Three hundred meters west of the control tower, near the front gates of the air base, a concrete barracks building was full of security troops, and this building was also topped with a Kornet missile battery. The two operators at this location were also shielded from the elements and from any attack. In their case an enclosed bunker on the roof right next to the missile launcher protected them. Only their heads were visible through the window, and if there was any sign of trouble, the men could duck down out of sight and operate their weapon in safety by using the camera in the nose cone of the missile.
In addition to the two antitank/antiair batteries, there were eight cement bunkers along the fence line of the air base, each manned with two sentries armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Along with their weapons they controlled powerful searchlights, and all the bunkers were in radio contact with the guard force in the barracks, another sixty men ready to deploy against any threats to base security.
Several armed canine patrols walked the perimeter of the fence, adding an additional ring of protection to the installation.
Although no flight ops were scheduled and no air traffic controllers were present, the lights of the single runway came on just after midnight, and just a minute later, a Russian Antonov AN-74 cargo aircraft appeared above the runway, descending through the impossibly low cloud cover. The plane touched down, stopped on the runway, and, following orders given to the pilot via a text message on his cell phone, taxied toward a darkened hangar near the barracks.
Then the lights of the runway turned off as suddenly as they’d come on.
As the aircraft made its way toward the hangar, Court Gentry crawled out of a drainage ditch alongside the runway. Dressed head to toe in black and wearing a black backpack, he reached back behind him in the ditch and grabbed a second black backpack. It was a large British Army — issued Bergen, and it was slick with mud. He struggled to pull the Bergen out of the ditch and up onto the very edge of the runway, but once he made it to the cement surface, the eighty pounds of equipment inside and strapped to the pack became easier to handle. He’d lashed a skateboard to the back of the bag, after having painted the board and the wheels matte black, and this helped him push the gear along as he scooted along at the runway’s edge.
After ten minutes of movement through the dark, much of it stop and start because he was trying to get his positioning as close to perfect before leaving the runway, he pulled the pack with him into the low wet grass between the runway and the parking apron where the Foxbats were lined up. It took all his might and patience to drag the gear behind him. He strained with the effort, but still he kept his eyes darting from one sentry position to the next.
After another few minutes he made his way to a nearby position in the grass, forty yards from the runway and two hundred from the taxiway and the parking apron. He lay there, prone and still for a moment, alert to any signal that his presence had been detected. When he felt confident his movements had not compromised him, he pulled binoculars from the pack on his back. With them he checked the position of the four men in the two missile battery positions carefully, and then he began backing up in the grass, pulling his huge Bergen with him.
He stopped and rechecked the Kornet locations with his binos. Satisfied he was in the right position for his work ahead, he took a moment to catch his breath.
Court was completely exposed here in the center of the air base; the nearest revetment he could use for cover if the shit hit the fan was over fifty yards away. But he felt good about his chances to remain undetected. He knew all the guards’ positions and he could anticipate their movements, because he had been here on the property for more than twenty-four hours. He’d been delivered inside a base cargo truck that had returned from a local repair shop. While it was in the shop, confederates of the man who contracted Court for this operation had secreted him inside in a stash compartment behind the seats, and then they strapped his gear into the well where the spare tire would normally go.
Court had no problems getting into the base after this; he only had to wait in an impossibly cramped position in the truck for nine hours until he was certain all ground crews had left their station for the night. Then he climbed out of the truck, falling onto a motor pool parking lot with legs that felt like wet noodles. Once he had the use of his lower appendages, he unfastened his bag from the spare tire well and began his work, moving slowly, avoiding sentries and lights.
By dawn he’d made his way three hundred meters to the ditch far out across the field alongside the runway, and here he spent the daylight hours. He had a radio that picked up all the comms around the base, and he monitored the instructions given to the security forces about the meeting that would take place in the middle of the night.
He could tell from the radio traffic that the head of base protection forces, a Ukrainian Army major, thought tonight’s event to be a potential security nightmare, but he also knew the men in charge didn’t give a shit what the major thought. Court knew that an Air Force general who was well connected to the Ukrainian government was getting paid handsomely to provide the air base as a venue for a clandestine transaction between the Iranian Quds Force and the Russian FSB, and the major and his men would not think twice about killing a lone gunman caught on the base during the meet.
He looked back up to the missiles. They sat on their rails, pointing out over the base.
Those were his biggest threat.
Court was worried about the sentries around the airfield. He was concerned about the troops in the barracks near the gate. He was uneasy about the canine patrols on the fence line… but he was terrified of the Kornet missile systems on the control tower and on the roof of the barracks.
Tonight’s clandestine meeting between Russians and Iranians would involve a swap of cash for nuclear secrets. The Persians had the dough and the Russkies had the smarts — hundreds of gigs of plans for maximizing the efficiency of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program stored on three small hard drives; Court knew all this because he had been told by a Russian general, a man who had been cut out of the arrangement and felt swindled by the whole affair. The general had made a deal with Ukrainian mobsters to stop the meeting and to destroy the hard drives full of critical data. The general wasn’t interested in protecting the world from the evils of nuclear proliferation. He just wanted to do his own deal with Iranians and trade them his own hard drives of critical data.
Not long after Court stopped moving in the wet grass, the lights of the runway came back on. This time it was a Lockheed JetStar that landed, a small business jet that could carry eight to ten passengers comfortably. The plane raced past him on his left and then slowed and stopped much farther down the runway. After a moment it began taxiing toward the hangar near the barracks.
Court knew these were the Iranian Quds Force agents, here to drop off the cash and to pick up the computer drives from the Russians. There was no reason the entire transaction needed to take more than a few minutes, so Court knew he had to prepare quickly for what he had in store.