by Ted Halstead
Like a bucket of ice water, the realization hit Ibrahim that it was precisely because the white truck held the weapon that no missile had struck it. Not only was this no random anti-Taliban patrol, they even knew which vehicle held the nuclear device.
Abdul’s fear had been correct. The enemy did have better radiation detection equipment than anyone knew.
Looking around him at the few other survivors, he felt a rush of anger. They weren’t going to make it to Kabul.
But at least he could take this bunch of assassins with them.
Ibrahim strode towards the white truck.
No sooner had he done so than he could hear weapons firing, and a glance backward revealed that the few men left were all on the ground. None of them were moving.
Ibrahim began to run.
It felt as though a giant hand had shoved him face-first to the ground. And it happened so quickly.
That was Ibrahim’s last thought before consciousness fled.
Forty-Two Kilometers South of Kabul, Afghanistan
Mikhail Vasilyev opened his eyes to see nothing but clear blue skies. That was quickly replaced by a face he didn’t recognize wearing a concerned look. The face turned and yelled, “He’s conscious, sir!”
Captain Rogoff. Now, that face he recognized.
“Glad to see you’re still with us,” Rogoff said. “Think you can sit up?”
A good question, Vasilyev thought, and only one way to answer it. He grabbed Rogoff’s outstretched hand and was soon sitting upright. Rogoff sat down next to him.
Vasilyev took stock. Head was spinning and throbbing a bit. He’d felt worse after drinking too much celebrating a friend’s birthday.
Ready to complete the mission.
“How are my friends, Captain?” Vasilyev asked.
“Well, I’m glad to say our bomb expert came through OK. She’s getting bandaged behind you,” Rogoff said, pointing.
Vasilyev turned, and could now see Neda Rhahbar getting a white cloth bandage applied to her forehead.
“She needed some stitches, but says she’s OK,” Rogoff added.
Vasilyev nodded. “And my friend Grishkov, and your men?”
Rogoff frowned. “There, I’m afraid the news isn’t so good. Grishkov took shrapnel damage and is unconscious. We think he’s bleeding internally. We’ve got him stabilized, and a medevac chopper is en route. It should be here in less than ten minutes. The rest of us got lucky, with no serious injuries.”
“Any remaining enemy forces?” Vasilyev asked.
Rogoff shook his head. “Not that we can see. We’ve seen a couple of twitches, but I have a man on that,” he said, pointing at a soldier with a sniper rifle who was slowly and methodically sweeping the area around the distant white truck.
Rogoff added, “Normally, we’d try to take prisoners to get intel, but I figured anybody still alive would try to set off the bomb, so…”
Vasilyev nodded vigorously enough that his head started spinning again.
“Agreed, Captain.” Pointing at Neda, he said, “We need to get to that bomb.”
Rogoff nodded. “Figured you’d say that.” Gesturing towards the smoking helicopter to his right, he said, “We’re lucky the pilot was able to get our bird down in one piece. It’s not going anywhere.”
Pointing at the helicopter on his left, Rogoff said, “This one’s still in good shape. We’re going to hop you two over to the truck once the corpsman’s done bandaging Neda.”
Right on cue, the corpsman working on Neda looked towards Rogoff and lifted up his right thumb.
Rogoff stood up and extended his hand again. Grasping it, Vasilyev was shortly standing.
More spinning, a bit more throbbing. Rogoff handed him a canteen, and Vasilyev swallowed from it gratefully.
Better.
Vasilyev walked over to Neda. She looked pale but determined.
“How are you doing?” Vasilyev asked.
“Well enough,” Neda replied. “And you?”
“The same,” Vasilyev said.
“Have you heard anything more about Grishkov?” Neda asked.
“Just that a medevac helicopter is on its way. At least we know he will be in competent hands,” Vasilyev said.
While he was at Bagram Airfield, he had heard that the hospital there boasted a very high survival rate, so high that nearly all combat deaths in Afghanistan happened before the victim reached the hospital.
