Arctic Gold (12 page)

Hold it! Delgado yelled. He had his sidearm out and had pivoted to aim it back in the other direction, behind Karr. Drop it! Drop it!

Karr spun. Several protestors had come all the way around the promenade, circling it clockwise as Spencer and his guards backed around counterclockwise. One of the protestors, oddly on this brilliant late- spring morning, was wearing a heavy overcoat. That was damned strange.

With a sense of dawning horror, Karr saw the man pulling something out from under the coat a weapon an Uzi submachine gun raising it to his shoulder.

Spencer was between Karr and the gunman no, the gunmen.

Another activist nearby had a pistol in his hand, was aiming it at Spencer.

Karr lunged, plowing into Spencer from behind and the side with his shoulder, a football block that sent the American scientist sprawling. Karr hit the deck of the promenade, his Beretta out of its shoulder holster and gripped two- handed as he slid over smooth concrete.

The man with the Uzi was the greater danger in terms of sheer firepower; the man with the pistol was already drawing a bead on Spencer. In an instant instinctive decision, Karr swung his Beretta to aim at the one with the pistol, squeezing the trigger in a fast double tap.

The gunman fired in the same instant. Karr felt the sting of concrete chips slashing his cheek. The activist with the coat and the Uzi opened up on full- auto, sending a stream of slugs slamming into Delgado, then sweeping the chattering weapon around, trying to hit Spencer.

Spent brass cartridges tumbled and flashed in the sunlight. Delgado was falling; Payne was aiming his weapon in a stiff Weaver stance, firing into a third gunman, no, a gun woman.

Karr shifted aim as he got his feet underneath him, throwing himself between Spencer and the attackers, firing into the guy with the submachine gun as he moved. As he came to his feet, however, he felt something like a

hammer slam into his side then again, hard against his chest.

Part of him knew he was hit, though there was no pain not yet. He kept squeezing the trigger as he fell and turned, sending round after round into the gunman, slamming against the railing, dropping to one knee.

Two more hammer blows and a terribly wet crunch against his throat. Karr felt himself falling, the Beretta gone, spinning off into space. Damn it, he couldn’t breathe!

He tasted blood, salty and hot.

Tommy Karr collapsed as the darkness descended, engulfing him.

The Art Room

NSA Headquarters

Fort Meade, Maryland

1035 hours EDT

Jesus!

Rockman stared at the big display screen, which currently was showing a number of TV monitors. On one, the earnest, too- perfect makeup of a BBC anchorwoman stared from the screen as she mouthed unheard words into her microphone. Another screen showed the view of another camera, aimed up at the green banner unfurling ten stories above the Thames. The banner, so huge it could easily be read from the ground, showed the Greenworld logo, together with the words Save Our World!

But Rockman and the other runners in the Art Room were staring at one of the other monitors, this one tapping into a security camera mounted in the ceiling of the overhang above the outside sightseeing promenade around London Living Room. The scene was one of incredible

confusion, of an enormous, surging crowd struggling hand to hand with the police. Gunfire had panicked the mob, sending it scattering across the observation deck.

But in the background

My God! Sarah Cassidy shouted. They shot him! They shot him!

Jeff Rockman couldn’t believe what he thought he’d just seen Tommy Karr catching a full- auto blast from the gunman Uzi, exchanging fire, then falling backward against the guardrail before crumpling to the concrete deck.

Spencer was on his hands and knees, looking dazed but apparently unhurt. Karr had thrown himself between the gunmen and the scientist, had probably saved Spencer life. One of the FBI men was down; another was on one knee, his pistol locked in a two- handed grip and swinging wildly back and forth as he looked for another target, another threat. He was screaming into the needle mike at his mouth, calling for backup.

The third FBI agent entered the picture from behind the foreground a moment later, weapon drawn. And Evans, the GCHQ agent, was there as well, also armed.

