Twenty-five miles northeast of Moscow, it turned south, descended to five hundred feet above the earth, and accelerated to five hundred and forty nautical miles per hour as it approached the air defenses ringing Zhukovsky Flight Test Center near Bykovo. It had already been programmed with a course that would take it around major known cultural features such as tall transmission towers or buildings, but the missile also used a comb-size millimeter-wave radar to alert it of any unknown obstacles in its path. The radar was sensitive enough to detect the high lead and sulfur content of the smoke coming out of some factory chimneys in its path and easily circumnavigated them as if they were obstructions.
The missile turned on its imaging infrared sensors seventy seconds prior to target, then uplinked the images via satellite to Jon Masters aboard the DC-10 launch aircraft. The image showed the base in fine detail, with reds, pinks, purples, and oranges forming enough contrast to see buildings. A white box surrounded the computer’s best guess as the intended target. From ten miles away, it was hard to tell if the box was on the right building, but in less than a minute, he’d find out.
It was off, but not by too much. The navigation system had drifted off a few dozen yards, and the white box was centered on an adjacent hangar. Jon entered commands into the computer, froze the image in computer memory, then used a trackball and rolled a crosshair cursor over the proper target impact point — a spot three-quarters of the way across the roofline — and commanded the missile to hit that exact spot. He then made sure the terminal maneuver was programmed as a PUP — Pull Up, Push Over, in which a few seconds before impact the missile would climb a few hundred feet and then plunge itself down onto the target point. Several air defense radars in the area had detected the missile — rather, they had detected something out there — but the missile’s stealth characteristics made it impossible to get a solid lock on it.
The last few seconds of the missile’s three hundred mile flight were the most spectacular. Eight seconds before impact, Grant One made its steep climb. The imaging infrared picture stayed locked on target. Then, just before the missile reached a thousand feet above ground, it did an even steeper dive. Jon caught a glimpse of the roof of the Metyor Aerospace building for just a few seconds before the missile hit.
The radar in the missile’s nose gave the exact distance to impact, and at the proper moment, the computer ignited a small armored rocket device in the missile’s nose that shot a five-hundred-and-fifty-pound high-explosive shaped-charge warhead through the thick concrete and steel-sheathed roof, allowing most of the rest of the missile to pass through. Once inside, the main charge detonated: a two-thousand-pound high-explosive incendiary warhead, which created a massive three-thousand-degree fireball inside the secure section of the Metyor IIG research hangar. The force of the blast, combined with exploding fuel and natural gas lines, added enough energy to the blast to rip the entire hangar open like a popped balloon. Everything inside the hangar and within five hundred yards of the blast was instantly roasted to ash.
Jon Masters whooped and cheered like a kid at a rodeo when his screen went blank — he knew his missile had scored a direct hit. “Hey, Archangel,” he said to nobody, still reveling in his long-distance victory, “come take a look at this mess. Man, what a day.” He clicked on his intercom. “Good kill, guys,” he announced. “Grant Two bit the dust, but Grant One made us proud. Come on up and take a look at the video if you’d like, then let’s put our little models back together — we’ve got three hours to make this plane look like just another trash-hauler carrying oil-drilling parts again before we land.”
Radohir, Bulgaria
“Halt! Stop! Astanavieevat’sya!” yelled the Bulgarian military officer in as many foreign languages as he could think of, running at top speed toward the engineer’s trailer, the AK-74 assault rifle held high over his head. “Stop, in the name of the law!”
Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov, wearing a long black leather coat — which discreetly covered a Kevlar bulletproof vest underneath — and black fur cap, looked up from the rolls of blueprints and engineering specs, saw the angry officer running toward them waving the rifle, and rolled his eyes in exasperation. He was standing with a group of aides and engineers on the back porch of the mobile engineer’s headquarters trailer, which had been transported to southwestern Bulgaria, just thirty-five miles west of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia and less than fifty miles from the Macedonian border. “Now what?” he shouted angrily.
“He’s got a gun, sir,” one of the engineers said nervously.
“What is with these Interior Ministry assholes?” Kazakov muttered. He nodded to one of his bodyguards standing a few feet away. “Doesn’t he realize how dangerous it is to be carrying a weapon like that? Someone could get hurt. Or he could be mistaken for a terrorist and shot by mistake.”
The bodyguard smiled, pulled out a German MP5K submachine gun with an eight-inch Sionics suppressor fitted, and leveled it at the approaching officer, keeping it low and out of sight. “Gatoviy, rookavadetel,” he said in a low voice as he clicked the selector switch from the S setting to the three-shot setting. The eyes of some of the engineers and assistants standing nearby widened in fear — Is he really going to shoot that soldier? they thought. He looked agitated, and he was carrying a gun, but he certainly wasn’t threatening.
Kazakov thought about giving the order, then shook his head. “Nyet. Zhdat, “ he said, with an exasperated voice. His bodyguard took his finger off the trigger but kept the muzzle leveled at the officer. As long as the Bulgarian officer had the rifle in his hand he was a potential threat, so the bodyguard did not lower his own weapon, but kept careful watch as the officer approached the group. “He has made so much noise, half of Bulgaria has already heard him. Plenty of time to take care of him later, if the need arises.” The officer shouted several angry words in Bulgarian at the group, jabbing toward the mountains and the nearby dam with the rifle. “Don’t these Interior Ministry officers speak Russian anymore? What in hell is he saying?”
“He is Captain Todor Metodiev. He is not from the Interior Ministry, but from the Labor Corps of the Bulgarian Army, sir,” a translator said.
“The Labor Corps? What’s that?”
“A sort of engineer branch of the army, but also used in civil work projects,” one of his aides replied.
“Another damned bureaucrat with a uniform and a gun,” Kazakov said disgustedly. “What does he want … as if I don’t already know?”
“He wants us to stop work immediately, dismantle all of the equipment, remove all construction materials from the mountainside, and move our operation back to Sofia,” the translator said. “He says we do not have the proper documentation for this operation.”
“Remove everything from the mountain!” Kazakov exclaimed. “We have over three thousand kilos of dynamite and at least a kilometer of Primacord up there! Can’t he see I have loaders, tractors, earthmovers, and dump trucks lined up five kilometers down the road — the road I had to build, to comply with yet more Bulgarian laws — ready to move earth? Is he crazy? We have all the proper documentation already! We are drowning in documentation!”
Metodiev kept on talking all through Kazakov’s retort and the translation. “He says we do not have a required permit from the Labor Corps. They are in charge of the reconstruction project on the dam. He says the demolition can create serious damage to the dam and the river itself if there are mudslides or shifting earth. In the interest of safety, he demands we remove all materials from the mountain immediately or he will send in Labor Corps troops to do it for us and then bill us for the labor.”