THE NUCLEAR OPTION
Allan Leverone
© 2020 by Allan Leverone
Cover design by Elderlemon Design
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, some of which may be based in part on actual names, characters, places and incidents, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is unintended and entirely coincidental.
First eBook edition: 2020
Prologue
May 10, 1988
2:50 a.m.
Krasnoyarsk-26, USSR
The rumble of the Ural-43206 Red Army cargo truck’s diesel engine was hypnotic, low and steady, but there was little chance of any of the vehicle’s three occupants falling asleep. The mood inside the cab was tense, and the vodka-laced coffee the men had been sipping for the last two hours failed to ease their jitters.
The truck had been stolen from a bar just outside the gates of the Skrunda Radar Station in western Latvia three weeks earlier. Its driver had made an understandable—but costly—mistake: he had established a pattern of celebrating the end of his route with a few glasses of vodka.
At the same time.
In the same bar.
Every workday.
The soon-to-be court martialed army private had been so confident none of the locals would dare interfere with a Red Army vehicle he had left the key in its ignition and its doors unlocked as he drank. It wasn’t an inaccurate assumption on his part, either, but what he couldn’t have known was that the radical group Sovetskiy Soyuz Navsegda—Soviet Union Forever—was in desperate need of a cargo truck.
And the Ural-43206 fit the bill perfectly.
Accomplishing the theft was even easier than Navsegda team leader Nikolay Stepanov had expected. Fellow Navsegda member Rostya Terschenko entered the bar and began plying the fall guy with vodka while Nikolay simply slipped into the Ural’s cab and fired up the truck’s engine. For three hours Rostya bought the driver glass after glass, eventually slipping out the back door to a waiting car, leaving the man nearly unconscious and in danger of falling out of his chair.
That three-hour window afforded Nikolay more than sufficient time to disappear with the truck. He drove at a sensible pace, drawing no attention to the anonymous-looking army vehicle and putting enough distance between himself and Skrunda that there was virtually no chance of being apprehended by police or Red Army investigators when the drunken—and now truckless—driver finally sobered up enough to realize he’d been victimized.
The moderately drunk Rostya was a bear of a man, much larger and thus much more suited to absorbing the alcohol than the rail-thin Red Army private, but he was still in no condition to drive. That chore was handled by the third member of the Navsegda team, Ilya Kalinin.
The following day the men began the long journey to a Navsegda safe house in central Russia, taking their time, obeying all speed limits, driving carefully. Three days later they arrived and hunkered down, staying out of sight and awaiting the beginning of their real mission.
Tonight that mission had begun.
The access gates of Krasnoyarsk-26 swung into view in the distance as the big Russian-made cargo truck lumbered around a hairpin turn. Krasnoyarsk-26 was one of several closed Russian cities, meaning sensitive military work was conducted within its boundaries. The barbed-wire-topped fence gleaming dully in the truck’s headlights fully encircled the one hundred thousand person metropolitan area.
No one was permitted into or out of the city without proper authorization.
The road’s ninety-degree turn was an engineering measure designed to force drivers to slow to a crawl before approaching the security checkpoint. Its purpose was to discourage anyone foolish or crazy enough to contemplate using their vehicle to ram the gates.
Nikolay could not imagine such a measure being necessary, because manning both sides of all checkpoints were Red Army soldiers armed with Kalashnikov semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. And it was common knowledge that the soldiers had standing orders to use deadly force if necessary, to ensure preservation of the city’s security.
Every access road into and out of Krasnoyarsk-26 had been designed with a similar feature. There was not one highway, not one two-lane road, not one cow path, that approached the city limits straight on, despite the fact that this portion of south-central Russia was not much more than a vast wasteland outside those imposing barbed wire fences encircling the city.
But the impressive and potentially deadly security measures were of little concern to the three Navsegda radicals. They wouldn’t be attempting to smash through an armed security checkpoint, not tonight and not ever.
They had a different plan.
They were confident but still tense as the Ural-43206 eased to a stop next to a small wooden outbuilding housing a pair of Red Army soldiers. The air brakes screeched and hissed, and then the low rumble of the idling engine was the only sound as the three Navsegda operatives waited quietly for one or both of the soldiers to exit the shack.
For a long moment nothing happened. The Soviet sentries sat unmoving on the other side of a small Plexiglas window, staring out at the truck and its occupants impassively. It was almost as though they didn’t even see the Ural-42306, which was plainly impossible.
Ilya cleared his throat nervously. Tried to speak to his partners out of the corner of his mouth. “Are you sure we drove to the correct gate? What if we—”
“Be quiet,” Nikolay interrupted, his voice barely more than a whisper. “We are at the proper entrance. I mapped our route carefully, double-and-triple-checking it before committing it to memory. I reviewed it so many times I could drive it blindfolded. This is just another security measure. Remain calm and wait.”
