by Tom Clancy
“They killed Qaderi because Kovac reported the trackers. Grim told Kovac we were still in Irkutsk, and the weather was causing problems with the GPS. That’s why the Sikorsky didn’t look for anyone tailing the Lada. My gut tells me they’ll be back—about the time we’d arrive if we’d left Irkutsk when Kovac thinks we did.”
Hansen said, “You and Grim put some thought into this, didn’t you?”
Fisher nodded.
“How long do we wait?” asked Valentina.
“Depends on where the Ajax bots go and how long it takes the Sikorsky to leave.”
THEY got the answer to their first question two hours later, when Hansen called out from where he was sitting against the tunnel wall. “They’re back.” After leaving the site of Qaderi’s execution, the Sikorsky had flown lazy figure-eight patterns up and down the lake’s eastern shore and the foothills beyond. “Looks like its touching down. Thirty miles due east of us, about one and a half miles inland from Ayaya Bay.”
Fisher got the topographical map, unfolded it on the Lada’s hood, and found the spot Hansen had indicated. It sat two-thirds of the way between Ayaya Bay and a smaller V-shaped lake called Frolikha. “Middle of nowhere,” he said. “The perfect spot for a black-market auction.”
“I don’t see any roads,” Gillespie said.
“You’re right. We’re going to need a boat.”
THE Sikorsky returned shortly before noon and spent two hours flying up and down the shoreline, using Sludjanka Lake as a datum. Several times it passed directly over the cliffs outside the tunnel entrance, but it neither slowed nor descended.
As the afternoon wore on the team members grew restless, pacing the tunnel, checking and rechecking their equipment, and cleaning weapons. Fisher gave them something to do, briefing each on what they would be carrying when and if they found the auction site. He’d gotten the same reports before leaving Irkutsk, but the task broke the monotony.
“Communications.” Gillespie began laying out the equipment. “We’ll all have hands-free, voice-activated headsets and microphones. We synced them to the OPSATs. They’re not SVTs or subdermals, but they’ll get the job done.” She donned one of the headsets; it was a commercial cell-phone model with a dangling microphone and a miniature alligator clip. “The audio pickup is decent, but there’s a half-second lag in the voice activation. Also, you need to cup the microphone, bring it to your mouth, and whisper.”
“We also jury-rigged a flexicam,” Valentina said. “It’s primitive—no night vision, EM, or infrared, but the picture’s fairly clear.”
“Good work,” Fisher said. “Ben?”
Hansen laid out their makeshift uniforms: wool-lined black cargo-style pants and heavy black sweaters, a dual layer of silk long underwear, fingerless mittens, and full balaclavas.
Fisher nodded, turned to Noboru. “Time to unveil your project.”
Noboru walked to the Lada, pulled a duffel from the backseat, and returned. He laid out the modified paintball guns and launchers and ran through the operation and specifications. “Hold on,” he said. “Forgot the CO2 cartridges.”
Moments later he called, “Ah, goddamn it . . .”
“What?” Fisher called.
“Better come see for yourself.”
Fisher and the others walked to the rear of the Lada. Noboru was standing beside the open tailgate. Fisher felt his stomach lurch. He leaned into the cargo area and looked around.
Ames was gone.
AFTER passing out the Groza assault rifles, Fisher left Hansen and Valentina at the tunnel entrance and took Noboru and Gillespie deeper into the mine. A few hundred yards in, at a triple branch in the tunnel, they found a pair of flex-cuffs lying on the ground. They each took a tunnel and searched for fifteen minutes before meeting back at the branch.
“Nothing,” Noboru said.
“Me neither,” replied Gillespie. “I counted nine side tunnels in mine. There have to be other entrances. We can check the map, then split up and find a way around the cliffs—”
“No,” Fisher said. “Forget him.”
“Forget him?” Noboru repeated. “This is Ames we’re talking about. After what he did—”
“We’ve got what we need from him. He’s irrelevant now,” Fisher said. This was only partially true. Ames had given Hansen the location of his insurance stash against Kovac, but if the case ever saw the inside of a courtroom, without Ames a conviction was uncertain. Right now, however, his team didn’t need such worries clouding their thinking. “Focus on the mission,” Fisher told them.
