From the sealed control center below Heidari’s feet, Majidi reported, “We are beginning the transition to the rocket’s vertical launch position.”
Slowly, the rocket and its attached gantry elevated, swinging through a 90-degree arc until they pointed skyward through the opening in the oil tanker’s deck. Only the upper third of the finned launch vehicle was visible above the hull.
“The gantry is locked in position,” Majidi said calmly over the intercom phone. “And the launch pad’s own internal motion compensators and stabilizers are fully engaged. All internal systems remain nominal. We are beginning our final checks of the Zuljanah’s first two solid-fueled stages. Once those are complete, we will begin the process of loading the upper stage with its more volatile hypergolic fuel mixture. The clock is now at T minus forty-five minutes and counting.”
Russia’s main defense command center occupied a vast complex of Stalinist-era white concrete buildings sprawling across the Moskva River’s north bank. Most of its aboveground offices and auditoriums handled the day-to-day routine of managing the military’s peacetime functions. The real work of coordinating serious military action around the world was handled by smaller command centers and other facilities safely buried far underground.
Inside one of those secure subterranean conference chambers, President Piotr Zhdanov and Pavel Voronin were seated next to each other at a semicircular table. They had been brought here by the sudden and unexpected flow of flash message traffic from the converted SSBN BS-64 Podmoskovye out in the middle of the Atlantic.
Nakhimov’s first signals reporting the Gulf Venture’s abrupt alteration of course had been worrying enough. The submarine captain’s new messages were even more troubling. With the storm diminishing and the coming of night, Podmoskovye had been able to creep close enough to the Iranian tanker to use its night vision periscope. The pictures it was taking were being relayed in real-time via communication satellite to Moscow.
Zhdanov glared at the green-tinted images displayed on the large screen in front of them. They showed the Zuljanah rocket now locked into its launch orientation. And none of Voronin’s Raven Syndicate security personnel were visible anywhere aboard the huge ship. Instead, several armed Iranian sentries were clearly posted at various points on the tanker’s tall aft superstructure. “The fucking bastards in Tehran lied to us,” he snarled. “They’re launching a day early.”
Unconcerned and even a bit amused by this evidence of Iranian duplicity, Voronin shrugged his elegantly tailored shoulders. “Nothing in our own plans is actually affected by this unexpectedly early missile strike, Mr. President,” he pointed out. “Our own ICBMs are already on standby, ready to strike as soon as we receive confirmation of a successful EMP attack on the United States. All the Iranians will accomplish by this minor act of treachery is to advance the time of their own destruction by a few hours.”
Zhdanov breathed out. “I suppose that is true,” he said grudgingly. “But what about the team you had aboard the Gulf Venture? Aren’t you concerned about them?”
Voronin smiled thinly, a smile that never reached his pale eyes. “If Skoblin and his men are now prisoners aboard the tanker, what of it?” He gestured toward the screen. “They weren’t expected to take any action until after that rocket is launched. And with the Podmoskovye already lurking below the surface with Colonel Danilevsky’s additional commandos, nothing really changes.” His smile widened minutely. “Except possibly the personal fate of Skoblin and the others on the Gulf Venture. And if they die,” he said callously, “they die. Some men are always expendable.”
Thirty-Seven
“Captain!” one of the Revolutionary Guard ratings manning the tanker’s air search radar console said suddenly. “I have an unidentified large air contact on my screen.”
Heidari was at his side in less than a second. “Show me!” he snapped.
The rating tapped a tiny blip blinking into existence every time the radar swept that portion of the sky. “It’s right there, sir.”
“What’s your evaluation?” Heidari asked, closely watching the blip as it moved slowly across the screen. If this was an air attack, he might have only seconds to send his gun and SAM crews to their stations.
The rating frowned. “The contact is currently south of Point Omega, about twenty-two nautical miles out.” Point Omega was the featureless spot on the ocean around which the Gulf Venture was currently steaming. With the tanker’s actual heading constantly changing as it continued turning through complete circles, the coordinates served as a useful reference point. “The bogey is currently on a heading of zero-seven-five degrees. And I estimate its altitude at more than nine thousand meters.”
“What is this plane’s airspeed?” Heidari demanded.
“Very slow, Captain,” the rating told him, scanning his readouts. “Not more than one hundred and fifty knots.”
Puzzled, Heidari frowned. This unknown aircraft’s flight profile didn’t match that of any regular commercial passenger or cargo aircraft that would normally operate this far out in the Atlantic. Could it be one of the U.S. Navy’s carrier-based E-2 Hawkeye reconnaissance planes? He swallowed hard, suddenly afraid. The presence of an American carrier task force and its accompanying escorts in this part of the ocean could be catastrophic for MIDNIGHT. During its ascent phase, their Zuljanah rocket would be horribly vulnerable to the SM-3 interceptor missiles carried by some U.S. destroyers and cruisers. Had he and his crew come all this way only to fail ignominiously in what should be their moment of triumph?
Regaining control over his emotions, the Iranian naval officer forced himself to think carefully. This bogey’s observed airspeed was far below the normal cruising speed of those American Hawkeye early-warning aircraft. They ordinarily flew at more than 250 knots. He turned to the sailor manning the Gulf Venture’s improvised electronic warfare console. “Are you picking up any active radar emissions from that contact?”
“No, sir,” the other man assured him. “Not so much as a single pulse.”
Heidari’s frown deepened. The absence of any surface search or air search radar emissions made it extremely unlikely the unknown aircraft was a military reconnaissance plane out on patrol. And while the weather had greatly improved over the past several hours, there was still a nearly unbroken layer of clouds across the sky at low altitude. No one aboard an aircraft that high up could hope to spot anything on the surface of the sea without using special IR cameras or sensors. So if that distant bogey represented a real threat to his ship and its mission, he couldn’t make out what it might be. Nevertheless, he found its sudden appearance, at this critical moment in the rocket’s launch sequence, disturbing — especially when he considered it in the light of the several other aircraft they’d spotted over the past few days. At the time, he’d written those contacts off as routine, the sort of chance encounters that might be expected with two to three thousand commercial flights crossing the Atlantic every single day. But what if he’d been wrong?