“Christ. That’s pretty smart. But I have a few questions.”
“Hit me.”
“Do these things just crash into the ground like a bomb?”
“No. They fall like stones for thirty-four thousand feet. Then the ’chutes open, and they float in the last eight hundred feet at around twelve miles per hour. From the moment the ’chute opens it’s about forty-five seconds before they hit the ground. And barring a gale, they come in within thirty yards of the beam. The guys will not only see them floating down, they’ll hear them thud into the ground.”
“How about radar?”
“With those things hurtling through the air, straight down, from thirty-five thousand feet, the chances of the Russians getting a good fix, before they disappear, are pretty remote. And even if they did, it’d be a bit late to do much about it. On a screen I guess they’d look like meteorites or something.”
“What would they weigh?”
“Around two hundred and fifty pounds each, specially fitted with handles, of course, to make it easy for two guys to carry.”
“Then what? Bury ’em somewhere near the edge of the woods?”
“Exactly. And as soon as the SEALs open ’em up, the first thing they take out are a couple of spades. Then they lock ’em up and bury ’em, all ready for the night when they’ll be back for ’em.”
“I got another problem, John. How are we going to send a military aircraft over Russian airspace without them asking all kinds of questions?”
“That’s pretty simple. With sensible care, there’s nothing to identify a military aircraft from a commercial one, unless they just happen to put up an interceptor for a visual ident. And that’s most unlikely.”
The SEALs Commander walked over to a large globe in the corner of his office and ran a length of a tape measure across the top, edging it into position. “There you are,” he said, tapping the globe. “The polar route from Los Angeles to the Emirates, right on the Gulf. Passes directly down the right-hand side of the lake. We bring in the chief executive of whichever American airline flies that route, and have him file a commercial flight plan with the Russians for that night. No one would think of questioning it. The only difference is, it’ll be a high-altitude echo-enhanced military aircraft making the journey, five miles up there, instead of a regular Boeing.”
“Did I ever mention the fact that you might be a genius?” said Arnold Morgan.
“Not lately,” said Admiral Bergstrom.
“Have they actually tested this system?” said Morgan. “In the desert, and it happened just as you are saying?”
“I have no hard report, but a couple of my guys were out there, and they said it was a goddamned miracle. Those things just came floating in from thirty-five thousand feet and landed right there, just a few yards from the beam.”
“John, old buddy, we got ourselves a plan. That’s the way we’ll go. Where are the guys right now.”
“They’re in a hotel in Helsinki, waiting for the word to move into one of the tour ships across the bay in St. Petersburg. They have excellent papers and passports, as we agreed before.”
“Sounds good. Now, I’ll get the CIA to take care of all of those tour ship bookings. I think we better start those four days after the Tolkach barges actually arrive off the Red Sormovo yards. In theory, they could load and depart right away. Although I don’t think that will happen.”
“Right. I’ll send a veteran chief petty officer into Helsinki, and he can go with two SEALs up the lakes on a ship right away.”
“We need to move fast. They’d better get the canisters made and trucked down here in a couple of days. We’ll load them, and have ’em ready to go that same day. I’ll get the chief on a flight to Helsinki tomorrow morning. We’ll almost certainly have a couple of weeks to spare, but we wanna be ready.”
“One thing, John, are we going to need good timing to get the recce team away from the tour ship and out to the drop zone?”
“Not really. You see we’ll know the exact time they’re scheduled to arrive at the Green Stop before the ship departs. We just need to get the dropper overhead, say, two hours later. That way the guys can just appear to take a walk and set up their beam, and we’ll make sure the aircraft is up there right on time. If he’s late, it just means the guys will have to hang around for an hour. Which doesn’t matter. The thing is, he can’t be early, because he cannot slow down much during his approach through Russian airspace. But I’m not seeing a problem there.”
“No, John, neither am I. The key to this lies in our ability to organize it without a hitch. And then it’s in the hands of the SEALs. By the way, how do we get ’em out? They’re not going back on the ship are they?”
“The recce team will…the ship makes very fast time back, running nonstop at around twenty to twenty-five knots all the way to St. Pete’s. Of course, the strike squad will not return to the ship. We’ll have them out in a small truck, but there will be nothing incriminating about them. Just a small group of tourists trundling around in the land of their forefathers. No problem to anyone. It’s very rural up there. Nothing much for anyone to be sensitive about.”
“Until the charges go off. That might change things a bit.”
“So it might, Arnie, but we’ll be long gone by then.”
“How about afterward? There’s gotta be a fucking uproar, whatever happens.”
“Now that’s your problem. Not mine. I’m here to bang out three little Russian diesel-electrics. And I think I can do it. The uproar will be political. And that’s your beat. We better get the guys at the CIA to work on it.”
“Yeah. Guess so. Somehow we want to be indignant…file some complaint or other…try to sow the seed of doubt in the Russian mind that the whole thing might have been carried out by those Chechens, or a fundamentalist group. We’re not the only country that has a beef with the Moscow government.”
“No, Arnie. We’re not. But we are the only country that has made it absolutely clear we’re not having those Kilos going to China.”