THEY waited until nightfall, then packed up and left the tunnels, picking their way back down the rutted tract to the main road, where they turned north and drove until the lights of Severobaikalsk came into view. They pulled off the road, shut off their engines and headlights, and waited for another two hours until, slowly, the town’s lights began going out.
“Early to bed, early to rise,” Gillespie muttered.
“Not much nightlife on a Tuesday night in Severobaikalsk,” replied Noboru.
Fisher started the engine. “Let’s go steal ourselves a boat.”
36
WITH its hundreds of river outlets, Lake Baikal’s surface generally stays ice free until mid January and clears by the end of May, but this year was an exception, Fisher found as they reached the middle of the lake and the first pancake ice chunks began scraping down the hull. In both boats the team members looked around warily. From his seat in the bow Fisher spread his hands in the baseball “safe” signal. The ice was too brittle and thin to damage the hulls of their johnboats. So shallow were their drafts that in the worst case the flat bottom rectangular craft could skim over the ice with little trouble.
As it was still early in the season, the tiny Severobaikalsk marina had offered them few choices of transportation: sailboats, fishing trawlers with diesel engines, or skiff-sized craft like their johnboats. The electric trolling motors were virtually silent, if not particularly powerful: After two hours of travel they were only halfway to Ayaya Bay.
Fisher donned his night-vision headset again and did a 360-degree scan. He saw neither lights nor shapes. They had the lake to themselves. A hundred yards off the bow he could see a low fog clinging to the water’s surface. He looked left, caught Hansen’s attention, and gestured for him to steer closer. When their gunwales were within a few feet of each other, Fisher whispered to Gillespie in the seat behind him, and she threw across the painter, which Noboru secured to the cleat.
The fog enveloped them.
WITH no points of reference except for occasional glimpses of the neighboring boat in the swirling fog, time seemed to slow. In Fisher’s boat Gillespie had moved to the stern to help Valentina navigate; Hansen and Noboru had teamed up in the other. The steady hum of the electric motors had a lulling effect on Fisher. The days and weeks of being on the run, of infrequent and insufficient sleep, were catching up to him. He leaned over the side, scooped up a handful of icy water, and splashed his face.
He checked his OPSAT. Five miles to go.
AT two miles Fisher signaled to Valentina to cut the engine; Hansen heard this and did the same. They drifted ahead until the boats came to a halt and began gently rocking. For ten minutes they sat still, listening. They heard nothing but the lapping of water against the hulls. Fisher scanned with the night vision and saw nothing
At two-minute increments over the next half hour they repeated the process—engines off, glide to a stop, listen, scan—until Fisher’s OPSAT told him they were at the mouth of Ayaya Bay. He ordered the motors lifted and the oars broken out.
They began paddling.
CONCENTRATING on even, silent strokes rather than speed, the last two miles to the beach took another hour. With an extra pair of hands, Fisher’s boat pulled slightly ahead, and when his OPSAT’s distance reading scrolled down to a hundred yards, he stopped paddling and untied the painter connecting the boats. On the slim chance there were guards posted, he didn’t want to risk the jo
hnboats bumping into each other. The gong of aluminum would travel clearly over the water.
He started sounding for the bottom with his oar. Sixty feet from shore, the tip plunged into mud. Fisher handed his oar back to Gillespie, then slipped over the side into the water. Hansen followed a moment later, and they began towing the boats until the water was only waist high. Noboru, Gillespie, and Valentina climbed out and helped drag the boats onto the sand.
Quickly and quietly, they unloaded their gear, ran a final weapons and equipment check, and donned their packs. Fisher checked his OPSAT. As they had been since early afternoon, the Ajax bots showed as a tight cluster two miles inland, sitting between them and Lake Frolikha. Again, Fisher found himself wondering where in the middle of thick, almost impassible Siberian forest did someone find a suitable spot for the auction. They would soon know.