Even thinking that felt like bad luck.
As Vasilyev had that thought he could hear an approaching helicopter, and fractionally relaxed.
Neda’s head followed his towards the sound, and he could see her relax slightly as well.
“They say they’ve moved all of my tools to the other helicopter. Are we ready to go?” Neda asked.
Rogoff had stood off to the side while they were talking, but walked towards them once Vasilyev looked in his direction.
“We are ready,” Vasilyev said.
Rogoff nodded and gestured to the pilot that Vasilyev could now see was already seated in the helicopter.
As they walked together towards the helicopter, Vasilyev saw that several soldiers were boarding as well.
Seeing Vasilyev’s questioning look, Rogoff shrugged.
“I said I thought we got all of them. Better safe than sorry,” Rogoff said, as they all entered the helicopter and strapped in for takeoff.
Just as they did so, they could see the medevac helicopter touch down, and corpsmen race to where Grishkov lay unmoving on a stretcher.
Their helicopter rose, but to a much lower altitude than before. The pilot pitched it forward, and the truck quickly grew larger in the helicopter’s windshield.
As the pilot lowered the helicopter to the ground, it kicked up a cloud of dust so thick that visibility outside was close to zero. Some of it found its way inside so that Vasilyev’s eyes burned, and he began to cough.
Vasilyev thought to himself that he would be delighted to be finished with this mission.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Forty Kilometers South of Kabul, Afghanistan
How am I still alive?
Ibrahim had no sooner asked himself the question than he knew the answer. Abdul had insisted he wear body armor under his clothes, even though Ibrahim had complained that it was uncomfortable and unlikely to make a difference.
Well, Abdul had been right, Ibrahim thought. Too bad I’ll never have the chance to thank him.
Ibrahim started to get up, but some instinct made him stay still. Seconds later, the craaak of a rifle came to him at nearly the same instant he heard a dull thud not far away.
Ibrahim correctly guessed that movement would make him the target of that rifle. Gritting his teeth, he realized that he could do nothing but wait face down in the dirt.
It seemed like his wait went on forever, but Ibrahim knew that only minutes had passed when he heard a new sound. A helicopter. And it was rapidly getting closer.
Ibrahim was smart enough to build a jury-rigged nuclear weapon. It took much less intelligence to realize that if the helicopter landed nearby, it would probably kick up enough dust to obscure his run to the truck.
Sure enough, in less than a minute, dust started to swirl around him, as the sound of the helicopter went from loud to deafening.
Ibrahim quickly discovered that the dust was a double-edged sword, as it stung his eyes and clogged his throat. But it didn’t matter. This was his chance.
Ibrahim rose and, bent double ran as quickly as he could to the truck. As he dove inside the back, he could hear a craaak that was immediately followed by something hitting the truck’s metal side with a loud clang.
Too late, Ibrahim thought exultantly as he hurried to the weapon he had labored for so many hours to build.
He had given a lot of thought to how to set off the device, in particular how to do it as quickly as possible while making accidental arming as difficult as he could. Ibrahim believed the design he’d chosen was the best possible.
Anyway, it was undoubtedly the best he could do, he thought wryly.
Ibrahim had thought about trying to defeat the Nasr nuclear core’s built-in detonation delay, a design function that guaranteed a regular missile firing would have time to clear the launch area before detonation. Since it appeared reshaping the core’s nuclear material would have been required, it seemed impractical.
Ibrahim knew that he had already received fatal radiation exposure. If he put his hands on the core, even with lead-lined gloves, he knew he might not make it to Kabul.
Abdul had already been forced to put the men who had removed the cores from the warheads and carried them to the trucks in Pakistan out of their misery. As well as the men who had helped Ibrahim build the finished weapons, which again required repeatedly handling the cores.
