Arctic Fire c-9

by Keith Douglass

  He hung up the microphone abruptly, knowing that the Spetsnaz commander understood exactly what the phrase “other options” meant.

  The executive officer didn’t. If he had, he would have known that no Cossack ever left an untrustworthy officer at his back.

  CHAPTER 5

  Wednesday, 28 December

  1000 Local

  CVIC, USS Jefferson

  Commander Busby frowned and stared at the technician standing in front of him. “You’re sure about this?”

  The technician nodded. “No doubt in my military mind, sir.” The younger man pointed at a series of lines stretching across the printout. “Look at those frequencies. Those aren’t from military communications. Not ours, anyway.”

  “What are they from, then?” Busby asked. The three lines on the paper that the technician pointed to were cryptic strings of numbers, indicating frequencies and times of detection. To anyone else, it could just as well have been a report from a Supply logistics computer. He smiled for a second, wondering how many top-secret reports looked just as mundane.

  “What’s your best classification?” he asked finally, tapping his pencil on one column of numbers. “These frequencies — this isn’t a long-range system.”

  “You’re right about that. I’d call it some sort of short-range tactical system — maybe even hand-held. Look how the signal strengths vary so widely. Could be caused by geography — somebody walks behind a rock and the antenna’s not fully extended, you get that sort of dip.”

  “Did you check with our SEALS? Maybe they were playing with some of their toys.”

  The technician smirked. “Thought you might ask about that. And no, it’s not our SEALS. The frequencies don’t match up at all.”

  Commander Busby sighed and tossed the paper on his desk. The last thing he needed right now was evidence of unknown short-range tactical communications in their vicinity. He closed his eyes for a moment, visualizing a chart of the area. Nowhere those signals could have come from but the islands to the north. He opened his eyes and saw that the technician had come to the same conclusion.

  “This is impossible, you know. Just how am I supposed to explain to the Admiral that we’re detecting radio signals from the godforsaken rocks called the Aleutians? Nobody lives there, and we’re certainly not ashore. If we’re wrong about this, we’re going to stir up a hell of a lot of trouble for nothing. Every intelligence group on board and back home is going to get their shorts twisted in a knot over this.”

  The technician nodded. “Yeah, but if everybody were where they were supposed to be all the time, they wouldn’t need us, would they?”

  Busby motioned to a chair sitting next to his desk. He reached for his coffee cup, curling his fingers gratefully around the warm, rough ceramic mug. The temperatures in CVIC–Carrier Intelligence Center — consistently hovered around the sixty-degree mark. Maintaining a stable, cool temperature inside the most sensitive spaces on board the carrier was one of his continual headaches, and no one had ever been able to come up with a compromise between the needs of the sophisticated equipment jammed into these small spaces and the human beings who operated it. As usual, operational requirements won out over human comfort.

  “Okay, we need a game plan,” Busby said finally. “Make me look smart here, Jackson.”

  The technician scooted his chair over next to Busby’s and picked up the printout. “You can read it yourself, Commander; I know you can. Maybe some of those fellows believe you don’t know everything that goes on back there, but not me.”

  “Pretend I’m dumb for a minute. Chances are, you’ll explain something I would have forgotten to ask about.”

  The technician shot him a sardonic look. “Okay. See, here’s the first detection,” he said, pointing his pencil at the fifth line from the top. “Short duration — only two minutes. High frequency — you see, right here in this column?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got that. But tell me how we know it’s tactical communications.”

  “The signal breaks up. If this were a large transmitter, one drawing a hell of a lot of power, it would blast right around some of the obstructions. Instead, we get these changes in signal strength that indicate somebody’s moving around. Or maybe walking around a rock, or something like that. Not something you see, except on mobile field communications.”

  “You ever seen these frequencies before?”

  The technician shook his head, paused, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. “Something like it, but not this one exactly. Way back in A School, when we were studying the old Russian Bear. You remember, back when we had an enemy? Hearing about the Bear-J that’s been in the area reminded me of it.”

  “So what does it look like?”

  “I’m not certain, sir, but I remember one day they played back for us some short-range Spetsnaz communications. Looked a little bit like this.” The technician shrugged. “Course, no telling who’s using all that gear these days. They could’ve farmed half of it out to the border guards. And, like I was saying, there’s nothing really unique about this, except for the frequency. In the range of short-range tactical communications, and not one of ours. That’s about all I can tell you for certain.”

  Busby thought for a minute, then hauled himself out of his chair. “Guess I’m about as smart as I’m going to get, then. Thanks for the briefing, Jackson. I’ll let the admiral know what’s happening.”

  The technician took the hint, and rose to walk out of the office. He turned right at the doorway, heading back to the even chillier operating spaces within CVIC. At the heavy steel cipher lock that shut his spaces off from the rest of the intelligence center, he paused, then turned back to watch Commander Busby’s figure disappear around the far corner.

  Lab Rat. The technician chuckled a moment, wondering who had first hung that moniker on the diminutive Commander Busby. Good call, whoever had done it, although he thought the commander might have wished for a more impressive nickname. But with his pale, almost colorless hair, bright blue eyes magnified behind thick Coke-bottle glasses, and generally frail, nervous appearance, Commander Busby hadn’t had a chance in the world of avoiding that one.

