Fallout (3 page)

The Russian continued to stare at Mahmood’s purple neck with clearly visible handprints and at his buggy, open eyes. Two flies had already begun circling the body. “They are not my friends.”

“True. They do nothing out of friendship.” Riaz smiled. “It is always for money. Or power. I can identify with them. They are my kind of people. I need to talk to them.”

The Russian scientist nodded, trying to ignore what he had just seen, trying not to throw up. He had never wanted to leave Russia. He was comfortable where he had been, working in a laboratory at the nuclear weapons plant at Trekhgornyy. He was content, until he got laid off from the plant. They had no more money to pay him. He’d tried to find other jobs in Russia, but there was nothing, and certainly nothing that would allow him to use his training, his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Moscow University. The local Mafia had offered him a job as a driver for more than he’d been paid as a scientist for the state, when he had the job.

He had refused. He knew he would never work for the Mafia. But then they had come back, offering him a position overseas, working in his field, helping them “solidify a relationship,” as they had put it. And he would be paid in gold, five times what Russia had ever paid him. He couldn’t resist.

Khan crossed over and stood in front of the Russian, looking up into his blue eyes. “You need to tell your friends to get me more material. Within a month.”

The Russian tried to hide his fear. “It is impossible—”

“I am sick of that word!” Khan screamed. “It is
not
impossible! They did it once, and they can do it again. Security in Russia is terrible. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Terrible, yes, but not nonexistent!” the Russian protested. “And getting it here would be doubly impossible.”

“We cannot wait!” Khan insisted, looking at Shirish.

Shirish replied, “We have only one more time we could do it. One and only one.”

“When?”

“October.”

The Russian knew he’d be the next bug-eyed corpse lying on the floor if he didn’t come up with some alternative. “You are doing it the hard way,” he said cryptically.

Khan looked at the rest of the men in the room, who were shifting their weight restlessly. He returned his stare to the Russian. “Oh. Really. You have an easier way and have just not told us about it.”

“I have only now thought of it,” he said, looking straight ahead, over Khan’s head.

Shirish stepped closer and listened with interest as the Russian spoke in English.

“What might it be?”

“You want to do serious, permanent, irreparable damage to the Americans with little risk?”

“Yes,” Khan answered slowly. “Obviously. That is the critical first step in our plan. You have known that!”

“You should listen to the Americans more. They are so open, so honest. They hang out their laundry for the entire world to see. If they find a weakness of their own, they have hearings. There are groups in America that do nothing but point out their own country’s weaknesses and faults. Such a weakness has been exposed for years. It would do much more damage than that nuclear warhead you were hoping to rescue at the border. And the rest of your plan could remain the same.”

Khan was intrigued. “We could do this from TOPGUN in Nevada?”

“Oh, yes. With ease.”

“And it would do as much damage as a nuclear weapon?”

“Perhaps not quite as spectacular, but equally deadly.”

“It must be too hazardous.”

“Far less dangerous than trying to smuggle a nuclear warhead into the United States.”

Khan turned away and walked toward the window. “I have no interest in biological killing. It is—”

“It isn’t biological.”

“What, chemical?”

“No. You need to carry nothing hazardous at all.”

“And you think we could do this with ease?”

“If you get to TOPGUN, you could do it.”

Khan pointed to the table where several air navigation charts and some papers lay. “Show me,” he said.

Luke sat in the instructor’s ready room at TOPGUN across the table from Lieutenant Quentin Thurmond, Thud, the only black instructor at the school and Luke’s best friend, who was eating a glazed doughnut as he drank coffee.

Thud spoke with his mouth full. “So what the hell happened?”

“Mink was trying to take a picture. He rolled into me. I tried to get out of the way and our wings hit. His came down on my Sidewinder rail, and his wing just broke in half.”

“Shit, man,” Thud exclaimed. “That’s not your fault.”

“Yeah.” Luke lost focus as his mind drifted. “Except Gun gave me the Big Dark Look.”

