9: Chapter 9 A Spark in the Desert

May 1976.

Two months after Fatima arrived in Khuzestan, Reza arranged for her to stay in an underground bunker next to the oil well base.

Calling it a "laboratory" was generous; it was actually a concrete hole dug into the ground—thirty meters long, fifteen meters wide, and three and a half meters high. Ventilation relied on two iron pipes leading to the surface, and lighting was powered by a diesel generator obtained from the Americans. Most of the equipment inside was second-hand goods sourced from the black markets in Pakistan and Turkey, while the rest were makeshift contraptions Fatima had modified herself.

When Fatima first walked into this underground hole, she stood at the entrance for ten seconds.

"It's even worse than I imagined," she said.

Then she rolled up her sleeves and started working.

In two months, she did three things.

First: She analyzed all the military blueprints provided by Reza, separating those that were "achievable under Iran's current industrial conditions" from those that were "completely impossible."

The conclusion was crueler than Reza had anticipated—out of twelve blueprints, only three were assessed by Fatima as "possible."

"Your Anti-tank mines plan is the simplest; just use cast iron shells filled with TNT. Any foundry in Iran can make them," she said, pointing to the drawings. "The short-range rocket plan is also doable, but the accuracy is very poor; it can basically only hit area targets. As for the 'Persia-1 Type' short-range missile—"

She looked up at Reza.

"This thing is theoretically feasible, but the guidance system you need cannot be built in Iran. What you drew on the blueprint is inertial guidance, which requires high-precision gyroscopes. Iran does not have the capability to produce gyroscopes, and importing them would be immediately discovered by the Americans."

"What if we don't use inertial guidance?"

"Then we can only use the most primitive unguided flight, similar to the V-1s the Germans used during World War II. With a range of two hundred kilometers, the circular error probable would be at least three kilometers. In other words, if you aim at a military base, the missile might land in a farm three kilometers away."

"A three-kilometer deviation?"

"Yes. That is the price of not having a guidance system."

Reza pondered for a while.

In his previous life, he certainly knew the importance of guidance systems, but he also knew that in 1970s Iran, trying to create precision-guided weapons was pure fantasy.

But—who said war must rely on precision guidance?

"If a three-kilometer deviation is no good for hitting a military base, what about hitting a city?"

Fatima was stunned.

"When Saddam Hussein's missiles hit Tehran, they didn't have guidance systems either," Reza said. "He used modified Soviet Scud Missile variants, and the circular error probable was even greater than three kilometers. But he didn't care, because he was hitting cities—as long as it landed within the city limits, it could cause panic. This is called a 'terror weapon,' not a 'precision weapon.'"

Fatima was silent for a long time.

She was a scientist, not a soldier. The concept of a "terror weapon" took time for her to digest.

But she digested it quickly.

Because she was smart enough, and clear-headed enough. She knew that in this dog-eat-dog world, Iran could not rely on "morality" to protect itself.

"Fine," she finally said. "If you only want an unguided rocket that can fly two hundred kilometers and land within a three-kilometer deviation range—then I can build it within a year. But there is a prerequisite."

"What prerequisite?"

"I need at least twenty engineers and technical workers. At least five must have metalworking experience, three must understand chemical engineering, and two must be able to weld special alloys. Also, I need a lathe—not the small lathe used for making screws, but a heavy-duty lathe capable of machining workpieces over one meter."

"I will find the people. As for the lathe—"

Reza opened his notebook.

In his memories from his previous life, Iran had imported a batch of heavy-duty lathes from Czechoslovakia in the 1970s for the ammunition factories of the Iran Defense Industries Organization. A portion of these lathes had been deemed "scrap" due to rust from moisture during transport and were piled up in a warehouse at Abadan Port.

Scrap didn't mean they couldn't be used; they just needed repair.

"There is a batch of scrapped Czech-made lathes at Abadan Port. I'll have Hassan go get a few."

Fatima looked at him—the same "how on earth do you know that" look—but she had already learned not to ask.

The second thing: Fatima solved the propellant problem.

She obtained butadiene monomer from a small refinery in Khuzestan and, using a homemade polymerization apparatus she assembled herself, synthesized the first batch of domestically produced polybutadiene propellant.

The purity was significantly lower than imported goods, but after repeatedly adjusting the formula and process parameters, she finally produced a batch of solid propellant with "barely sufficient" performance.

"Specific impulse of two hundred and ten seconds," Fatima reported with an expressionless face, as if she were talking about what she had for lunch. "It's thirty percent lower than American solid propellant, but it's enough to send a five-hundred-kilogram warhead two hundred kilometers away."

Reza knew clearly what "specific impulse of two hundred and ten seconds" meant.

The Scud missile from his previous life used liquid propellant, with a specific impulse of about two hundred and thirty seconds. The solid propellant Fatima had created in an underground hole using makeshift equipment was actually less than ten percent lower than the Scud Missile.

This woman was a monster-level genius.

The third thing was the most critical—Fatima designed the airframe structure of the "Persia-1 Type."

It wasn't the plan Reza had given her; it was one she had redesigned herself.

She cut sixty percent of Reza's original plan, retaining only the most basic functions of "being able to fly and explode." The airframe was welded from ordinary carbon steel without any thermal protection—anyway, flying two hundred kilometers, the airframe temperature wouldn't exceed three hundred degrees, and carbon steel could handle that. The warhead used the simplest high explosive; she didn't bother with cluster munitions or bunker-busters. The launch method used an inclined launcher; she didn't bother with vertical launch.

