Deathrace

25

General Reza Ruhollah had been outside his commandeered headquarters at the bomb plant and on his way to where his men reported a firefight was in progress with aggressors. He was furious.

"How the hell did anyone find us?" he had asked his major aide. Then he shook his head. "If they did find us, how did they get through our security? Call out the rest of the military guard. Do it now."

The major scurried away from the staff car where he had been talking to the general through the window. He headed for the nearest building with a phone.

General Ruhollah had just ordered his driver to head for the bomb assembly plant, when the gigantic explosion rocked the whole area and turned the night into a false dawn as one thundering blast roared toward him and then on past with a surging rush of gale-force wind.

"What in hell?" Ruhollah stepped out of the car and stared ahead. Two hundred yards away, flames lit the sky.

He bolted back in the car.

"Drive," he shouted. "Get to that fire. Now!"

The driver started the car and drove ahead. A block closer to the fire he had to jog around debris in the road that evidently had been blasted there by the explosion. Half a block from the fire the driver stopped. A truck lay on its side in the road where it had been blown from near the bomb assembly building.

"Far as we can drive, sir," the driver said.

The general pushed open the door and stepped out. A wall of heat hit him and drove him back a step.

"How could this happen?"

He looked around. A half dozen officers had gathered just out of the heat zone. He called to them, and they came over and saluted.

"How bad is the damage?"

"General, sir. The entire assembly plant has been blasted out of existence. We're not sure if it was a malfunction of some of our explosives to be used in the bombs, or something else."

"Explosives in a nuclear bomb?"

"Yes, my General. Ten or twelve powerful ones set in a circle around the device. The mechanism will squirt tritium into the core at the moment the explosives ignite. This generates large quantities of neutrons to boost the fission reaction. That reaction in turn blasts more neutrons into another tritium supply, causing a fusion reaction. We were projecting about four hundred and fifty kilotons for each bomb."

"How could this explosion happen?" General Ruhollah bellowed. "I want a complete investigation. Wasn't there an attack from outside the wire tonight? How did that happen? Did we catch the attackers? Someone told me that there were some lights shot out in one section of the fence. Who did this? Is there a chance that there was some kind of invasion of our facility?"

"Yes, my General. We have had reports of a small enemy force inside the wire. They killed a large number of our troops, and evidently forced all the civilian workers out of the bomb assembly building. They were military of some kind. The civilians did not recognize any insignia or style of uniform."

"Why wasn't I told about this before now?" General Ruhollah screeched, his face turning red.

"We only now found out. There was an officers party for our commander's birthday, and-"

"Idiots. You'll all be shot, of course. Consider yourself under house arrest. Go now."

The officers saluted. The General didn't bother to return the salute. He edged closer to the flames. They were dying down now. Most of the building was indeed gone. There were only partial walls in places, no roof at all. The concrete floor of the large building seemed to be the only thing left intact.

Gone.

All six of his wonderful nuclear bombs were gone.

He would have to start over. Build a new assembly building. Buy the hard-to-find plutonium and the tritium, and do all of the delicate machine tooling. Again.

He paled then, thinking about the promises he had made to certain of his confidants. Within two months they would have six nuclear bombs. He had promised them that as an absolute, and the last of the huge amount of money had been designated for him.

Could he win them over for more money now that this setback had wiped out any possibility of getting the weapons in the near future? He figured it would take two years. Even with the start they had with the facilities, and the experienced men doing the work. Two years. He shivered. Pursuit.

He must find out where the attackers left the facility, and send every man he had chasing after them. Yes, that much he could do. He had two hundred regulars here, well-trained fighting men, some with combat experience. He hurried back to the car. "To my headquarters, quickly."

When he walked in, the facility commander and his top three men stood waiting for him.

"General Ruhollah, we were attacked."

"I'm well aware of that. Where did the force come in? Where did it leave the wire? Did they leave any dead behind?"

"General, they came in through a hole they cut in the wire about midway along the west fence. They shot out the lights on both sides, after they launched a diversion attack to the far end of the complex. They shot down our helicopter. We have found where they exited, near the southern end of the wire, where a fence closed off a construction road that led south to the rock quarry."

"Idiots, have you sent troops after them?"

"No, General."

"Send fifty heavily armed guards at once. The best men you have. Is there another helicopter?"

"No, General. We have one at Chah Bahar, but it was ordered to remain there."

"Phone now, get it up here at first light."

The Colonel in charge of the facility had been pointing at officers, and rushing them out of the room for each assignment.

"Now, Colonel, I am horrified at your security arrangements. You have set our program back by at least two years. You will be brought up on charges of high treason. Consider yourself under house arrest. Who is your second in command?"

"Sir, that would be me." A Major stepped forward and saluted.

"You, too, will be up on charges. Depending on how well you clean up the rubble of the assembly building, and reconstruct it, then bring in the required new machinery, equipment, and supplies that are needed, then we will see how severe your penalty will be. Be sure those troops chasing the attackers have orders to kill all of the bastards."

General Ruhollah waved them all out of the room. His aide came in with a fresh pot of special Turkish coffee that he loved. He sat down at the desk and began making plans. All of the troops on the facility would be sent out at first light. They would scour a swath two miles wide. Where would the attackers go?

If they were Arab, they might go east into Pakistan. If they were from the Western whore-mongering nations, they would try to go straight south to the Gulf of Oman and escape to some ship, perhaps even a submarine.

He would send troops both directions. The southern route was the more reasonable. However they were less than thirty miles to Pakistan, and more than fifty miles to the gulf. He would call Tehran at once and order the largest plane that could land at the dirt strip at Chah Bahar to bring in paratroopers. He would fly six more helicopters, gunships with door machine guns. He would alert the MiG jet fighters at Shiraz to fly over the area, watching for any movement on the ground, and to prevent any type of air rescue of the force.

How many men did the raiders use? He had no idea. Fifty men, perhaps less. It was a hit-and-run attack. He could have done it with a dozen good men.

The headache came again, grinding, stabbing, making him shut his eyes and hold his head. He needed relief. How in this boil on the butt of the devil could he find what he needed?

Slowly he sat down and picked up the phone. He had to make the calls, to get the troops and planes coming this direction. Time was the big factor now. He would have to show that he had slaughtered the squads of men who destroyed the nuclear bombs. That was the minimum he would need to do to convince his secret cabal of supporters that he must have more money, that they must make another effort to build their own nuclear bombs. It was the only way that Iran could take its proper place as the major world power that ruled all of the Mid Eastern Arabs. Yes, it must be done.