They both knew what that meant. Commander Rick Beebe, the TOPGUN commanding officer—actually the training officer, theN-7, of the Navy Strike and Air Warfare Center at Fallon, Nevada—was legendary for his looks that could wither the weak. When he gave you a look, it usually meant something worse was coming.

“Mink just gooned it up.”

“Yeah, but I’m the instructor. It’s always our fault. He’s going to board me.”

“What?” Thud exclaimed. “Why?”

“To be sure I’m fit to continue as a TOPGUN instructor,” Luke said with irony in his voice.

“You’ve got to be shitting me!” Thud cried. “You have got to be friggin’ shitting me!”

“Nope. He just told me.”

“About what?” asked Lieutenant Commander Brian Hayes, the Intelligence Officer. He was close to both of them and felt perfectly comfortable injecting himself into any of their conversations. He flipped open the pink doughnut box. His face showed immediate disappointment at finding it empty. “Who took all the doughnuts?”

“Some thief,” Thud lamented. “Believe that?”

“I didn’t even get breakfast,” Hayes said.

“Stick’s getting boarded for that midair,” Thud announced.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Hayes asked as he walked across the room. His right knee and foot insisted on turning in just slightly. It was barely noticeable; Luke and Thud could tell that Hayes was doing everything he could to hide it. Hayes had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

“Nope,” Luke said, still stinging from the announcement. He tried to be his usual optimistic self, but he was so embarrassed by the fact that he was getting boarded, he found himself reddening every time he mentioned it. It was eating him alive.

“That’s bullshit,” Hayes said. “We ought to board the Skipper,” Hayes said, quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure Gun wasn’t around. “Probably just a formality.”

“Yeah. That’s it,” Luke said. “Just a formality. That’s why I’m grounded until they get it done.” He stood and filled his coffee cup.

Thud was speechless. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll pass. No problem.”

Luke looked at him as he drank. He knew Thud was just blowing smoke. And he knew Thud knew.

Colonel Yuri Stoyanovich sat behind his desk in the dimly lit, dilapidated building that was the headquarters of his regiment, the 773rd IAP—Istrebeitelnyi Aviatsionnaya Polk, Fighter Aviation Regiment—and ignored the loud knock on the door. Command of one of Russia’s premier fighter regiments was an honor. But it was a pain in the ass, too. The airplanes were easy. Well, perhaps not easy, but easy compared to the pilots and the difficult times Russia had been cursed with for almost fifteen years now. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Yes, well he did, and now the Berlin Wall and the rest of the Soviet Union were mostly rubble. And he was in charge of one of the piles of rock.

Stoyanovich missed the simplicity of climbing into the cockpit of a jet fighter and escaping the problems below. Even now that Russians claimed to be free, they weren’t free of difficulties, or of poverty. There was no gas. There were no cars anyone could buy. They weren’t even free to get paid what they had earned from the government as pilots. Their pay was always late, if it came at all. The fighter pilots of Russia, the elite of the military, lived in barracks not fit for dogs.

Stoyanovich leaned back and scratched his scalp through his thinning, oily hair. His men, the pilots and the others, took out their frustrations in ways that were often self-destructive. He dealt with a new problem every day. Today the pattern had held true, only it wasn’t just another personnel problem. The one knocking on the door was his favorite pilot, a longtime friend and ally, someone he had mentored for more than ten years. He had become a brilliant success—until now. “Come in!” Stoyanovich yelled finally.

A pilot marched smartly into the office. The concrete floor echoed his hard-soled boots. He faced the Colonel and saluted. “Major Vladimir Petkov, sir. Reporting.”

Stoyanovich studied Petkov as he tried to decide what to do with him. “Major, you know why I have called you.”

Petkov feigned ignorance. “No, Colonel Stoyanovich. I got the message that you wanted to see me, and I came.”

“You have no idea?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you not think it might be because of your ill-advised journey into town last night?”

Petkov frowned. “I did not do anything noteworthy in town last night, sir.”

