Tiger by the Tail (43 page)

Vanel and Marko both pointed their pistols in the man’s face and advanced on him, forcing him to backpedal into the room. Three more people, all dressed in the same outfits, looked up in surprise as the group marched into the small control area. Marko and Bourey swung their guns over to cover the rest of the group. What really made Vanel’s eyes widen was the fully operational control panel, with glowing monitors showing incomprehensible readings and lights blinking and on all across the board.

“Tell them to get their hands up!” Vanel said, motioning at the ceiling with his pistol. Bourey rattled off some Burmese, and the other three slowly began to comply.

“Hey, what’s with leaving the control room door open—” said a loud voice behind them. Marko turned to cover the new arrival. “Hey, what’s—who?”

Seeing the pistol, the man turned and bolted back outside. With a curse, Marko took off after him, leaving Vanel and Bourey to cover the other four.

Spotting one of them slowly moving toward a console, Vanel said, “Don’t—”

The man lunged toward a red button, leaving Vanel with no choice but to fire. The shot was loud in the confined space, making his ears ring.

A small black hole appeared in the middle of the man’s suit, just below his heart. He collapsed where he was, his hand inches from that button, breathed one last time, and died. The other three didn’t move a muscle, just alternated between staring at their dead co-worker and the man who had just shot him.

Vanel was already on his radio. “Inara Four to Kildar.”

“Go for Kildar,” Mike replied.

“What the hell is going on here?” Bourey asked. “The only time you are to be in the suits is . . . when . . . there is leak . . .” He whirled to Vanel. “We have to get out of here right now! There is leak in reactor!”

* * *

Khin hustled the semi-clothed young woman through the door as Jace called out, “Another one to keep an eye on, Chief.”

Meanwhile, Mike sat on the dark wooden desk and set the pistol on his leg, the muzzle casually pointing at the colonel’s head. Jace closed the door and walked over to stand in front of the desk. The army officer started to turn to look at him, but was stopped when his jaw hit the slide of Mike’s pistol.

“No no no, you really want to keep those watering eyes on me right now,” Mike said, tapping the man’s face with the muzzle for emphasis. “Now, you’ve already seen what I do when I stop in to say hello. So you can imagine how much worse I get when I ask a few questions and don’t like the answers I hear, right?”

Colonel Ohnmar nodded, his eyes on the black muzzle of the 9mm pistol inches away from his face.

“All right then. You have received the motherboards for the reactor, correct?”

The colonel nodded.

“Where are they right now?”

“In the main reactor building, undergoing a final inspection before being installed,” Jace translated.

“Good. Since the rest of the crew has been rounded up, have Adams and Khin go and collect the boards. Lock the officer personnel up with the rest of the crew.” Mike turned back to the colonel. “Where were we? Ah, yes. You were about to tell me the military’s true purpose for this reactor.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about—” was all the farther the officer got before Mike placed the muzzle of his pistol on the man’s lips and slowly shook his head.

“See, that is exactly what I am talking about. You tell me something that I do not want to hear—” Mike increased his pressure on the gun, forcing it into the man’s mouth. He gagged as the slide scraped past his teeth, tears trickling down his face as Mike shoved the pistol in farther. “—and that really upsets me. Now let’s try it again, or I am going to shoot your other hand.”

Squirming in the leather chair, the colonel tried to speak around the metal filling his mouth.

“I can’t understand anything he’s saying with his mouth full,” Jace said, then wrinkled his nose. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, he pissed himself.” Mike withdrew the pistol fast, chipping Ohnmar’s upper front tooth. Grabbing the man’s undamaged hand, he slapped it on the desk. Setting the muzzle on top of it, he said, “I am going to count to three, and I’d better hear something better than ‘I don’t know!’ One . . .” He stared at the colonel, whose sweat was trickling down his forehead to mingle with the blood on his jaw and shirt.

“. . . Two . . .” Mike thumbed back the trigger. “. . . Th—”

The officer started babbling in a torrent Jace could barely follow. “God damnit, get him to slow down!”

Mike pulled the pistol away and held it up in front of the man’s face. “Once more, from the top.”

