Case in point, a nuclear detonation requires absolutely perfect timing between the shaped charges surrounding the plutonium. Forty perfectly timed explosions, to be exact. If even one of the forty was off by the tiniest fraction of a second, the bomb would fizzle. Only one very rare triggering device could offer such precision: a Krytron device. And only two companies in the world manufactured Krytron triggering devices. Yuri needed eighty of them. Unfortunately, each was reported to a governing body and carefully tracked.

He could have gone for a new triggering mechanism, but the chances for failure would have increased considerably. No, he needed the Krytron devices and they alone took two years to secure, and then only because of the former Soviet Union’s black market, which had its share of disgruntled officers willing to turn a blind eye for $100,000. The world’s supplies of beryllium and polonium were as tightly monitored. The focus was always on the radioactive elements, like plutonium, but in reality the plutonium had been the easiest. There was a lot of it around and with his contacts in the Russian Mafia, he had secured it in less than six months.

Bottom line, all of the necessary elements could be obtained, assuming money was no object. Yuri wasn’t sure where these men got their money—drug trade, oil, who knew—but they obviously had what it took. All the items he’d requested eventually made it into the jungle.

And now it was time to take them out of the jungle.

Of course, there was the small matter of Abdullah, and Abdullah was no one to play with. His heart was the color of his eyes, Yuri thought. Black.

Yuri walked over to the larger of the two weapons, a fission device roughly three times the yield of the Nagasaki device. To modern standards the design itself was basic, very similar to that of the first bomb. But there was nothing simple about the sixty-kiloton explosion it would create.

A black sphere rested in the opened panel, measuring thirty-five centimeters in diameter. It was dotted with forty precisely spaced red circuits with a wire protruding from each, giving it the appearance of a hairy fruit. To the front of the sphere sat a white receiver and a small collector. The outer housing shone silver—polished aluminum—no more than an expensive case for the black bomb inside. The large fly crawled over that shiny surface and Yuri reached a hand out to chase the insect off.