As Nikolay finished speaking, one of the soldiers stood and exited the shack, approaching the driver’s side window.
Nikolay rolled it down and said, “Good evening, comrade. We are here for the scheduled laboratory pickup.”
The soldier responded immediately. “It is an unusual time for a pickup.”
“Yes,” Nikolay agreed. “Who can understand the reasoning of officers?”
At that, the guard’s posture eased. He’d been plainly tense, probably even more apprehensive than the three men inside the Ural, and Nikolay watched as the concern drained from his face, at least partially, and he held out his hand.
Rostya slipped a manila envelope to Nikolay, who passed it through the open window to the soldier.
“It is all here?” the young man said.
“Of course.”
“You will not mind if I check, then.”
“Not in the least.” It was a lie, of course, but not because the three Navsegda members had tried to short-change the guards out of their agreed-upon bribe.
Nikolay just felt far too exposed, sitting at the gates of a closed city in a stolen truck waiting for a goddamned army private to count his ill-gotten gains. Even though it was just before three a.m., who could say another vehicle would not come along and witness the unusual activity?
And if they witnessed it they would surely remember it.
The soldier opened the clasp and lifted a fistful of Russian money out of the envelope, fifty and one hundred ruble notes. He ruffled through th
em and then glanced inside the envelope before returning the cash inside and resealing it, apparently now satisfied he wasn’t being cheated.
“Good luck with your laboratory pickup,” the soldier said. He flashed a tight smile and then returned to the guard shack.
A moment later the gates swung open and the Ural-43206 rumbled into Krasnoyarsk-26.
***
The streets were mostly empty as the Sovetskiy Soyuz Navsegda operatives rolled through the night. Their destination, the Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Combine facility, was located on the extreme southern side of the city, but since the soldiers with whom Navsegda had negotiated the bribe were assigned to a gate in the northeast corner they were forced to traverse the heart of Krasnoyarsk-26.
Past a small Red Army compound.
Past the city’s police station.
There was no reason to believe the truck would raise anyone’s suspicions, even given the time of night. The Soviet Armed Forces kept their own schedule, and Nikolay guessed this would not be the first time anyone who happened to be awake at this hour would have seen military vehicles rumbling past.
Nevertheless he felt nervous, like this whole plan might fall apart at any moment.
Keep yourself under control, he thought. This is only the beginning.
Another security guard was waiting when the Ural rolled up to a loading dock behind one of the buildings in the labyrinth of structures comprising the Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Combine. Nikolay was preparing to swing the truck wide and back it up to the dock when the soldier surprised him by waving them to a stop.
“It looks like this sentry is alone, unlike back at the guard shack,” Ilya mumbled.
Nikolay nodded. “He also looks older and tougher. More experienced.”
“It makes sense,” Rostya said, “given what is manufactured and stored inside this facility.”
The soldier had a Kalashnikov slung over his right shoulder and an unhappy expression on his face as he approached the Ural’s cab. He made an impatient spinning gesture with his right hand in a fist and his pointer finger extended, and Nikolay dutifully rolled down the window.
“Let me see the money,” the soldier said, foregoing the pleasantries the kid at the northeast gate had extended.
“Friendly bastard, isn’t he,” Ilya whispered.
Nikolay wanted to turn and tell his fellow operative to shut the fuck up, but he couldn’t, not with the sentry standing just on the other side of the open window. Instead, he cringed slightly and passed another envelope full of money along to another Red Army soldier who may or may not have gotten paid this past Friday.
This man didn’t ask permission to check his envelope. He simply unclasped it and glanced inside.
Examined it for the briefest of moments.
Then he closed it and said, “Back the truck up to Bay Four. The garage door is already unlocked. Your merchandise is just inside the door, on the shipping floor. Load it into your cargo hold and then get the fuck out.”
The soldier turned and stalked away without another word.
Ilya leaned across Nikolay, clearly intending to say…something…out the still-open window to the retreating man.
Nikolay had no idea what that something might be, but he knew anything his hotheaded underling might say at this point would only cause a problem, maybe a deadly one, so he swiveled in his seat and shoved him back down.
He stuck a pointed finger into Ilya’s face and hissed, “Not now, comrade. Just keep your mouth shut and do your job.”
Ilya clamped his jaws closed and turned to look past Rostya, out the passenger side window. After a moment Nikolay returned his attention to driving, backing the cargo truck up to the warehouse as instructed. He left the engine idling as the three men piled out of the cab and climbed onto the loading dock.
The sentry stood maybe ten meters away on the long concrete platform, smoking a cigarette and watching disinterestedly. Nikolay bent and pulled on the garage door’s handle and it rolled up, exactly as they had been told it would.
Inside the door stood a wooden crate roughly the size of four military-type footlockers that had been placed side-by-side and end-to-end. The crate was lashed to a large wooden pallet and featured a sturdy-looking carrying strap on each end, along with one at the midway point on both sides.
