Free Countdown by David Hagberg Page A

they’d passed through on the way in. It made the third since he and Schey had gotten out of the tractor and climbed up on the trailer with the missile.
    â€œHow much longer?” he asked the East German.

    Schey looked up from the open hatch in the missile’s side. “I was finished ten minutes ago. You asked me to stall for time.”
    â€œIt’s set on the new target?”
    â€œYes, of course, providing the data you supplied me with is correct.”
    â€œIt is,” Kurshin said curtly. “What about the abort mechanism?”
    â€œDisconnected.”
    â€œAt this point then, once the missile is launched there is no way for their Missile Control facility to recall it or destroy it?”
    The East German shook his head. “Short of sending a fighter interceptor after it and shooting it out of the sky—an almost impossible feat—no.”
    â€œVery good,” Kurshin said, glancing over his shoulder again toward the blockade at the south side of the plaza. “Button it up, let’s begin.”
    Schey closed and relocked the small hatch on the missile’s radar guidance system, and then replaced the section of outer skin he’d removed, dogging it down with a dozen flush-mounted fasteners.
    â€œWhat about the plastique collar?” Kurshin asked.
    â€œIt will fall harmlessly away within the first few seconds after launch.”
    â€œThere will be no effect on the missile’s course?”
    â€œNone that the guidance system won’t correct for.”
    â€œGood,” Kurshin said, his eyes hard. He jumped down from the trailer bed and one at a time lowered the hydraulic stabilizing jacks at each corner, while Schey was connecting the four launch control umbilical cords.
    If there was going to be trouble, Kurshin thought, sweating lightly, it would come now. They would be fools not to try to stop what was happening here. But then they had been fools at the base with their lack of security. This would never happen in the Rodina, not even now, though if it ever did it would shake up those pricks in the Kremlin even more than the German kid had done by flying his little toy airplane into Red Square.
    Ten minutes later, Schey checked all the wires and steadying
jacks to make certain everything was in order, then opened a control hatch at the side of the trailer and flipped a switch.
    The Pershing missile began to slowly rise from the trailer bed.
    HAUPTBAHNHOF SQUARE
    â€œOh, Jesus Christ,” Colonel Collingwood said as the missile began to elevate from its transport trailer.
    McGarvey had been looking through binoculars at the two men. The taller of them, dressed in an Air Force uniform, had turned several times, giving him a good look. He had the same bulk and general appearance as Kurshin, but his face was different. From here he looked very much like the photographs McGarvey had been shown of Brad Allworth.
    He lowered the binoculars. “Blow the missile now,” he said.
    Trotter, who had met him when the chopper had set down, stepped back a pace and Colonel Collingwood’s eyes widened.
    â€œIs this the hotshot who was supposed to come up with the good ideas?” the security chief spat at Trotter. He looked coldly at McGarvey. “Do you know what such an action would mean? Do you know what it would do here?”
    â€œYou say the civilians have been pulled out. Clear the rest of your men except for one volunteer sharpshooter who can hit the plastique. And blow it now before it’s too late.”
    â€œIt would spread radioactive materials for hundreds of yards,” Collingwood growled. “There would be a three-block area of no-man’s-land for a long time to come.”
    â€œYes,” McGarvey said, watching the missile rise. “And probably a number of casualties. An increase in the cancer rate over the next twenty or thirty years. The news media would be on your ass. The Pentagon would probably set you