"Ugly. Rough. Primitive," Fatima evaluated her own design. "But—it works."

The first test airframe of the "Persia-1 Type" was assembled in August 1976.

It was four point seven meters long and forty centimeters in diameter. It was a grey-black carbon steel welded body, with crooked weld seams, and four crude stabilizer fins riveted to the tail, looking like a firework rocket magnified ten times.

Nasser's first reaction upon seeing this thing was: "This thing… can it fly?"

Fatima pushed up her glasses: "How would we know without trying?"

The test site was chosen in an uninhabited Gobi desert at the easternmost end of Khuzestan Province, right next to the Iraq border. There were no villages within a fifty-kilometer radius, and the nearest garrison was eighty kilometers away.

August 17, 1976, 3:00 AM.

Reza stood at an observation point two kilometers behind the launch site, holding a Soviet military telescope bought from the black market.

The launcher was a tripod welded from three steel pipes, as thick as telephone poles, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle toward the east. The "Persia-1 Type" test missile was fixed to the launcher by two steel cables, its tail nozzle pointing at the ground, like an ugly iron bird crouching there.

Fatima stood in a bunker three hundred meters next to the launcher, clutching a homemade electric igniter—essentially a car battery connected to a wire.

"Countdown," her voice came through the walkie-talkie, without a trace of tremor, "Ten, nine, eight—"

Reza gripped the telescope.

Hassan stood next to him, his hand subconsciously pressing the gun at his waist—he knew nothing about missiles, and when nervous, he only knew how to touch his gun.

"Three, two, one—ignition."

Fatima pressed the switch on the igniter.

Nothing happened.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Silence.

Reza's heart sank half an inch.

Then—

A low, muffled sound came from the direction of the launcher, like a roar from the deep throat of a giant beast.

A ball of scorching white flame erupted from the nozzle, carrying billowing smoke, instantly scorching the sand around the launcher into charred black.

The test missile trembled, and then—it left the launcher.

The speed was not fast. For the first few seconds, it was climbing slowly, like a child just learning to walk. But the thrust of the solid propellant continued to increase, and after five seconds, it had accelerated to a speed difficult to track with the naked eye, rushing into the night sky, dragging a white plume of smoke.

Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds.

The smoke plume disappeared into the darkness in the east.

Fatima's voice came over the walkie-talkie: "The engine worked normally for thirty-two seconds, and the thrust curve met expectations. If the calculations are correct, the impact point should be in the range of one hundred and eighty to two hundred and ten kilometers to the east-northeast."

"Can you confirm the impact point?"

"No. We don't have radar, and we don't have an observation station. We have to wait until dawn to send people to look for it."

Reza put down the telescope.

His hands were trembling slightly—not from fear, but from adrenaline.

In his previous life, he had participated in missile test launches, but that was in a modern test base with telemetry systems, real-time data links, and hundreds of engineers staring at screens.

And now—an underground cave, a genius woman, twenty workers, a pile of junk equipment—that was how they sent a missile into the sky.

"Hassan."

"Here."

"After dawn, send people to search along the trajectory. Find the crater, measure the location, and record all data."

"Yes."

Reza turned to the walkie-talkie.

"Fatima."

"Hmm?"

"Well done."

There was silence on the other end of the walkie-talkie for two seconds.

Then Fatima said one sentence, her voice as cold as usual, but Reza detected a trace of extremely faint, almost imperceptible pride—

"This is just the first step."

Two days later, the search team found the crater.

Location: one hundred and ninety-three kilometers east of the launch point. Deviation: four point seven kilometers to the north.

The crater was three meters in diameter and one point five meters deep. The airframe had completely shattered, but judging from the distribution of the debris, the warhead detonated at the moment of impact—the fuze worked normally.

After receiving the data, Fatima locked herself in the underground laboratory for three days without coming out. When she came out on the fourth day, she was holding a modified design plan.

"The four point seven-kilometer deviation was mainly due to insufficient machining precision of the tail fins, which caused a rolling moment during flight. If the machining tolerance of the tail fins is controlled within zero point five millimeters, the deviation can be reduced to under three kilometers."

"Can it be done?"

"Yes. But I need better lathes. Have the Czech lathes you mentioned arrived yet?"

"Hassan is working on it."

Fatima nodded and went back into the basement.

Reza stood outside the bunker, watching the figure disappear underground.

The first test launch of the "Persia-1 Type" flew one hundred and ninety-three kilometers. The deviation was four point seven kilometers.

It looked terrible on paper.

But in the Middle East in 1976—

Except for Israel, no Middle Eastern country possessed self-produced ballistic weapons with a range exceeding one hundred and fifty kilometers. Iraq's Scud missiles were provided directly by the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia's Dongfeng missiles were bought from China later, and Egypt's missiles were technology transfers from the Soviet Union.

And Iran—a country that even had to import bullets from the United States—had just built its first weapon capable of flying nearly two hundred kilometers in a hole in the ground in a desert, using a pile of junk.

What did this mean?

It meant that from this moment on, Persia had teeth.

Although they were just milk teeth for now.

But milk teeth could also bite.