The Arctic Event (19 page)

She nodded toward the glassed-in nose of the bomber. “We came in through the cockpit window, and Gregori dove into the bomb bay and hauled you out. A little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and here you are.”

Smith grimaced. “Pardon me while I feel incredibly stupid.”

“I shouldn’t, Jon,” Valentina replied soberly. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, climbing into that chamber of horrors. Just looking through that hatch was enough to make my skin crawl.” The historian shook her head in profound distaste. “I love fine weapons, but that...thing...isn’t a weapon; it’s a nightmare.”

“I’m not going to argue the point.” Smith smiled up at her. “I suppose I should be making a stink over you and the major for disobeying my direct orders, but I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for it. Thank you, Val.”

He extended a hand past her to Smyslov. “And thank you, Major.”

The Russian gripped it firmly. “It is the duty of a good subordinate to point out factors in a situation possibly overlooked by his superior,” he quoted, still grinning.

Smith tried to sit up again, this time succeeding with only a hint of dizziness. His strength seemed to be returning rapidly. “Well, we’ve got some good news and bad news. The bad news is that we still have the anthrax to deal with. The good news is that the containment vessel seems to be intact and undamaged. Just in case, we’ll stay on the antibiotics, but I don’t think we have any spore spillage to contend with. Val, how did—”

She stood up abruptly, giving Smith a sharp but seemingly accidental bump as she got to her feet. “Thank God for that at least,” she chattered on. “Do you think it’s safe to fort up in the fuselage for tonight? It sounds like the weather is kicking up a bit outside.”

“Yes...I think that might be a good idea,” Smith replied. “I suspect it will feel a little odd camping on top of a mound of anthrax, but I think it should be safe enough. What do you say, Major?”

Smyslov shrugged. “I think it will still be bloody cold in here, but I think it will also be better than a tent out on that stinking glacier. I think we’d do better in the aft compartment though.”

“Marvelous!” Valentina said, offering her hand to Smith. “Let’s get our gear together and start playing house. I could use a dollop of that medicinal whisky you promised.”

Smith accepted her hand and heaved himself off the deck. “Now that you mention it, so could I.”

Seated on the bare springs of the starboard crew bunk, Smith scowled at the walkie-talkie in his hand. “Wednesday Island Station, Wednesday Island Station. This is crash site, crash site. Randi, can you read me? Over.”

The little SINCGARS Leprechaun tactical transceiver hissed and spat back in his face. “Isn’t that just the way of it,” Smith said in disgust. He snapped off the radio and folded the antenna back into the casing. “You can communicate instantly with the farthest corner of the world except for when you actually need to talk with someone.”

“There is an entire mountain between us and the station.” Sitting cross-legged beside the tiny pack stove, Valentina carefully dropped a ball of hard-packed snow into the pan of water steaming atop it. Beyond melting a foot-wide circle in the frost on the overhead of the crew’s quarters, the little fuel-pellet burner was incapable of measurably affecting the temperature within the compartment, but it could produce hot water for an MRE and to refill the team’s canteens.

To save their batteries, the only illumination in the compartment came from a pair of chemical light sticks clipped to the bunk frames, the soft, all-encompassing green glow giving an impression of warmth.

The fuselage at least provided still air shelter from the wind whining across the glacier. The environment within the wreck would at least be tolerable for the night.

“What bunk do you want, Professor?” Smyslov asked, detaching his sleeping bag from his pack frame. “Ladies have first choice.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” Valentina replied. “But please indulge yourself. I’m taking the deck.”

“I’m doing the same,” Smith added, taking the last swallow of coffee from his canteen cup. “They apparently built aviators on a small scale in those days.”

“As you wish.” Smyslov started to unroll his sleeping bag into the lower port-side bunk. “Tell me, Colonel, now we know we do have anthrax to deal with. How do we proceed?”

“Well, I think your people had the right idea; we just take it a step farther. Since we still have full containment, I’d say we simply bring in a demolition team and pack the fuselage with a couple of tons of thermite and white phosphorous. We incinerate the whole damn thing right where it sits.”

“We most definitely do not!” Valentina exclaimed, looking up from the stove.

