The Nuclear Option

by Allan Leverone

  She cruised past, glancing right to see if the truck’s cab was occupied.

  It was. She couldn’t tell whether anyone was sitting in the passenger seat, but there was definitely one man behind the wheel, sitting quietly and smoking a cigarette.

  Tracie tried to determine whether the presence of someone in the cab was a good or bad sign and decided to take it as a good one. Presumably the Navsegda operatives in charge of detonating the device would want to survive the explosion and the attendant plume of radiation that would spread across the city in whatever direction the wind was blowing. If one of their men was inside the cab, she should have at least a little time yet.

  A car was parked at the curb directly in front of the truck. It appeared empty. Tracie guessed this car would provide the transportation for the man she had just seen to escape the area before detonation.

  She continued down the otherwise deserted street until the F-150 disappeared from view in the rear view mirror. The moment it did, Tracie pulled to the side of the road and stopped. She needed to think.

  The plan was to notify Stallings of the bomb’s location the moment she found it in order to allow other American operatives to make their way to her. Trying to take down a terrorist organization intent on detonating a nuclear device alone and without backup seemed foolhardy at best and suicidal at worst.

  But Tracie had felt all along there was a good chance that plan would not come together and now it seemed obvious that was the case. It would likely take days for other CIA assets to get to Kirov, given the fact their numbers were seriously depleted at the moment and the operatives were scattered across the huge expanse of the Soviet Union.

  And it seemed clear there was no way Navsegda would wait days to put their plan in motion. Now that they had positioned the truck, they would probably not wait more than a few hours, just enough time for their people to clear the area. If the vehicle were still sitting in front of the church at sunrise, when the people of Kirov started waking and the city began grinding to life, police would almost certainly take notice and the bomb would be discovered.

  Tracie realized time was no longer running out.

  It was about to expire.

  For just a moment she considered finding the Kirov police station and notifying them of the danger to their city and instructing them to alert General Gregorovich.

  But as quickly as she began weighing the option she discarded it. The police would never take her seriously. They would assume she was a raving lunatic and would take her into custody. And even if they did send a unit to investigate the claim made by the crazed young woman with the head injury, the minute the Navsegda operatives saw the police coming they would either detonate the device or precipitate an armed standoff.

  Either option would make the situation immeasurably worse.

  Tracie cursed under her breath. One of the items she had brought from the safe house in her resupplied equipment bag was her secure satellite phone, and now she unzipped the bag and lifted it out.

  She unfolded the antenna and extended it, then fingered the power button and sat holding the blocky device as she gazed out the window at the sleeping city.

  Was there even any point in calling the CIA director? Would it amount to anything more than a waste of valuable time? She had already decided she was going to have to act alone, and if she were successful she could brief Stallings in full following mission completion.

  If she were unsuccessful, any call prior to taking action would be pointless. Stallings would know exactly what had happened, anyway, once he got news of a nuclear blast leveling a Russian city.

  And that would probably come at roughly the same time as the declaration of war from Moscow.

  41

  June 15, 1988

  1:40 a.m.

  Kirov, Russia, USSR

  Tracie jammed the sat phone back into her bag and zipped it closed. Then she tossed the bag into the back seat. She’d never shut down her engine, so she checked for traffic she knew would be nonexistent—it was—and then she pulled away from the curb.

  Three right turns put her to the rear of the truck once again, on a side street running along the eastern edge of the church property. She eased slowly up the street as far as she dared, stopping the car on the side of the road while it remained screened from view of the F-150’s driver by the enormous church building.

  She checked her weapons for no reason other than habit. She’d checked and double-checked the magazines in both guns before leaving her safe house and knew without a shadow of a doubt they were fully loaded and ready for use, but a career’s worth of training and a caution born of the knowledge she was truly alone in the middle of the Soviet Union would not permit her to leave the car without doing so.

  Then she chambered a round in her primary weapon.

  She swung open the car door and stepped outside into a cool late-spring Russian night. Her Beretta she held down at her side, shielded from view of anyone in front of her by her right thigh.

  She’d been the recipient of extensive training, both early in her career before being permitted to operate in the field and on a recurring basis in the years since, probably the best and most wide-ranging espionage instruction in the world. But at no time during any of that training had she been tutored on disarming a live, armed nuclear weapon. It was considered inconceivable that a lone operative would ever have occasion to do so.

  Tracie would have to do so.

  Given her lack of specific knowledge regarding the device’s triggering mechanism, Tracie knew she had just one option: take the Navsegda operative by surprise and force him to disarm the bomb himself.

  The plan was straightforward and simple.

  And terrifying.

  She walked toward the main street, keeping the church building between herself and the truck for as long as she could. Eventually it would become impossible and she would be forced to approach the F-150 more or less in full view, but the longer she could delay the inevitable, the better it would be for her.

