The Arctic Event (34 page)
Over the Arctic Ocean
The patterns of pack ice below and boiling cumulus clouds above were frost white, while the sea and sky shone a steely blue. Intermittently the MV-22 Osprey VTOL bucked and shuddered like a heavily laden truck on a potholed road. The storm front had passed, but the turbulence of its passage lingered.
With the Combat Talon tanker holding its course ahead and above the Osprey, Major Saunders stalked the refueling drogue streaming from the larger aircraft’s wingtip. It was an exceptionally precise piece of flying machinery. With its wingtip engine pods rotated into horizontal flight mode, the danger of putting the shuttlecock-shaped drogue through the arc of one of the Osprey’s huge prop-rotors was very real. The result, to say the least, would be spectacular.
The intermittent jolts of clear-air turbulence and the fuel gauge bars dipping toward empty only compounded the challenge. Saunders had given his wingman first pass at the tanker, and it had taken the number two VTOL over twenty minutes to make the hookup, burning through most of Saunders’s meager fuel reserve.
The long refueling probe extended from above the cockpit of the Osprey like the horn of a techno-unicorn. For the dozenth time, the Air Commando leader aligned it with the bobbing, weaving mouth of the drogue as a Stone Age hunter might aim a spear. With his knuckles white on the joystick and throttles, he waited for the instant his target might hold steady. It came, and he nudged the throttles forward.
This time, the probe slipped smoothly into the drogue and locked, linking the fuel-starved VTOL with its tanker. Beneath the wing of the big MC-130, command lights shifted pattern to green. “We have locks, pressure, and transfer,” Saunders’s copilot announced.
Saunders exhaled luxuriously. With the drogue secured and kerosene cascading into his fuel tanks, he could relax by a minute increment.
“Nav, how are we doing?” he called over his shoulder to the officer crouching before the GPS console.
“In the groove, sir,” the navigator replied. “We’re clearing the tail of that front now and we’ll be angling east at our next waypoint.”
“ETA to objective?”
“Maybe another three hours to touchdown, sir, depending on the winds.”
“Three hours it is.”
“I touched base with the cutter a few minutes ago, Major,” Saunders’s copilot commented. “The Coasties report clear air, but they aren’t hearing anything from the island yet. I wonder what we’re gonna find.”
“Maybe not a damn thing, Bart. That’s what’s worrying me.”
Saddleback Glacier
Crouching inside the cave mouth, the Russian demolitions man studied the lava ceiling and the explosive charges he’d planted, double-checking his placements. His orders had been explicit. He must collapse the entrance in a way that would present the appearance of a natural rockfall. It was an interesting technical challenge, especially in the roiling of the fall so that explosives-uncontaminated rock would face outward. It wouldn’t do to leave detectable chemical traces. Lieutenant Tomashenko had been very insistent about this, and today would not be a good day to fail his platoon leader.
Satisfied, the demolitions man knelt and crimped an electric detonator cap to the end of the spliced bundle of primer cords. Some of the cord lengths led to the overhead charges; others ran deeper into the cavern within the mountain.
Pavel Tomashenko felt the cold sweat gathering down the center of his spine beneath his parka. He knew it was only partially due to the golden ball of the sun bobbing above the southern horizon. He was on the verge of losing this mission. Like a hockey goalie seeing the puck skimming past beyond his block, all he could do was try to stretch for that last critical millimeter.
He, his radioman, and the second member of his demolitions team stood out on the glacier some fifty meters from the mouth of the cave the Misha crew had used as a survival shelter and the Americans had used for a fortress.
Even standing out on the glacier face in the open daylight was an admission of crisis. Like any other commando unit, the Spetsnaz were normally creatures of secrecy and concealment. But Tomashenko had lost both the cover of night and weather to the more critical factor of time. He must act decisively now, utilizing the scraps remaining to him. With the clearing skies, the outside world would be reaching in to Wednesday Island.
“Have you been able to contact the submarine?” Tomashenko snapped, then silently berated himself for the display of nerves. If his radioman had been able to establish communications, he would have reported it at once.
“No, Lieutenant,” the stolid Yakut replied, crouching beside his tactical transceiver. “There is no longer any interference, but there is no reply. They must not have found a lead in the ice for their antenna.”
“So be it.” Tomashenko forced his voice into normality. “We will try again at the noon schedule.” It was just as well. It would give him a couple of additional hours to salvage this mess and conceal his failure. “Get me through to White Bird team.”
“At once, Lieutenant.”
Using the radio so promiscuously was another symbol of disaster, as was the splitting of his meager command. But again Tomashenko had no choice. He must clean up things here at the crash site, and at the same time he must find and eliminate those damn American intelligence operatives!
At the base of East Peak the senior demolitions man emerged from the cave mouth. Trailing the detonator wire behind him, he backed across the sun-brightened surface of the glacier toward Tomashenko’s temporary command post. The number two demo man took the detonator box from the explosives sled and began setting it up.
“Lieutenant, I have White Bird leader.”
Tomashenko tore back his parka hood. Hunkering down beside the radioman, he accepted the headset and microphone.
“White Bird, this is Red Bird. Report!”
