Locked On

by Tom Clancy

  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 weapons 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 farther on, 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.

  He ordered the two men to stand at the front of the room, alongside the monitors, and point their weapons at the staff. He himself moved between the tables so he could see the work the men were doing. The twenty Russian engineers and technicians looked at him.

  “Launch sequence for immediate launch!”

  “Which silo?”

  “Both silos!”

  There was no system to send two Dneprs simultaneously, so it would have to be all done manually. They had the launch link to 104 in place at present, so Georgi ordered that silo to deploy first. He then ordered a second team of men to finalize launch prep on the second silo, so he could send that missile skyward close behind the first.

  He pointed his Makarov at the assistant launch director, the highest-ranking engineer in the room.

  “One-oh-four clears its silo in sixty seconds or Maxim dies!”

  No one argued with him. Those with nothing left to do sat there, panicked that they would be shot because they had outlived their usefulness. Those with last-second duties to prepare the launch worked furiously, arming the power pressure generator and checking each of the three fuel stages of the LV for the correct readings. Georgi and his pistol were right behind them through the entire sequence, and all the launch engineers knew tha
t Safronov could have been sitting in any one of their places doing their job. No one dared attempt to do anything to thwart the launch.

  Georgi would see through any trickery.

  “How long?” Safronov screamed as he rushed to the control panel with the two launch keys. He turned one, then put his left hand on the other.

  “Twenty-five seconds more!” screamed the assistant launch director, nearly hyperventilating from panic.

  A large explosion boomed in the hallway just outside. Over the radio one of the Dagestanis said, “They are in the building!”

  Georgi removed his hand from the key and took his walkie-talkie from his belt. “Everyone come back to the control room. Hold the hallway and the rear stairs! We only need to keep them back for a few moments more!”

  80

  Chavez was halfway down the rear stairwell, turning at the landing, when the door to the LCC opened below him. He leapt back, out of view. He could hear gunfire throughout the lower floors of the building, and he was also receiving the Rainbow teams’ transmissions in the comms set in his ear. Two of the three teams were in the hallway on the other side of the LCC, but they were being kept at bay by over a dozen terrorists who held fortified positions in the hall.

  Ding knew that the president of the Russian rocket company—he hadn’t bothered to learn the son of a bitch’s name—could launch the missiles with little preparation.

  Clark’s operation orders to all the men on the mission were cold. Even though there would be a dozen unwilling participants in the launch control room, Clark had stressed that they were not innocents. Chavez and Rainbow were to assume that these men would launch the missiles that could kill millions—under duress, maybe, but they could launch them nonetheless.

  Chavez knew that it was up to him.

  For that reason Ding had been outfitted with six fragmentation grenades, an unusual load-out for a mission involving hostages. He was authorized to kill everything that moved in launch control to assure that the Dnepr rockets did not leave those silos five miles to the east.

  But instead of reaching for a frag, he quickly took off his sub-gun, placed it silently on the stairs, then quickly climbed out of his chest gear, only taking his radio set from it and hooking it to his belt. Removing his vest made him lighter and faster and, he sure hoped, quieter. He drew his Glock 19 pistol from his right hip and quickly spun the long suppressor onto the barrel.

  He carried special Fiocchi 9-millimeter subsonic ammunition for his handgun; he and Clark had discovered it when training in Rainbow and he knew that, when fired through a good suppressor, it made his Glock as close to whisper-quiet as a firearm could ever be.

  Clark had stressed that the entire operation hinged on speed, surprise, and violence of action—Ding knew he needed all three of these factors in spades in the next sixty seconds.

  He lifted the Glock to eye level and took one calming breath.

  And then he kicked his legs over the railing, spun one hundred eighty degrees, and dropped through the air toward the men in the stairwell below.

  Fifteen seconds to launch of 104!” shouted Maxim. Even though Safronov was only five feet away, Georgi could barely hear over the gun battle raging in the hallway.

  Safronov stepped to the remaining launch key and put his hand on it. While doing so he turned and looked over his shoulder, across the dozen Russian engineers, and at the two exits across the room. On the right, two Jamaat Shariat stood inside the doorway to the rear stairs; two more men were out in the stairwell guarding access from the first and third floors.

  And on his left was the door to the hall. Two men were positioned just inside the doorway here, and whatever remained of Jamaat Shariat was outside, martyring themselves in the fight to give Safronov every second he needed to get at least one of the nukes in the air.

  Georgi shouted to his four brothers in the room with him. “Allahu Akbar!” He looked quickly to Maxim seated below him for confirmation that the pressure cap had been charged for launch. The Russian just nodded blankly while looking at his monitor.

  Georgi heard a grunt and then a scream, his head swiveled back to the stairwell, and he saw one of his two men there falling backward, a spray of blood squirting from the back of his head. The other man was down already.

  The two Jamaat Shariat men across the room saw this, and they had already spun their weapons toward the threat.

