“Right. But I still can’t see how we get the guys on the right boat.”
“Well, if you can’t, maybe the Russkies won’t figure it out either. The tour boats run about four times faster than the barges, which tend to make a steady five knots from Nizhny right up into the lake. And they don’t stop. Which means we can get a very accurate fix on what time they’re going to reach the shoreline near Unica. We watch the barges on the overheads all the way, then the guys get on the tour boat we know will come sliding past the submarines around 1700 hours in the north of Lake Onega. That Green Stop represents the end of the line for the tourists. The ship turns round then and heads back to St. Petersburg the next morning.”
“Yeah, but you can’t just get on a tour lasting several days. You have to book cabins and Christ knows what,” said Admiral Bergstrom.
“Yup. No sweat, John. We take a coupla suites on the upper deck on all of the probable boats, day after day. We book ’em right here in the USA.”
“Yeah. But there’ll be a lot of suspicion when we keep canceling.”
“What d’you mean, canceling? We’re not canceling anything. We’ll get people in to take up the reservations. Secretaries, boyfriends from embassies and American corporations all over Europe. Give ’em a free vacation for a few days. The boats are packed with Americans. I have a survey here…of three hundred passengers on the last three Odessa-American Line boats, an average of two hundred and eighty-four were Americans. The worst thing that can happen is we have to change four or five names when we put our own team in. But we’ll be giving them several days’ notice because we’ll know the precise time they’re gonna reach the north end of the lake — we’ll know it the moment the satellites spot the barges leaving Nizhny.”
“Jesus, Arnie. We’re really gonna do this, aren’t we?”
“We have no choice.”
The two Admirals sat in silence for a few moments, each momentarily stunned by the enormity of the may- hem they were about to unleash.
“Your guys have a headache packing the kit and transporting it?” asked Arnold Morgan.
“Huge,” replied John Bergstrom. But he did not propose to get into the complicated details of such a mission…the semantics of preparing the men’s requirements, the four underwater breathing Draegers, their helmets, masks, flippers, and wet suits. The four attack boards. The well-balanced, effective Soviet-designed RPD light machine guns with their distinctive sound, which Bergstrom hoped would confuse a Russian guard should it come to a fight. Their sidearms, Sig Sauer 9mm pistols. The piles of ammunition clips. The Kaybar combat knives. The medical kit with codeine, and morphine, and battle dressings. Water purification tablets, radios plus batteries, plus a GPS. And five ponchos with liners and ground sheets, just in case the SEALs were forced to shoot their way out and take refuge in the countryside until they were rescued.
“I’ve made one change to our original plan, Admiral. We’re sending in a backup SEAL caretaker to nanny them. CIA agent, worked behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s. Very tough character, Angela Rivera.”
“ANGELA!” yelled Admiral Morgan. “Is this a girl? On a mission like this?”
“Yes. Makeup and disguise expert. Finished first in the CIA Tradecraft Class at Camp Peary. Highly trained and unobtrusive.”
“What if she gets hurt, or can’t cope with a getaway?”
“Arnie, remember when that bastard Aldrich Ames was in the process of shopping all these US agents working in East Germany, Russia, and Romania?”
“Do I ever.”
“Well, he blew the cover on the slim and clever Angela Duke in some Berlin hotel. And the KGB sent a couple of spooks to her room. They apparently decided that one should go in after her and one should keep watch. When the first one didn’t come out, the second one went in himself, stupid bastard. He just had time to find his mate dead on the floor. It was the last thing he ever saw. She garroted ’em both. And got away, back to Langley. She’s up to it. Trust me.”
“Jesus,” said Arnold Morgan. “Guess we’re gonna need a lot of explosives?” he asked, changing the subject.
“According to my calculations, each of the four swimmers is going to need eight small, shaped charges, weighing around fifty-one pounds each. These things make a fairly small bang but blow a big hole…a kind of cylindrical shape to the explosion forces it just one way, rather than an outward/inward blast. Each charge has its own timer…very, very accurate. That’s forty pounds of explosive for each man, and I don’t think they want to carry more.”
“Not with a mile, or even a little more to swim. Anyone looked at the water depth yet?”
“Since I only found out seven minutes ago where the operation was taking place, not hardly.”
“Jesus, you guys are getting slack,” said Morgan in mock seriousness.
“Well, on that note, let me tell you what I think is going to be a bit of a roadblock right here,” replied Admiral Bergstrom. “And I’m not at all sure how to solve it…How the hell are we gonna get all the stuff into Russia, and then transport it to that northern wasteland? We’re going to end up with around seven hundred and fifty pounds of gear — that’s a third of a ton. We’re talking forklift truck, minimum.”
“Christ…so we are. I’d kinda assumed we could somehow run it over the border from Finland, up in the Karjalan Lanni area.”
“Arnold, there are no roads that cross the old Soviet border up in that area. There’s a long border road running north-south, but it doesn’t cross into Russia. And a couple of roads just come to dead ends. There’s a railroad, but even today the Russians keep a careful eye on it. We can’t start running cargoes of fucking Semtex all over the place.
“Of course there is a regular freeway that runs straight up from St. Petersburg to Petrozavodsk. But it would be just about impossible for us to bring in a cargo of this size under the eyes of the Russian Customs and port authority guards. And if they found it, there would be an unbelievable uproar.”
“You’re right. How about an airlift from some remote spot in eastern Finland, straight over the border and right into the area we need it?”
“We can’t chance that, Arnie. The Russians are still pretty hot about
“Well, how about by the waterways?”
“Too risky. The canal traffic is subject to checks at various points all along the routes. The truth is we
“What do you consider the best chance of success?”
“It’s all a bit worrying, Arnie. I suppose the chopper over the border…flying very low, right under the radar. If one of their military listening stations picked it up, they’d shoot it down. If push comes to shove we might just have to accept that risk and go for it.”
“Christ, if that happened there’d be all hell to pay.”
“I know it. But I don’t know any other way round the problem.”
By this time, both men were pacing the room, deep in thought. Neither spoke for several minutes. Then John Bergstrom said, “Arnie, there is something in the back of my mind…you read about that new HALO development? It’s not perfected, but my guys in the industry say it’s gonna work.”
“HALO,” replied Morgan. “That’s High Altitude, Low Opening, right? A free-fall situation from above twenty thousand feet. You’re thinking of dropping a couple of guys out of an aircraft, high over Russia, hanging on to all that kit. Jesus. I’m not sure about that, John.”
“No, Arnie. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking capsules. Big metal canisters that operate on the same system as laser-guided bombs. We’re gonna pitch ’em out of a military aircraft high over Russia — maybe as high as thirty-five thousand feet, and get ’em to home in on a beam.”
“Home in on what?”
“A beam. We just get our guys in there. On the ground, somewhere out in the wilds near the lake, and they turn on their device and wait for the aircraft. The beam locks on and the air crew dump the canisters out. Then the computerized steering activates a small power unit in the canisters and steers ’em right in.”
“Christ. That’s pretty smart. But I have a few questions.”
“Hit me.”
“Do these things just crash into the ground like a bomb?”
“No. They fall like stones for thirty-four thousand feet. Then the ’chutes open, and they float in the last eight
