by Marc Cameron
Sikuliaq used her twin Wartsila ICEPOD azimuth thrusters, each capable of rotating 360 degrees, to stay in place relative to the seafloor. The big ice—the dangerous stuff that could gut even a tough polar ship like Sikuliaq—was still a half-mile away, glinting like silver on the northeast horizon.
Moon turned down the speaker and adjusted the headset over her ears, studying sound graphs on the screen of a second laptop, which was also attached to her hydrophone. Her primary laptop received readings from the expendable research buoy that Snopes Thorson had lowered into the water minutes before. The three-foot can was designed to remain under the ice all winter, far below the massive, fast-moving keels that raked the frigid water as deep as thirty meters. Surface buoys were a no-go in such harshly kinetic environments. They would simply be ground to bits. UAVs—underwater autonomous vehicles—drones—were useful. But they were also expensive. Frigid water sapped battery life and made them prone to loss. The Arctic, and the mysteries that lay beneath her surface, still baffled—and ate—technology.
That’s where the under-ice buoys came in. Three feet tall and eight inches in diameter, the metal cans were relatively cheap, though expendable seemed not quite the right word for something with a three-thousand-dollar price tag. Attached to a fourteen-hundred-pound anchor, the device would remain on the ocean floor for most of the year, recording measurements on currents, temperature, and salinity at depth. At a predetermined time, shortly before the surface ice was expected to melt, a mechanism would release the buoy from its anchoring tether, allowing it to float to the surface, collecting more data about flow and thickness and melt rates. When the ice melted and the buoy peeked above the surface, it would send a message to its handlers via short-burst data transmission over the Iridium satellite system.
Ice data was all well and good, Dr. Moon thought. It was, after all, what paid the bills for now, but her real interest was in underwater sounds. To that end, she had begged permission to attach the hydrophone to the deploying cable as the buoy went down. She kicked herself for not rigging a camera at the same time. Even a GoPro might have given her video of whatever had made the sound.
She checked both computer screens, and then looked at Thorson. He surely thought the thick collar of his wool turtleneck made him look like a Nordic fisherman. Patti thought he looked like a little boy wearing his daddy’s sweater.
“My money is on bubbles,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. He nodded toward his computer. “It’s not on the charts, but the sonar’s showing a tall ridge jutting up from the seafloor about fifty meters northwest of our position. It’s likely you’re hearing current burbling around the rocks.”
It was Moon’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t think it’s burbling bubbles . . .” She fiddled with the touchpad on her computer. “What depth are you showing now?”
He checked his computer, then leaned sideways, squinting at her screen.
“Same as you. Three-six-five feet.”
She gave Thorson her best imploring look, going so far as to bat her eyes a little. “Think we could bring it up a hundred feet, see if I could get that sound again?”
The numbers on her screen kept climbing as the buoy went deeper.
“Sorry, kiddo,” Thorson grunted. “Entanglement danger if we reverse the winch right now.”
Damn him, but he was right.
Moon thought of begging him more, but Sikuliaq’s first officer, a thirtysomething woman named Symonds, trotted down the steps from the wheelhouse and strode over to them, her head bowed against the wind. She also wore a wool turtleneck under waterproof orange Grundens bibs, but she wore hers better than Thorson, like she’d been born in them. A shock of curly blond hair jutted from beneath a black wool watch cap. One of the handful of people on the boat who didn’t hold a graduate degree in science or engineering, Kelli Symonds possessed more common sense than most of them put together.
“Low pressure toward Wrangel Island is sucking a knife ridge of heavy pack ice south and west, right on top of us,” she said. “The first course looks to be about the size of a cruise ship, and there’s city blocks of the stuff after that. The skipper wants us up and outta here in five minutes.”
Faces glued to their screens, both scientists gave Symonds a thumbs-up.