  Safronov turned the key and then reached for the button, his eyes on the doorway. Suddenly a man in a black tunic spun through the doorway in a blur, his long black pistol high and swinging toward Georgi without hesitation. Georgi saw a flash of light as he began pressing the button to launch the Dnepr, and he felt a tug in his chest. And then a second tugging on his right biceps.

  His arm flew back, his finger left the launch button, and he fell back onto the table. Quickly he reached for the button again, but Maxim, still seated at the control panel, quickly reached up and turned both keys up into the disarm position.

  Georgi Safronov felt strength pouring from his body in a flood; he half leaned, half sat, on the table by the control panel, and he watched the man in black, the infidel, as he moved along the wall in some sort of run-crouch, like a rat hunting for a meal in an alley. But the man in black fired his gun as he moved; it flashed and smoked, but a fresh ringing in Georgi’s ears drowned out any noise.

  The man in black killed both of the Jamaat Shariat men guarding the hallway door. Just killed them like they were nothing, not men, not sons of Dagestan, not brave mujahideen.

  All the Russian engineers at tables dove for the ground. Georgi was the only man standing now, and he realized he was still standing, still alive, and he still controlled the fate of Moscow and he could still destroy millions of infidels and cripple the government that enslaved his people.

  With renewed strength Safronov used his left hand now, and reached back to turn the keys to rearm the silo.

  But as he put his fingers on the first key, a movement in front of him caught his eye. It was Maxim, he was standing from his chair, he was swinging his fist, and he hit Georgi Safronov square on the nose, knocking him over the top of the table and onto the floor.

  Domingo Chavez helped the Russian technicians secure and barricade the door between the LCC and the hallway, which would help to keep all the terrorists in the hallway.

  In Russian, Ding shouted to the dozen men there, “Who has served in the military?” All but two raised their hands quickly. “Not in the rocket forces,” Ding clarified. “Who is good with an AK?” Only two kept their hands up, and Chavez gave them each a rifle and instructed them to watch the door.

  He then rushed over to the guy he came to kill; he still didn’t know the motherfucker’s name. He saw a big Russian sitting on top of the wounded man. “What’s your name?” Ding asked in Russian.

  “Maxim Ezhov.”

  “And his name?”

  “Georgi Safronov,” the man said. “He is still alive.”

  Ding shrugged; he had meant to kill him, but he would not kill him now that he was no threat. He searched the man quickly, found a Makarov and a few extra magazines and a phone.

  A moment later, Chavez activated his radio headset. “Romeo Two for Rainbow Six. Launch keys secured. Repeat, launch keys secured.”

  The Mi-17 helicopters moved low and fast over the flat landscape. A unit of eight Rainbow operators took Launch Silo 103, along with the sniper/recon team that had been in place for a day and a half. Five miles to the south, another unit of eight, again with covering fire from two men in the snowy grass, killed the Jamaat Shariat forces there.

  Once Rainbow secured the rockets, specially briefed munitions experts climbed down into the silo and stepped onto the equipment deck to access the third stage. Headlamps illuminated their work while they opened an access hatch to expose the Space Head Module.

  A third helo, a Russian Army KA-52 Alligator gunship, flew to within a kilometer of the bunker near the turnoff to the Dnepr facility. Inside were four Da
gestani rebels. No one asked them if they wished to surrender. No, their position was rocketed and auto-cannoned until the four men’s bodies were so thoroughly mixed with the rubble that only the insects, carrion, and wild dogs that would populate the steppes in the springtime would ever recover them.

  And a fourth helo, an Mi-17, landed at the LCC. John Clark stepped off the aircraft and was led inside by Colonel Gummesson.

  “Rainbow casualties?” asked Clark.

  “We have five dead, seven wounded.”

  Shit, thought John. Too fucking many.

  They took the stairs out of the lobby to the second floor, moved through the carnage of the hallway, where fourteen Dagestanis died in a futile attempt to buy their leader enough time to launch the nukes. Bodies and body parts and blood and scorched metal were everywhere. Bloody medical dressings lay in wads and Clark could not walk without kicking spent brass or empty rifle magazines.

  In the LCC he found Chavez, sitting in a chair in the corner. He’d hurt his ankle in an awkward landing after leaping over the stair rail. His adrenaline had dulled the pain for those critical few seconds afterward, but now the joint swelled and the pain grew. Still, he was in decent spirits. The men shook hands, left hand to left hand, and then they hugged. Ding then motioned to a man in a camouflage uniform in the corner. A Rainbow medic from Ireland was treating him. Georgi Safronov was white and covered in sweat, but he was definitely alive.

  Clark and Chavez stood in the launch control room while the launch engineers, until ten minutes ago hostages here in this room, powered down and reset all of the systems. The Irish medic continued to work on the wounded terrorist, but Clark had not checked on him.