The Arctic Event

by Robert Ludlum

  In the cargo bay, Smith locked one arm around a seat brace and the other around Valentina as the radical evasion threatened to hurl them both out of the plunging aircraft. For a fragment of a second they could see the anthrax reservoir lashing wildly at the end of its sling cable, threatening to sweep down on them like Thor’s hammer. Then they were past and diving clear, beneath and behind the Halo.

  Smith stuck his head out into the slipstream, looking after the fate of the stricken heavy lifter, hoping, praying to see the sling cable breaking or the big helicopter spinning down out of the sky. For a few heartening moments the Halo did seem to stagger on the verge of departing control. Then it stabilized and resumed its remorseless drone to the southeast.

  The outer islands of the archipelago lay very close now.

  Randi swung in behind the larger helicopter once more, climbing for position. When she called back, her voice was light. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had it with this. I’m just going to go up there and stick a pontoon in his rotors. We’ll land a little lopsided, but that’s okay.”

  It was the casual declaration of a kamikaze run. Tapping the Halo’s rotor with one of the Ranger’s floats would indeed finish the job. But the odds of the Long Ranger surviving the resulting kinetic explosion and spray of disintegrating blade fragments were almost nonexistent.

  Randi knew this full well. So did Smith and so did Valentina. The black-haired historian gave him an ironic smile and a faint throwaway shrug of her shoulders. It was the way of the trade. It must always be the job and getting the job done. Survival was not mandatory, especially with the lives of thousands in the balance.

  There was no sense in prolonging matters. Randi had them positioned above and behind the lumbering Halo once more, poised to strike. Before giving the word, Smith took a final look around the Long Ranger’s interior, seeking for some asset, some option, that he might have overlooked.

  There was simply nothing left. Only the big aluminum carryall of lab gear and his half-emptied backpack, a few loops of well-used climbing rope drooling out of it.

  And then Jon Smith grinned, a tight, humorless, feral grin.

  “What are they doing now?” It was growing harder to yell over the engines. Kretek could feel the weakness creeping upon him. The crude tourniquet on his shattered arm was only slowing the growth of the blood pool at his feet.

  “How the fuck should I know?” the pilot raged back, casting a longing look at the release lever. “They’re hanging behind us again.”

  “Hold your course.” Kretek stumbled back toward the crane cab amidships. From where they huddled near the open doorways he could feel his men’s eyes upon him. They were starting to fail; they were beginning to fear death more than they feared Anton Kretek. And Kretek felt the first shadow of that fear himself.

  How could he be beaten by someone called Jon Smith?

  Somehow the arms merchant knew it was the American team leader from Wednesday Island back there. The man the college professor had spoken of but whom he, Kretek, had never met face to face. Who was he? Who was this anonymous man with the bland name to end so many dreams and plans?

  Painfully Kretek hauled himself into the glass-walled crane cab, looking astern.

  There it was! The Long Ranger was almost on top of them again, diving in like a striking hawk. And this time there was something suspended beneath the smaller helicopter.

  As if it were aping the Halo and its sling load of anthrax, a silver metal case dangled below one of the Long Ranger’s pontoons on a rope. And a man was braced in the side hatch of the Ranger, feeding the rope over the side. Kretek had an impression of dark hair flattened in the rotor wash, and hard, fine-planed features and narrowed, intent eyes that cut across the distance between them like a cold blue death ray. This, then, was Smith. This was his executioner. Kretek bellowed a wordless cry of denial and rage and horror.

  The heavy equipment case dipped into the Halo’s rotor sweep. Smith felt the end of climbing rope smoke out from between his gloved hands as the case was smashed and hurled away by a blade tip.

  Smith rolled back into the Long Ranger’s cargo compartment, Valentina helping to drag him through the side hatch. “Randi,” he yelled, “get us out of here!”

