Arctic Gold (6 page)

Soon Kozhevennaya came to a T at Bolhoy Prospekt, and Akulinin turned left, then began hunting for the entrance to a parking lot. The cruise ship terminal was just ahead. The atmosphere of their surroundings, he noticed, had changed dramatically, clean, well kept, well lit, and open, where only a few blocks away the decrepit warehouses and abandoned machine shops brooded over fog- shrouded darkness.

St. Petersburg, Akulinin knew, depended these days upon making a good impression on tourists for its economic survival.

Pulling the CitroICn into an empty space in the parking lot, Akulinin took a moment to peel off his worker coveralls. These went on the floor under the passenger side seat, leaving him in a suitably tacky short- sleeved shirt that fairly shouted American tourist. The MP5K, along with Lia SOCOM pistol, went under the seat. Pulling a small stack of papers and booklets from the glove box, he stepped out of the car. Lia was transformed, wearing a pale blouse displaying significant cleavage over a short black skirt and heels, with a sweater over her shoulders to keep off the night chill.

Gallantly he held out his elbow. It been a lovely evening out on the town, my dear. Shall we?

I don’t go out with Romeos, she told him, smiling. At least not with any

old Romeo.

Together, they started for the building entrance that would take them through to the cruise ship.

Ghost Blue

Ten miles west of St. Petersburg

0056 hours

Dick Delallo was holding his F-22 in a gentle right turn above the Gulf of Finland when the threat receiver lit up and the warning tone sounded over his headset.

Haunted House, Ghost Blue, he called. The Oscar Sierra light is lit. Do you copy?

Ghost Blue, Haunted House, came over his headset. Copy. You are clear to get out of Dodge. Over.

Ah roger that. He was already tightening his turn, trying to identify the source of the threat. On my way back to the barn.

Oscar Sierra was a pilot inside joke, using the phonetic alphabet letters for O and S

to represent the words oh, shit. It meant someone was painting him with a target acquisition radar and that a missile launch could be imminent.

The signal from the threat radar, though, was weak and intermittent. The frequency suggested that he’d been briefly painted by the acquisition radar code- named Spoon Rest by NATO, which meant they were trying to target him with an SA-2 Guideline.

Guideline was the NATO reporting name for the Lavochkin OKB S-75 surface- to- air missileancient by the standards of modern military technology but still deadly. Gary Powers’ U-2 had been downed over Sverdlovsk in 1960 by a barrage of fourteen SA-2 missiles, a barrage that had also managed to take out a MiG-19 trying for an intercept.

Just because Delallo was being painted didn’t mean the Russian radar operator could see him. In fact, the operator probably didn’t. The whole point of stealth technology was to prevent the energy of the threat radar from

returning to the emitting dish, rendering it blind. Still, the pucker factor for Major Dick Delallo was rising.

Operation Magpie

Waterfront, St. Petersburg

0058 hours

Akulinin and Lia walked up a low concrete ramp toward the entrance to the cruise ship wharf. The ship, the North Star Line St. Petersburg 2,

was tied up on the pier just beyond the high chain- link security fence, her lights ablaze stem to stern, like beacons promising refuge and safety.

To get to that promise, they needed to go through the security checkpoint and customs. A pair of Russian MVD police eyed them suspiciously as they approached.

Good evening! Akulinin called in his most jovial dumb tourist voice. Some fog out tonight, huh?

One of the men pointed his weapon, an AKM, at Akulinin chest. You stop, please, the man said in thickly accented English. Passports.

Akulinin and Lia both handed their passports over.

The guard grunted as he looked at the stamps, then added, Your other papers. ID. All.

When these were produced, the guard went through them with microscopic attention while the other watched the two with a sullen expression.

Your papers not in order, the first said after an interminable examination.

Why? Akulinin said, putting on his best naIove- American expression of surprise and confusion. What the matter?

Our papers were perfectly in order before, Lia said. What the hell is going on?

Papers not in order, the Russian said, his broad Slavic features betraying no emotion. You come with us.

We’re alerting Mercutio, Rockman voice said in Akulinin ear and presumably in Lia as well. Stall them.

Stall them, Akulinin thought. Right. Maybe I should do a little soft- shoe?

MercutioRomeo best friend in Romeo and Juliet

was running Magpie support operation in St. Petersburg, the stage crew behind the scenes who let Lia and Akulinin play their roles. The support team was on board the cruise ship, which was serving as a kind of impromptu safe house for the op.

Of course, in the original Romeo and Juliet

Mercutio had been killed in a duel.

Akulinin hoped to hell it wasn’t going to come to that.

Ghost Blue

Twelve miles west of St. Petersburg

0058 hours

Major Dellalo pushed the throttle forward as he brought the stick back, sending the F-22 higher and yet higher into the thin, cold air. The SA-2 Guideline had a range of about thirty miles and a ceiling of sixty thousand feet. Thirty miles from the SA-2 site on the western end of Kotlin Island would reach to the far end of St. Petersburg to the east and halfway back to the Finnish border to the west.

His F-22 had two advantages if the Russians could actually see his plane and target itspeed and altitude. The top speed of the F-22 Raptor was classified, of course, but his baby could crowd Mach 2.5 and have knots to spare. Her service ceiling was sixty- five thousand feet.

It should be possible to get above a Guideline reach, and while he couldn’t outrun onethe SA-2 had a velocity of about Mach 3the speed of his Raptor would

make it nearly impossible to catch if the missile was launched from a stern position.

