by Ted Halstead
“Where is the liquid nitrogen?” Khaksar demanded.
Neither man said anything. Instead, they stood looking at each other, obviously trying to guess what possible use the gunmen would have for liquid nitrogen.
Before Khaksar had to resort to violence, he saw one of the researchers involuntarily glance towards a door in the room’s back right corner. Keeping his gaze and his gun fixed on the researchers, Khaksar ordered two of the squad to check behind the door.
Seeing a glum and rueful look on the face of the researcher who had looked in the direction of the room’s corner door, Khaksar was confident they were on the right track.
Khaksar’s blood froze as he heard the distinctive sound of an AK-74’s arming mechanism being engaged.
Without turning his head, he yelled, “Don’t shoot anywhere near where the liquid nitrogen might be. Did you even try the handle?”
Khaksar had told everyone in the squad before they set out on this mission to avoid shooting the liquid nitrogen cylinder since, at best, it would cause the nitrogen to escape. Ibrahim had also told him that depending on the nitrogen’s degree of compression, at worst, it might explode.
It was not the first time that a fighter under Khaksar’s command had failed to follow orders. It didn’t make this time any less frustrating.
Shortly Khaksar heard the sound he had expected. The door opening, with no violence required. It made sense, after all. Was it essential to lock the storage closet door to keep the supercomputer’s users from stealing liquid nitrogen and printer paper?
As he kept his gaze on the security guard and the researchers, Khaksar heard an exchange he’d also expected. The Taliban fighter who had not prepared his rifle to fire laughing at the one who had, followed by an embarrassed and rather profane response.
The man felt stupid? Good. Hopefully, he’d be a little less ready to use bullets as a first resort next time. This time, it had nearly cost them the use of two nuclear weapons.
A few minutes later, an odd squeaking noise finally made Khaksar glance backward. What he saw made him grunt with satisfaction. He had been told to have his men look for a metal cylinder with a label containing either the abbreviations “LN2” or “N2” or, more simply, the word “Nitrogen.” The label on the cylinder being wheeled towards him on a dolly helpfully had both “LN2” and “Nitrogen.”
Even better, several long thin metal tubes with different shaped heads were attached to the cylinder with a Velcro strap. Ibrahim had told Khaksar the bottle would be useless without these since he would need the attachments to dispense the liquid nitrogen safely.
Now maybe they could get out of here before the Pakistani police or military showed up.
Looking at the researchers, Khaksar said, “I don’t have to explain why it would be a bad idea to leave this room until long after we’re gone, do I? Particularly since this man has already alerted the authorities,” he said, gesturing at the security guard.
Khaksar saw with approval that both researchers looked at the guard with new respect. Good. His courage deserved it.
They were also quick to nod and mutter agreement.
Khaksar then looked at the guard but said nothing.
The guard glared back but finally gave a curt nod.
Good. Khaksar had killed many men in his years as a Taliban leader. He was now determined to do so only when truly necessary.
As soon as they left the room, the door closed behind them. Khaksar lifted his rifle. To the other men’s surprise, he fired a single round into the station the guard had used to unlock the door. To his satisfaction, a shower of sparks and a wisp of smoke made it clear it was no longer functional.
Khaksar couldn’t be sure, but thought it was likely the door now wouldn’t open from the other side either.
The van they had brought to carry the cylinder was waiting outside the door, with an SUV behind it holding more fighters for security. Ibrahim had made it clear that without the liquid nitrogen, there would be no useable nuclear weapons, and Khaksar was taking no chances.
They pulled away from the Institute’s entrance without incident. However, since only a single road led to and from GIK, Khaksar doubted their luck would last long.
He was right. Flashing lights soon appeared behind them, along with a command over a loudspeaker to pull over.
Khaksar sighed and shook his head. Police. Well, with this van, they certainly weren’t going to outrun them.
On the other hand, with the firepower his men had this first round would be no challenge. But could they avoid round two?
As planned, a Taliban fighter thrust his head and shoulders through the SUV’s sunroof and began to rake the police car with automatic weapons fire. It immediately swerved off the road, and Khaksar listened hopefully for the sound of a crash or explosion.
He heard nothing and swore. One or both of the policemen in that car had probably survived and just radioed their description back to headquarters. Here near the Afghan border, that would almost certainly be followed quickly by a military response. Could they make the planned switch to another waiting vehicle in time?
In minutes Khaksar had his answer. No.
Two sets of headlights appeared to their right, bouncing up and down on a side road that was probably not as well maintained as theirs. Khaksar couldn’t see them yet but was willing to bet they were Pakistani military vehicles.
His heart sank as he saw how rapidly they were advancing, and Khaksar yelled at the driver to increase their already considerable speed. They had to stay ahead of the enemy to have any chance of escape.
Yes! Khaksar’s van and the trailing SUV passed the intersection just before the oncoming vehicles.
Khaksar shook his head, though, when he finally got a look at the pursuing vehicles. The Taliban had run circles around the Pakistani military for years because they had stuck with traditional armored vehicles. They had the advantage of being hard to damage but were too slow to keep up with Taliban vehicles such as pickup trucks with pintle-mounted machine guns.
