“I have seen several Humvees down here, sir—I am surprised they are not here now,” Khalimov said. “There have been news pieces on complaints by citizens about the military presence in downtown San Francisco—they say it affects tourism and scares everyone. Perhaps they took them away.”
“We will not count on that,” Zakharov said. “We assume the vehicles that are here will be heavily armed military patrols.”
From Main Street, they made their way to California Street and drove up the steep boulevard to Van Ness Avenue, then to Lombard Street and onto the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge heading toward Marin County. Huge outdoor lights had been set up, illuminating the tollbooths and bridge approaches like daytime. They passed two Bradley Fighting Vehicles here. “Security appears even heavier on this bridge,” Zakharov observed.
“It is all for the TV cameras, sir,” Khalimov said disgustedly. “The Golden Gate Bridge is a symbol of the Western United States and the state of California, and they put more National Guard forces out here to show the public they are defending them. But they are no more capable than the ones in Oakland.”
Zakharov looked at his aide carefully. “You appear more confident than I have ever seen you, tovarisch,” he said. “Perhaps…too confident?”
“I am confident of success, sir,” Khalimov admitted, “but it is not overconfidence. It is disgust.”
“Disgust?”
“This is their country, one of their greatest cities,” Khalimov spat, “and they try to act as if nothing whatsoever is wrong. They were attacked with a nuclear weapon, for God’s sake, and yet they pretend that everything is ahuyivayush’iy.”
“As you were, Captain,” Zakharov said. “Don’t let these people’s attitudes about their life and society cloud your judgment. Keep fully alert and ready at all times.”
“Yes, sir,” Khalimov said. “I will. But they are making this seem too easy.”
“Beliefs like that will get us killed, Pavel. I order you to stop it and concentrate,” Zakharov said seriously. “You thought it would be easy to trap Jorge Ruiz in Abaete, too.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me.”
They drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, struck by the incredible contrast of going from a large cosmopolitan high-rise city to a wooded countryside in just a few kilometers. Just past the Marin County Airport north of Novato on Highway 101, they exited the freeway onto Redwood Highway and proceeded to the Redwood Landfill, then to a side road, stopping near a set of railroad tracks. Khalimov made a radio call using a short-range FM transceiver, and a man with an Uzi submachine gun appeared out of the darkness and unlocked an old, rarely used railroad access gate on the far side of the landfill. Khalimov drove inside to the incinerator facility. Inside an area marked with signs carrying skulls and crossbones that read DANGER HAZARDOUS WASTE DISPOSAL AREA and POS REQUIRED, they were met by a man wearing a respirator and carrying an Uzi submachine gun.
“It is here, sir,” Khalimov said. He handed Zakharov a respirator with a full-face mask and small green bottle of oxygen on a shoulder strap. “Hazardous waste materials from the piers in Richmond are brought here for incineration. We will move the device immediately after prearming.” Zakharov donned the mask, checked it, and they left the car. Khalimov retrieved a small yellow case from the back of the Cherokee and followed the Russian colonel inside the facility.
Even with the masks on and with positive pressure against his face, the acidy taste and feel of the air was oppressive. The temperature was at least ten degrees Celsius higher inside. Khalimov went over to the back of the facility, where a row of waste collection hoppers were waiting in a row with a chain around them so they could not be used. Khalimov removed a padlock from the chain, and he and his men pulled one of the hoppers out of the row. He unlocked a large lever and pulled it carefully, tipping the hopper. Several liters of thick sludge dumped out. Bolted to the side of the hopper was a device about the size of a small car transmission, wrapped in aluminum foil and plastic. “It is not petroleum-based oil—the heat from the device might have caused regular oil to burn,” Zakharov explained as he began to carefully cut the foil and plastic away. “It is a mixture of antifreeze and dry cell battery carbon,” Zakharov said as he dumped the slurry out. “It makes an excellent homemade coolant and neutron absorption fluid. The foil should have reflected any other stray gamma rays and alpha particles back into the core, and also prevent detection from passive radioactive detection systems.”
