Arctic Fire c-9

by Keith Douglass

  Tombstone’s frustrated sigh carried clearly over the radio circuits. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but that can’t stop us from trying. You wouldn’t believe the news media I have breathing down my neck out here.”

  Batman thought he detected something besides true professional annoyance in his old squadron mate’s voice. “One of those news media people wouldn’t happen to be the lovely Miss Pamela Drake, now, would it?” he asked shrewdly.

  If swearing on a Navy radio circuit weren’t prohibited, he could have sworn he heard Tombstone mutter a curse. But then again, the private circuit rigged up between the two admirals was hardly a normal channel.

  “Of course it is! It just wouldn’t seem right, with things going to hell in a hand-basket, if she weren’t around, now, would it?”

  “And how is that working out?” Batman pressed.

  Silence descended on the circuit. Finally, Batman heard Tombstone sigh. “I’d be lying if I told you it was easy,” Tombstone said finally.

  “Does Tomboy know she’s out there?”

  “No. And I’ll thank you not to tell her. I’ll get around to it in my own time, in my own way. The separation hasn’t been easy on either of us.”

  “At least she gets to fly every day,” Batman said, a note of longing in his voice. “I’m tempted to put myself on the schedule for one of those reconnaissance flights.”

  “That was one of the hardest parts of that job, Batman,” Tombstone’s voice said soberly, “realizing that it wasn’t my turn anymore — that I could do more good for the battle group by staying where I was supposed to be, in TFCC and in command, than I could trying to outdo some youngster with faster reflexes and better eyesight.”

  Batman chuckled. “Am I going to be following you around for the rest of my career, Stoney?” he asked, “learning every lesson two years after you’ve learned it?”

  “Up to you, shipmate. You’re going to make mistakes. We all do. I recommend you avoid mine, and make your own.”

  Batman felt the ship shudder as another Tomcat on the cat spooled up to full military power. “You hear that, Stoney?” he asked.

  “The sound of freedom.”

  “Yep, and for all that I get tired of following in your footsteps, I’d sure as hell rather be out here than stuck ashore like you are right now.”

  “Don’t rub it in, asshole. You’ll get your turn ashore. In the meantime, why don’t you see if you can’t rustle up some evidence of what happened to that Greenpeace boat? Out there, you can always have a convenient communications failure. Back here, I can’t seem to get away from these people. Give me something I can use.” Tombstone’s voice took on an ominous, pleading quality.

  “Roger that. I’ll see what we can come up with.”

  Batman replaced the receiver thoughtfully and stared at it for a moment. In the twenty years that he had known Tombstone, he had never known the hotshot Tomcat pilot to sound so beleaguered. Even in the midst of the Spratlys conflict, or engaged in a dogfight over the Norwegian coast, Tombstone had had the ability to maintain an absolutely unflappable demeanor that had earned him his nickname. If shore duty had the ability to make his friend sound like a pussy-whipped lieutenant, then Batman wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it.

  Batman walked out of his cabin, through the Flag Mess, and toward the far entrance to the mess. His chief of staff’s combination stateroom and office was located immediately inside the door to the mess. Batman rapped lightly once on the doorjamb. The chief of staff glanced up from a two-foot stack of paperwork, then immediately stood. “Yes, Admiral?”

  “Let’s get everybody assembled in the briefing room at fifteen hundred, COS,” Batman said. “We need to do some serious thinking about this Greenpeace boat.”

  COS regarded him soberly. “Admiral, you know there’s no chance that those men are still alive. Even if they made it into the rafts, the cold would have killed them by now.” COS shook his head. “A damned shame, but I don’t know what we can do about it at this point.”

  “That’s not what worries me, COS. Sure, we need to make every effort we can to find any survivors. People survive under the damnedest conditions, and if those men and women have the guts to hold out in a life raft, I’ll do my damnedest to find them. But what worries me even more is why they sank in the first place.”

  COS shrugged. “Sounds like a massive engineering casualty to me.”

  Batman looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe. Or they could have even struck a submerged iceberg. All of those are possible explanations. But we don’t get paid the big bucks to think of the easy solutions. I want to make sure we’re all thinking on the same wavelength.”

  “You think they were attacked? By who, a coalition of angry fishermen who want to kill whales?”

  Batman shook his head. “I don’t know, COS. And that’s what worries me. Until we have some evidence of what happened to them, I’m going to assume they wandered into harm’s way. And I want everybody on this ship thinking the same way.”

  0800 Local

  Adak

  Tombstone heard a light rap at his door. He looked up and saw Pamela Drake framed by the doorway.

  “Do you have a moment for me, Admiral?” she asked politely.

  “Only if you’re not going to rake me over the coals,” Tombstone answered. “After yesterday, I’m not up to any more surprises.”

  She walked across the room and settled into the chair in front of his desk with that too-familiar combination of easy grace and sensuality. She crossed her legs, not bothering to yank her skirt down when it rode up over her thighs. “Off the record, Stoney — can I still call you that?”

  He nodded. “There’s a lot of history between us, Pamela. I wouldn’t change a bit of it.”

  “Not even the way it ended?”

