by Nick Carter
Hansen glared at Carter but sat back. "Right," he said at length.
Carter had a bad feeling about this mission already. It was getting off to a very poor start. He hoped that everything would straighten itself out quickly because, as Hansen had said, their lives depended upon their working well together.
"What have you already been told, Tom?" Carter asked.
"Not a lot, other than the fact that our mission is to steal a computer chip for the ECM room of a Soviet-built sub. And that you made a try for it yourself but failed. But it wasn't made clear exactly where we were to find this sub, or even if the chip was aboard a sub."
"It's aboard a submarine, all right," Carter said. "A Petrograd-class sub. Have you heard of it?"
It was obvious they all had. Hansen's mouth dropped open, and Barber and Forester were thunderstruck.
"There are no Petrograds around here," Barber said.
"They're all in Svetlaya," Hansen added. "And you have to be stupid to think of getting in…" He stopped.
"You flew up to Hokkaido?" Scott asked.
Carter nodded. "Took a fishing boat to within a hundred miles of the Soviet coast, but their navy was running an exercise and we got stopped."
"Were you boarded?" Scott asked.
"No. Nor was I spotted as an American. But I had to dump the carrying case overboard. I couldn't risk the chance of the Russians seeing it."
"I don't understand, Carter," Hansen snapped. "You mean to say that you planned on stepping ashore, walking onto the naval base at Svetlaya, and stealing the computer chip out of the boat itself?"
"That's a pretty stupid idea, isn't it," Carter said, a hard edge to his voice.
"I'll say," Hansen said, sitting back.
"Then you won't have to come along, Captain, because that's exactly what I'm planning on doing."
Hansen's jaw dropped open even further. Barber sat forward.
"We have a sub standing by for us with sealed orders. She is to do whatever we ask of her," Barber said.
Hawk had said he was still working on something. The submarine must have been it. It was clear now to Carter what they were going to have to do. What wasn't clear was why Barber, Hansen, and Forester had to be included.
"The sub will have to drop me off along the coast somewhere," Carter said. "I'd just as soon do this alone…"
"Not a chance," Barber cut in. "It's time the Company did something with a bang."
"I can be of assistance with the computer itself," Forester said. He was slight of build and soft-spoken.
"That coastline is pretty harsh this time of year, Commander," Carter said. "Almost certainly there will be some bloodshed."
Forester managed a smile. "As long as it's not my blood being shed, I think I'll manage."
"I know the layout of the base," Hansen growled.
"We're going in as a team," Barber said. "It's the way it was handed down to me."
"I've been instructed to give you anything you need in the way of ground support from this end," Scott spoke up. He turned to Barber. "It won't be safe, however, for Carter to be seen anywhere in Tokyo. We have a training compound and safe house up near Mito, about sixty miles up the coast."
Barber glanced at his watch. "The sub is actually thirty-six hours out. We could rendezvous off the coast. It would give us some practice." He looked up. "But this is your operation. Carter. We'll do whatever you say."
"Bullshit!" Hansen snapped, jumping to his feet.
"Ease up. Chuck, or you're out," Barber said.
"I see two Navy, one ex-Navy at this table. And it is a U.S. Navy submarine standing off to pick us up."
"You're out, Captain," Barber snapped harshly.
Carter shook his head in disgust, and he too got up. "No, he's not. If we're going in as a team, we'll need him."
Hansen started to protest, but Carter ignored him.
"Set up our transportation for Mito right away," he said to Scott. "I have a call to make first. Can we be out of here within the hour?"
"Sure," Scott said.
Barber and Forester both nodded.
"I'm not taking orders from you, Carter…" Hansen sputtered.
Carter turned back. "Oh, I think you will, Chuck," he said. He turned and left the screened room.
* * *
Kazuka was at the office. Carter managed to get a secure circuit through the communications center in the embassy's basement without anyone on duty realizing whom he was calling.
"You had no trouble getting back?" he said.
"No. Did you?"
"Everything is fine here. I'm leaving Tokyo within the hour for a place near Mito."
"The CIA compound."
"That's the place. Do you know it?"
"I've been up there," Kazuka said.
"Is it secure? I may have to be there for a day and a half.
"It's reasonably secure, Nicholas. But Major Rishiri does know about the place. It's the training area they use on joint missions. If he gets wind that something is up, you can bet he'll be up there snooping around."
"Right," Carter said. "If anything does come up, don't try to contact me directly unless it's an extreme emergency. Go through Hawk."
"Are you making another try?"
"Yes. This one by submarine. But I'll have a CIA operative and two U.S. Navy officers in tow. If there's anything I should know about, Kazuka — anything concerning the mission — let Hawk know. He understands the entire situation."
"Be careful, Nicholas."
"You too," Carter said, and he hung up.
* * *
They hitched a ride on a big garbage truck a little before ten. The Russians were on them from the moment they left embassy grounds and did not give up until the truck had actually dumped its garbage at the processing facility a few miles south toward Yokohama.
