Читать книгу The Book Of Schemes - Marcus Calvert - Страница 6

They had me dead-to-rights on a moonlit night.

Six plain-clothed Iranian Special Forces troops surrounded me with assault rifles aimed at my head. Disguised as oil workers, they were so close that I could smell their collective, sweaty stench. I dropped my digital recorder, raised my hands, and slowly moved to a kneeling position. One of them ripped off my Ghillie suit, which covered my desert fatigues with a layer of fake foliage. Since I had been lying prone in a patch of real bushes all night, they shouldn’t have spotted me.

I slipped into the valley sixteen hours ago and uploaded damned nice footage of six well-camouflaged missile silos in the middle of a small, fake oil field. Disguised as oversized oil derricks, the missile silos were surrounded by dozens of real derricks. While the remote facility had been logged since its construction in the early 90’s, no one had figured out it was fake until just last week. Some bored NSA egghead had been testing spy satellite upgrades and needed a map reference to focus on.

This location was picked out of a proverbial hat and the upgrades were tested. But instead of finding an oil deposit, said upgrades picked up something else. There were six well-shielded nuclear emissions, each some two hundred feet below the surface. They also had an underground pipeline that fed oil from another (real) oil field some ten miles to the southwest. Higher-ups were notified and I ended up skydiving out of a modified stealth bomber two days ago. I hunkered down by day and hiked by night. Then, I reached the target zone last night, dug myself in, and broke out my recorder/directional microphone.

As luck would have it, I picked up verbal chatter from two of the “oil workers” (which was streamed to Langley in real-time). Basically, a middle-aged guy (a major) was getting the tour of the place from a guy in his late-50’s, who he once referred to as “general.” Through my camera, I could see that both men were packing pistols under their work clothes. They also weren’t afraid to speak freely.

What they said scared the shit out of me.

During the early 70’s, a rogue group of Russian generals and high-level KGB officials came up with the insane idea of stashing thirty-five nukes throughout Iran. The smallest ones were in the six-kiloton range. The largest were in the twenty-megaton range. Some were stashed in hidden silos. Others were stored in secret bunkers near Iran’s borders, where they could be trucked into other countries and detonated near key strategic sites. These Russians – idiots that they were – figured that, should World War III start, it might be necessary to indirectly attack American allies and/or military bases in the Middle East. They recruited equally rogue elements within the Iranian military, who kept this secret from their civilian leadership.

The Iranian general expressed his utter amazement that the secret survived the fall of the Iron Curtain. Scarier still was the fact that the same Russians had all but given Iran the detailed breakdown for making nuclear weapons. If they wanted to, the Iranians could mass-produce nukes in a matter of months. Instead, their nuclear facilities were actually being used for peaceful energy production … and to prompt Israel into a pre-emptive strike.

Unfortunately, the Israelis didn’t take the bait. Also, claimed the general, their intelligence suggested that the Israelis didn’t know about these nukes. I had to agree. Otherwise, the Israelis would’ve gone after them by now. There’s no way in hell they’d go about the logistical nightmare of finding/dismantling dozens of nukes, stashed all over Iran, on their own. They would’ve come to us for help. And with my background, I’d have been tasked to one of those operations.

Apparently, continued the general, his superiors had grown tired of this military-diplomatic shell game. More radical than their predecessors, they opted to simply take out Israel with some of their 70’s-era stockpile. When the major voiced his concerns about Israeli’s ability to counter-launch, the general grinned and explained that the nukes wouldn’t be launched from Iran. Oh no, explained the general, seven low-yield nukes were already inside Israeli territory.

They were strategically placed during the 80’s.

Each nuke could be armed and rigged to detonate simultaneously by their operatives in Israel. Once the bombs went off, the Jewish state would cease to be. Since the nukes would have a Russian blast signature, Iran could not be blamed. The Russians would probably conclude that some aging nuclear stockpile had been stolen by terrorists. After all, the current regime didn’t know about this conspiracy either.

While Iran’s political leaders would publicly deny involvement, they’d privately wonder what the hell happened. Western intelligence services would monitor their communiqués and absolve them of any blame, simply because they weren’t in the loop.

The two praised Allah and continued the orientation tour.

