Nearby, the four SEALs of fire team three moved closed on the large watertight door at the aft end of the Lebedev’s superstructure from either side.
20
Aft Stores Locker
CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1030 hours, GMT–12
FEODOR GOLYTSIN REACHED the long passageway on the main deck outside the machine shops and stores lockers. This was the aft end of the Lebedev’s above-hull superstructure, a long block of large compartments used to support the mechanical aspects of at-sea drilling and bottom sampling.
The aft stores locker had been filled with crates of food at the beginning of the expedition but was nearly empty now. Days before, Golytsin had given orders that the compartment be carefully searched for anything that might become an improvised weapon. Then mattresses had been moved into the compartment, which had sinks and a toilet. The American “guests” could be housed temporarily there, at least until arrangements could be made to put them on board a helicopter, and they could be flown back to Mys Shmidta. A naval infantry guard stood outside the door, gripping his AKM tightly and looking nervous at the growing sounds of battle outside.
“Stand aside,” Golytsin ordered. “Open it.”
The guard undogged the hatch and stepped back. Golytsin stepped inside, exercising caution in case the prisoners had prepared an ambush inside. The prisoners, however, were gathered along the far bulkhead, slumped on mattresses or the bare deck.
“What the hell is going on?” one of the men demanded.
“Some of your countrymen have decided to launch a hostage rescue, Lieutenant Segal,” he said. During the past days, he’d closely questioned all thirteen of the prisoners, and now he knew them all by name. He raised his PM and pointed it at one of the women. “Miss McMillan, you will come with me.”
“Now wait just a damned minute!” Tom McCauley yelled, coming to his feet, fists clenched. Fred Masters got up as well . . . and then all of the prisoners were on their feet.
“Stay put, Kathy!” Randy Haines ordered.
“What the hell are you trying to pull?” Steven Moore demanded. “She stays with us, you Russian bastard!”
Golytsin smiled. Moore was one of the Greenpeace moviemakers. It was interesting to see how the two groups had forgotten differences and come together since coming on board the Lebedev.
Golytsin brandished the pistol. “I promise nothing will happen to her,” he said. “But if the rest of you don’t sit down and do exactly as you’re told, several of you will be dead!”
“It’s okay, boys,” the woman said. She crossed the deck to stand in front of Golytsin. She still wore the T-shirt she’d had on when she came on board; someone had found her a pair of BDU trousers, however, which were baggy on her. “So what am I, Feodor, your personal bargaining chip?”
“Something like that.” He grabbed her upper arm and steered her toward the door. “I suggest the rest of you lie down, cover your heads under those mattresses, and don’t move around. Hostage rescues can be . . . very hazardous for the hostages.”
He led the woman out into the passageway.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“Somewhere safer than this ship,” he told her. He pointed with the PM. “That way.”
During the past week, he’d been quite impressed with Kathy McMillan. Threats of torture, of gang rape, of being abandoned on the ice or dropped into freezing water, none of those had shaken her resolve to tell Golytsin absolutely nothing.
Golytsin considered himself to be an ethical and moral man. He disliked violence, disliked bully tactics, and had never intended to actually carry out any of those threats on the woman. But she didn’t know that, and he’d been impressed by her stolid, almost Russian willingness to confront and endure whatever the future might hold for her.
Still, her silence, and that of one of her companions, Randy Haines, had confirmed for Golytsin that both of them were American intelligence agents, probably CIA. The third man the Dekabrist had plucked off the ice, Dennis Yeats, Golytsin was pretty sure was just another NOAA scientist. Haines was almost certainly CIA, but he was also a big man, with powerful arms, and Golytsin didn’t trust his own ability to keep control of someone that physically strong.
Those commandos outside could have the rest of the prisoners. McMillan, Golytsn had decided, was more valuable than the lot of them combined.
“Faster!” he urged as they hurried down the passageway.