“You think our new friend will help us move this crate if we ask him politely?” Ilya said and then sniggered.
“Be quiet and get to work,” Nikolay answered. He was annoyed and tired and still wired from the nonstop adrenaline rush he’d been experiencing ever since they pulled up to the security gate at the Krasnoyarsk-26 city limits.
He stationed himself at the end closest the truck’s cargo hold with his back to the loading dock, waiting as a once-again chastened Ilya moved to the rear carry strap and Rostya grasped the side strap closest to him.
“On three,” he mumbled, and at the prescribed count the men hefted the crate a few inches off the concrete and began muscling it across the loading dock. The cargo was bulky and heavy and the going was slow.
But they did it. They set it down at the edge of the dock, readjusted their grips, and then thirty seconds later lowered the crate into place along the front wall of the cargo hold, lined up just behind the cab. Their prize was heavy enough that nothing was going to make it slide around short of the truck being involved in an accident, but the men took the time to lash it securely, anyway.
All three of them were breathing heavily and sweating from the exertion in the cool Russian nighttime air as they stepped onto the loading dock for the final time. Nikolay slammed the truck’s rear gate closed, and as he turned to jump off the dock and make his way back to the cab, he noticed the sentry had wandered across the platform and now stood just a couple of meters away.
Next to Ilya.
And he knew things were about to go to hell. He just knew it. But there was nothing he could do.
Ilya turned and found himself nose to nose with the surly Red Army guard. He blinked in surprise and Nikolay willed him not to speak. Willed him to shut his mouth and leap off the dock and move away from the guard.
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
Ilya recovered quickly from his surprise. He smirked and said, “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, dickhead.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the guard responded instantly.
“Maybe you think you can make me.”
Nikolay was hurrying back to the platform, determined to place himself between his man and the soldier, but he never made it.
The soldier reached lifted both hands to shove Ilya, but before he could, Ilya pulled his Makarov semi-auto pistol and fired point–blank into the guard’s forehead.
The gun roared and the man dropped straight down, and Rostya—who had been standing less than a meter away from Ilya—wrapped his big arms around his fellow Nasvegda member and wrestled him to the concrete.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Nikolay shouted in Ilya’s face.
“He had it coming,” came the mumbled reply.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Ilya shrugged. “What? Stealing a tactical nuclear device is okay, but silencing a witness to the theft is not?”
Nikolay shook his head angrily. “Just shut up and get on your feet. We need to get out of here, and the sooner the better, now, thanks to you.”
Rostya released his grip on Ilya and the two men clambered to their feet. Nikolay glanced at the Russian soldier and shook his head again. The man was clearly dead; he’d been shot point-blank in the brain by a 9mm handgun.
To Nikolay’s surprise, Ilya leaned over the man he’d just shot.
“Don’t bother,” Nikolay told him. “He can’t be saved, and trying to do so will only cost us valuable time.”
“Save him?” Ilya repeated scornfully. “I just shot him. Why would I want to save him?”
“Then what…” Nikolay’s words faded away as he watche
d his partner reach a hand deep inside the dead soldier’s trench coat. When he removed it he was clutching the ruble-stuffed envelope.
“He won’t be needing this,” Ilya said, and then stepped down from the platform.
Nikolay cursed.
Spat on the ground.
Then he said, “Get into the goddamned truck. We need to get back across the city and out the gate. Then we need to put as many kilometers between ourselves and Krasnoyarsk-26 as we can before this man is discovered.”
He looked at his watch. It was nearly three-thirty. They had at most three-and-a-half hours before workers began flocking into the facility to begin the day shift, and thanks to Ilya’s rashness and stupidity, they would now need every last second of it.
1
June 6, 1988
8:35 a.m.
McLean, Virginia
Tracie Tanner didn’t feel like sitting. She hadn’t felt like sitting in weeks. Sitting would represent the first step toward relaxing, and relaxing wasn’t something she felt she deserved.
Or was even capable of.
She had hoped that finding and ending the Soviet assassin who murdered her father last month would provide a measure of closure, or at the very least serve as the first step in the long process of somehow getting on with the rest of her life.
And maybe, given the benefit of time, she would look back and realize that was exactly what she’d done. Maybe the act of pulling the trigger on Piotr Speransky inside that lonely industrial park in Leningrad would stand as the precise moment her life began an upward trajectory. Maybe she would see that was when she began lifting herself out of the black despair in which she’d been wallowing since learning of her father’s awful fate.
Maybe.
Eventually.
But it sure didn’t feel that way.
The only emotions she’d been experiencing since her return from Russia two weeks ago were an overpowering sensation of self-loathing and a simmering, unreasoning anger directed toward everyone and everything.
The Nuclear Option Page 1