  Wish all officers were more like him, the technician mused, punching in the numbers that would open the cipher lock to his outer door. Professionally demanding, tough to work for, but he took good care of his troops. And no pussyfooting around when it came to threat signals. The commander had said he’d take this straight to the admiral, and he would, carefully shielding his technicians from the myriad political considerations that would arise once the report went out.

  The heavy door swung open, and a slight puff of air caressed his face, the result of the positive pressure gradient between the sensitive crypto spaces and the rest of CVIC. Jackson stepped over the shin-high knee-knocker and shoved the door closed behind him, waiting to make sure he heard the ominous click announcing the door was secure.

  Well, it would be up to the admiral to decide what they did now.

  1015 Local

  Admiral’s Cabin, USS Jefferson

  “You think this is really something?” Batman asked Commander Busby.

  “Define ‘something,’” Busby said. “if you mean, do I think it’s a valid detection, the answer is yes. But what it means — that I don’t know, Admiral.”

  Batman sighed. “And you can’t tell me what was said on the circuit, just that somebody was transmitting?”

  “That’s about it. It was all encrypted. With enough time, enough resources, NSA might be able to make something of it, but we can’t here. And I’m not even sure that NSA could break it that fast — there are too many good commercial encrypters on the market these days.” Busby shook his head. “I know the U.S. has tried to keep control of digital encryption technology, but other nations aren’t quite so vigorous.”

  “So for all we know, this could be that Greenpeace boat communicating with their people back in the States?”

  Busby shook his head. “Not at that
frequency. You’d see a high frequency — HF — for that. One thing we’re relatively sure of, this was a short-range signal.”

  “Satellite?”

  “Not enough power. No, Admiral, I was hoping that would be the case, but this signal has no other reasonable explanation. None that I can come up with, anyway.”

  “Damn it. And we can’t ignore it.” Batman handed the commander the printout sheet and stood up. “Well, I’ll have our people check it out. You’ll want to debrief them as soon as they return, I imagine.”

  “The SEALS?” Busby asked.

  Batman smiled grimly. “They’ve spent the last three months running laps in the hangar bays, taking up hours on the Stairmaster machines, and generally chafing at the bit. I imagine their commander is going to be more than eager to jump on this one. And what better way to check out a spurious radio signal from an island than to send in the SEALS?”

  1532 Local

  Kilo 31

  The ocean was peculiarly calm, cloaked in an uneasy, expectant hush Rogov had come to associate with the quiet before a williwaw. The covered lifeboat, pressed once again into service as a shuttle between the submarine and the shore, bobbed gently against the hull.

  Rogov set one foot on the first rung of the ladder, paused, and turned back to the executive officer, now in command of the boat. “You understand your orders?”

  The executive officer nodded. “We remain surfaced until you signal that you are ashore, then maintain the original communications schedule for the next two weeks. If you fail to make four consecutive scheduled contacts, I am to return to base immediately and report the lack of contact to the man you have designated.”

  “And?”

  “And to no one else,” he added quickly. “My word as an officer, it will be done.”

  Rogov studied him for a moment, then let a grim smile of approval cross his face. “Very well. On your word. That will mean as much to you as it does to us.”

  “You may depend on it.”

  Rogov put his other foot on the first rung and started descending the ladder to the boat. Halfway down, the expression that had lulled the executive officer so easily melted into something that would not have calmed the most junior sailor on board that boat.

  Rogov fingered the transmitter in his pocket. Cossacks never left enemies at their back. In this situation, four pounds of high-explosive plastic compound cemented to the wall of their dead skipper’s stateroom would ensure it.

  Two thousand meters later, he pressed the button. The Kilo shivered, then the ocean around her fountained up in a gout of metal, machinery, and men.

  1540 Local

  Pathfinder 731

  17,000 Feet Above Aflu

  “Goddamned carrier jocks,” Lieutenant Commander Bill “Ramrod” McAllister grumbled. “Be nice if they could learn to tell the difference between a civilian craft and a tanker.” He put the P-3 into a gentle, left-hand bank, circling the large commercial vessel located below. “Even at this altitude, I can tell what it is.”

  “We going in for a closer look?” Lieutenant Commander Frank “Eel” Burns asked.

  “Not unless you really think it’s necessary. I can tell what it is from here,” the pilot replied.

  “Yeah, well, if we drop down and rig it out, it might be good practice. Not damned much else to play with out here,” Eel replied.

  “All right, all right,” the pilot snapped. “If it’ll keep you guys in the backseat from playing with yourselves, we’ll go take a look.” He nosed the P-3 Lockheed Orion over and headed toward the ocean below them.

  Eel glanced uneasily at the antisubmarine warfare technician sitting next to him. AW1 Kiley Maroney, an experienced technician with five cruises under his belt, shrugged. He made a small movement with his hand, signifying a continuation of a discussion they’d dropped before boarding the aircraft. Pilots had their moods, and all a decent backseater could do was put up with it. When it came down to tactical command, they both knew that the man sitting in front of them would do what they needed.

