Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

Llewellyn remained to have a few more choice words with the MVD guards. When Akulinin glanced back, he saw a sheaf of Russian currency changing hands as Llewellyn paid their “tax.” He then turned and strode after them, his trench coat billowing after him like a cape.

Once on board the ship, Akulinin allowed himself to begin to relax. “Was that a shakedown?” he asked Lia. “A simple extortion? Or something more?”

“I don’t know,” Lia said. She looked at Llewellyn as he joined them. “How about it, Lew? Was that random, or were they after us?”

“Hard to tell,” Llewellyn replied. “ Probably random…”

“But you never can tell in this game,” Lia said, completing the thought. “Thanks for coming to our rescue.”

Llewellyn grinned at them. “The new kid here was doing pretty well on his own. You did exactly right, son. The Russkies respect authority. Step on their toes until they apologize. If you throw your weight around, chances are they’ll cave.”

“Yeah,” Lia said. “Either they cave or they’ll shoot you.” She seemed to sag a bit. “Where are our staterooms?”

“I’ll show you. But… don’t get too comfortable. The word from the Art Room is you’ll be on the move again soon.”

Akulinin leaned against the ship’s railing and studied the vista ashore. A more depressing location for a cruise ship dock would be difficult to imagine. The facility was brightly lit, but hemmed in by ancient apartment buildings, close huddled and clotted with shadows, and industrial complexes, rusted, decrepit, and cloaked in night.

In the parking lot, two men approached the rental car Akulinin had acquired that afternoon-part of Mercutio’s cleanup team. They would drive the vehicle someplace safe and get rid of the incriminating evidence-weapons and clothing-hidden inside.

He looked to the right, toward the southeast. The warehouse district they’d just escaped from lay just beyond the port’s security fence.

“Can I help with the post-op cleanup?” Akulinin asked. He was still thinking about the equipment he’d left behind. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

“We’ll take care of it,” Llewellyn told him. “I need to take you two down to the communications center. They need some data back at the Puzzle Palace.”

“Does it have to be tonight, Lew?” Lia said. “I’m dead on my feet.”

“Tonight, Lia. There’ll be time for rest later.” He turned and led them toward a companionway ladder descending into the ship.

Ghost Blue Approaching Waypoint Tango Bravo 0119 hours

Major Delallo stuffed his nose down and raced toward the surface of the sea. He only had one engine, but he had it wide open and was using gravity all he dared. Down he went into the gloomy night, trying to get against the surface of the sea, where he would find some measure of safety from his pursuers. He just might make it. He allowed himself that much hope, at any rate.

A worrisome thump began sounding from somewhere aft, causing the aircraft to shudder and buck. He’d been supersonic when he took the missile. Now, as the thumping became louder and the instrument panel jiggled and danced, he automatically retared the throttle and let his speed bleed off as he tried to assess the damage to his mount. The missile’s detonation had peppered the Raptor with shrapnel, knocked out one engine, and played merry hell with his avionics. The slipstream might be peeling back a piece of the aircraft’s fuselage, and that might make for a bright, easy target on hostile radars.

He loved the Raptor, an astonishing piece of advanced aircraft engineering. Its one weakness, though, was a variation on the Murphy Effect. When things went wrong with the aircraft, everything went wrong, and in the worst possible way.

In February of 2007, Delallo had been one of six pilots ferrying a flight of F-22s from Hickam Air Force Base to Kadena, Okinawa. The moment they’d crossed the international date line at the 180th meridian, the computers on all six aircraft had crashed, taking out all navigational systems and most communications. It had been good weather and broad daylight, thank God, and the flight had managed to form up on their tankers and make it back to Hawaii. Forty-eight hours later, the problem had been fixed and the flight had continued, but the incident had been a nasty reminder of how complicated these systems were. The F-22’s software ran to something like 1.7 million lines of code, most of it concerned with data processing for the incoming signals from the aircraft’s sophisticated radar systems.

Right now, he was getting squat from the radar-both the AN/ALR-94 passive receivers and the AN/APG-77 AESA, or Active Electronically Scanned Array. His navigational systems had crashed as well, leaving him as in the dark as he’d been that afternoon over the central Pacific.

The one electronic system that appeared to be working was his SAS, or Signature Assessment System, which threw up warning indicators when wear and tear on the aircraft had degraded its low radar signature to something the enemy could detect. Of course, the warning indicators might themselves be a glitch in his failing electronics… but he didn’t want to count on that. Something was thumping hard against the side of the aircraft aft, like the monotonous beat of a flat tire on pavement.

The aircraft shuddered, the thump growing savagely more severe. The aircraft was completely fly-by-wire, with three flight-data computers that actually flew the aircraft. All his stick and rudder controls did was make inputs to the computers. They were doing all right just now, but if the structural damage exceeded the computers’ ability to cope, or the control throw available, he was going to tumble out of the night sky.

He was down to four thousand feet now and still descending. Where were those MiGs? His gadgets were silent-which probably meant they were damaged-although it might mean the Russian jocks had headed home for the night.

Delallo searched the darkness behind him as he keyed his radio. “Haunted House, Haunted House, Ghost Blue,” he called.

No response. If a data stream was still going out, it wasn’t registering on his almost nonexistent instrumentation.

Well, at least he was going in the right direction, west. Waypoint Tango Bravo was inside Finnish waters, a few miles south of Kotko. A support vessel was there. If necessary, he could bail out and hope for a pickup.

That, however, was an option he didn’t want to have to use. Those black waters, patchy with streamers of fog, were frigid even in late spring. Not even his flight suit would keep him alive for long, and with his navigation systems out, finding the support vessel would require outrageous luck.

Still looking aft, he saw a flash high and behind him, at four o’clock.

The northern sky flamed and shimmered with the cold glow of aurora. His eyes searched the deep twilight… Now he saw it, a streak of fire in the night.

A missile contrail, a thin white thread arcing around to intercept him.

Oh, shit! There was no way his crippled Raptor could manage the maneuvers necessary to evade an incoming air-to-air missile.

He grabbed the lanyard for his ejection seat and yanked up hard…

St. Petersburg 2 Waterfront, St. Petersburg 0230 hours

Lia was exhausted. She’d been at it for an hour and a half, with no results yet. She was ready to pack it in.

“Anything, Lia?” Rubens’ voice said in her ear.

She leaned back in her chair and looked around the stateroom, a fairly luxurious suite booked under the name Stevens but occupied by Llewellyn. It was the “communications center” only by virtue of the laptop computer set up on a desk in the corner.