But too little, too late. All three tangosin his mind, Rockman had immediately reverted to the code term meaning terroristsall three, two men and a woman, were down. The woman appeared to be wounded, was trying to get up. Evans pushed her down again as Rogers kicked her handgun away. More backup arrived, London bobbies and several in plainclothes MI5.

Payne was checking the motionless form of Delgado.

Call Rubens, Rockman said.

He he in a briefing, Ron Jordan said, his voice shaking. He can’t be

Call Rubens!

Desk Three had lost agents before. The NSA had lost

agents and operators many times since its creation in the late 1940s. But the loss of another agent was never easy.

The loss of a friend

was much worse.

More London Center

Near the GLA Building

1435 hours GMT

Directly adjacent to the black, leaning egg shape of the GLA, some fifty meters to the southwest across the tree- lined pavement of a park known locally as Potter Field, loomed a brand- new office building, the More London Center, housing a bank, an insurance firm, and a number of government offices that had not fitted in with London City Hall or the Greater London Authority. Hours ago, Sergei Braslov had used a back stairwell and a stolen passkey to gain entrance to a maintenance door leading out onto the roof. Twelve stories up, the roof let him look down onto the outside promenade at the tenth floor of the GLA building. By climbing a ladder up onto the top of the small rooftop structure housing the building air- conditioning system, he gained a bit more elevation and a perfect shot.

Braslov carried with him a black, leather camera bag, as well as various ID proving him to be a cameraman with the BBC. If anyone happened to be on the More London Center roof, Braslov could flash the ID and claim he was looking for a good vantage point overlooking the fast- developing riot below. Inside the bag, however, was not a minicam, but a high- powered rifle broken down into four pieces, a weapon originally designed for use by the Soviet Spetsnaz, the Russian equivalent of the American Special Forces. It was a matter of two minutes’ work to snap or screw the pieces together, chamber a round, and peer through the telescopic sight into the crowd on the GLA building promenade deck.

At a range of just under fifty meters, he could hardly miss.

He’d not fired the weapon, however and didn’t plan to do so if he could possibly help it. Mallet, Berger, and Fischer, simpleton dupes, the lot of them, had done exactly as he’d coached them over long, patient hours during the past week, finding Spencer, rushing in as close as possible, and only then pulling out their weapons and opening fire. Braslov was ready with the sniper rifle if necessary, if none of the three succeeded in hitting anything, but at point- blank range, they were almost certain to hit someone.

That they appeared to have missed Spencer mattered not at all. They’d killed one, perhaps two of Spencer bodyguards.

It would be enough.

There was one final task Braslov had set for himself, however. None of the three, after his coaching, had expected the bodyguards to be armed, and, as a result, all three of the Greenworld attackers were now down. Two were almost certainly dead, but the third, the woman, was still moving, a puddle of blood spreading on the concrete beneath her and soaking through her T- shirt. He shifted his aim until the crosshair reticules in his scope centered on her head. A squeeze of the trigger and the only person on the GLA observation deck who knew exactly what had happened would be dead.

It was a difficult shot, however. The surviving bodyguards and several GLA security personnel were clustered around her, and she was partially blocked from his view by the back- slanting safety railing at the edge of the deck.

No, he decided. Too risky.

Shooting the woman would alert the security forces that a fourth shooter was in the game. They might even spot him and call in support before he could get clear of the building.

Fischer was done for, shot in the stomach and chest several times. Even if she survived, she didn’t know enough to be a threat to Braslov, or to the Organizatsiya.

Moments later, paramedics arrived, and they began strapping Fischer onto a gurney. The window of opportunity was past.

Thoughtful, Braslov disassembled the rifle and stowed the pieces back in the camera bag. Only then did he pull out a satellite phone and punch in a number, opening an encrypted line.

Rodina, he said. Motherland. Mother Russia.

We’re watching BBC Two. Excellent work.

One of our agents still lives. I cannot get a clear shot, however.

