James Cobb - The Arctic Event

Vlahovitch came up onto his knees, saw a wounded Spetsnaz trooper kneeling beside a second downed man, and leveled the Agram, emptying the submachine gun in a single prolonged figure-eight burst that engulfed both the wounded and the dying.

As the bolt clicked open on an empty chamber, Vlahovitch was caught by the silence. His had been the last gun firing. The only sounds remaining were the creak and whine of the pack ice and the hiss of his own breath. Staggering, he got to his feet, drawing a fresh clip out of his belt pouches.

The Russians had come out of nowhere while Vlahovitch and his men had been distracted by their search for the woman. The Spetsnaz had apparently been taken as much by surprise by the presence of the arms smugglers as the reverse. It had been an unexpected-meeting engagement, inevitably the most chaotic and savage of battles.

“Lazlo,” he yelled, ejecting the empty and forcing the reload into the Agram’s magazine well. “Lazlo!…Vrasek!…Prishkin! To me!”

No one answered. Blood streaked the ice. The scattering of bodies lay unmoving. Their men and his.

“Lazlo!…Prishkin!”

He turned in place slowly, looking around. It was a wipeout. A mutual massacre. He was the only one left of either side.

“Lazlo?”

Then he heard the distant, rhythmic thudding of rotors. It was the Halo. He couldn’t see it from the base of the point, but he could follow the sound of its flight. It was heading up to the glacier. Kretek was going after the anthrax, and Vlahovitch knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt that he wouldn’t be coming back.

And Vlahovitch finally acknowledged something else that he had known down deep in his belly for a long time: that Anton Kretek would eventually betray and abandon him like this.

“Kretek, you bastard!” He almost burst his throat with the scream.

“He’s not a very nice man really.” The voice was conversational, feminine, and coming from directly behind him.

Vlahovitch spun to find the woman standing some twenty feet away. She hadn’t been there a few moments before, but she was there now, her materialization as silent as the arrival of a stalking cat. She wore the red ski pants worn by the blonde they had captured the day before, and the green sweatshirt she had stolen from the body of Kretek’s nephew, the overlong sleeves rolled up. But this wasn’t the brown-eyed American blonde. The thrown-back hood of the shirt revealed high-pinned raven black hair and chill gray eyes, and the accent to her words was vaguely British. She stood relaxed with her arms held loosely crossed over her stomach.

“But then, you really aren’t a very nice man, either,” she went on. And then she smiled.

A strange, uncontrollable horror welled up within Vlahovitch. There was no justification for it. He was a man cradling a loaded machine gun, and she an unarmed woman. Yet he was stricken with the fear a condemned prisoner feels when he hears the approaching footfalls of his hangman. He brought up the Agram, trying to draw back the SMG’s bolt, his terror making him fumble.

The first thrown knife sank into his right shoulder, paralyzing his arm. The second struck in the center of his chest, driving through his breastbone and into his heart.

Valentina Metrace allowed herself that single, deep, deliberate breath. An enemy was dead and she and her friends were alive, and that was how it should be. She knelt down beside Vlahovitch’s body, reclaiming her knives. She cleaned each blade with a handful of snow, drying them on the clothing of the arms smuggler before resheathing them.

She’d started to salvage the man’s weapon and remaining ammunition when a new factor intruded. From this position, she had a fair view down the eastern side of the point. Standing, she shielded her eyes against the growing sun glare and peered down the revealed reach of the shoreline trail. “Oh, dear,” she murmured under her breath.

Wednesday Island Station

“Jon, look!” Randi exclaimed, pointing. “They didn’t torch the copter!”

From their position atop the antenna knoll they could look down on the ruins of the science station. All three of the prefab huts were in flames, but beyond the camp, at the helipad site, the Long Ranger sat apparently intact under its protective shroud of snow-covered tarpaulins.

Smith kicked free of his snowshoes and unslung the SR-25. “If they didn’t wreck it some other way we may still be in business. Let’s go, but keep your eyes open for any stay-behinds.”

Weapons readied, they dropped down off the hill to the station area. The low-lying smoke stank of burning plastic and hot metal, and there was a faint tinge of roasting pork to it that all three recognized but none commented on.

It took only a few moments of wary inspection to prove that the station’s ruins were deserted. “They’ve pulled out,” Randi commented, lowering Valentina’s rifle, “bag and baggage.”

“They must have bolted when they heard the firefight. They realized more was going down around here than they’d figured.” Smith looked across at her. “How about it, Randi? What are the chances they’re aborting?”

She shook her head. “I think the guy running this show, Kretek, would be willing to risk everything at this point but the anthrax. I think he’s operating in bull-in-the-china-shop mode now. He’s going for it.”

“Then so do we. Let’s look at the copter.”

They had to circle wide around the blazing lab hut. As they did so Smith almost tripped over a form half-buried in the snow.

“Ah, hell!”

It was the body of Professor Trowbridge, casually kicked aside out of the camp walkways and frozen solid in an undignified sprawl. Smith was glad the previous night’s snowfall had encrusted the dead man’s face so that he didn’t have to look down into Trowbridge’s accusing eyes.

“I’m sorry, Jon,” Randi spoke quietly, coming to stand beside him. “I kind of made a hash of things here.”

“It’s not your fault. I set up the situation. I let him come with us.”

The final lesson, Sarge. When you command, you don’t just live with your decisions for today, but forever.

“He asked to come, Jon,” she said, looking at the still form, “and it was his call to make. None of us knew what was waiting for us here.”

“I guess that’s true enough.” He glanced at her, a grim half-smile crossing his face. “Does it make you feel any better?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

They moved on.

When they reached the helipad, they found only a single set of tracks leading up to the Long Ranger through the fresh snow. They also found an ugly brick-sized package strapped around one landing gear strut with electrician’s tape. Smith and Smyslov froze when they saw it, but Randi dropped to her knees beside the float, intently examining the charge. “It’s plastique,” she reported after a moment, “and it hasn’t been fused. Let me have a knife, please.”

Smith passed her his bayonet. “They were probably interrupted by the firefight.”

She carefully cut through the tape binding the charge to the helicopter. Standing, she pitched the explosives as far beyond the wind berm as she could. “It stands to reason that if they were going to blow up the Ranger they wouldn’t bother with sabotaging it as well.”

“That’ll be for you and the major to check out.” Smith looked back toward the burning camp. Where in the hell was Val? After she finished her decoy run she was supposed to rejoin. “How long will it take for you to get this ship airworthy?”

Randi frowned and brushed back her parka hood. “It’s been sitting out here cold-soaking for two days. The book says at least two hours for warm-up, prep, and preflight in this kind of environment.”