“Clark should not have made it to Moscow. Your mistake, not mine.”
“Fair, Valentin. I’ll accept that. But let’s deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.”
There was a long pause. “Why did you call?”
“We have Clark, we are holding him in Moscow, trying to find out just what our exposure is on this.”
“That sounds prudent.”
“Yes, well, the men working for us are not interrogators. They have fists, yes, but I am thinking you would have some expertise that would be very helpful.”
“You think I torture people?”
“I don’t know if you do or not, though I can imagine it is in your DNA. Many people talked after a few hours in a basement with your father.”
“I am sorry, Paul, but my organization needs to limit its exposure in this enterprise. Your side has lost. The developing situation in Kazakhstan is occupying the concerns of everyone in my nation right now. The excitement about bringing down Jack Ryan has passed.”
Laska fumed. “You cannot just walk away from this, Valentin. The operation is not complete.”
“It is for us, Paul.”
“Don’t be a fool. You are in as deep as I am. Clark gave your name to his contact.”
“My name is, unfortunately, a matter of record in the CIA. He can say what he wants.”
Now Laska could hide his fury no longer. “Perhaps, but if I make one telephone call to The Guardian, you will be the most recognizable Russian agent in Britain.”
“You are threatening to out me as SVR?”
Laska did not hesitate. “You as SVR, and your father as KGB. I’m sure there are still some angry people in the satellites that would love to know who was responsible for the death of their loved ones.”
“You are playing a dangerous game, Mr. Laska. I am willing to forget about this conversation. But do not test me. My resources are—”
“Nothing like my resources! I want you to take custody of Clark, then I want you to find out who he is working for, what his present connection to Ryan is, and then you make him disappear so he cannot speak about what he has learned in the past month.”
“Or what?”
“Or I make phone calls in the United States and in Europe, revealing what you’ve been up to.”
“That is a poor bluff. You can’t reveal your involvement. You have broken laws in your country. I have broken no laws in mine.”
“In the past forty years, I’ve broken laws that you cannot imagine, my young friend. And yet I continue. I will survive this. You will not.”
Kovalenko did not reply.
Laska said, “Make him talk. Cut off all the loose ends. Clean this up and we can all move on.”
Kovalenko started to say something, to grudgingly agree to look into the matter personally, but to make clear that he would not commit to any particular measure.
But Laska hung up the phone. The old man knew Valentin Kovalenko would follow orders.
Georgi knew from the very beginning that the FSB’s Alpha Group would attempt to retake control of the facility. His fertile mind could have guessed as much even if he had not witnessed a mock FSB raid to retake the Soyuz facility from a terrorist organization, just three years prior.
He had no reason to be involved in the Soyuz operation, but he had been in Baikonur at the time on other business, and he was invited by facility officials to witness the exercise. He’d watched it all with incredulous fascination: the helicopters and the overland movement of the camo-clad forces, the concussion grenades and the rappelling from the roof of the building.
He’d talked to some Soyuz engineers after the drill and had learned more about the Russian contingency plan in the unlikely event terrorists ever took control of the complex.
Safronov knew there was also a chance Moscow would simply decide to fight fire with fire, and nuke the entire Cosmodrome in order to save Moscow. Fortunately for his plan, the Dnepr launch site at Baikonur was the original launch site of the R-36, and was therefore built to withstand a nuclear attack. Sites 104, 103, and 109 contained hardened silos from which the missiles launched, and the launch control facility was built with thick reinforced concrete walls and blast-proof steel doors.
At six p.m. on the first day, eight hours after the facility was overtaken by Dagestani terrorists, a pair of Russian FSB Alpha Group Mi-17 helicopters landed on the far side of the Proton rocket facilities, twenty-five kilometers from the Dnepr LCC. Twenty-four operators, three teams of eight, climbed out, each man laden with sixty pounds of gear and covered in white winter camouflage.
Within minutes they were heading east.
Shortly after eight o’clock in the evening, an Antonov An-124 transport aircraft landed at Yubileinaya Airfield northwest of the Baikonur Dnepr facility. The An-124 was the largest cargo aircraft on earth, and the Russian military needed every inch of the cabin space and cargo hold for the ninety-six Spetsnaz assault troops and all their gear, including four assault vehicles.
Four more Mi-17 helicopters arrived an hour later along with a refueling aircraft.
The twenty-four men in the white camo had been traversing the Baikonur steppes throughout the evening, first in heavy four-wheelers handed over by the Kazakhs, but as they got closer they left the vehicles behind and marched through the snow-covered grassland in the dark.
By two a.m. they were in position, waiting for a go code from their leadership.
Safronov had spent a busy afternoon giving orders to his gunmen, as well as the launch control engineers. After loading the nuclear devices into the Space Head Modules, he’d released the rest of the processing team. This decision, and his decision to have the foreign hostages brought to the LCC, allowed him to consolidate his men.
He had four Jamaat Shariat men at the crossroads bunker, four at silo 109, ten each at silos 103 and 104, and fifteen at the LCC. He ordered his men to sleep in shifts, but he knew even those men sleeping would do so with one eye open.
He expected the attack to come in the middle of the night but did not know if it would be this evening or the next. He knew that, before the attack itself, he would be contacted by the Russians in order to occupy his attention at that critical moment.
So when he was awoken by a ring and a flashing light on the comms control board to which his headset was attached, his heart began to pound. Sitting on the floor against the wall with his AK in his lap, he leapt to his feet.
Before he answered the call he reached for his radio. He broadcast to all of his Dagestani brethren, “They are coming! Be ready!” and then he screamed at all the prisoners in the launch control room, most of whom were sleeping on the floor. “Everyone to your positions! I want 109 ready to launch in five minutes or I start shooting! Onboard telemetry up! Separation systems armed! LV pyro armed!”
“Yes, sir!” replied several of the launch control directors as they executed the commands, their hands trembling.
Bleary-eyed men in rumpled clothing scrambled to their seats as Dagestani gunmen waved rifles at them.
While this was going on, Georgi Safronov grabbed his headset and placed it to his ear. In a sleepy voice that he found hard to fake with the adrenaline in his bloodstream he said, “Yes? What is it?”
The twenty-four men who had spent the last eight hours humping overland hit the LCC on three sides, corresponding to the main entrance, the rear entrance, and an equipment loading bay.
Each entryway was protected by three Dagestani rebels, and they had warning from their leader that the attack was coming. The men at the front entrance started firing into the night as soon as the call came, a mistake that benefited them greatly, as it gave the Alpha Group men, still just at the far edge of the snow-covered parking lot, the false impression that they had been spotted. All eight men took cover behind cars and fired back at the open doorway, effectively pinning down both forces.