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.