The missiles had a curly-sided triangular cross-section, rather than a conventional round torpedo shape, with the bottom side slightly broader in an aerodynamic “lifting body” fuselage design. They had no conventional wings or control surfaces such as tail feathers or fins. When the missiles’ flight control systems were tested after assembly, the missiles’ skin actually seemed to undulate and ripple, like the scales of a swimming fish. The missiles’ engine inlets and exhausts were narrow slits both atop and at the weapon’s tail. Tiny sensor arrays covered the outside, looking in all directions. Each missile weighed about three thousand five hundred pounds. They were slid inside a pressure-sealed chamber over the curious cargo doors on the bottom of the aircraft fuselage.
By the time the missiles were in place, the DC-10 was over northern Belarus, fifty miles west of the city of Vitebsk. The technicians still inside the aft part of the cargo compartment donned helmets, parkas, gloves, and oxygen masks, and signaled on intercom that they were ready for the next step. The mission commander nodded, took a sip of Pepsi from a large squeeze bottle, keyed a microphone button, waited for the secure satellite transceiver link to lock in, then; “Hey, Archangel, this is Mad Dog.”
“Go ahead, Mad Dog.”
“We’re all ready to go. Say the word.”
“Do it.”
“Got it. Buzz me if you change your mind."
“Very well. Good luck.”
“Don't need it, but thanks. Later.” He turned to the aircraft intercom: “Okay, guys, countdown is under way. T minus two minutes and counting,” Doctor Jon Masters reported. “Final prelaunch checks complete, running pregyro spin-up checks, awaiting RLG alignment in forty-two seconds. Stand by for launch chamber depressurization.”
Jon Masters w as happiest in his lab or on a computer design system, but he enjoyed actually going out and firing a few of his babies off every now’ and then. In his early thirties, w ith boyish good looks bordering on impish, Jon Masters was the Bill Gates of the military hardw are and weapon contractors. He had earned his Ph D about the same time most kids were learning to drive a car. and he had helped NASA build a worldwide tracking and data system and had been made chairman of a small high-tech weapons firm in California by the time most young men were getting their first real job. A few years later, he was firmly in control of his company and known the world over as an innovative inventor and designer. Sky Masters Inc, developed hundreds of different strategic and tactical military systems—everything from miniature satellite reconnaissance and communications systems, to high-tech aircraft, sensors, and air-launched weapons.
His most lucrative contracts had always been the top-secret stuff—satellites launched specifically for a classified mission, stealth warplanes, and Buck Rogers-like high-tech weapons. His company actually manufactured few of his designs—he found it much more profitable to license the designs to other high-tech firms. But this project was different. He’d personally supervised every aspect of this mission. This was the ultimate request, and the ultimate challenge—he wasn't going to let anyone down. Jon Masters had a long enough string of successes working for classified top-secret projects that he could afford to be cocky, but he knew that if it could go wrong, it might go wrong, and he could never be positively sure until the mission was over
The countdown went smoothly and swiftly. It took less than thirty seconds to spin up and align the RLG, or ring laser gym, which provided super-accurate attitude and heading information to both missiles’ autopilots and navigation computers. Once the RLG was aligned, the chamber in which the missiles sat was depressurized, and the final data download began. Launch aircraft position, airspeed, altitude, and heading, along with target coordinates and last-second enemy antiaircraft intelligence information, was dumped to the missiles’ onboard computers, checked, then rechecked by computer in a matter of seconds. One more self-test was accomplished, the launch aircraft began a shallow climb, the cargo doors on the bottom of the fuselage were opened, and both missiles were ejected one by one into the slipstream.
The missiles were only in the air for a few minutes when an alert sounded. “Grant Two reporting a flight-control malfunction.” one of the technicians reported. “Looks like the entire left-side adaptive wing actuators are out.”
“Did you try a recall order?”
“It responded in the affirmative, then started reporting offtrack.” the tech replied. “It’s trying to make its way back to us, but it can’t steer.”