  Her clothing was dark: black jeans, black hooded Moscow Aviation Institute sweatshirt, dark socks and shoes. She had considered smearing greasepaint on her face to neutralize some of the effect of her fair skin, but decided to forego doing so. Darkening her face would provide marginally more cover at night, but it would also serve to let any Navsegda operatives know she was coming for them if she were spotted before making it to the truck.

  At least without the greasepaint they would have to consider the possibility she was just a young woman walking the street, maybe a hooker or a homeless person.

  Tracie eased her head around the side of the church building and peered toward the sidewalk. The Ford was still parked where she’d seen it on her drive-by. From this angle she could not tell whether its occupant remained seated behind the wheel but she guessed that was the case, as the car sitting directly in front of the F-150 had not been moved.

  She took a deep breath and broke cover, moving straight to the sidewalk and then turning toward the truck. She moved at a rapid pace but with a pronounced limp—her ankle was still killing her; sitting inside a car for the last eight hours or so had not done her injuries any favors—and she guessed her limping gait would make her appear less threatening to the driver in the event he glanced into the rear view mirror and saw her approaching.

  Hopefully.

  She would find out soon enough.

  In less than ninety seconds Tracie had arrived in position, directly behind the truck’s right taillights. She moved along the side of the cargo bed, the nuclear device looming over her, its black tarp’s heavy plastic crinkling in the light breeze. In a perfect world she would simply open the passenger door, leveling her gun at the occupant and taking him by surprise.

  But this was no perfect world, and if the driver had locked his doors—which presumably he had done—he would have time to draw his weapon were she to attempt to open the door and fail.

  Assuming of course he had not already drawn his gun at
her approach and was even now waiting to fire point-blank into her face.

  So she moved to Plan B. She stopped just behind the front passenger side door, lifted her fist to shoulder height and then swung her arm down and to the left, smashing it into the window. She’d left the gun butt protruding below the meat of her fist and put everything she had behind the blow, because breaking a car or truck’s window was no easy task.

  The gun struck the glass and the window spiderwebbed and sagged inward but did not break. Automotive glass was engineered to avoid shattering in the event of an accident, but still the pain exploded in Tracie’s hand and she could feel the warm wetness of blood begin to flow.

  She had known the injury was coming and gripped the gun tightly to avoid losing it, either from the force of its impact against the window or from the hot blood as it slicked her hand, and now she lifted it again and struck the window a second time as quickly as she could manage, and this time it fell into the cab, dropping onto the passenger seat in one piece, more or less.

  Tracie raised her weapon immediately and brought it to bear against the driver.

  She’d managed to take him by surprise and he was only now reaching for the gun he’d placed on the bench seat next to him.

  “Don’t do it,” she said firmly in Russian.

  His hand hovered over the weapon as he calculated the odds of survival should he ignore her words. After a moment he came to the only conclusion available and he cursed softly and withdrew his arm.

  “Good decision,” she said, “but don’t blow it now. Keep your hands where I can see them. I want you to raise them both and place them on the upper half of the steering wheel.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” he said. “If you mean to rob me, you should know I have almost no money.”

  “Put your hands on the wheel, right now,” she repeated, “or die. The choice is yours and it’s the only thing you should be worried about at the moment.”

  He began lifting his arms, moving slowly, clearly thinking hard and looking for any opportunity to turn the tables on his attacker. In his left hand he held what looked like a small radio transmitter with an antenna protruding from the top. On the front of the device was a digital screen with a timer that featured flashing numbers, and beneath the screen were four dials. Beneath the dials was a single toggle switch.

  The man kept the device in his possession as he followed Tracie’s instructions, holding it tightly against the steering wheel while wrapping his fingers around it. Tracie had a sick suspicion she knew what it was, but pushed that concern to the back of her mind for now. She had to get this situation stabilized before worrying about any nuclear detonator.

  Once he’d placed both hands on the wheel as instructed, Tracie said, “Now I’m going to unlock this door and open it. If I see so much as one of your fingers twitch, your brains are going to end up splattered all over this truck. Do you understand?”

  No answer.

  “Do you understand?”

  Still no response, but the man glared at her and then inclined his head in the slightest of nods, like he couldn’t bear to acquiesce but he didn’t want to die just yet, either.

  Tracie reached through the window, careful to avoid snagging her arm on any of the glass shards that were left sticking out of the frame like tiny mountaintops. She flipped the lock and pulled the door open.

  Then she said, “So far, so good. Now I’m going to clear off some of this broken glass so we can sit and have a conversation. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  He mumbled something she could not make out, but she didn’t think he agreed with her definition of the word “nice.”

  Just to be sure, she reiterated the consequences of any action he might take that she interpreted as threatening. Then she bent at the knees, keeping her weapon trained on the Navsegda operative with her right hand while using her sweatshirt-clad left arm to sweep safety glass off the seat and into the foot well.

