The Arctic Event (12 page)

“Be careful you don’t hit the rotors,” Randi yelled over the increased wind roar.

“I’ll be lucky to hit anything!”

“Hostile at eight o’clock, high angle!” Smyslov chanted. “Hostile is at nine o’clock, still climbing. Hostile is at ten o’clock...He’s banking! He’s turning in! He’s coming in faster this time!...”

The tracer stream cut past the windscreen, and again Randi rolled the Long Ranger into its steep evasive break. As the helicopter rolled onto its side, there was a momentary frozen image of the attacking Cessna cutting past them, the plane’s gunner half-hanging out its cargo door.

Like a Vietnam-era helicopter gunner, he was suspended from a monkey harness bolted into the door frame. Some kind of medium machine gun was strapped to his body, the belt feeding from an overhead magazine, making him a living flexible weapons mount. Looking down, he hosed death at the diving Long Ranger, the flash of an exhilarated grin glinting on his face.

Behind her, handguns crashed, both pistols firing at once, the piercing crack of Smith’s automatic and the heavier slam of her revolver. Ejecting brass flickered around the cockpit, and Randi caught a whiff of gun smoke as Smith got off half a dozen rounds before the target was past.

“No chance! Missed the bastard!” It was one of the rare times she ever heard him swear.

She got the helicopter stabilized under its rotor disk and checked her gauges. “We can do that once more,” she reported; “then we go into the water.”

It was a simple statement of fact.

“There’s a life vest under each seat, and a life raft slung under the fuselage.” Smith was equally pragmatic with his reply as he reached forward to take another speed loader from the fanny pack. “When we go in, I’ll try for the life raft. Everyone else swim as far away from the copter as fast as you can. Stay together and don’t inflate your vests right off. He’s going to strafe us, and you’re going to have to dive to evade.”

He was only going through the drill for form’s sake. Their survival time in the frigid waters of the straits could be counted in single-digit minutes.

“This would be a marvelous moment for a witty offhand comment,” Professor Metrace added dryly. “Any volunteers?” The historian’s face was pale in the cockpit mirror, but she was holding it together in her own way. Randi had to smile. Her taste in men might be questionable, but even she had to admit, Valentina Metrace had style.

Beyond the portside windows she could see the Cessna climbing into attack position once again. “Last chance,” Smith said. “Any suggestions?”

“There may be something...” Smyslov’s distracted murmur came over the intercom circuit.

“Major, do you have an idea?”

“Possibly, Colonel, but there is only a small chance...”

“A small chance is better than none, Major,” Smith snapped, “and that’s what we have now. Go!”

“As you wish, sir!” Behind his sunglasses Smyslov had his own eyes fixed on the enemy plane. “Miss Russell, when he begins his next run, you must hold your course; your straight course; you must let him shoot at us!”

Randi spared him an instant’s disbelieving glance. “You mean we give him a clean shot?”

“Yes. Exactly! We must let him fire on us. You must hold your course to the last possible second; then you must not turn and dive; you must climb! You must cut directly across his flight path!”

That was insanity twice over. “If he doesn’t shoot us down, we’ll collide with him!”

Smyslov could only nod in agreement. “Very possibly, Miss Russell.”

The Cessna banked, lifting into its wingover and final attacking dive.

“Randi, do it!” Smith’s command rang in her ears.

“Jon!”

His voice mellowed. “I don’t know what he’s thinking, either, but do it anyway.”

Randi bit her lip and held her course. She felt Smyslov’s hand drop onto her shoulder. “Wait for him,” the Russian said, tracking the pursuit curve of their attacker, calculating speeds and distances. “Wait for him!”

A tracer tentacle lashed past the Long Ranger, weaving and groping for the helicopter.

“Wait for him!” Smyslov said relentlessly, his fingers digging into her collarbone. “Wait...!”

The airframe shuddered as high-velocity metal thwacked through its structure. A side window starred and exploded inward as death screamed through the cockpit.

“Now! Pull up! Pull up!”

Wrenching her controls back to their stops, Randi lifted the Long Ranger through the flight path of the Cessna Centurion. For an instant, the whole world off the port side was filled with the nose and shimmering propeller arc of the diving plane, hanging mere feet beyond their own rotor arc. And in that frozen instant the windshield of the Cessna exploded outward.

Then it was past, and the helicopter was bucking and skidding wildly in the interlocking turbulence, on the very razor’s edge of departing controlled flight. Randi fought for the recovery, a thin, angry adrenaline-spurred cry slipping from her lips as she wrestled with the pitch and collective, striving not to lethally overstress the airframe. If she could fly the Ranger out of this, by God, she could fly it anywhere.

