Charon's Landing - v4

by Jack Du Brul

  “Eddie, what’s our ETA to Elmendorf AFB?”

  “I don’t know, I filed a flight plan to Fairbanks. What’s at Elly?”

  “A couple of helicopter gunships and some gung-ho soldiers.” Mercer grinned at Rice. “There’s no way I’m going to get shot at again.”

  “Amen to that, brother.” Rice smiled back, his teeth looking iridescent in the glow of the cockpit. “I’d say about another hour and ten minutes in these conditions.”

  “As soon as you can, get me in radio contact with them. They’re expecting my call.” Mercer then switched to a more relaxed tone. “So, how does your wife like living up here?”

  “She doesn’t,” Rice said ruefully. “She and I split up while I was still in the hospital. It seems I wasn’t the only one receiving injections from my doctor at Pearl.”

  “Man, I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, shit. Life goes on, don’t it? Besides, a black man up here? I get more ass than I can handle.” Eddie’s grin was back, though there was a hint of sad bitterness in his voice.

  An hour later, Anchorage was a bright blur on the ground beneath the JetRanger. The waters of Cook Inlet were an inky black stain. The storm that had pounded Valdez during the afternoon had moved northward and now pummeled Alaska’s Queen City. Rain lashed the helicopter, striking the windshield so hard that it sounded like stones thrown against the Plexiglas. The wipers turned the torrent into arcing streaks across their field of vision. Wind rocked the craft, sluing it dangerously despite Eddie’s best efforts. He made no apology for his flying. His face was tight with concentration, his hands and feet dancing over the controls. A pilot of lesser skill wouldn’t have dared flying tonight.

  “Alyeska Flight One-eleven, we have you on radar twelve miles out, flying three-oh-five degrees.”

  “Roger that, Elmendorf,” Eddie confirmed. “ETA in five minutes. Approach three-ten, squawk zero-two-two-zero. Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed One-eleven.”

  “You know what you’re doing?” Mercer teased Rice.

  “No clue.”

  Four minutes and forty seconds later, Eddie settled the Bell chopper onto the tarmac near a huge corrugated steel hangar. Two Huey UH-1 troop transport helicopters were next to the spot where ATC had sent the Alyeska helicopter, and even in the murky light spilling from the hangars, they looked deadly. The side doors were open, revealing gimbal mounted M-60 heavy machine guns. Even before the JetRanger’s blades stopped turning, technicians were swarming around the craft, oblivious to the icy rain buffeting the airfield. A fuel truck drew alongside and two men prepared to attach the thick hose to the chopper.

  Mercer ducked from the JetRanger, dashing for the protective cover of the hangar, his boots kicking up violent waves in the puddles on the asphalt. A cold chill lapped under the raised collar of his leather coat, and his hands felt frozen by the time he entered the glowing hangar.

  The huge building’s heating eased the chill on Mercer’s exposed skin, but his insides were still cold with fear and apprehension. Two delta-shaped F-15 Strike Eagles dominated the space, their twin tails rising up almost twenty feet from the polished concrete floor. Behind them, at the back of the hangar, a cluster of men waited quietly, their faces blackened with camouflage grease, their M-16A1 assault rifles held competently in demigloved hands. They paid little attention to Mercer as he approached, satisfying themselves with a dismissive glance before turning back to the perpetual task of checking and rechecking equipment. Mercer kept walking toward them, and finally a single man detached himself from the collective.

  He was short and heavily built, with bristle-cut hair and a face that needed a razor. His brows were heavy tangles of wiry hair that met above his hooked nose. His eyes were dark and wrinkled at their corners, but Mercer saw that they were level and quick. His mouth, incongruously, was full-lipped and sensitive.

  “Colonel Knoff?”

  “You must be Mercer.” Knoff’s handshake was like having a hand caught in some sort of farm machine, a relentless grinding pressure. Mercer briefly considered matching Knoff’s handshake but realized this wasn’t some sort of macho test, just Knoff’s natural grip. “I gotta say, you’ve caught us a little off guard here. An hour ago, I was watching porno movies with a few of the guys, and next thing I know, I’m on the phone with General Samuel Kelly, the Air Force’s Chief of Staff. I can’t even guess who you are to pull that kind of string.”