He looked at each of the team members and got nods and thumbs-up signs in return.
In a staggered single file, they set off into the darkness.
WHAT none of them knew, and none of their maps showed, was that the area between Lake Frolikha and Ayaya Bay was part of the Great Baikal Trail. According to the sign they found higher up the beach, the non-profit, volunteer-driven project hoped to create a series on interconnected trails that circumnavigated the entire lake. Six years into the task, the trail was halfway done.
This again raised the issue of why this area had been chosen for the auction site. Admittedly the area was remote and the hiking season had not yet fully begun, but to go as far as holding the auction in Siberia only to place it astride the Great Baikal Trail . . . Something didn’t add up. Even so, Fisher knew better than to overanalyze the gift. The trail would not only save them hours but also the effort of blazing their own path.
Taking fifteen-minute turns walking point, they made quick progress, covering a half mile in twenty minutes despite frequent stops to look and listen for signs of guards. By 3:00 A.M. they had closed to within a quarter mile of the Ajax signal. Fisher resumed point and led them forward until the trees began to thin and they found themselves at the edge of an oval-shaped meadow. In the moonlight stalks of brown grass and weeds jutted through the foot-thick blanket of snow. On the north side of the meadow sat a square, cinder-block hut with a rusted sheet-metal roof.
Fisher called Hansen up and whispered, “Take Gillespie and circle around to the east side of the meadow. Check for signs of foot traffic, sensors—anything out of place.”
“Got it.” Hansen collected Gillespie and they disappeared back down the trail. Noboru and Valentina moved up beside Fisher. He gestured to them to scan, and all three started panning their binoculars across the meadow. Twenty minutes passed, and then Hansen’s voice came over Fisher’s headset: “In position. No off-trail foot traffic, no sensors, no guards. There’s something interesting at your eleven o’clock, though, in the center of the meadow.”
“What is it?”
“I know what it looks like to me, but you better check for yourself.”
Fisher adjusted his binoculars to the appropriate area and zoomed in. “Got it,” he confirmed. He’d missed it the first time, but now the parallel ruts in the snow were unmistakable. Helicopter landing skids. “Our missing Sikorsky,” he said.
“My thought as well. We’re right on top of the touchdown coordinates.”
The Ajax hadn’t left the meadow. There was only one place they could be.
“Move back to the hut,” Fisher told Hansen.
When both teams were in position, Fisher took a final look through the night-vision goggles, then whispered, “Move in.”
In unison Hansen and Gillespie and Fisher and his two cohorts stepped from the trees and started toward the hut, their Grozas held low at the ready. As arranged, Hansen circled behind the hut, Fisher in front, where they joined up. A faded metal sign with red Cyrillic letters read METEOROLOGICAL STATION 29. The hut had only one entrance, a heavy steel door set into the cinder block; like the roof, it was pitted with rust. Fisher crept up to the door, then turned, signaled Hansen forward, and pointed at the door’s padlock.
It was brand-new.
37
FISHER knelt down before the lock and realized it was more than brand-new. It was a Sargent & Greenleaf 833 military-grade padlock—six-pin Medeco biaxial core, anticutting and grinding ceramic inserts, liquid nitrogen resistant.
“This must be one special meteorological station,” Hansen whispered. “Can we pick the lock?”
“If we had a few hours, maybe. Semtex would do the trick, too, but we’d probably have company before the smoke cleared. Fisher stood up and backed away from the hut. “Not big enough,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s not big enough to hold the 738 Arsenal.”
“Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe it’s not here.”
Fisher shook his head. “Why did the Sikorsky land here? And why the lock? If the arsenal isn’t here, then it’s just Qaderi’s laptop and phone sitting inside this hut.”
“That may be, but we’re not getting past that door.”
“Let’s find another one, then.”
They retreated to the trees and crouched down in a circle. Fisher briefly explained what they were looking for, then assigned each of them a search area. “One hour. If we don’t find anything, we regroup here.”
