“You’re right. We’re going to need a boat.”
The Sikorsky returned shortly before noon and spent two hours flying up and down the shoreline, using Sludjanka Lake as a datum. Several times it passed directly over the cliffs outside the tunnel entrance, but it neither slowed nor descended.
As the afternoon wore on the team members grew restless, pacing the tunnel, checking and rechecking their equipment, and cleaning weapons. Fisher gave them something to do, briefing each on what they would be carrying when and if they found the auction site. He’d gotten the same reports before leaving Irkutsk, but the task broke the monotony.
“Communications.” Gillespie began laying out the equipment. “We’ll all have hands-free, voice-activated headsets and microphones. We synced them to the OPSATs. They’re not SVTs or subdermals, but they’ll get the job done.” She donned one of the headsets; it was a commercial cell-phone model with a dangling microphone and a miniature alligator clip. “The audio pickup is decent, but there’s a half-second lag in the voice activation. Also, you need to cup the microphone, bring it to your mouth, and whisper.”
“We also jury-rigged a flexicam,” Valentina said. “It’s primitive — no night vision, EM, or infrared, but the picture’s fairly clear.”
“Good work,” Fisher said. “Ben?”
Hansen laid out their makeshift uniforms: wool-lined black cargo-style pants and heavy black sweaters, a dual layer of silk long underwear, fingerless mittens, and full balaclavas.
Fisher nodded, turned to Noboru. “Time to unveil your project.”
Noboru walked to the Lada, pulled a duffel from the backseat, and returned. He laid out the modified paintball guns and launchers and ran through the operation and specifications. “Hold on,” he said. “Forgot the CO2 cartridges.”
Moments later he called, “Ah,
“What?” Fisher called.
“Better come see for yourself.”
Fisher and the others walked to the rear of the Lada. Noboru was standing beside the open tailgate. Fisher felt his stomach lurch. He leaned into the cargo area and looked around.
Ames was gone.
After passing out the Groza assault rifles, Fisher left Hansen and Valentina at the tunnel entrance and took Noboru and Gillespie deeper into the mine. A few hundred yards in, at a triple branch in the tunnel, they found a pair of flex-cuffs lying on the ground. They each took a tunnel and searched for fifteen minutes before meeting back at the branch.
“Nothing,” Noboru said.
“Me neither,” replied Gillespie. “I counted nine side tunnels in mine. There have to be other entrances. We can check the map, then split up and find a way around the cliffs—”
“No,” Fisher said. “Forget him.”
“Forget him?” Noboru repeated. “This is Ames we’re talking about. After what he did—”
“We’ve got what we need from him. He’s irrelevant now,” Fisher said. This was only partially true. Ames had given Hansen the location of his insurance stash against Kovac, but if the case ever saw the inside of a courtroom, without Ames a conviction was uncertain. Right now, however, his team didn’t need such worries clouding their thinking. “Focus on the mission,” Fisher told them.
They waited until nightfall, then packed up and left the tunnels, picking their way back down the rutted tract to the main road, where they turned north and drove until the lights of Severobaikalsk came into view. They pulled off the road, shut off their engines and headlights, and waited for another two hours until, slowly, the town’s lights began going out.
“Early to bed, early to rise,” Gillespie muttered.
“Not much nightlife on a Tuesday night in Severobaikalsk,” replied Noboru.
Fisher started the engine. “Let’s go steal ourselves a boat.”
36
With its hundreds of river outlets, Lake Baikal’s surface generally stays ice free until mid January and clears by the end of May, but this year was an exception, Fisher found as they reached the middle of the lake and the first pancake ice chunks began scraping down the hull. In both boats the team members looked around warily. From his seat in the bow Fisher spread his hands in the baseball “safe” signal. The ice was too brittle and thin to damage the hulls of their johnboats. So shallow were their drafts that in the worst case the flat bottom rectangular craft could skim over the ice with little trouble.
As it was still early in the season, the tiny Severobaikalsk marina had offered them few choices of transportation: sailboats, fishing trawlers with diesel engines, or skiff-sized craft like their johnboats. The electric trolling motors were virtually silent, if not particularly powerful: After two hours of travel they were only halfway to Ayaya Bay.
Fisher donned his night-vision headset again and did a 360-degree scan. He saw neither lights nor shapes. They had the lake to themselves. A hundred yards off the bow he could see a low fog clinging to the water’s surface. He looked left, caught Hansen’s attention, and gestured for him to steer closer. When their gunwales were within a few feet of each other, Fisher whispered to Gillespie in the seat behind him, and she threw across the painter, which Noboru secured to the cleat.
The fog enveloped them.
With no points of reference except for occasional glimpses of the neighboring boat in the swirling fog, time seemed to slow. In Fisher’s boat Gillespie had moved to the stern to help Valentina navigate; Hansen and Noboru had teamed up in the other. The steady hum of the electric motors had a lulling effect on Fisher. The days and weeks of being on the run, of infrequent and insufficient sleep, were catching up to him. He leaned over the side, scooped up a handful of icy water, and splashed his face.
He checked his OPSAT.
At two miles Fisher signaled to Valentina to cut the engine; Hansen heard this and did the same. They drifted ahead until the boats came to a halt and began gently rocking. For ten minutes they sat still, listening. They heard nothing but the lapping of water against the hulls. Fisher scanned with the night vision and saw nothing
At two-minute increments over the next half hour they repeated the process — engines off, glide to a stop, listen, scan — until Fisher’s OPSAT told him they were at the mouth of Ayaya Bay. He ordered the motors lifted and the oars broken out.
They began paddling.
Concentrating on even, silent strokes rather than speed, the last two miles to the beach took another hour. With an extra pair of hands, Fisher’s boat pulled slightly ahead, and when his OPSAT’s distance reading scrolled down to a hundred yards, he stopped paddling and untied the painter connecting the boats. On the slim chance there were guards posted, he didn’t want to risk the johnboats bumping into each other. The gong of aluminum would travel clearly over the water.
He started sounding for the bottom with his oar. Sixty feet from shore, the tip plunged into mud. Fisher handed his oar back to Gillespie, then slipped over the side into the water. Hansen followed a moment later, and they began towing the boats until the water was only waist high. Noboru, Gillespie, and Valentina climbed out and helped drag the boats onto the sand.
Quickly and quietly, they unloaded their gear, ran a final weapons and equipment check, and donned their packs. Fisher checked his OPSAT. As they had been since early afternoon, the Ajax bots showed as a tight cluster