Sikuliaq was a Polar Class 5 vessel, fully capable of operating year-round in two and a half feet of new ice, with a few chunks of the previous year’s stuff mixed in. Even now, a slushy soup of seawater and baby ice rattled and thunked against the powder-blue hull.
“. . . and . . . we have touchdown,” Thorson said. “Can is stable. Detaching now. Cable’s coming up.”
Patti Moon hunched over her computer again, ready this time, focusing intently on her headset as the winch wound in the Kevlar cable, raising the hydrophone faster now that there was only the counterweight and not a half-ton of gear dangling on the end of it.
The azimuth thrusters under Sikuliaq’s hull had already begun pushing her south, away from the jagged teeth of oncoming ice.
And there it was—at least part of it.
The noise started again at two hundred and fifty feet, continuing for almost four seconds before going quiet.
Dr. Moon marked the position in her journal and looked aft, past the red cranes and over the transom at the wake Sikuliaq left in the churning blue-green water. She shivered, and not from the bitter wind. This could not be what she’d initially thought. That was impossible.
Banging metal.
Screams.
Human screams.
2
Today, the lesson was on field-expedient weapons, a subject with which John Clark was intimately familiar. Two-by-fours, pointy mop handles, socks full of sand, a handy magazine rolled into a tight tube if it came down to that—all of them could be useful in a pinch when an operative found him- or herself without a gun or a suitable knife. Campus director of transportation Lisanne Robertson was proving herself to be an able student as they walked through the teeming Ben Thanh Market.
Clark registered the sweating European man with his peripheral vision. Open cotton shirt, juking this way and that as he made his way through the crowd. This guy was up to something, leading Clark to believe that some kind of a weapon might come in handy in the not-too-distant future.
Clark estimated the European to be in his mid-thirties. Lean, fit, with the kind of ropy muscles that were difficult to keep hold of in a fight. A workingman’s muscles, like he’d just come from hanging Sheetrock or swinging a hammer at a construction site. Dark hair hung in sweaty curls over the collar of his shirt. Glancing furtively, obviously searching for someone, the man attempted to move quickly, but was impeded by the mass of shoppers and sightseers who clogged the aisles between what, at first glance, appeared to be an endless line of T-shirt shops.
Clark had spent the morning braving the crowds of Ho Chi Minh City, wading through rivers of scooter traffic and pointing out the various items an operative might find useful if he or she had to suddenly go on the defensive. Lisanne was former law enforcement and no stranger to conflict, making her a quick learner. In point of fact, Clark was more interested in observing the way she handled herself on the street than he was in teaching any of the finer points of tradecraft. Operational teams like The Campus, an off-the-books intelligence agency set up by President Jack Ryan and Senator Gerry Hendley, needed a periodic inoculation of fresh perspective and talent. The backbone of the team had been around since the beginning. They’d lost a couple of dear friends along the way, and, considering the type of work they did, were bound to lose some more if they were not extremely careful . . . or even if they were. Hence, Clark’s desire to see how the young woman comported herself in a foreign land.
The greasy European had popped up on Clark’s radar when he’d stopped to talk to a woman at a stall selling chunks of bloody unidentifiable meat piled up beside baskets of live frogs.
; Clark didn’t mention anything to Lisanne. So far, he had nothing more than a gut feeling, a hunch.
It wasn’t so much how the man moved as the way those around him reacted to his presence. The woman with the basket of frogs recoiled when he approached her stall, as if he smelled bad or was about to draw a knife.
The man didn’t look particularly dangerous, at least not to John Clark. In truth, Clark had no idea of the man’s nationality. But he carried himself like a European, legs together when he stood, furtive, catlike, instead of doggedly like an American—so Clark began to think of him that way as they walked.
