Countdown to Midnight

Thirty-Two

Pavel Voronin sat beside Piotr Zhdanov in the back of the president’s armored black limousine. Other cars carrying plainclothes bodyguards were ahead and behind them. Several more wheeled armored personnel carriers packed with troops brought up the tail end of this convoy.

They turned off the highway and onto a narrow track that ran deeper into the surrounding forest. Studded tires crunched over snow and ice as the column of vehicles drove slowly along the winding trail. A quick thaw across this part of Russia a few days ago had been followed by one last freezing spring storm, leaving the trees sheathed in glistening coats of ice.

Two kilometers off the main road, they came out into a clearing. Razor wire-topped fences stretched in either direction. Patrols of soldiers in white winter parkas accompanied by dogs could be seen along the perimeter. As they approached the main gate of this isolated compound, the leading vehicles turned off the track and parked on the side, clearing the way for Zhdanov’s limousine to proceed alone.

The guards manning the gate pulled it open. They waved the big black car through without stopping it. Officially, the Russian president was not here, and so no records of this secret visit would be kept.

At the center of the compound, the limousine pulled up outside what appeared to be a simple forester’s hut. Bodyguards riding up front jumped out and opened the rear doors for Zhdanov and Voronin. When they emerged, a major waiting at the open hut door stiffened to attention. “Mr. President, welcome to the Forty-Second Rocket Division,” he said briskly. His eyes darted to Voronin and then just as quickly shifted away. Clearly, he’d been briefed against showing too much curiosity about the Russian leader’s civilian guest.

“Lead the way, Major,” Zhdanov ordered.

Obeying, the young officer ushered them into the hut. It was simply a concrete-floored shell designed to hide an elevator shaft that ran deep underground. Steel doors slid aside, revealing a waiting car. They filed in and waited while the elevator smoothly descended, carrying them nearly two hundred meters below the surface.

At the bottom, the doors rolled back, revealing a short, well-lit corridor. At the far end, another thick armored hatch opened into the missile unit’s battle management center. Above the entrance, Voronin noted the emblem of the Strategic Rocket Forces — a wreath-surrounded golden shield backed by two crossed arrows and an upright sword — along with its ominous motto: “Posle nas — tshina.” “After us — silence.” A wry smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. The phrase seemed particularly appropriate, given the role this unit was slated to play in MIDNIGHT.

After he and Zhdanov passed through it, the armored hatch silently swung shut and sealed behind them, leaving their staff escort outside in the corridor. Consoles equipped with computers, displays, and secure communications links lined each of the battle management center’s two stepped tiers. In the middle of the lower tier, a single long table faced a theater-sized screen. A small group of senior officers stood there waiting for them. All of the other workstations were empty. Knowledge of the MIDNIGHT targeting plan was restricted to a tiny inner circle of the 42nd Division’s leadership.

Voronin noted how Major General Konstantin Rezanov, the rocket division’s rail-thin commander, carefully avoided making eye contact with him — instead focusing all his attention on Zhdanov. He concealed his amusement. Rezanov and all the others in this room had already accepted generous compensation from the Raven Syndicate for their part in MIDNIGHT. Pretending not to know their real paymaster wouldn’t fool anyone for very long, least of all the president — especially since Voronin had been careful to secure the older man’s approval for his bribes to active duty military officers. After all, he had no real need to work behind Zhdanov’s back, not for this enterprise anyway.

He took the chair he was offered and studied the large central screen. At the moment, it showed the current locations of the twenty-seven road-mobile RS-24 Yars ICBMs controlled by the 42nd Rocket Division. The huge sixteen-wheeled launchers transporting these missiles were dispersed throughout the surrounding forests. Every RS-24 carried four independently targetable 300-kiloton nuclear warheads, each twenty times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Once they were all settled, Zhdanov turned to Rezanov. “Let’s not waste more time on meaningless pleasantries, General.” He smiled coldly. “This is a war briefing, not a social call. And I want to be back in Moscow before anyone important notices that I’m gone.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Rezanov acknowledged. He darted a glance at the most junior officer in the room, a colonel. “Run the targeting program, Mikhail.”

