An hour later, with the truck convoy safely on its return trip to the Saratov-63 Nuclear Weapons Storage Complex, Pavel Voronin watched the An-72 taxi onto the rightmost of the airfield’s two long runways. It held in place there for a few moments, waiting for permission to take off.
“Freight Seven-Two, Engels Tower. Winds light at zero-one-five, cleared for takeoff on runway zero-four right. Safe flight,” he heard the controller radio.
“Thank you, Tower. Freight Seven-Two, cleared for takeoff, zero four right,” the cargo jet’s pilot acknowledged.
The An-72 ran its twin turbofan engines up to full power, released its brakes and rolled down the runway — picking up speed until at last it lumbered heavily into the air. Slowly, it climbed higher and banked to the south, turning onto a flight path that would carry it high above the vast open steppes east of the Volga River.
With a gratified smile, Voronin lowered his binoculars and glanced at the Air Force general standing at his side in the Engels-2 Control Tower. “That was a most impressive exercise, General Turgenev,” he said politely. “I very much appreciate being allowed to observe it.”
Turgenev, the commander of this vital strategic bomber base, seemed unsure of the best tone to take with his unusual guest. Only a direct order from President Zhdanov himself had persuaded him to allow a mere civilian to witness this classified nuclear weapons drill. He cleared his throat. “You’re very welcome… Mr. Voronin,” he grunted at last, opting for a measure of courtesy he would ordinarily have reserved only for high-ranking political dignitaries. Highly irregular as this visit was, the president’s intervention strongly suggested this man Voronin was much too powerful to risk offending.
Voronin ignored the interplay of emotions crossing the general’s craggy face. Instead, he raised his binoculars again, refocusing on the now-tiny dot of the An-72 as it flew onward — bound for the Shahrud Missile Test Facility in northeastern Iran.
After months of careful preparation, MIDNIGHT was moving into high gear.
Thirteen
The city of Zaranj lay right on Afghanistan’s border with Iran. Built mostly of traditional mud-brick buildings, it was home to around fifty thousand inhabitants, with another hundred thousand or so in outlying towns and villages. Most of them were members of the minority Baloch ethnic group — a people split between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The city, whose roots went back more than two thousand years, was also the capital of the thinly populated Nimroz Province.
Largely ignored by whatever passed for a central government in Afghanistan at any given time, the citizens of Zaranj and its surroundings traditionally relied on a mix of both contraband and legal trade goods for any modest prosperity they enjoyed. Water in this parched land was particularly scarce, so agriculture rarely supplied more than a fraction of the local population’s needs. Instead, for centuries the region had survived thanks to its location on one of the major land trade routes between the Middle East and Asia. In recent decades that meant a steady flow of heroin, illicit weapons, and black market gasoline.
Zaranj’s airport had one runway, a rough 7,400-foot-long gravel strip. Apart from occasional civilian passenger flights from Herat and Kandahar, it saw rare visits by military aircraft belonging either to the distant Kabul government or to the various regional warlords. Even more rarely, the poorly maintained runway was used by commercial charters.
Now one of those charter aircraft — a large four-engine Il-76 cargo jet in the colors of a Ukraine-based air freight company — was parked just off the runway. Two large, open-sided canvas tents had been erected close to its open rear ramp. A number of men in coveralls could be seen working in each tent to assemble two smaller aircraft whose crated components had been flown in aboard the larger Russian-built plane.
The smaller of the two flying machines was a kit-built two-seater BushCat propeller-driven aircraft conceived by SkyReach, a South African company. Constructed around a tubular aluminum frame and covered with a Dacron-Trilam composite fabric in desert camouflage colors, the high-wing, light sport plane weighed less than fourteen hundred pounds when fully loaded. Originally designed for service in Africa’s vast bush country, the BushCat could take off and land on almost any grass or dirt field — and in incredibly short distances, usually around the length of an American football field. The second aircraft was a pusher type, with its propeller mounted in the tail. It was a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator UAV, unmanned aerial vehicle — complete with a bulbous, windowless domed nose, long, thin fuselage, wide, narrow wings, and three down-angled tail fins. Among other less visible modifications, its landing gear and aft engine section had been upgraded to allow it to operate safely on Zaranj’s rough-surfaced runway.
Several men in camouflaged fatigues, baseball caps, and body armor were posted as guards around the tents and the parked Il-76 cargo plane. They were armed with military-grade HK417 7.62mm carbines.
Not far away, a wire fence surrounded several white, flat-roofed buildings that contained offices and other facilities for the airport’s small staff and local government workers. Inside one of those offices, Nick Flynn sat comfortably across a low table from the representative of the ruling local warlord who’d come to meet him.
Squarely built, hawk-nosed, and about the same height as Flynn, Masoud Bokharai was clean-shaven, with a thick shock of curly, dark hair. At the moment, he wore traditional Afghan men’s clothing, a knee-length, open-collared tunic with long sleeves, baggy trousers, and an open waistcoat. Flynn had a sneaking suspicion the other man would be just as comfortable in an expensive Western-style business suit and silk tie.
On official tables of organization, Bokharai was listed as the deputy assistant provincial administrator for development and trade. But the Quartet Directorate intelligence brief on this part of Afghanistan indicated that he wielded a great deal more power and influence than his relatively low rank would suggest. Foreigners interested in doing business in Zaranj and the rest of Nimroz were well-advised to keep on his good side — especially if their enterprises weren’t likely to withstand careful legal scrutiny.
Bokharai finished leafing through the full-color brochure Flynn had brought to their meeting. He looked up with a narrow smile. “A most intriguing concept, Señor Duarte. I confess the idea of Nimroz Province as a potential market for village-centered solar power installations had never occurred to me.” His English was excellent and the irony in his tone was palpable.
Probably because you’re not an idiot, Flynn thought coolly, pretending to wait while the interpreter he’d brought from Kabul translated the Afghan official’s comments into Spanish. The passport he was currently using identified him as Simón Bolivar Duarte, a citizen of the socialist republic of Venezuela. Before flying into Afghanistan, Flynn had darkened his hair even more and let his beard grow out to a rough stubble. Brown-tinted contact lenses concealed his light blue eyes. His Spanish was flawless, and that, plus the Tejano ancestors on his mother’s side of the family, allowed him to pose convincingly as a native of South America.
“It is certainly a revolutionary idea, Administrator,” he acknowledged in Spanish when the interpreter finished. “But my principals see these smaller, locally based power facilities as a natural fit for your region.” He shrugged his shoulders apologetically, as though regretting the need to bring up an unpleasant subject. “That is especially true considering the unfortunate… problems, let us say… that large-scale infrastructure projects tend to encounter here.”