“Cripes,” Masters exclaimed under his breath. “And that was the best one in the fleet. Did we get a data dump yet?”
“Yes, sir. Grant Two sent a complete data dump as soon as the malfunction occurred, and I requested and received another one. Blytheville acknowledged the fault and data dump, too.” The missiles always collected engine, systems, environmental, attitude, and computer data for the last thirty minutes of flight, like a flight data recorder did on an airliner, and it uploaded that information via satellite back to the launch aircraft and to Sky Masters Inc.’s headquarters in Blytheville. Arkansas. The upload came regularly throughout the flight, just before reaching their target, and whenever there was a glitch.
Jon Masters reached over to a red swatch cover, opened it inserted a key into a lock, turned it. and then pressed a button. Ten miles away, the second missile exploded. “Eighteen million down the tubes.” he muttered. There was no such thing as insurance for an experimental missile—especially one being used illegally. “How ’s Grant One?”
"Straight and true, on course, all systems in the green.”
Jon nodded. Well, he thought ruefully, that’s why we launch two at a time, even with the best systems—and he had the best systems around. Just ask him.
Grant One (Jon Masters always named his devices after U.S. presidents) continued its flight, descending smoothly from thirty-nine thousand feet under battery power only, heading 1 east. Several minutes after launch, with its battery power halfway depleted, it automatically started its turbojet engine, but kept the power-off glide going until reaching five thousand feet above the western Russian lowlands. The engine throttled up as it began to level off, then reported one last status check to its mothership. Jon responded w ith a final "go- ahead” order.
The missile accelerated to four hundred and eighty knots airspeed and descended to one thousand feet above ground level as it cruised north of Moscow, skirting the long-range air defense and air traffic control radars ringing the city. Every twelve seconds, it updated its inertial guidance system with a fix from the Global Positioning System navigational satellites, but after only a forty-five-minute low-level flight, its navigational error was less than sixteen feet.
Twenty-five miles northeast of Moscow, it turned south, descended to five hundred feet above the earth, and accelerated to five hundred and forty nautical miles per hour as it approached the air defenses ringing Zhukovsky Flight Test Center near Bykovo. It had already been programmed with a course that would take it around major known cultural features such as tall transmission towers or buildings, but the missile also used a comb-size millimeter-wave radar to alert it of ,any unknown obstacles in its path. The radar was sensitive enough to detect the high lead and sulfur content of the smoke coming out of some factory chimneys in its path and easily circumnavigated them as if they were obstructions.
The missile turned on its imaging infrared sensors seventy seconds prior to target, then uplinked the images via satellite to Jon Masters aboard the DC-10 launch aircraft. The image showed the base in line detail, with reds, pinks, purples, and oranges forming enough contrast to see buildings.
A white box surrounded the computer's best guess as the intended target. From ten miles away, it was hard to tell if the box was on the right building, but in less than a minute, he'd find out.
It was off, but not by too much. The navigation system had rifted off a few dozen yards, and the white box was centered on an adjacent hangar. Jon entered commands into the computer, froze the image in computer me
mory, then used a trackball and rolled a crosshair cursor over the proper target impact ioint—a spot three-quarters of the way across the roofline— and commanded the missile to hit that exact spot. He then made sure the terminal maneuver was programmed as a PUP— Pull Up, Push Over, in which a few seconds before impact the nissile would climb a few hundred feet and then plunge itself lown onto the target point. Several air defense radars in the irea had detected the missile—rather, they had detected something out there—but the missile’s stealth characteristics made it impossible to get a solid lock on it.
The last few seconds of the missile’s three hundred mile flight were the most spectacular. Eight seconds before impact, Grant Two made its steep climb. The imaging infrared picture stayed locked on target. Then, just before the missile reached a thousand feet above ground, it did an even steeper dive. Jon caught a glimpse of the roof of the Metyor Aerospace building for just a few seconds before the missile hit.