“Why not?” Smith asked, puzzled. “If we can just concentrate enough heat rapidly enough around that casing, we should be able to burn every spore before there’s any chance for them to spread.”

“Oh, good Lord! The blind who will not see!” She gestured expressively around the compartment. “Given its superb condition, this plane is a historic treasure! Come spring, if we can get an ice breaker and a helicrane in here, we could lift it off the glacier essentially intact! It could be restored. In fact...”

The idea flared behind her eyes, “In fact, with the components of this crash and the TU-4 that’s on static display at the Gagarin Institute, I’ll wager we could assemble one complete airworthy aircraft.”

She turned to face Smyslov, suddenly as excited as a schoolgirl with a new bicycle. “You’ve been to the Institute! You’ve seen the Bull they have in the air museum there! What do you think?”

The Russian officer looked up, bemused. “I really wouldn’t know, Professor, but I’m sure it would take a great deal of money.”

“You leave the fund-raising to me, Gregori! I know of a number of wealthy war bird fanatics who would give an arm and a leg to see the
Fifi,
the Commemorative Air Force’s Superfortress, doing a joint flyover with a genuine Russian B-29-ski. Champlain alone would be good for at least a quarter of a million!”

Smith couldn’t help but be impressed with her vibrant enthusiasm. Valentina Metrace obviously was a cobbler who stuck to her last. He whistled softly and aimed a thumb forward toward the bomb bays. “I’m afraid we still have certain other priorities here.”

Valentina waved a hand arily. “Details, details! I don’t care what breed of germ we might have to tidy up. No one is casually putting the torch to this aircraft if I have anything to say about it. This is history!”

“That will be for the powers that be to decide, Val,” Smith smiled. “Not me, I’m very pleased to say.”

Smyslov looked over his shoulder at Smith, his expression intent. “What do we do next, Colonel?”

“We know the anthrax exists and is still a factor, so reporting that is our priority.” Smith set the empty canteen cup on the deck. “Tomorrow morning, if we have decent weather, I intend to make one fast sweep around the crash site to look for the survival camp of the Misha’s crew. Then we hike for the science station. If we can’t make radio contact with the outside from the station, then I’ll send Randi back to the cutter in the helicopter to report.”

Smith studied Smyslov’s back as the Russian unrolled his sleeping bag in the crew bunk. “I’m also going to commit the reinforcement group and secure the island, Major. That’s going to mean bringing the Canadians on board, and a general escalation of the whole scenario. I know we promised your government that we’d try and keep this low-key, but now, with both the anthrax and the disappearance of the station staff to contend with, we may have no choice but to go overt.”

“I fully understand, Colonel. There is indeed no choice.”

Smyslov’s reply was unexpressive, and Smith had to wonder if the Russian was speaking in agreement with his words or with some thought of his own.

“Ah, me! That’s all for tomorrow’s worry list,” Valentina said, glancing toward the hatch set in the rear bulkhead. “In the meantime, there is something else I need to have a look at.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?” Smith asked.

She looked toward Smith so the minute tilt of her head and the lift of her eyebrow would be masked from Smyslov. “It’s nothing really. Shan’t take a second.”

Catching up a flashlight, she got to her feet and moved aft. Undogging the pressure door, she ducked low through it. Assorted thumps and bangs followed as she worked toward the very tail of the aircraft, followed by a few minutes of involved silence. “Now, this is interesting,” her voice reverberated with a metallic hollowness. “Jon, could you please give me a hand back here for a second?”

“On my way.” Smith followed Valentina into the dark of the passage. The historian was crouching on the gangway between the stinger turret’s ammunition magazines. With her flashlight aimed at her face, she silently mouthed the words “Shut the hatch.”

“Damn, Val. Were you raised in a barn! It’s even colder out here.” He pulled the pressure door closed and twisted the dogging lever to the locked position. Moving back to the magazines, he sank down on one knee beside Valentina. She was turning a wicked-looking autocannon shell over and over in her gloved fingers.

“What’s that?” Smith inquired over the whine of the wind playing around the tail surfaces.

“A Soviet 23mm round. From the tail gun belts,” she replied.

