Academy, she went to the University of Connecticut in Hartford. October of her second year, she disappeared. She was raped and murdered. They found her a week later in a ditch. The guy who did it-they never proved he killed Sandy, but he raped two other girls at the school-well, he's in a mental hospital now. They said he was crazy, wasn't really responsible. So someday the docs'll say he's cured, and they'll let him out, and Sandy'll still be dead.' Edwards looked down at the rocks.
'I couldn't do anything about that. I'm not a cop, I was two thousand miles away. But not this time.' His voice showed no emotion at all. 'This time was different.'
'You love Sandy?' Vigdis asked.
How to answer that one? Mike wondered. It sure did seem like that, five years ago, didn't it? But would it have worked out? You haven't exactly been celibate these last few years, have you? But it hasn't been the same, either, has it? He looked at the photograph taken three days before Sandy had been killed. It had arrived in his box at Colorado Springs after her death, though he hadn't known it at the time. Her dark, shoulder length hair, the tilt of the head, the impish smile that went with an infectious laugh… all gone.
'Yes.' There was emotion in his voice now.
'You do for her then, yes?'
'Yes,' Edwards lied. I did it for me.
'I do not know your name.'
'Mike, Michael. Edwards.'
'You do this for me, Michael. Thank you for my life.' There were the first beginnings of a smile. She placed her hand on his. It was soft and warm.
27. Casualties
'At First we thought that they simply drove off the cliff road. We found this in the vehicle.' The major of field police held up the top of a broken bottle of vodka. 'But the medical corpsman who collected their personal effects found this.'
The major pulled the rubberized sheet off the one body that had been thrown clear when the vehicle hit the rocks. The stab wound in the chest was unmistakable.
'And you said that the Icelanders were as peaceful as sheep, Comrade General,' the KGB colonel observed sardonically.
The major continued, 'It is difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened. There was a farm a short distance away whose house was burned to the ground. We found two bodies in the wreckage. Both had been shot.'
'Who were they?' General Andreyev asked.
'Impossible to identify the bodies. The only way we knew they were shot was the bullet hole in the sternum, so that was likely done at very close range. I had one of our surgeons look at them. A man and a woman, probably in their middle years. According to a local government official, the farm was occupied by a married couple with one daughter, age'-the major checked his notes-'twenty. The daughter has not been found.'
'What of the patrol?'
'They were southbound on the coast road when they disappeared-'
'No one spotted the fires?' the KGB colonel asked sharply.
'There was heavy rain that night. Both the burning vehicle and the farmhouse were below the horizon for the neighboring observation patrols. As you know, the road conditions here have upset our patrol schedules, and the mountains interfere with radio performance. So when the patrol was late getting in, no particular note was made of it. You can't see the vehicle from the road, and as a result they were not spotted until the helicopter flew over it.'
'The other bodies, how did they die?' the General wanted to know.
'When the vehicle burned, the soldiers' hand grenades cooked off, with the obvious results. Except for the sergeant here, there is no telling how they died. So far as we can tell, no weapons were taken. All the rifles were there, but some items are unaccounted for: a map case and some other minor things. Possibly they were blown clear of the vehicle by the explosions and fell into the sea, but I doubt this.'
'Conclusions?'
'Comrade General, there is not a great deal to go on, but I surmise that the patrol visited the farmhouse, 'liberated' this bottle of vodka, probably shot and killed the two people who lived there, and burned the house. The daughter is missing. We are searching the area for her body. At some time after this happened, the patrol was surprised and killed by an armed party which then tried to make their deaths look like a vehicle accident. We should assume that there is at least one band of resistance fighters at large.'
'I disagree,' the KGB colonel announced. 'Not all the enemy troops have been accounted for. I think that your 'resistance fighters' are probably NATO personnel who escaped when we took Keflavik. They ambushed our troops, then murdered the farm people in the hope of stirring the local population against us.'
General Andreyev shared a furtive look with his major of field police. It had been a KGB lieutenant commanding the patrol. The chekisti had insisted that some of their people accompany the roving patrols. Just what he needed, the General thought. Bad enough that his crack paratroopers were consigned to garrison duty-always destructive to unit morale and discipline-but now they were jailers, too, and in some cases commanded by jailers. So the arrogant young KGB officer-he'd never met a humble one-had thought to have himself some fun. Where was the daughter? The answer to this mystery certainly lay with her. But the mystery wasn't the important thing, was it?
'I think we should interrogate the local inhabitants to see what they know,' the KGB officer announced.
'There are no 'local inhabitants,' Comrade,' the major answered. 'Look at your map. This is an isolated farm. The nearest neighbor is seven kilometers away.'
'But-'
'Who killed these unfortunates, and why, is unimportant. We have armed enemies out there,' Andreyev said. 'This is a military matter, not something for our colleagues in the KGB. I'll have a helicopter search the area around the farm. If we find this resistance group, or whatever it is, we will deal with it as with any band of armed enemies. You may interrogate any prisoners we manage to capture, Comrade Colonel. Also, for the moment any KGB officer who accompanies our security patrols will be an observer, not a commander. We cannot risk your men in combat situations for which they have not been fully trained. So. Let me talk to my operations officer to see how we will handle the search. Comrades, you did well to bring this to our attention. Dismissed.' The chekist wanted to stay, but KGB or not, he was only a colonel, and the General was exercising his legitimate prerogatives as commander on the scene.
An hour later, a Mi-24 attack helicopter lifted off to check the area around the burned farm.
'Again?' Toland asked.
'Not a bank holiday, Commander,' the group captain replied. 'Two regiments of Backfires departed their bases twenty minutes ago. If we want to catch their tankers, we must move smartly.'
Within minutes, two EA-6B Prowlers, designed to find and jam enemy radar and radio signals, were climbing to altitude on a northwest heading. Known with backhanded affection as the Queer, the EA-6B's most striking characteristic was its canopies, inlaid with real gold to protect sensitive onboard instruments against electromagnetic radiation. As the planes climbed, their pilots and electronics officers were already working in their gilt cages.
Two hours later they spotted their prey, radioed back the signal bearings-and four Tomcats rolled down the runway of Stornoway.
Cruising at an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet the Tomcats flew racetrack-shaped patterns north and south of the predicted course for the Soviet tankers. Their powerful search/missile-guidance radars were shut down. Instead, they swept the skies with a built-in TV camera that could identify aircraft as far as forty miles away. Conditions were ideal, a clear sky with only a few high cirrus clouds; the fighters left no contrails that might warn
