Hail Warning

Termez, Uzbekistan

Victor Kornev eased himself out of bed, still a little sore from the debacle in North Korea. Total damage assessment included a bullet hole in his right hand, very sore ribs and a stiff back caused from being thrown from the vehicle he had been driving. Two eardrums may either have been blown out, or he had suffered temporary hearing loss from the explosion of the Dongmyong Hotel. Those were his major ailments from his business trip to North Korea, but there were also many minor scrapes and cuts which were a nuisance.

Kornev was a big man and had always tried to stay in shape. Yet, after almost losing his life in North Korea, he came to the realization that it didn’t matter how old you were or what type of exercises you did. Death could come a-knocking at any time. Unless you were made from titanium, death didn’t care about the state of your physical fitness.

His business trip was supposed to have been uncomplicated. He had flown into North Korea and was escorted by General Kim Won Dong to the warehouse where all the ICBM parts were being delivered. Kornev had orchestrated the deliveries so all the pieces would arrive approximately at the same time. Hundreds of pieces of all different sizes arrived via plane, boat and truck, some of which made the trip using a combination of all three transportation methods. Once they had arrived, there would be enough parts to build three long-range, Russian-made R-29RMU Sineva missiles. But, if any of the parts were captured, confiscated, lost or destroyed, enough parts would have survived to build at least one ICBM. And, that strategy was acceptable to the North Koreans. They just wanted that one finger of intimidation to allow them to reach out to figuratively touch any country in the world with horrendous consequences.

Except for a single truck, which had been running late carrying the last huge section of a missile, the operation had run flawlessly. Kornev had to wait for an additional twelve hours at the warehouse for that one last damn truck. Just when the truck had finally arrived and unloaded, he received a phone call. The voice on the phone informed him there would be an airstrike on the warehouse in less than ninety seconds. Since no one knew he was there, he had taken the caller seriously. He had jumped into the nearest Jeep and taken off. Initially, he thought he had been clear of the facility, but that hadn’t been the case. Some type of flying machine had chased after him, shooting down on him as he drove. The last shot from the flying contraption had scored a hit on his right hand. But other than that, he had escaped serious injury because the pursuing aircraft had blown up behind him. Why? Who? What was it? None of those questions had been answered.

The only place in North Korea he was familiar with had been the smelly Dongmyong Hotel. Kornev had driven until he was within one block of the hotel. Then, out of the blue, the entire hotel had exploded. The resulting shockwave forced his Jeep to veer into a ditch. The impact of metal against mud had thrown him out, over the Jeep, ending face-first into the ditch. Kornev expected that his rib injury resulted in his chest hitting the top of the frame of the windshield frame when he launched forward. His back injury was caused by the landing — doing what the younger generation called a “scorpion”. When doing the “scorpion” your legs arch backwards behind your back until your toes touch the back of your head.

After Kornev found himself facedown within a ditch on the periphery of the incinerated Dongmyong Hotel he had some serious doubts if he would escape North Korea. Whoever had blown up the hotel did so to kill him, believing that he was staying there. The life of an international arms dealer was fraught with danger. Your friend today might be your enemy tomorrow. There were no warnings about when or why they had turned. Money, politics, and power culminated in a thick perilous soup that you could stir; however, you never knew who would boil to the top until you took a big bite. By that time, it was too late.

Involuntarily, Kornev swallowed a wad of North Korean mud. It was crammed into his gaping, screaming mouth while momentarily blacked out from hitting the muck with a lot of velocity. When he awoke from his mini-coma, he found himself choking to death on the thick watery sludge that consisted of part mud and part whatever else North Korean peasants left in smelly ditches.

It had not been a fun business trip.

Now, as he stepped onto the balcony of his home in Termez, located in the country of Uzbekistan, he was beginning to feel better. The sun was hot, and it felt good against his skin. He stood on the balcony and stretched his back, trying to touch his toes. He then arched backwards, leaning from side-to-side. He noted the pain had subsided from the previous week; however, he experienced more pain in his ribs than in his back.

Kornev observed a young woman pushing a wooden cart full of colorful clothing towards the open market in the town square. The street was narrow and made of nothing but dirt, but the woman was young and strong, and she didn’t seem to be having much of a problem with her load. Kornev looked down the street to the left, and then turned his head to the right, doing a threat assessment. He didn’t make a habit of staying in the same place for a couple of nights

consecutively, let alone the week he had stayed here. But this place, in this lonely corner of the world, was as close to a home as he could remember. His home was two-stories tall with two-foot-high thick clay walls that ran from the ground to the top of his home. It was more of a fortress than a home. Providing Kornev with a greater sense of security was a wide twenty-foot clay wall encircling his entire property. Atop the clay wall was a trench filled with jagged broken glass. In this part of the world, a nervous homeowner used this technique. Barbed wire was ugly, expensive, and hard to source — thus the use of broken glass atop clay walls.