  He shook his head. “Neither of us was willing to compromise. I won’t quit flying; you won’t quit hop-scotching around the world in search of the hottest story. It was inevitable. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  She smiled. “I suppose you’re right. Still, it’s good to see you again.”

  “And you as well. Now,” he continued briskly, “what’s on your mind? Still off the record.”

  She looked troubled. “This Greenpeace boat. It’s a tragedy, of course. There are several million of my colleagues out interviewing family members as we speak.” She grimaced, as though disgusted with the inevitable state of how-does-it-feel-to-lose-your-husband questions that were sure to be posed to the surviving families. “And as bad as it is for the men and women who were on that boat, I’m not sure why you’re mobilizing the entire ALASKCOM and a U.S. carrier battle group to look for survivors. As your operations officer said, there’s little chance that the men are alive.”

  “Men and women,” Tombstone corrected. “Two years ago, you would have chided me for making that mistake.”

  “Okay, men and women. But still-“

  “Why are we mobilizing a full-scale SAR exercise when we’re fairly certain that no one survived?” He let his eyes rest on hers, and studied the sea-green eyes flecked with gold. There had been a time when just looking at her brought a thrill of anticipation to him, a tightening and hardening he’d never been able to control.

  Now, seeing her here, he was surprised to find he still had the same reaction. Muted, perhaps, the edges smoothed away by his fascination with Tomboy, but the echoes of their long relationship still sang in his body. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to pull her toward him, run his hand over the smooth curves and sleek skin, feel her body warm to his touch and respond to him. He shook his head and tried to push the image of Pamela naked on the bed beside him out of his head. “A short lesson on governmental politics is in order,” he said, aware that his voice had softened and become more intimate.

  Pamela caught the change. “It’s still there, isn’t it?” she said softly. “Me, too, Stoney.”

  He sighed. “And the more senior each of us gets, the less likely we’ll do anything about it.
For now, let me see if I can bore us both for a few minutes.”

  She regarded him speculatively. “Maybe that’s better for now.”

  “You know about NGOs — nongovernmental organizations,” he began. “They’re always a factor in policy decisions, regardless of whether the government wants to admit it or not. These groups have more power than many of the strongest lobbies in the United States. Things like the American Red Cross, the Ralph Nader groups, the nonprofit corporations-“

  “And Greenpeace,” she finished. “I understand that part, but why is it important now?”

  Tombstone pointed to a large map on the wall behind him. “The Aleutian Islands, that’s why. They stretch from the tip of Alaska in a long, south-curving arc over to Russia. At the closest point, the last Aleutian Island is only eleven miles from Russian soil. For centuries, the people who lived there wandered back and forth between the two countries, ignoring all the political boundaries that we set up from five thousand miles away. But during the Cold War, that changed.”

  “Because they’re so close to Russia?”

  He nodded. “During the days when we were concerned about Russian submarines, the Aleutian Islands contained some of the most advanced listening posts and tracking stations in the world. In addition to that, here on Adak, four P-3C Orion squadrons were stationed in case we ever escalated into full-out war. Up to the north of the Aleutian Islands, in the Bering Sea, the Soviets used to conduct regular ballistic missile patrols. With the long-range missiles on the Delta-IV and the Typhoon ballistic missile submarines, those boats damn near don’t have to leave port to strike any place in the continental United States. But they deployed them to the North Sea, under the ice, to make them harder to find.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what a tactical nightmare it is, trying to track a submarine under the ice. Sonar echoes off the ice overhead as well as off the ocean bottom. The water is so cold that there’s virtually no temperature gradient. Sound energy travels straight to the bottom and, if you’re lucky, might reflect back up to be detected. Add to that the noise caused by ice floes, icebergs calving, and hordes of snapping shrimp, and you’ve got a virtually sonar-proof environment.”

  “So that’s the reason for the Aleutian Island stations. But how does that fit in with Greenpeace?”

  “Downsizing. We can’t afford to maintain all these stations, so it’s essential that we convince the American people that they’re not really needed anymore.”

  “And you’re saying that’s not true?” She reached almost reflectively for her tape recorder, and then forced herself to stillness.

  “I’m not saying anything. We’re off the record, remember? And as to how Greenpeace fits into this — well, they’re a very powerful organization. In the last fifteen years, they’ve developed an array of international contacts and supporters. Most of the time, we’ve been at loggerheads with them. If we do anything except make a full-out push on the search for survivors, the Greenpeace advocates who haunt the halls of Congress will claim that the United States military left them out to die. No one will ever question why they were up there in the first place in a boat not well suited for those waters, or whether some fault on their part led to this tragedy. Instead, it will become all our fault. The military is the favorite punching bag for every problem in the world these days. Someday soon, I expect to see the Navy blamed for crime in the streets and welfare problems.”

  “That’s not fair,” Pamela said sharply. “Many of the things I’ve reported on were the United States Navy’s fault. The problems with women on ships, the death of that aviator — don’t tell me that some of these weren’t caused by the Navy pushing through unqualified people.”

  “We’ve had our problems, true,” Tombstone acknowledged. “But no more than any large organization. You’re talking about somewhere around half a million people — the United States Navy is a huge organization, Pamela. You’re going to get some bad apples in it. There’s no way to screen them all out.”

