Moscow Machination (13 page)

Mehico City, Mehico

At 1,800
feet and 160 Knots, the AN-225 Mriya lined up for its final approach to Santa
Lucia air force base in Mexico City.

A group of
dignitaries including ministers, Chinese diplomats and cartel bosses were
gathered to witness this epic moment in Mexican history. Every country in North
America stood out in its own awesome way. Panama had the canal. The US had the
nukes. Canada had Ryan Reynolds. Belize had that sick sinkhole. And now, Mehico
was getting a sweet high speed train.

Finance
Minister Alejandro Vargas and the Chinese Trade Secretary Tsai Huateng sat at the
podium admiring the descending aircraft. The rest of the dignitaries, the majority
of whom belonged to the Zeta Zones cartel, stood by the tarmac sipping Coronas
and Champagne. The air force personnel provided the much needed security from
pigeons and laymen.

The AN-225
was losing altitude steadily. Two minutes before touchdown, the Japanese made
generator revved up and began churning out 400KVA of unadulterated power.
Sensing the pulsating voltage, the Shinkansen’s auto pilot pushed the throttle
all the way up. The wheels of the train began to spin… slow then fast and then faster.
Thirty seconds later the rotating wheels had hit a land speed of 500Km/hr, way over
the Shinkansen’s rated top speed of 415Km/hr.

But… incredibly,
the train hadn’t moved an inch relative to the aircraft. The Shinkansen’s
autopilot, a computer named Shanky, or at least certain sections of Shanky, firmly
believed the train was rushing ahead. The proponents of this theory were the simple
headed analog parts that measured the wheel’s angular speed.

But the
suave, sophisticated and highbrow parts of Shanky gathered inputs from radars
and proximity sensors. These suggested that they weren’t moving at all.

A third input
from a GPS sensor said they were moving at 300Km/hr aka 160 Knots.

Three
systems - three measurements – Shanky faced quite a conundrum.

During
this conundrum a small and kooky part of Shanky came up with another bizarre
hypothesis.

Someone
asshole had put a giant treadmill under the train.

The big
Antonov… the Mriya II, listed and swayed.

 “Boy she
is big … tail winds eh?” said Vargas the Mehican Minister.

“No
biggie. Happens all the time in China,” asserted the Chinese Trade guy. Tail winds,
ass winds, whatever… China was all in on this Mehican deal.

The
Antonov crossed the airport’s fence with its nose slightly ajar of the runway.
The hundred or so dignitaries were enraptured by its size.

“Jesus.
She is big,” said one of the Zeta Zones dudes.

“Maybe we
should buy this damn thing instead of a train… fuck man we got screwed here,”
responded another.

“It’s not
too late. We will shove out the Chinese and deal with the Ukrainians instead.”

By now the
Antonov was only a couple of hundred yards away.

Chukotka, Palin’s Russia

“Hit the
rudder,” barked Primakov.

“Hitting
the rudder.”

The
Antonov, AN-225 turned slightly to the right.

Primakov
was breathless. Everything would be over in five seconds.

“Unlatch
nosecone,” cried Primakov.

Korlov
clicked something, “Nose cone unlatched.”

5 sec

4 sec

Primakov
held his breath.

Inside a hangar
at the Anadyr Airport, a bunch of heavy vehicles were buzz sawing something
huge… something white with Ukrainian markings.

3 sec

2 sec

Korlov
took one last glance at the Mriya I before the hangar’s doors closed.

1 Sec

0 Sec

“Cut the
treadmill.”

Korlov
flipped a switch on his Fly-From-Home plane kit. “Treadmill power is out.”

Mehico City, Mehico

As the
Zeta Zoneses watched, the nose of the big Antonov shattered. Sort of like an
explosion from the inside. The entire nose was replaced by a gaping hole. The
plane became aerodynamically challenged.