Until finally, a Pakistani frontline officer did the obvious. He used a captured Taliban pickup truck and its machine gun against them. It proved so useful that other Pakistani officers in the combat zone began mounting weapons on many types of small, fast vehicles. None of those vehicles appeared on any list of official Pakistani military equipment.
That didn’t prevent two of them appearing behind Khaksar right now.
The men in the SUV trailing Khaksar were some of his best, and they didn’t need his orders to act. An arm holding an RPG-7 appeared through the SUV’s sunroof, quickly followed by the head and shoulders of one of those fighters. Khaksar was impressed with the man’s speed, even though the maneuver was one they had practiced repeatedly.
The man pressed the RPG’s trigger at nearly the same instant that machine gun rounds began hitting the SUV. The rocket-propelled grenade was on target, and Khaksar yelled with triumph as the first pursing vehicle exploded and swerved off the road in a ball of fire.
The cry died in his throat as machine gun rounds reached the SUV’s gas tank, and it exploded in turn. It flipped and nearly hit the other pursuing vehicle, but to Khaksar’s disgust, it managed to evade the obstacle at the last second.
Without the SUV to shield it, machine gun rounds began striking the van. Khaksar immediately thought- the cylinder! Without a conscious plan, Khaksar wedged himself through the gap between the two front seats and then covered the bottle with his body.
At the same moment, his men kicked open the right side of the van’s two back doors and began pouring answering rounds from their rifles. Though they had less firepower, they had one advantage.
Khaksar’s men were facing the enemy vehicle’s driver. That is where they concentrated their fire.
It worked. Their last pursuer veered off the road, and though the van had been hit multiple times, its tires and engine were intact, so it continued to speed down the highway.
Khaksar had not been so luck
y. His last act had saved the cylinder and their mission, but it had cost him his life. Two rounds that would undoubtedly have pierced the cylinder were in his body instead. It was fortunate that the passage of both rounds had been slowed by first passing through the van’s metal frame, or his sacrifice would have been in vain.
Only five minutes ahead, the van’s driver pulled over next to a nearly new truck bearing the logo of a major supplier of liquid propane to both residences and businesses. The back of the truck was full of propane containers of many different sizes and shapes, including cylinders. It took less than a minute for the truck’s driver to attach a new label covering the previous ones carefully so that now the liquid nitrogen cylinder was indistinguishable from all of the other containers the truck carried.
A battered sedan was parked in front of the propane truck, and its driver gestured impatiently for the surviving Taliban fighters to climb aboard.
The van, now containing nothing but Khaksar’s body, was left behind. Not from a lack of respect, but because they all knew that would have been what Khaksar wanted. As Muslims, once the van was found either the police or the military could be counted on to give Khaksar a proper burial.
What mattered now was for the surviving fighters to escape so their mission would succeed, and Khaksar’s death would have meaning. Thanks to the switch they had just made and the bright lights of a sizable town ahead, that’s exactly what would happen, as the propane truck and the battered sedan disappeared into a swirl of heavy traffic.
Chapter Twenty-Three
En Route to Afghan-Pakistan Border Post
Mikhail Vasilyev had started to snore gently, and Anatoly Grishkov looked at him with frank envy. He wished he could sleep through the noise produced by the Mil-8 helicopter’s flight so easily.
From the small smile Grishkov saw on Neda Rhahbar’s face, she had correctly read his expression but said nothing.
Grishkov’s gaze went back to the map he had been studying, a copy of the one he had found in the Taliban vehicle. This version had expert translations of the notes on the original and had helped them pick the border post they were going to now.
It was still a gamble. Four border crossing points had been marked on the map, two for the weapon going to Bagram Airfield and two for the one going to Kabul’s Green Zone.
Grishkov had read all the briefing papers and knew the experts had their reasons for sending them to this particular border post. He still thought it was likely they would come up empty.
He didn’t know why, but something made Grishkov shift his view from the map to Neda, without moving his head.
Grishkov knew at once what had subconsciously attracted his attention. Neda was looking intently at Vasilyev, as though she were trying to decide…something. But what?
It only took a few seconds for Neda to realize Grishkov had noticed the way she was looking at Vasilyev. Blushing furiously, Neda started to say something, but then stopped.
Grishkov smiled and asked, “His snoring is starting to get on your nerves?”
Neda smiled back gratefully and said, “Yes, that’s it.”
Both of them knew that wasn’t it. But neither of them wanted to discuss what was really happening.
Grishkov would have freely admitted to anyone who asked that he was far from an expert in what he thought of as “romantic issues.” Even he, though, had finally realized Neda appeared to be thinking of Vasilyev that way.
Neda keyed her headset and gestured to Grishkov that he should do the same. This would let them speak without yelling over the noise of the helicopter.
“I want to let him sleep while we talk,” Neda said.
Grishkov nodded in response.
Neda gestured towards Vasilyev. “You knew his father long before I met you both in Iran, yes?”
Grishkov nodded again. “That’s right. We first met when I was in the Army fighting in Chechnya, and he was an intelligence briefer. The only one I ever met there who had information we could really use. Even better, he listened to me when I told him what I thought was going on.”
