The sky was marginally brighter but still cloudy when he climbed back into the survival suit and curled up on an inflatable mattress for a much-needed nap. He’d left California nearly forty-eight hours earlier and hadn’t put his head down since. Despite the excitement and pre-mission jitters, he fell asleep in seconds.
When he woke, the sun hung in the clear southern sky, the intensity of its reflection off the white expanses of snow and ice nearly blinding. His body and especially his injuries had stiffened during his few hours of sleep, and he moved the way his grandfather had in his final years. Putting on gloves and goggles, he ducked out of the tent and hobbled a few yards away, following the sound of trickling water. Rivulets of melting ice carved channels into the glacier, slowly eroding it. He filled two water bottles under the flow of one of the tiny rivers, and dropped a tablet inside each bottle to purify the contents. Back in the tent, he dug into his rucksack for an MRE, and sat down for a leisurely breakfast, his first in recent memory. By the time he finished eating, the water tablets had done their work, and he eagerly finished off one of the bottles.
The air temperature outside had risen to a comfortable 42 degrees F., but the glacial ice still radiated cold, keeping the air below his waist closer to freezing. Time to go to work. Consulting a GPS device, a map and compass, he computed the distance he had to cover to his target. Then he pulled contents out of the big rucksack—rope, pitons, crampons, biners, ice axe, tools, ice screws and other gear—and laid them out on the air mattress. The parachute harness could double as a climbing harness if he needed it. He’d break down camp later and hike at the end of the day—the evening, actually—when people would less likely be outside, lowering the chance that someone might see him. Satisfied, he repacked the rucksack with easy access to the tools he might need and left the remainder laid out for later.
Taking care to apply liberal amounts of sunscreen to exposed skin, including zinc oxide on his nose, he dressed in the white camo survival suit, grabbed a pair of binoculars and headed back outside to do some recon. After checking his compass, he limped a hundred yards northeast until he came to the top of a rise. Far below, in the crook of a small bay about five miles away, lay a haphazard jumble of buildings perched on the rocky shore. He eased up to the crest on his belly, put the glasses to his eyes and focused on the scene. Huge trucks moved mounds of rock and dirt from a hole near the top of a rocky cliff and trundled it to an offloading station where it moved by conveyor into a giant crushing machine. From there it disappeared into one of the buildings, for further processing, he assumed. Men scurried around the encampment like tiny ants, dodging the trucks and other vehicles. He panned back up the dirt road to the hole in the cliff. Inside the mouth of the cavern, a train of small ore cars disappeared into a tunnel.
Definitely a mining operation. That much he’d already known from a look at the satellite photos in his briefing packet. Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing celebrating the Fourth of July near the top of the world. The rolling breakers on the warm, sunny beaches of southern California and northern Baja waited for him to shred them with one of the half-dozen custom boards he’d collected over the years, but he was here, freezing his ass off. Nothing about his life had been boring down there. After nearly two decades of service to his country as a Navy SEAL, Trip Macready didn’t owe Uncle Sam a thing. Yet here he was.
The SEALs didn’t have a more gung-ho enlistee than Macready. After his two-and-a-half years of training, he’d been deployed with SEAL Team 3 and sent to the Mideast for Desert Storm in the early ’90s. But that little skirmish was over practically before it started, so when the former Soviet satellite Yugoslavia broke apart, pitting Serbs against Croats against Muslims, Trip had asked for a transfer to SEAL Team 2. There he’d gone through another six months of training in arctic warfare. But since the situation in Bosnia had been a UN “peacekeeping” mission, again he’d seen little action. By the late ’90s he’d transferred back to Team 3.
In 2002, he’d shipped out to Afghanistan as part of the extensive forces put on the ground to hunt down bin Laden and stamp out al Qaeda before the terrorist group could carry out another abomination like 9/11. Not surprisingly, his facility with Russian had come in handy there, since the Soviets had occupied the country for ten years. After two tours, he’d seen enough action to last a lifetime. When he’d shipped back to the States, he’d transferred into the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program. After all, that had been what he’d gone to school for, and why he’d studied at Woods Hole. But the move had been the beginning of the end of his navy career. The navy bureaucracy had soured for him. As much as he’d believed—and still believed—in what he’d done, in what he represented, he’d grown a conscience during his time with NMMP. Or rather, he’d expanded his consciousness.
So, he resigned his commission and opened a dolphin rescue facility near San Diego. And he’d “untrained” retired Navy dolphins so they could be returned to the wild. But that little venture had boomeranged. The Navy had sued him, the pair of dolphins he’d released had been found and repatriated by a group of terrorists intent on making a statement, and to top it off the group had kidnapped Trip’s attorney in Seattle. What a fiasco. But when all was said and done, Macready realized how much he missed the adrenaline-inducing action of fieldwork.
* * * * *
Six weeks earlier, he’d gotten a call from one of the few people in the service he still trusted. John Granger, an Expeditionary Strike Force leader down in Coronado, and a damn good one, had been the only person he’d been able to turn to for help resolving the hostage crisis involving the McHugh woman. Molly. Hers had been a face he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for months. The first woman who’d had that effect on him in years, maybe ever. Granger had come through, so when he called, Trip was ready to return the favor, whatever it was. The favor John asked seemed small—wait for a guy to contact him, and hear him out.
