Arctic Gold

by Stephen Coonts

  “Shore party,” the COB called, “break out cold-weather gear and report topside.”

  Dean turned to the captain. “Permission to go ashore, sir?”

  “Granted. But watch your ass out there.”

  Twenty minutes later, Dean was on the ice, trudging toward a forlorn cluster of prefab huts. The air was surprisingly warm, though the wind had a bite to it; the sun was low above the northwestern horizon in this land of the midnight sun, even though it was nearly 2200. The sky was a deep, clear blue. The Ohio’s sail cast long shadows across the ice at his back.

  Several Navy SEALs were already at the NOAA base, clad in black dry suits and holding assault rifles with the trigger guards removed, so they could be fired while the SEALs were wearing heavy gloves. Taylor’s SEALs-sixteen of them-had boarded the ASDS hours before, slipping ahead of the Ohio to perform a surface reconnaissance. They’d located a polynya, broken through the ice, and deployed into the NOAA base, determining that it was abandoned. They’d lowered a sonar beacon through the hole in the ice-Signal Sierra One-to guide the Ohio in on the deserted encampment.

  Lieutenant Taylor was standing next to a flagstaff planted in the ice outside the main building. The white, blue, and red-barred flag of the Russian Federation fluttered in the stiff breeze above him. Dean watched as the man pulled a diving knife from somewhere under his heavy parka and sawed through the line securing the flag. In an instant, the flag fluttered away on the wind, trailing a loose four feet of line. Another SEAL standing nearby produced an American flag, neatly folded in a triangle. The two men used the remaining rope to secure the flag, then hauled it quickly to the top of the staff and tied it off.

  “Well done, Mr. Taylor,” Dean said.

  “Thank you sir,” Taylor said. “Our base is secure.”

  “And no sign of the enemy?”

  “Nothing, sir. No sign of our people, either.”

  “I’d still like to have a look.”

  The door to the main building was hanging open. Dean stepped inside and immediately made a face. “God, it stinks in here!”

  Taylor, behind him, nodded. “Yessir. Too many people in too small a space for too damned long.”

  “Like on board the Ohio, huh?”

  “Hell, at least everything on the Ohydro has a place and is squared away,” Taylor said, using a nickname that went back to the sub’s service as a boomer. “This is a damned rat’s nest.”

  Dean agreed. The hut was cluttered with human debris-clothing hung up to dry, a camera sitting next to a chess game in progress and a plate with half a sandwich. Much of the stench was from a long-untended chemical toilet in the back of the room, but the air was also thick with the mingled stinks of perspiration, wet clothing, oil, stale food, and mildew. Curtains that had divided the sleeping quarters had been ripped down and left on the floor. Radio equipment at the opposite end of the room had been smashed, apparently with rifle butts.

  Dean stepped away from the SEALs and tried switching on his personal transmitter. “George, this is Charlie. Do you copy?”

  He could hear static behind his ear and a faint, dopplering whistle.

  “George, Charlie. Are you there?”

  “Reception up here sucks, man,” one of the SEALs told him. “Satellites are too close to the horizon.”

  “I guess so.” He would have to transmit from the Ohio’s much larger UHF antenna later. He switched off the unit in his belt and continued exploring the base.

  A storeroom in a nearby building was a charnel house, the air thick with the stink of blood. Someone had gone down the passageway, methodically shooting the sled dogs in their kennels. The act appeared random and cruel… until Dean suppressed his anger and thought it through. The Russians evidently had been here on a quick in-and-out to grab the Americans. They hadn’t been able to take the dogs along, so they’d shot them rather than leaving them to starve in their cages or freeze on the open ice.

  At the far end of the passageway, near some carefully stored snowmobiles, there was a rusty stain on the floor that looked like more blood. Dean studied it for a moment. It might have splashed out of a nearby cage-there were plenty of bloodstains on the wall above the dead dogs-but it looked more like someone had fallen here, bleeding. The stain streaked across the floor, as though smeared by someone dragging a body, and all of the dogs were inside their cages.

