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 Dagestani 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.
Over Clark’s headset a call came through: “Delta team to Rainbow Six.”
“Go for Rainbow Six.”
“We are at site 104. We have opened the payload container and have accessed the nuclear device. We have removed the fuses and rendered the weapon safe.”
“Very well. Losses to your men?”
“Two injured, both noncritical. Eight enemy killed.”
“Understood. Well done.”
Chavez looked to Clark; he’d heard the exchange in his headset as well. “I guess he wasn’t bluffing.”
“Guess not. One down, one to go.”
A full minute later, a second transmission came over the net. “Zulu team to Rainbow Six.”
Clark grabbed the radio. “Go for Six.”
A Canadian nuclear munitions expert said, “Sir, we’ve breached the Space Head Module and opened the payload container.”
“Roger that. How long until the weapon is rendered safe?”
A pause. “Um, sir. There is no weapon.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying there is no device at 106?”
“There is a device, but it’s definitely not a nuke. There is a tag on this thing, let me clean this so I can read it. Wait one … Okay, it’s in English. From the markings on this device, I do believe that what I’m looking at here is a 1984 Wayne Industries, S-1700 school bus engine.”
At launch control, Clark turned to Chavez, their eyes met. A moment of panic.
Ding stated the obvious in a breathless whisper. “Fuck me. We’ve lost a twenty-kiloton nuke.”
Clark’s head swiveled over to the injured man on the floor. The Rainbow medic was tending to him still. The Dagestani had a bullet wound in his chest that, Clark could tell from having been around others with such an injury, would be excruciatingly painful. He had a second hole in his upper arm. Georgi’s breath was shallow, and his face dripped sweat. He just stared up at the older man standing above him.
The American put his hand on the shoulder of the medic. “I need a minute.”
“Sorry, sir. I am just about to sedate him,” the Irishman said as he swabbed Safronov’s forearm.
“No, Sergeant, you are not.”
Both the medic and Safronov looked up at John Clark with wide eyes.
The Irishman said, “Aye. He’s all yours, Rainbow Six.” And with that he stood and walked off.
Now Clark knelt over Georgi Safronov. “Where is the bomb?”
Georgi Safronov cocked his head. Through his short wheezes he said, “What do you mean?”
Clark drew the SIG in his coat with his left hand and shouted, “Goin’ hot!” to the men in the launch control room. He then fired four rounds into the concrete under the large wall displays, just past where Safronov lay. The injured man shuddered with new fear.
But Clark wasn’t shooting at Safronov. He was, instead, rendering the tip of his pistol’s barrel nearly red-hot from the expulsion of explosive gases.
He took the hot barrel, grabbed Safronov by his right arm, and jammed the barrel into the jagged bullet wound in his biceps.
Safronov screamed like a banshee.
“No time to fuck around, Georgi! Two rockets! One nuke! Where is the other fucking bomb?”
Safronov finally stopped screaming. “No! Both Dnepr-1s were armed. What are you talking about?”
“We aren’t idiots, Georgi. One of them was armed with a goddamned bus engine. You didn’t think we’d have armament experts here to—”
Clark stopped talking. He could see it on Safronov’s bloodstained face. A look of confusion. Then a look like … like what? Yes. Like a man who just realized that he had been betrayed.
“Where is it, you son of a bitch? Who took it?”
Safronov did not answer; he seemed overcome with anger, his pale face speckled with this fury.
But he did not answer.
“Going hot!” Clark shouted again, and pointed his pistol at the wall so he could turn it once again into a searing torture device.
“Please, no!”
“Who has the bomb?”
81
Jack Ryan Jr. looked through the thermal binoculars at the warehouse a hundred fifty yards away. He’d just gotten off the phone with Sam Granger, who told him Clark and Chavez, along with Rainbow, had ended the terrorist incident at the spaceport in Kazakhstan. He’d relayed this to Mohammed and Dom, who were both elated. Now they were concentrating on making sure whatever Rehan had in store here did not come to pass.