The copter responded and steadied with a final shuddering bobble. They still had a valid aircraft. They still had life.

“Where is he?” Randi panted.

“Down there,” Smith answered.

The white Cessna was falling away beneath them in a flat spin, a thin haze of smoke streaming from its cockpit. A moment later it belly-slammed into the sea, vanishing from sight in an explosion of spray.

“Well done, Randi,” Smith continued. “And you, Major. Exceptionally well done.”

“I’ll second that,” Valentina Metrace added reverently. “If you were a man, my dear Randi, I’d be yours for the asking.”

“Thanks, but would someone mind telling me just what it was that I did? What happened to that guy?”

“It was...pah, what are the words...” Smyslov slumped in his seat, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. “...target fixation. The machine gunner, he was firing his weapon from a body harness. He did not have a fixed gun mount with fire interrupters to keep him from shooting into his own airframe. Once he had you targeted, he focused on trying to hold his tracers on you for the kill. When you cut across his nose as you did, he swung with you, and turned his gun barrel right into his own cockpit.”

“And before he could get off the trigger he’d killed his own pilot and shot himself down,” Smith finished. “Fast thinking, Major.”

Smyslov lifted his hands. “Merest memory, Colonel. Once, over Chechnya, I had a muzhik door gunner with pig shit for brains who nearly blew the back of my head off.”

Randi sighed and glanced at the Russian. “I’m glad he missed.”

Chapter Fourteen

Kodiak, Alaska

The spruce-shaggy slopes of Barometer Mountain mirrored themselves in the waters of St. Paul’s Bay as the Long Ranger skimmed into the harbor at Kodiak. Angling past the trawlers that crowded the docks of the fishing port, the copter headed for the Coast Guard Base. The USS
Alex Haley
lay moored beside the base pier, and the big cutter was standing by to receive them. Her own helicopter had been offloaded, and her hangar bay doors gaped wide, a wandsman standing by on her afterdeck helipad to walk them aboard.

The
Haley
was a singleton, one of a kind within the Coast Guard’s white-hull fleet. A staunch and stolid ex-Navy salvage ship, she did duty as both the regulation-enforcing scourge of the huge Kodiak Island fishing fleet and its rescuing angel of mercy. Sailing in the wake of legendary predecessors like the
Bear
and the
Northland,
she was the law north of the Aleutians. Also, with her powerful engines and ice-strengthened hull, she was one of only a handful of ships able to dare the Northwest Passage with winter looming.

Gingerly, Randi eased the Long Ranger aboard, compensating for the ground effect variant as she sidled over the cutter’s deck. The pontoons scuffed down on the black pebbly antiskid, and she cut the throttles. For a long minute, as the turbines whined down, Smith and his people luxuriated in the sheer stability of the ship’s deck. Then the cutter’s aviation hands were ducking under the slowing rotor arc, and two officers in crisp khakis were approaching from the hangar bay.

“Colonel Smith, I’m Commander Will Jorganson.” As stolid and stocky as his ship, Jorganson was a fit, balding middle-aged man with intent sea-faded blue eyes and a strong, dry handshake. “This is Lieutenant Grundig, my executive officer. We’ve been expecting you. Welcome aboard the
Haley.
”

“You have no idea how glad we are to be here, Commander,” Smith replied with a degree of irony. After the cramped interior of the helicopter, the open, breeze-swept freedom of the helipad felt wonderful. “This is my assistant team leader, Professor Valentina Metrace; my pilot, Ms. Randi Russell; and my Russian liaison, Major Gregori Smyslov of the Russian Federation Air Force. Now, I have two questions I need immediate answers for, Commander. The first and most critical is, how fast can you get this ship under way and headed north?”

Jorganson frowned. “We’re scheduled to sail at 0600 tomorrow.”

“I didn’t ask when we were scheduled to sail,” Smith said, meeting the Coast Guardsman’s eyes. “I asked how fast you can get under way.”

The cutter captain’s scowl deepened. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Colonel.”

“I don’t either, Commander. That’s why we have to get out of here right now. I trust that you have received specific orders from the commandant of the Seventeenth Coast Guard District concerning my authority on this mission under certain curcumstances?”

Jorganson stiffened. “Yes, sir.”

“Those circumstances exist, and I am invoking that authority. Now, how fast can you get us under way?”

Jorganson had indeed received his packet of sealed orders concerning the Wednesday Island evacuation, and the two-starred signature underneath them had been exceptionally impressive. “We are fully fueled and provisioned, Colonel. I have personnel ashore that I’ll need to recall, and my engine room crew will need time to heat up the plant. One hour, sir.”

