Lieutenant Segal whirled and advanced on Benford, fury in his face and clenched fists. “You slimy little bastard!” Segal shouted. “Isn’t it convenient that there was no one else there to back up your story! You know what I think? I think you shot Richardson and then you clobbered the skipper to cover your tracks!”
“That’s ridiculous! Why would I do something like that?”
“Why would a man with sixteen years in NOAA and a wife and two kids just up and shoot a guy? Huh?” Segal reached Benford and grabbed the man by the throat. “Answer me that, you little prick!”
“He hated us!” Benford cried, pounding at Segal’s hands. “Let me go, you big-”
“Break it up, you two!” Masters shouted. “Both of you! Stand down!”
“This is the criminal, Fred!” Segal said. “This little bastard right here!”
“Let him go, Phil. He’s not worth it.”
Segal shoved Benford hard, slamming him back against the wall as he released him. “No. He’s not.”
“Larson did have it in for all of us Greenworld people,” Lynnley Cabot said. “We all saw it!”
“Commander Larson wouldn’t have shot anybody,” Fritcherson said. “I don’t believe Benford’s story, not for a second. But it won’t do us any good arguing about it. Save it for the trial.”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” Benford screamed.
Tomlinson was about to snap back a reply, but he stopped, his mouth open. There was a new sound rising above the wind outside… a deep, almost throbbing rumble, punctuated by the unmistakable crack of breaking ice. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
The others were listening now, too.
“Pressure ridge,” McCauley said. “Ice coming together, buckling, creating an upthrust.”
“We have to get out of here!” Cicero cried. She bolted for the door.
“Don’t go out there!” Masters shouted.
Steven Moore reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “Just… chill!” he said. “Don’t panic! Everything’s going to be okay…”
“It sounded pretty close,” McCauley told the others. “We should check it out.”
The sounds from outside had stilled, save for the blustering of the wind.
“I’ll go,” Tomlinson said, rising. Pressure ridges could form anywhere on the ice, at any time. It wasn’t likely, but if one decided to come up underneath the Quonset hut, the base could be torn apart, leaving them without shelter in the storm.
Fortunately, it sounded like whatever it was had stopped…
The door banged open. Surrounded by swirling snow and a blast of frigid wind, a heavily bundled man stepped into the hut.
Cicero screamed. McCauley started, then reached for a rifle leaning against a nearby wall. For a moment, Tomlinson wondered if an American expedition had come up after all… but the assault rifle in the man’s gloved hands was wrong-orangewood and ugly black metal, with a curved, banana clip magazine.
A Russian AKM.
“Be still,” the intruder barked in accented English. “All of you! Be still!”
A second man pushed his way inside behind the first. Both of them wore fur caps with the earflaps down. The first kept his assault rifle pointed at them; the second held a small but deadly-looking military pistol.
“What the hell are you-,” McCauley started to say.
“Silence!” the man with the pistol shouted. “Hands up, all of you!” He aimed the pistol at McCauley. “You! Stand back from that weapon!”
Hands raised, McCauley did as he was told. Through the open door, in the wan light of the never-setting sun, Tomlinson could see other Russian soldiers and, beyond, the sheer, smooth black cliff of a submarine sail, rising vertically up from the broken and jumbled ice.
“This… territory,” the man with the pistol said, “is the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation, and you are here illegally.”
“Get over yourself, Ivan,” Walters said. “This ice isn’t yours until the UN says it is. In the meantime, this is an American outpost-”
“Not anymore,” the Russian said. “We… understand that a crime has been committed here. A crime on Russian territory. You will all come with us until this matter can be properly settled.”
“This man is badly injured,” Tomlinson said, pointing at Larson. “Can you get him to a hospital?”
The man gave a short, sharp nod. “Da. There are… medical facilities where we are going. He will be taken care of. Get your winter gear. Quickly!”
