The Shadow Protocol (66 page)

A voice crackled in the pilot’s earphones. “One minute to drop. Confirm readiness.”

“I confirm readiness,” Major Andrei Durnovtsev replied, the calm professionalism of his voice masking his nervousness. All of the Tu-95’s crew, and that of the Tu-16 jet acting as an observation aircraft off to starboard, were volunteers—and it had been made very clear that there was a chance they might not make it home. In theory, at the Tupolev’s maximum speed it would reach the minimum safe distance with a small margin to spare … but theory and practice were two different things.

“Message received,” came the reply. “Fifty seconds to drop. Wind speed and direction on your escape vector remain constant.” A pause, then: “Good luck.”

Durnovtsev did not reply, instead checking his instruments, preparing himself. The actual release of the bomb was controlled from the ground; his job was to fly the bomber on an exact heading, taking the prevailing winds into account so the Tsar Bomba would parachute down as close to its target as possible. Even though it could destroy an entire city the size of New York, for whatever reason his masters at the Kremlin wanted their superweapon to hit the right spot. A demonstration to the West of precision as well as power, he supposed.

All musings vanished at another radio message. “Thirty seconds to drop. Prepare for device release.”

“Confirm thirty seconds to release,” Durnovtsev replied, before switching to the aircraft’s internal intercom. “Thirty seconds! All crew, secure stations and confirm readiness!”

One by one his men reported ready, all systems green. “Fifteen seconds,” said the ground controller. Durnovtsev’s stomach knotted, but he held his hands firmly on the controls, ready to act. One last check of the instruments. Everything was as it should be.

“Ten seconds!” A glance at the compass. The Tu-95 was now heading almost due east, curving in toward its target; to survive, he had to turn the lumbering bomber to the southwest as quickly and sharply as possible. “Drop in five seconds! Four! Three! Two! One—
drop
!”

The release mechanisms opened—and the Tupolev shot upward as twenty-seven tons of death fell from its gaping bomb bay.

A massive parachute snapped open in the slipstream the moment the bomb was clear of the fuselage. Barometric sensors would trigger the detonators at an altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. But even with the huge ’chute slowing it, the Tsar Bomba was still plunging earthward at a frightening speed, giving the bomber and its chase plane less than three minutes to reach safety.

If they could.

Durnovtsev had already slammed the flight controls hard over, throwing the Tu-95 into a sharp banking turn. The smaller Tu-16 held its course for a few more seconds, its cameras and observers tracking the bomb to make sure the parachute had deployed, before it too swung southwest. Its pilot immediately went to full power, the jet rapidly outpacing the wallowing turboprop.

“The payload has been dropped and the parachute
successfully deployed,” said the voice in Durnovtsev’s headphones, relaying the news from the second aircraft. “Estimated detonation in two minutes and forty seconds. Go to maximum speed and initiate blast procedure.” Then, barely audible: “God be with you.”

As a loyal communist Durnovtsev was not a believer, but he certainly appreciated the sentiment. The Tupolev came about on to its escape heading; he leveled out, one hand pushing on the throttle levers to the detent. The Tu-16 was already shrinking into the distance.

The airspeed indicator showed that the Tu-95 was now traveling at just over 510 knots, its four mighty engines straining. “Begin blast procedure!” he ordered. Across the cockpit, his co-pilot pulled a pair of thick, almost opaque dark goggles down over his eyes. Durnovtsev waited until the insectile lenses were secure before donning his own. Day turned to night, the instruments barely visible through the tinted glass.

But he knew that the sky would become much brighter very soon.

Volkov looked up at the clouds again. Even over the sound of the dogs, he could now hear the bomber. The rumbling drone was subtly different, though. A Doppler shift; the aircraft was moving away from him.

He shook off a vague sense of unease. Whatever the plane was doing, it could have nothing to do with him—or the reason he was here. He touched the steel cylinder’s case, making sure it was secured in place. It was. Reassured, he looked back as the sled crested a rise. The blackened remains of the facility stood out against the snow, the entrance to the pit an ominous yawning mouth. The runestone was a single broken tooth at its edge.

There was no sentiment as Volkov regarded his former
workplace for the last time. What mattered above all else was the work itself; what he had discovered, and where it could lead.

He turned his back on the scene, a small smile rising. With the sample in his possession and a new life awaiting in the United States, that work would continue.

“Thirty seconds to detonation!” Durnovtsev barked into the intercom. “All crew, brace for blast!”

He pulled his seat-belt straps as tight as they would go before clenching his hands back around the controls. The compass was an indiscernible shadow through the goggles, but holding the Tupolev on course was about to be the least of his concerns.