She knows nothing. We don’t want to reveal your presence. That might tell the opposition too much.

That was my thought. He hesitated. Perhaps it is time to activate Cold War. The two incidents should take place close together, for maximum effect.

We agree. A ticket and new identity papers are waiting for you at the embassy. You fly out tonight.

Good. Until tonight, then.

Utter pandemonium reigned throughout the GLA building and in the surrounding parks and waterfront. It was simplicity itself to walk down the stairwell and let himself out onto Potter Field. Terror- stricken people continued to flee the area, spilling out of the GLA building and into the surrounding park. Police were arriving now, many in heavy combat gear, but no one took notice of the lone cameraman with a BBC ID badge clipped to his shirt.

He looked up at the enormous green banner for a moment, hanging ten stories above his head, smiled, then mingled with the fast- thinning crowd and disappeared.

Deep Black 7 - Arctic Gold

8

Met Remote One

Arctic Ice Cap

82a! 30’ N, 177a! 53’ E

1910 hours, GMT12

KATHY MCMILLAN PULLED the edges of her hood closer to her face. The temperature was only just below freezing, but the wind was shrill and biting. The windchill, she thought, must be down around zero, Fahrenheit.

Forty years ago, an American astronaut had described the surface of the moon as a magnificent desolation. This, she thought, must have been what he’d felt. The landscape in every direction was utterly flat and almost featureless, save for occasional small upthrusts and pressure ridges, none more than a few feet high, and randomly scattered patches of ice melt. The sky was a searing, featureless blue, the sun a heatless white disk suspended above the southern horizon. In every direction there stretched a barren white icescape, pocked with shallow craters filled with icy water, broken here and there by darker leads.

Scarcely five hundred miles away, in that

direction, lay the North Pole itself.

Met Remote One was an unmanned meteorological drift station established on the Arctic ice cap three weeks

before. There wasn’t a lot therea slender tower with an anemometer, a surface instrument package for measuring temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, ice thickness, and other data, and a GPS and a dish antenna for measuring ice drift and transmitting the information to Ice Station Bravo, some eighty miles away. The whole setup required minimal maintenance; the three American scientists were essentially employing the met station presence as a useful excuse an alibi.

Somewhere off toward the north, about seven miles away and just barely over the horizon, was Objective Toy Shop, an amusing reference to their proximity to the North Pole and Santa Claus. While the NOAA expedition at Ice Station Bravo was out here on the ice to monitor changes in climate and ice thickness, Yeats and McMillan were here specificallyand secretlyto have an up- close look at the Toy Shop.

Hey, Mac! Quit playing tourist and give me a hand, here, Dennis Yeats said. He and Randy Haines were beside one of the sleds, wrestling with the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle.

Sorry. She tore her attention away from the barren panorama and crunched through soft ice to join the others. She carried an M-16 slung over her shoulder. All three of them were armeda necessary precaution against the possibility of polar bears. Unslinging the weapon, she stowed it on the supply sled behind Haines’ snowmobile, then joined the others.

Did you get through to Bear One? she asked.

Yeah, Haines told her. And

to Asheville. A freakin’ miracle.

Communications had been frustratingly intermittent lately. Maybe things were finally starting to break their way.

The three of them had driven out across the ice in three

snowmobiles, each towing a sled with supplies and the special equipment. Yeats’ sled carried the Orca, eight feet long and weighing over a quarter of a ton, while hers carried the cable reel and support gear. The two men had just finished stripping the protective plastic sheet off the cradled Orca and were readying the sleek black and red device for launch.

McMillan was the Orca technician. Approaching her sled, she first double- checked to see that the ice brakes were solidly set. Then she took several minutes to hook up the guidance wire, stringing the thin length of fiber- optic cable from its spool on her sled across to the receiver on the Orca dorsal surface and attaching the other end to a small handheld control unit. The connections made, she switched on the power for a final pre- launch check.

