One of the Mi-17 helos from Yubileinaya Airfield arrived over the roof of? the LCC, and men fast-roped to the concrete. Then they headed for the door in a tight stack. This door had been rigged to blow as well, but the Russians anticipated this, and stood clear of the doorway after the breach.
But while the IED did not kill the men on the roof, it slowed them down, and gave the men on the first and second floors time to respond to the sound of a helicopter above.
The stairwell to the roof exit became a third stalemate area at the LCC. Four Jamaat Shariat men had good cover on the second-floor landing behind an iron doorway and a blast-proof wall, and the eight Alpha Group men had the high ground above. Grenades bounced down the stairs only to explode harmlessly on the landing, and AK rounds sliced the air through the stairwell only to miss their targets tucked around the sides of the doorframe.
Within a minute of the start of the assault, Russian helos attacked the three launch silos. Sites 103 and 104 each had ten defenders, and they were well spread out and under good hardened cover. Site 109 had only four men guarding it, and it was also the first to be reached by the helos. The Mi-17 fired 12.7-millimeter machine guns, raking the site, but the fire was ineffective because the gunner did not have the thermal optics that would have allowed him to easily pick out his targets at the frozen location.
The helo at site 109 lowered to just above the earth, and twenty operators fast-roped to the concrete pad. These well-trained killers had better luck finding and engaging the enemy throughout the site than the Mi-17 had.
Site 109 was cleared in under a minute, as there were only four Jamaat Shariat mujahideen there. As the chatter of gunfire continued from the other sites, each nearly a mile distant over the steppes, the Alpha Group men at site 109 raced toward the silo, frantic to carry out the next phase of their mission in time.
The soldiers could not disable the nuclear weapon; they wouldn’t even be able to get to it inside the Space Head Module without wasting considerable time. But they had been instructed on how to take the Dnepr offline from here at the launch site, to cut its umbilical cord to the LCC, so to speak, so they rushed forward at a breakneck pace.
The men used lights on their helmets and their rifles as they peered into the deep silo, the only part of the 110-foot-long rocket visible was a large green conical fairing with the white letters KSFC. Below this was the Space Head Module, and below this were the three rocket stages. The men used their lights to identify a massive iron lid a few feet from the open silo; it looked like a giant manhole cover. They got the hatch open, and two of the men began descending down a metal ladder, racing for the support equipment level, a catwalk just a dozen feet down where they would find a second ladder, which would take them down another level. Here they could gain access to the three-stage launch vehicle itself and disable the communication linkage that wired the launch vehicle to ground control.
As they ran across the catwalk and started down the second ladder, the two men knew they had little time.
Are we ready?” Safronov shouted to the two men at the launch control board. When they did not answer, he screamed at them,
The redheaded man on the left just nodded curtly. The blond on the right said, softly, “Yes, Georgi. Launch sequence complete.”
“Launch 109!” The two launch keys were already in their locks.
“Georgi, please! I c?annot! Please do not—”
Safronov pulled his Makarov and shot the blond man twice in the back. He fell to the floor writhing in pain, screaming in panic.
Georgi turned to the launch engineer seated next to the dying man. “Can you do it, or will I do it myself?”
The Russian man reached over, placed his hand on one of the keys at the top of his control board, and then closed his eyes.
He turned the key. Then, looking up at the pistol in his face, he quickly turned the second key.
Above him, Georgi Safronov said, “Swords into plowshares, and now back into swords.”
Safronov pressed the button.
At site 109, the two Alpha Group operators tasked with decoupling the communications linkage had just left the ladder, and they ran up the small hallway toward the base of the Dnepr-1, frantic to take the LV offline before the madman at launch control blasted the rocket into the stratosphere.
They did not make it.
A loud metallic click below their feet on the catwalk was the last input their brains ever registered.
A power pressure generator below the rocket contained a black powder charge held at pressure, and this ignited below their feet, creating a mass of gases that expanded instantly, firing the 110-foot-tall rocket out of the silo like the cork from a popgun. The two men were incinerated in the blink of an eye as the missile pushed out of the silo and the hot expanding gases pushed out across the tunnel toward small exhaust vents.
The rocket itself rose quickly, but it slowed as the gases that propelled it out of its silo dissipated. With the bottom of the lowest stage of the launch vehicle just sixty feet above the frozen launch silo, the huge craft hung in midair for a moment.
The eight Spetsnaz operators stood below it, staring at the bottom of a space rocket that was about to launch just over their heads.
One of the men mumbled,
With a pop like a Champagne cork, explosives pushed the protective cap off the bottom of the first stage, exposing the rocket exhaust system.
Then the first stage ignited, scorching the earth and all those on it below with flaming rocket fuel.
All eight men died within two seconds of one another. The Mi-17 helicopter had been hovering at one hundred feet. The pilot yanked the controls hard, saving the lives of himself and his crew, but the helicopter itself was too low for such a maneuver. He crashed in the snow, a survivable crash, though the copilot broke both of his arms and the men in back suffered various injuries.
The Dnepr-1 rocket rose into the night sky, moving faster with each second, smoke and steam and flame behind it on the launch pad and in the air. A screech filled the air and a thumping vibration shook the ground for miles in all directions.
The 260-ton machine achieved a speed of 560 miles an hour in less than thirty seconds.
As it rose, all Russian forces abandoned their attack on the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
73
Safronov had programmed the flight telemetry himself using data derived from the working group he’d assembled a few months back. The group had no idea they were working on a nuclear attack, their understanding was that they were to reinvestigate the plan to send rescue boats and other emergency aid via rocket launch. The LV had instructions loaded onto its onboard software that controlled pitch and yaw and burn time, all to direct it toward its destination.
It was the ultimate “Fire and forget” weapon.
The first stage of the launch vehicle separated and fell back to earth, landing in central Kazakhstan just eight minutes after launch.
Moscow was tracking the trajectory, and everyone in the know realized within a few short minutes that their former R-36 missile was on course to Moscow itself.