  Mercer immediately liked Knoff’s attitude. He didn’t have a career soldier’s disdain for anyone not in uniform. It was clear that he hadn’t forgotten that it was civilians he was trained to serve. “Ask any politician and he’ll tell you I’m the most powerful person in the country.” Mercer smiled. “An American tax-payer.”

  “You mind telling me what this is all about?”

  Mercer could understand Colonel Knoff’s question and the concern he felt for his men that made him ask it, but none of them had the time to stand around and discuss it. He had to get them moving.

  “Colonel, if I’ve managed to convince your superiors about this mission’s importance, put your trust in their judgment and just go along with it. This may be a waste of your time, but if it’s not, if I’m right, we’re going to face a seriously hot LZ. I can’t give you any of the overall picture, but I need to know if you have any tactical questions about tonight’s op. If you don’t ask now, some of your boys may not be coming back.”

  “Mr. Mercer, I wouldn’t worry about us.” The ramrod in Knoff’s back got about two degrees straighter, if such a thing was possible. “General Kelly briefed us on what to expect. What bothers me is the presence of you and your slick in our convoy. My pilots don’t know your man, and the last thing we need is a civilian helicopter flying in the same area where we’re making a hot drop.”

  Mercer had expected such a concern, and his reply was the reassurance that Knoff wanted. “I flew with this pilot during last year’s flap in Hawaii. Plus, he’s ex-navy and a Gulf War veteran. I plan to keep us a couple miles back from your landings and monitor from the radio. You guys are the ones who make the big bucks for getting shot at, not us. Have your lead pilot give instructions to my man, and he’ll follow them to the letter.”

  “What about you, what’s your experience?” Knoff asked.

  “Were you in Iraq?” Knoff nodded. “I’d already been in and out before the Abrams tanks broke through the berms. I was a specialist for Delta Force’s Operation Prospector, to make sure none of you boys faced nukes on the battlefield. I’ve probably seen more firefights than all of your troops combined, and we can sit here all night and compare scars, but I don’t have the time. Anything else?”

  Knoff was slightly taken aback by Mercer’s response. The Special Forces community, though rife with interservice rivalries, was close-knit, and stories of black operations circled freely in watered-down versions to avoid compromising ongoing missions. It was obvious in his reaction that Knoff had heard of Operation Prospector and knew that a civilian had turned a debacle into a success while saving most of the team sent to protect him. “No, sir. That should do it. I’ve got the coordinates for the pump stations and the quick sketch map faxed to us by a guy named Lindstrom. I figured we’d hit both simultaneously.”

  “Negative,” Mercer replied evenly. “If we split your forces, we’ll be outgunned and probably outmanned. By the time we get up there, I’ll have the intel on which station was taken.”

  “All right.” Knoff didn’t have any more questions.

  “Then let’s go,” Mercer said with more bravado than he felt.

  IVAN Kerikov settled into a chair behind the pump control console, a Heckler and Koch MP-5 resting across his knees. The corpses of the few Alyeska employees who’d remained at the station had already been dumped outside. He removed his heavy overcoat and was thinking about taking off the bulky black sweater he wore beneath it. In the late 1970s, he’d been attached to a KGB commando team as an intelligence officer. As a training mission, they’d once had to r
etake a “terrorist-occupied” natural gas pumping station deep in the heart of Siberia. He’d never forgotten the loneliness of the station far out in the tundra or how drab and utilitarian and unbearably cold the facility had been. Expecting much the same in Alaska, he’d dressed several layers too thick for the assault on Pump Station Number 5.

  So far, overdressing had been his only miscalculation.

