Resurrection Day (19 page)

'You're suggesting we drop one these nuclear bombs on Abu Hasim's camp?'

'Anywhere near him would be sufficient, and he'd be vaporised.'

'What about his other camps?'

'Pick the major ones and carpet-bomb them, thick and hard. Use powerful, thousand-pound bombs. Hit the bastards with everything we've got. And I mean everything. Turn these camps into wastelands, with not a tree or a rock left standing or a single mujahidin left alive.'

Kuzmin pursed his lips in thought, then addressed Androsov, the head of the SVR. 'Misha, what is our latest intelligence on Abu Hasim? Can we locate him?'

'We keep a close watch on his mujahidin bases with our satellites, like the Americans. But out intelligence is even better, since the bases are nearer our borders. And from the handful of excellent Muslim agents we have in Afghanistan, we know in which of his training camps Abu Hasim has his command centre.'

'But can we be certain he'll be there?'

'One of our best agents is a senior figure in the regime in Kabul. Their intelligence always tries to keep a close watch on Abu Hasim's movements. This agent of ours has access to such information. I can request his urgent help to get us an exact fix on his whereabouts.'

'Could he do that?'

'I'm certain. In the past he's been reliable in the extreme.'

'How soon can we get this information?'

'The agent keeps in touch with a satellite radio transmitter. With luck, I could have news within hours.'

'Then see to it.' The President addressed the others. 'Gentlemen, I'm going to assume for now that we can get a fix on Abu Hasim's whereabouts. Which brings us to some decisions we have to make.'

Kuzmin called a vote. The first was on the question of the prisoners. It resulted in unanimous agreement against their release. The second vote concerned the question of direct military action, and Butov's suggestion: conventional carpet-bombing and the use of a single nuclear weapon. It came to the last two votes. 'Admiral Vodin?'

'I say yes.'

'Interior Minister Sergeyev?'

'Yes,' Sergeyev replied firmly. 'We finish this thing now, before it escalates. Before it tears apart the Federation and destroys Russia.'

Kuzmin counted sixteen votes in favour of Butov's action, and just two against: the Finance Minister, Akulev, and Trade Minister Boris Rudkin. The die was cast. He turned to the general.

'Do it,' he ordered. 'Destroy Abu Hasim.'

Five minutes after the Kuntsevo meeting had ended, General Yuri Butov was being driven at high speed by his military chauffeur towards the Moscow ring road. By 2.59 a.m., he had reached his destination, an austere granite building on the northeastern outskirts of the city.

Taking an elevator five floors below ground level, he strode into the vast underground room that housed a secret command centre for Russian army headquarters. The chamber was thirty metres square, built to withstand the shock of a nuclear blast.

Butov's office was in a corner. The general sat, made an all-important phone call to an internal number, and simply gave the code word 'Storm Rising'. It activated a select group of two dozen high-ranking military officers on call day and night at a moment's notice. All over Moscow, men who were sitting down to meals with families or making love to their wives or girlfriends would hear their phones ringing and a voice at the other-end would utter the code word, causing them to cease whatever they were doing at once and report to the command centre immediately.

As they received the calls, Butov was already planning the bare bones of the attack. Russia was still a superpower with a fearsome arsenal of weapons at her disposal. Thousands of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, and many hundreds of bomber regiments sited all over the Federation, could be deployed in an instant. Butov summoned his duty officer, who crossed to a large metal safe beneath a console table in the middle of the command room. He removed a large thick envelope marked 'Afghanistan' and brought it to the general.

Once a crisis was raging, Butov knew from experience, there was little time for forward planning. The safe contained various sets of plans for a military strike against any nation likely to menace the Russian Federation. Inside the envelope were at least a dozen scenarios involving Afghanistan that her armed forces might have to react to. One included a punitive air strike against all of al-Qaeda's major bases in that country, drawn up during the height of the Chechen war, when Russian military intelligence suspected the terrorist leader of supplying arms and men to the rebels.