  A savage, racketing vibration jackhammered through the Halo’s frame as Kretek staggered back toward the cockpit. The pilot was fighting with the blood-smeared controls, his dead copilot looking on, his near-severed head shaking sardonically.

  “That’s it!” the pilot screamed. “We’ve got to jettison and land!”

  “No,” Kretek fell back on the threat of his leveled automatic. “Keep going.”

  “You stupid son of a bitch! We’ve taken a major blade strike! The fucking rotor assembly’s coming apart! If we don’t land now we are going to fucking die!”

  The pilot grabbed for the sling release, and Kretek used the last of his strength to smash his gun butt down on the groping hand.

  “No!”

  Then all time for debate was past. The Halo’s tortured transmission exploded like a howitzer shell. Centrifugal force hurled fifty-foot rotors away like thrown sword blades, and the Halo pitched over into its death dive, the white ice and black water of the pack below filling the shattered windscreen as it rushed toward them.

  Anton Kretek screamed like the trapped animal he was. Emptying his pistol into the pilot, he denied the Canadian an extra second or two of life.

  They watched as smoke and sparks streamed back from the Halo’s engine bays; then the rotor assembly came apart and tore away, and the massive helicopter assumed the flight dynamics of a filing cabinet.

  Pitching over onto its nose, it plummeted toward the sea ice. With gravity’s tension off the sling tether, the bioagent reservoir seemed to float beside the falling hulk of the heavy lifter, the maimed aircraft and its canister of death tangled in an entwining, dream-slow dance.

  Then they hit, and a mushroom of black and scarlet flame sprouted and grew over the huge hole blasted through the ice.

  “What about the anthrax, Jon?” Valentina inquired, watching the fireball.

  “Flame and seawater,” Smith replied. “You couldn’t ask for two better spore destroyers.”

  “That’s it, then?’

  “That’s it.” Smith looked forward into the cockpit. His throat was raw from yelling and his lungs burned from the cold. As his adrenaline load burned out he was suddenly aware of the aching bruises from the previous night’s icefall. It was becoming harder to force the words out. “Randi, do you think you can find the Haley from here?”

  “With the radios working, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

  “Then take us back to the ship. Somebody else can pick up the pieces back on Wednesday.”

  “I hear that!”

  Smith slammed the side hatches shut and collapsed with his back to the pilot seats. Unbidden, his eyes closed, and he was only dimly aware of a warmth beside him: Valentina’s head resting lightly on his shoulder.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Ascension Island

  It was early spring in the South Atlantic, but a storm had rolled in with the sunset. The ghost blue runway lights of Wideawake Field glowed through a watery mist, and rain dripped from the wings of the two huge jet transports sitting side by side on the most isolated parking apron of the joint UK/US air facility. One, a Boeing 747 wearing the blue and white livery of the Presidential Squadron; the other, an Ilyushin 96, it’s opposite number from the Russian Federation.

  The world at large did not know of the presence of the two aircraft here, nor of the meeting between the two national leaders they carried. As armed sentries circled the sodden parking apron, a confrontation without records or witnesses took place in a soundproof, electronically screened briefing room aboard Air Force One.

  “I recognize it’s sometimes necessary for a President to lie to his constituency,” Samuel Castilla said coldly to the lean, aristocratic figure seated across the conference table fr
om him, “but I damn well don’t like having to abuse the privilege. I especially don’t like having to lie to those people about how their family members died. It leaves a sick taste in my mouth.”

  “What other choice do we have, Samuel?” President Potrenko replied patiently. “To rip open the healing wounds of the Cold War? To set the rapprochement between our nations back by decades? To play into the hands of the hardliners on both sides who say the United States and Russia are meant to be hereditary enemies?”

  “You spin that line very smoothly, Yuri, and so do my advisors and the State Department, but even if I accept it, I still don’t have to like it.”