  Then she slipped into the F-150 and pulled the door closed. A brief shower of glass fragments accompanied the action. She ignored them.

  Instead she kept her attention focused on the radical. She reached out and plucked the man’s gun from between them, then dropped her hand between her knees and slipped the gun under her seat, shoving it back as far as she could. That should serve to keep him from accessing it, and was much less dangerous than tossing a loaded weapon onto the sidewalk or into the grass where it could be picked up by a passerby.

  The man cleared his throat and said, “I did as you asked. Now, tell me what you want.”

  “I think you know why I’m here,” Tracie said.

  “I am certain I do not.”

  “Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence,” she said. “I know you have a nuclear device in the bed of this truck, and I think you know I am here to prevent you from detonating it.”

  “If you know as much as you claim to know, then surely you realize you have no say in the matter.”

  “I don’t know how you came to that conclusion. You may have noticed I have the gun and you do not.”

  The man shrugged. “A gun is irrelevant at this point. We are both going to die regardless of what happens with any gun.”

  42

  June 15, 1988

  1:45 a.m.

  Kirov, Russia, USSR

  “Is that so?” Tracie said, trying to camouflage the spike of terror she felt as the man spoke.

  “It is so.”

  “And why is that?” Tracie asked. She said it more to keep the man talking than for any other reason, because she thought she already knew the answer to the question. She’d been squinting across the front seat at the transmitter in the Navsegda operative’s left hand, concentrating on the digital screen with the glowing green numbers on it.

  Numbers that appeared to be counting down toward zero.

  As she watched, the numbers went from 00:28:29 to 00:28:28 to 00:28:27, the digits on the right side of the screen clicking through once per second.

  She swallowed heavily.

  Nodded at the device.

  Said, “That’s the detonator, isn’t it?”

  “You already know it is. Why bother asking?”

  “So we have twenty-eight minutes to live.”

  The man glanced at the screen and said, “Less than that now.”

  “You’re going to disarm that detonator. You’re going to do it right now.”

  The operative ignored her words and said, “Who are you?”

  “You’re not in any position to be asking questions.”

  “I disagree,” he said. “As I already explained, your weapon is useless to you.”

  “If that’s the case, why did you follow my instructions when I told you to place your hands on the steering wheel?”

  A tight-lipped smile crossed his face and then disappeared. “When someone threatens you with a gun, it is an instinctive reaction to do whatever possible to avoid instant death. I do not wish to be shot, but I have already accepted that I will die in,” he glanced at the transmitter once again, “a little less than twenty-seven minutes. If not sooner.”

  “So you’re telling me your merry band of mass murderers drew straws to see who was going to sit in the cab of a pickup truck and watch your detonator count down to zero?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I don’t say so. It’s obvious to me the car parked right in front of us is there for your use, and it’s equally obvious that device you’re holding onto so tightly is remotely operable. You were supposed to deliver the truck to this location and then drive away, detonating the device once you had put a safe distance between yourself and the bomb. The timer is a failsafe, so the device would detonate anyway should something happen to you.”

  Another brief smile told Tracie she was right.

  “So why,” she continued, “are you sitting here instead, watching the numbers click down to zero, waiting to be vaporized?”

  “You are not Russian, are you?”

&nb
sp; “What difference does that make? I’m here to stop you from killing thousands of your fellow citizens, that’s all you need to know.”

  “But that is my point,” he said, “and the answer to your question about why I am sitting here instead of escaping and saving my life.”

  She shook her head, mystified. “Explain it to me like I’m stupid.”

  “I believe in my cause. I am committed to my cause. I am certain that my actions tonight will result in a stronger Soviet Union and better lives in the long run for its many citizens.”

  “But…”

  “But that conviction does not change the fact that by detonating this device I will be ending the lives of hundreds of my fellow countrymen.”

  “Thousands,” Tracie corrected. Mixed in with her incipient panic and terror was a rapidly building fury. “And not just a few thousand, many thousands once the radiation poisoning has run through all your innocent victims over the next several months and years. Probably hundreds of thousands. If you’re unburdening yourself, at least be honest about it.”

  Tracie had spent her entire career working to bring about the destruction of the Soviet Union, convinced its collectivist system of government was not just wrong but evil, denying its citizens basic individual freedoms in the mistaken notion that doing so would result in a better life for all. But not once in her nearly ten years of covert operations had she ever considered the citizens of the Soviet Union to be inherently evil, or even inherently wrong. They were human beings, every bit as entitled to life and liberty as was she herself, and the thought that so many were about to be slaughtered by a group of political fanatics was infuriating in the extreme.

  The Navsegda operative nodded soberly. “Of course. I stand corrected. Many thousands of lives will be lost. And that only amplifies my point. I believe what I am doing is necessary for my country to prosper, but I cannot live with the knowledge that so many died at my hands.”

  “But you could disarm the device if you chose to, couldn’t you?”