Arctic Gold

But he didn’t like it. He’d argued point-blank with Rubens when he’d found out Lia was going to Russia. The new guy being paired with her was too new, too inexperienced. Dean wanted to go instead.

But Rubens had pointed out that Dean’s yearly quals were due and that there wasn’t time to wait while he worked his way through the battery of tests, physical drill, and proficiency exams. Damn the bureaucrats, anyway…

“Excuse me, Gu

“I hear you, Marine,” Streiber said, gathering up Dean’s equipment. “Go. I’ll check your gear out.”

“Thanks.”

“Semper fi, Charlie,” the former Marine said, his voice grave. He must, Dean thought, have read something in Dean’s voice, or in his eyes.

“Yeah. Semper fi.”

He hurried toward the door.

DeFrancesa Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0034 hours

Lia hunkered down in the darkness between two walls of crates, watching and listening. From here, she could just glimpse several armed men moving past the opening to her hidey-hole, could hear more shouting in Russian.

She didn’t speak the language, beyond a few rough-and-ready tourist survival phrases like “Good morning” and “Where is the women’s restroom?” and she didn’t have her communications link with the Art Room for a ru

The fact that one of the newcomers had already identified her as an American told her that the mission had been compromised, quite likely by Alekseev. Two people breaking into a warehouse on a St. Petersburg waterfront? With crime and looting as bad as they were in the city, how would the newcomers know foreigners were involved, much less Americans?

No, someone had talked. And she was pretty damned sure she knew who.

Keeping low, she found a side passageway through the labyrinth of crates, one taking her closer to the main door. Emerging from the warren, she crept over to the southeastern wall of the warehouse, keeping to the shadows. She could see one of the bad guys now, twenty feet away, standing with his back to the open door. He was visible to her in profile, holding an AKM in his right hand, gesticulating with the left as he shouted something to the others. “Gdeh ona? Skarei! Skarei!”

She studied him carefully. He had a distinctive face, scarred and weathered, with a cruel mouth revealing blackened teeth when he shouted.

A garbage can sat just this side of the open door, next to a clutter of janitorial tools-a push broom, a rusty bucket and a mop, a pile of filthy rags. She thought she’d noticed the can when she’d peeked in through the fiber-optic surveillance device.

The garbage can was overflowing with trash, its round, handled lid perched atop the pile precariously. She edged along the wall, moving closer.

“Ilya?” she called softly, giving the name its correct pronunciation, with the accent on the second syllable. “Ilya, do you copy?”

“I hear you.”

“I’m close to the main door… on the southeastern wall. Is anyone outside?”

“Yeah. Two goons with AK-74s. They’re standing to either side, their backs to the wall.”

“Can you take them?”

She heard a long pause as he studied the situation. “Yeah. They’re about fifty yards away.”

“Don’t do anything until I tell you to.”

“You’re the boss.”

Yeah. I’m the boss. And if I get out of this alive, I‘m going to have a hell of a time explaining to my boss…

Rising from her crouch, she moved toward the garbage can…

Ghost Blue Two miles north of Ostrov Kotlin 0034 hours

Major Richard K. Delallo eased back on the Raptor’s throttle, bringing the powerful twin Pratt & Whitney F-119-PW-100 thrust vectoring turbofans back to a purring near idle. According to his navigational display, he’d just passed the island of Kotlin, with its naval base at Kronshtadt, to his right. At fifty thousand feet, dense fog carpeted the waters of the Finland Gulf beneath him. He could just make out the diffuse glow of city lights beneath the fog ahead, eerily peaceful and quiet. Overhead, auroras flamed and shifted like pale, utterly silent ghosts.

His radio and radar receivers, however, showed a much busier picture. Pulkovo Airport was loudest, with traffic control radars banging away to the southeast, but he could distinguish the thready pulse of military search radars as well.

Nearest and most worrying was the big Kronshtadt SAM-2 site on Kotlin, just eleven miles away, but there were several naval bases in and around St. Petersburg itself, all on the lookout for exactly this sort of incursion.

No one was targeting him, though, and none of the signals suggested they’d picked up Delallo’s Raptor. The F-22’s actual radar cross section was highly classified but was widely assumed to be somewhat smaller than that of a sparrow.

He put the Raptor into a gentle, banking turn right and switched his receivers to the highly classified frequencies used by NSA operatives on the ground.

A man’s voice came through. “… about fifty yards away.”

“Don’t do anything until I tell you to.” That was a different voice, a woman’s voice.

“You’re the boss.”

Delallo opened the com feed cha

DeFrancesa Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0034 hours

Lia’s biggest advantage at the moment was that damned light the bad guys were waving around. It was a handheld spotlight with a pistol grip, and a civilian with an AKM slung over his shoulder was using it to try to penetrate the shadows deeper inside the warehouse. Any dark adaptation these people had possessed when they’d entered the building had been shot to hell by now. Lia was still in deep shadow in her combat blacks, though she would have to emerge into the glare of the overhead lights to reach the door.

The two Russians were less than ten feet away now, their backs to her. Beyond, she saw Alekseev and two more Russians. She could hear the shouts and crashes of yet more Russians moving through the labyrinth of crates.

Silently she stepped up to the garbage can, grabbed the lid by the rim, and hefted it. Moving back a few feet, she gauged the distance to another pile of warehoused crates on the far side of the main door, pulled her arm back, and flung the round lid hard, whirling it like an underhanded Frisbee.

The lid sailed past the door, rising, arcing, falling… then struck the top of the far row of crates with a boiler factory clatter.

Instantly gunfire erupted inside the echoing cavern of the warehouse, as one of the men with Alekseev opened up with his AKM on full-auto.

“Tudah!” the man with the spotlight screamed, swinging the beam to the northeastern end of the warehouse. He pointed. “Tudah!”

Another Russian joined in, spraying the northern corner of the room, sending up clouds of whirling splinters.

“Stoy!”

“Nyeh shevileetes!”

“Now, Ilya!” Lia called. “Take them out!”

She lunged forward.

Akulinin Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0034 hours

Gunfire thundered from inside the building. Akulinin had been holding his MP5K on the Russian to the left of the entrance, waiting for Lia’s command. It was an awkward stance. The MP5K was a ridiculously stubby weapon, even with the shoulder stock locked open, and Akulinin was trying to brace it with his left hand on the small handgrip beneath the almost nonexistent barrel. Leaning into the recoil, he tapped the trigger, loosing a three-round burst with a sharp, harsh clatter.

Fifty yards was the upper end of the weapon’s effective range, meaning he had perhaps one chance in two of hitting his target. The range was too great for trying a finesse shot at head or center of mass. Instead he aimed low, with the expectation that muzzle climb would throw at least one or two of the three rounds into the target.