Grishkov paused, clearly thinking back. “It was a huge stroke of luck when I found him again in Vladivostok, on the other end of Russia. Or maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Neither of us liked Moscow much, though that’s where we ended up after our first mission together.”
Neda smiled. “I heard both of you refer to that mission, though I know you can’t discuss the details. I remember, though, both of you were surprised you survived.”
Grishkov snorted. “That’s a considerable understatement. I felt we’d both used up our supply of luck, and was almost relieved when I was later shot on the Iran-Iraq border during our last mission.”
Then Grishkov’s expression darkened. “As you know, that’s the mission where Alexei’s luck ran out. My luck actually held, since the bullet only hit my ballistic vest, leaving me with nothing but a bruise.”
Neda spoke rapidly, as though trying to chase those thoughts from Grishkov’s head. “Well, if there is such a thing as a finite supply of luck, Alexei had been drawing on it much longer than you had. I remember him telling me that I would be astonished by the number of times he had cheated death.”
Grishkov smiled sadly. “It’s true. He told me many such stories. Here’s one that is not classified secret. Alexei was on a commercial flight within South Korea. All such flights are very short because it’s such a small country, less than a third the size of Japan. So, such flights are used for training. For example, no sooner had the crew finished the takeoff checklist and reached cruising altitude than it was time to start the landing checklist.”
Neda smiled. “I can see how that would make training more efficient.”
Grishkov nodded. “But on this flight, the trainee noticed a light was flashing after they were halfway through the landing checklist. He asked the highly experienced captain what the light meant. The captain replied that the light meant they had not lowered the landing gear. The trainee said, ah; then we should lower the landing gear. The captain said, no, we did that already because we’re past that point on the checklist.”
Grishkov paused and said, “I should note here that we know exactly what they said because they were able to pull the cockpit voice recorder.”
“Oh, no,” Neda said, breathlessly.
Grishkov shrugged. “The captain and the trainee continued their discussion until the accident investigation established that the captain reached to the side out of the trainee’s view and pulled the circuit that was making the warning light flash.”
Neda looked at Grishkov in disbelief. “So the plane…”
Grishkov nodded. “Landed without lowering its gear. In a stirring endorsement of American engineering, everyone was able to walk away from the plane, which was, of course, a total loss.”
Neda shook her head. “Astonishing. What happened to the captain?”
Grishkov smiled. “That was the part Alexei said he found most interesting, next to surviving the flight. There was a lively debate over the airline’s decision to fire both the captain and the trainee. Many Koreans argued it was unrealistic to think the trainee would stand up to the captain and hit the switch lowering the landing gear. Alexei sided with the many other Koreans who said that with dozens of lives at stake, nothing less was to be expected.”
“So do I,” Neda declared emphatically.
“Well, me too. But that wasn’t the only time that an aircrew’s incompetence nearly cost Alexei his life,” Grishkov said.
Neda’s eyebrows flew up. “Really? And where was this?”
“On a flight going from Dakar, Senegal to Nairobi, Kenya. That’s an entirely overland flight. In a moment, you’ll see why that’s important,” Grishkov said.
Neda shrugged and nodded.
“The airline had just installed a new door to the cockpit designed to resist an assault by hijackers. After the plane had reached cruising altitude and the autopilot had been engaged, the captain left the cockpit to use the r
estroom. Then the co-pilot left to chat with a flight attendant. The cockpit door closed and locked behind him.”
Neda looked at Grishkov, horrified. “You mean…”
Grishkov nodded. “Yes. No one but the autopilot was flying the plane. At first, the captain and copilot tried to open the cockpit door without attracting attention, to prevent panic among the passengers. Until several passengers noticed there was nothing below them but water because they had flown past Kenya and were over the Indian Ocean.”
Neda shook her head. “So, what did they do?”
“Now that the secret was out, they got the strongest and heaviest passengers together to take a running shove at the cockpit door. It took several tries, but they were finally able to break through,” Grishkov said.
“Good,” Neda said with relief. “So, that’s the end of the story.”
“Not quite,” Grishkov replied. “You see, the plane no longer had enough fuel to reach Nairobi. After frantic radio calls, they were finally able to get clearance to land at Mombasa Airport, on the Kenyan coast. Even though the runway there was too short for their plane.”
Neda smiled. “But since Alexei was still alive to tell you this story…”
Grishkov smiled back. “Yes. The front end with the cockpit ended up off the runway, but the landing gear was still on it when the plane came to a stop.”
Neda shook her head. “I can see why he felt he was pressing his luck.”
She looked again at Vasilyev. “I thought his father was a good man. I think the son is too.”
The only response that came to Grishkov’s head was nodding, so that’s what he did.
So, here was a complication. But there was nothing Grishkov could think of that he could do to address it.
Lahore, Pakistan
Mullah Abdul Zahed frowned, as he immediately saw a change since his last visit to the building where the two nuclear warheads were being detached from their casings. The last time, the warheads had been on worktables far apart. The technician working on the warheads, Ibrahim Munawar, had explained that if something went wrong with the conventional explosive component of one warhead he wanted some chance that the other might survive.