  “This I can understand, Samuel. I know you to be a man of conscience and honor”—the corner of the Russian’s mouth quirked—“possibly too much so for the realities of our profession. But we need more time. We have to let more of the old Cold Warriors die, and we have to move the fear further into the past. But at least you will have the consolation of knowing the truth will come out in the end.”

  “Oh, it will, Yuri. You can bank on it. We’re in agreement that in twenty years’ time all documentation on the Wednesday Island incident and the March Fifth Event will be unsealed and there will be a full joint disclosure by both governments.”

  “It is agreed.”

  Castilla pressed the point home. “Said pact to be made over our signatures and with the two of us accepting the full responsibility for the secrecy lockdown and the whitewash.”

  Potrenko’s eyes flickered toward the tabletop; then he nodded. “It is agreed. Until that day, the members of the Wednesday Island science expedition perished in the tragic fuel dump fire that swept through the station. The members of our Spetsnaz platoon were lost in a training accident. The crew of the Misha 124 will simply not be found, their disappearance becoming one more mystery of the Arctic. And the aircraft itself was destroyed when an old onboard demolition charge was accidentally triggered. All eventualities are covered.”

  “I doubt it will be quite that easy,” Castilla replied dryly. “Lies seldom are. No doubt Wednesday Island will become yet another conspiracy theory haunting the Internet. Maybe we can take a page from John Campbell and Howard Hawks and blame it on a flying saucer.”

  Castilla took a sip from the glass of branch water sitting beside his place and wished the shot of bourbon were sitting beside it. “Why couldn’t you have told me the truth in the beginning, Yuri? We could have rigged this somehow. Nobody had to die. We didn’t have to come within a hairsbreadth of loosing that anthrax on the world.”

  Potrenko continued his silent study of the maroon leather tabletop. “No doubt things could have been managed...more effectively. But I cannot apologize for being part of the Russian bureaucracy or for the protocols set by my predecessors. We are all still very much ‘slaves of the state,’ and we are likely to remain so for some time to come. I can only apologize for allowing this situation to slip so far out of control. Certain...individuals within governmental and military chains of command exercised poor judgment. They are being dealt with.”

  “I daresay they are,” Castilla replied, his voice arch. “Now, there’s one last point for us to cover. When our relief force occupied Wednesday Island, the body of one man was not accounted for, that of Major Gregori Smyslov, the Russian Air Force liaison officer assigned to our inspection team. Do you have any information on him?”

  Potrenko frowned. “That need not be a point of concern, Mr. President.”

  “Colonel Smith, our team leader on Wednesday, seems to think differently. When I spoke with him, he asked specifically that I inquire about the fate of Major Smyslov. I am inclined to favor his request. What happened to him, Yuri?”

  “The major was...injured during events on the island, but he survived. He was evacuated to our submarine. He is now being held for trial on a variety of charges.”

  “Stemming from the fact he sided with Colonel Smith and against your government?” Castilla’s voice softened in an ominous manner. “That is not acceptable, Mr. President. You will see that all charges against Major Smyslov are dropped immediately and that all ranks and privileges are restored to him without prejudice. If you feel that to be impossible, you will turn the major over to our ambassador in Moscow for repatriation to the United States. If you don’t want him, we’ll be glad to have him.”

  “That is impossible!” Potrenko snapped. “Major Smyslov has been charged with mutiny and a massive breach of state security. These are very serious matters! I am warning you, Mr. President, these are strictly the internal affairs of the Russian Federation!”

  Castilla smiled back without humor but with some pleasure. “And I just hate having to violate the internal affairs of the Russian Federation, Yuri, but then, I’m having to do a lot of things today that I’m not pleased about. What’s one more?”

  “This man is a Russian citizen and military officer of the Federation!”

  “Colonel Smith seems to feel the major is also still a member of his team, and as I said, I am inclined in the colonel’s favor at the moment!”

  “This matter is not open for discussion!”

