Locked On Part 43

Therefore, the security plan for the train relied on supreme stealth, and an onboard force of one company of troops, just more than one hundred armed men. If stealth failed and terrorists. .h.i.t the train, one hundred men would, under virtually all circ.u.mstances, be sufficient to repel an attack.

But Rehan was prepared for one hundred men, and they would not stand a chance.

The lights of the train appeared in the flat distance, just a kilometer away now. Rehan could hear Safronov's heavy breathing over the pattering of the rain on the tin roof. In Arabic the general said, "Relax, my friend. Just lie here and watch. Tonight Jamaat Shariat will take a first important step in securing a Dagestani homeland for your people."

The Pakistani's voice was full of confidence and fake admiration for the fools out there in the gra.s.s. Inwardly he was hoping they wouldn't f.u.c.k it up. Out there with Jamaat Shariat were a dozen of his own men, also ready with small arms and radios to organize the attack. He had no idea how well the Haqqani trainers had prepared these fifty-five mountain men, but he knew he was seconds away from finding out.

The train itself appeared in the rain, screaming forward in the night behind its white light. It was not long, only a dozen cars. Rehan's contacts at Kamra Air Weapon Complex had no way of knowing which car the devices would be loaded into, and he had no one at Taxila railroad station to confirm this either. Obviously it would not be in the engine, and common sense said it would not be the rear car, as the security detail would logically post a portion of the force at the back in case of attack from the rear. So Jamaat Shariat had been ordered to fire their RPGs only at the engine and the last car, or at any large cl.u.s.ters of dismounted troops only when they were well away from the train. The RPGs could not set off a nuclear explosion even if they hit the bombs themselves, but they could very easily damage the weapons or set the rail car containing them on fire and make it difficult to extract the two big bombs.

Again, Rehan worried. If this did not work, his plan to take control of the nation was dead.

The conductor of the deployment train must have seen the missing portion of track ahead; he slammed on his brakes, and they squealed and screeched. Georgi Safronov tensed perceptibly behind the rusty tractor with General Rehan and Colonel Khan. Rehan started to calm him with gentle words, but suddenly a Kalashnikov rifle opened up, firing fully automatic, while the train was still moving.

Another AK joined the chorus, the sound barely perceptible over the incredible noise of the brakes of the locomotive.

Still, Rehan was furious. Jamaat Shariat had jumped the gun.

Rehan shouted into his radio at his men in the field, "They were not to fire until the train derailed! Shut those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds up, even if you have to shoot them in the head!"

But just as he finished his transmission, the heavy engine skidded off the track. Behind it, like a slowly collapsing accordion, the other cars turned both in and out. The train came to a slow, labored stop in the rain. Small fires ignited in the braking system.

Rehan started to countermand his last order, he pressed the transmit b.u.t.ton on his walkie-talkie, but instead he held the device in front of Safronov's face. Softly the general said, "Give your men the order to attack."

The terrified Russian millionaire's white face filled with color in an instant of animalistic pride, and he shouted so loud into the microphone of the walkie-talkie that Rehan was certain his call would come out distorted on the radios of his gunmen.

"Attack!" he screamed in Russian.

Instantly the field ahead of the men in the shed flickered with the lights of launching RPGs. A couple streaked over the train, arcing off into the night, and one detonated against the second-to-last car on the tracks, but four more rocket-propelled grenades. .h.i.t their mark on the engine, turning it into a fireball of twisted metal. Two more grenades slammed into the rear car, killing or maiming everyone stationed there.

The AK chatter from the field was incredible-loud and angry and sustained. Return fire from the train cars took a long time to begin. No doubt the hard braking and the derailment knocked the men around inside like beans shaken in a can, and they were in no position to fight in those first seconds. But finally large cracks of semiautomatic .308 fire from big HK G3 battle rifles began answering the Kalashnikovs in the wheat field.

More RPGs detonated against the train, mostly at the front and the rear, but some of the Dagestani forces controlling the launchers seemed, to General Riaz Rehan's way of thinking, to have extremely poor fire discipline. He heard shouts in the walkie-talkies, in Urdu and Arabic and Russian, and from across the dark rain-swept field, he watched the soldiers on the deployment train die.

These soldiers were not bad men. Many would be good Muslims. Many would support Rehan's cause. But in order for Operation Saker to succeed, some men would need to be martyred.

Rehan would pray for them, but he would not grieve for them.

Rehan used night-vision binoculars to watch the action from the shed. A group of ten or so PDF soldiers managed to make it out of the train; they attacked into the ambush in a disciplined fashion that made the general proud to be a.s.sociated with such men. But the ambush line was too wide, the force in the wheat field too numerous, and the men were slaughtered within seconds.

The entire firefight lasted just over three and a half minutes. When the ISI officers in the field called a cease-fire, they sent teams of Jamaat Shariat fighters into each car, one at a time, so that there was no blue-on-blue shooting between the cars.

