by Tom Clancy
Without notice, a knock came at the door. The Snow Maiden drew her weapon, asked who it was. Room service. She checked the peephole.
Two men stood there: one wearing a hotel uniform and pushing a cart that carried food and bags of clothing. The other guy wore a long overcoat and had the dark but graying hair and pale skin of an Eastern European. She guessed he was about fifty.
She opened the door, keeping her weapon hidden behind her back, and allowed the cart pusher to enter.
The other man immediately said, “Viktoria, come with me.”
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, raising her pistol to his forehead. “Maybe you should come with me.”
“I’m in the room next door. He’ll keep an eye on Chopra and the boy.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“A colleague of Patti’s. Lower that weapon. Right now.”
The Snow Maiden thought a second — he knew who she was, knew about Chopra, and knew Patti. She lowered the gun but remained tense and ready. “Answer my question.”
“I will. Come on,” he said.
She followed him to the next room, where inside, seated at the desk near the window, Patti smoked a cigarette and sipped a cup of tea. “Sit down, Viktoria. And please keep your mouth closed and listen.”
“That would be wise,” added the other man.
“This is Igany Fedorovich,” Patti began. “He’s director of SinoRus Group oil exploration. They have headquarters on Sakhalin Island. That’s just north of Japan.”
“And he’s a member of the Ganjin,” added the Snow Maiden.
“Of course.”
Fedorovich looked at the Snow Maiden and put a finger across his lips.
Patti continued, “What I’m about to tell you, very few people in this world have heard. And if they learn that you know who they are, you will be a target.”
The Snow Maiden smirked; tell her something she didn’t know. Everyone already wanted her dead. Take a number.
“Ganjin as a concept was born many years ago, back in the 1970s, during the fall of the Communist regime. The movement was the precursor in China toward capitalistic individualism and enabled the beehive mentality of Chinese society to restructure into many hives. The concept also prompted Xu Liangyu and Isaac Eisenstein, two classmates at Harvard, to consider how the concept could be used to gain control of the world’s natural and socioeconomic resources.”
The Snow Maiden yawned. “Kill me now before this history lesson continues.”
“Quiet,” snapped Patti. “You need to understand this.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re part of it.”
“I quit. You’re here. You got the old man and the kid, who by the way is a spoiled punk who would sell his own mother to the devil. I’m done. You do the rest. I want to be paid right now.”
“You’ll do as we say — otherwise, you’ll receive nothing.”
The Snow Maiden raised her pistol at Patti’s head. “Payment now. Electronically as usual.”
Ignoring the pistol, Patti forged on: “Liangyu and Eisenstein were joined by myself, Igany here, and Dominico DiNezzo, who’s president of the Vatican Bank and the man who discovered the existence of Mr. Manoj Chopra. We called ourselves the Committee of Five, members of the Ganjin, a network that extends over the entire globe. We’ve influenced this war in ways you can’t imagine, and all for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China, a nation we once believed would win this war and become the world’s only remaining superpower.”
“So I’ve been working for China.”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“What’s wrong, then? I can hear it in your voice.”
Fedorovich moved in beside Patti. “The committee has split. Patti and I do not agree with the Ganjin’s new direction.”
“They no longer support China?” asked the Snow Maiden.
“They’ve linked with the Green Brigade Transnational. They’ve extended their network into South America. They’re being heavily influenced by those factions, and many of our resources within China have turned their backs on us because they will not endorse those relationships. The Chinese have very careful and thoughtful plans to seize control of the Russian Federation, but these South American factions can undermine those plans.”
“So that’s how Nestes knew who you were,” said the Snow Maiden.
Patti nodded. “I gave him orders to protect you against attack, but he double-crossed me, then tried to play a different card with you. I’m glad you saw through him.”
“He just knew too much. So I killed him.”
“Exactly.”
“So what now?”
