And, from the look of it, girls from one of his brothels in town.”

“Yeah. Looks like it’s a hell of a party,” Akulinin said.

Llewellyn typed another entry, and a number of architectural drawings came up-blueprints on the dacha. “We got these from the company in Moscow that built the place,” he told them. “The same company made a number of alterations to the house after Kotenko bought it. Notice here… on the first floor, and here, in the basement directly below.”

“Looks like it’s wired for Internet,” Lia observed, studying the wiring schematics. “And what’s all this in the basement? Looks like they added structural reinforcement.”

“Right the first time. They reinforced the floor, there, with load-bearing beams.”

“A safe?”

“That’s a good bet, Lia. Something damned heavy, anyway. We think this area on the first floor is Kotenko’s office… and that eight years ago he installed a heavy floor safe, right here.”

Lia nodded. “So… if we can’t sneak in without being seen, we might make it look like a burglary.”

“That was our thought,” Llewellyn said. “I brought some specialist tools for you from St. Petersburg.”

“Wait a second,” Akulinin said. “You guys are jumping way ahead of me here. A burglary? I thought this was just a quick in-and-out to plant bugs.”

“Ideally,” Lia told him, “we could sneak past a couple of security guards, gain entrance to the building, plant our surveillance devices, and slip out again and no one would ever know we’d even been there.”

“Right,” Llewellyn said. “But with that many people on the property, it’s more likely that you’ll be spotted.”

“Exactly. If we pretend to be burglars, though, they might not think to look for bugs afterward. At least, not the kind of bugs we’ll be leaving.”

“And if you’re burglars,” Llewellyn added, “the safe, obviously, becomes your target.”

Lia watched realization unfold behind Akulinin’s eyes. “Ah. Got it,” he said. “If Kotenko has the satcom unit, there’s a good chance that he’ll have it in that safe. We might be able to get it back after all.” Akulinin pumped his arm happily. “Yeah! The new kid gets a chance to redeem himself! I can live with that.”

“I’d still rather go in without a crowd on the premises,” Lia told Llewellyn. “Any chance we could just kick back and wait for a few days, maybe hope Kotenko goes back to St. Petersburg?”

“No, Lia,” Llewellyn said. “Mr. Rubens was most insistent. Something big is happening either in Siberia or up in the Arctic. He wants to be able to read Kotenko’s mail as quickly as possible.”

“We should have done this as soon as we heard Kotenko was behind the beryllium shipment,” she said. She was thinking that she and Akulinin might have had a better command of the situation in St. Petersburg if there’d been some hard intelligence from Kotenko’s dacha before they’d inserted.

“Yes, well, that was on the to-do list, don’t you know. But it wasn’t quite so urgent then.”

“That’s the government for you,” Akulinin pointed out. “Hurry up and wait… and then you find they needed it done yesterday.”

“So when do we go in?” Lia asked.

“Some of our local assets are still getting into place,” Llewellyn said, “and we need to coordinate with your Puzzle Palace. Besides, if you’re jet-lagged, a good night’s sleep would be just the thing, eh?”

“Sounds heavenly,” Lia said.

“Tomorrow night then?” Akulinin asked.

“Tomorrow night,” Llewellyn agreed. His fingers clattered over the laptop’s keyboard again, bringing up more photographs and diagrams. “Now, let me show you what we’ve worked out…”

Beaufort Sea 75° 18' N, 129° 21' W 1732 hours, GMT- 7

A shadow, whale-lean and 560 feet long, moved through the eternal night of the abyss, six hundred feet beneath a ceiling of solid ice, invisible and silent.

The Ohio had remained submerged as she threaded her way through the Parry Channel south of the barren Queen Elizabeth Islands, emerging at last in the iced-over deeps of the Beaufort Sea. Dean followed the vessel’s progress with interest in the big plot board at the aft end of the control room, where an enlisted watchstander marked the Ohio’s position each hour, connecting the most recent navigational waypoint with the last.

They were now some 820 miles from NOAA Arctic Meteorological Station Bravo, about twenty-eight hours at their current speed. Officially, an Ohio missile boat had a maximum speed of twenty knots; in fact, her actual speed was closer to twenty-five, and Dean was pretty sure she could manage even better than that in a hell-bent-for-leather emergency dash.

Dean was in the Ohio’s tiny wardroom, seated at the table with Captain Eric Grenville, Lieutenant Commander Hartwell, and a third man in a black acrylic pullover and no rank insignia. The third man had been introduced simply as Lieutenant Taylor. Mugs of coffee, each adorned with the Ohio’s logo, rested on the table before them.

“We should be able to maintain flank speed for most of the way,” Captain Grenville told Dean, “if we don’t run into major ice problems.”

“What would be a major ice problem, sir?” Dean asked.

“Pressure ridges,” Grenville told him. “Places where ice bangs together and creates a kind of mountain range, but sticking down underwater, instead of up in the air. That doesn’t look very likely at the moment, and now that we’re clear of the continental shelf, we can stay deep enough to avoid anything that’s likely to show up.”

Hartwell took a sip from his mug, then added, “We’ve been coming to dead slow every so often to get a good sonar picture. Sonar’s pretty useless above fifteen knots or so. Too much noise. So we dash along at flank, stop, listen, then dash some more. And we’ll need to slow down for the final approach, of course.”

“So they don’t hear us coming?” Dean suggested.

“Exactly,” Grenville said, nodding. “Intelligence says there may be Russian subs operating up there. We’d rather our appearance be a surprise.”

That was news to Dean, but then, the National Security Agency wasn’t usually concerned with Russian naval movements unless they showed up on SIGINT intercepts. Word on the arrival of Russian submarines had probably reached the Ohio via naval intelligence, the DIA, or, just possibly, the CIA.

Dean sipped his coffee. True to the traditions of the submarine service, the stuff was pretty good. “Will Russian subs pose a problem for your operation, Lieutenant?” he asked.

Taylor gave a thin smile. “I don’t think so.”

“I was wondering if I could come along.”

Taylor exchanged a quick glance with Grenville. “Negative. My people know how to work with one another. As a team.”

“So do the Marines, Lieutenant.”

Taylor’s hard expression barely changed. “You’re a Marine?”

“I was. In my misspent youth.”

“Still not a good idea, sir.”

From the hard edge to Taylor’s voice, Dean knew that this was one argument he would not win.

Although no one had told him specifically, he was reasonably certain that Taylor commanded a platoon of Navy SEALs. The Ohio SSGN conversion had specifically allowed the upgraded boats to carry up to sixty SEALs or other special ops forces, but on this mission SEALs were by far the most likely passengers. SEALs-the acronym stood for the three realms in which they operated, SEa, Air, and Land-were the Navy’s premier commando force. Their training was unbelievably rugged, and according to some, they were the toughest warriors on the planet.

Dean held a deep respect for the SEALs but couldn’t resist a good-natured jibe. “When I come ashore at that base,” he told Taylor, “I do not want to see one of your damned signs waiting for me.”

The SEAL Teams had evolved out of the old Navy UDTs, the Underwater Demolition Teams, which had been born in the Pacific in World War II. The Marines had prided themselves at always being the first ashore, but on island after island they would hit the beach only to find hand-lettered signs upright in the sand identifying a UDT

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