Smith nodded. “Very good, Captain. Now, my second question leads into the reason for all of this. Is your onboard aviation detail set up to assess and repair battle damage on an aircraft?”

That finally shook Jorganson’s stoicism. “Battle damage?”

Smith nodded. “That’s correct. While we were en route to your ship, someone tried to shoot us down. We were intercepted over the Passages by a light plane equipped with a military-grade radio jammer and a machine gun. If it weren’t for a bright idea by Major Smyslov and some brilliant flying by Ms. Russell, you’d be sailing to search for a downed helicopter.”

“But...”

“I don’t know, Captain,” Smith repeated patiently. “But someone is obviously trying to prevent my team from reaching Wednesday Island. Accordingly, I think it behooves us to get the hell up there just as fast as we can.”

“We’ll take care of it, sir.” Jorganson nodded, his professional composure returning. “The same for your helo. Whatever needs to be done will get done.”

The captain turned to his waiting first officer. “Mr. Grundig, recall all hands and make all preparations for getting under way. Expedite! Set your sea and anchor details and advise Chief Wilkerson that he
will
be ready to turn shafts in forty-five minutes!”

“Aye, sir!” The exec disappeared through a watertight door in the white-painted deckhouse.

The Coast Guard commander looked back to Smith. “Do you have any instructions about Dr. Trowbridge, Colonel?”

“Trowbridge?” Smith groped mentally for the name.

“Yes, sir, he’s the off-site director of the university research program on Wednesday. He’s up at the Kodiak Inn now. He was scheduled to ride up with us for the recovery of the expedition.”

Smith recalled the name now, and he considered his options. Dr. Rosen Trowbridge was listed as the chairman of the organizing committee for the Wednesday Island science program, a fund-raiser and an academic administrator, not an explorer. On the one hand, he would be another complication in a situation that was already growing increasingly complex.

On the other, he might prove a useful information source on the personnel, assets, and environment on Wednesday.

“If he can make it down here by the time we’re ready to sail, he can come.”

Chapter Fifteen

Off the Alaskan Peninsula

With bright ice crystal stars overhead and an occasional distant shore light to starboard, the USS
Alex Haley
swept through the deepening autumn night, her engines rumbling at a steady fast cruise. The big ice cutter had a four-hundred-mile run to the southwest along the Alaskan coast before she could make her turn north at Unimak Island for the true long haul up through the Bering Sea.

Her cramped radio room smelled of ozone and cigarette smoke and was sultry with the waste heat radiating from the equipment chassis. The use-worn gray steel chair creaked with Smith’s weight and the roll of the ship, and the handset of the scrambled satellite phone was slick with perspiration. Smith had the radio shack to himself, the regular radio watch having been evicted in the face of security.

“How did they spot us?” Smith demanded.

“It’s not difficult to guess,” Fred Klein’s distant voice replied. “Pole Star Aero-leasing provides helicopters and light transport aircraft for a number of survey and science operations in the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic, including the Wednesday Island project. When the press release about your expedition to the Misha crash site hit the media, the hostiles must have staked out the most likely equipment sources. You were caught in an airborne version of a drive-by shooting.”

“Then somebody else must know about the anthrax aboard the Misha 124.”

“That’s a distinct possibility, Jon.” Director Klein’s voice remained controlled. “We’ve known from the start that the Misha warload would be a major prize for any terrorist group or rogue nation. That could explain the attack on your aircraft. But that’s only one possible explanation. We don’t know nearly enough to close out any options on this incident.”

Smith ran a hand through his sweat-dampened dark hair. “I’ll concede that point. But how did it get out? Where did it leak?”

“I don’t know, but I’d suspect it’s on the Russian side. We’ve been holding all the information on the Misha 124 tightly compartmentalized. Literally the only people stateside who know the whole story are the President, myself, Maggie, and the members of your team.”

“And as my people were the ones damn near killed in this intercept incident, I think we can safely eliminate them as a sellout source.”

Klein’s voice grew emotionless. “I said we can’t close out any possibilities, Jon.”

Smith caught the caution. Smyslov...Professor Metrace...Randi. He fought back the instinctive denial. Klein was right: “It’s inconceivable!” made a wonderful set of famous last words.

The director continued. “The other remaining option is that we had a leak on site, through one of the members of the Wednesday Island team itself. We have been assured that none of the expedition members have visited the downed bomber. Somebody may be lying. That will be something else for you to investigate, Jon.”

“Understood, sir. That brings us back to the question of who’s on our ass.”