Fantail
CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1031 hours, GMT–12
The SEALs reached the watertight door leading into the Lebedev’s superstructure and tried pulling the grab handle. “It’s locked!” one yelled.
“Blow it open!” Taylor called back.
One of the SEALs reached into a waterproof pouch, producing a strip of cutting charge. But it would take precious seconds to affix the charge and blow the door off of its dogs and hinges.
“Have your men step clear,” Dean said. He put the Sky-HUNTIR on an automatic search orbit above the ship and set the controller on the deck, retrieving the MGL-140. “And I mean way clear. We can kick the door in with this baby.”
Taylor nodded, clapping Dean’s shoulder with a gloved hand. “Do it.”
At Taylor’s direction, the SEALs stepped well back from the door, taking cover around the corners of the superstructure. Dean brought the MGL-140 to his shoulder and sighted on the center of the door.
The MGL-140 had been developed to meet a number of design challenges posed by earlier grenade launchers, like the well-known M-203. Besides being able to launch a tactical battlefield camera, the MGL-140 could also utilize a variety of new munition types, in addition to the large and varied family of 40mm grenades already in the military arsenal.
Among these was the MEI Hellhound round, an impact-detonation grenade with twice the lethal radius of the conventional M433 high-explosive grenade and far more hitting power. The joke was that the “hound” in the round’s name stood for “High-Order Unbelievably Nasty Destruction,” a rather too-cute acronym, which Dean was inclined to doubt came from real life, but which certainly told the story. Officially, the round was called “hyper-lethal/enhanced blast.” The round was the reason the MGL-140’s unofficial nickname was Master Blaster.
“Knock-knock,” Dean said, and he squeezed the trigger.
The grenade streaked across the open fantail deck and slammed into the steel door dead-center. The explosion engulfed the door; the concussion rang shrill in Dean’s ears and slapped against his face and combat vest with a palpable, startling blow. Pieces of the door frame clinked and rattled across the deck as smoke billowed across the fantail. As the smoke cleared, Dean could see that the watertight door had been punched off its dogs and slammed back into the passageway beyond.
“Go!” Taylor yelled. “Go! Go! Go!”
The SEALs dashed up to either side of the opening. One tossed a canister through into the swirling smoke, and a few seconds later a string of thunderous explosions and bright, strobing flashes erupted from inside. The flash-bang was designed to incapacitate anyone waiting on the other side, blinding, deafening, and stunning them with a series of sharp detonations. Dean suspected that if any bad guys had been on the other side of that door, they weren’t going to be affected much by a flash-bang grenade now, not after the Hellhound had come knocking.
The four SEALs of fire team three clambered over the smashed-in door, following close on the heels of the last of the flash-bang detonations.
“Good shot,” Taylor told him. He sounded relaxed, almost chatty. “You know, I trained with the 140 at China Lake for a while. Damned impressive weapon.”
Dean placed the launcher on the deck and retrieved the UAV controller. “It’s all about force multipliers, sir,” he said. Reasserting control over the UAV still circling high above the
ship, Dean put the device into a shallow dive, bringing it down closer to the ice-girded Lebedev. As he turned the UAV to fly parallel to the ship, from stern to bow, he saw something on the screen, something worrisome.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “We’ve got trouble.”
“What?”
Dean enlarged the window on his monitor and zoomed in close. From either side of the bridge at the forward end of the Lebedev’s superstructure, open wings extended out over the port and starboard companionways. On the screen, two men in uniform could be seen wrestling something long and heavy out onto the starboard wing.
“What the hell?” Taylor said.
“PK,” Dean told him. “Russian machine gun. If they get that thing set up there, they’ll be able to sweep the entire starboard companionway.”
“Fire team two!” Taylor called over the radio. “Be advised there’s a Russian MG being set up on the starboard bridge wing. Watch yourselves!” Team two had been working its way up the starboard companionway toward the bow.
“Copy,” a voice came back. “We’ve got . . . shit! Shit!”