Stunned, the Americans began doing as they’d been told. As he donned his parka, though, Tomlinson glanced at Benford. The man seemed relaxed, now, almost at ease.
Tomlinson saw him slip something beneath the mattress of Steven Moore’s bunk.
What the hell was going on?
13
Oval Office, the White House Washington, D.C. 1508 hours EDT
“THE PRESIDENT WILL SEE YOU now.”
The three of them had been waiting on benches set against the walls of the main corridor of the West Wing, Collins, Bing, and Rubens. None of the three had spoken a word when they’d arrived separately half an hour earlier, but Rubens could feel the chill in the air, the psychic sharpening of knives. For his part, Rubens had leaned back on the bench and focused on a relaxation mantra, calming himself. If these two harpies were going to descend on Desk Three, he wanted to be able to respond with cool logic, not a storm of emotion.
As the secretary held the northwest door of the Oval Office open, they stood and, still without a word to one another, entered the historic room.
All three had been here before, of course. The ancient grandfather clock against the northeast wall still clucked quietly to itself. The familiar portrait of George Washington still glowered down from over the fireplace on the room’s north wall, the rosy-cheeked figure still looking as though his mouth hurt. Swedish ivy, grown from cuttings in a series going back to President Kennedy, adorned the mantle itself while, elsewhere, Remington bronzes of horses and western themes graced tabletops and niches in the walls.
President Marcke sat behind the familiar Resolute Desk… so named because it had been made from the timbers of a British frigate, HMS Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880 and brought out of storage a century later by President Carter. That touch seemed appropriate to Rubens now. They would need to rely a lot on their British counterparts if they were going to have a chance at getting a team back into Russia anytime soon.
James Fenton and Roger Smallbourn both were already in the room, standing before the desk. A third man stood near the east wall, the only uniform present. He was Admiral Robert Thornton, the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Rubens was surprised to see them, but he could feel the startled shock of both Bing and Collins; obviously they’d not been expecting the DNI or the D/CIA to be here, the top two men in U.S. intelligence. As for the number-two man in the DIA, Rubens could only imagine why he was here as well. It was almost unprecedented, having this many top spooks together in the same room at the same time.
“Ladies,” President Marcke said, looking up. “Charlie. I would like to know what the hell is going on.”
“I… I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. President,” Bing said.
“I mean how the hell this mess could have exploded in the Arctic and no one in U.S. intelligence was aware of anything going down!”
“Sir, we were aware of ongoing developments,” Collins said. She spoke with a crispness that might have been meant to convey cool efficiency, but Rubens could hear her gears shifting in her mind. “We had two officers up there with the NOAA expedition with orders to determine what was going on at that Russian base. It was all there in your pickle a couple of weeks ago.”
“Your two officers have been captured by the damned Russians, along with a number of American civilians and NOAA personnel. The Russians say they’re being interned for the time being, pending a resolution of the status of their ter
ritorial claims in the Arctic.”
“In other words,” Fenton said, “they’re holding them hostage to ensure that we go along with Moscow’s agenda. They particularly want our assistance in reining in the Canadians and the Danes.”
“You’re kidding,” Rubens said.
“Unfortunately, I’m not.” Fenton gestured at a paper on Marcke’s desk, closely typewritten beneath the richly decorated letterhead of the Russian embassy. “Their ambassador gave us official notification this morning. Very politely worded, of course. But it amounts to a ransom demand just the same.”
“Publicly, we’ve been staying out of this brouhaha up north,” the President said, “and Moscow seems to have taken that as acquiescence on our part. They may see hostages-though they’d never actually call them that, of course-as a guarantee of our active support.”
It made sense in a weird way. Normally, the United States would have sided immediately with Canada, her old ally to the north, but in this recent exchange of confrontation politics over the Arctic, the U.S. had been keeping an uncharacteristically low profile. Cynics, both inside the Beltway and those writing op-ed columns, had pointed out that America had her own territorial ambitions in the Arctic. The North Slope oil fields provided just a glimpse of what riches might yet be hidden beneath the seabed north of Alaska.
