Locked On

“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.

“What is your plan, you son of a bitch?” he whispered softly.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he grabbed it. “Go for Ryan.”

“It’s Clark.”

“John! I just heard from Granger. Great work!”

“Listen to me. You have problems.”

“We’re okay. We’ve tracked Rehan and his men to a warehouse at the Lahore Central Railway Station. They are in there now and we are waiting on more SSG soldiers to arrive so we can take him down.”

“Jack. Listen! He’s got a nuke!”

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, softly, he said, “Oh, shit.”

“He switched out a bomb with Safronov. It must be with him right now.”

“Do you think he’s about to—” Jack could not even say it.

“Kid, you’ve got to work on that assumption. When he learns the Baikonur attack failed, he may reason that the Pakistani government might hold on to power. He will be desperate to start a bigger war so the Army can take control. If a nuke flattens Lahore, Pakistan will retaliate immediately with their own weapons. Both countries will be devastated. Rehan must have a place he can go wait it out.”

Again Ryan tried to speak, but there were no words. “What can we… What do we… None of us know how to deactivate a bomb, even if we could get past the ISI and LeT men holding it. What the hell are we going to do?”

“Son, there is no time for you guys to get out of there. You have to go after the bomb. Just gain control of the weapon and our experts here will talk you through removing the detonators.”

Jack Ryan Jr. just muttered, “Understood. I’ll call you back.”

Just then, Ryan heard the low thumping of helicopter rotors approaching from the west.

Caruso was by his side. “I only heard one half of that conversation, but it sounded bad.”

Jack nodded, then called out to al Darkur, “Mohammed. We need the best nuclear munitions expert we can find in the area to get their ass here right now.”

Al Darkur had heard enough of the conversation to put it together. “I will call Islamabad and get my office to work on that, but I don’t know if we have time.”

Riaz Rehan stood behind Drs. Noon and Nishtar from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. The two scientists leaned over the bomb; it was still housed in the wooden crate marked “Textile Manufacturing, Ltd.” The bearded men made final adjustments to the detonator. They had bypassed the fuses, and now, with the press of a button, a countdown clock would begin running backward from thirty minutes.

When the clock reached zero, the northern half of the city of Lahore would cease to exist.