Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

“Five hundred rubles,” Lia said. “About what… twenty dollars at the current rate? I didn’t realize the local cops were such cheap dates.”

Akulinin drove slowly up the road, passing the warehouse that had been the focus of Operation Magpie. A number of shadowy figures were visible in the parking lot… more than he’d seen originally exit the two cars on the wharf. An open-bed truck was parked on the road in front of the warehouse, suggesting that reinforcements had arrived. How many goons had he and Lia been facing, anyway?

He kept his eyes on the road ahead, not looking at them, and they, apparently, didn’t connect passing traffic on the street with their quarry. By deliberately driving at a sedate and unhurried pace toward, then past the hunters, rather than pulling a U-turn in the middle of the street and rushing off in the opposite direction, Akulinin might throw off any would-be pursuit.

It was a bit of tradecraft Akulinin had learned only recently, during his induction into the secret ranks of Desk Three, and he didn’t yet entirely trust the psychology behind it. What if the opposition had people in some of the surrounding buildings, watching the street? What if they’d seen him and Lia emerge from the alley and get into the car? A quick call over a walkie-talkie from a hidden lookout and that whole pack of Russian gunmen could be swarming after them in an instant.

He drove with one hand, the other gripping the MP5K on his lap, out of sight but ready for action.

Several of the men glanced at the Citroën as it cruised past, but there was no other reaction.

“Okay, I guess they didn’t track us,” he said.

“They’re not pros,” Lia said. “All muscle, no brain.”

He set his loaded weapon on the seat beside him, relaxing slightly… but only slightly. “Your fancy duds are in a bag on the floor of the backseat,” he told her.

“I see it.”

For the next several blocks, Akulinin was treated to the sounds of tantalizing rustles, snapping elastic, and shifting movements in the backseat. Determined to maintain a professional bearing, he kept his eyes rigidly on the road, not even checking the rearview mirror.

Professional or not, though, nothing said he couldn’t try to imagine the scene at his back. Lia was an extremely attractive young woman…

Soon Kozhevennaya came to a T at Bol’shoy Prospekt, and Akulinin turned left, then began hunting for the entrance to a parking lot. The cruise ship terminal was just ahead. The atmosphere of their surroundings, he noticed, had changed dramatically, clean, well kept, well lit, and open, where only a few blocks away the decrepit warehouses and abandoned machine shops brooded over fog-shrouded darkness.

St. Petersburg, Akulinin knew, depended these days upon making a good impression on tourists for its economic survival.

Pulling the Citroën into an empty space in the parking lot, Akulinin took a moment to peel off his worker’s coveralls. These went on the floor under the passenger side seat, leaving him in a suitably tacky short-sleeved shirt that fairly shouted “American tourist.” The MP5K, along with Lia’s SOCOM pistol, went under the seat. Pulling a small stack of papers and booklets from the glove box, he stepped out of the car. Lia was transformed, wearing a pale blouse displaying significant cleavage over a short black skirt and heels, with a sweater over her shoulders to keep off the night chill.

Gallantly he held out his elbow. “It’s been a lovely evening out on the town, my dear. Shall we?”

“I don’t go out with Romeos,” she told him, smiling. “At least… not with any old Romeo…”

Together, they started for the building entrance that would take them through to the cruise ship.

Ghost Blue Ten miles west of St. Petersburg 0056 hours

Dick Delallo was holding his F- 22 in a gentle right turn above the Gulf of Finland when the threat receiver lit up and the warning tone sounded over his headset.

“Haunted House, Ghost Blue,” he called. “The Oscar Sierra light is lit. Do you copy?”

“Ghost Blue, Haunted House,” came over his headset. “Copy. You are clear to get out of Dodge. Over.”

“Ah… roger that.” He was already tightening his turn, trying to identify the source of the threat. “On my way back to the barn.”

“Oscar Sierra” was a pilot’s inside joke, using the phonetic alphabet letters for O and S to represent the words “oh, shit.” It meant someone was painting him with a target acquisition radar and that a missile launch could be imminent.

The signal from the threat radar, though, was weak and intermittent. The frequency suggested that he’d been briefly painted by the acquisition radar code-named Spoon Rest by NATO, which meant they were trying to target him with an SA-2 Guideline.

Guideline was the NATO reporting name for the Lavochkin OKB S-75 surface-to-air missile-ancient by the standards of modern military technology but still deadly. Gary Powers’ U-2 had been downed over Sverdlovsk in 1960 by a barrage of fourteen SA-2 missiles, a barrage that had also managed to take out a MiG-19 trying for an intercept.

Just because Delallo was being painted didn’t mean the Russian radar operator could see him. In fact, the operator probably didn’t. The whole point of stealth technology was to prevent the energy of the threat radar from returning to the emitting dish, rendering it blind. Still, the pucker factor for Major Dick Delallo was rising.

Operation Magpie Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0058 hours

Akulinin and Lia walked up a low concrete ramp toward the entrance to the cruise ship wharf. The ship, the North Star Line’s St. Petersburg 2, was tied up on the pier just beyond the high chain-link security fence, her lights ablaze stem to stern, like beacons promising refuge and safety.

To get to that promise, they needed to go through the security checkpoint and customs. A pair of Russian MVD police eyed them suspiciously as they approached.

“Good evening!” Akulinin called in his most jovial dumb tourist’s voice. “Some fog out tonight, huh?”

One of the men pointed his weapon, an AKM, at Akulinin’s chest. “You stop, please,” the man said in thickly accented English. “Passports.”

Akulinin and Lia both handed their passports over.

The guard grunted as he looked at the stamps, then added, “Your other papers. ID. All.”

When these were produced, the guard went through them with microscopic attention while the other watched the two with a sullen expression.

“Your papers not in order,” the first said after an interminable examination.

“Why?” Akulinin said, putting on his best naïve-American expression of surprise and confusion. “What’s the matter?”

“Our papers were perfectly in order before,” Lia said. “What the hell is going on?”

“Papers not in order,” the Russian said, his broad Slavic features betraying no emotion. “You come with us.”

“We’re alerting Mercutio,” Rockman’s voice said in Akulinin’s ear… and presumably in Lia’s as well. “Stall them.”

Stall them, Akulinin thought. Right. Maybe I should do a little soft-shoe?…

“Mercutio”-Romeo’s best friend in Romeo and Juliet -was running Magpie’s support operation in St. Petersburg, the stage crew behind the scenes who let Lia and Akulinin play their roles. The support team was on board the cruise ship, which was serving as a kind of impromptu safe house for the op.

Of course, in the original Romeo and Juliet Mercutio had been killed in a duel.

Akulinin hoped to hell it wasn’t going to come to that.