After the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the Russian government sold at least five suitcase nukes to the United States to be decommissioned, each still containing the FB subcircuit boards. BXJ Technologies was the corporation hired to decommission them. However, rogue ex-Soviet general Dmitri Gredenko blackmailed the BXJ founder, Phillip Bauer, and Abu Fayed, a Muslim extremist cell leader, paid off Darren McCarthy, to obtain five of them. Gredenko and Fayed coordinated together to use the weapons on U.S. soil (albeit to attain two separate goals).