Three weeks passed without a word. Macready had almost forgotten about it when a lean man with a golfer’s tan, thinning blond hair, board shorts that hadn’t seen water yet, and a nearly unblemished stick almost bumped into him on one of his favorite beaches south of Ensenada. A chonner by the look of him. And a little old to be learning, but then he could be one of the ex-pats who retired in Mexico and found themselves with nothing to do.
“Sorry,” the man said. “How’s the surf?”
Macready shrugged and planted his board in the sand. “Clean, but the swells are a little weak.” He snagged the towel on the beach with two fingers and rubbed it over his dripping head.
“Nice day for it, at least.” The man turned his gaze from the blue ocean to Trip and stuck out his hand. “Pete.”
Macready gripped it tightly. “Trip.”
Pete nodded as if he already knew. “Heard you might be looking for work.”
Macready remembered Granger’s favor, but remained cautious. “I already have a job.”
Pete’s smile stayed in place. “A mutual acquaintance says otherwise.”
Macready grunted softly. “Well, if you know him, then you know it depends on the job.”
“Simple recon. Get in, infiltrate if necessary, find out what’s going on, report and get out.”
“Nothing’s ever that simple.”
Pete conceded the point with a nod and waited patiently.
A field assignment. Macready’s knee-jerk reaction was to tell Pete he’d wasted his time. Trip had been out of the navy for several years, and he was starting to feel his age in small ways—joints that ached more when he woke in the morning, weight that threatened to balloon if he didn’t work out even more diligently than before, a mid-afternoon dip in energy that made him sometimes wish he could take a nap. But he shushed the little voice inside and thought about how much it had meant to take on that terrorist group up in Washington state, how much he’d actually enjoyed taking the bastards down.
“Why me?” Macready said finally.
“You have
the skill sets needed for the job.” Pete shrugged, and his smile faded. “You weren’t our first choice given the circumstances of your retirement. But there were only a handful of others who met the requirements. We discounted each of them for various reasons.”
“Leaving me.” Trip threw the towel over his shoulder and stepped into the pair of flip-flops he’d left on the sand next to his T-shirt. “Who for?”
Pete shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. It’s ‘need-to-know.’ And it’s off the books, so you’ll have no official sanction.”
Macready rubbed his jaw, feeling the day-old stubble there. No backing meant no protection if he was exposed or captured. And he didn’t like being kept in the dark.
“We’re the good guys in case you’ve forgotten. And this is important.” Pete saw Trip’s hesitation. “Look, we’ll give you all the resources you’ll need, and you can name your price.”
Macready looked up the beach, squinting his eyes against the hot Mexican sun. “Where?”
“Greenland.”
“Shit.”
Pete’s smiled more broadly. He knew Macready was hooked. “Welcome aboard.”
Now, weeks later, Trip was thinking about a woman half a world away and out of reach—in more ways than one—while he watched a bunch of Russians play in the dirt. He shook his head clear of the divergent thoughts and focused his gaze on the mining camp. Someone high up in the US intelligence community wanted him to find out what the Russians were looking for—or what they’d already found. The Danes, by way of Greenland’s P.M., didn’t know and didn’t much care as long as they and the royal family got their cut of whatever the Russians dug up.
On the other side of the country the native Inuit people had named a place “Savissivik,” which in loose translation meant “place of iron knives.” The area was known for its iron meteorite fragments dating back 10,000 years. The environment was far too hostile for the Russians to mine something as common as iron. Macready wondered if they’d found something else carried in on a meteorite, something that could be valuable enough to warrant the investment of money, machinery and manpower he saw down below.
* * * * *
Over the course of four days, Macready cautiously worked his way down the glacier, picking his way around a small nunatak and through the dangerous seracs on the ice field, careful to use cover whenever possible. The sore ankle grew less painful and stiff each day until it barely hindered him. But the shoulder still had limited range of motion before pain radiated up his neck and down into his arm and back. He continued to baby it and pushed through the pain. Late on the fourth day, as the sun swung toward the northwest and dipped closer to the horizon, he pitched his tent within several hundred yards of the mining town. Close enough to hear the non-stop growl of gas generators and the guttural voices of men laughing and swearing in Russian. He awoke the next morning to the sound of diesel engines and rumble of machinery so close it rippled the tent fabric. But he was no closer to learning what they were doing, and his frustration mounted.
As he lay there, he closed his eyes and forced himself to relax, focusing on one muscle group at a time, starting at his feet and working up. He couldn’t afford to get sloppy now. He emptied his mind, pushing aside his agitation. Cold nipped at his ears and nose, by now a familiar friend, a gauge of how warm or cold other body parts were. His focus narrowed to the simple act of breathing—cold, dry air tempered in his nasal cavities before filling his lungs, warm, moist air expelled in a small cloud of vapor in front of his face. All sounds except the gentle wash of his breath disappeared as he went deeper into the meditation.