This took five more minutes, and resulted in what Rehan could tell just by listening was the execution of the wounded or the surrendering.

Finally a radio transmission came over Rehan's walkie-talkie. In Urdu, one of his captains said, "Bring the trucks!"

Immediately two large black dump trucks pulled out from behind the warehouses and drove up a wet road through the wheat field. A third vehicle, a yellow crane truck, followed behind.

It took only seven minutes to offload the bombs from the train onto the trucks. Four minutes after this and the first of the trucks full of Dagestanis had hit the IslamabadLah.o.r.e road and turned to the north.

As Rehan and Safronov climbed into one of the vehicles, a long salvo of gunfire rang out from one of the abandoned warehouses. The weapons doing the firing were PDF G3 battle rifles, but Rehan was not worried. He had ordered his men to pick up weapons from the train's security force, and then use these weapons on the four MULTA men who, up until the moment the ISI shot them dead, thought that they would be returning to India with these weapons.

The ISI had Dagestanis carry the bodies into the field and dump them.

Jamaat Shariat lost thirteen men in the ambush. Seven died outright, and the others, men injured too badly to survive the trek ahead of them, were shot where they lay. All the bodies were loaded on trucks.

The first of the PDF response to the train attack arrived just twelve minutes after the last of Rehan's trucks left the wheat field. By then the two bombs were nearly fifteen kilometers closer to the impenetrable metropolis of Islamabad.

Since returning from Pakistan weeks earlier, Jack had seen Melanie almost every day. Usually he would leave work a little early to head down to Alexandria. They would walk from her apartment to dinner unless it was snowing or raining, in which case they'd take the Hummer. He'd stay the night, getting up the next morning at five to beat the traffic for the thirty-mile drive back to Columbia.

She'd mentioned something about wanting to see where he lived, so Sat.u.r.day afternoon he picked her up and took her back up to Columbia for the night. They dined on Indian at Akbar, then they stopped in for a drink at Union Jack's.

After a beer and some conversation, they went back to Jack's apartment.

Jack had had girls over to his place before, although he was by no means a playboy. Normally, if he thought he might have company over later in the evening, he just gave his apartment a once-over while grabbing his keys and heading out the door to go out, but for this date he had cleaned thoroughly. Mopping his hardwood floor, changing the sheets on the bed, scrubbing his bathroom from top to bottom. He'd play like he always kept the place so spic-and-span, but he was reasonably certain Ms. Kraft would be sharp enough to figure out that was not the case.

He liked this girl. A lot. He'd known that from the start, had felt the kindling of something on their early dates. He'd missed her when he was in Dubai, and when he was in Pakistan he wanted nothing more than to hold her, to talk to her, to get some sort of validation from her that he was doing the right thing for the right reasons and that everything was going to work out.

s.h.i.t, Jack thought. Am I going soft?

He wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that two bullets had come within inches of ending his life in the past three weeks. Was that what was behind the feelings he was developing for this girl? He hoped that was not the case. She did not deserve someone falling for her as a result of some personal issue or a near-death experience. No, she warranted the head-over-heels feeling without any artificial additives.

His apartment was pricey and full of nice furniture and modern, open s.p.a.ces. It was very much a bachelor pad. When Jack excused himself to go to the bathroom, Melanie snuck a peek into his refrigerator, and she found exactly what she expected. Not much but wine, beer, Gatorade, and days-old takeout boxes. She also gave his freezer a quick scan, she did work for a spy agency, after all, and found it filled with ice bags, many of which had melted and then refrozen.

She then opened a couple of cupboards in his kitchen by the freezer. Ace bandages, anti-inflammatories, Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment.

She remarked on this when he came back to the room.

"Any more b.u.mps and bruises on the slopes?"

"What? No. Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering. I saw the emergency aid station you have set up."

Jack's eyebrows rose. "You've been snooping?"

"Just a little. It's a girl thing."

"Right. Actually I was taking a mixed martial arts cla.s.s in Baltimore. It was great, but when I started traveling a lot for work I had to quit." Ryan looked around the room. "What do you think of my place?" he asked.

"It's beautiful. It lacks a woman's touch, but I suppose if it had a woman's touch, I'd have to wonder about that."

"That's true."

"Still. This place is so nice. It makes me wonder what you think about that little dump I've been making you stay over at."

"I like your place. It suits you."

Melanie c.o.c.ked her head. "Because it's cheap?"

"No. That's not what I mean. I just mean, it's feminine and it still is full of books on terrorism and CIA manuals. It's kick-a.s.s. Like you."

Melanie had adopted a defensive posture. But she relaxed. "I'm really sorry. I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed by your money and your family ties, basically because I come from the other side of the tracks, I guess. My family never had any money. Four kids didn't leave much of my dad's military pay left over for nice things."

"I understand," Jack said.

"You probably don't. But that's my problem, not yours."

Ryan walked over to Melanie and put his arms around her. "That's in your past."

She shook her head and pulled away. "No. It's not."