Though the rest of The Campus was off doing “real work,” Lisanne Robertson embraced the training week, rattling off possible field-expedient weapons nearly as quickly as Clark while they walked. The nine million inhabitants of Ho Chi Minh City—formerly Saigon—provided all sorts of deadly detritus in the way of rakes, tire irons, and bamboo poles. The wet market, pungent and loud, made up a relatively small area off the diverse indoor Ben Thanh Market. What it lacked in size, it made up for with an original odor. To Clark, it was the smell of Asia, and it brought with it a flood of memories. It was a smorgasbord of meat cleavers and fillet knives, free for the snatching if the need arose.
A smallish man crossed in front of them as they walked. Clark paused a half-step when he caught the man’s eye. The small man bowed slightly and walked on, disappearing into the crowd. Clark pointed down the aisle, motioning for Robertson to take the lead.
“He looked Chinese,” Robertson noted as they walked, calling out her observations like a good student. “Do you know him?”
“Nah,” Clark said. “He just reminded me of someone. A Chinese colonel.”
“From back in the day?”
“Yep,” Clark said.
“Sorry,” Robertson said. “Must be tough.”
Clark stopped. The people behind him parted, passing on either side of him and Lisanne. “The particular guy was a colonel who’d come to Vietnam to teach the Vietcong how to better kill us. Though I have to say they were already doing a pretty damned good job of it. Anyway, I watched that colonel for three days, learning his habits, what kind of beer he liked to drink, his preference in women. Got to know his face very well.”
“You think that guy was him?”
Clark looked at her, shaking his head as if to clear it.
“What?”
“Do you think that guy was the colonel you met years ago?”
“Oh, no,” Clark said, picturing the reticle of his Bushnell scope settling over the colonel’s ear. “I’m not positive about much in this old world, but I can assure you this. That wasn’t him.”
“Ah,” Robertson said. “Gotcha.”
She was a former Marine, and no shrinking violet when it came to human conflict.
They kept walking, Robertson calling out weapons, and Clark kept an eye on the European.
Clark liked his people to be aware of everything around them, keeping their “quivers” full, so they could draw on what they needed when they needed it. Even if an operative had a gun, circumstances could make producing it take too much time.
Ingrained in Clark’s DNA, these were good points for even the most seasoned operative to review.
Vendors barked out to them as they walked, calling Lisanne “Madam,” looking stricken with grief when she didn’t stop and buy a pair of “Adodis” sweatpants or a “Nortfaze” jacket. Their faces magically brightened again as they barked at the next customer once Lisanne passed by.
Clark and his friends had frequented the market during his first trip to Saigon. U.S. Navy HQ had been only a few blocks away and Ben Thanh provided a good place to meet girls, grab a plate of shrimp dumplings, or maybe buy a couple of knockoff T-shirts to send to your kid brothers who were getting all their news about the war from Walter Cronkite or The Huntley–Brinkley Report. Saigon had been loud then, and crowded, too, though nothing like it was now.
Many of the old buildings were gone, gaudy new ones with higher rent having sprung up in their place. It was hard to say which were the flowers and which were the weeds—the old buildings or the new. Maybe it was a bit of both. The people seemed better off than they’d been when he was here before, but Clark supposed that was more a function of pushing the poorer folk to the outskirts of town.
Thousands of scooters, called motos in Vietnam, groaned and buzzed on the teeming street outside the market. Clark and Lisanne Robertson were merely two in tens of thousands of other bees moving en masse inside a hive. Clark was unarmed, and he’d long since moved his wallet into the front pocket of his loose chinos—not because Vietnamese people were inherently more likely to pick his pockets, but because they were people and the odds around so many people were that some of them were going to try and pick his pocket. And of all the species of animals on the planet, Clark mistrusted people the most.
The sizzle and smell of banh xeo, an especially delicious shrimp crepe, twined around Clark’s memory and pulled him sideways toward the stall. The crowd moved on behind him as he stepped out of the flow. Clark spoke quickly to the stooped mama behind a wooden board she’d set over two upturned crates. He paid for two cardboard baskets of yellow tacolike banh xeo, one for him, and another for his trainee, and then waited while the mama dished up his order. Clark couldn’t help but wonder what this woman cooking banh xeo had been up to when he was here the first time. Had she been cooking then, too? Had they passed on the street? In a club? Had she or one of her relatives shot at him, killed his friends? Had he killed any of hers? Whose side had she been on? Likely her own side, Clark thought, trying to stay alive when two unstoppable forces were bent on grinding everything between them into the greasy monsoon mud.