In the end, he had decided against trying to defeat the delay, because the risk just wasn’t worth the reward. The Nasr’s range was short enough, and its speed sufficiently high that the core’s detonation delay could be only a few minutes.
In an attempt to prevent detection, Ibrahim had put heavy shielding around the core in both of his finished devices. He was bitterly disappointed that his effort had failed.
In truth, though, the shielding had failed only partially. The Okhotnik drone would have detected his device far more quickly without it. And in the meantime, Abdul’s weapon continued towards Bagram Airfield.
Ibrahim was proud of the arming switch he had devised. It depended on a piece of metal with a small electrical charge making contact with another. This meant moving the metal piece protruding from the case within a groove cut into the casing. First up, and then to the right.
Ibrahim was sure that no matter how much the weapon was jostled within its elastic lattice, that precise set of pressures would never be applied by accident. Whether or not that was true, he thought, didn’t matter now.
His design had made it this far. Now to see if it worked.
Ibrahim’s hand moved forward to the switch, and did what he had been born to do.
Up, and then to the right.
Ibrahim was immediately rewarded with a steady “beep” that repeated every few seconds. He almost hadn’t bothered to add this feature but had reluctantly concluded that whether or not he believed accidental arming was possible, he should have some way to know if it happened.
The next step, Ibrahim thought, was to delay the enemy in the helicopter long enough to let the arming process finish. Not that he thought there was a real chance someone could disarm the weapon in the few minutes available. Just to be thorough.
The simplest way to have achieved this would have been to lift the cloth flap separating the truck bed where he was now and the front seats, followed by sitting in the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition.
Granted, he wouldn’t have made it far. But certainly far enough to ensure there would never be enough time to defuse the warhead.
Instead, Ibrahim’s background betrayed him. He had gone through military training as an officer, but as a college graduate destined for Pakistan’s nuclear forces, combat infantry skills got little emphasis.
On the one hand, Ibrahim’s education and skills meant better pay, better housing, and better working conditions than nearly anyone else in Pakistan’s military.
On the other, Ibrahim knew that behind his back, a lot of the others in the Pakistani military didn’t consider him a “real” soldier.
Well, that was going to end today.
There was an AK-74 lying in the truck bed. Ibrahim checked to make sure the clip was seated correctly, and a round chambered. Then he checked that the rifle was set to automatic fire. He knew the helicopter was close enough that even an average marksman like him could hardly miss it.
Ibrahim was going to empty the rifle’s entire clip into the helicopter before they killed him. That ought to slow them down enough.
Ibrahim took a deep breath, and then leaped through the cloth flap in the back of the truck and landed outside on his feet. In a single smooth motion that took less than a second, he had the AK-74 aimed at the helicopter. It was close enough that he had no trouble seeing the people inside, including two who were just starting to exit the helicopter.
Ibrahim pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He had forgotten to take off the safety.
Everything went black.
Forty Kilometers South of Kabul, Afghanistan
The American soldiers who had climbed aboard the helicopter with Captain Rogoff had said nothing within Mikhail Vasilyev’s earshot during the entire trip. Vasilyev wasn’t sure but suspected this was due to orders they’d received from Rogoff.
Now, though, one said laconically, “Remind me to buy Pete a beer when we get back.”
The soldier he was speaking to nodded. Both of them looked out the windshield at Ibrahim’s body and prepared to follow Vasilyev, Neda, and Rogoff out of the helicopter.
Vasilyev guessed correctly that “Pete” was the American sniper who had stayed next to the damaged helicopter.
The Americans took up position outside the truck in case any more Taliban appeared, while Vasilyev and Neda began work inside it on defusing the bomb.
The beeping they heard as soon as they climbed into the truck bed made it clear that the weapon had been armed, and they probably had only a very few minutes.
Fortunately, there were only a few screws to remove to get at the weapon’s interior. Vasilyev had feared that it would be welded shut, but now realized that would have made access impossible for its creators too if something went wrong.
