Chapter Three

Ten years ago, Pierre Renard had retired as one of France’s most decorated submarine commanders. The French Navy’s top brass had pegged him for flag rank, but Renard found the political and administrative constraints of the admiralty too confining. He had greater plans.

Using his retired officer network, he had become a director for the French shipbuilder DCN International in its Agosta submarine program delivery to Pakistan. While succeeding with the Agosta delivery, Renard had established relations with senior Pakistani military officials. After impressing them with recommendations on military planning, he had met with then-General Pervez Musharraf himself.

Renard’s French nationality had brought a detached objectiveness that the Pakistani leader valued. By the time Renard had explained a fraction of his analysis of the Pakistani defense structure, Musharraf had offered to quadruple his salary to leave DCN and join his staff. Renard had accepted the job on the spot.

Renard had addressed gaps in Pakistan’s ability to integrate their military operations. He had convinced Musharraf to coordinate his air defenses with his ground and naval forces and had urged him to accelerate the Super-7 aircraft’s production before the United States could pressure China to terminate delivery. As conflict in the Kashmir region validated Renard’s counsel, a grateful Musharraf had showered the Frenchman with bonuses. Then he had sent him to Algeria.

In Algiers, Renard had used his brokering skills to prevent Russia from adding delays and surcharges to their agreement to deliver their Kilo class submarines - as they had done with Iran. After helping Algeria acquire its foremost naval weapons, Renard had assisted with training its crews, developing its tactics, and transferring knowledge about the Kilos to Musharraf’s admirals to use against the Kilos of the Indian fleet.

Success in Algeria garnered an invitation from an Iranian admiral to upgrade his Kilo fleet tactics, and then an Iranian general asked him to outline and acquire the means to improve his anti-air defenses. By the time he had left Iran for his subsequent client, Renard had become a renowned international military consultant and arms dealer.

As the money flowed into his personal coffers and his ego grew with the demand for his services, Renard had developed a power base, network, and reputation among many countries dotting the map between his first two Pakistani and Algerian clients. But after a decade of strengthening the militaries of former-soviet states and countries across Africa, Renard had felt himself trapped.

Although raised in a Christian democracy, Renard had found no moral problem in assisting undemocratic Islamic states, but when rebel factions and thugs started seeking him, requests had become orders, and threats had followed his attempts at refusal.

Two years ago, he had awoken in Nigeria with the dark epiphany that he had created a mobilized and integrated anti-air defense network for a gang of brutes. When his captors had released him, Renard had returned to France and made the crucial decision to leave the money and power behind, dismantle his network, and retire.

But as he had reflected upon his career, the impact his work had imparted upon the world had depressed him. To make restitution, he had decided to undertake a final planning and weapons acquisition operation that would begin to redeem the acts he regretted. Decades as a Cold War warrior had made him an anti-communist, and he decided that he would transform Taiwan, communist China’s adversary, into a nuclear state.

 

*

 

March 26, 2006

Fifteen nautical miles north of Petrapovlosk, Russia

Renard knelt in a bobbing Zodiac and cringed as the Bering Sea’s breeze invaded his parka.

“Merde!” he said. “My testicles have frozen into cannon shot.”

The sea nudged his Zodiac against the fishing trawler he had purchased weeks ago. Renard glanced over his shoulder. Rubber boots dangled over the ship’s edge.

“Yes?” the man in the boots asked.

“I was merely making conversation with myself since you and your companions are boring.”

The man and his boots walked away.

Renard kept his eyes on the trawler. He had tested it on gale force seas and conducted crashback runs on its diesel engines, shifting from a flank bell to full reverse to verify the boat’s integrity. He trusted the trawler more than the Taiwanese sailors with whom he shared it.

I’ve earned reward for taking risks, he thought as he shifted his weight to flush blood through his legs. But I can hardly wait to finish this and retire.

A chime rang near his chest. He slipped his fingers from his glove, reached for his wireless phone, and pressed it against his cheek.

