Highway 85 ran east to west in northern Saudi Arabia, and it was impossible to travel south towards Riyadh without crossing it. He had men with counterfeit Saudi uniforms set up a roadblock on Highway 85, and had the R-330ZH automated jammer turn up its output to full to prevent anyone fuming at the delay from reporting it.
On the one hand, the proximity of King Khalid Military City helped Hamid. This was not the first time that Highway 85 had been shut down to allow the passage of tanks on exercise, and in the dark he was certain nobody stopped a kilometer away at his roadblock would be able to see that they were not Saudi tanks.
However, there was no way to prevent drivers at the tail end of the roadblock from turning around. Able to drive at full speed, it would not be long before those cars were out of jamming range. If someone in one of those cars happened to work at King Khalid Military City….
Well, apparently someone did, and had called KKMC HQ to ask about armor exercises and why nobody had told the caller they were scheduled.
Whoever was in command had then probably sent out a drone, which thanks to his jammers would have stopped sending back pictures long before reaching his force.
An incompetent or simply lazy commander could have easily decided to wait until morning to take action. It wasn’t unreasonable to hope for such a commander, either, since KKMC had its forces assigned shrunk dramatically after the Gulf War. It was almost sad to hear from his scout that three M1A2 tanks and three M-113 armored personnel carriers were coming. They would hardly pose much of a challenge to his force.
But if any survived to escape jamming range and report, Hamid knew he could find himself dealing with serious Saudi resistance before he was anywhere near Riyadh. And that wouldn’t do.
Though he hated to admit it Hamid’s Zulfiqar-3 tank wasn’t the best choice to take on an M1A2, especially if he wanted to be sure of a quick kill, particularly at night. The Irbis-K thermal sights on their Russian T-90s, the first Russian-produced mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT) matrix thermal sight, gave them the ability to identify the enemy at a range of slightly over three kilometers. Reluctantly, Mazdaki decided to also commit his lone Russian T-14 Armata to the ambush, since it was even more capable than the T-90s.
Since he knew from the scout that the Saudis were simply barreling down Highway 6262 towards his position, finding a spot where the terrain allowed his tanks to hide most of their bulk while leaving their cannons free to fire was not difficult. Hamid had eleven T-90s and the Armata take position, so that each target could be hit with two rounds.
It turned out that two rounds were definitely overkill for the M-113 APCs.
Hamid saw multiple secondary explosions from all three, and correctly guessed that he was witnessing detonations from the onboard ammunition.
Two of the M1A2 tanks were also quick kills.
The third M1A2, though, escaped without a scratch. One of his tanks had simply missed. The other had targeted the wrong tank.
The commander of that M1A2 was no fool. He immediately deployed smoke, and left the highway. Even worse than the smoke was the bright light from the burning and exploding armor in front of them, which made their thermal sights useless.
“After him!” Hamid roared into his command radio. All of the tanks in the ambush moved forward, with the faster Armata in the lead.
In fact, the Armata had a rated off-road speed of ninety kilometers per hour, better than double the M1A2 tank’s rated speed of forty KPH. Hamid knew that both numbers, though, were misleading. He was sure the M1A2’s commander was having his driver press the accelerator to the floor, and that it was going well over its “rated speed.” On the other hand, he knew the Armata’s commander would not careen across the unlit desert at its top speed, no matter how important the target.
Nevertheless, Hamid was confident they would catch up to the Saudi tank.
But would they stop it before the enemy tank had a chance to send its base a warning?
Only one direction made any sense for the M1A2 tank, and that was back to base. For several agonizing minutes, though, there was no sign of it.
Suddenly, Hamid could see the Armata fire once, and then again. The second time Mazdaki saw with satisfaction that the M1A2 was hit, and had stopped moving. The Armata put one more shell into the Abrams to make sure, and this time was rewarded with secondary explosions that lifted its turret into the night sky.
Hamid tried to calculate how far the enemy tank had traveled. The ambush site was already some distance from the R-330ZH jammer, which had to stay near the roadblock.
Finally, Hamid shrugged. There was only one way to find out for sure.
Press forward, and see what sort of a welcome the Saudis had prepared.
Chapter Sixteen
Kazem Shirvani and Farhad Mokri climbed out of Kazem’s car, and walked to the back of a nondescript concrete building next to an airstrip that had weeds peeking out from it in several places.
Farhad shook his head. "I grew up in Tehran and this place is less than an hour’s drive from my parent’s house. But I had no idea this airfield was here.”
Kazem smiled at Farhad’s additional unspoken comment, visible in his expression. “Yes, nothing about this closed airport says ‘secret nuclear weapons storage facility’. Of course, that’s the point.”
The building’s back door opened readily to Kazem’s key, and in less than a minute they were both standing in front of a framed but faded poster celebrating a cultural exhibition that had happened over a decade ago. The only other thing Farhad noticed in the hallway was an elevator door, but it was at the far end of the corridor.
Kazem carefully took the poster off its mounting hook and set it aside.
Now a plain white keypad was revealed, with no clue to its purpose.
Kazem leaned over the keypad so that it was concealed from Farhad’s view, and quickly punched in a series of numbers.
Nothing happened.
Then Kazem carefully replaced the poster on its mounting hook.
The elevator door at the end of the hallway slid open.
“Step lively,” Kazem said, running for the elevator with Farhad right behind him. They reached it just before it shut again, and squeezed inside.
As the elevator began to descend, Kazem grinned and said, “It’s good that you’re young enough to keep up. If we’d missed it we wouldn’t have been able to try again until tomorrow, and I’m going to need some help with this job.”
Farhad noticed that there were no floors below ground level indicated on the elevator’s control pad. And, he thought, he hadn’t seen a “down” button on the outside of the elevator either.
After a ride that lasted only a few minutes, but seemed much longer, the elevator smoothly came to a stop. The door slid open, to reveal a workspace crowded with equipment and storage cabinets. There were also three of the
“glove boxes” Kazem had described to him earlier.
As he opened one of the storage cabinets with a key, Kazem began to explain what they were going to do next.
“All three weapons are completely disassembled both for safety reasons, and to facilitate maintenance. The two designed for ground testing we’re going to assemble completely with the exception of a single component. The one that will be dropped by air we will assemble completely. You may be wondering why we will do that one differently.”
Farhad simply nodded.
Kazem continued, “The reason is that the countdown for the first two weapons begins when they are completely assembled. Remember that our first goal was to successfully achieve detonation of a nuclear device. Only later were we planning to focus on precise control, for example a detonation that could be controlled with a timer.”