  Ever since he’d arrived in Alaska, he’d been plagued by set-backs, delays, and a thousand other problems. He’d handled them all in his typical manner. If the problem is mechanical, replace it; if it’s timing, stall it; and if it’s human, kill it. But now, all his groundwork was paying off. Thanks to the former captain of the Petromax Arctica and the PEAL workers, there were eighteen hundred tons of liquid nitrogen encasing strategic parts of the Alaska Pipeline. The specially built packs needed to keep the supercooled fluid from prematurely freezing the pipeline were disguised as the metal sleeving that encased the forty-eight-inch-high carbon steel pipe. The nitrogen packs had been so well built that even close inspection by Alyeska workers couldn’t differentiate them from the normal sleeves. Kerikov had gone so far as to have them weathered to duplicate the quarter century of wear the pipeline had withstood. To the inspectors, the slightly larger size of the packs never raised any suspicion, and some of them had been in place for months.

  Using PEAL had been Kerikov’s greatest masterstroke. But as he sat in the control room, he allowed himself one more degree of conceit and admitted that creating PEAL had been the masterstroke. Hasaan bin-Rufti had been leery of Kerikov’s plan. He had wanted to use some of his own people to carry out the delicate operation of placing the nitrogen packs, but Kerikov had pointed out that fifty Arabs running all over Alaska would arouse too much suspicion. However, Kerikov said, a group of environmental activists, common all over the United States and especially in Alaska since the President’s announcement about the Arctic Refuge, wouldn’t raise even an eyebrow, let alone an alarm. Like the purloined letter, they could hide in plain sight, protesting at various sites and cities along the pipeline’s route while their companions booby-trapped the pipe.

  The beauty of PEAL, too, was that they didn’t know that their actions had a darker motive. Jan Voerhoven and his sad band of codependent flotsam didn’t realize that their sabotage went so far beyond an environmental statement. They naively believed that when the nitrogen was released it would freeze the oil in the line and forever prevent the Trans-Alaska Pipeline from transporting crude. They believed this because it was what Kerikov had told them and was what they wanted to believe. Not one of them had ever considered that just freezing the line would present only a temporary setback to Alyeska and the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

  Voerhoven was the worst of them. He was intelligent, probably possessed a genius IQ for all Kerikov knew, but he was warped by his inflated ego. Ivan Kerikov had transformed him from a member of the lunatic fringe into a driving force in the war on industrialism, and Voerhoven thought that he’d done it all on his own. Twenty years with the KGB in various functions had taught Kerikov how to manipulate others. Sometimes it took money and sometimes fear; with Jan Voerhoven, all it took was a little ego stroking and the Dutchman was off and running. By the time PEAL began setting the packs around the pipeline, Voerhoven had convinced himself that the idea for the strike had been his all along.

  “Sir.” One of Kerikov’s people entered the control room, a dusting of snow covering his wide shoulders. “It’ll take another two hours to secure the nitrogen packs.” He spoke in German-accented Russian and his voice was apologetic. “Our intelligence didn’t specify that the pipeline would be so high off the ground when it reaches this station. We only have two trucks equipped with cranes, so the work is slowed considerably.”

  Kerikov’s feeling of self-satisfaction evaporated.

  The final packs, the linchpin for the entire operation, had been lost when one of them had split during transfer from the Arctica to the fishing boat Jenny IV. Captain Albrecht had had one of his arms frozen off when it was doused in two-hundred-degrees-below-zero nitrogen. During the confusion following the accident, a fire had broken out on the Jenny IV. The crew of the boat had been unable to put it out before it boiled the cryogenic tanks already stowed aboard. The resulting explosion had all but destroyed the fishing boat. JoAnn Riggs had assured Kerikov that the hulk wouldn’t float for more than an hour after they cut her away from the tanker. Of course, the Jenny IV hadn’t sunk and was discovered the next day. Though Kerikov had been forced to act against the men who found the derelict, his more pressing demand was to find additional liquid nitrogen and get it in position. The original KGB blueprint for Charon’s Landing had called for eighty tons of liquid nitrogen to be placed in a remote area on the downward leg of the pipeline as it descended the Brooks Range, fifty miles north of his present location. Without that quantity of nitrogen to work with, Kerikov had had to modify the plan and place a much smaller amount directly at Pump Station 5.