The readouts on her control panel all showed green and ready.

We’re set to go, she told them. I’ve got feedback and control. Ready to cut the hole?

We’re on it, Haines told her.

One hundred yards from the met station, they’d found a patch of ice melt, a circular depression in the surface filled with milky green water, where the ice was thin enough to have nearly broken through to the ocean beneath. The ice here was about three meters thick; at the center of that depression, it might be as thin as a few centimeters.

Yeats now trudged toward the edge of the depression, carrying a small, tightly wrapped satchel. Reaching back, he flung the device far out over the water. It hit with a splash, sinking gently about three- quarters of the way toward the depression center.

Okay! Yeats called, hurrying back from the depression edge. Let blow it!

And three, Haines said, holding a small transmitter in his gloved hands, and two and one and fire

!

A column of water and chunks of ice geysered into the cold air with a solid thud

that they felt through the soles of their heavily insulated boots. The water and spray subsided, leaving a large dark spot at the bottom of the depression.

Breakthrough! Haines called.

Right, Yeats said. Launch the baby.

Watch your feet! she called. Don’t get caught in the cable! McMillan touched a control on her board, and the cradle supporting the Orca at the depression edge began rising on powerful hydraulics, tipping the UUV tail high, the nose down. In seconds, gravity took over and the Orca eased forward on its rails, slammed hard onto the ice belly down like a huge and ungainly penguin, and swiftly slid into the water. It reached the dark patch, nosed over, and vanished, trailing the slender wire behind it.

The large spool of fiber- optic cable mounted on McMillan sled played out rapidly with a faint hissing sound. An age ago, in what seemed now like another life, Kathy McMillan had worked for Raytheon on the ADCAP torpedo for the U.S. Navy. Five years ago, she’d come to work for the National Security Agency, bringing her experienceand her security classificationwith her. For the past year, though, she’d been seconded from the NSA to the CIA and had been working with the Company Directorate of Science and Technology to fine- tune the Orca for CIA operations worldwide.

The Orca was actually quite similar to the wire- guided torpedoes used on board U.S. submarinesconsiderably smaller, lighter, and slower, of course, and lacking a high explosive warhead, but powered by batteries, driven by pumpjet propulsors, and remotely piloted over its two- way data feed. McMillan had about ten miles’ worth of

cable on her spool, though it didn’t look bulky enough for that.

Her handset looked like a video gamer control box, with a pair of inch- long joysticks, one for left- right- up- down, the other for controlling speed. Touch- pad controls handled the sophisticated array of underwater sensors and cameras into its nose. Headlamps set into the Orca on either side of the nose cast an eerie, cold- white light ahead, illuminating swirling clouds of gleaming white motes in the vehicle path. McMillan was getting a clear picture on her small displaya deep blue- green and featureless haze, with an oddly wrinkled and rugged ceiling of white overhead.

How she look? Yeats asked, coming up beside her.

We’re beneath the ice, she told him. On course, fifteen knots. We’ll be there in about half an hour.

Good. I don’t want us to hang around here longer than we have to.

Relax. They don’t even know we’re here.

They would’ve heard the explosion, Yeats told her. Sound travels underwater, you know.

Yes, Dennis, she said in her most acid, yes- dear tone. She hated it when men patronized her. I know something about sonar, okay?

Oh, yeah. All that work for the Navy.

And I also know that it almost impossible to track underwater sounds under the ice. They heard the explosion, all right, but they won’t have a clue as to where it came from, or how far away it is. So far as they know, it was something echoing in from the oil derricks off the North Slope.

Minutes passed. The fiber- optic cable continued unreeling from its drum, vanishing into the hole in the ice. On her monitor, the bottom side of the ice raced past overhead with a flicker of fast- shifting shadows. Twice she adjusted the Orca depth to avoid looming pressure ridgesinverted mountain ranges plunging down into the black. This part of the ice cap, though, was fairly uniform and relatively thin. Maybe, she thought, the environmentalists had something after all; the ice cap was

thinning rapidly from year to year. A couple of years ago, for the first time since such things could be checked, ice- free water had actually opened around the North Pole itself.