“Okay, okay, I will tell you! Several high-ranking military officers are planning to manufacture a large-scale nuclear event at this plant in order to take over the country. They needed the control boards to get the reactor running so they could create a meltdown scenario and release a large cloud of radioactive steam—”

“But Mandalay is only about forty miles south of here. They are going to release radiation that could affect their own people?” Mike asked.

“That is not the real target. We were supposed to wait until a southern wind came up and then cause the criticality accident. The goal was to get a cloud of radioactive material heading toward Nay Pyi Taw—”

“The country’s new capitol city,” Jace interrupted his own translation to add.

“—and force a city-wide evacuation. The men in charge of managing the evacuation would remove the government staff and hold them prisoner in an undisclosed location until the military can launch their
coup d’etat
and reestablish their control over the nation. Afterward, they would use Yangon as a base of operations until they can decontaminate the central area of the country.”

“Okay, but if they’re the military, why did they need to buy all those arms from China?” Mike asked.

“Because not all of the upper officers are in on the plan. The group couldn’t draw that much weapons and equipment and send it north without it looking suspicious, especially with most the insurgent activity occurring in the west and the south. The weapons are to arm a large contingent of loyalists who are waiting for its arrival in Mandalay right now.”

“Shit! I thought Cong might have been selling them to the insurgents, not the fucking army itself!” Mike’s radio buzzed, and he snatched it up. “Go for Kildar.”

“This is Inara Four, we are evacuating the control room. Have found men in radiation suits working inside, and control panel is operational.”

“What the fuck?” Mike’s head snapped up. “Khin, I thought you said the control room wasn’t working yet.”

At Jace’s translation, the engineer’s face paled. “It shouldn’t be—” He yanked the door open and ran out of the office.

Mike grabbed the colonel, whose face was also draining of blood, by the shirt collar. “Come on, we’re going to see what the fuck is going on out there.”

“Wait—what are you talking about? No one should be working in there right now. They are just supposed to be doing final adjustments to the reactor before installing the boards.”

“Well, we’re gonna find out one way or the other.” Keeping the man in front of him, Mike marched him out of the office. He instructed Adams to maintain his position as he went by.

Leaving the administrative building, they walked over to the control room, where four people in heavy radiation gear were standing with their hands on the wall. The last member had dirt stains on his knees, chest, and arms, as if he had been tackled. A fifth suited body lay on the ground beside them.

As Mike and Colonel Ohnmar walked up, Khin burst out of the room, holding both hands up. “It is okay. There is no danger, the fuel rods are secure.” He put his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“What was going on in there?” Mike asked.

“Don’t get me wrong, if your people had been a couple minutes later, these guys would have initiated a countdown to a criticality accident.”

“Meaning?” Mike asked, although he had a pretty damn good idea what the short engineer was talking about.

“A core meltdown and release of radioactive steam—a lot of radioactive steam—into the atmosphere.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Cargo hold, this is your captain speaking. We are about to begin our final approach into Mandalay International Airport in the oppressed nation of Myanmar, and should be landing in approximately six minutes. Please make sure that you are in your seat with your seat belts fastened. You’ve probably already noticed that there are no tray tables, so no need to concern yourself with returning them to an upright position. In the event of one of the vehicles breaking loose and careening around the cabin—not that that would happen under our excellent tech sergeant’s watch—however, if that were to happen, we’d probably be heading straight into the ground, with only enough time to stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. On behalf of the pilot, tech sergeant, and myself, we’d like to thank you for flying the United States Air Force Super Hercules, the loudest, most uncomfortable flight in the air.”

“Really, Major Wolfe?” Timmons asked as he did one final check of his flaps, landing gear, and airspeed. Everything was nominal. The 14,000-foot runway stretched out before him like a concrete road into infinity. He took a moment to admire the design of the access paths to and from the main terminal. They were at forty-five-degree angles to both the runway and the road next to the boarding bridges, allowing easy access both to and from the main runway.

“Hey, I never get the chance to do any of that with our cargo runs.”

“Yes, but you know probably none of them heard you.”

