At 11:00 p.m., Director Brukhanov received a phone call from Silayev. “Find the nitrogen,” the commission chairman said, “or you’ll be shot.” Accompanied by a detachment of troops, Brukhanov managed to locate the convoy of tanker trucks sixty kilometers away in Ivankov. The drivers, apparently terrified by the spectral horrors of radiation, had stopped in their tracks and refused to go any farther. Soldiers with machine guns took up positions at each end of the convoy, and the drivers were at last persuaded to deliver their cargo, at gunpoint.