“Red Bird,” the radio-filtered voice whispered in the earphones. “We have no contact. We have swept the south descents and the main trail approaches for a second time. We have found no trace of them. They are not on the glacier and they have not climbed down on this side of the ridge. They must have descended the north face, Lieutenant.”
The descent Tomashenko had said was impossible the night before.
“Very well, White Bird,” he spoke curtly into the handset. “Commence a sweep toward the west end of the island and the science station. Engage on contact. We will be joining you shortly. Red Bird out.”
“Understood. Executing. White Bird out.” Tomashenko passed back the headset and mike. The Americans must have headed for the station. There was nowhere else to go. If so, there was still a chance they could be taken and eliminated. Even if it cost him another third of his command, the secret of the March Fifth Event would be kept.
The demolitions team had the charge leads wired into the detonator box now, and the lead man was cranking up the key. “Ready to fire, Lieutenant.”
“Carry on. Blow it.”
The demo man rested his gloved thumb on the detonator button and hesitated, looking over his shoulder at his platoon leader. “Lieutenant, those men in the cave...Sergeant Vilyayskiy and our people. Shouldn’t something be said...some words?”
“The dead are deaf, Corporal. Fire it!”
The detonator box magneto zipped, and thunder rumbled deep within the belly of the mountain. Ten thousand tons of basalt fractured, shifted, and resettled, sealing the crew of the Misha 124 and the four lost members of the Spetsnaz platoon in a black rock eternity. A brief burst of lava dust jetted from the cave mouth, only to be overwhelmed by the cascade of disturbed ice and snow flowing down the flank of East Peak, erasing the last trace. Even those who had been inside the lava tube would have a hard time finding it again.
As the misting avalanche cloud dissipated, the demolitions leader spoke, his words flat. “Your orders, Lieutenant?”
“Retrieve the detonator leads and let’s move out. I want to join up with the search party as soon as possible.”
The demo man gestured toward the wreck of the Misha 124 a half-mile distant across the saddleback. “What about the plane?”
“We leave it as it sits. The Americans know of it, and to burn it now would only make for more questions. Let’s move!”
At that moment, the radio operator stiffened. Tilting his head he pressed his earphones tighter to his head. “Lieutenant, I hear a signal on the transponder circuit! It is the radio tracer beacon Major Smyslov was carrying!”
Tomashenko bent over the radioman’s shoulder. “Are you certain?”
“It is the proper frequency and code pattern. It must be the same tracer.”
“Get a bearing!” Smyslov must still be alive and possibly pointing the way to his captors. As the radioman plugged the RDF loop into his set, Tomashenko squatted on the ice. Spreading out an island map, he readied a compass and a straightedge from his chart case.
“Signal bearing approximately two six six degrees! Signal strength five!”
Tomashenko’s all-weather pencil slashed across the map. A little south of west. That bearing would put Smyslov either on top of East Peak or on the south coast between this position and the science station. It must be the science station! At signal strength five it might be three or four miles out. Maybe his luck was turning.
“Radioman! Contact White Bird leader! Tell him the enemy is on the southern coast and they are heading for the station! Tell him to pursue with all speed! Corporal! Cache and conceal the radio and the other heavy gear, on the double! Light marching order! Weapons and ammunition only! We’ll have these bastards yet!”
Wednesday Island Station
“We destroy the station when we leave,” Kretek ordered. “We burn it all.”
“Is that necessary?” Mikhail Vlahovitch looked up from the data file he had been glancing through. He was no man of science, and he did not understand the columns of carefully noted meteorological readings. But neither was he, by instinct, a wolverine.
“It will muddy the waters and destroy evidence, Mikhail. Besides, the people who scribbled all of that down are dead. What will it matter to them?”
“No doubt you are right.” Vlahovitch tossed the folder on the laboratory worktable. It was a wise time to be agreeable with his employer.
Through the lab hut’s windows, men could be seen at work, gray shades moving through the rapidly thinning fog. Preparations for departure and the final big job were under way. Down at the helipad, heater tents had been erected around the Halo’s engine pods, prewarming the heavy-lift copter’s turbines for flight. The riggers were connecting the heavy nylon strap sling to the belly hard point, and the members of the demolitions team were laying out their ribbon charges on the snow, checking the connectors and fusing.
“How do you think we are coming on time, Anton?” Vlahovitch had to ask again.
“I’ve told you, we have enough,” Kretek replied irritably. “They are coming, but if we make no more mistakes we will be well away before they arrive.”
“We should be ready to start engines within the next fifteen minutes.” Vlahovitch hesitated. “Anton, what do you wish to do about the boy’s body?”
“Leave it in the bunkhouse. It would be excess weight, and when it is found it will confuse matters even further.”
Kretek’s explosion of familial anger had passed, and his professional objectivity was returning. He would gladly kill his nephew’s killer, but he couldn’t be bothered with his corpse.
“No one will know exactly what happened here,” the arms dealer continued. He peered into his second in command’s face; his ice-colored eyes narrowed. “At least, no one will know as long as that girl is indeed dead.”