Once the Russians were gone, Carter, Barber, Forester, and the still surly Hansen climbed out from the large hydraulic compartment and got into the van waiting for them.
The driver was one of Scott's men who assured them he had gotten to the dump without a tail. They skirted the city far to the west before they headed back to the northeast coast.
Mt. Fuji and the rugged hills were all to the south and southwest, so in a matter of a few miles they had come again down to the gently rolling hills that led to the ocean. Again Carter was struck by the storybook neatness of the farms and villages, though it was obvious even to a casual observer that Japan was a densely populated country.
It was a lovely though cool afternoon by the time they made it to Mito, the capital of the Ibaraki Prefecture and a city of about 150,000 people.
The main sprawl of the city was a few miles inland from the sea. The CIA compound itself was directly on the coast behind a tall wire fence; the locals believed it to be the estate of a wealthy Japanese industrialist.
A low line of hills hid most of the compound's grounds from the coastal highway. They were let through the gate by a mean-looking Korean guard. The Japanese hated the Koreans, Carter explained to Barber. Their mere presence at the gate of a compound insured that the average Japanese would not come within spitting distance.
A wide, well-paved road wound its way down to a very large, Western-style house perched on the edge of a cliff looking out over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Big breakers rolled in from across the sea to thunder against the rocks at the base of the cliffs. They could almost feel the entire coastline shudder each time a breaker hit.
Besides the main house, there were several other buildings in the compound, most of which were built to look like one thing but were meant to be used for a far different purpose. The communications center looked like the building of an amateur astronomer. A stone building that appeared to be a garage in actuality housed a small armory. A large greenhouse housed a planning center.
Carter always got a kick out of the vast amounts of money the CIA was able to throw around, while AXE had to make do on a minuscule budget.
"A lot
of this is just fluff, sir," Scott's driver explained. "The Japanese like to think they're getting their money's worth by allowing the Company to operate freely on their soil. Mostly we do a lot of counterinsurgency training here. Weekend warriors and all that stuff."
He dropped them off with their bags at the front door of the main house, then drove back up the hill toward the gate. He would have to get back to Tokyo so as not to make the Russians nervous about a missing van.
The house was a two-story brick affair, with a steeply pitched roof and several chimneys. It looked like something that might be more at home in the English countryside, or perhaps in Connecticut along Long Island Sound, than an hour or so north of Tokyo.
Scott had promised that except for the security and maintenance staff they would have the place to themselves until they were due to rendezvous with the submarine the following evening at around eight.
Inside, they stowed their gear in their rooms and changed into the gray training uniforms the CIA used there while the cook fixed them a late lunch of soup and sandwiches.
They met back in one of the dining rooms at the rear of the house with a dramatic view of the ocean.
Hansen had turned sullen and refused to look Carter in the eye, or say much of anything at all. Forester was suffering from jet lag. He had been awakened in the middle of the night in his San Diego home and had been put on a plane for Japan before he had any idea where he was going or what might be expected of him. But Barber was ready and eager to get started.
"Can we contact the submarine directly to arrange our rendezvous, or are we going to have to go through Pacific Fleet communications?" Carter asked.
"She'll surface at eleven hundred GMT; which is eight tonight our time — and again at twenty-three hundred GMT, which will be eight our time tomorrow morning. We'll be able to talk to her then."
"How will we get out to her from here?"
"A chopper."
Once again Carter was struck by a sense of futility. Barber would do all right, but the other two would have to be babysat. If they made it to the rendezvous with the sub, that is, Carter thought grimly. A lot could happen between now and tomorrow night.
After lunch Hansen went with Forester over to the planning center where they would develop a model plan of the Svetlaya naval base, as well as a computer mock-up of their best guess as to the layout of the Petrograd submarine's ECM room.
Carter went for a walk to look over the grounds. Barber caught up with him before he got a hundred yards.
"Mind the company, Carter?"
"Not at all. But call me Nick. It looks as if we're going to be in close quarters for the next few days at least."
"And you don't like that very much, do you," Barber said as they strolled past the communications center and headed up toward a thick stand of woods.
"I've gotten used to working on my own."
Barber smiled. "You are definitely not a Company man, then. We do everything — and I mean everything — by committee."
"Which is fine for some things."
"But not your thing."
Carter shrugged. What he had already seen of Barber, he liked. Depending upon what happened in this operation, he thought, he would talk to Hawk about offering the man a job with AXE.
"This morning, on the way in from Hongo, you said you had heard of me," Carter said. "Where?"
"Around."
"Could you be a bit more specific, Tom?"
Barber looked at him, a new expression in his eyes. "You don't especially care for people hearing about you, do you."
"Not especially."
Barber nodded. "My boss mentioned your name. He said you were one of the best field men in the trade… our side or theirs. I had heard your name mentioned about three years ago during an operation in Libya. And that's it."
Carter sighed. There was no such thing as an airtight cover. Not for him, not for anyone else. Still, when your life depended upon anonymity, it rankled a little to hear that you had a reputation — good or bad.
"You don't think we have much of a chance, do you," Barber said.
