James Cobb - The Arctic Event

At least until the Russians walked in on them.

Valentina focused on breathing without chest movement. This was no worse than sitting it out in a leopard blind, only she couldn’t see, and she was the one being set for. She pushed her other senses out beyond the second skin of the survival blanket, listening for the rasp of exertion breathing or the vibration of a footfall on ice. Her fingers eased into the sleeve of her sweater, their tips touching the hilt of the knife strapped to her forearm.

Jon and the others should be well on their way by now. They’d be moving toward the station along the base of the ridge. With this batch of guns drawn off and theoretically engaged by the Spetsnaz, they’d have a better chance when they put the station and landing ground under sniper fire. Divide and conquer. Good strategy, Jon.

She gulped and wished she could sneak a mouthful of snow. Let’s see, what to do should the Spetsnaz not show? Don’t wait to be fallen over. Jump and knife the nearest man. Drop the second closest with a throw. Commandeer a submachine gun and ammunition. Keep to the cover of the pressure ridge, maximize casualties, and buy Jon and Randi their time yourself.

There, that was something of a plan anyway.

Where in the hell were those bloody Russians? Wasn’t that just the way of the world? There was never a Bolshevik around when you needed one.

Someone nearby gave a startled yell and an SMG chattered. Valentina went stark stiff for an instant, then realized there had been no shock of a bullet impact. Another automatic weapon replied-the sharper, more piercing crackle of a small-caliber assault rifle. Valentina recognized an AK-74. The Spetsnaz had just put their foot in it!

More shouts followed. A scream trailed off. The exchange of gunfire built explosively.

Valentina allowed herself a full, deep breath. Blinking for a moment in the snow-refracted sunlight, she slipped out from under the camo blanket. Drawing one of her knives, she began to slither on her belly through the buckled ice, moving toward the heart of the burgeoning firefight.

Jon’s orders had been specific. When their enemies engaged each other she was to fall back and disengage immediately. But Valentina had decided upon a loose definition of “immediate.” She intended to linger a bit, extending military assistance to both sides of the conflict.

At the first crash of automatic weapons fire, Jon Smith had drawn up sharply and looked back. Then, when it was returned and built in volume, he managed a grin. That was a battle, not an execution.

They’d been double-timing along the base of the central ridge, keeping out of sight of the shoreline trail. It had been snowshoe work and hard going, but they’d already covered a fair portion of the distance back to the science station. Now if they could only make the high ground overlooking the helipad and Kretek’s helicopter without being seen, they’d stand a chance of bitching somebody’s works.

The question marks were Val and Randi. Would Val be able to get clear and rejoin, and could Randi keep it together? Randi was slumped against Smyslov with her eyes closed and with the concerned Russian half-supporting her as she gasped for breath. She was carrying neither pack nor weapon, and he couldn’t doubt her will. But running in snowshoes was murderous even for someone who hadn’t already been half-killed by hypothermia.

“Randi?”

She looked up, her shadow-rimmed eyes fierce. “Go!” she whispered. “Just go!”

Three plumes of smoke rose over Wednesday Island Station. All three huts had now been torched. The remaining security teams had been pulled in tight around the Halo, the flight and demolition men were on board, and the heating tents around the engines had been stricken. Kretek paced warily beside the big aircraft, his sense of unease growing.

He glanced down at the submachine gun he carried. The MP-5 was a professional’s weapon, and the woman who had carried it had been a consummate professional. What of the others he had been told of? This history professor, the Russian and American military officers. Had they been of the same breed as the lethal little blonde? What of the team leader, this Jon Smith? Obviously it was the crudest of cover names. Who was he really?

For the thousandth time Kretek’s eyes swept the high ground above the station, tasting the blood from his cold-cracked lips. He could smell more than the smoke of the burning huts. He could smell the stink of an operation going rotten.

This was wrong. He’d acted without thinking when he’d sent Mikhail after the girl. Appearing above the camp at that moment had been too convenient, and he had snapped at the dangled bait too rapidly. Somebody was setting something up.

On an ordinary job, any other job, he would abort and run. But this was the job. The one that would never come again.

Abruptly he stopped his pacing and yelled up through the Halo’s open fuselage door, “Prepare to start the engines.”

One of the demolitions men leaned out of the hatch. “I haven’t rigged the time fuse on the other helicopter yet, sir.”

Because of its proximity to the parked Halo, the smaller Jet Ranger couldn’t be blown until after they were in the air.

“Then get on with it!” Kretek snapped back impatiently. “We’re taking off.”

“What about Vlahovitch and the others?”

At that instant the faint ripple of distant gunshots reverberated over the knoll-automatic weapons exchanging fire, many of them.

Everyone froze in place, listening. Then Kretek broke the lock with his bellow. “Everyone aboard! Everyone aboard now! Get those goddamned engines started! We’re getting out of here!”

The gas turbines began to crank with their hollow baritone moan, the huge rotor blades sweeping past overhead. The security perimeter collapsed in on the helicopter, men hurling their weapons through the open side hatch and scrambling in after them. Kretek was last aboard as displaced snow started to swirl, tornadolike, around the mammoth heavy lifter.

Kretek raced forward to the cockpit. “Get us in the air!” he yelled, leaning in between the pilots’ seats. “Take us to the crash site!”

The pilot twisted in his seat, looking back at his employer. “Aren’t we going after the others?” He was a former Canadian naval aviator who had been cashiered for wife beating. He had fallen a great distance, but he still remembered how things had once been done.

“The sea is frozen,” Kretek said, glaring out of the windscreen. “They can walk home.”

They were half a mile short of the station when they saw the gleaming red bulk of the Halo lifting from behind the antenna knoll. The big machine swung parallel to the ridge, climbing under full power. Instinctively, Smith and the others went facedown flat on the snow, camo-merging into their background. The aircraft thundered almost directly overhead, heading for the central peaks and the saddleback between.

“Damn it!” Smith raged, scrambling to his feet and staring after the departing helicopter. “I’d hoped splitting them up would keep them pinned! They’re bailing out on their own men!”

Randi shook her head, coming up onto her knees. “They don’t give a damn, Jon. They’re criminals, not soldiers. They well and truly don’t give a damn.”

“What do we do now, Colonel?” Smyslov asked.

“We fall back to Plan B.”

“What is Plan B?”

“That depends on what’s left at the station. Let’s go!”

Mikhail Vlahovitch fumbled the little Belgian-made pocket grenade out of his parka, feeling the bullets hitting on the far side of the ice slab he crouched behind. Pulling the pin, he let the safety lever flick free, counted two, and pitched overhand. He waited for the flat crack of the grenade detonation, then lunged out from behind the slab, rolling across the frozen beach to get the angle on the men who had been firing on him.