“We’re breaking off from the Ganjin. We plan to form a new international health organization. We’re getting out of the business of war and into the business of peace. And Dubai’s gold and oil reserves will help fund our efforts.”
“You already work for the World Health Organization.”
She closed her eyes. “We are as corrupt and unmanageable as the Ganjin itself.”
The Snow Maiden shrugged. “Look, this is all very admirable, but I still haven’t been paid.”
“We’ll offer an additional advance on services rendered,” said Fedorovich. “But what we’re really offering, Viktoria, is something more — a seat as director of intelligence.”
“You’re going to screw over the Ganjin, and you’re going to use me to do it. And you don’t think they’ll be mad about that?”
“No, I don’t,” said Patti. “They won’t live long enough to get upset.”
The Snow Maiden laughed. “This is insane.”
“Viktoria, this entire operation has been run entirely through me. They have no idea that you’ve located Chopra and are here. I’ve misdirected them from the beginning.”
She turned away from both of them, feeling a chill run up her spine. “I can’t trust you. Why did I think I could?”
“We assumed you’d feel this way, which is why we thought we’d make a peace offering.”
“The money…”
“And him,” added Patti.
The Snow Maiden turned to face Patti. “Him?”
“Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, a man who loves you more than anything in this world. He’s being held at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.”
“I thought you said a peace offering — what are you going to do? Use him to blackmail me into this? Go ahead, kill him! I don’t care! Do it!”
Fedorovich put a hand on her shoulder. “On the contrary, Viktoria. Within six hours, he’ll be a free man.”
“Impossible.”
“We have a sleeper on the inside,” said Patti. “This individual has been a project for many years and is now a high-ranking mole in the Joint Strike Force. Pavel will be at your side very soon.”
NINETEEN
USS Florida SSN-805
Virginia-Class Nuclear Submarine
Persian Gulf
Brent and his team were just south of Abu Musa, part of a six-island archipelago near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had once established a special weapons facility there, but it had been destroyed hours before the nuclear exchange with Saudi Arabia.
Commander Andreas had suggested they take advantage of the littoral capabilities of his Virginia-class sub. The Persian Gulf had a maximum depth of ninety meters and an average depth of fifty meters. Florida measured 15.85 meters from the bottom of her keel to the tip of her sail, and thus she could get in tight to the coast while using her electronic “big ear” to help Brent with situational awareness.
Once in position, Brent thanked Andreas and issued orders for his group to begin lockout. The first group left the sub and assisted the SEAL chiefs in their efforts to store the load-out bags aboard the delivery vehicle. Those bags included the combat suits, helmets, weapons, liquid fuel and batteries for the suits, and other communications and intelligence-gathering equipment.
Brent, Lakota, and four others from the group, including Schoolie a
nd Thomas, entered the lockout chamber in their wet suits, with their Draeger LAR-Vs buckled to their chests. The Draegers were closed-circuit breathing systems sans the telltale bubbles of conventional scuba gear and were standard issue for “black” operations. Even Thomas had taken a course on their operation as part of his Splinter Cell training. Once sealed, the chamber began flooding with cold seawater.
Dennison’s update regarding the target zone had been brief, and the Snow Maiden had yet to be sighted within the heavily observed five-kilometer perimeter. However, Dennison had once more confirmed that the woman had been in Geneva, as evidenced by the dead operatives in her wake. The major had then turned her attention to Dubai itself, where satellite streams picked up a large militia force. Those well-armed combatants patrolled the streets for eight or so hours at a time, then retreated in boats to the offshore islands, where radiation levels were a bit lower. The patrols were replaced by secondary groups, but for about eight hours each day, usually during nine A.M. to five P.M., the city remained empty.
Much of Dubai’s infrastructure was still intact following the nuclear exchange between its neighbors, including the Burj Dubai or “Dubai Tower,” once the tallest human-made structure ever built at 2,684 feet before it was supplanted by the Chinese “Tower to the Sun,” completed in 2019.
