“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 that 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.