Countdown to Midnight

Prologue

Off the northern Iranian coast, a sleek, 1,500-ton missile frigate lay at anchor, riding gently up and down as low waves rolled across the vast inland sea. On the open ocean, the Damavand would have been dwarfed by larger destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers in the service of the world’s major naval powers. On the waters of the landlocked Caspian, however, the gray-painted Iranian war vessel, armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, a 76mm gun, and torpedoes, was the local equivalent of a mighty WWII-era battleship. The navies of most of Iran’s neighbors, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, were little more than collections of even smaller and more antiquated missile boats and other patrol craft. Even Russia’s Caspian Flotilla, based at Astrakhan, more than a thousand kilometers north across the sea, had no warships larger than the Damavand ready for duty.

For all of that, Pavel Voronin knew, this frigate, the pride of Iran’s Northern Fleet, was far more useful as an observation platform for today’s test than it would be in any real modern war. Naval guns and short-range cruise missiles were mere toys in any all-out struggle waged between nations armed with rockets capable of striking targets half a world away. And despite their stern religious fervor, many of Iran’s theocratic rulers understood this reality better than most. Which was why video monitors and computer consoles manned by white-coated technicians and scientists were currently crammed into almost every available square meter of deck space aboard the small warship.

Smiling inwardly, the trim, fit Russian moved to the windows lining one side of Damavand’s bridge, followed by his Iranian hosts — a group of bearded Revolutionary Guard officers. Voronin’s elegantly tailored Savile Row suit and handmade Italian shoes stood out plainly among their dark green uniform tunics, rank-emblazoned shoulder boards, and wide-brimmed caps. Surrounded by these hard-faced men whose brutal tactics kept Iran’s radical Islamic regime in power and spread terror around the globe, he appeared to be nothing more than a cultured and prosperous businessman. He found that a useful facade, one that concealed his true nature — ruthless, predatory, and utterly self-interested.

“The countdown is proceeding normally,” one of the technicians stationed on the bridge behind them reported in Persian. His words were echoed in Russian by a translator assigned to Voronin. “The test vehicle is completing its transition to a vertical launch position.”

Voronin raised a pair of binoculars to his pale gray eyes and peered out through the windows. There, several kilometers away, a large barge motored across the sea. A gleaming white rocket topped by a black nose cone swung slowly upright from its deck, hoisted into position by a powerful hydraulic crane. Moments later, it locked into place, towering more than twenty-five meters above the barge.

He nodded appreciatively at the smooth completion of this delicate operation. While not large compared to the enormous heavy-lift rockets developed by the United States, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China, the Zuljanah space launch vehicle still massed more than fifty-two tons. And the solid-fuel engines in its first two stages and its liquid-propellant upper-stage motor could send a good-sized payload into space up to five hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

“The launch pad’s stabilizers and motion compensators are engaged,” the technician said calmly, parroting reports radioed to Damavand by the flight crew controlling operations from inside an armored trailer bolted to the barge’s aft section. “Go for launch in sixty seconds.”

Still focused on the distant rocket, Voronin nodded again to himself, this time pleased by the demonstrated efficiency of his Iranian hosts. Tehran had carefully scheduled this test for a relatively short window when there were no American or Chinese spy satellites in position to observe the launch. Their infrared early-warning satellites in geosynchronous orbit would certainly detect the Zuljanah’s rocket plume as it roared aloft and provide tracking data on its trajectory. But the absence of visual and radar imagery would still conceal certain key elements of this planned test flight from both Washington and Beijing.

The last remaining seconds sped past in a monotone blur of engine status and other system readiness reports relayed from the flight crew. All around him, Voronin sensed a sudden spike of tension as the critical moment approached. Finally, the technician called out, “Five… four… three… two… one… ignition!”

Across the sea, the barge disappeared suddenly, hidden by a billowing cloud of gray smoke — a cloud lit from within by a bright orange glow. Moments later, the bright white rocket appeared above the cloud, riding a scintillating pillar of fire and trailing a plume of exhaust as it soared skyward and arced toward the northeast. It was accompanied by a loud, crackling roar as the first sounds of liftoff finally reached the Iranian frigate.

