that and focused on the island of yellow ahead of him.
Ten minutes later, they reached a towering mass of ice, A wooden frame was set into it, a blank wall of timber hauled at impossible-to-estimate cost to this deserted spot. A steel door was centered in the dark wood wall.
He saw the Spetsnaz commander watching him carefully. He strode forward, put one gloved hand on the wooden bar set crosswise in the two U-shaped supports, and lifted it out. The door unbarred, he tugged it open. The interior of the structure was pitch-black.
Rogov turned to the Spetsnaz commander. “Get some light in there.”
The man nodded, looking faintly disappointed, as though he had expected Rogov to show some signs of fear now that they were alone on the forsaken island. He motioned sharply to one of his subordinates, who produced a flashlight. “We’ll get this generator started immediately, Comrade Colonel. The batteries are probably completely drained, especially in this weather. We need to run the generator for three hours a day to keep the batteries charged. Unless we make some extraordinary energy expenditures, that will be enough to keep the life support functioning.”
Rogov stepped inside the structure, following the man with the flashlight. He gazed upward. A thick continuous sheet of heavy plastic was bolted to the overhead, a thin layer of insulation between the occupants of the cavern and the massive mountain of ice overhead. “Ingenious,” he murmured. He’d studied the pictures, the mission briefings, but the actuality of this impressive engineering accomplishment could hardly be conveyed in the dry technical words of the science teams who had been there before them. The world’s best insulation against cold — ice.
The Spetsnaz commander said, “It warms up some once we get the heater started, but not very much. We can’t risk too high a temperature. The plastic keeps the overhead from dripping on us, but if too much of it melts, it will cool down on the deck and start refreezing around our feet.”
“Comfort is the least of our concerns while we’re here,” Rogov said. “There are supplies for how many days stored here?”
“Two weeks.” For the first time, the Spetsnaz commander looked at him uncertainly. “Will it be much longer than that, do you think?”
“When you need to know, Comrade Commander, I will tell you,” Rogov snapped. “I suggest you concentrate on getting this camp fully operational as quickly as possible. Perhaps the memory of two weeks of rations will add speed to your preparations.”
The Spetsnaz commander barked orders to his compatriots, his air of braggadocio considerably diminished at the thought of being stranded in the camp with no rations. Rogov smiled to himself, pleased. How long they would be here would depend on the Americans. And it was Rogov’s job to ensure that the United States found very little to interest them on this westernmost Aleutian island.
At least, not right away.
CHAPTER 2
Rear Admiral Matthew Magruder forced himself to relax the tight grip he had on the seat’s armrest. The worn upholstery on the C-130 transport plane was testimony to the years that it had been in service in the United States Navy.
How many times had it made this trip? he wondered. Five hundred? Two thousand? He glanced around the cabin, trying to distract himself from the tricky approach onto the Adak Island airfield, wondering how many other admirals and other dignitaries had made this same flight during the last five decades. Not many in recent years, he would be willing to bet. And this would be one of the last ones, since he was en route to Adak to preside over the decommissioning of the last P-3C Orion squadron assigned there.
He looked down and saw his fingers had curled around the armrest again. The nubby, well-worn fabric was rough and slightly oily under his hands. He grimaced and shook his head. Like most naval aviators, Rear Admiral Magruder despised being a passenger. An F-14 Tomcat pilot himself, he found it particularly unsettling to be strapped into a seat thirty feet away from primary flight controls. He felt the plane shift slightly, and his left foot pressed down automatically, trying to compensate for the aircraft’s slight wobble.
“Please remain in your seats,” a terse voice said over the speaker. “We’re getting some strong crosswinds. Normal for this part of the Aleutian Islands, but it makes for a tricky landing.” A slight chuckle echoed in the speaker. “Don’t worry, folks, I’ve done this about eight hundred times myself.” The speaker went dead with a sharp pop.
Eight hundred times, Magruder thought, and tried to relax. I had that many traps on an aircraft carrier by the time I was a lieutenant commander. Now, with over three thousand arrested carrier landings, Magruder was one of the most experienced pilots in the Navy. He would have gladly foregone the promotions that went along with that.
Three months ago, he’d been commanding the carrier battle group on board USS Thomas Jefferson, responsible for the safety and well-being of over five thousand crew members and aviators, as well as close to one billion dollars in equipment. Jefferson had been on the pointy end of the spear, intervening in a conflict between China and the southeastern Asian nations over the oil-rich seafloor around the Spratly Islands.
And this is my reward. His uncle, Vice Admiral Thomas Magruder, had warned him at his change of command that he was up for an exciting new assignment. Tombstone had spent two months at the Naval War College for a quick refresher in intelligence and satellite capabilities, along with an update on Special Forces capabilities. It had been difficult to put the information in context, since his ultimate duty station was still classified top secret.
Alaska. When the word had finally come, learning that he was to be commander of Alaskan forces with sole operational responsibility for everything from Alaska across the Pacific Ocean, it had been a letdown.
They might as well have told me I ought to go ahead and retire. ALASKCOM might have been a big deal back during the days of the Cold War, when Russian submarines routinely plied the straights between the Aleutian Islands, but it was a backwater post these days. The Soviet forces lay rusting and decaying alongside their piers, with the exception of some long-range ballistic missile submarines that still deployed under the ice cap. The SOSUS station and most of the P-3 squadrons that had been stationed at Adak during the Cold War had either been decommissioned or pulled back to CONUS — the continental U.S. The Aleutian Islands, along with the frigid Bering Sea to the north of it, were a tactical wasteland.
Still, his uncle had promised him that it would be a good deal more exciting than he thought. He sighed, staring out the window at the thick white clouds now racing past the double-paned plastic. Surely his uncle had something in mind besides a touchy landing in strong crosswinds on a remote island.
Not only was this assignment operationally uninteresting, but it also put a crimp in his personal life. During his time on Jefferson, he’d finally broken off his long-term engagement to ACN reporter Pamela Drake. It had been partly due to the realization that neither one was willing to give and take enough with their career priorities to make it work. Additionally, Pamela had been increasingly uncomfortable with the more dangerous aspects of his chosen career. It was all right for her to go flitting off to the most dangerous combat areas of the world to report her stories, but the idea of Tombstone launching off the carrier to take on adversary air over the Spratly Islands was more than she could take. They’d ended it just as Tombstone was realizing his attraction to one of the hottest female aviators in the Navy.
He felt his mouth curl up in a smile, an expression that would have surprised most of the officers who’d worked with him in the last twenty years. Lieutenant Commander Joyce Flynn, “Tomboy” to the rest of the squadron. The name suited her, although it didn’t adequately describe the more delicious aspects of the petite, redheaded female naval flight officer. While they had both been assigned to the Jefferson, a relationship had been impossible. Tombstone had been in command of Carrier Battle Group 14, while Tomboy was a RIO (radar intercept officer) in VF-95, a Tomcat squadron on board. Faced with the possibility that his tactical decisions would put her in danger, and knowing the Navy’s strict policy against fraternization, they had finally come to an agreement to put