Just as it
dawned on the dignitaries, a big black gleaming serpentine thing rushed out of
the nose less, faceless aircraft. Unlike the aircraft’s mellow 100 Knots, this
black long shiny thing came at them in excess of 500Km/hr. 

Some dude
screamed, “Train… is… flying… run.”

Someone
else screamed.

The two
dignitaries on the podium started running with their cigars.

By now the
entire train was out of the headless Antonov. The train’s onboard computer
Shanky was moribund. The Shinkansen had just crashed through a Soviet made 6
inch aluminum wall. Shanky’s final thoughts were never ending rails….

The
descending train landed head first and squelched into the crowd of Mehicans and
Chinese. The first guys that got squelched were the ones with BMI in excess of
30. The Mehican Minister and Chinese Trade guy fell in that category. Then came
the guys with 25 – 29 BMI and finally the whimsy sub 20 dudes.

Squelch.
Squelch. Squelch.

With a 90%
fatality rate, the train proceeded to whiplash the air force’s administrative
building, the corridors of power and restrooms. After three minutes of raining
carnage, the train eventually stopped outside a popular burrito joint two miles
outside the air force base.

Five
seconds after the train had hit the podium, the biggest jet in the world, the
AN-225, landed on top of the podium. The big jet sort of cleaned up after the
train and ensured a causality rate of 110%.

The
Antonov pretty much followed the trail of destruction left by its cargo. From
afar it seemed as though a great white shark had swallowed some anaconda… but
then the anaconda had ate its way out by biting off the shark’s head…

Being a
Mehican air base the facility had no airplanes. But for some reason facility
was filled with cameras. Even though many didn’t make it through the feral afternoon,
were enough survived with enough footage. Mehican sleuths confirmed that the
aircraft, the AN-225 was Ukrainian and its cargo, the black train was indeed
the Chinese CRH400A.

Kremlin, Moscow

“Sweet
Baby Buddha!” screamed Xiannian the Chinese Premier.

Three
hours later he arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on an unescorted Sukhoi-30.
The Moscow air traffic controllers had thought it was some German CEO burning
rubber up until the last moment when they heard the Sukhoi’s sweet thunder. By
the time the air traffic controllers had found the toll free number for the
Russian Air Command, the Chinese Sukhoi had already gated next to a Lufthansa.

When
Xiannian and his pilot jumped out of the jet, the Lufthansa crew had shook
their collective heads, “Moscow… such a circus… ja...”

Under normal
circumstances such a breach in air defense would have led to commanders and
other air dudes getting new airholes. But unlike the Mathias Rust fiasco, the
Russians had been watching this time.
Mathias Rust, a West German bro,
landed a Cessna on the Red Square. True story brah.

Ever since
the events in Mexico City the Russians had been expecting the Chinese Premier
to freak the fuck out. FSB psychologists had given him 72 hours. The Premier
arrived on the 84
^th
hour.

As
expected, the Chinese while adept at bullying Lilliputian neighbors had been
completely blindsided by the Mexico City plane-train fiasco. The Chinese
intelligence services, relatively new to the game, kept forgetting that the KGB
had never loved Audis.

President
Petrova sent a Camry to pick up the Chinaman. She was all set to make an
accord. Throughout the hour long unescorted ride to the Kremlin, the Premier
had chanted ‘Sweet Baby Buddha…. So, so sweet… sweet lord…’ The Chinese Sukhoi
pilot a Han, after a ‘slip’ at the Vnukovo men’s room, concurred that the
premier had chanted the same stuff during the flight to Moscow.

“Sweet
Baby Buddha… Sweet, sweet baby Buddha… Sweet Baby Buddha… Anna? Petrova?
President?”

“Xiannian,”
looked up Anna Petrova as the Chinese Premier was ushered into her office.

“Oh thank
you baby Buddha… it’s you… Madam President…”

“So… you
seem to have come to your senses.”

“Yes
Madam.”

“So what
did the Americants say about your Russian problem?”