  Dean used a tiny digital camera to record everything, including the gruesome contents of the cages and the long smear on the floor. Other supply sheds and buildings scattered about the compound appeared to have been searched but seemed to be intact. Eventually, he returned to the main building.

  “Mr. Dean?” Taylor said, holding something up as he stepped into the building. “You might be interested in this.”

  Dean accepted the device, which looked like a small transistor radio. There was no tuning knob, however, just a knob for volume and on-off. When he turned it on, he could hear a squeal of atmospherics and, just barely, a voice, though the static was too bad to understand the words.

  “Where’d you find this?”

  “Jones found it underneath that mattress over there,” Taylor said, pointing. “It may be nothing, but…”

  “But the fact that it was hidden makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Curious, Dean popped a back panel off and looked at the batteries. They were double-As, but the words printed on the casings were spelled out in Cyrillic letters.

  So, what was someone on the NOAA expedition doing with a single-channel radio powered by Russian batteries?

  Dean could think of only one reasonable answer to the question.

  “Let’s check the personal effects,” Dean told the SEALs. “Whose bunk was this?”

  Each of the bunks, racked two high in the cramped sleeping area, had a pair of small steel lockers next to it. Methodically, three of the SEALs began going through each, removing the contents and bagging them.

  There wasn’t a lot-wallets, personal items such as rings and jewelry, toiletries, packs of cigarettes, sewing kits, socks and underwear, and the like. The radio had been found under one of the bottom bunks, so the owner had kept his personal items in one of two small lockers close by. ID cards in the wallets gave the names of the owners.

  Steven Moore, Dean knew from his briefing, was one of the Greenworld documentary filmmakers.

  Randy Haines was one of the NOAA meteorologists.

  And one of them, Dean knew, was a traitor…

  The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1515 hours EDT

  William Rubens sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen. The e-mail, on a special, secure feed from Men-with Hill, had come through from decryption only moments before. Lightly he touched the screen, as though wondering if the message would vanish.

  “Thank God,” he murmured as he began to read the message again. He shook his head. “Thank God…”

  Major Richard Delallo recovered and safe, the decoded message read. He ejected into the sea south of Kotka, Finland. He was unconscious when he hit the water, but he was pulled out by Finnish fishermen, who took him back to their village. There was some delay in getting word back to Lakenheath. Major Delallo’s flight suit was sterile for the op, and the fishermen thought he might be Russian. It was several days before they contacted the UK embassy in Helsinki.

  Pilots flying covert ops such as Ghost Blue’s always went in sterile-meaning no flags on their flight suits, no name tags, nothing that could identify them as American or British.

  Major Delallo will be flown to USNH Bethesda later today. He is suffering from the effects of exposure, hypothermia, and frostbite but is expected to make a complete recovery…

  The message was signed Col. Copely, RAF, the name of the vice commander at Lakenheath Air Base.

  Rubens sagged back in his chair, letting the relief wash through his body. It wasn’t the political aspect of Delallo’s rescue that was affecting him… but the knowledge that his decision to send Ghost Blue to St. Petersburg had not resu
lted in someone’s death.

  Outwardly, Rubens always maintained a level of control and composure that some thought cold. He didn’t rattle, he didn’t express his worry, and he didn’t apologize for sending good men and women into harm’s way when the situation demanded it. Composure-even coldness-was part of the territory, the price necessary to keep Desk Three running at peak efficiency.

  But he’d also seen Delallo’s personnel file-and knew the man had a wife and two daughters, currently living in base housing at Lakenheath.

  Rubens made a mental note to make arrangements to have the family flown back to Washington, so they could be with the major as he recovered at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda.

  With a mental sigh, Rubens deleted the message, then checked the time.

  One operator had been recovered alive… but two more were about to insert at Solchi.

  He wondered for a moment if he should go down to the Art Room and supervise the insert personally but then decided against it. He had good people. They knew what they were doing.