I was about to radio Langley for instructions when my motion sensor went off. Six blips were closing in on my position. They must’ve spotted me somehow. While I was armed and not too averse to a quick shoot-out, I knew that I couldn’t kill them all and get away. So I instead chose to press the button on a time-delayed charge that I had strapped to my chest harness.

Roughly the diameter of a dinner plate and four inches thick, the metal construct functioned much like a suicide vest. It was packed with a Semtex charge that would turn me – and this pack of shitheads – into a smoking crater. The blast would happen in about thirty more seconds. I forced myself to pretend to be surprised and wished Langley the best of luck. Hopefully, they’d figure out how to stop these fucks without a global Armageddon.

Then the six bastards caught me.

Now, I was face-down in the dirt with my wrists being flex-cuffed behind me. One of the soldiers spotted my bomb, guessed what it was, and pulled out a knife. Unable to stop him, I could only watch as he cut the bomb’s straps loose. Even worse, the bastard had one hell of a throwing arm. He whipped the explosive like a pro Frisbee master and yelled for everyone to hit the dirt. My suicide bomb exploded with tremendous, harmless, force.

As dry dirt and pebbles rained down around us, the guards rose to their feet. I earned a kick to my ribs for that little stunt. Alarms and shouts arose from the fake facility as the guards pulled their stashed AK’s and ran to their action stations. Hidden searchlights flared to life and illuminated the darkened landscape. I wished I had a suicide tooth or something. It beat being taken alive inside of Iran.

Odds were I’d be tortured for everything I knew, paraded in front of CNN, and then executed. The guards turned off my gear and gathered it up. I’d happily tell them that their evil scheme had been compromised. They’d have to abort or risk an all-out retaliation from Israel, who might launch pre-emptively, once the CIA warned them. While I didn’t see myself as a martyr type, I could take a quiet pleasure in knowing that I had saved millions of lives.

”Please be quiet,” an irritated, feminine voice ordered inside my head! She had a familiar accent-

”I’m Israeli,” she said. ”And again, shut up with the inner monologue! You’re thinking too much.”

As the guards picked me up, I forced out a cleansing breath and tried to ignore the pain in my ribs as I emptied my thoughts.

”Much better,” she said with a hint of praise. ”Please keep your eyes on the general or the psi-link won’t hold.”

I obeyed.

A trio of jeeps raced toward my position, with four troops each. One of them carried the plain-clothed general. Two of my captors held me between them. I let them drag me between them as I kept my eyes on the general.

”Perfect,” she purred. ”I’m glad your Russian’s still good, Agent Verden. Follow my lead and I’ll have you out of here before dawn.”

Russian? Okay, I’ll play along. As the general stepped out of the jeep with an evil smile, I felt a rush of energy pass out of me, almost like an invisible electrical current. The stoutly built general walked up to me and gently punched me in the right arm.

“Let him go,” the general ordered in his native tongue. “Tell the men to stand down. This was a drill.”

I fought the urge to gawk in shock. The guards regarded him quizzically for a moment before releasing me. One of them cut my flex-cuffs off with a small knife. Another guard picked up a radio and called in the “all-clear.”

“Men, let me introduce you to Anatoly Vasadrev … a ‘friend’ from Moscow. His specialty is in covert surveillance.”

Oh she was good!

I hadn’t used my Vasadrev alias in years, back when I was posing as a freelance Russian assassin/information dealer. I had ties with Hezbollah, Hamas, and even Al-Qaeda. With a bit of luck, my cover might still hold up to casual scrutiny. The guards, who had clearly known too much about Russia’s secret pact with Iran, exchanged grins.

I was in fucking awe. That psychic bitch wasn’t in my head anymore … she was in the general’s! Apparently, she had taken over his brain. If she could read my memories so well, then she’d surely do the same to the general.

He wouldn’t know everything about this conspiracy. But he’d have to know something: names, dates, locations … enough for the Israelis to perhaps save their country from obliteration. Hell, I bet she could even send an encrypted e-mail from the general’s office straight to some intelligence facility in Israel. The Israeli could get me out of the country with ease – even with an armed escort, if she so chose. When the smoke cleared, and the general was no longer useful, she could leave him to face charges of treason and with no recollection of what had happened.

“Come,” the general winked. “You’re to be my honored guest for the evening. I’m looking forward to your detailed assessment of our security.”

“I’d be honored,” I replied in the local dialect, careful to put a Russian twang into my response. “And then you could tell me where I screwed up, no?”