Kornev’s home was owned by a shell company and could not be traced back to him. He rarely spent time here, unless it was necessary, like when he was hurt. The downside to his job was he got hurt a lot. He had been shot twice in separate and unrelated jobs. Well — now three times — after being shot by the flying contraption that left him with a new wound on his right hand. In all three incidences, he had made his way home to visit his doctor friend, convalesce and get his act together.

In Termez, Uzbekistan he was not out of place. The area was gradually incorporated into the Russian Empire during the 19th century. In 1924, what is now Uzbekistan, became a bordered constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan declared its independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on August 31, 1991. Although no longer part of the defunct Soviet Union, about five percent of the population was still Russian, and the Russian language was spoken in most parts of the country. Kornev wasn’t completely reliant on speaking Russian. He had a knack for languages and could speak dozens fluently, including the local Uzbekistan language, which was Turkic in nature.

Along with the ability to blend in with other Russian inhabitants of the country, Kornev had picked this city because it was the most southern city in Uzbekistan. A quick 200-mile flight on one of his cargo planes could set him down in many countries in which he did business. Uzbekistan is bordered by five countries: Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Afghanistan to the south; and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Iran was very close, as well as arms clients in Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. By flying low, first passing over Turkmenistan and then over the Caspian Sea, Kornev could easily deliver tons of ordinances to the world’s most violent countries and do so completely undetected.

It was his network of planes, boats, ships, and his process of moving contraband from point A to point B, that had saved him in North Korea. He was not going to rely solely on the North Korean general to get him out of North Korea. He always had a contingency for saving himself in case the sale turned into a cluster.

After he had pulled himself out of the mud, and then clawed his way up the side of the ditch, it had taken him the better part of an hour to come to his senses. The distance from the center of Pongch’un-dong to the east coast of North Korea, was less than a mile. And there, sitting at the end of a long pier next to the Songdowon Hotel, was a sea plane. Each night, the pilot of the seaplane flew 100 miles from Goseong, South Korea to this dock. He then waited for eight hours on the off-chance that Kornev needed an escape route. This type of forward thinking was how Kornev had not been involuntarily retired. To date, he had been shot three times during his entire career. He was still alive and kicking due to his preventative planning ability.

Kornev owned the home in which he was convalescing. His shell company also owned the homes on all four sides of his fortress. However, the inexpensive dwellings were empty. All had an underground tunnel that led from their garages that funneled into the two-story fortress Kornev called home. He had no guards, servants, girlfriends or prostitutes, but he did have a gardener. He had no friends except his former comrade-in-arms and his lifelong friend, Doctor Nikita Sokolov, who also lived in Termez. People were undependable, but a tunnel could be your best friend, and it would never either betray or abandon you.

During the time he did spend at his Termez home, he always used the tunnels to come and go. The many garages were joined via his tunnel system and each garage had an assortment of cars and motorcycles fueled up and ready to drive. This gave Kornev the latitude of driving a different car, as well as entering and leaving, from any one of the four different streets. Someone intent on laying a trap for Kornev would have to spend a great deal of time and money covering all access points of his compound; therefore, the numbers of actors that would be required to surveil him increased. This would make spotting them all that much easier.

Kornev watched the young woman with the cart turn the corner at the end of the street. He looked both left and right and saw no one, almost as if the little town had been abandoned. He suddenly felt lonely. Such was the life of a man who had made this career choice. He realized that he was too old to have a family, and really, what kind of life could he offer them? Hell, he couldn’t even have a steady girlfriend or a wife. Too many complications and risks involved with such entanglements. The only companionship that worked for him were short stints with women, such as the single night he had spent with Tonya Merkalov. Before he had made his trip to North Korea, he had met the stunning woman at the bar in the Volna Hotel, in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. She was a beautiful red-haired vixen. He smiled thinking about her.

The wave of loneliness hit him again, and he thought of contacting the woman. Who knew — maybe she was on this side of the world and would want to meet up somewhere? Of

course, he would have to be careful. But he was always careful, and he really didn’t think the woman was anything other than the pampered daughter of an international banker. She was a woman who had too much money — too much free time, and loved to party.

Yeah, that could work for Kornev right about now. The companionship of a beautiful woman would make him feel better, and that’s what he needed. Because he was feeling low.

Kornev took out his phone and found the woman’s e-mail address. He typed a text and waited for a response.