  And he couldn’t afford to let them know that he was worried. He worked at his desk for almost an hour before deciding to go down anyway.

  Kotenko Dacha Sochi, Russia 2310 hours, GMT + 3

  The Kotenko dacha was built on the western face of a mountain overlooking the Black Sea. Llewellyn and an assistant named Vasily had driven Lia and Akulinin to a spot on the road above the Kotenko dacha after it got dark. From the hillside below the road, but well above the eastern side of the property, they could look down on the house and its grounds, which were spread out for their inspection, well lit and apparently well guarded. Lia held a set of electronic binoculars to her eyes and studied the scene. “Okay, people,” she said quietly. “Everybody online? Gordon, do you copy?”

  “We copy,” the voice of Jeff Rockman said in her ear from a workstation back at Fort Meade. “Good voice. Good picture.”

  “Dragon, do you copy?”

  “Copy, Lia,” Llewellyn’s voice said an instant later. “We can see and hear just fine.” Llewellyn and Vasily, with the handle Dragon, had parked the van beneath some trees a quarter of a mile up the road and were linked in through the vehicle’s satellite communications suite. Both the team in the van and the runners back in the Art Room could see the scene transmitted from Lia’s binoculars, as well as hear the two of them through the mikes mounted on the collars of their combat blacks.

  “Let’s have a closer look at that gate,” Rockman said.

  “Here you are.” Lia pressed the zoom function on the camera, and the scene expanded, centering on the main gate where a paved driveway entered the property. A blond man in civilian clothes, but holding an AKM assault rifle, stood guard. Nearby, another armed guard followed the inside of the perimeter wall, a German Shepherd tugging at the leash in his hand. The gate was open and, as Lia watched, a car drove up and stopped beside the guard, who spoke briefly with the driver before waving him through.

  A security camera watched it all from a telephone pole beside the driveway.

  “I see two dogs,” Akulinin said, peering through his own binoculars. “The other one’s at the far side of the property, above the cliff.”

  “We see him,” Rockman said. “Let’s have a look at the party in the back.”

  From the hillside above the east side of the mansion, the two agents could see about half of the back deck, which extended from the west side of the house almost all the way to the cliff above the sea. The swimming pool was brightly lit, the blue light shimmering and wavering as it reflected off trees and walls. A dozen people or so were visible, engaged in laughing conversation. Most were casually dressed, though the people sculling in the pool or lounging in the hot tub were nude.

  “I don’t see Kotenko,” Lia said. “Gordon, are you getting IDs on these people?”

  “The bald guy talking with the tall blond is Vladymir Malyshkin,” Rockman said. “He runs the exploratory division of Gazprom’s oil subsidiary. The guy with thick glasses and his arm around the brunette over by the diving board is Sergei Poroskov, a member of the St. Petersburg Duma, and a major shareholder in Gazprom.” There was a hesitation as Rockman called up more data on his monitor back in the Art Room. “Yeah… all of the men are movers and shakers, either with the Russian government or in the Russian oil and gas industries. The guy skinny-dipping with the two chicks in the pool is CEO of a major construction company.”

  “What about the women?” Akulinin asked.

  “I think they’re the floor show,” Lia said.

  “Kotenko owns a string of gentlemen’s clubs in half a dozen cities,” Rockman said, “and he’s also into producing, um, adult films. Like Lia says, they’re probably part of the entertainment.”

  “Well, as long as they’re very entertaining,” Lia said, “and keep it on the back deck, we should have clear sailing inside. Ilya? Break out the dragonfly.”

  Akulinin pulled off his backpack and extracted a plastic case the size of an encyclopedia. He opened it, revealing a delicate device, mostly wire and gauze but with a core the size of a pencil. He switched it on and the filmy wings unfolded, quivering in the slight breeze. “How about it, James?” he said. “You have a signal?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Llewellyn replied. “We’re good to go.”

  “Right then. Here goes.” Akulinin raised his hand and gave the device a gentle shove, lofting it into the air like a paper airplane. The gauze wings caught the breeze and the device soared higher, circling out into the darkness above the dacha with a faint rasping flutter of its wings.