  “Then forget it!” Castilla half rose from his chair. “The whole deal is off! Upon returning to Washington, I’m calling a press conference and I’m blowing the whole thing: the aborted nuclear war, Stalin’s assassination, the anthrax, the attack on our investigations team, the cover-up—the whole nine yards goes public!”

  Potrenko’s face went bloodless. “You’re mad! You would not do this thing! You would not trigger this catastrophe between our governments over the fate of one man!”

  Castilla sank back into his chair. “Yuri,” he said, peering coldly at Potrenko over the frames of his glasses, “I’m not a happy camper. Humor me.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

  The cabdriver glanced in his rearview mirror at the tall, quiet man in the Army greens and black beret. Since 9/11 he’d carried a lot of soldiers to the airport, some of them heading home, others heading out to somewhere. From the multiple rows of ribbons on this man’s uniform coat, there had been a lot of somewheres, and from the weariness etched in his face, he’d been to one not long ago. But like most of the best, he wasn’t saying much about it.

  The cabbie smiled to himself, looking back on his own somewheres, among them the rice paddy south of Bear Cat where he’d exchanged his right hand for a steel hook.

  The Yellow Crown Victoria swept around the great curving reception bay of the terminal building, finding an unloading slot amid the milling streams of traffic. The soldier dismounted, drawing his barracks bag and briefcase out of the backseat. Stepping up to the front window, he reached for his wallet.

  The cabdriver reached over with his prosthesis and zeroed the meter. “Forget it, Colonel. This one’s on the house.”

  The tall soldier hesitated and then smiled. “If you insist.”

  “Damn straight I do,” the cabby called back, pulling into traffic with a blare of his horn. “Eleventh Cav, ’sixty-seven. Good luck, sir.”

  The shift manager wouldn’t mind. He was an ex-Marine, and he’d been some places, too.

  Jon Smith pushed through the glass doors of the terminal to the ticketing counters, the luggage check-in, and the sluggish shuffle of the security inspection lines. The wait didn’t bother him particularly. At the moment he was in no rush.

  He recognized the phenomenon, a combination of the biological backlash of the past week’s extreme exertions and the usual postmission psychological letdown. It would pass. At his last long-distance debriefing with Fred Klein, the director had told him to stand down and take some of his backlog of leave. The director had even waved his magic wand and arranged for it to happen.

  The problem was, Smith didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything particularly. And back in Bethesda there was only the house that had never had the chance to become a home.

  Snap out of it, Smith. You don’t need a lea
ve. You need to get back to work.

  But that brought up another point for consideration. Just exactly what was his work now? When he had accepted his position with Covert One, he had viewed himself as a research microbiologist performing an occasional specialist’s assignment for Fred Klein. Now, though, it was feeling more and more as if he was the dedicated operator and his position as USAIMRIID was the filler.

  And hadn’t he taken that research slot to begin with specifically so he could work with Sophia? So they could be together? Since the Hades plague that wasn’t going to happen. That idealization was gone forever. Why the hell was he still going through those motions?

  The X-ray machine and the security shakedown was a welcome distraction, his uniform and his government ID rating him the most cursory of inspections. He strode on down the concourse toward the United boarding gates. He was early for his flight to Dulles. Maybe he had enough time to get himself a cup of coffee before boarding. Not a drink in the mood he was in, but a cup of coffee.

  “Jon, hey, Jon! Hold up!”

  Randi Russell was trotting toward him, towing a squeaking piece of wheeled luggage. The white ladies’ gloves she wore contrasted with her comfort-faded denims. Coming to a halt, she smiled up at him, an open, happy, pleased smile, very different from when they’d met across the street at the Doubletree.

  “I saw that dermatologist you wanted,” she said, holding up her gloved hands. “He said they might be a little sensitive to cold from now on, but he doesn’t think there will even be any scarring.”

  Smith found himself smiling back. “I’m glad to hear it, Randi. Where are you off for?”

  She made a face. “I can’t really say. You know the drill.”