“Yes, well, the thing is, we were able to track it for a time,” Llewellyn said. “Used a satellite to query the satcom’s imbedded GPS. We were able to plot its movements over the course of two days, from St. Petersburg to Moscow to someplace near Donetsk. The last time we got a signal from the unit, we think it was airborne and moving south.”
“Donetsk is more or less halfway between Moscow and Sochi,” Lia said. “You think it was on its way here?”
“A distinct possibility,” Llewellyn told them. “We’re now certain the gang that jumped you in St. Petersburg was with the Tambovs. Grigor Kotenko is a high-ranking Tambov chief, and he was closely involved in the beryllium sale in St. Pete. Those were probably his enforcers on the waterfront. He specializes in high-tech items, remember, and the black box alone from the AN/PSC-12 would be worth millions to the right buyer.”
“Tell me about it,” Akulinin said. “Rubens is going to have me shot when I get back to the States.”
“Only after he skins you alive,” Lia told him.
Llewellyn grinned. “Maybe they’ll just take it out of your pay. In any case, we couldn’t find the kit on the waterfront where you said you must have left it. The sensors you two left in the area showed the whole place was crawling with people for hours after you left, so it’s a fair bet they found it and looked inside. If they reported it to Kotenko, he would have wanted to see just what it was that had so unexpectedly fallen into his hands.”
Lia looked at Llewellyn. “So does that mean Kotenko is in Sochi now? I thought the dacha was closed except for a housekeeping staff.”
“We thought it was,” Llewellyn said. “But several days ago, we saw signs that the place was open for business. Here.” He typed a set of commands into the laptop, and a full-color photograph came up on the 17-inch screen, a shot apparently taken from a boat offshore. The camera angle looked up from the water, framing a large two-story villa on a hilltop. Snowcapped mountains—the Caucasus—rose behind, almost lost in a blue haze. The house, its walls and roof brightly colored in tropical aquas, reds, and yellows, looked deserted. He hit a key and a second photo opened up, this one taken from either a satellite or a high-flying aircraft, looking down on the same building. The grounds, the large deck, the balconies, all were deserted.
“Those first two are from a week ago,” Llewellyn said, pointing to the date and time stamps on the photos. “You can’t tell for sure from two photos, but our agents watching the place reported no activity at all, save for a gardener, a pool caretaker, and two security types. Then, three days ago, we got this.”
He brought up a third photo, again taken from overhead. This one showed two cars in the driveway at the front of the dacha, an open table umbrella on the poolside deck, and a number of human figures around the pool. Five security men were visible around the property’s perimeter, two of them with dogs on leads.
“My God,” Lia said, looking close. She hit a key several times, zooming in closer on the scene. “Is that an orgy?”
“Kotenko appears to have been, ah, entertaining some guests this past weekend,” Llewellyn said. “We’re checking our sources in Moscow, and going through some backlogged cell phone intercepts to be sure, but we think he’s brought in some VIPs from Gazprom. Probably for some high-level . . . I think you Yanks call it ‘wheeling and dealing’?”
“Looks like that’s not all they’re doing,” Akulinin said, studying the screen. “Damn. That does complicate things a bit.”
“Indeed. We were counting on you two having the place more or less to yourselves. But if Kotenko is in residence, he’ll have a small entourage with him. Bodyguards. Office assistants. Maids and butlers. Secretaries. And, from the look of it, girls from one of his brothels in town.”
“Yeah. Looks like it’s a hell of a party,” Akulinin said.
Llewellyn typed another entry, and a number of architectural drawings came up—blueprints on the dacha. “We got these from the company in Moscow that built the place,” he told them. “The same company made a number of alterations to the house after Kotenko bought it. Notice here . . . on the first floor, and here, in the basement directly below.”
“Looks like it’s wired for Internet,” Lia observed, studying the wiring schematics. “And what’s all this in the basement? Looks like they added structural reinforcement.”
“Right the first time. They reinforced the floor, there, with load-bearing beams.”
“A safe?”