The colonel keyed in a sequence of commands at his console. Immediately, a new image appeared on the central screen — a detailed digital map of Iran. Color-coded icons representing important cities, nuclear weapons and missile research sites, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bases, military airfields, and oil production and storage hubs dotted this map. One by one, dozens of these icons blinked red. “New coordinates have been locked into the multiple warheads aboard fourteen of this division’s ICBMs,” Rezanov confirmed. His voice held no discernible emotion except a cool professionalism.

The screen split, continuing to show the map of Iran on one half, while shifting back to a display of the positions of the fourteen RS-24 missiles on the other. “Upon receipt of your coded order, UNLOCK MIDNIGHT,” the general continued, “these fourteen ICBMs will execute a simultaneous launch.”

Echoing his words, the symbols representing the selected RS-24 missiles blinked yellow and began moving along arcs which illustrated their planned trajectories — hurtling southward at more than 24,000 kilometers an hour. They vanished off the edge of the digital map of central Russia, and instantly reappeared on the map of Iran. All fourteen ICBM icons divided into four new tracks each, representing the fifty-six separate warheads now fanning out toward their designated targets. One by one, they reached a red-outlined icon and vanished, leaving only a glowing dot. “Approximately seven minutes after launch, our weapons will begin detonating — some in the sky over soft targets like cities, and others, earth penetrators, deep inside heavily protected underground complexes,” Rezanov said. “Within ten minutes, our nuclear strike will have completely obliterated Iran’s radical Islamic government, military forces, oil industry, and advanced weapons research facilities.”

Zhdanov looked pleased. “And your estimate of civilian casualties?” he asked.

Rezanov shrugged. “They will, inevitably, be very high. Our preliminary analysis indicates upward of twenty to forty million Iranians dead or critically injured.”

The Russian president raised an eyebrow. “So many?”

“The Iranians have sited a large number of their most critical defense facilities close to population centers,” the general explained. He smiled thinly. “Probably as a deterrent to a major attack by the Americans or the Israelis — since they know both countries are reluctant to inflict collateral damage.”

“A weakness we do not share,” Zhdanov commented dryly.

“No, sir,” Rezanov agreed.

Zhdanov turned to Voronin. “Do you have any questions, Pavel?”

He shook his head. “None, Mr. President.” He nodded pleasantly at Rezanov and his officers. “The targeting plan these officers have created seems perfectly satisfactory.”

In truth, Voronin was delighted. The rain of nuclear fire planned by Rezanov was the final piece in the fiendishly complex and ruthless scheme he’d devised and implemented over the past several months. By wiping Iran off the map shortly after their EMP warhead detonated over the United States, he and Zhdanov would achieve several of their country’s long-sought and most crucial strategic objectives.

First, they would eliminate any chance that Iran’s radical leaders could betray Russia’s involvement in the attack against the United States. And, in fact, Russia’s nuclear bombardment could be portrayed as an act of justified retaliation for Tehran’s “brutal and unprovoked strike against innocent American civilians.” Whether anyone genuinely believed this was immaterial. Having seen the horrific consequences of angering Moscow, no other nation would dare do more than issue weak, pro forma protests.

Second, they would destroy the rising Shia power in the Persian Gulf, one whose very existence threatened all of its Sunni neighbors. That ought to entice a grateful Saudi Arabia and all of the other Arab states to turn to Russia for protection and leadership. The United States, crippled and in ruins, could have nothing to offer them. Left without much choice, even Israel might finally come to realize that its own national interests aligned with those of Moscow.

Finally, the destruction of Iran’s oil fields and infrastructure, combined with the havoc wreaked by MIDNIGHT’s EMP pulse on U.S. energy production, would create a massive spike in world oil prices. And this, in turn, would vastly increase the value of Russia’s own oil production, which was now virtually its only reliable source of economic strength.

Voronin smiled icily. As he had so often promised Iran’s fundamentalist leaders during their negotiations, MIDNIGHT would indeed overturn the world’s existing balance of power — though not at all in the way they had foolishly imagined.