"Student loans?" Ryan asked, and then immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry, it's none of my business. I just-"

Melanie smiled a little. "It's okay. Just no fun to talk about. Just be thankful for your family."

Now Jack was the one to go on the defensive. "Look, I understand that I was born into money, but my dad made me work. I'm not riding the family name to the bank."

"Of course you aren't. I totally respect that about you. I'm not talking about money." She thought that over for a second. "Maybe for the first time I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about your family. I see how you talk about them. How you respect them."

Jack had learned to not press her about her own upbringing. Each time he had tried she had withdrawn from the conversation or changed the subject. For a moment he thought she would finally go into her family life on her own. But she did not.

"So," she said, and he could tell that the subject had just been changed. "Does this place have a bathroom?"

At that moment her mobile phone chirped in her purse on Jack's kitchen counter. She reached for it and looked at the number.

"It's Mary Pat," she said in surprise, wondering why her boss would call at ten o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day night.

"Maybe you are getting a raise," Jack joked, and Melanie laughed.

"Hi, Mary Pat." Melanie's smile faded from her face. "Okay. Okay. Oh . . . s.h.i.t."

When Melanie turned away from him, Jack sensed trouble. But he sensed more trouble ten seconds later when his own mobile rang in his pocket. "Ryan."

"It's Granger. How quick can you be at the office?"

Jack turned away and walked into his bedroom. "What's up? Is it Clark?"

"No. It's trouble. I need everyone in immediately."

"Okay."

He hung up the phone and found Melanie in his room behind him. "I'm so sorry, Jack, but I have to go in to the office."

"What's going on?"

"You know I can't answer that. I hate that you'll have to drive me all the way to McLean, but it is an emergency."

s.h.i.t. Think, Jack. "Tell you what. That was my office that just called. They want me to come in for a bit, somebody's worried about how we're positioned for the Asian markets opening on Monday. Can I have you drop me at work and then you just take my truck?"

Ryan saw it in her eyes instantly. She knew he was lying. She covered; she did not press. It was likely she was more worried about whatever bad news Jack had yet to learn than she was that her boyfriend was a lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Sure. That will work."

A minute later, they headed for the door.

They drove mostly in silence to Hendley a.s.sociates.

After Melanie dropped Jack off at his offices, she drove off into the night, and Ryan stepped in the back door.

Dom Caruso was already there, downstairs in the lobby, talking to the security men on staff.

Ryan walked up to him. "What's going on?"

Dom walked up to his cousin and leaned into his ear. "Worst-case scenario, cuz."

Ryan's eyes widened. He knew what that meant. "Islamic bomb?"

Caruso nodded. "Internal CIA traffic says a Pakistani armaments train got hit last night local time. Two twenty-kiloton nukes got lifted, and are now in the hands of an unknown force."

"Oh my G.o.d."

The two twenty-kiloton nuclear bombs stolen from the Pakistani Air Force found themselves, just days later, in the skies over Pakistan. Rehan and his men had the bombs packed and crated into twelve-by-five-by-five-foot containers that were labeled "Textile Manufacturing, Ltd." They were then placed on an Antonov An-26 cargo plane operated by Vision Air, a Pakistani charter airline.

Their intermediate destination was Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

As much as General Rehan would like to send the Dagestanis on their way, to get them out of his country and somewhere where they could publicize what they had done and threaten the world with their bombs and their missiles, he knew Georgi Safronov was smarter than all the other cell members and insurgency leaders and even any of the government operatives he had worked with in his career. Georgi knew as much about nuclear weapons as Rehan did, and the general knew he needed to put one hundred percent of his efforts behind an authentic preparation of Safronov's operation.

To do that he would need two things: a private and secure place, outside Pakistan, to arm the bombs and fit the bombs into the Dnepr-1 payload containers, and someone with the technical know-how to do this.

Bilateral trade had increased precipitously between Tajikistan and Pakistan in the past four years, so travel from Pakistan to Dushanbe was commonplace. Dushanbe was also almost directly between Pakistan and the ultimate destination of the weapons, the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The An-26 flew out of Lah.o.r.e with its two cargo crates and its twelve pa.s.sengers: Rehan, Safronov, Khan, seven of Rehan's personal security, and two Pakistani nuclear munitions experts. The Jamaat Shariat forces traveled out of the country via a second Vision Air charter that would take them to Dushanbe, as well.

Rehan's JIM Directorate had already spread bribes around Tajik customs and airport officials; there would be no impediments to either aircraft's offloading its cargo and crew once on the ground. A Tajik with the Dushanbe city government who had a long history as a paid informant and foreign agent of the ISI would be waiting on touchdown with trucks and drivers and more crated cargo that had recently arrived from Moscow.

The Campus worked twenty-four/seven looking for the nuclear bombs. The CIA had picked up ISI chatter within hours of the hijacking, and Langley and the National Counterterrorism Center at Liberty Crossing spent the intervening days looking into ISI involvement.