Chapter 6

“Mr. Dychenko, will you please follow me?”

Kostya gathered his papers and followed the man into the room the clerk had emerged from just a moment ago. After a long day with Customs and Border Patrol at the airport, and a long night in one of the small holding cells at the downtown office, Kostya was trying very hard not to be impatient. But his head ached from sleeping on the dorm-style bed set in a common room surrounded by a mosaic of people who obviously slept in different time zones. His mind had not stopped spinning since he left Cherkasy seventy-two hours ago. It was frustrating being held in limbo, especially knowing that the information he offered could save lives.

The clerk gestured toward the grand desk facing them. A frazzled, fifty-something year-old man sat behind the desk, scribbling into a notebook and tapping on a computer keyboard alternately. He had a pencil behind his ear, one in his hand, and yet another in his shirt pocket. His graying hair covered most of what looked like red, and his complexion, easily flushed, was reddening as he finished recording his ideas on paper and in cyberspace. The clerk cleared his throat. “Mr. Dychenko, this is Mr. Hannigan. He will be taking your case from here.”

Mr. Hannigan waved the clerk out and waited for the door to shut. His pale eyes, looking past the readers perched on the end of his nose, examined Kostya. He closed one file and placed it in a basket on the corner of his desk. A big man, Hannigan’s gut was probably thicker than it once was, and his age showed around his eyes and mouth, but he seemed capable and respected. His office was pleasantly disorganized, full of files and books on shelves and in stacks around the room. There was no wall of diplomas or awards. Instead he displayed pictures of himself with smiling people who Kostya assumed were clients based on the variety of ethnicities they represented. Kostya liked him immediately.

Hannigan put out his hand and greeted Kostya with a handshake. “Now, Mr. Dychenko, it sounds like you have quite a story. I’d like to make a recording while you tell it, if that’s ok.” Kostya nodded while Hannigan pulled out his phone to record the interview. “When you start, please state your full name, and state the fact that you are seeking asylum. Then, tell your story. All right?” Hannigan started the recorder and pointed at Kostya to begin.

Kostya’s jaw clenched with determination and his voice was gravelly but strong. “I, Kostyantin Mikhail Dychenko, am asking for asylum status in the United States because of dangers I face inside my home country, the Ukraine. I know I am in danger because my life has been openly threatened with physical attacks, and my family’s farm has been destroyed by arson, killing my father and my mother.” When he spoke of his parents, his control faltered slightly, and he coughed to clear the catch in his throat.

Hannigan breathed out deeply. “I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Dychenko.”

“Thank you,” Kostya said quickly. He kept his eyes fixed ahead. If only he hadn’t taken the extra work, even if the additional money promised to be a godsend for his family. In the end, all he accomplished was making his parents targets.

“I’ve read your statement.” Hannigan flipped through some papers on his clipboard. “I understand the basics on the work you did on the components, but could you explain how you discovered the missile silo?”

“The computer components I worked on were labeled. Each one listed the Oblast, or Provence, where my employer had collected the piece, and the GPS coordinates of what ended up being a missile silo. He rattled off the precise latitude and longitude coordinates from each box like they were sitting in front of him—all locations in the Ukraine, spread around the central farmlands, his homeland.

“I guess I don’t understand why, when you suspected something was wrong, you didn’t go to the authorities.” Hannigan peered over his readers at Kostya.

“Exactly who do I report a resurrected missile silo to, Mr. Hannigan?” Kostya ran his hands through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “My brother and I could have been shot for what we saw at the silo, depending on who wanted to keep it a secret. If I told my employer, I would be blamed for lost profit. Tell the Ukrainian Defense Ministry? Corruption is so rampant in government offices, I wasn’t convinced they weren’t involved. The Russians? The United Nations? The thought of someone listening to a programmer from Kiev who claimed to have reverse engineered components to launch an ICBM was laughable.”

“So in the end, you chose the Americans?” Hannigan grinned across the table.