His copilot shrugged. “The opportunity was there. Besides, it’s not like I had anything to do like watch for other flights out here at the ghost airport.”

“Yeah, it is a bit off-putting, isn’t it?” Timmons checked the radar one last time. As before, he found it amazingly empty for a major international airport. The Super Hercules came down onto the runway perfectly. With so much space ahead of him, he didn’t even have to work the brakes, but could let the Herc coast to a stop using less than half of the available runway.

This was Timmons’s first time to Mandalay, and he marveled at the clean, neat lines of the main building with its pair of twin tiered pagoda-style roofs. Everything, from the terminal itself to the huge runway, was less than fifteen years old. And the whole place was pretty much barren.

Built to handle one thousand passenger arrivals and departures every hour, or three million passengers a year, with a flight leaving or arriving every eight minutes, the forlorn Mandalay airport now looked exactly like the white elephant government critics had labeled it when the decision to build it was first announced. There were only a handful of aircraft from lesser-known flight companies like Air Bagan, Air Mandalay, Asian Wings Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Yangon Airways at various boarding gates. There was certainly no line waiting to take off on the huge runway.

Feathering his turboprops, Timmons taxied to the end of the runway and found a parking area that looked like a good place to sit for a bit while their passengers and cargo got themselves sorted out.

Wolfe was staring out his side window. “Looks like we’re about to have company. That didn’t take long.”

Timmons looked over to see an unmarked sedan plus an airport security car speeding in their direction. “Sure hope our mystery leader can work his magic on these guys as easily as he did at Tbilisi and Kabul. I’m going to head down to see if he needs any assistance.”

“Hey, count me in.” His copilot was right behind him as Timmons went down the stairs leading to the cargo area. The twenty men were still sitting facing each other in the red seat webbing Sandra had rigged for them. The vehicles were still secure, as expected, and took up every available inch of the bay remaining.

Colonel Neilson was up, however, and greeted the pilots with a smile. “Thank you for the excellent and speedy flight, gentlemen.”

“Our pleasure, sir. However—” Timmons jerked a thumb in the general direction of the approaching car. “What looks like a security car is approaching outside. I imagine they want to have a word with us.”

The colonel’s smile grew even broader. “I’ll take care of them, and see if I can get you refueled at the same time. Meanwhile, let’s get the men and vehicles offloaded, all right? Do you need anything else while I’m out there?”

Timmons exchanged a puzzled glance with his copilot. “Not that I can think of.”

“Okay, see you in a bit.” By this time Sandra had lowered the rear loading ramp, and Nielson walked down. He headed straight for the cars, which had stopped about fifteen yards away.

Timmons walked down just far enough to see the man conversing with three men who had gotten out of the cars to meet him. One was in a suit jacket and the other two were in security uniforms. They spoke for several minutes, and at one point Nielson pulled out a satphone and began dialing a number. This made the jacketed man raise his hands and shake his head. Nielson put the phone away and pointed at one of the engines. The airport suit’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded and pulled out a radio mic from his car and began talking into it.

As Nielson walked back to the aircraft, Timmons glanced at Wolfe again.

“Who the hell are these guys?”

* * *

“Well, that was interesting,” Mike said.

“That’s one way to put it,” Jace replied.

They had just spent the last twenty minutes interrogating the control room crew. All of them had been very willing to talk after seeing their team leader get shot to death right in front of them. They had put together a disturbing picture of what had been about to happen if Vanel and his team hadn’t interrupted them.

With the control boards in place and the nuclear fuel loaded, the control team had been about to scram the reactor while it was only partially covered with water. That would enable the safety systems to engage, but at nowhere near maximum efficiency. Also, they were going to override the activation of the Isolation Condenser System and the crossflow cooling towers. According to Khin, the result would have been catastrophic. The metal cladding around the uranium fuel pellets would have melted, releasing a lethal amount of radiation into the surrounding area. If the meltdown wasn’t contained in time, it might have even led to the theorized “China Syndrome” of the late ’70s, where superheated nuclear material would have melted deep into the earth’s crust.