Bloodstorm

1

Chen Takung paused in the darkness next to a boarded-up building with peeling paint and graffiti-sprayed walls. To the left a woman screamed. Someone began sobbing. A baby cried. A cool breeze whipped a newspaper down the street. Chen stepped quickly into the dark alley and waited. He was good at waiting. This strange land was nothing like Shaanxi Province in China, where he grew up. Here it was dry, harsh, unfriendly, and even smelled bad. Not at all like the softness of a Chinese night with a pale moon riding high.

An older car with three colors of paint on it drove up slowly, stopped for a moment, then moved on. Chen was near the Odessa port district that fronted on the Black Sea. Odessa had once been the busiest port and main southern outlet for the Soviet Union in the glory days. Chen had heard that ships from all over the world had lined up to get dock space. Now the new nation that had split off when the Soviet Union fragmented was known as Ukraine, and it struggled to keep its economy going well enough to maintain its independence. Chen knew that ships still stopped here to discharge and take on cargo, but not in the volume they used to.

The smells assaulted him again. It wasn’t the night-soil odor of the Chinese country, but more a cloying smell of unwashed bodies and decomposing garbage. He hated it here in Ukraine. He hated any place that wasn’t China.

Chen Takung had come to Odessa on board the Star of Asia, of Chinese People’s Republic registry, a beaten-up and weathered freighter, which now sat at a dock awaiting its special cargo. Chen eased against the building, not letting the two-hour wait drag at his senses. He saw everything that went on in the area, evaluated the actions, and determined that none of them held any danger for him.

He tried to relax tense muscles. His senses were on instant alert, searching for anything dangerous. He had made covert buys of sensitive goods from foreign nations before, but nothing of this magnitude.

Chen glanced where his backup crouched in the darkness across the street. The other man had a sniper rifle and was deadly accurate. No one would see him until they should see him.

Chen was highly trained in his field of international relations and secret operations. He was extremely efficient when dealing with those who worked outside of the law of their own countries.

He squeezed his left arm against his body and felt the reassuring bulge of the 9mm pistol. The two men he was to meet were late, which he had expected. He had played that role often in his dealings.

He faded to the left out of the mouth of the dark alley, and edged into the doorway of the run-down building. The door was inset two feet, giving him plenty of room to vanish completely in the shadows of the Ukrainian summer night.

The smell came again. Something dead, maybe a rat or a cat. He pushed it out of his mind.

Time dragged. Tension knotted a muscle in Chen’s neck, and he rotated his head trying to calm it. Sweat beaded his forehead even in the cool night. Where were they? They should have been here a half hour ago.

He heard them first. Footfalls on the cobblestones coming from the right. Slowly two men materialized out of the darkness from the downtown direction, and paused at the side of the same building that shielded Chen.

“Nabokov?” Chen whispered the password. He felt better now, more sure of himself. Only two of them.

The men walked toward him slowly with nervous caution.

“Yes, I am Nabokov. Are you Chen?”

“Yes, I’m Chen.” They spoke in Russian. Chen stepped away from the doorway. The two men stopped three paces from him.

“You are early,” he said, still in Russian.

“Yes, we are ready to do business.”

“First I need to inspect the merchandise. Then I’ll show you the payment.”

“You have the seventy-two million U.S. dollars we agreed upon?”

“Yes, the equivalent in gold bars, diamonds, and U.S. currency. I’ll show you it after we see the goods.”

“Yes, we agree. Come with us.”

Chen had expected more than two of them. He made a curt motion, telling his backup rifleman to return to their headquarters.

Chen and the two Ukrainians walked down a block, where the three entered a ten-year-old Ziv auto.

A short drive later, the car stopped at a large run-down warehouse near the docks.

“The merchandise is inside,” the taller of the square-cut Ukrainians said. “We have security. We tell you so you won’t be surprised.”

“I would wonder if you didn’t.”

Six Ukrainian soldiers stood just inside the warehouse’s first door. They had the newer Russian-made AK-74 rifles. A Russian RK-46 machine gun stood on its mount of sandbags, and a soldier trained it on the door. At each of the next four locked doors there were three soldiers armed with the Portuguese-made stubby Lusa A2 submachine guns. They had an interesting closed configuration. Chen counted twenty-four guards before he came to the last locked door. They had worked their way to the far side of the warehouse. This last section was bathed with bright lights. Chen could smell a salty dampness in the air, so this area must be right next to the water.