Kostya shook his head and laughed out loud, but quickly became serious again. “I love my country. I think you should know that. For so long I believed that I was doing what was right for the Ukraine. Perhaps I have become a stranger to my country.”

“Or maybe your country has become a stranger to you.”

“Perhaps.” Kostya took a long drink from a water bottle Hannigan had provided him.

“You were Spetnaz-Alfa. Special forces in the Ukrainian Army.” Mr. Hannigan flipped some pages in Kostya’s file. “You had excellent marks, a bright future in the military. Why did you quit so suddenly and go to the University?”

Kostya shrugged. His mind drifted to the November protest in Kiev held at Independence Square. His unit was tasked with peacekeeping, but not everyone believed in following orders. The eyes of Ukrainians, his neighbors, rounded up like animals and used for target practice still haunted him. “I couldn’t be a part of it anymore—the corruption, the violence against civilians—I had to escape.” He turned his head, eyes resting on the table for a moment, and then returning to Hannigan. “I believe in honor and doing what is right.” He quickly shook off the bad memories. “Besides, my family needed my help to keep the farm.”

Hannigan nodded, but they sat silently for the next several moments as Kostya’s confession settled. “When you went to Cherkasy, did you find the locations identified with the coordinates?”

“Yes. My brother Bohdan and I decided to go explore.”

****

Bodhan was happy to let Kostya use a dirt bike, and he didn’t ask very many questions when Kostya wanted to go out riding Saturday morning. Knowing that the cell coverage was spotty, Kostya borrowed a handheld GPS unit. They set out together on the bikes, tearing up the paths away from the Dychenko land. The first site was just miles from his childhood home, off the main roads. Following some dirt paths and skirting creeks full of water and the edges of fields planted with tall crops of corn, the men stopped in front of the first geographical marker.

The land had been cleared about a hundred meters square, and slabs of rotting concrete marked areas where vehicles may have parked at one time. There were several metal poles with lights and antennas that reached up from nothing to the sky. Near the center of the clearing was a berm of built up earth.

“I know what this is. This is one of the old Soviet missile silos sites,” Bohdan said. “There are a bunch of them around.”

“I thought they shut them all down at the end of the Cold War,” Kostya said. He heard it wasn’t uncommon for people to loot the old silos for metal, or for teenagers to explore the dark, underground spaces for a thrill. It was harmless because the Russians had taken everything dangerous before they abandoned them.

“They did, but they left behind skeletons of their existence. It looks like this one is pretty intact.” Bohdan booted down the kickstand and walked toward the berm. “Want to explore?”

Kostya jumped off his bike and followed Bohdan to get a closer look. “Let’s see if we can get inside.”

Near one of the corners of the open area was a pair of concrete walls that angled into the ground, retaining the soil from a pathway that inclined downward. Bohdan led while both men accessed their cell phones to use as flashlights. The square-shaped entry’s top support was at ground level, opening to a concrete reinforced tunnel into the earth.

“How far do you think this goes down?” Bohdan asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve heard they dug over fifty meters deep, though.”

Holding his cell phone at his leg to light the walkway, Kostya entered the passageway, which led into a tiered stairway going deeper and deeper into the ground. The steps were metal grates, good for traction and upkeep. The white painted concrete, peeling and crumbling in places, surrounded them as they descended on the stairs. Lines of wires were attached to the wall in conduits that snaked down from level to level with the stair passageway.

Reaching the first landing, there was a threshold to what looked like a storage room on one side, and a square open shaft that appeared to house a lift to the deep lower levels.

“Do you think it still works?” Bohdan asked.

“Not without electricity,” Kostya said cynically. He leaned over and pushed the call button for emphasis.

Both men jumped back when it roared to life.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kostya mumbled.

Bohdan burst out with laughter. “What was that about electricity, brother?”

“Why would they still have it hooked up?” Kostya wondered as an open elevator car ascended to their level. His senses on high alert, Kostya watched and listened for any evidence of other people around and found nothing.