FORTY minutes later, Valentina called, “Got something. Three-quarters of a mile north of the hut. Placing a marker on the OPSAT now.”
They converged on her position: a narrow, six-foot-deep ravine bordered by scrub pines. Fisher whispered to her,
“Where?”
“Dead ahead, about twenty yards. See that rock outcrop sticking up beside the stump?”
Fisher followed her outstretched arm with his eyes. It took him a moment to see it—a nearly perfect circle of melted snow around the outcrop. Fisher signaled for the group to wait, then donned the night vision goggles and crept ahead. He was still six feet away from the outcrop when he felt the warm breeze. He continued forward, extended his hand, and stuck it into a niche in the rocks. His hand touched something metal.
IT took minutes of painstakingly quiet work to move the rocks away from the air vent. It was roughly the size of a manhole cover and consisted of steel crossbars. Fisher stuck his fingers through the gaps and felt around the edge. He found neither a locking mechanism nor alarm wires. He pointed to Noboru and together they squatted over the cover, gripped the bars, and lifted. It came free. They crab-walked it a few feet away and gently set it down. Fisher put his NV goggles back on and leaned into shaft. Beyond ten feet he saw nothing but darkness.
Gillespie already had her rope coil detached from her pack. Hand over hand, she lowered the end into the shaft. She stopped and reeled in the rope, counting turns on her arm as she went. She held up three fingers, then five fingers. Thirty-five feet to the bottom.
Fisher gave her the nod.
ONCE they had the rope tied off to the trunk and measured out thirty-five feet, plus another five for safety’s sake, Gillespie severed the remainder and tied the rope to a Swiss seat rappelling harness. After a few adjustments, she secured herself in the seat, gave the group a nod and a smile, and lowered herself into the shaft.
A minute later her voice came over their headsets. “Down and clear.”
Fisher went next, followed by Valentina, Noboru, and then Hansen. Having already cleared the space with her night vision, Gillespie had set one of her LED flashlights upright on the concrete floor, casting a pale cone of light on the ceiling.
The room was ten feet long and roughly triangular, with the ceiling angling away from the overhead shaft to a half wall into which was set a doorway. Running down the middle of the floor was more vent grating. Warm air gusted past them and rushed out the shaft above. Somewhere below they could hear the faint pumping of machinery. Fisher turned on his headlamp and walked through the other door. He emerged thirty seconds later.
“It’s a utility room. There’s another door. I che
cked the circuit panel. Some of the lights are on somewhere.”
“More signs of life,” Hansen said.
“How big is this place?” Noboru wondered aloud.
Fisher replied, “Judging by the panel, damned big. There were a few hundred switches. A service tag read March of ’62.”
“Almost fifty years old,” Valentina said. “Cold War era. What do you think—bunker, test facility?”
“Either or both. Let’s pair up and do a little recon. Hansen and Gillespie; Noboru and Valentina. Stay sharp and stay in touch. Any trouble, we collapse back here.”
“That leaves you on your own,” Hansen observed.
Fisher smiled. It was strange to hear a fellow Splinter Cell talk about solo work as if it were an aberration. Kids these days. Then again, he reminded himself, there was something strange about working and living alone and considering that normal. He’d been under too long.
“I’ll get by,” he said.
ONCE through the utility-room door they found themselves in a wide, low-ceilinged corridor. On the concrete floor painted lines in fading green, red, and yellow led away in both directions. Stenciled on each line were what looked like three-letter Cyrillic acronyms. There were no lights. Everyone donned their night-vision headsets.
Fisher flipped a mental coin and pointed the others down the corridor to the left; he would take the right. With nods, the groups parted company and headed out.
FISHER hadn’t gotten fifty feet before Hansen’s voice came over his headset. “Sam, I’ve got something you’ll want to see.” He checked his OPSAT and saw the four of them were clustered together in the main corridor, fifty yards to the south. “On my way,” he replied. When he got there, he found the group standing before the wall, shining their flashlights on a four-foot-square Plexiglas placard. It was a map of the facility.