The sharp rattle of automatic fire sounded from somewhere forward. On the screen, Dean could see the two Russians on the bridge wing standing behind the PK, which had been dropped into a vehicle mount on the aft wing railing. They were firing sharp, short, controlled bursts down onto the companionway.
Tilting the UAV around, Dean was able to spot two SEALs, crouched on the companionway deck behind an open watertight door. They were using the door as cover, but if they moved, either to fall back or to go around the door to enter the superstructure, the machine gunners above would have them in a clear and deadly line of fire.
“One-one, this is Two-one,” a voice called. “Andrews is hit. It’s not bad, but we’re pinned down, can’t move!”
That PK machine gun had just sucked the vital initiative from the SEAL assault.
Dean put the UAV back onto automatic. “I can get that machine gun,” he said, picking up the MGL-140 again.
“Do it,” Taylor said.
Dean stood up and started forward.
“Where are you going?” Taylor asked.
Dan pointed. “Up there. I need a clear shot.”
A ladder led up the aft end of the superstructure to an upper deck, where the Lebedev’s single smokestack rose clear of the structure. Forward of that was a drill rig, with another ladder leading up.
“Don’t get yourself lost, Marine,” Taylor warned him. “When we sound recall, we’re gonna have to get the hell out of Dodge fast.”
“I’ll be there,” Dean said. And he started up the first ladder.
Main Starboard Passageway, Main Deck
CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1032 hours, GMT–12
Golytsin urged the American woman ahead of him at a ragged jog. He’d ordered her to turn right when the passageway came to a T intersection, leading her around and past the internal housing for the ship’s smokestack, then forward up the starboard side of the ship. Seconds after they made that turn, an ear-wracking boom had echoed down the passageway, followed moments later by something that sounded like Chinese fireworks, only much louder.
The enemy commandos were storming the Lebedev’s interior.
No matter. His destination was not much farther ahead.
“Look, Feodor,” the woman said. She sounded exasperated . . . and tired. “Give it up! Let me and the rest go and no one needs to get killed.”
“People have already been killed, Miss McMillan,” he replied, his voice cold. “But it’s in a good cause.”
“What good cause? Oil?”
“Money,” Golytsin told her. “Money, and something much more precious.”
“What’s that?”
“Survival.”
“I’d think you would want to survive the next ten minutes.”
“Miss McMillan, you really have no idea what the people I work for are like.”
“And who would that be?” she snapped. “The Organizatsiya?”
That observation alone confirmed for Golytsin that the woman was with American intelligence.
“Something like that. They are not nice people.”
“Then why work for them?”
He snorted. “As I say, you don’t know them. With Tambov, once you’re in, you can never leave.”
From outside, he heard the urgent, pounding yammer of a machine gun, and he knew the captain had gotten one of the PKs set up to sweep the outside companionway. It wouldn’t stop the enemy commandos for long, but it would slow them up long enough for him to get his prisoner to their destination.
And then the Americans could have the damned ship, for all the good it would do them.
Drilling Tower
CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev
Arctic Ice Cap
82° 34' N, 177° 26' E
1034 hours, GMT–12
Forward of the Lebedev’s smokestack, a miniature oil derrick rose forty feet above the aft superstructure. The Lebedev’s mission included taking core samples of the bottom, and the derrick, presumably, was used for drilling into the sea floor to get them. A ladder, steel rungs welded up one corner of the tower, gave access to the top of the structure. Slinging his Master Blaster, Dean grabbed the nearest rung and started up.
He needed to climb about twelve to fifteen feet to get a clear shot. While the ship’s aft superstructure was one level high, not counting the smokestack and several small buildings off to one side, the forward half was a solid block rising three stories above the main deck, with the much smaller bridge house on top of that. The bridge wings extended to either side of the bridge, and he needed to get high enough that the forward structure didn’t block his line of sight.
