The Arctic Event

“I can empathize with his feelings.” Smith idly flipped the top of the transponder lighter open and shut with his thumb, his eyes drifting around the green-lit interior of the little cave, taking stock of his available assets.

Randi ran her own mental inventory. Two rifles, one pistol, maybe two hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, and four combatants, one of whom was disabled by cold and exhaustion, and another crippled by conflicting interests.

It didn’t make for an impressive army.

“Well, Sarge,” she heard Smith murmur under his breath. “If I can pull this one off, I guess you’ll say I’ve learned how to command.”

“What did you say, Jon?” Randi inquired, puzzled.

“Nothing.” The repetitive click-ching click-ching of the lighter top filled the interior of the cavern.

Valentina slid the bolt back into the model 70. “Here’s a lovely thought,” she said. “Perhaps when Kretek and company arrive at the crash site they’ll waltz into a Russian ambush just as we did.”

“A lovely thought indeed,” Smith replied. “Only our friends up at the wreck are probably miles away from the crash site by now, hunting for us.”

Silence returned, except for the rhythmic click-ching of the lighter top. Then it stopped. Thumb still extended, Smith sat dead still for a long moment, staring intently into nowhere.

“Jon, what’s wrong?”

The lighter top snapped shut decisively a final time, his features going back to their fixed focused impassiveness. “Randi, do you think you’re up to moving?”

She sat up in the sleeping bag. “I can go wherever you need me to.”

“Right, then. Major, let’s get the gear together. I want to be out of here in ten minutes. We have some positioning to do. Ladies, a favor, please. When you get dressed, exchange your outer clothes, Randi’s for Val’s. Got it?”

“You have a plan, my dear Colonel.” Valentina made it a statement, her eyes bright with interest.

“Just possibly, my dear professor. It says in the Bible that a man can’t serve two masters at the same time. But it doesn’t say a damn thing about his not being able to fight two enemies.”

Chapter Forty-six

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 a

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 go

“Maybe not a damn thing, Bart. That’s what’s worrying me.”

Chapter Forty-seven

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 ante

“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.