When the door opened, he stared at the contents of the huge room. Chen caught his breath, but made sure the two Ukrainians didn’t notice. The merchandise was as negotiated. Six of the Russian Satan intercontinental ballistic missiles. The six lay on shipping dollies with wheels for easier movement. All looked identical: painted brown and green in a camouflage pattern, eighty feet long, and should weigh a little over thirty tons each. Chen knew that when fired from a land-based mobile launcher or silo, one missile could travel over 6,500 miles and dump nuclear bombs on ten different independently targeted cities.

Chin shivered. Right in front of him were six of the large missiles waiting for him. They looked to be as ordered, with the correct Russian words and configuration. Ten nuclear warheads should be inside each of the sleek nose cones.

“I’ll need to inspect each missile, to be sure there have been no changes, no sabotage,” he said.

The two Ukrainians nodded. Chen crawled over and around the missiles for a half hour. The long-range ICBMs were in mint condition. He had trained at the Karkoff Institute of Scientific Research in Moscow for two years, specializing in the Russian ICBM system and its missiles. There was no evidence that any of the nose cones had been tampered with or the warheads removed. Good.

Back with the two Ukrainians, he nodded. “They appear to be in good condition and unaltered. We do not need the auxiliary launching and guidance systems. If we find any irregularities after we take possession, we’ll come back and kill you.”

“Have no worries. These missiles are as you ordered.”

“Where do I go to make payment?” Chen asked.

“Do you have it in a vehicle?”

“Yes, a truck with the U.S. dollars, the diamonds, and the gold. Together it has a value of seventy-two million dollars.”

“Bring it here.”

“First our freighter must be under way so it can redock here.”

The Ukrainian who did most of the talking smiled. “There is no need for that. Your ship, the Star of Asia, has been redocked just beyond those large doors.”

Chen smiled. “Ukrainian efficiency. I’ll go and bring the payment. We must have our ship loaded and be ready to cast off our lines before daylight.”

“There should be no problem. Our harbormaster has been told of your departure.”

“And compensated?” Chen asked.

They all laughed.

“I understand that not all levels of your government have been informed of this sale.”

Nabokov, the larger man, chuckled. “This is a private sale.”

“Good. If this works out, perhaps we can do business again.”

Chen went with the other two back through the locked and guarded doors to the street. They loaned him a car and driver to take him where he needed to go. He had the driver drop him off two blocks from the small office he had rented two months ago when negotiations first began with Nabokov, director of the Nuclear Arms Arsenal just outside of Odessa. Chen knew that these were missiles that Ukraine had kept out of the inventory of the large numbers of nuclear weapons, missiles, and warheads that were transferred to Russia in 1994 and slated for destruction. That had been part of the disarmament accord between Russia and the United States. Chen had been told that now the hoarded nuclear weapons were orphans, known about only by a few men high in the government. Six of the missiles would not be missed due to the sloppy management.

Chen walked to the small office, opened the locked door, and turned on the lights. Everything must appear normal. He went into the back room and grinned at his six men. A chorus of questions greeted him. He saw his backup man had returned.

He held up his hands. “Yes, it is arranged. We take the money to them now. I know the way. Is everyone ready?”

The six men wore black combat uniforms, with vests and webbing hung with the tools of the elite Chinese military strike force specialists. All carried Russian AKSU-74 submachine guns with thirty-round reversible banana clips that had been taped together for fast reloading. All of the weapons were fitted with sound suppressors.

The truck was a 1974 Chevrolet half-ton pickup that had somehow found its way to Odessa. In back it held storage boxes filled with currency, gold bars, and boxes of cut and polished, brilliant diamonds.

“Let’s go,” Chen said. He drove the pickup, and the men stepped into an old van of mixed manufacture. Chen would pick up Nabokov and the other man at the front of the same warehouse. The Ukrainians would show Chen how to drive the small truck directly into the section of the warehouse with the missiles.

When Nabokov entered the pickup with his yes-man shadow, he frowned and looked behind them.

“There is a van following you,” Nabokov said.

“That’s my security,” Chen said, and chuckled. “You didn’t think I would try this transfer by myself, did you?”