  “How ‘bout we take a look at the island at the same time?” Eel suggested. “Jefferson claimed she got some strange signals coming off that island last night. Wouldn’t hurt us to take a look.”

  “I tell ya, it comes from too many arrested carrier landings,” the pilot said, continuing the diatribe he’d started earlier that day. “Scrambles their brains, it does. Just look at that,” he finished, standing the P-3 on one wing to circle around the massive foreign-flagged tanker below them. “That’s exactly where they reported that Greenpeace ship at. Does that look like a converted fishing vessel to you?”

  “No, it certainly doesn’t,” Eel said slowly. “And I don’t think even an F-14 jock could get the two confused.”

  “Well, if that’s not what they reported, where the hell is the Greenpeace ship?” the pilot demanded. “I tell you, slamming into the deck that many times a day just rattles their brains. Ain’t a damned one of them that’s got a bit of sense.”

  “Let’s go back to your first question,” Eel suggested. “Where the hell is the Greenpeace ship? We know she’s out here — too many people besides that Tomcat jock have seen it.”

  “Oh, it’s out here, all right; I don’t doubt that,” the pilot answered. “But we try to work these things out so the carrier turns over some decent locating data to us. Some hotshot just made a bad report, and now we’re going to have to research the whole area. And it’s not like they’ll get tasked to do that themselves — nothin on the carrier’s got long enough legs to pull the shifts that we pull.”

  “The S-3 might-” the technician started.

  The pilot cut him off with a sharp laugh. “Yeah, like we can get them to agree to do surface surveillance,” he said angrily. “If it doesn’t involve dropping sonobuoys, they try to snivel out of the mission. People, we’re gettin’ screwed on this one.”

  Ten minutes later, after completing a detailed report on the superstructure of the tanker as well as a close scrutiny of the flag flying from her stern, the P-3 climbed back up to altitude.

  “The island?” Eel suggested again.

  “Give me a fly-to point,” the pilot replied.

  Eel busied himself on his console, laying in course and speed vectors to take them directly over the last island in the desolate Aleutian chain. Finally satisfied with his plan, he punched the button that would pop it up on the pilot’s fly-to display.

  “Got it,” the pilot announced. The P-3 immediately leaned into a sharp right-hand turn. “Looks like about twenty minutes from here.”

  Eel flipped the communications switch over to the circuit occupied only by himself and the enlisted technician. “What you thinking?” he said quietly. “Me, I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Me neither, sir,” the technician said uneasily. “Too many ghosts. That same F-14 jock reported a disappearing radar contact right before his Greenpeace locating data. Me, I’d want to check that out a lot more carefully.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you. Especially with these EW — electronic warfare — signals that keep cropping up. Too many unexplained oddities in this tactical world.”

  “I’m staying heads up on the ESM gear, sir,” the technician replied. “And the frequency they reported is well within our capabilities. If somebody’s talking down there, we’ll know it.”

  1600 Local

  Aflu

  “They landed, cleaned the fish they’d caught, ate, then left,” the commando reported.

  “And your men weren’t seen?” Rogov demanded.

  The Spetsnaz officer shook his head. “There was no sign of it. The men were well hidden in the cliffs, and the natives left immediately after they’d eaten.”

  “Then why did they come ashore at all?”

  The commando shrugged. “Who knows why these people do anything? Maybe their gods told them to; maybe one of them had to take a crap. All I can tell you is that they came, they left. I’ve left two men on watch there, but
we won’t be able to keep that up forever. The hike across the cliffs takes too long.”

  “Keep me advised.”

  Rogov stared up at the clear sky, which was already starting to darken as the short day ended. At this latitude, there were no more than a few hours of daylight out of every twenty-four. Dismal living conditions, especially when the frequent winter storms obscured even those few hours of sunlight. He shook his head, marveling at the strength of his ancestors who survived the long march across this land bridge to enter the North American continent.

  He snugged the cold weather parka more closely around his face and readjusted the wool scarf covering his mouth and nose. After only a few hours ashore, his goggles were already slightly pitted from the blowing ice crystals. A thin tracery of ice had taken hold around the edge of one lens. He considered taking the goggles off long enough to clean them, but the memory of the sharp cold that had bitten into his face last time he tried that dissuaded him.

  The Spetsnaz commander had been absolutely insistent on the importance of maintaining an outside watch, and rightly so. Rogov was tempted to remove himself from the watch rotation, but in the end decided that he would take his turn in order to assert his equal standing among the small band of trained killers he commanded. He shook his head as he turned around, scanning the horizon and air above him. Two days ago, he hadn’t known he’d be worried about that.

  Living under Aflu conditions was already proving more harshly draining than he ever dreamed possible. Subsisting on field rations, trying to catch a few shivering hours of sleep in the dank cave, and pushing the men to complete the foundations for the weapons systems had taken more out of him than he thought possible. Was it possible, he wondered, that he’d been a fool to insist on supervising this mission personally? At forty-eight years of age, he was a good fifteen years older than the most senior Spetsnaz here. How significant that was hadn’t shown up until he’d come ashore.