Arctic Gold

“That’s ridiculous! Why would I do something like that?”

“Why would a man with sixteen years in NOAA and a wife and two kids just up and shoot a guy? Huh?” Segal reached Benford and grabbed the man by the throat. “Answer me that, you little prick!”

“He hated us!” Benford cried, pounding at Segal’s hands. “Let me go, you big-”

“Break it up, you two!” Masters shouted. “Both of you! Stand down!”

“This is the criminal, Fred!” Segal said. “This little bastard right here!”

“Let him go, Phil. He’s not worth it.”

Segal shoved Benford hard, slamming him back against the wall as he released him. “No. He’s not.”

“Larson did have it in for all of us Greenworld people,” Lynnley Cabot said. “We all saw it!”

“Commander Larson wouldn’t have shot anybody,” Fritcherson said. “I don’t believe Benford’s story, not for a second. But it won’t do us any good arguing about it. Save it for the trial.”

“I didn’t kill anybody!” Benford screamed.

Tomlinson was about to snap back a reply, but he stopped, his mouth open. There was a new sound rising above the wind outside… a deep, almost throbbing rumble, punctuated by the unmistakable crack of breaking ice. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

The others were listening now, too.

“Pressure ridge,” McCauley said. “Ice coming together, buckling, creating an upthrust.”

“We have to get out of here!” Cicero cried. She bolted for the door.

“Don’t go out there!” Masters shouted.

Steven Moore reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “Just… chill!” he said. “Don’t panic! Everything’s going to be okay…”

“It sounded pretty close,” McCauley told the others. “We should check it out.”

The sounds from outside had stilled, save for the blustering of the wind.

“I’ll go,” Tomlinson said, rising. Pressure ridges could form anywhere on the ice, at any time. It wasn’t likely, but if one decided to come up underneath the Quonset hut, the base could be torn apart, leaving them without shelter in the storm.

Fortunately, it sounded like whatever it was had stopped…

The door banged open. Surrounded by swirling snow and a blast of frigid wind, a heavily bundled man stepped into the hut.

Cicero screamed. McCauley started, then reached for a rifle leaning against a nearby wall. For a moment, Tomlinson wondered if an American expedition had come up after all… but the assault rifle in the man’s gloved hands was wrong-orangewood and ugly black metal, with a curved, banana clip magazine.

A Russian AKM.

“Be still,” the intruder barked in accented English. “All of you! Be still!”

A second man pushed his way inside behind the first. Both of them wore fur caps with the earflaps down. The first kept his assault rifle pointed at them; the second held a small but deadly-looking military pistol.

“What the hell are you-,” McCauley started to say.

“Silence!” the man with the pistol shouted. “Hands up, all of you!” He aimed the pistol at McCauley. “You! Stand back from that weapon!”

Hands raised, McCauley did as he was told. Through the open door, in the wan light of the never-setting sun, Tomlinson could see other Russian soldiers and, beyond, the sheer, smooth black cliff of a submarine sail, rising vertically up from the broken and jumbled ice.

“This… territory,” the man with the pistol said, “is the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation, and you are here illegally.”

“Get over yourself, Ivan,” Walters said. “This ice isn’t yours until the UN says it is. In the meantime, this is an American outpost-”

“Not anymore,” the Russian said. “We… understand that a crime has been committed here. A crime on Russian territory. You will all come with us until this matter can be properly settled.”

“This man is badly injured,” Tomlinson said, pointing at Larson. “Can you get him to a hospital?”

The man gave a short, sharp nod. “Da. There are… medical facilities where we are going. He will be taken care of. Get your winter gear. Quickly!”

Stunned, the Americans began doing as they’d been told. As he donned his parka, though, Tomlinson glanced at Benford. The man seemed relaxed, now, almost at ease.

Tomlinson saw him slip something beneath the mattress of Steven Moore’s bunk.

What the hell was going on?

13

Oval Office, the White House Washington, D.C. 1508 hours EDT

“THE PRESIDENT WILL SEE YOU now.”

The three of them had been waiting on benches set against the walls of the main corridor of the West Wing, Collins, Bing, and Rubens. None of the three had spoken a word when they’d arrived separately half an hour earlier, but Rubens could feel the chill in the air, the psychic sharpening of knives. For his part, Rubens had leaned back on the bench and focused on a relaxation mantra, calming himself. If these two harpies were going to descend on Desk Three, he wanted to be able to respond with cool logic, not a storm of emotion.

As the secretary held the northwest door of the Oval Office open, they stood and, still without a word to one another, entered the historic room.

All three had been here before, of course. The ancient grandfather clock against the northeast wall still clucked quietly to itself. The familiar portrait of George Washington still glowered down from over the fireplace on the room’s north wall, the rosy-cheeked figure still looking as though his mouth hurt. Swedish ivy, grown from cuttings in a series going back to President Kennedy, adorned the mantle itself while, elsewhere, Remington bronzes of horses and western themes graced tabletops and niches in the walls.

President Marcke sat behind the familiar Resolute Desk… so named because it had been made from the timbers of a British frigate, HMS Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes in 1880 and brought out of storage a century later by President Carter. That touch seemed appropriate to Rubens now. They would need to rely a lot on their British counterparts if they were going to have a chance at getting a team back into Russia anytime soon.

James Fenton and Roger Smallbourn both were already in the room, standing before the desk. A third man stood near the east wall, the only uniform present. He was Admiral Robert Thornton, the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Rubens was surprised to see them, but he could feel the startled shock of both Bing and Collins; obviously they’d not been expecting the DNI or the D/CIA to be here, the top two men in U.S. intelligence. As for the number-two man in the DIA, Rubens could only imagine why he was here as well. It was almost unprecedented, having this many top spooks together in the same room at the same time.

“Ladies,” President Marcke said, looking up. “Charlie. I would like to know what the hell is going on.”

“I… I’m not sure what you mean, Mr. President,” Bing said.

“I mean how the hell this mess could have exploded in the Arctic and no one in U.S. intelligence was aware of anything going down!”

“Sir, we were aware of ongoing developments,” Collins said. She spoke with a crispness that might have been meant to convey cool efficiency, but Rubens could hear her gears shifting in her mind. “We had two officers up there with the NOAA expedition with orders to determine what was going on at that Russian base. It was all there in your pickle a couple of weeks ago.”

“Your two officers have been captured by the damned Russians, along with a number of American civilians and NOAA personnel. The Russians say they’re being interned for the time being, pending a resolution of the status of their territorial claims in the Arctic.”