The radar in the missile’s nose gave the exact distance to impact, and at the proper moment, the computer ignited a small armored rocket device in the missile’s nose that shot a five-hundred-and-fifty-pound high-explosive shaped-charge warhead through the thick concrete and steel-sheathed roof, allowing most of the rest of the missile to pass through. Once inside, the main charge detonated: a two-thousand-pound high-explosive incendiary warhead, which created a massive three- thousand-degree fireball inside the secure section of the Metyor IIG research hangar. The force of the blast, combined with exploding fuel and natural gas lines, added enough energy to the blast to rip the entire hangar open like a popped balloon. Everything inside the hangar and within five hundred yards of the blast was instantly roasted to ash.
Jon Masters whooped and cheered like a kid at a rodeo when his screen went blank—he knew his missile had scored a direct hit. “Hey, Archangel,” he said to nobody, still reveling in his long-distance victory, “come take a look at this mess. Man, what a day,” He clicked on his intercom. “Good kill, guys,” he announced. “Grant Two bit the dust, but Grant One made us proud. Come on up and take a look at the video if you'd like, then let's put our little models back together— we've got three hours to make this plane look like just another trash-hauler carrying oil-drilling parts again before we land.”
Radohir, Bulgaria
Later that morning
'Halt! Stop! Astanavleevat’sya!” yelled the Bulgarian military officer in as many foreign languages as he could think of, running at top speed toward the engineer’s trailer, the AK-74 assault rifle held high over his head. “Stop, in the name of the law!”
Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov, wearing a long black leather coat—which discreetly covered a Kevlar bulletproof vest underneath—and black fur cap, looked up from the rolls of blueprints and engineering specs, saw the angry officer running toward them waving the rifle, and rolled his eyes in exasperation. He was standing with a group of aides and engineers on the back porch of the mobile engineer’s headquarters trailer, which had been transported to southwestern Bulgaria, just thirty-five miles west of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia and less than fifty miles from the Macedonian border. “Now what?” he shouted angrily.
“He’s got a gun, sir,” one of the engineers said nervously.
“What is with these Interior Ministry assholes?” Kazakov muttered He nodded to one of his bodyguards standing a few feet away. “Doesn’t he realize how dangerous it is to be carrying a weapon like that? Someone could get hurt. Or he could be mistaken for a terrorist and shot by mistake.”
The bodyguard smiled, pulled out a German MP5K submachine gun with an eight-inch Sionics suppressor fitted, and leveled it at the approaching officer, keeping it low and out of sight “Gatoviy, rookavadetel, ” he said in a low voice as he clicked the selector switch from the S setting to the three-shot setting. The eyes of some of the engineers and assistants standing nearby widened in fear—Is he really going to shoot that soldier? they thought. He looked agitated, and he was carrying a gun, but he certainly wasn’t threatening.
Kazakov thought about giving the order, then shook his head. “Nyet. Zhdat, ” he said, with an exasperated voice. His bodyguard took his finger off the trigger but kept the muzzle leveled at the officer. As long as the Bulgarian officer had the rifle in his hand he was a potential threat, so the bodyguard did not lower his own weapon, but kept careful watch as the officer approached the group. “He has made so much noise, half of Bulgaria has already heard him. Plenty of time to take care of him later, if the need arises.” The officer shouted several angry words in Bulgarian at the group, jabbing toward the mountains and the nearby dam with the rifle. “Don’t these Interior Ministry officers speak Russian anymore? What in hell is he saying?”
“He is Captain Todor Metodiev. He is not from the Interior Ministry, but from the Labor Corps of the Bulgarian Army, sir,” a translator said.
“The Labor Corps? What’s that?”
“A sort of engineer branch of the army, but also used in civil work projects,” one of his aides replied.
“Another damned bureaucrat with a uniform and a gun,” Kazakov said disgustedly. “What does he want... as if I don’t already know?”
“He wants us to stop work immediately, dismantle all of the equipment, remove all construction materials from the mountainside, and move our operation back to Sofia,” the translator said. “He says we do not have the proper documentation for this operation.”