“Hello?”

“Are you there...with the trawler and Zodiacs?” Major Alexander Chernokov asked.

“Yes. All is prepared.”

“Then it begins,” Chernokov said.

“I wish you luck, my friend,” Renard said. “God willing, I will see you soon.”

 

*

Red cheeks and fair skin gave Russian Major Alexander Chernokov an appearance younger than his thirty-nine years. Given his freedom, he would have pursued a doctorate in his passion of astrophysics, but paternal pressure from a decorated infantry officer had forced him into the military. While his contemporaries with genuine military interest became colonels, Chernokov became sour.

He ran Petropavlovsk’s security detachment in the Russian Far East, distant from the comforts of Moscow. His salary, when paid, bought only secondhand goods for his family of four. Electricity and water were often rationed.

After years of discontent and no sign of promotion, Chernokov felt little guilt in selling ten SSN-18 nuclear warheads to Renard for three million dollars and a new life outside Russia.

 

*

A three-vehicle convoy climbed a dirt incline. Its lead jeep’s headlights illuminated a hillside. As Chernokov’s driver circumvented a rut, the beams lit the tops of oak trees and the road’s dirt shoulder crept up to the vehicle’s tires.

Pulse racing, Chernokov withdrew a Taser from his pocket and slammed it against his driver’s chest. The driver convulsed and fell limp against his door.

As the jeep rolled to a stop, Chernokov reached into the glove compartment for a plastic box that contained syringes loaded with the analgesic drug fentanyl, made infamous when Chechen rebels overtook a Moscow theater. He popped one syringe into his driver’s thigh, opened his door, and jumped to the ground.

He looked through the windshield of the transport truck behind him. Its driver convulsed as Chernokov’s accomplice, Captain Victor Ivanovich, shocked his victim. Ivanovich tugged the driver to the floor and grasped the wheel. Chernokov joined Ivanovich in the ten-wheeler and placed his boots on the unconscious driver.

“Reverse. Now!” Chernokov said.

The engine growled, and the truck lurched and slammed into the trailing jeep. Chernokov stuck his head out the window and watched the jeep tumble into the ravine.

Ivanovich stopped the ten-wheeler and jumped out. Chernokov reached into his jacket for a flashbang grenade. He yanked the pin and held a spring-released detonator. A bulletproof panel opened behind him, and light flowed through the gap.

“What’s going on?” asked a soldier from the infantry squadron sealed in the warhead compartment.

Chernokov tossed the flashbang grenade through the hole. Thunder cracked. With the guards incapacitated, he reached into his jacket for a vial of fentanyl in its gaseous form, opened it, and tossed it into the cargo cabin.

Chernokov stuck his head outside the ten-wheeler and watched a flashbang grenade leave Ivanovich’s hand and land in the ravine. An explosion rocked the toppled jeep. Ivanovich stood like a zombie as one of the four men from the trailing jeep staggered to all fours. The remaining men lay on the ground.

“Round them up,” Chernokov said. “I expect little resistance in doping these incapacitated men with the fentanyl vials, but if any man should regain consciousness and defy you, shoot him in the belly.”

“We will leave them here?” Ivanovich asked.

“Yes. They will not awake in time to stop us.”

“This drug can be fatal,” Ivanovich said.

“I’ve measured the dosage, and these men are strong,” Chernokov said. “Most, if not all, will survive.”

 

*

Renard listened to Chernokov’s voice on his wireless.

“It is done,” Chernokov said. “We are approaching.”

“Well done! I will soon reunite you with your family as a very wealthy man,” Renard said.

The Frenchman scanned the rocky shore in anticipation of Chernokov’s arrival. He trembled as anxiety heightened the chill.

“What’s delaying the other Zodiac?” he asked the man in the rubber boots above.

Hearing no response irked Renard. He had expected more enthusiasm from the men the Taiwanese Deputy Defense Minister had lent him to steal warheads for their country.