Yet another super skyscraper in the area, the Almas Tower, was of greater interest to Brent because it housed the country’s main vault, a subterranean affair newly renovated in 2018 to include sophisticated biometric security measures. If the Snow Maiden was coming to Dubai for the money, then the Multi Commodities Centre vault should be her main target.
The militia’s commander was also aware of what lay beneath his feet, as the patrols were heaviest near the Jumeirah Lakes Towers area, particularly around Almas. How the Snow Maiden intended to bypass those forces remained to be seen. Brent and his people would have their work cut out for them, if they were to remain undetected — at least initially. The real trick would be to cash in on what Special Forces did best: linking up with and recruiting locals to their cause. If he could turn this militia into allies, then the Snow Maiden wouldn’t stand a chance of escape.
But what if they were wrong about this woman? What if she wasn’t coming to Dubai? They would lay an elaborate trap for nothing, and Brent wouldn’t just be out of Ghost Recon; he’d be regarded as a fool and fall guy by his colleagues. Once again, his career was in the hands of the intel they’d received. Good, bad, or ugly. And in the end, his fellow operators would remember only that the mission had failed, not the true reasons why.
He reassured himself that this had to be the Snow Maiden’s plan: The kid and the money man could get her into the vault, and that was her goal. What else could she possibly want with them? Both were connected to Dubai. There was no reason to believe the money had been moved — no records of such movement. The country had been sitting in a radioactive vacuum for years, and the intel indicated that prior attempts to gain access to the main vault by the leaders of the remaining emirates had failed.
During the submarine ride, Brent had read up on “living keys” and other security techniques. It seemed clever and reasonable that Dubai’s leaders would employ the most sophisticated measures available to them, but they hadn’t anticipated losing so many of their “living keys” in one fell swoop.
Now the Snow Maiden had found some of those keys.
Worse, she wasn’t operating alone, and whatever faction was behind her could be extremely powerful, perhaps backed by the Russians, the Chinese, or maybe even a clandestine group within the JSF or European Federation. For all Brent knew he could be an unwitting participant in the flushing out of a mole.
Brent shoved the rebreather into his mouth as the water rose above his neck and filled the trunk. The others lifted their thumbs. After a muffled clunk, the door swung open, and they swam into a long tunnel of ocean dimly lit by the delivery vehicle’s red lights.
Once everyone was linked up with the craft, the SEAL chiefs shut the lights and set course for the marina. Sometimes the SEAL pilot and co-pilot were part of the combat team, but in this case, after dropping off the Ghosts, they’d return to the sub. Andreas had warned Brent that Russian subs were sniffing for them, so he’d best have an alternate extraction plan in case Florida got caught up in that cat-and-mouse game. As “on-scene” commander, Brent would make that call. The USS Independence, a futuristic-looking assault transport with a trimaran hull, was also operating in the Gulf of Oman area and could be called on if they needed her. Farther out was the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group.
The team’s course would take them around the Palm Jumeirah, one of three artificial islands shaped like a palm tree with long fronds once serving as beachfront property for hundreds of homes now deserted. These islands were as surrealistic and improbable as many other parts of Dubai, where architectural ambitions had been fueled by magnificent wealth. The most elaborate of all projects had been known as “The World,” an archipelago of three hundred human-made islands meant to resemble the land masses of Earth. The project had been abandoned, the islands now eroding back into the sea.
Once they skirted those areas, the SEALS would head into the marina and follow the canals toward the city proper. Lakota kept in touch via hand signals and closely monitored the radiation levels. Brent had already picked out several underground locations, subbasements and parking garages within the nearby Gold and Silver Towers that he believed would afford them some protection between observation shifts. Even with their suits, Brent was taking no chances by keeping anyone exposed for more than eight hours. He’d studied the blueprints of both buildings and would put Schleck on the roof of one, Riggs on the roof of the other. Those snipers would be rotated out with the rest of the team.