Clark closed his eyes for a quick moment, just long enough to take in the riot of odors and sounds—fish, black vinegar, and scooter exhaust. When the wind shifted just right, he could smell the Saigon River, mere blocks away.
Clark passed one order of crispy shrimp crepes to Lisanne—who’d snagged them a couple of seats at one of the half-dozen low plastic tables beside the food stall. It wobbled badly and looked like something the kids would be relegated to at Thanksgiving. Clark didn’t care. They’d been on their feet all morning and it was good to sit down.
Lisanne tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear, and leaned across the rickety plastic table toward Clark. She wore khaki shorts and, like Clark, a loose microfiber shirt with the long sleeves rolled up above her elbows. The deep olive complexion she’d inherited from her Lebanese mother helped her blend in a little better than Clark. Though, he had to admit, old men were invisible just about anywhere in the world. It was a fact he used to his advantage. Clark was still in better-than-average shape, jogging five miles every other day. He was admittedly not nearly as fast as he used to be. He’d kept up with his lifting, lower weight and higher reps. He could still bench his body weight, an ability he’d used as a sort of litmus test for his personal fitness. These days, he spent a good deal of time recovering between sets, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about his grandson—or whoever he happened to be training at the moment.
“Doesn’t this bug you?” Lisanne asked, her eyes darting from face to face in the crowd of passersby. “I’ve never thought of you as a person who’d like to turn his back on anyone.”
Clark smiled at that, resisting the urge to call his young acolyte Grasshopper.
“We’re predators,” he said, biting into one of the banh xeo. “Our eyes are set in the front of our heads, perfect for being a hunter. When we focus those eyes on someone in particular, we have to turn our back on someone else.”
“Still,” Lisanne said, scanning the crowd. “It creeps me out to have anyone get behind me.”
“I agree,” Clark said. “That’s a good quality for you to have in our line of work.” He nodded to the food. “Go ahead and eat. We won’t sit here long.”
“Glad to hear that,” she said. Supremely feminine, she still knew how to shovel down food.
After the Marines, Lisanne was working as a patrol officer in Virginia when she’d pulled Hendley over on a traffic stop. He’d been extremely impressed with the way she’d handled herself and he’d eventually recruited her to be their director of transportation. She was fluent in Arabic and could get by in Spanish and Mandarin. As DT, she often acted in the same capacity as a one-person Phoenix Raven detail, guarding the Hendley Associates G550 when it was on the ground at various airfields around the world. Clark rolled her into defensive tactics and other scenario-based training exercises with other Campus operatives almost as soon as she’d come aboard. She’d wowed the rest of the team with her fighting skill right from the get-go. More than anything, Clark was impressed with her ability to think under pressure. She was a better-than-average shot on the range, but began to really shine when the Sim rounds came zinging her way. She’d been downrange before and knew all too well what it was like to get shot at.
“Would it make you feel better if you had a gun?” Clark asked.
Lisanne looked up over half a bite of crepe and raised an eyebrow. She was used to him quizzing her all the time. Often calling him Socrates when he only answered her questions with more questions.
“I think it would,” she said. “A little. Though I guess I’d worry about someone bumping into it in a crowd like this and making a scene.”
Clark gave a contemplative nod. He wiped his hands on a handkerchief he took from the hip pocket of his khakis. Few food vendors wanted to cut into their bottom line by providing napkins for free.
“Tell me what you have on you right now,” he said.
“My everyday carry?” Lisanne grinned. “I always enjoy it when Ding has everyone pocket-dump their EDC on the plane.”