Stephen Coonts: Arctic Gold

Rubens bit back a most unprofessional word. Sunspots …

Desk Three’s communications system depended upon a necklace of military comm satellites parked in geosynchronous orbit twenty-two thousand miles above the equator. Lia currently was working pretty far north-at sixty degrees north, in fact, the same latitude as the southern tip of Greenland. That meant that in the city of St. Petersburg, the comsats hung low in the southern sky, subject to interference from buildings, transmission lines, and any other horizon-blocking obstacles.

Add to that the fact that the sun was approaching the most active phase of its regular eleven-year cycle. Increased sunspot activity, solar flares, auroras in the highly charged upper atmosphere in the far north and south… it all meant that communications with field operatives could be a bit ragged at times.

But damn it all! He looked around the huge high-tech chamber known within the NSA as the Art Room, scowling at communications consoles and computer displays and satellite feeds. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of technology. What good was it all if it didn’t work ?…

“What about her backup?” he demanded.

“Romeo’s not in position yet,” Sarah told him. She indicated the big screen dominating one wall of the Art Room. It showed a highly detailed intelligence satellite photo of St. Petersburg ’s waterfront district, the southern shore of Vasilyevsky Island close against the southern estuary of the Neva River. A winking white point of light marked one of a line of warehouses along the wharf, together with the name “DeFrancesca” in white letters. A second white marker blinked several blocks away, on the Kosaya Liniya , accompanied by the legend “Akulinin.”

“It’s these buildings, sir,” Jeff Rockman said. He used a laser pointer on the screen, indicating several tall warehouses and skyscrapers across the river on the south bank of the Neva. “They must be blocking her signal.”

Rubens picked up a microphone. “Romeo. This is Shakespeare.”

“Copy,” a voice said from an overhead speaker, harsh with static.

“Where are you?”

“If you’re in the Art Room, I assume that’s a rhetorical question, sir,” Akulinin replied. But he added, “I’m driving southwest on Kosaya. Just passing Detskaya.”

Rubens glared at the satellite map on the wall above him, which mirrored Akulinin’s description. Damn it, Lia should have clapped a hold on things until her partner could get into position . Alekseev, their Russian contact, had been too anxious, however, too skittish, and Lia had told the Art Room that she was going in, whether she had backup or not.

“We think Lia is inside the building. We’re not getting a clear signal. We need you in place to relay her transmissions… and to watch for the opposition.”

“Yes, sir.” Akulinin’s voice was momentarily garbled by static. Then, “I should be there in five minutes.”

“Make it faster. I don’t like the way this one is playing out.”

Operation Magpie had been running rough since its inception. A good intelligence op flowed, like a carefully orchestrated ballet. Every operative had a place and a task, a precise and meticulously choreographed passage of a ballet. Of course, many of the dancers didn’t even know they were performing-the local contacts, the informers, the marks, the opposition. The only way to keep them in the dance was for the operatives to stay in complete control of the situation… meaning each of them was where he or she was supposed to be when he or she was supposed to be there, leading the unwilling and hopefully clueless participants in the drama through their steps and turns without their ever knowing they were onstage.

Of course things were bound to go wrong from time to time, but good operators could ad lib until things were back in control, back in the flow.

This time around, Rubens thought, someone had lost the beat, and now the situation was fast slipping into chaos.

The ballet, he thought, was fast on its way to becoming a brawl.

“What is the current position of Ghost Blue?” Rubens demanded. He didn’t want to use that option, but…

Ghost Blue was an F-22 Raptor deployed hours ago out of Lakenheath. Stealthier than the F-117 Nighthawk, which it was currently in the process of replacing, more reliable than the smaller, robotic F- 47C UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), the F-22 had sophisticated avionics and onboard computer gear that allowed it to serve as an advance platform for ELINT, electronics intelligence, enabling it to pick up transmissions from the ground and relay them back to Fort Meade via the constellation of military comsats.

“Ninety-six miles west-northwest of St. Petersburg, sir,” James Higgins replied from another console. “Over the Gulf of Finland, tucked in close by the Finnish-Russian border.”

“Send him in.”

“Yes, sir.” Higgins hesitated. “Uh, that requires special-”

“I know what it requires. Send him in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ninety-six miles. Ghost Blue would be staying subsonic to maintain his stealth signature, so that was seven and a half minutes’ flight time… or a bit less to a point where he would be able to intercept Magpie’s transmissions. Call it seven minutes.

Of course, this was a flagrant violation of Russian airspace and territorial sovereignty. At the moment, the Raptor was loitering unseen within Finnish airspace, also a violation of territorial boundaries, but not so deadly a sin as moving into Russian territory. St. Petersburg sat like a spider within a far-flung web of radar installations and surface-to-air missile sites, protecting dozens of high-value military installations in and around the city.

And if anyone could defeat U.S. stealth technology, it was the Russians. In 1999, Yugoslav forces had scored a kill, probably with Russian help, shooting down an F-117 with an SA-3 missile. The pilot had been rescued, but Yugoslav forces had grabbed the wreckage-and almost certainly turned it over to the Russians for study. The Russians, it was well known, were very interested in learning how to defeat American stealth technology.

Rubens had just kicked up the ante in an already dangerous game.

He reached for a telephone on the console beside him.

DeFrancesaOperation MagpieWaterfront, St. Petersburg0025 hours

Well, they’d warned her she might find herself out of communications with the Art Room. There was nothing Lia could do about it now, however.

Like all Desk Three field operatives, Lia had a tiny speaker unit implanted in her skull just behind her left ear. The microphone was attached to her black utilities, while the antenna was coiled up in her belt. The system provided safe, clear, secure communications… usually. It was a bitch, though, when the technology failed.

Still, the satellite dish receivers at Fort Meade were a lot better as antennas than the wire in her belt. It was possible that they were receiving her back in the Art Room even if she couldn’t hear them.

She would have to keep operating on that assumption.

What she couldn’t rely on was the Art Room warning her of approaching threats.

She tried raising her backup. “Romeo, this is Juliet.”

Nothing. And that was worrying. It meant she and Alekseev were on their own.

Alekseev had moved ahead and was searching the huge chamber now with his own flashlight. She could see stacks of crates, some covered in tarpaulins, looming out of the darkness.

But one large crate was off by itself, near the back wall of the warehouse. She could see words stenciled in bold, black Cyrillic lettering on the sides: stahnka .