“That’s a good bet, Lia. Something damned heavy, anyway. We think this area on the first floor is Kotenko’s office . . . and that eight years ago he installed a heavy floor safe, right here.”
Lia nodded. “So . . . if we can’t sneak in without being seen, we might make it look like a burglary.”
“That was our thought,” Llewellyn said. “I brought some specialist tools for you from St. Petersburg.”
“Wait a second,” Akulinin said. “You guys are jumping way ahead of me here. A burglary? I thought this was just a quick in-and-out to plant bugs.”
“Ideally,” Lia told him, “we could sneak past a couple of security guards, gain entrance to the building, plant our surveillance devices, and slip out again and no one would ever know we’d even been there.”
“Right,” Llewellyn said. “But with that many people on the property, it’s more likely that you’ll be spotted.”
“Exactly. If we pretend to be burglars, though, they might not think to look for bugs afterward. At least, not the kind of bugs we’ll be leaving.”
“And if you’re burglars,” Llewellyn added, “the safe, obviously, becomes your target.”
Lia watched realization unfold behind Akulinin’s eyes. “Ah. Got it,” he said. “If Kotenko has the satcom unit, there’s a good chance that he’ll have it in that safe. We might be able to get it back after all.” Akulinin pumped his arm happily. “Yeah! The new kid gets a chance to redeem himself! I can live with that.”
“I’d still rather go in without a crowd on the premises,” Lia told Llewellyn. “Any chance we could just kick back and wait for a few days, maybe hope Kotenko goes back to St. Petersburg?”
“No, Lia,” Llewellyn said. “Mr. Rubens was most insistent. Something big is happening either in Siberia or up in the Arctic. He wants to be able to read Kotenko’s mail as quickly as possible.”
“We should have done this as soon as we heard Kotenko was behind the beryllium shipment,” she said. She was thinking that she and Akulinin might have had a better command of the situation in St. Petersburg if there’d been some hard intelligence from Kotenko’s dacha before they’d inserted.
“Yes, well, that was on the to-do list, don’t you know. But it wasn’t quite so urgent then.”
“That’s the government for you,” Akulinin pointed out. “Hurry up and wait . . . and then you find they needed it done yesterday.”
“So when do we go in?” Lia asked.
“Some of our local assets are still getting into place,” Llewellyn said, “and we need to coordinate with your Puzzle Palace. Besides, if you’re jet-lagged, a good night’s sleep would be just the thing, eh?”
“Sounds heavenly,” Lia said.
“Tomorrow night then?” Akulinin asked.
“Tomorrow night,” Llewellyn agreed. His fingers clattered over the laptop’s keyboard again, bringing up more photographs and diagrams. “Now, let me show you what we’ve worked out. . . .”
Beaufort Sea
75° 18' N, 129° 21' W
1732 hours, GMT–7
A shadow, whale-lean and 560 feet long, moved through the eternal night of the abyss, six hundred feet beneath a ceiling of solid ice, invisible and silent.
The Ohio had remained submerged as she threaded her way through the Parry Channel south of the barren Queen Elizabeth Islands, emerging at last in the iced-over deeps of the Beaufort Sea. Dean followed the vessel’s progress with interest in the big plot board at the aft end of the control room, where an enlisted watchstander marked th
e Ohio’s position each hour, connecting the most recent navigational waypoint with the last.
They were now some 820 miles from NOAA Arctic Meteorological Station Bravo, about twenty-eight hours at their current speed. Officially, an Ohio missile boat had a maximum speed of twenty knots; in fact, her actual speed was closer to twenty-five, and Dean was pretty sure she could manage even better than that in a hell-bent-for-leather emergency dash.
Dean was in the Ohio’s tiny wardroom, seated at the table with Captain Eric Grenville, Lieutenant Commander Hartwell, and a third man in a black acrylic pullover and no rank insignia. The third man had been introduced simply as Lieutenant Taylor. Mugs of coffee, each adorned with the Ohio’s logo, rested on the table before them.
“We should be able to maintain flank speed for most of the way,” Captain Grenville told Dean, “if we don’t run into major ice problems.”
“What would be a major ice problem, sir?” Dean asked.
