Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(41)

It took a fair amount of effort, but they finally got the crate broken down. What they were left with was a tube about ten feet long and a little over a foot in diameter. The front was covered in a clear glass dome with stabilizer fins just behind. At the other end were significantly larger guidance fins and markings that identified it as Soviet in origin.

“I said I was looking to take out a house, Scott. Not a town.”

“We’re not sure if Marroqui has antiaircraft capability, so I figured we’d drop something from high up. The problem is that if you’re going to do that, you need guidance. This was the smallest thing the Latvians had lying around that’s got the right mix of features. Besides, you said you wanted to make a statement, right? Well, nothing says ‘fuck you’ like eleven hundred pounds of fuel-air explosive.”

Rapp nodded in the darkness. The man had a point.





CHAPTER 18


“TOO much or just enough?” Scott Coleman shouted over the gale blowing through the turboprop’s open door. They were cruising at twelve thousand feet above a black, uninhabited landscape. As forecasted, the clouds were continuing to dissipate, giving way to patches of hazy stars. A few dim red lights illuminated what had once been the passenger area of the aircraft but was now a stripped-down cargo hold.

The former SEAL had just finished taping protective foam to the bomb’s tail fins in a configuration that would protect them as they went through the door but then be torn off by the wind as it fell. The operation was more art than science, though. The Soviets had designed the weapon to be released by a mechanism somewhat more sophisticated than two guys chucking it out the side of a smuggling plane.

“Looks okay to me!” Rapp shouted back.

Coleman gave him the thumbs-up and walked over to a console fitted with a joystick, a monitor, and a disconcerting amount of Cyrillic writing. The bomb had a camera in the nose cone that could be used to find and lock on to a target. Once that was done, the fins—hopefully undamaged from their exit and no longer covered in padding—would take over.

A yet-unanswered question was whether Marroqui followed blackout protocols at night. While modern weapons would have infrared, starlight, laser, and whatever other overpriced systems defense contractors could come up with, this relic relied entirely on black-and-white video with the resolution of an I Love Lucy rerun. Fortunately, what Soviet engineers lacked in finesse they tended to make up for with brute force. Pinpoint accuracy wasn’t really necessary for this beast.

Their pilot appeared from the cockpit and raised a fist—the signal that they were five minutes from their target and that he was going to bring them to their operational altitude of twenty-five thousand feet. Rapp put on an oxygen mask and attached the bottle to his belt. Coleman did the same and they tied off to a couple of lines that would allow them to reach the open door but not fall through it.

The sensation of gravity intensified as they started their climb. Rapp put on a down jacket and goggles and then slid forward on his stomach until the rope attached to his harness went tight. Even through his headset, the roar of the engines and wind was deafening as he hung his head into space. No sign of anything on the ground, but based on the lack of stars, it seemed likely that they were passing through one of the intermittent clouds.

To his right, Coleman was messing with the video console, occasionally glancing at the rather rough Google translation of the instructions. Rapp focused on him for a moment, regretting all the times he’d taken the geeks at Langley for granted. Their abilities with languages, computers, and a hundred other things had saved his ass more times than he cared to remember. If they didn’t end up crashing into the side of a mountain or vaporizing themselves with their new Soviet toy, maybe he’d send donuts.

“You got anything?” Coleman shouted over his earphones.

“Not yet.”

The plane’s interior lights flickered, suggesting they’d reached twenty-five thousand feet. Rapp continued to search the ground, finally picking up something in his light-sensitive peripheral vision.

“Benjamín. Do you see that?”

“Sí! Right where the coordinates you gave me said it would be.”

The plane continued on course as the dim glow intensified. After another minute or so, it resolved into lights forming a rough circle in the sea of darkness. Not surprising. To the degree Marroqui expected trouble, he’d reasonably assume it would come from the ground. Based on that, security floods on his perimeter made a lot of sense. At least they had until he’d sent a hit squad to the South African wine country.

“One minute!” their pilot said.

Rapp and Coleman took positions on either side of the bomb. It was too long to point directly at the open door, but it was more or less angled in that direction.

“Get ready… On my mark… Now!”

The plane banked hard, tilting down on the door side to provide a gravity assist as they started pushing the weapon. Even with the incline, it was heavy as hell. Progress was slower than expected, right up to the moment that the nose cleared the aircraft’s fuselage. Despite the fact that they’d slowed to barely above stall speed, the wind caught the front fins and spun the weapon like it was made of papier-maché. It hit Coleman about calf height, knocking him down and fouling his safety line in one of the rear fins.

Rapp dove on top of him as the line went taut, pulling a switchblade from his pocket and snapping it open. In the end, though, it was unnecessary. The fin cut through the line before they could be dragged out and the bomb disappeared into the darkness. Suddenly free of its weight, the plane jerked back to level and their pilot throttled up. Rapp lifted Coleman and dragged him toward the video console, starting a silent countdown in his mind. Approximately thirty seconds to impact.