Nabokov scowled this time. “I hadn’t thought about that. Surely you must trust us as we trust you.”

“My trust is the same as yours. You have twenty or thirty security men at the warehouse. I have my own security men. It is necessary.”

“I want everything to go smoothly.”

“We are paying you a great deal of money, Nabokov. I insist on my own security.”

The Ukrainian licked his lips and took a deep breath. At last he nodded. He took out a small radio and spoke into it in Ukrainian for a moment.

“The rear guards will let us pass, both vehicles,” he said.

After driving several blocks, they came around the corner of a building. It was right on the dock, and Chen saw his ship tied up at the adjoining pier. A large truck door rolled upward. Two guards barred their entrance until they recognized Nabokov. Inside, Chen saw the bright lights and the missiles. When both vehicles had driven in, the large door rolled down.

Chen nodded, and they left the pickup. Nabokov and the other Ukrainian went to the rear of the Chevy and examined the boxes.

The six Chinese Special Forces men left the van and fanned out inside the building. They had their orders. Two Ukrainian soldiers came through the door from inside the warehouse.

Chen shouted something in Chinese, and watched with satisfaction as both Ukrainian soldiers were shot by the Chinese commandos. They slammed backward with four submachine-gun rounds each in their chests as they stared in surprise at the black-clothed killers.

Nabokov looked up from the payment boxes in shock. “What are you doing?” he bellowed.

“Securing the area,” Chen said. He held his pistol pointing at the Ukrainian. “I’ll take your side arm and the radio now, Nabokov. You have no armed support inside. Let’s not make this worse than it has to be.”

Nabokov took out the radio, pretended to hand it to Chen, then pushed a button on it and shouted in Ukrainian: “Alert, alert, the missile room, now.”

Chen shot him three times in the chest with his silenced pistol, then turned the weapon on the yes-man with Nabokov and shot him twice as he surged away. Both rounds took him in the back, one crushing his spine and dumping him into a death spasm on the concrete floor. Two Ukrainian soldiers burst through the small door at the back of the big room.

Chen saw them coming and shouted at his men, then dove behind the pickup. Both Ukrainian soldiers went down in a murderous cross fire of silenced submachine gun rounds. Two more soldiers raced through the inside door, and got off a dozen unsilenced rounds before the black-clothed Chinese specialists fired at them. The surprise entry caught the Chinese commandos by surprise, and two went down in the enemy fire.

Chen saw it all and jumped up, screaming and firing his pistol at the intruders. The other Chinese commandos cut down the Ukrainian guards.

“Lock that inside door that leads to the other rooms,” Chen said into his radio. Two of the black-robed Chinese darted to the door, and closed it and snapped on two locks. A pair of shots sounded from outside the door, but the rounds didn’t penetrate.

“The big doors, now,” Chen said to the radio. “We must move quickly.”

Two of the Chinese ran to the lift doors, looked at the row of buttons, and found the right ones. One of the twenty-foot-wide doors rolled up on greased tracks. Just beyond a thirty-foot-wide dock sat the Star of Asia. Deck sailors on watch took hand signals from Chen. A moment later a rusty-looking panel slid upward, revealing a thirty-foot-wide dock-level loading hatch. The interior of the ship looked like anything but a rust-bucket freighter. It was brightly lighted, and well painted. Quickly a loading platform bridged the three-foot gap between freighter and dock. A small tow tractor rolled over the bridge to the dock, and inside to the dolly holding the first missile. The tractor driver hooked up to the missile dolly, and then carefully towed it out of the warehouse, over the bridge, and into the hold of the freighter. It vanished somewhere to the left. Two minutes later the tractor came back for another missile.

A sudden burst of rifle fire came from the small door beside where the pickup had driven in. Two Ukrainian soldiers stood there firing at the Chinese Special Forces. One Chinese went down with a round to his chest. The other armed Chinese pounded the guard soldiers with thirty rounds of silenced death. They jolted backward. One man got off two more rounds before he died in another flurry of firing.

“Secure that back area,” Chen shouted at his gunmen. One man ran to the door, and kept a watch outside.

Ten minutes later, five of the ICBMs were stowed in the decrepit-looking freighter. The Chevy pickup with the seventy-two-million-dollar payment for the missiles was driven across the bridge into the freighter. Then the remaining three Chinese Special Forces men carried the bodies of their dead comrades into the freighter.

