John Bergstrom, was the latest in a line of outstanding officers who had served in its ranks, after having trained as a Navy SEAL. Often working undercover, usually in life-or-death situations, SEALs are the equivalent of the British SAS or the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service — they are highly trained killers, experts with explosives who possess a thorough knowledge of dozens of weapons, systems, and demolition techniques. Though they operate behind enemy lines, SEALs do not, normally, expect to die. In the words of General Patton they expect “the other poor dumb bastard” to take care of that part.
It’s more difficult to become a SEAL than to graduate from Harvard Law School. A brutal indoctrination course awaits those who make it through SEAL training — BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL), also known as “The Grinder.” To survive, a man must be a paragon of physical, intellectual, and emotional strength: aside from speed and a natural agility in the water, he also needs a first-class memory.
The BUD/S course is designed to eliminate
As the course moves on, exhausted men drop out, and the instructors drive those who remain harder. During “Hell Week” men on the verge of collapse are again driven one more time through an underwater tunnel, one more time out onto the dunes, into the ocean, and one more mile home. Half of the men who enter “Hell Week” never make it through. The instructors seek only those who are shattered but still defiant — those who think they have nothing more to give but still, in desperation, find more. That’s a US Navy SEAL.
The United States runs six teams of SEALs. Teams Two, Four, and Eight of Little Creek, Virginia, and Teams One, Three, and Five from Coronado. Admiral John Bergstrom, a veteran of Team Two, was the overlord of all SEALs. From his office in Coronado he over-saw every SEAL operation worldwide.
Each SEAL team comprises 225 men, of which 160 are active members of the attack platoons. Twenty-five people, including technicians and electronics experts, work as support and logistics staff. Forty more are directly involved in training, command, and control. The SEAL strike squadrons require enormous backup. These are valuable men, with a code of their own; in their short but valiant history they have never left a colleague on the battlefield. Neither wounded nor dead, not even in Vietnam.
Admiral Arnold Morgan was shown into the office of Admiral John Bergstrom shortly before 1000. The two men greeted each other warmly. They were old friends, who had a lot of respect for each other. They were both tough and ruthless in the execution of their duties, and fiercely protective of the men who served them.
Whereas Arnold Morgan had allowed his career to destroy his two marriages, John Bergstrom had suffered the agony of watching his wife of thirty years die of cancer only twenty-four months ago. Alone now in his official base residence, Admiral Bergstrom was considered a major asset by innumerable West Coast hostesses. Like all SEALs, he carried a mystique about him. He stood six foot two and still had retained the hard, athletic physique of a platoon commander. His sleek, dark hair had not yet grayed, despite his fifty-seven years. He had big hands and gray, sad eyes. It would not be true to say he laughed a lot, but he chuckled, the deep, amused chuckle of a man who had operated in the face of danger, and who now regarded all the rest of it as, essentially, kid’s stuff.
Arnold Morgan not only liked John Bergstrom, he also trusted him, and there were not many who fell into that category. “Good to see you, John,” he said. “It’s been a while. I have a few goodies here to show you, and I think we’re about to get this show on the road.”
Admiral Bergstrom grinned and shook his head. “I’m telling you, Arnie, this is not as goddamned simple as it looks. Quite frankly, I’ve never worked on a Special Ops project deep inside Russia. It’s a minefield of problems, and if my guys get caught it would be the biggest embarrassment to the United States since the U2 pilot back in the 1960s.”
“It would be more embarrassing,” said Morgan, “if the goddamned Chinese get a hold of enough of those fucking Kilos to shut us out of the Strait of Taiwan. Right then we’d have to go to war to restore the peaceful trading rights of all Western nations in those waters.”
“I haven’t taken my eye off the ball,” said Bergstrom. “I just hope we have enough data to make it happen.”
Admiral Morgan patted his briefcase. “I have some good stuff in here,” he said. “Pour me a cup of coffee and I’ll show you. By the way, the President asked me to pass on to you his kindest regards.”
“That’s very thoughtful of him,” said John Bergstrom. “I’ve only met him two or three times.”
“This President just happens to like military men a lot more than he likes politicians. He makes it his business to befriend all of his senior commanders. He actually takes pride in the fact that he knows the first name of his SEALs’ C in C. As I left the plane he just said, ‘My best regards to John.’”
“Hope he’s still saying that a couple of months from now,” replied the SEAL chief.
Arnold Morgan opened the briefcase and took out the manila envelope that had been delivered to him two days previously by the much-abused Charlie. He walked over to the detailed map of European North Russia, which was laid out on a wide sloping desk with a green shaded light curved over it.
He traced his finger up the left-hand side of Lake Onega, past Petrozavodsk. Here the lake is cut in half by two large peninsulas, forcing through traffic to the eastern side of the waterway. He ran his finger past the lakeside town of Kuzaranda, and then twenty-five miles farther north through the narrow gap between two other peninsulas.
“About another twenty-five miles on,” he said, “we come to one of the loneliest spots on the whole journey. See this town, Unica, which looks like it might be on the lake? Well it’s not; it’s about eight miles west — all the way up here. There is nothing but a few small farms.
“And right here,” he said as he pointed to the map with the sharp end of a pair of dividers, “is where these submarine barges stop. If you draw a line due northeast from Unica right across the lake to Provenec, where the canal comes in, top right-hand corner, that’s where the barges stop, on that line about a mile offshore.
“Follow the western shoreline of the lake for about a mile due north of where that line first reaches the water…right here…and we have something even more interesting. Along here…right on this desolate coastline is where the big tourist boats pull over — they call it a Green Stop — the boats ease over to the port side and park alongside the tall grasses that line this shore. They let down a long fifty-foot gangway, like you get on a car ferry, and everyone can get off and take a look at the virgin Russian countryside.”
“Jesus, Arnie. You might be a genius. Did I ever tell you that?”
“Well, I can’t claim credit for arranging the Green Stop, but I sure as hell claim credit for finding out about it.”
“Was it difficult?”
“Murder. I had someone call the Odessa-American Line right here in the States, and tell ’em he was a bird- watcher. I had him ask if he would get a chance to go ashore for a while at the northern end of Lake Onega. I was so careful I actually booked him on the ship before he made the call. Now the sonofabitch thinks he’s going on a ten-day paid vacation.”
“Whatever it costs, it’s cheap,” said Admiral Bergstrom. “That’s some kind of a break, right?”
“You make your own breaks in this game.”
“Which brings us to problem number one: how are we going to get the guys onto the precise tourist ship that will be parked up there when the barges stop for the night? And where the hell do the tour boats start from anyway?”
“They mostly run out of St. Petersburg.”
“St. Petersburg? Remind me, what’s the route up to the lake from there?”
“Through Lake Ladoga, then the River Svir, and into the canals that join Lake Onega. The route of the tour boat converges with the barges in the southern half of the lake. I expect our tour boat to pass the barges somewhere in the northern half. Then I think they’ll both make an overnight stop within a mile and a half of each other.”
“Right. But how do we get our guys on the right boat? How often do they run?”
“That’s the least of the problems. There are a lot of tour boats operational since Russia opened up. There’s one leaving just about every day. Sometimes three or four on weekends. They all seem to end up at the north end of Lake Onega for their Green Stops sometime in the early part of the evening. Remember it never gets dark up there in summer…you know, the White Nights and everything.”
