“I’m a little busy going over the numbers for the second launch. I won’t have much time after the first launch this afternoon.”
“Yes. But I need to speak with you about this afternoon’s launch. I have some concerns.”
Still, he needed to appear as if everything was normal for as long as possible.
“Come in.”
“I am at Flight Data Processing. I can be there in fifteen minutes. Twenty if there is too much ice on the road.”
“Well, hurry up, Aleksandr.”
It took Director of Launch Operations Aleksandr Verbov the full twenty minutes to arrive at his president’s office at the LCC. He entered without knocking, stamping his feet and pulling off his heavy coat and hat. “Fucking cold morning, Georgi,” he said with a grin.
“What do you need?” Safronov was running out of time. He had to get his friend out of here in a hurry.
“I’m sorry to say it, but we need to cancel today’s flight.”
“What? Why?”
“Telemetry is having issues with some software. They want to troubleshoot for a while, then power down and reset. Some of our data collection and processing systems will be affected for a few hours. But the next window to launch all three vehicles in quick succession, as we planned, will be in three days’ time. I recommend we cancel the launch sequence, power down the power pressure generators, offload the fuel from all three LVs, and put the SCs in temporary storage configuration. We will have a delay, but will still set the record for a narrow launch window, which ultimately is our goal.”
“No!” Safronov said. “The launch sequence continues. I want 109 ready to go at noon.”
Verbov was completely taken aback. This was a response unlike any he’d ever gotten from Safronov, even when the news was bad. “I do not understand, Georgi Mikhailovich. Did you not just hear me? Without proper telemetry readings European mission control would never allow the spacecraft to continue their flight. They will abort the launch. You know that.”
Safronov looked at his friend for a long moment. “I want it to launch. I want all missiles ready in their silos.”
Verbov smiled as he cocked his head. He chuckled. “Missiles?”
“LVs. You know what I mean. Nothing to worry about, Aleksandr. It will all be clear soon.”
“What is going on?”
Safronov’s hands trembled, he clutched the fabric of his pant legs. Over and over he whispered to himself a mantra given to him by Suleiman Murshidov. “One second of jihad equals one hundred years of prayer. One second of jihad equals one hundred years of prayer. One second of jihad equals one hundred years of prayer.”
“Did you say something?”
“Leave me.”
Aleksandr Verbov turned away slowly, headed out into the hallway. He’d gotten just ten feet or so from his boss’s door when Safronov called to him from his office.
“I’m joking, Alex! Everything is fine. We can delay the launch if telemetry says we must.”
Verbov shook his head with a snorted chuckle, something between confusion and mirth, then he returned to the office. He was through the doorway before he noticed the pistol in Safronov’s hand. He gave an incredulous smile, like he did not believe the weapon was real. “Georgi Mikhailovich… what do you think you are—”
Safronov fired a single round from the suppressed Makarov auto pistol. It entered Aleksandr’s solar plexus, passed through a lung, shattered a rib as it tore out his back. Alex did not fall, he’d winced with the noise of the gunshot, hesitated a moment before looking down at the bloodstain growing on his brown coveralls.
Georgi thought it took Aleksandr a long time to die. Neither man said a word, they only looked at each other with similar stares of bewilderment. Then Alex reached back, found the vinyl chair by the door, and sat down in it roughly.
Another few seconds and his eyes closed, his head sagged to the side, and a long final breath blew from his damaged lung.
It took Georgi several more seconds to control his own breathing. But he did so, and he placed the pistol on the desk next to him.
He pulled the dead man, still in his chair, into the closet in his office. He had made space for one man, the director of security, but now he would need to make more room for the Kazakh when he came in just minutes.
Safronov dumped Verbov’s body out of the chair and onto the floor of the closet, pushed the dead man’s feet inside, and then shut the door. Hurriedly he grabbed a roll of toilet paper in his bathroom and wiped up the drips of blood on the floor of his office.
Ten minutes later the director of security was dead as well, flat on the floor of Safronov’s office. He was a big man, and he still wore his coat and his heavy boots. Georgi stared at the body, the hangdog expression on the dead man’s face, and he wanted to retch. But he did not retch, he focused himself, and he dialed his mobile with a trembling hand.
When the call was answered on the other end, he said, “
71
Without their leader, the Kazakh security force did not stand a chance.
The Jamaat Shariat terrorists hit the main gate in force at 8:54 a.m. in a driving snow. They killed four guards posted there and destroyed three trucks full of reinforcements with RPGs before the Kazakhs fired a single shot.
The snowfall slowed as the six Dagestani vehicles — four pickup trucks carrying six men each, and two semi trailers, each one carrying a payload container, one with six men and one with seven — separated at a crossroads near the launch control center. A pickup of six men went to the processing facility, to take control of the sixteen foreigners who worked for the three companies with satellites here at Baikonur. The two semis headed for the three launch pads, along with one of the pickups leading the way. Another six-man unit remained at the turnoff from the main road to the Dnepr. They climbed out of their vehicles and into a low concrete bunker that was once a guard post for Russian military forces but now lay half buried in the snowy grasses of the steppes. Here they positioned RPG launchers and scoped rifles and scanned the roads, ready to take out any vehicle from a distance.
The remaining two six-man teams both drove to the LCC, and here they did meet stiff resistance. There were a dozen security men present, and they killed five of the twelve attackers before finding themselves overrun. Several guards dropped their guns and raised their hands, but the Dagestanis killed the Kazakhs where they surrendered.
The Kazakhs’ response to the attack was horribly uncoordinated after the disappearance of their leader. Their nearby barracks did not mount a counterattack for twenty-five minutes, and as soon as they took the first incoming RPG round, missing the first truck as it approached the turnoff, they turned back to rethink their strategy.
In the LCC, the civilians hunkered down on the second floor while the attack outside raged. When the sound of execution-style killing ceased, when all the huddled Russian space launch engineers sat sobbing and praying and cursing, Georgi Safronov alone walked down the stairs. His friends and employees called out to him, but he ignored them, and he opened the door.
Jamaat Shariat forces took the LCC without firing another shot.
Everyone was ordered into the control room, and Georgi made an announcement.
“Do as I say, and you will live. Refuse an order once and you will die.”