“They…
they accused me of cutting out the cartels and dipping into the DEA’s profits.”

“Haha DEA…
classic.”

“Madam
what do you want? Anything. Please tell me. Triple the price for gas? Sure…
pipeline to Sakhalin? Absolutely… anything Madam anything….”

“For
starters stop selling the damn trains. That’s all we want.”

“Done. But
that’s it?”

“Yes. Stop
peddling your cheap ass trains. Get to work on those pipelines. That’s really
all.”

After
assuring Xiannian for five more minutes, the Kremlin bundled him back into the
beat up Camry and shooed him away to Beijing.

Langley, Virginia

Sarah
McAllister rushed into Jim Borland’s office in Langley.

“Xiannian
just announced a major gas deal with Russia. The dimwit even offered to build a
pipeline from Sakhalin to Beijing, via Sapporo.

“Sapporo
as in…”

“Sapporo,
Japan. What’s gotten into that man? And why are the Russians doing all this?
And again why Sapporo?”

“Well that
confirms our suspicions. The Chinese just aren’t hard enough. A lack of
toughness – badass-ness – hardness – cojones-ness… or rather
cojones-less-ness.”

“Yeah
thanks. I get the idea Jim,” said Sarah hastily, “But why this game of Russian
Roulette? Crashing a plane carrying a train that’s filled with cocaine…?
Jesus.”

“Sanctions.”

“Please.
We sanction them and they take off their shirts and ride ponies. That’s what
they do. But this… this new MO just doesn’t make any sense.”

Sarah
continued to pace Borland’s office.

“Wait.
What about our assets in Moscow our moles?”

“Nothing.
The SVR and the FSB assumed that Petrova was just lipstick on the pig for the
previous regime.  So they mollycoddled her and kept her out of the loop. I
guess they went too far and she flipped out.”

After
twiddling her Blackberry, the Undersecretary of State sighed, “Ok fine. What
about the drugs?”

“We pulled
everything the NSA could lay their hands on and so far we have nothing. That
Antonov 225 took off from Guangzhou with the train and nothing but the train.
We have video footage, eyewitnesses and a ton of paperwork to prove it.”

“Are we
sure there were no drugs on that plane? I mean Guangzhou is close to the Golden
Triangle and Kunming… both restive.”

Jim
Borland replied flatly, “Absolutely nothing.”

That left
only one option and Sarah was afraid to broach it. “So… where does that leave
us?”

Jim voiced
it, “An old fashioned switcheroo…”

“The
Russians switched planes… switched the only AN-225 in existence with a phantom
AN-225?”

“Yep.”

Sarah
digested the switcheroo theory before moving along, “Ok let’s get back to the
drugs.”

“Well the
cocaine was synthetic. As in factory made. Not grown in Burma or Thailand or
Afghanistan.”

“So
Chinese factories?”

“tl;dr
it’s Japanese.”

“Whaaat?
Give me the whole story, Jim”

“Well,
turns out there are a ton of perfectly good yet abandoned factories all over
the Fukushima Prefecture. Not dangerous, just stigmatized.”

“So?”

“So, the
Japanese government decided to throw a bone to the unemployed factory workers…
by giving them the technology and permits to manufacture synthetic coke.”

“Ughh. Is
that even possible? I mean to make cocaine synthetically?”

“They are
the Japanese. They can do anything when not wanking off to tentacles.”

“Fair
enough, but what about… umm… taste… if five Latinos aren’t wasted per pound, I
can’t really appreciate the product… I guess I am a purist…. I mean I am not…
but there are people in DC who are…”

Jim
Borland reassured her, “The Yakuza forced their way into the distribution. So
it may not be five guys per lb., them being efficient and all, but maybe a leg
or an arm per pound.”

“Seems
pretty radical.”

“That’s
right, radical is what the Japs have become. After thirty years of economic
stagnation… I guess they just don’t give a fuck.”