The Russians might think that Washington’s support at the United Nations would resolve the issue in their favor. Holding a few Americans as “guests” while their legal status was determined might nail things down just that much more firmly.
“This situation has been brewing since the Russians planted that damned flag at the North Pole in ’07,” the President went on, “and the intelligence community has let me down big-time. Why the hell didn’t we see this coming?”
“Sir, in all fairness, our assets are stretched rather thin,” Bing said. She glanced at Thornton. “Between Iraq, the nuclear situation in Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea, and trying to contain al-Qaeda-”
“I don’t want fucking excuses, Donna!” the President said, his voice rising to a shout. “You people have been so busy playing Beltway power politics, trying to upstage each other, trying to cut each other out, pissing on the boundaries of your own turfs, you’re not delivering the results I need! This thing came out of nowhere and bit me in the ass, and I don’t like that one damned bit!”
“Sir,” Fenton said into the shocked silence following the presidential outburst, “you already have my recommendations for streamlining U.S. intelligence. It may be that by eliminating certain inefficiencies-”
“Inefficiencies my ass,” the President said. “I’m going to start eliminating some of the political deadwood around here and see what that does for inefficiencies!” He glared at them from behind the desk for a moment before continuing in a calmer voice. “Now, I’m going to say this just once. We are, all of us, on the same side, tough as it may be to recognize that fact sometimes. I want you people to stop the infighting and play nice. Pull together. Produce results I can use. Or I’ll fire the lot of you and put in people who give me what I need! Do I make myself clear?”
A mumbled chorus of, “Yes, sir,” rippled about the room. Rubens was surprised at the outburst, surprised and pleased. Marcke tended to present a laid-back and folksy outward charm that was both disarming and ingratiating, a tool he’d used to superb effect when it came time for rounding up votes, both at the polls and on the Hill. Only rarely was a steel core revealed beneath the country-boy demeanor, so rarely that the man was often castigated by the press for being wishy-washy.
“Okay? We’re on the same page? Good.” The palm of his hand slammed down on the polished oak desktop. “On to business. I’ve directed that one of our SSGNs be redeployed to the Arctic. Admiral Thornton? Tell the rest of them what you told me this morning.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Thornton cleared his throat. “Last evening, at the President’s instructions, we transmitted new orders to the SSGN Ohio, then en route for the eastern Med. Four hours later, she rendezvoused with the Pittsburgh, a Los Angeles attack sub, just south of Greenland. The two are proceeding north up the west coast of Greenland as we speak, with orders to proceed to the NOAA base and investigate the situation.
“On board the Ohio are thirty-two Navy SEALs and one of their ASDS minisubs. We do not believe the Russians have a military presence at their base in the Arctic. Not yet. The SEALs have been instructed to resolve the situation, using the threat of force if necessary.”
Rubens considered this. Thirty-two SEALs could handle any number of civilians, but how good was the intel that said there weren’t any military personnel at the site? Whoever had taken the Americans out of Ice Station Bravo must have had weapons simply to enforce compliance, and the volume of military radio traffic up there suggested a lot of movement and preparation. There were rumors of Russian submarine deployments in the region, and those might have naval troops on board. Besides, Mys Shmidta was only a three- to four-hour flight by helicopter to the south. If the Russians wanted a military presence on the ice cap, they would have one in very short order.
“I’m not sure a military option is our best choice at this time, Mr. President,” Donna Bing said. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Perhaps we should give diplomacy more of a chance here.”
“Did you hear those intercepts from our listening station up there?” the President demanded.
“Yes, but-”
“Did you hear them?”
“Yes, sir.” She glanced at Rubens, an expression of pure venom.
“The Russians were just waiting for an excuse,” the President said. “Just waiting. Damn it, we are not going to take this lying down. If they think they can snatch our citizens out of international waters under some flimsy legalese pretext, they’re going to find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun!”