“Remove everything from the mountain!” Kazakov exclaimed. “We have over three thousand kilos of dynamite and at least a kilometer of Primacord up there! Can’t he see I have loaders, tractors, earthmovers, and dump trucks lined up five kilometers down the road—the road I had to build, to comply with yet more Bulgarian laws—ready to move earth? Is he crazy? We have all the proper documentation already! We are drowning in documentation!”
Metodiev kept on talking all through Kazakov's retort and the translation. “He says we do not have a required permit from the Labor Corps. They are in charge of the reconstruction project on the dam He says the demolition can create serious damage to the dam and the river itself if there are mudslides or shifting earth. In the interest of safety, he demands we remove all materials from the mountain immediately or he w ill send in Labor Corps troops to do it for us and then bill us for the labor.”
“Bill us, eh?” Kazakov sneered. “Wonder how much his bill is to leave us alone right now?”
This was a common occurrence throughout the business world, but especially so here in Bulgaria—the official shakedown. Graft and corruption were commonplace in business all over the world, but Bulgarians seemed to be the masters at it; every two-bit bureaucrat, military, or paramilitary officer had stopped by his many construction sites in the past few months, carrying yet another official-looking edict or notice, then unabashedly putting his hand out—some of them actually doing just that, putting their hands out—expecting payola right on the spot.
To Pavel Kazakov, payola was a normal, routine part of doing business—he even included it in his budgets. Generally, the closer he was to Russia, the less developed the region, or the more Russian the influences in the region, the lower the payola. Ten to twenty percent was a good figure to use in Russia. the Transcaucasus, most of South and Central America, the Middle East, and Africa; twenty to thirty percent in eastern and southern Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and Asia; forty percent in western Europe; and forty to fifty percent in North America. That was one reason he didn’t do much business in the West—payoff expenses were always high, and the local Mafia organizations were generally better organized, better protected, and deadlier if crossed. His reputation was also better—meaning, more feared—in eastern Europe and western Asia.
But there was a protocol to follow, too. In most of the rest of the world, payments were made only to the head of the labor union, or to the city or county engineer, police chief, inspectors, compliance officers, tax assessors, or the local army barracks commander. In Bulgaria, everyone had their han
d out. The main guy was supposed to keep only a cut of the payoff, maybe twenty or thirty percent, and use the rest to grease the palms of his chief subordinates, immediate bosses, and anyone with whom he wanted to curry favor. Payola was meant to be shared—that’s how the institutions of graft and corruption survived and flourished. Many times, the bosses neglected to do that, thinking that because they were the boss, they were too powerful for anyone to retaliate against.
Pavel was all too happy to give payoffs in order to get a project done, as long as everyone else understood and played by the rules. He also enjoyed giving lessons on proper payola management.
‘Tell him to leave the paperwork for us, and we will complete it and turn it in to his superior officer,” Kazakov said, mentally dismissing the officer.
“He says he has been ordered to collect the paperwork now, or he will order his men onto the mountain to arrest us and dismantle and confiscate all of our equipment.”
Kazakov closed his eyes against a growing headache. “For the love of God ...” He paused for several long moments, his eyes closed tightly, resting against the chart table; then: “How many men does he have with him?”
“About fifty, sir. All heavily armed.”
Too many for his security staff, Kazakov thought—next time, he vowed to bring more men. He sighed, then said, “Very well. Have him and his men report to the senior site foreman at Trailer Seventeen. I will radio ahead and authorize Mr. Lechenov to give Captain Metodiev his ‘paperwork.’ Get out of here.”
As the Bulgarian army officer departed, Kazakov’s aide stepped up to him and asked quietly, “Trailer Seventeen is—”
“I know.” He watched as the Bulgarian officer gathered his men together and started marching them up the dirt access road into the forest. About a dozen Bulgarian soldiers armed with automatic weapons stayed behind—it appeared that they were guarding the trailer until their commander returned. “Peasants,” Kazakov spat. “Let's get back to work.” But their work was interrupted by a satellite phone call. Kazakov picked it up himself—only a handful of persons had access to the number “Shto?"
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