He could hear the hammering of the PK, though, and the shouts of Russian troops rallying somewhere forward. The two SEALs were still pinned down, unable to move back or forward, and there was no other way to get at the machine gun that was causing the trouble.
There they were, two men crouched over the machine gun as they trained it on the deck four stories below. As Dean climbed higher, though, one of the Russians noticed him, pounded his partner’s shoulder, and pointed.
Looping one arm through a support beam on the derrick, Dean unslung the MGL-140, checked that the next round up was a Hellhound, and brought the weapon to his shoulder.
Through the sights, he saw the magnified image of the two Russians as they swung the PK machine gun around to bear on him. If they fired first, the sheer volume of fire would sweep him from his perch like a fire hose. He squeezed the trigger.
An important innovation on the MGL-140 was the two-stage trigger. You needed to squeeze hard to get to the first detent—an important safety consideration when you were humping a weapon loaded with this much high explosives. After that first tug, though, a relatively light squeeze was all that was necessary to actually fire the round.
What that meant for Dean was that he could actually use the thing, unlike any other grenade launcher, as a sniper’s rifle . . . a sniper’s rifle with one hell of a kick when the round detonated.
In his sight, the PK’s muzzle flashed. Rounds struck the tower just above his head, whining into space and sending a shard of hot metal sizzling past his head and tugging at his ear. At the same moment, Dean fired the MGL, sending the hyper-lethal round hissing downrange.
The grenade struck the bridge wing railing or the PK—he couldn’t tell which—and detonated with a savage flash. One of the Russians was torn apart by a round identical to one that had just torn out a thick steel door, while the other was lifted and tossed over the disintegrating railing in a flailing of bloody arms and legs.
When the smoke cleared, the starboard-side bridge wing was completely gone, reduced to tangled fragments of metal on the deck below or tossed into the water alongside. Smoke continued to emerge from the open doorway leading onto the bridge as well, suggesting that the blas
t had caused damage there as well.
Climbing higher, Dean could see past the bridge and down to the forward deck, where several Russian troops were gathered. Taking aim, he placed a second grenade on the deck just behind them. The explosion thundered across the vessel and sent a column of smoke boiling into the pristine sky.
“Two-one and Two-two are clear,” Taylor said over Dean’s radio headset. “And team three is bringing out the hostages. Come on back to the fantail, Dean. We’re gonna hotfoot it out of here!”
But Dean had just seen something else. Through the MGL-140’s sight, he could see a man in a heavy military-style parka emerging from a doorway onto the main deck forward, just beyond the point where the bridge wing had collapsed. He was leading a woman in baggy pants and a T-shirt at gunpoint.
“You didn’t get all the hostages,” Dean said over the radio link, slinging his weapon. “I’m going after one.”
“Dean, get the hell back here! No heroics!”
He didn’t reply. Sometimes it was necessary to pretend radio failure.
Using his gloves and his insteps to brake his descent, he slid down the drill rig ladder, hitting the deck hard before breaking into a sprint. He was angry. If he’d had the sense to bring along an M40A1, or one of the other sniping rifles available, he could have taken out the Russian with a single shot from the tower, no sweat, and he or one of the SEALs could have gone forward to recover the hostage. Using a grenade launcher as a sniper’s weapon was all well and good, but it didn’t count for a damned thing when you needed to be selective with your kill. He could have easily taken out the running man . . . but the blast would have killed the woman in front of him as well.
Across the aft superstructure, then, to the corner of the forward structure, rising like an apartment building in front of him. Another ladder led down the starboard side to the companionway. He swung out onto a rung and slid down, his MGL-140 bumping against his shoulder as he dropped.
He hit the deck and started running again, unslinging the grenade launcher as he moved. He might not be able to use the thing against someone using an American prisoner as a human shield, but the sight of the monster weapon might frighten the guy into compliance.
Stephen Coonts' Deep Black: Arctic Gold Page 31