Butov opened the envelope. It contained mapped locations of al-Qaeda's eight principal camps — over twenty existed, but these eight were by far the most important — and the precise outline of an attack, using eighteen heavy bombers accompanied by fighter escorts. The bombers would strike in two waves, annihilating their targets. The air unit chosen was the 840th heavy bomber regiment in Solcy, outside Volgograd, which was equipped with Tu-160 'Blackjacks' and the Tu-95 'Bear', deadly and effective bombers suitable for long-range strikes. They would be protected on their journey by MiG-29 Fulcrum's from the 14th Fighter Wing based at nearby Zerdevka. Both air units were within three hours' flying time of the targets.

This option, Butov finally decided, would form the basis of the attack, but with necessary modifications, because there were still tactical problems to overcome. Kuzmin had ordered that the eight camps be struck at the same time, to heighten surprise. Also, one of the strike aircraft would have to drop an air-to-surface nuclear missile. The precise details of how to hit all the camps simultaneously would have to be worked out by the Commander of the Russian Air Force and a handful of his senior officers already on their way to HQ — whom Butov would consult in order to fine-tune the plan, and make whatever alterations were needed. By the time the alerted officers were approaching the command centre, the general had finished scribbling his notes. He had just decided on the broad strokes of the first nuclear strike in over fifty years. One thing remained. A name for the operation.

The strategy was intended to destroy Abu Hasim and his bases.

Hammer them into oblivion. Operation Hammer struck him as entirely appropriate. Butov threw down his pen, satisfied. His phone buzzed. It was the duty officer. 'The Air Force Commander is on his way, sir. He should be here within five minutes.'

'Send him down the moment he appears.'

The Kremlin 4.30 a.m.

Vasily Kuzmin was in his Kremlin office. The telephone buzzed. 'Mr President, Misha Androsov and General Butov are here to see you.'

'Send them in.'

The double oak doors opened. Androsov, the head of the SVR, looked triumphant. 'Mr President, our Kabul agent confirms that Abu Hasim is at his main command post, forty miles southwest of Kandahar, and hasn't moved from there in the last twenty-four hours. We have the exact map coordinates.'

For a few seconds, Kuzmin hesitated. The arguments had been made, the vote agreed upon, but he was acutely on edge, and posed the question as if to reassure himself. 'You feel confident his information is correct?'

'I'd put my last rouble on it. I trust him implicitly.'

'General Butov?'

'Mr President, the attack is ready to proceed.'

Solcy, Russia 4.35 a.m.

Twenty miles south of the city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, on a flat plain near the town of Solcy, are the headquarters of the 840th Heavy Bomber Regiment, one of over seven hundred military airbases scattered across the Russian Federation.

Three siren blasts roused the two teams of eighteen technician crew members on duty from their bunks. They raced along illuminated underground tunnels to their destination: the vaults that housed the nuclear armoury, for Solcy is one of two dozen bases where Russia's nuclear arsenal is stored. From one of the vaults the first of the three teams, overseen by an officer, carefully removed a silver ball the size of a small melon from its airless container and placed it on a specially made trolley. The ball was a plutonium core, one of many stored in the catacombs beneath the airbase. No sooner had it been placed on the trolley than the second team moved in, fitting the high-explosive cladding jacket that would detonate the core. Their job completed, the third team adjusted the bomb's pressure setting on their officer's instructions, fixing it for a ground-level burst to minimise its destructive radius and then wheeling it to the loading elevator twenty yards away, for delivery to the specially adapted warhead of a KH-102 missile.

At the same time, on the other side of the base in another underground tunnel, a dozen bomber-support crews were busily preparing over three hundred conventional thousand-pound bombs and missiles destined for the remaining aircraft chosen for the mission. The same three sharp siren blasts that had galvanised the technicians and support teams had alerted the crews of Russian air force pilots as they relaxed watching TV in their mess. Grabbing their helmets, they raced to a pre-assigned briefing room down the hall, where a wing commander was already waiting to give them their briefing.

It was short, and covered in exact detail the attack's planned route, the frequencies to be used, the security codes, and the co-ordinated strategy that would ensure that the mission was carried out with absolute precision. Even as the briefing proceeded, the underbellies of eighteen Tu-95 Bears and Tu-160 Blackjacks parked outside their hangars were being fitted with their cargo of thousand-pound bombs and missiles, all except one Tu-95 Bear: this was loaded with the single KH-102 nuclear missile meant to destroy Abu Hasim's lair.