“All I can say is that we are working that problem with all available assets,” Klein replied. “The ID numbers of the aircraft that attacked you belong to a Cessna Centurion owned by one Roger R. Wainwright, a longtime resident of Anchorage. The FBI and Homeland Security have pulled their packages on the man, and he has no criminal record and no known ties to any extremist organizations. The man’s a moderately successful building contractor and purportedly a solid citizen. But when the Anchorage FBI office scooped him up for questioning, he confessed to occasionally renting his plane out under the table to other parties. After that, he stopped talking and started yelling for a lawyer. The FBI is still working on him.”

“How about the hangar across from Pole Star Aero-leasing? Who rented that?”

“The name on the documentation was Stephen Borski. The people at Merrill Field business office recall a nondescript middle-aged man with a definite Russian accent. Possibly a Russian expat—they have a lot of them up this way. He paid in cash for a month’s hangar rental. The address and phone number given on the documentation have proven to be false.”

“Was he aboard the plane that hit us?”

“Unknown, Jon. The Coast Guard has found a floating debris field where the Cessna went down, but no bodies. They must still be in the plane, and it’s at the bottom of Kennedy Entrance. Given the deep waters and fast currents, it will be a while before they can locate and recover the wreck, if ever.”

Smith rapped a fingertip on the console top in frustration. Even Alaska was in on the conspiracy. “There’s one other Russian connection. Major Smyslov believes that the electronic warfare system used to knock out our radio was a Russian-made military communications jammer.”

Smith tilted his chair back on its swivel, wincing a little at the piercing squeal. “But why in the hell would the Russians be trying to stop us? They started it!”

“There are Russians and then there are Russians,” Klein replied mildly. “We’re working with the Federation government; somebody else might not be. Anchorage FBI says they get the feel of Russian Mafia or something similar, but that’s just an instinct call on their part, with nothing solid to back it up. The Russian links could be purely coincidental, or they could be local hirelings fronting for someone else.

“Whoever they are, they seem to have a broad spectrum of resources available to them. That bullet recovered from the float of your helicopter was a 7.62mm NATO standard round, and the Alaskan State Police Lab identifies the lands on the slug as coming from an American Army–issue M-60 machine gun.”

God,
Smith sneered at himself. And just this morning he’d been saying that this shouldn’t be a shooting job? “What are your orders, sir?”

“I’ve been in conference with the President, Jon. We feel that the mission and its secrecy protocols are both still necessary, more so than ever if someone else is interested in that anthrax. We also view your team as still the best asset we have in position to do the job. The question is, how do
you
feel about it?”

Smith studied the cable-bedecked overhead for a long ten seconds. If he’d forgotten how to command, he’d also forgotten about the burdens that command brought with it. He was being reminded vividly now.

“I concur, sir. The team is still good, and we still have a valid operation.”

“Very good, Jon.” A hint of warmth crept into Klein. “I will so advise President Castilla. He’s ordered you some backup as well. An Air Commando task force is being deployed to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. They’ll be on call to lift in to Wednesday Island should you need them. We are also working on the identity and motives of your attackers, top priority.”

“Very good, sir. There’s one other point I need to bring up: our liaison, Major Smyslov.”

“A problem with him, Jon?”

“Not with the man himself. He saved our collective asses today. Only after today’s events, I’m fairly sure he realizes that we’re not your average bunch of army doctors and government contract employees. And fair being fair, it’s pretty obvious Major Smyslov is not your average Russian Air Force officer.”

Klein chuckled dryly. “I think that particular fiction may be abandoned within the family, Jon. You have a fangs-out operation now and a common enemy. Putting a few more cards on the table might be in order. As team leader I’ll leave that to your good judgment. You’re carrying the ball.”

“Thank you, sir. Is there anything else?”

“Not at this time, Jon; we will keep you advised. Good luck.”

The sat phone link broke.

Smith dropped the phone back into its cradle and frowned. Accepted as a given, the United States and the Russian Federation did have a common enemy in this affair. But did that necessarily make them friends?

“Okay, Chief, I’m out of your hair for a while,” Smith said as he left the radio shack.

“Not a problem, sir,” the radioman of the watch replied tolerantly. The Old Man had already passed the quiet word. The Army guy and his people were to be considered VIP-plus, and don’t even think about asking questions.

Smith descended one deck level into officers’ country and headed aft down a gray-painted passageway. It had been a number of years since he’d last experienced the vibrant undertone of a living ship at sea, the whirr of air through ductwork, the throb of engines, and the repetitive creak of the hull working with the waves. Not since the tour he’d spent cross-attached to the Navy aboard the hospital ship
Mercy.
The cruise where Randi’s fiancé...

He jerked his mind away from the thought. The past was dead, and there was no time for resurrections. He and his team were operating.