While the tractor loaded the missiles into the freighter, Chen took a brisk walk down the dock. His destination was the sleek-looking freighter that was moored just in back of his down the pier. Its flag showed that it was of Panamanian registry. A sentry challenged Chen as he approached the gangplank.

As they talked, an officer came to the rail and saluted Chen. He quickly came down the plank, and they walked along the new, trim freighter. It was slightly larger than Chen’s ship, but this vessel was in freshly minted condition.

“You have the goods?” the officer asked.

“We do. You have the payment?”

“Yes. Bring the missile here and we’ll show you the payment.”

“You have dockside-level loading?”

“No, we’ll use two of our cranes. They are rated at over fifty tons.”

“Good.” Chen touched a button twice on a small radio he took from his pocket. “The goods are on the way.”

Five minutes later, the small tractor towed the sixth ICBM from the warehouse to the Panamanian freighter. Now a stiff canvas covered the missile and shrouded its identity.

One huge crane swung out and down; then a second moved into position. Men attached cables to each end of the missile and the dolly. Winches ground. Slowly the thirty-ton missile and dolly lifted off the dock. It wouldn’t fit into any of the holds on the ship, so they positioned it slightly aft on the main deck, secured it, and added more camouflage.

The Panamanian captain signaled, and a small crane swung down a pallet board with a wooden box on top of it. Inside the box were stacks of U.S. currency.

“There it is, fifteen million in hundred-dollar bills. Mostly used, but some with sequential serial numbers.”

“We’ll check it,” Chen said. The tow tractor pushed its lift bars under the pallet board and carried the money back to the Star of Asia.

A few minutes later it was loaded on board. Chen stepped into the ship through the side loading hatch, and the tractor pulled the loading bridge inside. The heavy steel panels on the side of the freighter closed, and the rusty camouflaged plates slid down into place.

It took another five minutes for the crew of the Chinese ship to cast off its lines. Aided by a tug, it worked its way out of the dock area toward the channel that led to the open Black Sea. Within ten minutes they had cleared the port, paid the pilot double his usual fee, and put him in his small boat.

All of the regular clearances had been filed. They checked out with the port master’s radio in faltering Russian, and were on their way.

For two hours, Chen stood in the bridge, listening to the radio and watching for fast-moving ships that might be overtaking them. He paced the small area, smoked one cigarette after another, and always looked to the rear. He saw and heard nothing unusual. Only when they were a half hour at sea did he take out a bottle of rice wine he was partial to and pass around drinks to the Chinese Navy captain of the ship and his executive officer.

“Due south?” the captain asked.

“Yes. Later we can change course to come to the Bosporus Strait.”

The captain tipped his second small glass of the wine and lifted his brows. “All goes well. You will be a hero of China.”

Chen’s face froze into a steel mask. “Not yet. We have a long way to go. We have the greatest prize any warship has ever won. We have the future of the Chinese nation’s place in history. We have fifty more nuclear warheads that we can retrofit and then use any way that we want to.

“They will give us flexibility. We have some nuclear weapons, but not as many as the Western nations believe. This will give us massive potential. They will fuel a power drive gobbling up nations and territories that no nation on earth will have the nerve to challenge.

“There will be no stopping this vessel in any port. We will go through the strait, then on into the Sea of Marmara and out the Dardanelles.

“Once in the Aegean Sea, we will be able to relax and to meet one other ship. We must avoid any suspicion by any government. We are an oily old rust bucket of a Chinese freighter making for the Suez Canal on our homeward trip. Nothing we do can alter that image. We are the future of China.

“We also saved the seventy-two million dollars we were to have paid for the stolen goods. We have sold one missile for another fifteen million. We will go down in Chinese history books as the key men in jolting China into the forefront of the world powers and in carving up the Far East in any fashion that China wants to.

“I make a toast, Captain, to China, the greatest nation on the face of the earth.”

“To China,” the captain and Chen said together. Then they drank.

When the rusty old freighter was fifty miles south of Odessa in the Black Sea, sailors from the ship held a short Buddhist funeral service and slipped the bodies of the three Special Forces men into the Black Sea. Chen watched. The bodies sank immediately. They were good men, good soldiers of China.