Assigned to command this aircraft was Colonel Vadim Sukov. At thirty-seven, he was a veteran air force bomber pilot with over sixteen years' service who had flown in air campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya. So highly trained was Sukov to carry out his orders without question that it was only after the briefing was over and he was being driven in a covered truck to his aircraft, along with his flight crew, that the full and frightening realisation of what he was about to do hit him. This wasn't an exercise. He was actually going to fire a live thermonuclear missile on a mujahidin base in Afghanistan.

Three minutes later a grim-looking Sukov, strapped into his seat and having completed his pre-flight check, taxied to the runway threshold, the other aircraft lining up behind him. Cleared for take-off, Sukov released his brakes and applied power. The Tu-95 trundled down the lit runway, picking up speed, reaching the critical moment at which he pulled back gently on the stick and the heavy Bear rose into the night air. Sukov made a right turn on to a south-easterly course, heading towards his first marker, a beacon outside Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea. On his port and starboard sides a pair of MiG Fulcrum escorts had already taken up their escort positions. Fifteen minutes later, at 05.11, he crossed the Astrakhan beacon. Sukov checked his Flight Management Computer for an estimate of when he would reach his target.

It calculated ninety-eight minutes exactly.

Moscow 5.12 a.m.

Boris Rudkin was in a state of shock. Lying in bed beside his wife in their apartment on Kempinsky Boulevard, the Trade Minister tossed and turned, unable to sleep. The phone call twenty minutes ago from the Kremlin had informed him that Operation Hammer was under way.

Rudkin's nerves were frayed. A nuclear bomb was about to be dropped on Afghanistan, a neutral country, and he had been one of only two Council members to oppose the attack. It both amazed and perturbed him, and said much about Kuzmin's aggressive style of government, his raging desire to make Russia once again a formidable world power.

But what if Kuzmin unleashed a holocaust by this action in Afghanistan? What if Islamic terrorists, in retaliation, made it their business to destroy Moscow? If they could procure the formula for the nerve gas, it wasn't beyond the bounds of possibility. All it took was a handful of determined fanatics driven by an overwhelming desire for revenge. The prospect terrified Rudkin. He had three grown children, five adorable grandchildren. To think of them being gassed appalled him, and he was beside himself with dread. Finally, he sat bolt upright in bed. His wife snorted, roused from her sleep.

'Boris, in God's name, what's wrong?'

'Are there any cigarettes in the house?'

'Why should there be? You gave them up years ago.'

'Well, I need to take them up again.' Climbing out of bed, Rudkin dragged on his clothes. 'Boris! Where are you going?'

'To buy a pack of cigarettes.'

The Amoco filling station was open twenty-four hours. A couple of Moscow taxi-drivers were filling up at the forecourt pumps, but other than that the place was deserted. It was snowing, and Rudkin wore a heavy winter overcoat, his face muffled by a thick woollen scarf, so no one would recognise him. He bought a pack of Marlboro Lights from a pimply youth serving behind the hatch and climbed back into his car. His state driver and Mercedes were on call when needed, but Rudkin had used his own Volvo estate. He'd left his apartment by the back entrance and walked to the private underground carpark at the rear, so that the two ministerial bodyguards stationed outside his home wouldn't see him drive away.

Leaving the Amoco station, Rudkin drove for five minutes and pulled up outside Gorky Park. His hand trembled as he lit a Marlboro. He inhaled deeply, and immediately stubbed it out again, repelled by the taste. Disgusting.

After five years of doing without, why the hell had he bothered buying a pack? But he knew it was nerves. Rudkin was torn by indecision. His heart beat rapidly. He knew what he had to do, but had he the guts to do it? The phone booth was a couple of yards away. The night-light was out, broken or vandalised. Rudkin climbed out of the Volvo, stepped inside, and was greeted by an overpowering stench of urine. Some drunken bastard had pissed on the floor. He wiped the receiver with his sleeve and took a coin from his trouser pocket. As his hand lingered over the slot, he felt his legs shake. He withdrew his hand, began to turn away. For God's sake, where's your courage? Rudkin reprimanded himself. He turned back, inserted the coin and punched the numbers.

Washington, DC 9.51 p.m.