twenty-five yards away.
A sniper’s round took the gunman on the right in the upper chest, knocking him back into the entry hall of the LCC. A quarter-second later another bullet fired from a second sniper took the other man in the neck, spinning him on top of his comrade.
Chavez pulled himself back onto the flat roof and rolled up onto his kneepads. He did not have time to assess himself for injuries, he only had time to heft his weapon and run toward the stairwell. His original plan, devised by him and Clark, was to breach the LCC’s bunkerlike ventilation shaft. It was nearly forty inches wide and accessible here on the roof. From here he could descend directly to a vent over the LCC, climb out in the auxiliary generator room, shut down the backup power generator to the entire building, stopping the launch cold.
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 w
eapons 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.