“All right. What’s going on?”

“Something odd, Jon. Things aren’t adding up, or rather, they’re adding up in a very peculiar way. That’s why I cut you off up in the cockpit this afternoon.”

“I thought as much,” he replied. “What are you seeing?”

“This airplane was fully outfitted for combat. In addition to having its anthrax warload aboard, its defensive armament was also fully charged. Furthermore, this plane didn’t make an emergency landing here. This was an accidental crash.”

Smith wasn’t quite sure of the differentiation. “Are you sure?”

“Quite. The bomber wasn’t configured for an emergency landing when it hit the ice. Remember when I asked about the propeller and fuel mixture controls in the cockpit? They had been left at their cruise settings. Also, I asked about the flap lever. The wing flaps hadn’t been lowered, as would have been done for any kind of a deliberate landing.”

Valentina rapped the top of the magazine housing with her knuckles. “Finally they didn’t eject the gun turret ammunition magazines. In a B-29 Superfortress or a TU-4 Bull, that would be a standard procedure in a ditching or emergency landing scenario.”

“Then what the hell did happen?”

“As I said, a freak crash, a total accident,” she continued. “According to the maps of Wednesday Island, this glacier has a gradual descending gradient toward the north. The bomber must have come in from the North. They also must have been coming in at night, flying low and on instruments because they never knew the island was here. They came in between the peaks, and the terrain rose up underneath the aircraft. Before the pilots realized what was happening they struck the ground, or rather the ice. They must have been traveling at full cruising speed, way too fast for a conventional landing, but as fate would have it, the glacier’s surface at that time must have been comparatively smooth, without any ledges or crevasses to trip the aircraft. So they hit flat and skidded cleanly.

“There have been similar crashes in the Arctic and Antarctic,” she continued in her whisper, “when aircrews have lost situational awareness in whiteout conditions. To put a bottom line on this, this aircraft was not in an emergency state when it went down. They weren’t lost, and they weren’t landing. They were in a controlled cruise configuration, bound for somewhere else.”

“If that’s the case, wouldn’t they have seen the island on their charts?” Smith asked.

“You have to remember that in 1953 detailed navigational information on this part of the world was all but nonexistent. The closest thing to an accurate chart was an American military secret. Wednesday Island is also something of a freak. It’s one of the highest points within the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago. At that time, whoever plotted this plane’s course had no idea that a bloody great mountain would be parked out here in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.”

“It’s not all that much of a mountain,” Smith mused. “We’re only about twenty-five hundred feet above sea level here. Wouldn’t that be a pretty low cruising altitude for a pressurized aircraft like this one?”

“Very much so,” she agreed. “In fact, a TU-4 or B-29 would only follow such a low flight profile for one reason: if its crew were worried about being picked up by long-range radar.”

Jon forced himself to play devil’s advocate. “Wouldn’t they have seen the island on their own navigational radar?”

“Only if they were using it. What if they were maintaining full EMCON, full emission control, with all of their radio and radar transmitters deliberately shut down to avoid detection?”

If such was conceivable, it seemed to grow colder. “So what do you think, Professor?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know what to think, Colonel,” she replied. “Or rather, I don’t know what I want to think. One thing I am certain of. Tomorrow morning we have got to find the crew of this plane. It might be more important in the greater scheme of things than the anthrax.”

“Do you think this might have something to do with this Russian alternate agenda?”

He saw her nod. “In all probability. I suspect when we find the survival camp, we’ll know.”

“I suspect we’ll know about Major Smyslov by then as well,” Smith replied grimly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Smyslov watched Smith disappear into the tail. All evening he had been waiting for the opportunity to act, for a moment when the others were involved or distracted. This might be the best, if not his only chance.

He headed for the crawlway tunnel leading forward, snaking down its length as rapidly and as quietly as he could. He knew exactly what he was to look for and exactly where it should be. He also had the set of fifty-year-old keys in his pocket.

Earlier in the day, when he had been in the cockpit with Smith and Metrace, he hadn’t dared to search. He couldn’t risk drawing possible attention to the Misha 124’s official documentation until he could ascertain its status.