“No. What you have said is correct,” the Colonel admitted. “You did not do anything in the town. I was wrong. It is no wonder that you did not know what I was talking about. Please forgive me.” His sarcasm was not lost on Petkov. “Perhaps, then, you would like to talk about coming
back
to the air base, Major Vladimir Petkov. Perhaps you would like to tell me how the automobile you were driving ended up in a ditch, in a pile of horseshit and mud, upside down, with the windows broken and the wheels spinning up into the sky like a fractured turtle—”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do remember that, Major Petkov? This has now come back into your mind?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah. Then, would you please tell me how this happened? What forces acted on you that threw you off the road so suddenly as to cause such a disaster?”

Petkov stared at the floor. “There weren’t any—”

“No, there weren’t any forces, were there?” the Colonel said, standing, his girth straining against his coarse wool uniform. “The only force acting on you was the one that makes you stupid every now and then, the force that seems to overtake you just often enough to remind your superiors that you cannot be
trusted
.”

“I can be trusted—”

“No, you cannot, Major! You drink too much vodka and then do stupid things! Your superior officers have looked the other way for years! Many have come and gone,” he said. “I, too, have let it go before, but no more. You have not learned!” the Colonel roared.

“I am sorry to have acted as—”

“Sorry? Do you really think sorry will do
anything
for you?”

Petkov didn’t know what to say. He had failed himself miserably. He’d tried to stop, but the base was so remote. Other than flying, he didn’t care much for the life he had fallen into. The flying almost made it tolerable.

“You are the best natural pilot on the base . . .” the Colonel said, his voice trailing off in regret. “The best I have ever seen. You earned the wings of a Sniper Pilot earlier than anyone else in the regiment. And well deserved. But your judgment fails you. You fall into self-pity, or depression, and make more bad decisions.”

“It won’t happen again—”

The Colonel wagged his finger at Petkov. “You are right about that, Major. Very right. Because from now on, you are not flying. You are grounded.”

Petkov’s face went white. “Colonel,” he gasped. “Flying is my life. It is all—”

“I know that, Major. Believe me, I know that. You have instructed many pilots here, you have taught them tactics, you have shown them what this fighter of ours can do. But I can no longer allow a
drunk
to show his bad judgment to the other pilots.”

Petkov was stung by the word. He couldn’t face the fact himself, and to hear it from someone else, someone he respected, somehow hurt more. “I can go to the rehabilitation—”

“You have already
been
, Major. That is what you talked my predecessor into. That is the game you have played before. It is even rumored that you gained access to your records then and changed them, to hide the fact last time that you had been to the special rehabilitation clinic before. So you bought yourself another chance then. But not this time, Major. You have come to the end.”

Petkov knew the Colonel was right. He fought back the sadness he felt. “What will you do with me, Colonel? You have always been a friend to me. You made me what I am.”

Stoyanovich paused. It killed him to look into Petkov’s face. But he was willing to do what he had to do. “You are being reassigned to security.”

Petkov couldn’t believe it. He thought the Colonel was just trying to frighten him, to get his attention. “For how long, Colonel?”

“Indefinitely, but probably for the rest of your career. I’m sorry.”

Petkov felt the life drain out of him. His boots against the floor sounded like they belonged to someone else as he saluted and did a smart about-face and marched out of the room as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. The one thing he loved had just been taken away from him forever.

Bill Morrissey didn’t like the report at all. As the head of the South Asia section of the CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, he generally hated the volatility that permeated the whole region. The report he held in his hands was another in the disturbing trend that was making it an even more dangerous place.

Morrissey carried the report into the office of Cindy Frohm, one of his senior analysts, and tossed it onto her desk. He trusted her judgment. “Read this,” he said, sitting in the chair across from her.

She glanced at the title of the report. “The Pakistan crossing incident?”

“Twelve hundred mils an hour. When they took the scrap metal off the truck, they found ten boxes just
shitting
radioactivity. Two of them weren’t sealed well, and two more had been breached by gunfire and the explosion. Ten boxes!”

“Weapons-grade,” she said.

“Plutonium,” he said ominously.

“I’d heard,” she said. “Who was bringing it in?”