“It can’t hurt if we take a look around, can it?” Bohdan tempted. Kostya, unable to think of a good reason why not, shrugged. Bohdan opened the gate to the small elevator car and they entered. Bohdan pressed the lowest button on the panel, “Control.”

Down they sank, Kostya counting ten thick concrete floors as he passed. The temperature of the air dropped with each floor they passed, giving him shivers. “I feel like I’m descending into hell,” he said. “Only colder.”

Bohdan became more and more wide-eyed as the car sank lower and lower. “There are ladders to get out if this contraption isn’t working later, right?” Kostya nodded, although he really didn’t know for sure.

Finally, the cables squeaked to a stop and they stepped onto the concrete landing of the control floor. There was a thick door on tracks, thankfully left open, between them and the rooms on that level. The handles were welded onto the side, proof of steel reinforcement; its thickness evidence it was made of both concrete and steel—a blast door. Kostya moved forward through the passageway to see what would have likely been the control room.

The narrow walkway opened up to a dimly lighted room on the right hand side. Again puzzled by the electricity present, Kostya’s senses were on high alert.

“This is probably where the military personnel who handled the missiles were stationed,” Bohdan observed. Then looking up to the opposite wall, he exclaimed, “What the hell is going on here?”

Kostya was already there, looking at the computers that lined the wall, set up in nineteen-inch racks. They weren’t just sitting there, abandoned, after the Cold War; they were up and running. Then, he stared as the realization hit: he was surrounded by the outdated components that he had reverse engineered and fixed. He recognized each component and its seemingly innocent purpose, not as benign now that he put it into context. The box for communications, for security, for testing equipment—all these had a much different purpose when put into a nuclear silo.

Kostya was so sidetracked by his components being here, Bohdan had to nudge him to get down when the two security guards descended the ladder from the floor above. They were laughing obnoxiously, one of them carrying a bottle of vodka and the other a deck of playing cards. Their conversation was continuing from the floor above.

“So I told him that they could bring in more guards, but it wasn’t going to change the fact that no one around here cares, and we do nothing,” the first guard said.

The second guard burst out laughing. “You really said that to him? No one cares?”

“Well, maybe not in those words—”

“Maybe not any of those words.”

“You know no one has been near this silo in months.” He took a swig of vodka. “And I know because I have been here the whole damn time.”

The guards sat at a table with a small lamp, across the room from the computers. Kostya and Bohdan had gone unnoticed so far on the floor behind some boxes and spools of cable, but they needed to escape either on the ladder or into the lift. The guards, although not diligent, would not be easy to sneak around.

“But they have delivered the missile now,” the second guard offered while shuffling the cards. Kostya, interested, signaled to Bohdan to wait.

“We have to be more careful.”

“What are they going to do with that huge chunk of metal and radiation?” the first guard slurred. “It’s like they think they can go back in time and make all the pieces work together again.”

That’s exactly what I’m helping them do, Kostya thought.

Bohdan poked his shoulder, and gestured to the ladder. Kostya saw what he did. The guards were distracted by their card game and bottle of vodka. This was an opening to escape very quietly up the ladder.

Kostya would have liked to look at the computers and how they were put together, but he knew that these were the systems he had been hacking over the last several weeks. The only thing missing was the last component: the one with the fail-safe chip and the alpha characters on the front.

They crawled slowly along the far wall of the room, and when they reached the ladder, Bohdan raised himself first. After his success, Kostya pulled himself up rung by rung. The guards did not notice them, but they still had eleven floors to ground level. But first, there was one thing Kostya had to see.

“Bohdan, wait for me,” Kostya said as he ducked back into the passageway.

Bohdan sighed but followed as Kostya went down the left-hand corridor and continued past the landing to a hallway filled with ducts, conduits, and wires. The connecting walkway transitioned to thick concrete, circling the area around the center silo. The area glowed with dim lights placed every several feet, and heavy metal doors separating them from the inside storage. Coming to what seemed to be a main access doorway, Kostya pulled on the handle and slid the door over about a foot. Looking in he blew out a breath and shook his head in disbelief. Inside the tall cylindrical encasement of the silo was a massive missile.