  He’d timed the attack so there would be only about twelve hours between the assault on the pump station and the release of the nitrogen, but every second they spent here increased their chances of either being caught or being forced to release the nitrogen prematurely, reducing its effect. In a small way, he blamed himself for not telling Voerhoven to sabotage this critical section during the beginning of the operation and not waiting for it to be the last set of packs coupled to the pipeline. Coming here was a calculated risk, but like any calculating man, Kerikov planned to stack the odds in his favor.

  “Tell your men to stop helping the PEAL members placing the packs. I know it’ll slow us further, but I need you and your troops ready for the American response. By now, they must know we’re here. I expect a counterassault shortly.” Kerikov spoke with confidence. He was back in his element. “Deploy the Grails and the RPG-7s and send a vehicle down the road as a rear guard. The authorities haven’t had enough time to organize their attack, which gives us the tactical advantage. And remember to make sure the missile strikes count. If you miss even one of their helicopters, they’ll be able to radio for reinforcements. I’m sure by now, those vans of Alyeska employees that were run off the road by the trucks have attracted police interest. The cops could show up quickly if they knew something was happening here.”

  While the brunt of the PEAL activists had arrived at Pump Station 5 in the lumbering trucks transporting the heavy nitrogen packs, Ivan Kerikov, Jan Voerhoven, and Kerikov’s two bodyguards had flown to the station in a helicopter. He thought that if the Americans managed to land a large number of shock troops, they could use the chopper again to escape, leaving the environmentalists to fend for themselves.

  If Voerhoven had any misgivings about allowing his people to be used as cannon fodder, it didn’t show. He was outside, braving the arctic storm, cheering on his workers like this was some great adventure that they would all reminisce about in the years to come.

  There was no way Kerikov would allow any of them to live even if they somehow survived the imminent American attack. He smiled tightly and lit a cigarette.

  VLCC Southern Cross

  According to the tiny constellation of luminous dots on Lyle Hauser’s watch, it was twenty minutes before midnight, twenty minutes until his deadline for Chief Engineer Patroni to shield Hauser’s launching of the lifeboat from the vessel. But that would not happen now. Those twenty minutes would tick by. Midnight would come. Then go.

  An hour earlier, he’d heard a rippling stitch of automatic gunfire through the lifeboat’s fiberglass hull. The shots sounded as if they’d come from the bridge, but to Hauser, the sound was as deadly as if he’d been shot himself as he lay cocooned under layers of blankets, the crumbs of iron ration crackers sprinkled around him. The gunfire could only mean that Patroni had been prevented from deactivating the bridge indicators for the three lifeboats. JoAnn Riggs and her terrorist comrades must have discovered Patroni’s actions and killed him, sawing his body
in half with lead slugs from their Uzi machine pistols. Hauser couldn’t get the gruesome image out of his mind.

  All was lost. Riggs would surely investigate why Patroni wanted to disable the indicator panel, and trapped as he was, there was nothing Hauser could do. There were no weapons in the craft, only an orange flare pistol, its great muzzle over twice the size of a ten-gauge shotgun. But to fire it within the life raft was tantamount to suicide. The phosphorus flare would ignite the boat, its toxic fumes overcoming anyone trapped within, leaving them incapacitated as liquefied plastic and fiberglass poured onto their inert bodies as the craft melted around them.

  Ten minutes till midnight.

  Patroni was dead, but maybe Riggs didn’t know what he had been attempting, Hauser hoped. Maybe he could hide in the hyperbaric lifeboat for a few more hours and then decide what was best, not only for himself but for the rest of the crew. If he launched now, the panel on the bridge would light up, sounding a number of alarms. Riggs would have plenty of time to send a soldier to investigate long before Hauser could motor away from the tanker. A machine gun from the stern rail would make his the shortest escape in history.

  He began working on a new plan. It was obvious that he couldn’t get off the Southern Cross undetected. Riggs and her followers had the ship locked up too tight. His only hope lay in sabotaging the vessel again and making sure that she didn’t reach a continental port. Hauser remembered hearing how important it was to Riggs that the tanker reach Seattle. According to his dead reckoning, they were still a day away from Washington’s port city.

  Suddenly a nearby voice called into the night, “Checking aft lifeboat now.”