Bloodbath
Page 21
The charges were part plastic high-explosive, part incendiary. They were phased detonation charges, designed to surround a nuclear or biological/chemical weapon in a cocoon of blast, intense heat and overpressure sufficient to vaporize even plutonium weapon cores and the most virulent weaponized biologicals known to exist in the arsenals of rogue nations.
The one problem was that they had never been tested in actual battlefield use, only in computer simulations. But there was a first time for everything.
As Breaux watched, the counter-WMD specialists were completing the placement of the charges on the nuclear weapons in all four of the captured trucks. The charges would be set for delayed time detonations to enable the helos to get clear of the blast with a radio-controlled backup available in case the timers failed to work.
This was possible but not probable -- the best timing electronics had gone into the timers, and they were multistage, so if one chip failed, two more ICs backed each of them up. Everything was redundant. It would fly.
With the nukes rigged to blow, Breaux gave the orders for the team to deploy. As for the captured Iranian commandos, they were handed the keys to their vehicles and told what was about to happen. They had five minutes to put as much distance between themselves and the next Sodom and Gomorrah as they were capable of doing. The Takavar wasted no time in climbing into their SUVs and beating a path out of the pumping station, the wounded helped by those who had emerged from battle unscathed, the dead left behind without a second thought.
The sandstorm, which had abated, was again worsening somewhat. Yet now for the first time the V-22 pilot looked upon the shamal with equanimity, even something approaching welcome. The weather would help hide the multirole transport from Iranian air and ground patrols, he surmised. And the powerful blasts from the det charges would also keep the enemy guessing.
Within minutes, loaded down with SFOD-O personnel, the Osprey lifted off and translated to horizontal flight. The special-purpose charges detonated before the convertiplane had gotten more than a mile from ground zero.
On the horizon there arose a mushrooming pillar of fire and luminous, billowing cloud that reached up to momentarily eclipse the sun, or so at least it seemed. Satellite sensors in space would later determine that the fissile pits of Iran's Winged Bulls had been vaporized with only a few percentiles of radioactive fallout having leaked into the atmosphere. Most of the fallout was clean. That was considerably better than what Iran had planned for its Middle Eastern neighbors.
Inside the Osprey, Breaux looked down to where Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni lay hog-tied on the deck. The bomb-maker was the sole prisoner that Omega was taking back to Jordan with it. But Dalkimoni would not be turned over to the Army provost marshall at Drop Forge. Far from it. Breaux would make sure nobody there even knew about the prisoner. Dalkimoni's fate was to be a private matter, one that SFOD-O would handle as a special favor to a good friend.
The bomb-maker didn't know it yet, but in a few days a large containerized, climate-controlled shipping module would arrive on a Lufthansa flight into Tempelhof International Airport. The cargo would appear listed on the airline's manifest as a rare silverback gorilla destined for the internationally renowned Berlin Zoo.
The manifest would further inform customs officials that although the gorilla had been sedated for the stressful flight, the beast was still highly dangerous and not under any circumstances to be disturbed or provoked. At the airport, a team of expert animal handlers dispatched from the Berlin Zoo would arrive by truck and the cargo container be duly claimed. On the autobahn, however, the turnoff for the zoo would be bypassed and another one taken that would shortly bring the truck to BKA headquarters in Berlin. Here a grateful German cop would snap the cuffs on the savage who had killed his only joy in life.
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At about the same time that this would happen, several thousand miles and several time zones away, Bashar would receive a fresh jar of fish food from one of his lackeys. He would inspect its contents and permit himself the seldomly enjoyed pleasure of a smile.
The fish would have quite a treat today, he would muse, dropping a choice tidbit from the tweezers into the tank. They seemed to relish human gonads, he would say to himself, even those such as these, still bloody from being hacked with a very dull knife from the traitorous mahmoons who had run from Americans rather than fight the hated Sons of Dogs.
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Farther still from Berlin, yet another player in the just-ended game would sip a vodka martini and ponder the events that had recently transpired, thinking about another scheme in which his poputchik might prove useful. It would be wise to console him in defeat, he decided.
Setting down his glass, Soviet Premier Boris Starchinov would pick up the desk phone and order a dozen prize Siamese fighting fish delivered to Tehran on the next available flight.