He raised his gaze to a sailor’s scowl.

“Well, what’s the delay?” he asked.

“The other Zodiac is in the water,” the sailor said. “Your Russian man - he has begun his attack?”

“Yes,” Renard said as he untied the Zodiac from the trawler. “They have the warheads. Let’s make for shore!”

As Renard reached for the Zodiac’s motor controls, a bullet whistled by his ear. Fire burned in his back and he fell to the Zodiac’s deck. Two bursts of gunfire echoed off the tree line.

As the fire in his flesh became numbness, he heard yelling in Mandarin. He bit the glove off the hand he could feel, reached into his parka, and withdrew his pistol. He aimed at the conversation above him and pulled the trigger.

Bullets clanked against the trawler. The engines droned and propellers swished. By the time Renard unloaded his clip he was alone. He collapsed and stared at the stars through the mist of his shallow breaths.

He propped himself on his good arm and examined his chest. Blood trickled from an exit wound. He knew he would survive the injury but doubted he would survive the Russian military if discovered.

Feeling returned to his arm, and he groped through his parka for a Marlboro. Popping one into his mouth, he worked a gold-plated Zippo lighter. Flicking the lid, he whipped his thumb across a gear that sparked flint into flame. Nicotine stifled the butterflies in his stomach. He reached for his wireless phone.

 

*

As Chernokov drove the truck full of warheads along a grass-covered forest road, he heard the rear doors clanking as they vented fentanyl.

He placed his wireless to his ear.

“Yes?”

“We’ve been betrayed,” Renard said. “I’ve been shot and abandoned. We must abort.”

Chernokov’s stomach knotted.

“I will retrieve you both,” Renard said. “I have two Zodiacs, and I’ve memorized the local charts. We can make for Petrapovlosk or perhaps the fishing havens to commandeer a trawler.”

Chernokov gaped at the moonlit silhouette of a KA-52 Hokum attack helicopter. Rotor wash whipped treetops, and turboshaft engines whined. A troop transport helicopter rose behind the Hokum and descended behind the trees.

The Hokum hovered in front of Chernokov.

“Jump!” he said.

The Hokum’s twin 30-millimeter guns erupted. The rounds splintered branches, shattered the ten-wheeler’s windshield, and shredded Ivanovich.

Chernokov leapt, rolled, and scampered into underbrush. Through the trees, he saw soldiers approaching. He cursed and lifted the wireless to his ear.

“Are you still with me?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Renard said. “What’s happening? I hear chopper blades and cannon fire.”

“There are ground troops...a Hokum...Victor is dead.”

“Merde! I’m sorry for Victor, but we must make haste. Meet at our rendezvous point. Circle through the trees to the south and-”

“You would risk your life for me?”

“I’ve never betrayed an ally. The Zodiac will be hard to see, and it is fast. We can escape.”

Chernokov heard an infantry officer barking commands to the squad of soldiers.

“Save yourself,” he said. “Find a fisherman’s house two miles to the north. Pitevski...he will hide you. At daybreak, find a merchant, Yvgeni Kuznetsov. As a contingency, I paid Kuznetsov in advance.”

“No, you must join me,” Renard said. “Make for shore.”

“You will inform my family of my love for them.”

“No, do what you must. Run! Swim to me! I got you into this. I will get you out.”

“You will ensure my family’s well-being?”

“Circle to the south. I will meet you.”

“Promise me...my family’s future,” Chernokov said.

He knelt by a pine and unscrewed the silencer from his pistol. A deep sigh issued from the phone.

“I promise you my friend,” Renard said. “They will want for nothing.”

The words comforted Chernokov as he chose his fate.

 

Renard pressed a palm against his exit wound and drove the Zodiac northward. A crack of gunfire shot from the trees, startled him, and died in the sea’s blackness.

Although the Russian traitor had been an instrument in his chess game, two years of befriending and promising Chernokov a better life weighed on Renard’s conscience.

“My God,” he said. “What have I done?”