Voronin tracked the missile as it rode higher and higher, smiling openly now. He knew that launching the Zuljanah to the northwest instead of the northeast would have better simulated an operational flight. But it would also have sent the rocket’s payload arcing high over Ukraine and Poland, apparently on a course toward Berlin or London. And there was no point in alarming those in the West. Not yet, at least.

Once the rocket disappeared from sight, he turned his attention to a monitor set up at the back of the warship’s bridge. Its screen showed flickering images of the Zuljanah captured by long-range tracking cameras as it arrowed onward through the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Puffs of white vapor blossomed abruptly around the midsection of the rapidly accelerating vehicle. Suddenly, the bottom third separated and fell away, tumbling end over end back toward the earth.

“Staging nominal,” the technician reported. And, as a new plume of flame appeared at the base of the now-truncated rocket, “Second-stage ignition.” Moments later, the process repeated as the Zuljanah’s second-stage engine finished its planned burn and detached — leaving the much smaller third stage’s motor to propel its payload the rest of the way into space.

Voronin saw the wavering, blurry pictures on the monitor vanish, replaced by a digital map with a bright green arrow depicting the spacecraft as it flew high above the central wastes of Kazakhstan. The speeding rocket had passed well beyond the range of Iran’s earthbound tracking cameras. From now on, the crew monitoring its flight would be dependent on telemetry from the spacecraft itself. “Payload deployment confirmed,” he heard the technician say. “The vehicle is now more than twenty-three hundred kilometers down range, and rapidly approaching the planned apogee of this suborbital test flight.”

Based on an earlier mission planning briefing by his Revolutionary Guard hosts, Voronin knew what to expect next. So he wasn’t surprised by the next flurry of reports.

“Telemetry indicates trouble aboard the spacecraft,” the technician said suddenly, still sounding calm. “Key flight control systems show signs of cascading hardware and software failure.”

Voronin noticed sly smiles appearing around him. The telemetry data currently being broadcast by the Iranian satellite was completely false. It was intended to deceive Iran’s enemies who must, by now, be closely monitoring every signal from this unannounced rocket test flight.

Mohsen Shirazi, the senior officer aboard, stepped forward. As commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force, the gray-bearded brigadier general had shepherded this missile project from its earliest days — approving every detail of its design, construction, and flight testing. He stabbed a finger at the waiting technician. “Initiate autodestruct,” he ordered.

Seconds later, Voronin saw the telemetry feed abruptly cut off. To outward appearances, the “dying” Iranian spacecraft had been destroyed by conventional explosive charges as a safety precaution, so that its scattered debris would burn up harmlessly on reentry. In reality, this final detonation had been carefully planned. The payload’s precisely timed explosive destruction was one of the crucial elements of this entire experimental flight.

Shirazi turned toward him. “Well, Mr. Voronin?” he asked.

“Most impressive,” Voronin replied honestly, with a thin smile. “Your Zuljanah rocket is all that you promised… and more. I will recommend to Moscow that we proceed as agreed with POLNOCH’, MIDNIGHT.”

Shirazi and his comrades nodded in grave satisfaction. Though he kept a low profile, they knew Voronin was a wealthy Russian entrepreneur, a private citizen whose shadowy company — Sindikat Vorona, the Raven Syndicate — provided military and intelligence expertise, services, and equipment to the highest bidders in trouble spots around the globe. His close ties to the Kremlin and especially to Russia’s autocratic president, Piotr Zhdanov, were less widely known, but they made him the ideal go-between for this high-risk, high-stakes secret operation.

Russia and Iran might not share a common ideology, but both governments knew only too well that they had a common enemy in the United States and its global network of allies. And in the murky, amoral world of Realpolitik, the old adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” pointed the way forward for Moscow and Tehran. The two countries were also painfully aware that time was not on their side. Though outwardly militarily strong, confident, and aggressive, each faced growing internal challenges and weaknesses — troubles that might topple even the most repressive regime if left unchecked. Their growing fear of the future, Voronin knew, was what had made his masters in Moscow, along with Tehran’s theocrats, so eager to find some way, any way, however dangerous and however deadly, to overturn the world’s existing balance of power.

Cold amusement flickered in Pavel Voronin’s pale eyes. President Zhdanov, Shirazi, and all the others involved in this plan were convinced that MIDNIGHT was the answer to their prayers. And so it was. Left unsaid was the reality that it would also pave his personal path to even greater wealth and power.