The ground controller continued the countdown. Twenty seconds. Ten. A last look around at the other crew in the cockpit. Dark shapes regarded him with impenetrable black eyes. One of the men in the seats behind him was holding a small cine camera, its lens pointed over Durnovtsev’s shoulder at the front windows. The pilot gave him a brief nod, trying to dismiss the thought that it might be the last time anyone ever saw his face, then looked ahead once more.

Five seconds. Four. Three …

Even through the heavily tinted goggles, the sky suddenly became as bright as the sun.

Volkov checked his watch again: 11:32. The dogs were making better time on the return trip to the boat, perhaps as eager as he was to get off the bleak island—

The leaden gray clouds turned pure white.

A flash lit the landscape from high above, its reflection from the snow blinding. Steam rose around the sled, the bitter cold dispelled by a searing heat.…

Volkov’s last thought was one of horrified realization—the bomber
had
been on a mission—before he and everything
for miles around vanished in an unimaginable fire.

The Tsar Bomba detonated two and a half miles above the ground. Durnovtsev had done his job with great skill; even with the inherent inaccuracy of a parachute-dropped weapon, it was within half a mile of its target.

But a fifty-megaton hydrogen bomb did not need to be precise.

The nuclear fireball, over two miles across, was as hot as the sun’s core. It never reached the ground, its own rapidly expanding shock wave bouncing back up off the surface to deflect it. But its flash alone, racing outward at the speed of light, was enough to melt rock and vaporize anything lesser in a fraction of a second. Behind it came the blast, a wall of superheated air compressed so hard that it was practically solid. What little survived the flash was obliterated moments later.

The Tu-95 was almost thirty miles from Ground Zero when the bomb exploded. Even inside the plane, its crew felt a sudden heat as high-energy radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays passed through the aircraft—and their bodies. Sparks flashed around the cabin, the nuclear burst’s electromagnetic pulse surging through the bomber’s wiring. Durnovtsev heard an unearthly squeal in his headphones as their little loudspeaker converted the electrical overload into sound.

The brightness outside faded, but Durnovtsev knew the danger was far from over. The shock wave was on its way. Even with the Tupolev going flat out, it would catch up in seconds. He braced himself, hands on the controls ready to react.…

It was as if the bomber had been rammed from behind by a speeding train.

For a moment Durnovtsev was stunned by the force of the impact, his restraints cutting tightly into his chest and crushing the breath from him. He struggled back to full awareness, gasping inside his oxygen mask as he pulled up the goggles. The sky was an angry orange-red, the fireball illuminating it like a miniature star. A colossal booming roar filled his ears: the sound of the atmosphere itself burning.

The artificial horizon was tumbling, the altimeter needle spinning rapidly down. A sickening feeling in his stomach told him he was in free fall. The Tupolev was dropping out of the sky, swatted like a wasp. It had already fallen a kilometer, and was still plunging.…

The cloud layer below had been evaporated by the shock wave. The cold sea glinted through the windows—the Tu-95 was nose down. Durnovtsev pulled back hard on the controls to level out. The engines were still at full power; he eased them off to reduce the stress on the wings. The horizon slowly dropped back down through his view.

Nausea faded, the pressure on his chest easing. “Is everyone all right?” he shouted over the crackling rumble. To his relief, all his crew replied in the positive. Next came a systems check. There had been some damage, but the aircraft was still in the sky with all four engines running. As far as Durnovtsev was concerned, that was a successful outcome.

He tried the radio. As he’d expected, nothing came through but a strange static screech. The explosion had ionized the atmosphere, making transmissions all but impossible. He had no idea how long it would take the effect to fade—all he could do was follow his orders and return to base.

The navigator provided him with the correct heading, but as he made the course change, Durnovtsev was
stuck by a compulsion to see what he had wrought. He turned the bomber further so he could look back toward Novaya Zemlya through the cockpit’s side windows.

What he saw chilled his blood. The Tu-95 had climbed back to its original altitude, over six miles above sea level … but the mushroom cloud had already risen far higher, demonic fire still burning within as it roiled skyward. A ring of smoke and ash was expanding around its base.

Nothing on the ground could possibly have survived.

Durnovtsev stared at the fearsome sight for one last moment, then turned his plane for home.

The landscape around Ground Zero was now unrecognizable from what it had been just minutes before. Snow had flashed to steam, the frozen soil beneath turned instantly to cinders before being blown away by the immense force of the blast. Even the very rocks had melted into a glaze covering the bowl of the newly formed crater.

Nothing remained of the facility. It had been atomized, along with the two men. Even the runestone, which had withstood the harsh climate for over a thousand years, was gone.

As was the pit.

The blast had sealed it forever, countless tons of molten and shattered rock filling it in. The dark secrets it contained would now remain hidden for eternity.

Except …

The runestone, and the words inscribed upon it, were no more. But they had been recorded, translated, and analyzed. The men who had ordered Durnovtsev’s mission knew what it said.

And knew the danger it still represented. A danger they could not allow to be released.