"Forester is all right, but we're going to have to take care of him. And Hansen has a chip on his shoulder."
"He's a good man, though."
"I'll tell you what, Tom. I want to conduct a little search-and-seize training mission tonight. If Hansen should get hurt — say, break an arm or dislocate a shoulder — would you scrap the mission?"
"You're planning on bending him a bit?"
"Maybe."
"Why?"
Carter stopped walking. "Listen to me, Tom. If we all go across together, our lives will hinge on the weakest link in the team. And when it gets right down to it, which it probably will, each of us might have to depend not only on the other man's expertise, but on his goodwill as well."
"I see what you mean," Barber said. "But you're not going to build any goodwill with Hansen if you damage him."
"Maybe respect."
Barber laughed. "Excuse me, Nick, if I don't exactly roll over and play dead. I really don't know who you work for — State Department or what — but give us a break. We're on the same side, you know."
They started walking again. For a few minutes Carter stayed with his own thoughts. He couldn't begin to count in his mind the number of men and women who were on the same side, as Barber put it, who were dead nevertheless because they simply didn't know what the hell they were doing. Because they had tried to play games in the real world after having learned the rules out of a book.
Carter stopped walking again and turned to Barber. "Would you trust Hansen and Forester with your life, Tom?"
Barber started to nod.
"No matter the circumstances?"
This time Barber hesitated.
"No matter how tough it got?"
"I see what you mean, Nick," the CIA man said.
"I hope so, because I'm going to lean on Hansen tonight. If he folds, he's out."
"And if he doesn't?"
"We'll see."
Eight
Carter was the quarry. He had already lifted the computer chip, according to the scenario, and was trying to make his escape. Three of Svetlaya's best, however, were on this trail; they were so close, in fact, that he was going to have to double back and eliminate them before he could get away. It was up to them not only to protect themselves, but to eliminate him and recover the chip.
Tom Barber was the Soviet team leader; Hansen and Forester were his lieutenants. They all were armed with riot control rifles, loaded with rubber bullets.
"There will be no ground rules," Carter told them, "except that there will be no chivalry or honor. The objective is everything."
They were in the planning center greenhouse. Carter had strapped one of the heavy computer chip carrying cases on his back to further simulate the mission they would be facing soon.
"What if we hit the carrying case?" Barber asked.
"Good point, Tom. That would be half your mission. You'd still have to come after me. If that were to happen, though, I would have a surprise for you."
"Which is…?" Hansen asked.
Carter just grinned at him. "It wouldn't be much of a surprise if I told you, would it?"
Barber looked at his watch. "It's just twenty-two hundred hours. We'll give you a sixty-second head start. When does the mission end?"
"When you're all dead," Carter said. He turned on his heel, slipped out the door, and headed directly across the access road toward the nursery, which was a broad area of apple trees that had been planted in regular rows.
He had gotten barely thirty yards when they opened fire from the greenhouse. He spun left, snapped off a couple of shots in their general direction, then ran zigzag for the protection of the trees.
They fired again, this time from the left as Carter dived and rolled as best he could.
He fired a third shot, this one at a figure rapidly retreating to the left past the main house.
A half-dozen shots were la
id down directly in front of him — one so close he felt the puff of air by his ear — before he could flop over and return a couple of shots.
For just a split second the figure of one man was silhouetted against the backdrop of the south woods, and then it was gone.
Carter lay on his stomach sighting the area around the woods and around the helicopter landing area on this side of the access road with his rifle. But there was no movement.
It was puzzling. The man who had run past the main house had been Hansen; Carter was sure of it. The figure that had disappeared into the woods was Barber. He had recognized he man's bulk. Which left Forester. Where?
At least they had not given him his sixty-second head start. If they had, Carter would have fired them on the spot. The objective, not keeping one's word, was the important thing.
Carefully he worked his way deeper into the apple orchard before he got cautiously to his feet.
At seventy pounds, the carrying case on his back was nothing more than a slight hindrance to his free movement — for the moment. Over the long haul, however, it would make things damned difficult, he knew. Which meant he was going to have to make his move now.
He grinned. It was going to be interesting to see if Barber had come to the same conclusion.
Carter worked his way through the trees, keeping low, keeping his movement erratic, and blending with the shadows as much as possible.
Someone shouted something off toward the helicopter pad, which was now on Carter's left. Carter stopped to listen, straining his every sense to detect the presence of Barber or Forester out ahead of him.
The night was silent, and Carter moved a little deeper into the apple orchard. They would be expecting him to operate with the carrying case. They all knew how heavy it was, and they knew that it would slow him down.
Someone shouted again to his left. This time Carter recognized Forester's voice. He stopped and listened.
"Tom!" Forester's voice came through the woods. It sounded as if he were in pain. "For chrissakes, this isn't a goddamned game any longer!"
Carter looked over his shoulder the way he had come. Hansen had gone that way. Where? No doubt to circle around. But he could not be that fast. He could not have moved through the north woods in time to circle back there. Not yet.