“I don’t suppose the Chinese Navy will be throwing a party in honor of the US Embassy staff in Beijing either.”
7
THE LAKE WAS FIFTY MILES WIDE HERE, AND the Mikhail Lermontov was heading north through the short seas at a steady twenty-five knots. It was mid-afternoon on May 1, and the spring sky was overcast. Deep, dark gray clouds drifted northeast before a steady breeze, a harbinger of the rain that would soon sweep in off the cold Baltic, where it had already slashed through the city streets of Helsinki and St. Petersburg.
“This weather could turn out to be a serious pain in the ass,” said Lieutenant Commander Rick Hunter. He sat huddled with his two companions in the corner of the small bar on deck three, right at the stern of the three-hundred-foot-long blue-and-white tour ship. “Matter of fact, if it rains like I think it’s gonna rain, this little holiday could turn out to be a royal fuck-up. Still, we can’t turn back now.”
His words were carefully chosen to betray nothing to possible eavesdroppers. Rick Hunter was a rare man. He was a SEAL team leader selected from a pack of equally rare men. In him, instructors and commanders had spotted something different. There was a coldness behind his bright blue eyes and Kentucky hardboot manner. They had judged this rugged, country Lieutenant Commander from the Bluegrass as a man others would follow, and who in turn would treat his team’s problems as if they were his alone.
Back at Coronado, and at his home base in Little Creek, Virginia, most everyone had a hell of a soft spot for Rick Hunter. Perhaps not least because of his unwavering eye for a thoroughbred racehorse and finely tuned ear for the Kentucky gossip. Three times in the last four years he’d correctly forecast the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Two of his picks had been favorites, but one had gone in at 20-1. There were young SEALs who believed that Lieutenant Commander Hunter was some kind of a god. His father, old Bart Hunter, bred his own thoroughbreds on an immaculate horse farm out along the Versailles Pike near Lexington, an
d was not among this particular fan club. He found it a profound mystery that his oldest boy had not the slightest interest in raising horses, as he did, and as his daddy before him had done.
There was no way he could understand the thirty-five-year-old Rick when he told him, as he had told him every year since he was about fifteen, “Dad, it’s too passive. I just can’t spend all year wandering around in a daze looking at baby racehorses, waiting for the Keeneland yearling sales to see if we’re gonna go on eating. I need action. In the horse business I would have considered becoming a jockey. But that’s not possible.”
It sure wasn’t. The six-foot-three-inch Rick Hunter tipped the scales at 215 pounds, and he carried not one ounce of fat. He actually weighed the equivalent of two jockeys, and he had quarters on him like Man O’ War. Rick Hunter had been a swimmer all of his life, a collegiate champion from Vanderbilt University, and he had very nearly made the Olympic trials for the 1988 Games but had dropped out of college suddenly. A year later he was accepted at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.
His third-generation farmer’s strength, combined with his coordination and dexterity in the water, made him a natural candidate for the SEALs. The fact that he was a deadly accurate marksman, and a man used to exercising authority from a very young age on the two-thousand-acre farm in the Bluegrass, made him a potential team leader right from the start. Rick Hunter disappointed no one. Except maybe Bart.
And now he sat, frowning, staring through the big stern windows at the lowering sky. “Fuck it,” he thought to himself as the Mikhail Lermontov ran smoothly beneath thick gray cloud. “Not much light tonight. Even with the full moon that cloud cover will just about kill it. Another pain in the ass.”
It was not quite the phrasing the young intellect for whom the ship was named would have chosen, but the nineteenth century romantic author of Russia’s first major psychological novel, A Hero of Our Time, did deal principally with the twin demons of frustration and isolation. And Rick Hunter understood all about that.
He and his two colleagues had spent some time in the little ship’s museum, which was devoted to the life of Mikhail Lermontov—all Russian tour ships these days are like cultural theme parks built around the person the ship is named for. The three SEALs had watched the illustrated account of Lermontov’s demise, killed in a duel at the age of only twenty-six. “Shoulda rolled off to the right when he’d fired his one shot,” thought Chief Petty Officer Fred Cernic, “then come right back at him with his knife…low off the ground…leading off his right leg…blade forward…one movement.” Then, aloud, the Chief observed, “He’d probably still be around if he’d been properly taught.”
“Yeah, right,” said Rick. “He’d’a been about two hundred years old.”
The third SEAL was Lieutenant Junior Grade Ray Schaeffer, a lean, dark-haired twenty-eight-year-old native of the Massachusetts seaport of Marblehead, where his family traced their lineage back to the time of the Revolutionary War. There was a Schaeffer pulling one of the oars when the Marbleheaders rowed General Washington to safety from the lost Battle of Long Island to Manhattan. Ray was proud of his heritage. His father was a fishing boat captain, and the family home was a medium-size white Colonial down near the docks. The Schaeffers were a deeply religious Catholic family.
Ray had gone from high school straight to Annapolis. A lifelong seaman, expert navigator, swimmer, and platoon middleweight boxing champion, he had SEAL written all over him. Both he and Rick Hunter were considered destined for high office in this unorthodox branch of the US fighting forces.