Vlahovitch ran his tongue across cracked lips, not liking the feel of that intent, cold stare. “I told you, Anton, she was swept away in an avalanche.”
“You are sure?”
“That was how it looked.”
“That might be how it looked, Mikhail, but is that what actually happened? You saw no body!”
“How could we?” Vlahovich lifted his voice. “It was at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot cliff, in the dark, in the middle of a blizzard! Besides, if she didn’t die then, she died later. She couldn’t have survived last night dressed as she was.”
Kretek maintained his glacial gaze for a moment longer, and then he smiled and gave Vlahovitch a bearlike slap on the shoulder. “Pish, pish, pish, no doubt you are right, my friend. What does it matter when she died, as long as the bitch is dead? Come, let’s be about the day’s work.”
The two men geared up for the cold, zipping parkas, donning gloves and taking up arms. Kretek had claimed the MP-5 the blonde girl had carried. Waste not, want not. The Heckler and Koch was a fine weapon, decidedly superior to the Croation-made Agrams he had issued to his men. Still, as he slung the SMG’s carrying strap over his shoulder, a muscle in his bearded jaw jumped. He did not like having things—people, money, or opportunities—taken from him.
Kretek swept a shelf full of hard-copy files onto the lab hut’s floor. Bracing a booted foot against the heater, he rocked it off its mounts. With a smoky clatter of falling stovepipe, it tipped onto its side, spraying burning coals. A score of flame tongues sprang up amid the scattered papers. The two men filed out through the snow lock, leaving the legacy of Wednesday Island Station to burn.
Outside, the quiet air seemed mild in comparison to the cold-fanged wind of yesterday. Directly overhead, the blue of a clear sky filtered down through the mist and the terrain around the station was swiftly regaining definition and color. As was frequently the case, the morning’s sea smoke was dissipating as rapidly as it had come on. The men’s voices lifted in exuberance, and their movements quickened in automatic response to the coming sun.
Kretek and Vlahovitch were just starting their trudge out to the landing ground when one of the perimeter sentries yelled an alarm.
A figure stood atop the antenna knoll—a small, slender figure clad in red ski pants and a floppy, oversized green sweatshirt, its hood drawn over her head. She looked down at the station and its startled inhabitants for a moment more; then she turned and was gone, dropping out of sight down the far side of the hill, a hasty burst of gunfire futilely chasing after her.
Kretek turned on Vlahovitch, massive fists engulfing the front of his lieutenant’s parka. For a moment Vlahovitch thought he was a dead man.
“So if she didn’t die then, she had to die later!” Kretek’s glare burned red-eyed with the focused rage of a charging boar. “I want her dead this time, Mikhail! For certain! Now!” He converted his grip into a shove. “Get after her!”
“At once, sir! Lazlo! Prishkin!” Vlahovitch lifted his voice in a half-strangled shout. “You and your fire teams, follow me! Move, you bastards! Move!”
Unslinging his submachine gun, Vlahovitch fled as much as he started to chase, laboring up the hill toward the place where the figure had disappeared. You simply did not fail Anton Kretek in this kind of catastrophic fashion and survive. Even if he succeeded in catching and killing the girl now, the odds of his getting off Wednesday Island alive were not good. But if he failed to bring her head back, they were nonexistent.
Valentina Metrace kept to the hard-packed and flagged station trails. Wallowing in the soft unbroken drifts would be slow death. There were several inches of fresh snow in the bottoms of the trail troughs, but she had the legs and lungs to cope with it. She kept in trim by running two or more miles daily, and not mere roadwork, but steeplechase orienteering over broken ground. In the field, she could match the old ivory hunter’s standard of twenty miles from dawn to dusk, walking and trotting, while carrying a light rucksack and a heavy-caliber rifle.
For this run though she was traveling light: clothes, knives, a single white camo survival blanket, and a steel signaling mirror. It enhanced her mobility edge over her more heavily laden pursuers.
After allowing herself to be seen, Valentina had angled down to the main trail along the island’s southern shoreline. Heading eastward, she alternated between an easy jog and a fast walk, carefully managing her breathing, ground coverage, and energy reserves. She had the edge here as well. She knew how far she had to go, how rapidly she needed to get there, and what was going to happen once she arrived.
She stayed focused on the trail ahead, taking care with each step and keeping to the easiest, safest, and most efficient path. For the moment a fall and a twisted ankle was all she needed to fear.
Looking back over her shoulder would be a waste of energy and distance. She’d had a good hundred yards’ lead at the start, and by the time her surprised pursuers could have reached the hilltop to acquire her trail, she would have lengthened that out.
The men coming after her would also be “blown” by their climb and would need to get their breath back. More time and space in her favor. As long as she kept moving, there was little chance they could get within pistol-caliber range before she’d drawn them into the target zone. All she had to do was to stay in their sight and keep them chasing and not thinking.
Of course, all this was predicated on Jon’s plan working and on Randi’s observation that the arms smugglers hadn’t brought a sniper with them. If either of them were wrong...There was no sense in worrying about it. If they were, she’d find out presently. As she ran along the landward edge of the piled shore ice she tossed a three-fingered Girl Guide’s salute to the rocky point of land a mile ahead.