Neda hissed in dismay. Vasilyev saw that the needle nose pliers she was holding were hovering over a complex mass of circuits and wires that he didn’t recall from any of Neda’s sketches of the weapon’s likely layout.
Then Neda’s expression cleared, and was replaced with a small smile. She thrust her left hand towards Vasilyev and said, “Your knife!”
Vasilyev really wanted to ask what use his combat knife could have in disarming a nuclear weapon, but swallowed the question and mutely placed it in her hand.
Vasilyev was astonished when Neda next lifted the entire mass of wires and circuits and began vigorously sawing through them with the knife. Finished, she tossed the jumble of plastic and metal back over her shoulder.
The beeping continued.
Neda saw Vasilyev’s concerned look and smiled. “A decoy. Put there to buy time.”
Her hands had never stopped moving while she spoke. Vasilyev recognized all of the steps she had tried to teach him and was profoundly grateful their lives didn’t depend on his memory.
Less than a minute later, Neda stepped back, satisfied. “That should do it,” she said.
The beeping hadn’t stopped.
Vasilyev was about to point that out when Neda’s smile stopped him.
“Yes, I know. The beeping. All it means is the weapon was armed. I could stop it, but the designer could have tied in another detonation circuit to activate if someone did that. Why take the chance?”
Vasilyev nodded. “So, there’s nothing to do but wait?”
Neda stepped towards him. “Exactly.”
Vasilyev stood paralyzed as he looked into Neda’s eyes, struck all at once by the depth of his feelings for her, in what could very well be their last moments.
Neda frowned and said something under her breath in Russian that made Vasilyev’s eyes widen, and then grabbed his face in both hands.
Their kiss seemed to go on forever. Vasilyev was dimly aware of the smell of smoke that permeated their clothes and hair from the helicopter fire, and how the bandage on Neda’s forehead scratched his where it pressed against him.
It was wonderful.
Finally, they broke free and looked at each other.
The beeping hadn’t stopped. But they were still here.
“So, it would probably have gone off by now, yes?” Vasilyev cautiously asked.
Neda shrugg
ed. “I won’t tempt fate by saying yes,” she replied.
Vasilyev laughed. “An excellent answer! We may make a Russian out of you yet!”
Then, instantly serious, he held both of Neda’s hands.
“There is a great deal I wish to say to you. But I want to do it away from this bomb, and our American audience,” Vasilyev said.
Neda smiled and squeezed his hands. She nodded, her eyes shining.
They both climbed out of the truck bed and saw that the Americans were all still holding station right outside. Unless they were deaf, almost certainly within earshot of everything they’d said.
If they’d been listening, Rogoff gave no sign. “So, mission complete?” he asked.
Vasilyev shrugged. “We certainly hope so. Of course, the device should still be handled with extreme caution.”
Rogoff nodded. “We’ve got nuclear weapons experts in the air, who I’ve been told should get to Bagram later today. A relief force will be on its way as soon as I advise the weapon has been disarmed. They’ll guard it in the meantime, and provide security for its transport.”
“Good,” Vasilyev nodded. “I didn’t think you’d leave it here for anyone to find.”
Rogoff smiled. “Right. Just one more question.”
“Yes?” Vasilyev replied.
“Are we invited to the wedding?”
Chapter Forty
Town of Bagram, Afghanistan
Mullah Abdul Zahed looked out of the truck’s windshield with little interest as it passed through the town of Bagram. It looked like dozens of small towns scattered across Afghanistan, though a bit larger than most.
As a child, Abdul’s father had made him study Afghanistan’s history. At the time, he had hated it, but now he was grateful for what his father had made him learn. As with much else, he thought wryly.
His father had lived to see Afghanistan’s liberation from the hated Russians, and died before the Americans came to take their place. Not for the first time, Abdul thought that he was glad his father had not lived long enough to see Afghanistan once again under foreign occupation.