When he felt the chill of the arctic air in his limbs, he let his consciousness climb back out of the depths. As it rose toward the surface, other sounds intruded again—the trill and squawk of an arctic tern as it soared over his head toward the water, the monotone growl of generators and multi-pitched reverberation of truck engines and machinery. A new, unfamiliar sound reached his ears, one he felt before he heard it, its low vibrations working their way up through his core. He opened his eyes. Cloud cover acted like twilight, dimming the circling sun, making the lights moving in the channel of water offshore that much more evident.
Raising the binoculars, he took a closer look. A ship hove into view as it made a wide slow turn from the channel into the fjord carved out by the glacier on which he stood. Still three miles or so from the mining camp, the ship appeared to be a research and supply icebreaker, a little over 200 feet in length if Macready judged it correctly. Russian, according to the flag flying from the ensign staff at the stern. Excitement raced through his veins. This could be his chance.
He quickly made his way back to the swale in the ice where he’d pitched his makeshift tent, and ducked inside. From the rucksack he pulled workman’s clothes—long underwear, fleece-lined jeans, thick woolen socks, flannel shirt, fleece vest and down parka—and traded the survival suit for the clothes. He tucked his gun into a shoulder holster and slid a Kizlyar Bopoh-3 combat knife into a sheath strapped to his leg. A small throwing knife fit into another sheath on his forearm. He stuffed pockets of the parka with an extra magazine for the pistol, a satellite phone and energy bars, and strapped a passport pouch stuffed with five grand in 50-, 100- and 500-ruble banknotes around his ankle. With a last look around, he wormed his way out of the tent and collapsed it. He stuffed everything into the rucksack and wedged it down into a nearby crevasse.
Picking his way through the remainder of the ice field down to the dry glacier bed took another forty minutes, and still he had another quarter mile to go. What had looked like a toy village from the glacier the day before now spread out in front of him, nestled into a bay in the fjord carved out by the receding glacier. A long wharf stretched at an angle into the water. Arrayed along the waterfront stood several large buildings that looked like warehouses. Just behind those stood the even larger building where trucks from the mine emptied their contents. Macready surmised it was a smelter or processing facility of some kind. Long Quonset huts staggered up the steep hillside in rows. Barracks for the men. On the other side of the road up to the mine entrance, white fuel tanks sprouted like mushrooms.
Activity still swirled around the docked ship, but Macready noted that the steady grinding roar of trucks moving up and down the hill had ceased for the day. The dirt and gravel streets were quiet, workers either in the mess hall or in their barracks. He calmly walked into the camp, his limp barely noticeable. Ominous clouds hung over the camp like a shroud, turning the arctic day dark. Floodlights on the pier snapped on, bathing the ship with light. Macready welcomed the shadows as he approached.
The larger of two cranes on the ship hoisted a pallet of supplies from the ship’s hold and swung it next to three others already loaded onto a flatbed truck. The driver threw a strap over the load, tied it down and climbed in the cab. Macready watched the truck drive up the pier toward one of the warehouses along the shore. Another truck took its place, but instead of a bare bed this one sported a full load of 55-gallon drums. The crane operator swung the hook into place, and the truck driver climbed onto the bed to thread a sling under a pallet and place the hook. The crane operator reeled in the cable until the hook pulled the sling tight and lifted the load off the truck. Macready counted two sets of four drums stacked on the pallet. His excitement mounted. Whatever the mine produced was now being loaded onto the ship.
Find out what’s going on Pete had said. They already knew about the mining operation from satellite photos. A look at the manifest for the drums now being loaded onto the ship probably would tell him what the mine was producing. But the only way to find out what it was being used for was to follow it. The idea was insane. Trip weighed his options. Skulk around the camp and learn what he could, or dog the mine output and find out its use. Either way he risked capture.
Mind made up, he quickened his pace and walked down the pier as if he belonged. Two of the four pallets on the truck had been loaded by the time Macready approached the
truck. He climbed onto the flatbed alongside the driver and helped thread the wide canvas straps under another pallet. The driver looked at him curiously, but said nothing. They stood together and watched the load disappear into the ship’s hold. After several minutes, the hook rose out of the open hatch in the deck and swung back to them. They hooked up the last pallet, and as the driver signaled the crane operator, Macready stepped onto the pallet and grabbed onto the strap.
“They want me to double-check,” Macready told the driver in Russian as the crane lifted him in the air. “Go eat. Da svidaniya.”
“Poka,” the driver grunted. He pulled papers from his coat pocket and handed them to Macready. Then he jumped down, climbed into the cab and with a small wave, drove off without a backward glance.
Macready held on tight with his good arm as the pallet swung up into the air and over the side of the ship toward the forward deck. The crane operator expertly lowered the load through the open hatch into the dimly lit hold below. Three deckhands looked up as he descended with the load, mouths agape.
“What the fuck are you doing up there?” one of them muttered loudly in Russian. “This isn’t the circus.”
Macready knew three things about the Russian people: they were intensely distrustful of strangers; they only smiled in the presence of friends; and other than that little Bolshevik thing in 1917 they didn’t question authority. He crossed his fingers and hoped the latter was still true.
Night Strike Page 2