His major disadvantage at the moment was the fact that Kotlin Island, with its SAM base, lay only eight miles ahead, and perfectly blocked his route back to international airspace out over the Baltic Sea. If they wanted to, they would get at least one clear shot at him.

How had they spotted him? His radar screen showed a number of targets in the immediate vicinity, all at lower altitudes. Most of them were civilian aircraft, but a few had the characteristic signatures of Russian military aircraft. A JOINTSTAR E-3 Sentry AWACS over the North Sea was feeding him data on possible threats. There were two radar returns that worried him in particular streaking in over Vikulova, from the south. The Sentry was identifying them as MiG-31s.

His threat receiver lit up again, and this time it stayed lit and he heard a high- pitched warble in his ears, which meant that the threat radar had switched to a high PRF tracking mode. So the Russians did see him, after all.

Haunted House, Haunted House, Ghost Blue, he called. Oscar Sierra, repeat, Oscar Sierra. They have a lock.

Copy that, Ghost Blue.

He suppressed a momentary flash of anger. It would be nice if Haunted House, the radio handle for the op controllers at Fort Meade, had something constructive

to say.

The warning tone wailed away incessantly. A launch, a dim flash of light in the gloom immediately below

By lowering a wing he could see the exhaust plume of the missile climbing through the fog, its exhaust illuminating the white haze below. A second missile rose close behind the first, followed by a third.

He was still climbing, passing through fifty- four thousand feet.

It was time to go balls to the wall. He slammed the

Raptor throttles full forward, angling his thrust to increase his rate of climb.

Behind and below, the missiles began angling toward their high- flying target.

The question for tomorrow, Dick Delallo thought, was how did the Russians see this stealth aircraft? The pressing question of the moment, however, was how to avoid being shot down.

The Art Room

NSA Headquarters

Fort Meade, Maryland

1658 hours EDT

Charlie Dean walked past an Army sentry at the door and stepped at last into the Art Room, his glance taking in the dozens of technicians and communications specialists huddled over consoles around the room, the numerous monitors, and the huge central display on the back wall. Currently the main display showed a satellite map of a large city, but he couldn’t tell, offhand, which city it was. A river snaked in from the right, then split to flow to either side of a large triangular island. Major highways were highlighted with yellow or white lines.

Two time readouts glowed in the upper right corner. It was 1658 hours Eastern Daylight Time; wherever Lia was at the moment, it was just before one in the morning.

Radio chatter sounded from speakers overhead.

Haunted House, Haunted House, Ghost Blue. Oscar Sierra, repeat, Oscar Sierra. They have a lock.

Copy that, Ghost Blue.

William Rubens looked up as Charlie Dean walked in. They’re okay, he told Dean without preamble. She

okay.

Good to hear it, Dean replied, keeping his voice neutral.

Rubens knew that he and Lia were close, but neither of them wished to say so aloud.

Dean was afraid that someday someone higher up the bureaucratic chain of command would declare that his and Lia relationship was somehow unprofessional. In the modern, Orwellian world, the illogical, whimsical boundaries of political and sexual correctness could be redrawn overnight.

Jeff said they were in a shoot- out?

Rubens nodded. Things went bad. We think our contact was a dangle.

The word was tradecraft slang for someone deliberately exposed to a hostile intelligence service in order to lure that service agents into a trap or a compromising position.

For?

Not now, Dean, Rubens said, his voice brusque. We’ve still got a situation.

Dean almost asked if the situation involved Lia but managed not to say anything. He knew Rubens well enough to know the Deputy Director would fill him in whenand ifhe needed to know.

Launch! Launch, an anonymous voice said over the speaker. Dean could hear the stress behind the words. I’ve got three missiles coming up, probably Guidelines. Maneuvering

Dean understood Rubens’ curtness better now. If an NSA assetin this instance meaning an aircraft somewhere over the Gulf of Finland off of St. Petersburgwas being shot at, that was a serious situation indeed. The bad old days of the Cold War were long gone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t occasional problems with America new ally the Russian Federation. In the global arena, more often than not, Russia still reverted to her old role as America adversary. In fact, in some ways it was tougher now.

In the Cold War, at least, you knew the Russians were the enemy. Nowadays, they were nominal allies in the War on Terror, as long as their cooperation didn’t interfere with their own agenda, such as dominance of the former Soviet republics, or the struggle for influence in the Middle East, or the developing international crisis in the Arctic

Jeff Rockman was looking up at the big screen. Dean watched him a moment, then walked over to the coffee mess tucked away against one wall. He returned a moment later with two cups full. He set one on Rockman workstation desk.

Hey, Charlie. Thanks.

Who shooting at whom? Dean asked, looking up at the display. It was, at the moment, singularly unhelpful, showing a swath of satellite- revealed sea and land from Estonia to Finland. A white icon labeled Akulinin and DeFrancesca was blinking on the waterfront in St. Petersburg. Another, marked Ghost Blue, was drifting slowly north a few miles off the coast of Kotlin Island.

Rockman glanced at him, then back at the board. The Russkies just popped three SAMs at our comm relay aircraft. It getting a little tight over there.

Sounds it. He could see three icons marking the SAMs, now, painted in by the computers running the display. They were swiftly closing the range between Kotlin and Ghost Blue. Other icons showed in the area as well, some orange, meaning unknowns, others red, meaning confirmed potential hostiles.

Russia shoots down American aircraft inside Russian territory,’ he said, mimicking a newscaster voice. Details at eleven.’ The old man a bit worried about the publicity, you know?