  “Okay,” Llewellyn said. “We’ve got good signal, good picture.”

  “We have positive control,” Rockman put in.

  The flier faded into shadowy invisibility against the night. Lia and Akulinin stayed hunkered down on the dark and brush-covered hillside as the team in the Art Room flew the probe from the other side of the Earth, guided by real-time imagery transmitted from the tiny camera in the dragonfly’s nose.

  The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1625 hours EDT

  Chris Palatino had been hired by the National Security Agency for one reason. He was very good at playing video games.

  The winner of the Extreme Gamer competition at the Origins gaming convention two years before, he’d been approached by a recruiter for a defense-related corporation. Only later, after Palatino had passed the security clearances, was the true nature of the job made clear: he would have to move from central Michigan to Laurel, Maryland, and take a job with the NSA. The money was less than he might have made writing software for a major corporation, but money wasn’t Palatino’s major interest.

  He called it the gamer’s ultimate fantasy, and he was living it-an overweight twenty-seven-year-old geek getting paid to remote-pilot micro-UAVs on missions halfway around the world.

  “Good hands, Chris,” Jeff Rockman told him. Half a dozen members of the Art Room team were standing behind his workstation, watching as Palatino jockied two joysticks on the console before him, eyes fixed on the large flat-screen monitor on the wall in front of him.

  “I know, man,” Palatino replied, though his voice had that dreamy, off-in-another-world vagueness it usually acquired when he was on a mission. “Watch and learn, watch and… son of a bitch!”

  Fifty-five hundred miles away-measured along a great circle route that skimmed south of the top of Greenland and north of the Shetland Islands-the eight-ounce flier had caught a heavy updraft along the side of the mountain that threatened to sweep it into the trees. Palatino gave the device an extra burst of power, flying into a downdraft and using the descent to pick up speed. A moment later he was clear, skimming above the tree tops toward the mansion.

  The UAV had been designed to operate on software modeled on the sculling motions of a fly’s wings. The wings themselves went rigid with the application of a low-voltage trickle of current, twisting and turning to put out some ten beats per second. That was about a twentieth of the beat freque
ncy for a housefly, but these wings were larger in comparison to the size of the body driving them, and included the ability to glide for long distances. Once clear of the downdraft, Palatino canted the wings into a rigid-locked configuration and, twitching gently at one of the joysticks, nudged the device into a gentle glide that carried it across the back deck twenty feet up.

  Any of the party guests who chanced to look up might have glimpsed a dark shape reflecting the light from the pool and dismissed it as a large moth or even a bat. The UAV circled the deck area twice as the Art Room team located and counted guests, staff, and guards.

  “Okay, Lia,” Rockman said after the second pass. “Still no sign of Kotenko, so he may be inside. We’ve identified twelve guests, five people who are probably staff, and four guards, not counting the two on perimeter patrol with dogs, or the guy at the front gate. It looks like they’re pretty well set out there, not much traffic in and out of the house.”

  “Copy that,” Lia’s voice came back over a wall speaker. “Let’s get this over with, okay?” She sounded tense, on edge.

  Rockman pointed at the screen. “The security camera is there,” he said. “On top of that pole.”

  “I see it; I see it,” Palatino said. “Gimme a sec…”

  He flipped the UAV’s wings out of their locked position, and with a soft rattle of sound the device streaked across the roof of the house, angling toward a solitary pole rising just inside the fence encircling the property, not far from the main gate and driveway. Hunched over the controllers, tongue sticking out in an unconscious expression of pure concentration, Palatino brought the tiny UAV to a near hover a foot from the top of the pole, dropping the body into a vertical orientation at the same moment that he extended four wire-slender and hook-tipped legs. An instant later, the device touched the creosote-blackened wood, and the scene displayed on the monitor became still, an extreme close-up of the pole’s weathered wood surface. The flier was now resting on the pole, a few inches behind the target camera.