Even in the dim light he could see that although it was completely underground, the missile was at least ten stories high. It was painted dark military green, except for the silver connections between rocket components. He peered down into the silo and saw the huge rocket thrusters and the deep opening below where the rockets would fire if they were ever launched. Just from the size, he knew this was one of the larger missiles from the Cold War Era, maybe even the SS-18 Satan, the largest intercontinental missile ever built, and one of the nuclear missiles the Ukraine had surrendered to the Soviets at the end of the Cold War.

“Holy shit!” Bohdan exclaimed. “Is that what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a Soviet nuclear missile, then yes.”

“What the hell have you gotten involved in, Kostya?”

“Whatever it is, I just got a lot deeper,” Kostya muttered.

While it was common knowledge that stockpiles of various Soviet guns and grenades existed, no one would expect an SS-18 was being prepared for launch. According to the official paperwork, all Cold War missiles had been turned over to the Soviets and accounted for, but corruption, greed, and power were great motivators for leaders to be less than honest in the counts. Now, here was proof. Nuclear missiles were still in the Ukraine, and one was hidden in an abandoned silo in Cherkasy and Kostya was witness to its existence.

And he had been a pawn in their chess game.

He reverse-engineered the computers, so they could hook up the rocket.

He allowed them to manipulate him with not even a question.

He inspected the missile the best he could from his position. The lights alongside the body of the rocket were active, and the silo itself had been modernized recently. He scanned the surface of the rocket’s shell for markings, finding the expected “CCCP,” the abbreviation for the Soviet Union, and farther down, a Soviet star painted in red. But just over the star, he saw something unexpected. Painted in gold paint was the phrase, “Vohon’ svitanku”—Fire of Dawn—and a stenciled outline of a phoenix rising from flames.

Fire of Dawn. Kostya felt nauseated recognizing the name. His mind fell back to that cold November morning when Petro Vlasenko, his commanding officer, allowed his brother, Stas, to slaughter the ethnic Ukrainians the Spetnaz-Alfa had detained during their patrol of the Kiev riots. Petro called it a cleansing by fire to clear the way for the new Russia’s dawning—the Fire of Dawn. Kostya, too late to stop it, witnessed the results: a massacre accomplished under the guise of peacekeeping.

Having been assigned to his command, Kostya knew Petro by sight, but Stas had escaped before anyone saw him. He soon became a ghost, eluding any attempt to capture him. Only the terrorized witnesses and the voices of the dead could identify him.

Fire of Dawn and the Vlasenkos were more than rebels, though. They gained attention as violent terrorists, intent on fracturing the Ukraine and molding an independent New Russia, Novorossiya, out of the ashes.

No doubt, Fire of Dawn would use the missile as the means to power. They wanted it so badly they would hijack a Soviet missile and kill to get it.

And maybe use other missiles as well.

Kostya backed out of the door and made his way to the main walkway. Stopping to lean against the wall and breathe, he tried to comprehend the implications of what they just found. In the silo, they stumbled upon a secret that had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Kostya’s actions from this moment were more important than the extra cash for extra work he agreed to when Mik asked him to do the job. This was potentially international politics and terrorism, conflict, and war. This was life and death, and his finger was on the button, so to speak.

Bohdan was standing down the corridor by the silo’s wall, and he gestured for Kostya to follow him. There was an opening to a zig-zagging set of ladders, with horizontal metal-grate steps and steel handrails, leading to ground level. “I’d go to the lift, but I’m afraid of being discovered by the guys in the control room,” Bohdan said. “We were lucky they didn’t hear it when we came down.”

Kostya agreed. Each ladder up raised them half a story, so they had climbed twenty ladders by the time they reached a ramp leading to ground level. Exiting through a side door at the top, they squinted at the brightness of the sun.