They wheeled the hopper out of the incinerator building so they did not have to wear the respirators any longer. Even though it was almost forty years old, the warhead itself was in almost perfect condition, Zakharov noted as soon as he had the protective wrapping peeled away. It was an AA60 tactical nuclear warhead, very common in a variety of Soviet weapons from short-range ballistic missiles and rockets to large artillery shells. Its design was simplicity itself. It was a gun-assembly-type device, with two eight-kilogram slugs of highly enriched uranium-235 on either end of a tube. One slug was surrounded by a shield or tamper that reflected neutrons back into the supercritical mass; the other end of the tube had an explosive charge that would drive the second slug into the other. When the explosive charge was set off and the two sub-critical slugs were driven into one another, it formed a supercritical mass that instantly created a nuclear fission reaction.
This particular warhead had been used on a 9K79 Tochka short-range tactical ballistic missile, what the West called an SS-21 Scarab. The main part of the warhead, the “physics package,” was simple and required no fancy electronics; the arming, fusing, and firing components were the tricky parts. The keys to deploying nuclear warheads were reliability, security, and safety—three ingredients that were mostly mutually exclusive. These systems had to be bypassed in order to get a nuclear yield, but done in the proper sequence to successfully arm the weapon and create a full yield, yet still allow his men to escape the blast.
Zakharov attached several cables from the test kit to ports on the warhead. “Watch carefully, Captain,” Zakharov said as he punched instructions into the test kit. “I am first removing the barometric arming parameters to the warhead—from now on it does not need to sense acceleration or airflow to arm. Second, I have set the radar fusing system to ‘contact’—as long as the warhead remains inside this container, it will not detonate. Do not touch the warhead or strike it with any hard objects—although the mechanical lock is still in place, any sharp blows may activate the chemical battery and trigger it, and the mechanical lock may not hold. There is a half-kilo of high- explosive material in the warhead that will detonate if the warhead is activated, which will at the very least kill anyone with ten meters and scatter a lot of nuclear debris around. I trust you will drive safely.”
“Of course, sir,” Khalimov replied stonily.
He placed a device in Khalimov’s hand. “Your procedures are simple, Captain. First, remove the mechanical safety lock by pulling this pin. Next, turn on the test kit by turning this key, flip these two switches, and remove the key. Finally, once you are safely away from the weapon but no more than thirty meters away, press and release the red button on that remote. From that moment you will have sixty minutes to get at least five kilometers away from the area. At the end of sixty minutes, the test kit will electronically change the fusing from contact to radar altimeter altitude of three meters. Of course, it will sense the distance from the warhead to the side of the container is only a few centimeters, so it will fuse and detonate immediately.
“Three notes of caution, Captain. One: once you remove the mechanical safety lock, it activates a chemical battery inside the warhead, which powers the warhead,” Zakharov said. “Since the fuse will be set for contact, any sudden movement or impact on the warhead that creates more than twenty Gs could set it off. It does not have to be a violent action—dropping it or even hitting it with a hand or object hard enough could be enough to trigger it. Have your men out of the building when you pull the pin, be careful to walk away from it, and for God’s sake don’t slam any doors on your way out.
“Two: you have just five minutes from the time you pull the mechanical safety pin to when you must turn on the test kit,” Zakharov went on. “After that, the chemical battery will be spent and there will be no way to set off the detonation charge except if you somehow managed to cook off the explosive charge using a blasting cap. The warhead will be all but useless then.
“Third: that remote control device is also a dead man’s switch,” Zakharov concluded. “If you press and hold the red button for more than six seconds, the weapon will detonate when you release the button. There is no way to stop the device from triggering after that unless someone disarms the device while the button is pressed. The device will also detonate when you move out of radio range of the test kit, farther than about two kilometers or so, even if you are still pressing the button. This may help you and your men bargain for escape if you are caught or discovered. Vi paneemayetye?”
“Da, Colonel,” Khalimov responded.
The ex-Russian commando was one of the most emotionless men Zakharov had ever known, he thought. He
