Operation “Stray Dog”. Chapter 4

Subscription to Stupidity

11:40 EST (20:20 Tehran time). 3 hours before Zeynab’s call. Isfahan. IRGC Secure Communications Hub

The secure comms room resembled a spaceship built from Soviet tank parts. The walls were padded with soundproofing panels the color of “bureaucratic depression,” and the air conditioner hummed with the strain of a dying elephant. On the desk sat a glass of tea with a lonely lemon floating in it like a sunken island.

Amirkhan Mousavi was screaming into the receiver of a red phone so loudly that the bulletproof glass separating him from the operators fogged up.

“What do you mean you ‘don’t see it’?! It’s not a sparrow, Lieutenant! It’s a five-ton Korean idiot with a nuclear reactor! It glows in the infrared spectrum like a Christmas tree in a Dubai mall!”

The voice of the duty air defense officer from the bunker in Hamadan was dull and hopeless, like instructions for assembling IKEA furniture written in Swedish.

“Colonel, sir, I understand. But the S-400 ‘Triumph’ system is giving error 404.”

“What the hell kind of error?!”

“‘License for long-range detection module has expired. Please contact your system administrator to renew your subscription or upgrade to Premium.’ The Russians cut off the package, Colonel. We’re left with ‘Basic’—we only see things flying slower than a camel and no further than eight kilometers.”

Amirkhan felt his eyelid twitch.

“Update the firmware! Hack it! You are the hackers of Allah!”

“We can’t. It has Kaspersky protection. If we try to crack it, it will lock the launchers and start mining cryptocurrency. And Bitcoin is down right now, so it’s economically unfeasible.”

Amirkhan slammed the receiver onto the cradle. The plastic cracked.

“Sanctions,” he hissed. “They’ve put sanctions even on friendship.”

He walked over to the safe, punched in the code (his wedding date, which he never forgot after that incident with the botched surveillance), and pulled out a white Starlink terminal—General Alavi’s legacy. He stepped out onto the balcony. The sky was clear, inky, and indifferent. Somewhere up there, in the stratosphere (or the troposphere, given the vacuum cleaner navigation—Amirkhan wasn’t too clear on the specifics), a Hwasong was flying. And it wasn’t flying to Mars, but to his daughter, to them, while he stood there with a dish from Elon Musk, trying to reach the only Russian who could help…

Taiga. 100 km from Severodvinsk. Altitude 50 meters

FSB Lieutenant General Vladimir “The Wolf” Volkov. A man who could solve any problem if he was sober. Or if he was drunk but in a good mood. Right now, judging by the time, he was in a state of quantum superposition.

An Mi-8 helicopter, repainted in “Luxury Winter” camouflage (white leather interior, backlit mini-bar, karaoke system), flew over the treetops, slicing the darkness with powerful searchlights.

The general sat by the open door, dangling his legs clad in polar wolf fur boots. In his hands, he held not a Kalashnikov—that was for plebeians and conscripts. He held a captured American AR-15 rifle with a latest-generation thermal scope and a gold-plated trigger. A retirement gift from CIA colleagues.

“Ergonomics!” he shouted to the pilot over the roar of the rotors, pressing his cheek to the stock. “Those Yanks know how to make things! Light as a Bolshoi ballerina! Not like our oar!”

Below, in the deep snow, sinking up to their bellies, a herd of wild boars ran. They ran not out of fear, but out of despair.

“Lower, Mikhalych! I want to look him in the eye before I turn him into shashlik! I want to see his soul!”

In the pocket of his sheepskin coat, sewn from the pelts of endangered seals, a satellite phone vibrated.

Volkov grimaced.

“Who is it now? The wife? Mikhalych, answer it! Tell her I’m in a meeting in the Arctic! Saving polar bears from global warming!”

But the phone wouldn’t quit. And the number was strange. Iranian. +98.

Cursing, Volkov pressed the phone to his ear with his shoulder, not letting go of the rifle.

“Hello! Volkov on the line. Speak fast, my boar is escaping into neutral waters!”

In Tehran, Amirkhan put it on speaker and launched a voice translator on an old tablet.

“Volodya! It’s Amirkhan! We have a problem!”

The robot translator’s voice, female and emotionless, rendered this as: “Vladimir. This is Emir. We have a goat.”

Volkov burped, releasing a small cloud of steam that smelled of Armenian cognac.

“What goat, Amir? I’m hunting boar! Why do I need your goat?”

“Korean missile!” Amirkhan screamed into the speaker. “Flying through you! Nuclear! Turn on the radars for us, your hustlers cut off the subscription! Urgent!”

Google Translate thought for a second, digesting the Persian idioms, and spat out: “Korean fireworks. Flying through you. Atomic. Activate your ears, your merchants killed the subscription to life.”

Volkov frowned. Through the noise of the rotors and half a liter of cognac, the meaning began to dawn on him. “Korean… atomic… flying at me.”

“Taepodong?” he yelled, drowning out the engine noise. “Did that fat Kim finally press the button?! I knew it! I said in the Security Council you shouldn’t give matches to children!”

“Yes! Hwasong!” Amirkhan shouted (Translator: “Affirmative! Truth!”). “Shoot it down or give us the activation codes!”

General Volkov realized the scale of the catastrophe. If the missile fell in the taiga—to hell with it, the taiga is big, the boars will mutate, get even bigger. But if it fell on his dacha in Sochi? The vineyards!

He jumped to his feet, forgetting that a helicopter is not an office at the Lubyanka, but a vibrating tin can in the air.

“Mikhalych! Turn around! Code Red! Urgent comms with Moscow! Fuck!!!”

The helicopter hit an air pocket.

The general, losing his balance on the slippery floor (who’s idea was it to put parquet in a helicopter?), bounced up. His head in the fur hat met a ceiling beam with a dull thud.

His finger, resting on the gold-plated, ultra-sensitive trigger of the American AR-15, reflexively squeezed.

A burst—rat-a-tat!—went not into the boar. And not into the air.

It went into the instrument panel, right between pilot Mikhalych’s legs, turning the GLONASS navigation system into confetti.

Sparks. Smoke. The pilot’s scream.

“What are you doing, you old asshole!!!” Mikhalych yelled, letting go of the cyclic. “Hydraulics! We’re going down!”

“It wasn’t me!” Volkov screamed, falling to the floor and trying to catch the bottle of cognac. “It’s American ergonomics!!! It’s sabotage!!!”

The helicopter spun like a top. The fir trees approached rapidly, looking like the spears of a green army.

In Amirkhan’s receiver, there was a crackle, a stream of choice Russian profanity (which the translator delicately rendered as “Oh God, how unexpected”), the sound of metal hitting wood, the crunch of branches, and finally, silence.

Amirkhan stared at the phone. The screen blinked: “Connection Lost.”

“Hello?” he asked into the void. “Volodya? Did you shoot it down?”

Google Translate remained silent.

Amirkhan sighed and rubbed his face with his palm.

“I think he shot himself down.”

The door opened. Zahra walked in. She was wearing a lab coat, holding a tablet, and looking like she was about to split an atom with her bare hands.

“What about the Russians?” she asked.

“The Russians have left the chat,” Amirkhan put the phone away. “They… went on a safari. For a long time.”

“So what now?” Zahra asked, looking at him with her intelligent, tired eyes.

“Now call the kids,” he said. “And pray that someone on this planet has working internet and no subscription to stupidity.”

Chapter 5. “Power of Siberia” — Power of TikTok →
← Isfahan
← Shiraz
← Fordow
← Operation “Stray Dog”