“Perdicaris alive,” Rubens said quietly, “or Rasuli dead.”
“Eh?” Marcke said. “What was that?”
“Perdicaris alive or Rasuli dead,” Rubens said again, more loudly. “One of your predecessors, sir. Teddy Roosevelt in… oh, it must have been 1904 or thereabouts. Just before the presidential election, anyway. Ion Perdicaris was a wealthy businessman representing American interests in Morocco who managed to get himself kidnapped by a Berber bandit leader named Rasuli. When Rasuli demanded a ransom from the United States-which harkened back to the old Barbary pirate way of doing business, actually-Roosevelt sent the U.S. Atlantic Squadron to Tangiers with instructions to free Perdicaris or kill Rasuli.” He smiled. “Perdicaris was released unharmed in short order. It turned out after the fact he wasn’t even an American citizen, but the Republican Party went wild at the news, and the affair helped elect Teddy.”
He didn’t add that Perdicaris had been released because a weak and vacillating Moroccan government, fearing the arrival of the U.S. fleet, had quietly paid Rasuli the seventy-thousand-dollar ransom. The story was too good to risk muddying the waters with extraneous details.
“Right, right. I seem to remember seeing a movie about that once,” the President said.
Rubens grimaced. “The Wind and the Lion,” he said. “As usual, Hollywood botched it pretty badly. Somehow, a dumpy, middle-aged Greek businessman got transformed into Candice Bergen.”
“If you please, Mr. Rubens,” Smallbourn said, “I fail to see what all of this has to do with the Arctic situation.”
“Mr. Rubens is reminding us, Roger, that we can’t give in to ransom demands,” the President said. “And that’s what the Russians are doing here… holding our people hostage in order to gain our compliance. We will not let that stand!”
“One of the captured agents, Mr. President,” Dean said, “is actually one of my people, a technical specialist on loan to the CIA.”
“And you’d like to have a hand in getting her back, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you suggest?”
“That depends on what you decide to do,
sir. However, at a minimum I’d like one of my people up there. He could deploy certain devices with which to track and eavesdrop on the Russians, maybe find out where they’re holding the prisoners.”
“You have someone specific in mind, then?”
“Yes, sir. His name’s Dean. A former Marine.”
Collins made a face. “Charles Dean?” she said. “I’ve seen his folder. He’s old.”
Rubens wondered what Collins had been doing going through NSA personnel records… and how she’d managed that. He gave her a cool, appraising look. “He’s one of my best field agents, Ms. Collins, and frankly, I’ll take a tough old Marine with combat experience over a young pup any day. And if you’ve been going through my filing cabinet lately, you’ll know he’s just completed his quals with a four-oh. He’s good. And he gets results.”
The President chuckled. “Think your old Marine can keep up with a SEAL platoon, Bill?”
“He’ll do whatever is necessary to get the job done, sir.”
“The SEALs have experience in deploying all sorts of high-tech gadgets,” Thornton put in. “Why do we need your man up there?”
“The SEALs are good,” Rubens agreed, “but they haven’t been trained in some of our more recent high-tech bits of hardware.”
“Mr. President!” Collins said. “I must protest! Once again, this is a job for the Central Intelligence Agency! We have the trained personnel and the equipment for covert operations of this nature! The NSA should stick with what it knows… signals intelligence!”
“How about that, Charlie?” the President asked. He was smiling. Damn the man, he was enjoying this!
“I’m not trying to steal the Agency’s thunder, sir. But I do submit that one man, with a portable satellite relay station and some rather small communications pickups, ought to be able to slip in and give us the insight we need into just what the Russians are doing up there.” He shrugged. “If the CIA wants to send their own team, that’s fine with me. But I do want a piece of this, sir.”
“How about it, Roger?” the President asked Smallbourn. “Does the CIA have a team they can insert right away?”
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