Smith ducked through a curtained doorway into the
Haley
’s wardroom, a small living space with scarred artificial wood paneling on the bulkheads and a collection of battered steel-tube-and-leather furnishings. Randi sat half curled on one of the settees, her feet tucked under her.

“Good evening, Colonel,” she said, glancing up from a paperback Danielle Steel, reminding him there was an individual present who wasn’t supposed to know they were on a first-name basis.

The cabin’s two other current occupants were seated at the big central mess table: Valentina Metrace and a middle-aged man in a wooly-pully sweater and heavy-duty cargo pants, a scattering of files open before them.

The man’s rounded shoulders rendered him squat rather than stocky, and the thin frosting of graying hair over his skull was countered by a precisely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. An expression of instinctive petulance had been ingrained on his features, and a look of automatic disapproval in his eyes, and he wore his outdoorsman’s gear as though it were a poorly fitted costume.

“Colonel Smith, I don’t think you’ve had a chance to meet my fellow academic yet, Dr. Rosen Trowbridge. Dr. Trowbridge, this is our team leader, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith.” A studied sweetness in Professor Metrace’s voice spoke beyond her words.

Smith nodded pleasantly. He’d caught and registered the vibrations radiating from the man as well. “Good evening, Doctor. I haven’t had a chance to apologize yet for the sudden change of our sailing schedule. I hope it didn’t inconvenience you too badly.”

“In fact it did, Colonel.” Trowbridge spoke Smith’s rank with a hint of distaste. “And, speaking frankly, I don’t appreciate your not consulting me about it. The Wednesday Island expedition has been a meticulously planned research project, and so far it has been a success for the involved universities. We don’t need any complications at this late date.”

Smith called up and applied an appropriate sympathetic smile. “I understand fully, Professor. I’ve been involved in a number of research projects myself.”

Enough of them to recognize you, my friend,
Smith continued silently behind his smile.
What you really mean is that your people in the field did good research while you sat in your cozy office signing off the documentation and absorbing credit by bureaucratic osmosis. Now you’re probably scared to death that someone is going to upset the applecart before you can finagle your name onto the final paper.

“You’re right, Doctor.” Smith settled into a chair across from Metrace and Trowbridge. “I should have, but it was a matter of expediency. There are certain concerns about the weather conditions we might encounter around Wednesday Island. With the winter closing in, it seemed to me the faster we get to the island the better. By gaining a little more time on station with an early sailing, I felt my team’s investigation of the crash site would be less likely to interfere with the extraction of your people and their equipment.”

“Well, that does make a degree of sense, Colonel,” Trowbridge replied, not happy at being mollified. “But still, the way this was done left a great deal to be desired. I’d like to be consulted before any further changes are made.”

Smith clasped his hands on the polished tabletop. “I understand fully, Doctor,” he lied, “and I promise you will be fully consulted on any further developments. It’s in everybody’s best interest for us to work together on this.”

“I can’t disagree with that, Colonel. Just as long as it is recognized that the university expedition was there first and that we have priority.”

Smith shook his head. “That’s not exactly true, Doctor. Some other people were on Wednesday Island a long time before your expedition arrived. The job of my team is to identify them and return them to where they belong. I think they should receive a degree of concern?”

Smith found that his words were only half cover sophistry. There were men up there on the ice. Men who had been there for a long time. They had served another flag, but they had been soldiers, like Smith himself. They had also been abandoned and forgotten by the world. The fate of the Soviet aircrew might be overshadowed by political expediency, but after half a century, they still deserved to go home.

Smith kept his gaze locked on Trowbridge until the academic backed down. “Of course, you’re correct, Colonel. I’m sure we’ll be able to accommodate everyone involved.”

“I’m sure we will.”

“I’ve been going over the Wednesday camp setup with Dr. Trowbridge,” Valentina said, “and the personnel roster, just to see what we might have to work with. I was thinking some of the expedition members might be able to help us with the crash site investigation.”

“If it doesn’t interfere with their official duties within the university expedition,” Trowbridge interjected hastily.

“Of course.”

Smith claimed the personnel file and flipped it open. Actually Smith had no intention of letting any of these people anywhere near the Misha 124. But that didn’t mean one of them might not have already paid the bomber an illicit visit. The leak about the TU-4’s warload must have come from somewhere. Could it have come from the source? And had it been inadvertent or deliberate?

He’d seen these files and faces before, but now he studied them again in this new light.

Dr. Brian Creston, Great Britain, meteorologist and the expedition leader. By his picture a big, smiling bear of a man with a brown flattop and a ruddy outdoorsman’s face. An accredited field researcher, he had a number of expeditions in both the Arctic and Antarctic to his credit.