All three men were traveling along the Russian waterways on false passports. They kept their given first names to avoid any careless errors but had changed their last names. They mostly kept clear of other passengers, but not in any way that would attract suspicion. In fact the slim, dark-haired divorcée Mrs. Jane Westenholz, and her doe-eyed nineteen-year-old daughter Cathy, had taken quite a shine to Rick and his friends. Mrs. Westenholz was apt to call them Ricky, Freddie, and Ray Darling, as if they were three hairdressers, which sure would have amused Admiral Bergstrom.
Lieutenant Commander Hunter looked at his watch. They were still four hours from the Green Stop, and because the tour boats were not yet on their summer schedules, they were due to arrive at 1930. Tonight they would dock in a grim, damp northern twilight. The Russian tour boat would secure alongside the jetty overnight and allow the passengers to sight-see in the morning, when a barbecue lunch ashore might be possible, weather permitting, before the ship returned to St. Petersburg.
Right now Rick could feel the boat altering course to the west for their scheduled swing around the island of Kizhi, the treasured national historic site. Some boats made a four-hour stop here for tourists to see the three carved eighteenth-century churches and visit other historic wooden buildings in this strange place where time has stood still for three centuries. The Mikhail Lermontov was not stopping at Kizhi, and its detour would be fairly swift, but the island is a unique place and ought not to be missed. Its onion domes adorn every guidebook of the great lake.
The three SEALs pulled on their parkas and baseball caps, paid and tipped the young Russian waiter, and went out on deck to see the island. Fred brought a camera with him, and they all leaned over the port-side rail on the upper deck while the Chief Petty Officer shot pictures. Ray said he didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that any of the photos would come out because of the poor light. At which point Mrs. Westenholz stepped out on deck wearing a fluorescent scarlet raincoat with bright yellow boots. “You boys shouldn’t be out in the rain, you all could catch severe chills in this awful Russian weather.”
“Ma’am,” Rick said, “I been walking around big fields in the pouring rain all of my life back home in Kentucky…doesn’t affect me now…’cept I sometimes get a little rust creeping up under my eyelids.”
Mrs. Westenholz squeaked with laughter, and opened her own dark eyes wide. “But this isn’t proper American rain,” she said. “This is Russian rain, and it’s colder, comes from the Arctic…it’ll freeze you right through.”
“Don’t worry about him, ma’am,” said Ray Darling. “He’s insensitive. That chill couldn’t get through to him.”
“Ooh,” said Jane Westenholz. “I think Ricky could be very sensitive…and I think you should all come inside now and I’ll get us some coffee and a glass of brandy to warm us up.”
Chief Cernic actually considered that an appealing idea. He also considered, very privately, that Mrs. Westenholz might be a bit of an athlete in the sack. Trouble was she plainly had eyes for only the big, straw-haired team leader from Kentucky. And at forty-four, Fred also realized that he was too old for her good-looking daughter. His wife and three sons, back home in San Diego, would probably have been pleased about that.
Rick grinned at Jane Westenholz. “Okay, you go ahead, we’ll see you in the stern bar in five minutes…but hold the brandy. I forgot to tell you, Fred here is a reformed alcoholic…gets really difficult after even one drink. Ray and I never drink when he’s around…we try to go along with his program…just to help him through it.”
Chief Cernic raised his eyebrows at the enormity of the lie. “Oh, darling Freddie,” Mrs. Westenholz said, “we mustn’t allow you to slip back, must we? One day at a time…and no drinkie-poohs for anyone this afternoon.”
Ray Schaeffer shook his head. “Jesus,” he muttered. “This old broad could be a real fucking nuisance. We may end up heaving the bodies of her and her daughter over the side before long.”
The identical thought occurred to Rick Hunter, but he thought it would be better if they could get through this without taking anyone out. “We’re going to have to make ourselves a bit remote this evening,” he said quietly.
The ten-thousand-ton Mikhail Lermontov turned back to the southeast, toward the narrow strait that divides the headland of Bojascina from the island of Kurgenicy. The fifty-mile north-south channel up to the Belomorski Canal lay just beyond.
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The rain stopped as they turned away from Kizhi, and a watery sunlight lit the surface of the lake intermittently. The high rolling cloud banks to the southwest remained in place, but the dying afternoon breeze had slowed the low pressure system as it moved northeast. Lieutenant Commander Hunter had baleful forebodings of the night’s weather, and he was already shuddering at the thought of the forthcoming conditions in which he and his team would almost certainly be working.
To Rick, this strange and foreign place was merely an operational zone, and he tried to view it dispassionately. But the sight of the hills, climbing away in a misty purple shroud on the eastern shore of the glistening silver lake, was almost overwhelming in its desolate beauty. Lieutenant Commander Hunter, no stranger himself to breathtaking landscapes, shook his head at the thought of three Soviet-designed submarines moving innocently, yet somehow obscenely, like huge black stranded slugs, across these waterways of God.
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