Within thirty minutes they had slid through the central canal and reached the Nuran Dubai Marina bridge. With the delivery vehicle still submerged, the team began to ascend, breaking the surface beneath the bridge and hidden from satellite view. Local time was 0924. They transferred the waterproof load-out bags to the concrete underpass, and then, with all the gear unloaded, Brent cut loose the SEALs with a hand signal.
“Better suit up now,” said Lakota, consulting her wrist-mounted radiation detector.
Without a word, the group began the process, with Schoolie giving Thomas a hand because he’d practiced donning the Natick 9V Exoskeleton combat suit only a few times. The suits were a flexible and modular armor system, offered NBC protection (which certainly made them a necessity in Dubai), yet still allowed a remarkable range of motion. Brent had once listened to a trainer spend more than an hour discussing the suit’s capabilities — including ballistic and blast protection and integrated data gloves for hand gesture interface with the Cross-Com, which was now part of the fully sealed combat helmet (no monocle or earpiece was required). The suits also had climate systems and user-specific operation modes with voice and facial recognition so enemies couldn’t exploit them — but the bottom line, as Brent reminded his people, was that no amount of technological magic could replace the fervor of the human heart.
“Captain, there’s a problem,” said Lakota, over a private channel.
Brent winced. The volume on his communications system was much too high. He issued a verbal command to lower it, then responded, “What’s up?”
“It’s Schoolie,” she said, gesturing across the way to the back of the group. Thomas, Schleck, and Park had surrounded the man and were working on his helmet. “He can’t get a good seal.”
Brent cursed. “He really wanted to come along, too.”
“Either he sits this out, or we keep him in the basement as security.”
Brent shifted through the group and faced Schoolie. “How we doing, bro?”
Schoolie shook his head and bore his teeth. “Don’t send me back. This is just my luck.”
“We can keep you with the gear. You need to stay below ground and to avoid full exposure.”
“Br
ent, I’ve got an idea,” said Thomas. “After I set up my sticky cams, we let Schoolie run them. That frees me up to focus on communications intel.”
“What do you think?” Brent asked Schoolie.
“Beats sitting on the bench,” said the big man.
Brent nodded to Thomas. “Let’s do it.” Then he whirled to regard the rest of the team. “Everyone else good to go?”
As they nodded, raised their thumbs, or shook their fists, a circle of avatars representing each Ghost appeared in Brent’s HUD, with his own positioned in the center. All but one of the figures showed green suits, fully online, fully functional. Schoolie’s avatar showed a flashing red line at the helmet seal, as expected. Beside each avatar floated data bars that included vital signs, weapons carried, ammo, and the combatant’s current GPS position, among other details.
With the flick of his gloved index finger, Brent minimized the report to the HUD’s margin and returned to the “home” image of scanning the battlefield for potential threats.
They broke into four teams:
Brent, Daugherty, Noboru, and Thomas were Alpha team.
Lakota, Copeland, Heston, and Park made up Bravo.
The sniper team was always known as Charlie and was staffed by Riggs and Schleck.
Delta team or the “base” team was actually a one-man show. Schoolie would still have a chance to do his part.
Brent’s team led the others up along the embankment. They wove their way between the marina buildings, wary of contacts and keeping tight to the walls.
The suit’s 360-degree sensors and three-dimensional audio queuing heightened Brent’s situational awareness, and the results of seeing what was behind him and sensing the depth of sounds around him was so effective that he couldn’t help but smile. The taxpayers had sure bought him some nice toys.
Within five minutes they reached the pedestrian footbridge spanning Sheikh Zayed Road. The concrete walls afforded some cover, so they crouched down and hustled across. Working their way on foot to the Gold and Silver Towers some 0.75 kilometers away was unavoidable, and doing so in broad daylight seemed surrealistic, but as Dennison had mentioned, the patrols had vanished like insects fleeing the light of day.