“Pressure ridges,” Grenville told him. “Places where ice bangs together and creates a kind of mountain range, but sticking down underwater, instead of up in the air. That doesn’t look very likely at the moment, and now that we’re clear of the continental shelf, we can stay deep enough to avoid anything that’s likely to show up.”
Hartwell took a sip from his mug, then added, “We’ve been coming to dead slow every so often to get a good sonar picture. Sonar’s pretty useless above fifteen knots or so. Too much noise. So we dash along at flank, stop, listen, then dash some more. And we’ll need to slow down for the final approach, of course.”
“So they don’t hear us coming?” Dean suggested.
“Exactly,” Grenville said, nodding. “Intelligence says there may be Russian subs operating up there. We’d rather our appearance be a surprise.”
That was news to Dean, but then, the National Security Agency wasn’t usually concerned with Russian naval movements unless they showed up on SIGINT intercepts. Word on the arrival of Russian submarines had probably reached the Ohio via naval intelligence, the DIA, or, just possibly, the CIA.
Dean sipped his coffee. True to the traditions of the submarine service, the stuff was pretty good. “Will Russian subs pose a problem for your operation, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Taylor gave a thin smile. “I don’t think so.”
“I was wondering if I could come along.”
Taylor exchanged a quick glance with Grenville. “Negative. My people know how to work with one another. As a team.”
“So do the Marines, Lieutenant.”
Taylor’s hard expression barely changed. “You’re a Marine?”
“I was. In my misspent youth.”
“Still not a good idea, sir.”
From the hard edge to Taylor’s voice, Dean knew that this was one argument he would not win.
Although no one had told him specifically, he was reasonably certain that Taylor commanded a platoon of Navy SEALs. The Ohio SSGN conversion had specifically allowed the upgraded boats to carry up to sixty SEALs or other special ops forces, but on this mission SEALs were by far the most likely passengers. SEALs—the acronym stood for the three realms in which they operated, SEa, Air, and Land—were the Navy’s premier commando force. Their training was unbelievably rugged, and according to some, they were the toughest warriors on the planet.
Dean held a deep respect for the SEALs but couldn’t resist a good-natured jibe. “When I come ashore at that base,” he told Taylor, “I do not want to see one of your damned signs waiting for me.”
The SEAL Teams had evolved out of the old Navy UDTs, the Underwater Demolition Teams, which had been born in the Pacific in World War II. The Marines had prided themselves at always being the first ashore, but on island after island they would hit the beach only to find hand-lettered signs upright in the sand identifying a UDT recon element that had slipped ashore the night before. It was a tradition that had continued all the way through to Vietnam.
Taylor actually smiled. Dean hadn’t been sure that the hard-faced man could smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t have told us you were a jarhead,” he said. “When you were just another spook, we didn’t know what to make of you.”
The Teams, Dean remembered, had long maintained a tradition of close work with the CIA, but also preferred to develop their own local intelligence networks where possible. The Teams were close-knit and band-of-brothers tight and tended not to play well with others.
“His ID says he’s CIA,” Grenville said. “Maybe we should just leave it at that.”
Dean said nothing. NSA operatives rarely admitted that they were from the No-Such-Agency when they were in the field, even to friends and allies.
“What exactly is your mission here, Mr. Dean?” Hartwell wanted to know.
Dean reached into the pocket of the dungaree shirt he’d been given to wear when he’d come aboard, and extracted a photograph laminated in clear plastic. He handed it to Grenville.
“Nasty scar,” Grenville said as he looked at the man in the photo. He passed it to Taylor.
“Sergei Braslov,” Dean told them. “Also goes by the name ‘Johann Ernst.’ Used to be GRU. Now he may be working with Russian State Security, but he’s also working for the Russian mob. He may be at the Russian base up here, and he may be involved in whatever happened to our people at the NOAA ice station. What we do know, beyond a doubt, is that he was behind the murder of another government operative, someone who was also a friend of mine.”
Taylor nodded, and his eye met Dean’s for just a moment. He knows, Dean thought. Comrades-at-arms, and all of that. Or maybe he just knows what it’s like to lose a buddy.
