“Wasn’t my question.”
“Couple of places. There’s a Russian bar on the north side. They’ve got real stuff. Or they used to. Before the war.”
“Let’s check it out now.”
“You really want to go there, Stephen?”
“No. But that’s where we’re going. Tell Guns the turns, all right? I have to call in.”
Most of the people in the bar were involved in the oil industry in some manner, even though Tikrit itself was hardly an oil-producing center. Following the occupation, Russians had filled many of the middle-level management jobs in the oil industry, both in the field and in the offices. Company management — in general foreign — trusted them more than they trusted the Iraqis; the Iraqi workers didn’t resent taking their orders quite as much as they would have an American’s.
Guns’s Russian worked well here. The bartender asked him where in Russia he was from. Moscow was an easy and noncommittal answer; but he supplemented it with a mention of Chechnya, saying he’d served there until recently and peppered his conversation with geographical details he remembered from their last mission. Without mentioning Vassenka by name, he said he was looking for a friend who’d come to Iraq very recently and also knew Chechnya. The bartender didn’t seem interested, and Guns simply took their drinks over to the table where James and Rankin had already sat down.
Ten minutes later, a man approached them, speaking volubly in Russian about atrocities in Chechnya. Guns thought it was a test and said nothing. Finally Rankin decided their best course was to leave. As they got up, the man became more vocal. They left money on the table and started for the door. As they reached it, the bartender came out from around the bar, tapped Guns on the arm, and suggested that he look for his friend in Balad, a town to the south a little less than fifty miles north of Baghdad.
“Jurg, right?” said the bartender.
Guns nodded.
“He was still looking to hire men yesterday. Perhaps he will have room for you on his crew.”
17
Saved by Van and Thera — the helicopter was actually a rental that Van Buren’s men had painted a few days earlier in case it was needed — Ferguson returned to Cyprus. While waiting for some replacement clothes from town, he vanquished his hunger with a large steak and got an update from Corrigan.
The Defense Department analysts brought in as consultants were having a field day poking holes in the theory that the SS-N-9 would be used in Iraq. The fact that the missile was a naval weapon seemed to them to rule out any possibility of its use on land. Admittedly, it was designed to travel at low altitude over open terrain, where it would have an unobstructed flight path, but it could be used over land, and Vassenka was supposed to be enough of an expert to make sure it would work. If the missile had been fitted with a GPS guidance system, it stood an extremely good chance of hitting its target. Whether it was the optimum tool for the purpose wasn’t the point. Vassenka himself would undoubtedly have preferred something along the lines of what NATO called the SS-12 Scaleboard, a large, liquid-fueled rocket with a range of roughly five hundred miles. Or for that matter a Scud, fitted with a similar guidance system.
Ferg thought that Vassenka might be able to fit the Scuds with GPS kits; along with alterations to the notoriously fickle steering fins and so-so engine, the improvements would make the missile considerably more effective than those Saddam had used during the first Gulf War. The location of these Scuds was admittedly a huge question. Most of the analysts doubted that the resistance could be hiding more than one or two, though they conceded that Vassenka might have been “retained” to supply some from Korea or elsewhere along with rocket fuel and his improvements.
In any event, with the rocket fuel confiscated and Khazaal dead, the Scuds no longer seemed to be a threat. Rankin and Guns were checking leads on who might be left in Khazaal’s organization, making sure they didn’t have the Scuds. It was a long shot, and this wasn’t their sort of work, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that they hadn’t turned up anything.
Which brought them back to the Siren missile.
“I’m with the intel guys on that,” said Corrigan. “You wouldn’t use it against an urban target. It flies too low.”
“For somebody like Vassenka, that’s not going to be a problem,” Ferguson told him. “If he can make a Scud accurate, he can make a Siren missile bit something in a city.”
“You don’t even know for sure that there was a missile.”
“Don’t start, Jack,” said Ferg.
“I’m just pointing out—”
“Let me do the thinking, OK? Birk doesn’t lie about what he’s selling,” Ferguson added, softening his voice a little. “Make sure Rankin knows I think the Siren might be a real threat. Tell him not to pay too much attention to the intelligence people. Not that he ever does.”
“There’ll be extensive coverage of the area where the missile could be launched from,” Corrigan said. “Even though they don’t think it’s possible, they don’t want to end up looking like fools. Predators, a Global Hawk, all sorts of aircraft will be overhead.”
“All right.”
“Airborne jammers will block the Glosnass and GPS satellites if there’s a launch,” added Corrigan. He was referring to devices designed to block the signals the guidance systems used to orient themselves. “A lot of systems are in place.”
“Didn’t the Air Force use a GPS bomb to destroy one of the Iraqi jammers during the war?” asked Ferguson.
As a matter of fact, the Air Force had, but jamming remained more art than science. Even if the GPS system was successfully blocked, the missile would carry a backup internal guidance system; the best defense was to find it before it launched.
“You going to Iraq?” Corrigan asked.
“I have some things to check out over here,” said Ferguson. “I don’t know at this point that I can come up with anything that Rankin or CentCom won’t.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
“You’ll give him a heart attack. Have you found
“Come again?”
“Birk’s yacht, the
“We told you, it’s not in Syrian waters or anywhere nearby.”
“Is that a no?”
“Yeah, that’s a no.”
“I have a new place to look: off Israel.”
“Israel?”
“Fifty to sixty miles from Jerusalem.”
“Ferg, we have every available photo expert looking around Baghdad for the missile launchers.”
“Get me the satellite photos and I’ll look.”
“Ferg, to pick out a yacht that size… All right. It’ll take a few hours.”
“E-mail them as soon as you can. I’m not sure where I’ll be.”
Ferguson found Thera waiting outside the secure communications shack.
“Dinner?” he asked.