Then she thought of the Greenworlders back at the main camp on the ice and dismissed the thought. That bunch of screwups couldn’t be right about the time of day, much less something as dynamic and ever- changing as the Arctic.

She felt a shudder pass through the ice beneath her boots.

What the hell was that? Haines asked.

Yeats eyed the hole uncertainly. Dunno. Maybe we should move back from the edge a bit, though. We might’ve used too big a charge.

Another shudder was transmitted through the ice, a solid shock. Nah, it not that, Haines said. That not like ice breaking. More like a thump from underneath.

A whale, maybe? Yeats suggested.

Haines gave Yeats a sour look. No.

We should probably move the sleds back a bit anyway, McMillan told them. Just to be safe.

Right, Yeats said. I’ll

And then the ice was shuddering and bucking so hard that Haines fell down, and Yeats and McMillan both grabbed hold of the edge of the sled to stay standing. There was a roar, like avalanche thunder, and the ice between the party and the met station began to heave and buckle skyward.

McMillan first thought was that a pressure ridge was forming but the buckling and upthrust continued.

Blocks of ice toppled backward and slid down the growing mound, and then something like a smooth, black cliff appeared above the center of the mound, rising slowly.

Submarine! McMillan screamed. It a fucking submarine!

The conning tower, or sail, as submariners called it, continued to loom slowly above the ice, which was rising and cracking now to either side of the structure as the submerged vessel hull ponderously broke through to the surface. As more of the structure came into view, she noted that the sail was rounded and sloped both fore and aft, giving it the streamlined look of a teardrop. That was emphatically not an American design. It was almost certainly a Russian boat, probably a Victor II or III, nuclear powered, with about eighty men on board.

It Russian! she called to the others. Quick! We’ve got to ditch the gear!

She rammed both joysticks on her controller full forward, sending the UUV into a vertical dive. Then she released the ice brakes on the equipment sled and locked the cable reel. Immediately the tough plastic wire snapped taut and the sled began to slide, slow but steady, toward the hole in the ice.

It hurt, destroying a $4-million piece of hardware like this, but the team was under orders to be careful not to let it fall into unfriendly hands.

She just wished they’d had a chance to get close enough to actually see what the Russians were doing at Objective Toy Shop.

Shit! Yeats said. C’mon, Randy! The two of them released the brakes on the second sled, unhooked the snowmobile, and began sliding the empty cradle toward the ice- melt depression.

The submarine had come to rest, surrounded by huge,

cracked blocks of ice. A figure, made tiny by comparison with the huge vessel, appeared at the top of the sail. A second figure appeared next to the first a moment later and a hatch behind the sail broke open to disgorge a line of men, all in heavy parkas, all carrying assault rifles.

Stoy! a voice boomed from the sail over a loud- hailer. Nyeh sheveleetess!

How your Russian? Haines asked.

He telling us to halt, to not move, McMillan told them.

The sled with the reel of cable was well out into the ice- melt depression now. It hit the black opening and vanished with a splash. The sled with the Orca cradle was in the depression but not moving.

There was nothing that could be done about that.

Brahstee arujyeh!

He wants us to drop our guns.

I suggest we do what they tell us, Yeats said, stepping away from the snowmobile, unslinging his assault rifle, and dropping it on the ice. Carefully he raised his hands.

Heavily armed sailors were clambering down off the submarine deck now, using a long extending gangplank to cross the broken ice. In another few moments, the three Americans were being herded back toward the surfaced submarine.

In the hard, blue sky overhead, a pair of Russian helicopters circled, apparently searching for other trespassers. One of them was gentling toward the ice ahead.

A sailor behind her nudged her hard with the muzzle of his rifle. Skarei!