  “So you’re saying this search for survivors is primarily politically motivated?” She shook her head. “The Tombstone I knew ten years ago wouldn’t have seen it that way.”

  “And the Pamela I knew ten years ago wouldn’t have blind-sided me in a press conference like you did yesterday,” he shot back angrily.

  She stood. “I guess this concludes this off-the-record interview, doesn’t it? And it’s still the same old thing. You and the Navy, that’s all you ever think about.”

  He gazed at her, feeling the sense of familiarity and longing wash out of him. “I guess it is, Miss Drake,” he said softly. “But just remember — you’re the one who said it first.”

  1245 Local

  The Spetsnaz stuffed the four holes bored into the ice with plastic to keep out the blowing ice and snow. That accomplished, the commander ordered them out into a surveillance patrol. The men split up into their two-man teams and began a careful survey of their temporary home.

  The island itself was twenty miles long and five miles wide, and was one of the smaller outcroppings of the Aleutian chain. Two men headed west, examining the first plain that led down to the water. The other two headed east, climbing gear in hand, and set out to explore the ragged crust of ice that formed the upper boundary of the island.

  The first half mile was relatively easy going, and they needed no more equipment than their hands to ascend the steadily increasing slope. After that, however, their progress was broken up by the need to set pitons in the jagged surface and relay up the slopes one after the other. While climbing it freestyle without the aid of ropes and climbing gear was well within their capabilities, their commander had cautioned them that they were to take no chances. With only five men on the island until reinforcements arrived, casualties were completely unacceptable.

  After a brief discussion, the two Spetsnaz commandos headed for the highest peak they could find, a promontory that jutted nine hundred feet above sea level. They spent the better part of an hour climbing it, checking along each stage of the way to make sure their tie-off points and ropes were set securely in the ice. Another time of year, any slight warming might have rendered the surface prone to crumbling, but in December the surface was as hard as rock.

  “You see anything?” the lead climber asked his companion.

  The second man shook his head. “No. Not a damned thing could survive out here, not without the kind of gear we carry.”

  The other man nodded agreement. “Always better to check, though,” he remarked.

  “Well, we’ve done that.” He shivered slightly as the wind picked up, gusting and keening between the sharp crags. “Let’s get back down and report.”

  Suddenly, the other man shook his head and pointed out at the ocean. Since the wind had died down, the swells and breakers pounding against the island had dropped down to four to five feet each. Marching across the ocean in sets of seven, each breaker was flecked with white and capped with a thin froth of foam, the twenty-knot wind still kicking up whitecaps. “Look over there.”

  The second man raised his binoculars and trained them in the direction his companion pointed. He swore quietly. “If I hadn’t seen it-“

  The first man grunted. “Commander isn’t going to like this.” He trained his own binoculars in that direction.

  Perhaps two miles offshore, a small boat plowed through the waves, obviously bound for their island. “Where the hell did they come from?”

  The other man shrugged. “One of the other islands, I guess. Though why the hell they’d bother to come here, I don’t know. Nothing to eat.”

  “Maybe they’re just fishing.”

  His companion shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’ve got some gear on board, but they’re not maneuvering like a fishing boat would. Look, they’re headed straight for us.”

  The other man sighed. “We wait for them to come ashore and take them out, or we go back and report?”

  “Let’s radio back for instructions. I think I know what th
e boss is going to want, but let’s double-check. You know what he told us.”

  The other man grinned wolfishly. “Yes. No survivors.”

  1338 Local

  Kilo 31

  “What do you mean, natives?” Rogov demanded.

  “Just what I said. My men have detected a small boat with approximately six people on board, inbound this location. Unless directed otherwise, I intend to eliminate these complications. Your orders?” The Spetsnaz commander’s voice was harsh and broken over the speaker. The Kilo was moving at steerageway just barely below the surface of the ocean, her antenna poking up above the surface for a scheduled communications break with the team ashore.

  Rogov paused, staring at the microphone, then swore quietly. The key to executing this mission successfully required no interference from outside sources. At the very least, if the natives landed, they would be witnesses. They must be Inuits or Aleuts, or one of the many other bands of native Alaskans that roamed the waters between the islands, foraging from the sea and living as they had for centuries on the desolate islands. Since the Oscar had eliminated the prying Greenpeace intruders, that was the only possible explanation. From what the Spetsnaz commander had said, the boat was too small to attempt trans-Pacific voyages. Therefore, it had to have come from one of the other islands.

  He paused and considered his options. Sinking the Greenpeace boat had been accomplished silently and stealthily with a submarine, and there was no evidence left behind to betray the mission. But Inuits — somebody might miss them, and one of the other isolated islands might have contact with the mainland. Finally, he reached a decision. “Avoid them if possible. If you are observed or if they come ashore, take them hostage. We’ll consider other options at a later time.”

  “Very well.”

  “And I will be joining you ashore tomorrow morning.” He glanced over at the Kilo’s executive officer, who was watching him with a faintly hopeful look on his face. “The Kilo will remain offshore to provide assistance as needed.”