Arctic Gold

brace for surface, ice. All hands brace for surface, ice!”

The periscope slid back safely into its well. “Blow main ballast, Mr. Dolby.”

“Blow main ballast, aye, aye, sir,” the diving officer replied.

Dean heard the shrill hiss of water and air venting from ballast tanks, felt the faint surge of elevator movement beneath his feet and in his gut as the Ohio began rising straight up. He felt more than heard the crunch as the top of the sail impacted squarely against the bottom of the ice, felt the Ohio stagger in her movement, then resume her ascent with a slight, crackling shudder.

“Shore party,” the COB called, “break out cold-weather gear and report topside.”

Dean turned to the captain. “Permission to go ashore, sir?”

“Granted. But watch your ass out there.”

Twenty minutes later, Dean was on the ice, trudging toward a forlorn cluster of prefab huts. The air was surprisingly warm, though the wind had a bite to it; the sun was low above the northwestern horizon in this land of the midnight sun, even though it was nearly 2200. The sky was a deep, clear blue. The Ohio’s sail cast long shadows across the ice at his back.

Several Navy SEALs were already at the NOAA base, clad in black dry suits and holding assault rifles with the trigger guards removed, so they could be fired while the SEALs were wearing heavy gloves. Taylor’s SEALs-sixteen of them-had boarded the ASDS hours before, slipping ahead of the Ohio to perform a surface reconnaissance. They’d located a polynya, broken through the ice, and deployed into the NOAA base, determining that it was abandoned. They’d lowered a sonar beacon through the hole in the ice-Signal Sierra One-to guide the Ohio in on the deserted encampment.

Lieutenant Taylor was standing next to a flagstaff planted in the ice outside the main building. The white, blue, and red-barred flag of the Russian Federation fluttered in the stiff breeze above him. Dean watched as the man pulled a diving knife from somewhere under his heavy parka and sawed through the line securing the flag. In an instant, the flag fluttered away on the wind, trailing a loose four feet of line. Another SEAL standing nearby produced an American flag, neatly folded in a triangle. The two men used the remaining rope to secure the flag, then hauled it quickly to the top of the staff and tied it off.

“Well done, Mr. Taylor,” Dean said.

“Thank you sir,” Taylor said. “Our base is secure.”

“And no sign of the enemy?”

“Nothing, sir. No sign of our people, either.”

“I’d still like to have a look.”

The door to the main building was hanging open. Dean stepped inside and immediately made a face. “God, it stinks in here!”

Taylor, behind him, nodded. “Yessir. Too many people in too small a space for too damned long.”

“Like on board the Ohio, huh?”

“Hell, at least everything on the Ohydro has a place and is squared away,” Taylor said, using a nickname that went back to the sub’s service as a boomer. “This is a damned rat’s nest.”

Dean agreed. The hut was cluttered with human debris-clothing hung up to dry, a camera sitting next to a chess game in progress and a plate with half a sandwich. Much of the stench was from a long-untended chemical toilet in the back of the room, but the air was also thick with the mingled stinks of perspiration, wet clothing, oil, stale food, and mildew. Curtains that had divided the sleeping quarters had been ripped down and left on the floor. Radio equipment at the opposite end of the room had been smashed, apparently with rifle butts.

Dean stepped away from the SEALs and tried switching on his personal transmitter. “George, this is Charlie. Do you copy?”

He could hear static behind his ear and a faint, dopplering whistle.

“George, Charlie. Are you there?”

“Reception up here sucks, man,” one of the SEALs told him. “Satellites are too close to the horizon.”

“I guess so.” He would have to transmit from the Ohio’s much larger UHF antenna later. He switched off the unit in his belt and continued exploring the base.

A storeroom in a nearby building was a charnel house, the air thick with the stink of blood. Someone had gone down the passageway, methodically shooting the sled dogs in their kennels. The act appeared random and cruel… until Dean suppressed his anger and thought it through. The Russians evidently had been here on a quick in-and-out to grab the Americans. They hadn’t been able to take the dogs along, so they’d shot them rather than leaving them to starve in their cages or freeze on the open ice.

At the far end of the passageway, near some carefully stored snowmobiles, there was a rusty stain on the floor that looked like more blood. Dean studied it for a moment. It might have splashed out of a nearby cage-there were plenty of bloodstains on the wall above the dead dogs-but it looked more like someone had fallen here, bleeding. The stain streaked across the floor, as though smeared by someone dragging a body, and all of the dogs were inside their cages.

Dean used a tiny digital camera to record everything, including the gruesome contents of the cages and the long smear on the floor. Other supply sheds and buildings scattered about the compound appeared to have been searched but seemed to be intact. Eventually, he returned to the main building.

“Mr. Dean?” Taylor said, holding something up as he stepped into the building. “You might be interested in this.”

Dean accepted the device, which looked like a small transistor radio. There was no tuning knob, however, just a knob for volume and on-off. When he turned it on, he could hear a squeal of atmospherics and, just barely, a voice, though the static was too bad to understand the words.

“Where’d you find this?”

“Jones found it underneath that mattress over there,” Taylor said, pointing. “It may be nothing, but…”

“But the fact that it was hidden makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Curious, Dean popped a back panel off and looked at the batteries. They were double-As, but the words printed on the casings were spelled out in Cyrillic letters.

So, what was someone on the NOAA expedition doing with a single-channel radio powered by Russian batteries?

Dean could think of only one reasonable answer to the question.

“Let’s check the personal effects,” Dean told the SEALs. “Whose bunk was this?”

Each of the bunks, racked two high in the cramped sleeping area, had a pair of small steel lockers next to it. Methodically, three of the SEALs began going through each, removing the contents and bagging them.

There wasn’t a lot-wallets, personal items such as rings and jewelry, toiletries, packs of cigarettes, sewing kits, socks and underwear, and the like. The radio had been found under one of the bottom bunks, so the owner had kept his personal items in one of two small lockers close by. ID cards in the wallets gave the names of the owners.

Steven Moore, Dean knew from his briefing, was one of the Greenworld documentary filmmakers.

Randy Haines was one of the NOAA meteorologists.

And one of them, Dean knew, was a traitor…

The Art Room NSA Headquarters Fort Meade, Maryland 1515 hours EDT

William Rubens sat at his desk, staring at the computer screen. The e-mail, on a special, secure feed from Men-with Hill, had come through from decryption only moments before. Lightly he touched the screen, as though wondering if the message would vanish.

“Thank God,” he murmured as he began to read the message again. He shook his head. “Thank God…”

Major Richard Delallo recovered and safe, the decoded message read. He ejected into the sea south of Kotka, Finland. He was unconscious when he hit the water, but he was pulled out by Finnish fishermen, who took him back to their village. There was some delay in getting word back to Lakenheath. Major Delallo’s flight suit was sterile for the op, and the fishermen thought he might be Russian. It was several days before they contacted the UK embassy in Helsinki.

Pilots flying covert ops such as Ghost Blue’s always went in sterile-meaning no flags on their flight suits, no name tags, nothing that could identify them as American or British.