“I don’t know what you have gotten involved in, but this is crazy shit.” Bohdan said, out of breath but finally out of the silo.

“Let’s get back to the bikes and get back before Larissa starts worrying,” Kostya said, wanting to get distance between himself and this place. He didn’t want to discuss this with Bohdan here, maybe not even at his house. Anyone he touched with what he knew about the computers might be in danger.

Regardless, Kostya knew he now had another move: leverage. Kostya had taken the one chip that made the fail-safe component useless, and the missile could not launch without it. Very few people knew how to access the information off this chip. Once he had the algorithm, he would have something valuable with which to bargain.

It might just keep him alive.

Or he might die protecting what he found.

****

Hannigan took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. “You found a Soviet-era missile in an abandoned silo, and some group, Fire of Dawn, was in the process of reactivating it?” He replaced his glasses. “So the Ukraine didn’t turn over all of the Soviet missiles at the end of the Cold War?”

“According to the official counts, they did,” Kostya said. “But don’t forget that at the end of the Cold War, the Ukraine possessed the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, behind Russia and the United States. With all the political changes, some things could be misplaced, mishandled, or simply stolen.”

“A Satan missile is an awfully big thing to misplace or mishandle.” Hannigan shook his head. “I’ve heard stories of nuclear devices being sold to terrorist groups or unfriendly countries.” He scratched on his notepad. “Do you have any proof that these weapons exist?”

“I have the GPS coordinates for at least four silos, and if I can still access my workstation in Kiev via the Internet, I can pull up the saved pictures of the work I was doing.”

“You say you went to the first silo undetected. When did you realize someone knew about your investigations?”

“Once I got back to Kiev from the weekend, Mik was suspicious, I think.” Kostya leaned his head back and loosened his neck. “I honestly thought he would help me. I had no idea how deep in the plot he was.”

“What was his advice?”

“He told me I must have misunderstood. I know he didn’t want to screw up the opportunity, but even he admitted if I said anything, it might put us in a dangerous situation. Kostya rubbed his forehead. “How could I have been so naïve to believe that Mik would want to help uncover what was happening? Mik, the company, and the client were all profiting from the relationship so why would any of them want to change anything?”

“When did you know you needed to run?”

“Mik called me. At first he just warned me to keep my mouth shut, to stay loyal to the employer and so forth.” Kostya stared stoically toward the bookshelves beyond Hannigan’s shoulder.

“And after that?” Hannigan prompted him gently.

“After that?” Kostya laughed cynically. “Mik was no longer a problem. They murdered him while I listened to him screaming and begging on the other end of the phone.” He put both hands down on Hannigan’s desk and looked at him intently. “If my mind hadn’t been made up before, it was at that moment. I was going to protect myself, and then I was going to make the missile’s existence public.” Kostya remembered his systematic actions after Mik was killed. “Without stopping at my apartment or the lab, I drove downtown, to six different branches of my bank and withdrew money at each one. When I had as much cash as I could withdraw from the bank, I turned my car toward home. After talking to my parents and Bohdan, I planned to disappear. And somehow I was going to do it all without anyone else getting hurt.”

“Then your parents…”

“My parents.” Kostya’s mind silently filled with the images from that night, seared into his memories. When he and his brother had smelled smoke, they rushed to his parents’ house. Arriving, the devastation of blackened wood and cement already marked the fire’s hungry path, and tall flames danced on the thatched roof. The house was a shell of what it once was. Both men scrambled to find entry into the house to save their parents, but were horrified when they found the front door and downstairs windows had been boarded up, probably just as the fire was started. His parents had been in the house as the fire started and grew, and their exits were taken from them one by one.

Leaving the scene of his parents’ death tore his heart out of his chest, but the threat on his life—on innocent peoples’ lives—was too great.

He escaped while their parents’ home smoldered into ashes.

Shaking off the memories, his eyes flattened out into the shadows. “Yes,” he answered carefully, clarifying the events for Hannigan. “Apparently, Fire of Dawn believed they had a fail-safe as well.”