“If you find Braslov,” Dean continued, addressing Taylor, “we want him alive for interrogation. The Russian mafia is putting together something pretty big. We think they’re trying to corner the whole Russian oil production network. Braslov may be able to give us some insight on that.”
“Okay. So the mafia takes over Russian oil production,” Hartwell said. “So what? No skin off our noses, right? What’s the big deal?”
“It is a big deal,” Dean told him. “Remember how gas prices soared in ’08? They will again, especially if the Russians start playing games with the market. Gas prices at five dollars a gallon. Higher in Europe. High oil prices mean the cost of everything goes up. High prices mean more unrest, turnovers in governments, even revolutions.
“The Russian mob has been running their economy into the ground for twenty years. If they do the same thing to the Russian oil industry, it will have global repercussions. Bad ones. Half of Europe depends on Moscow for oil and natural gas. If Russian production goes under, it will be devastating.
“And Washington is afraid they’re going to try to grab half of the Arctic Ocean, probably so that they can begin high-volume oil and gas exploitation up here. We know Canada and Denmark will fight their Lomonsov Ridge claim. A war over oil rights is going to shake the world market, too, maybe bring on a general economic collapse.”
Taylor slid the photograph back across the table to Dean. “And finding this one guy is going to stop all of that?”
“Maybe not. But he just might have the key to figuring out what the Russians are really up to.”
Grenville looked thoughtful, then stood and walked around behind the table to a wall safe. He punched several numbers in on the digital keypad, pulled open the door, and extracted a thick manila folder marked “Secret.”
“Your home office transmitted your clearance to see this stuff,” he told Dean, selecting several laser-printer color copies and pulling them out of the folder. He grinned. “Turns out your security clearance is better than mine. Have you seen these yet? Courtesy of the NRO.”
The first print showed three large ships in the ice, a shot obviously taken from an oblique angle from high overhead. Black water was clearly visible around each vessel, and Dean could see disturbances in the water caused by station-keeping thrusters.
The next two zeroed in on one of the ships, massive and
red-hulled. One showed the entire length of the ship from her starboard side, from far enough back that the entire vessel was visible, sitting in a large hole of black water surrounded by ice. She had a massive, blocklike forward superstructure and a large, open deck aft. Her name, in Cyrillic letters, was easily legible on her raised prow—Akademik Petr Lebedev.
“A civilian scientific research ship, sixty-six hundred tons,” Grenville said. “Launched in 1989, the second in her class. Designed for physical oceanography and ocean floor sampling. See that mast just forward of the stack, like an oil derrick? Used for drilling core samples.”
The next photo was a close-up, focusing on the Lebedev’s afterdeck. Individual crewmen could be seen, bundled up against the cold as they worked around a stack of long, slender tubes, each around thirty feet long, Dean guessed. One of the tubes hung off an A-frame over the stern, apparently caught as it was being lowered into the ice-free water next to the ship. A second tube was being lifted clear of the deck by one of five starboard-side cranes. Dean could even make out the face of one man who appeared to be in charge; he had his arms up, his gloved hands twisted in an obvious “come on, keep coming” gesture as he directed the operation.
More photos showed other details of a large-scale Arctic expedition—close-ups of the other two ships, an ice breaker and a cargo vessel—as well as a helicopter, small prefab structures on the ice, and piles of supplies and heavy equipment. Time and date stamps on each of the printouts indicated they’d been taken three days before in two passes about ninety minutes apart.
The NRO, or National Reconnaissance Office, was one of America’s sixteen separate intelligence agencies and was responsible for IMINT, or imagery intelligence—photographs shot by spy satellites, in other words. Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, it was officially part of the Defense Department, but was staffed by employees from both the NSA and the CIA, as well as by military personnel and civilian contractors.
“No,” Dean said. “I hadn’t seen these.” That much was true, though Rubens had told him about the Russian base on the ice during his long-distance briefing at Menwith Hill.
Stephen Coonts' Deep Black: Arctic Gold Page 23