Dalnijrus
06-08-2007, 08:49
+++The air was still in the cool morning in the Astrakhan Oblast, in the northern part of Dalnijrus, the people of Akhtubinsk still waking from their slumber, but for the old but still serviceable red pickup truck rumbling along the road, heading northward. Gvtesivar Sharadze, the driver of the vehicle, took a deep breath of the crisp, clear wind rushing past his open window. He had grown up in this country, and it felt good to be coming back to it from the startling urgency and reckless haste of urban life; but he had needed to live there, at least for a time, in order to set this up.
+++He looked over at his companion, Maxare Noridze: an average man, he seemed; somewhat short, clean-shaven, dark-eyed, with short, dark hair and a tan complexion, he was the one to look for if one needed a poster boy for the Dalnijrusian people. In fact, someone had done just that: he was included, by accident, in a Wikipedia article on the modern-day Beçevelibi people; and while he never knew that (for he had never a reason to look at the on-line encyclopædia), it did not matter: it had been uploaded anonymously, and no one had identified him, other than with 'typical Beçevelibi male'. Gvtesivar was much the same in appearance.
+++Neither actually knew the other's name, however. They were essentially faceless, for no neither knew each other, and could thus not give any information on who had done what, or why, and be entirely truthful.
+++There was, after a long stretch of farmland, a smattering of low hills, in the vicinity of which the Soviets had erected a facility. The farmers nearby knew enough to be afraid of it, and kept their mouths tightly sealed about its true nature, telling those who spelunked about in abandoned buildings that it was nothing—that all the interesting items had been looted long ago, and that the floor was completely rotted out; anyone that stepped in, they said, would instantly fall to their death. Of course, this was rubbish, and some saw it as such: they were the ones to meet the Kalashnikova battle rifles of the locals, which tended to persuade even the most curious.
+++Because the local government knew this happened (and because its Internal Security troops were better spent doing more important things than stand around all day), there were no guards there. The farmers had been in an extended discussion with Maxare's associate's associate's associate, who had at long last convinced them to complete their mission. The farmers' only concern was that it would not be traced back to them: this was easy enough. After all, what evidence did a nuclear weapon leave behind?
+++Indeed, it was a nuclear weapon—a suitcase bomb, to be exact—that the two men had come to collect. It was one of several that would not be missed: no one ever did an inventory, because there were simply no people on the facility's grounds. Unfortunately, there was no way to make more of them for the time being, but that mattered little for the present. As for the weapon itself, it held a quite small yield, compared to other stockpiled tactical nuclear weapons, which might have given the local government an excuse for their overlooking of it, if it weren't so easy to conceal.
+++The men unloaded themselves from the cab, moving toward the nearest door into the facility. They had studied copied maps of it beforehand, burning them after they memorised them: they quickly found what they were looking for, and left as quickly as they had come—moreso, in fact, because of their precious cargo.
+++Over the next few weeks, the truck would be travelling across borders, the two men seemingly on a tour through Eurasia and Europe. Their passports indicated that they were Russian Federation citizens—a fact that would be confirmed by any Russian official who had need to check such a trifling fact. They were actually from Uzbekistan, on loan from an organisation there for non-governmental Dalnijrusian purposes in the Isan Empire.
+++The nuclear weapon itself was deeply hidden within the machinery of the truck, measuring 62 х 55 x 27 centimetres (92,070 sq cm, or about the size of a lockbox). It was stowed beneath the floor of the truck, hidden cleverly under a pile of shit that, really, no one wanted to move, being that it would take a metric fuckton of time to do so and then get it back where it all belonged and have it fit. The two men were cautious only to go to overcrowded border crossings, where the guards were, ironically, the least prepared, for they were overworked and were often intent on just getting the people through.
+++Eventually, they came to a very crowded Isan border crossing, and, with no one to suspect them (save for that they had a little bit of an accent—but everyone these days were looking for Arabs, and the men didn't quite fit the bill, since they were of Caucasian and European stock, not Arabic or Iranian (although there was a little ethnic Iranian in both of them, but not much), passed smoothly on through, their truck on the way to a city within the Empire proper.
+++He looked over at his companion, Maxare Noridze: an average man, he seemed; somewhat short, clean-shaven, dark-eyed, with short, dark hair and a tan complexion, he was the one to look for if one needed a poster boy for the Dalnijrusian people. In fact, someone had done just that: he was included, by accident, in a Wikipedia article on the modern-day Beçevelibi people; and while he never knew that (for he had never a reason to look at the on-line encyclopædia), it did not matter: it had been uploaded anonymously, and no one had identified him, other than with 'typical Beçevelibi male'. Gvtesivar was much the same in appearance.
+++Neither actually knew the other's name, however. They were essentially faceless, for no neither knew each other, and could thus not give any information on who had done what, or why, and be entirely truthful.
+++There was, after a long stretch of farmland, a smattering of low hills, in the vicinity of which the Soviets had erected a facility. The farmers nearby knew enough to be afraid of it, and kept their mouths tightly sealed about its true nature, telling those who spelunked about in abandoned buildings that it was nothing—that all the interesting items had been looted long ago, and that the floor was completely rotted out; anyone that stepped in, they said, would instantly fall to their death. Of course, this was rubbish, and some saw it as such: they were the ones to meet the Kalashnikova battle rifles of the locals, which tended to persuade even the most curious.
+++Because the local government knew this happened (and because its Internal Security troops were better spent doing more important things than stand around all day), there were no guards there. The farmers had been in an extended discussion with Maxare's associate's associate's associate, who had at long last convinced them to complete their mission. The farmers' only concern was that it would not be traced back to them: this was easy enough. After all, what evidence did a nuclear weapon leave behind?
+++Indeed, it was a nuclear weapon—a suitcase bomb, to be exact—that the two men had come to collect. It was one of several that would not be missed: no one ever did an inventory, because there were simply no people on the facility's grounds. Unfortunately, there was no way to make more of them for the time being, but that mattered little for the present. As for the weapon itself, it held a quite small yield, compared to other stockpiled tactical nuclear weapons, which might have given the local government an excuse for their overlooking of it, if it weren't so easy to conceal.
+++The men unloaded themselves from the cab, moving toward the nearest door into the facility. They had studied copied maps of it beforehand, burning them after they memorised them: they quickly found what they were looking for, and left as quickly as they had come—moreso, in fact, because of their precious cargo.
+++Over the next few weeks, the truck would be travelling across borders, the two men seemingly on a tour through Eurasia and Europe. Their passports indicated that they were Russian Federation citizens—a fact that would be confirmed by any Russian official who had need to check such a trifling fact. They were actually from Uzbekistan, on loan from an organisation there for non-governmental Dalnijrusian purposes in the Isan Empire.
+++The nuclear weapon itself was deeply hidden within the machinery of the truck, measuring 62 х 55 x 27 centimetres (92,070 sq cm, or about the size of a lockbox). It was stowed beneath the floor of the truck, hidden cleverly under a pile of shit that, really, no one wanted to move, being that it would take a metric fuckton of time to do so and then get it back where it all belonged and have it fit. The two men were cautious only to go to overcrowded border crossings, where the guards were, ironically, the least prepared, for they were overworked and were often intent on just getting the people through.
+++Eventually, they came to a very crowded Isan border crossing, and, with no one to suspect them (save for that they had a little bit of an accent—but everyone these days were looking for Arabs, and the men didn't quite fit the bill, since they were of Caucasian and European stock, not Arabic or Iranian (although there was a little ethnic Iranian in both of them, but not much), passed smoothly on through, their truck on the way to a city within the Empire proper.