Arctic Gold

covert insertions, had married the HUNTIR with a self-powered UAV. The result was Sky-HUNTIR, a long-bodied 40mm round that deployed an engine and a parafoil wing at the top of its trajectory. The battery on board would keep the device aloft for up to ten minutes, and an operator on the ground-or, in this case, on the fantail of a ship- could remotely fly the UAV to exactly the right point for useful snooping, or let the onboard computer chip steer the vehicle on a preset search course.

The Sky-HUNTIR was already sending back black-and-white images, though so far they showed nothing but a wildly tilted horizon. Nudging the joystick, Dean brought the flier around in a broad turn, angling the camera in its nose to look back at the ship.

“That’s the IR view?” Taylor asked, looking over his shoulder.

“IR overlaid on visible,” Dean replied. He pointed at the screen. “We’re getting some thermal imaging through the superstructure. Looks like the hostages may still be gathered here.”

Large numbers of human bodies radiated heat-quite a bit of it. The ceilings and walls of the Lebedev’s superstructure were relatively thin and not well insulated; on the screen, numerous dark blobs of fuzz marked man-sized heat sources, some moving, some clustered together in one place.

Dean tapped on the small keyboard, bringing up a schematic of the Lebedev’s upper decks, then had the computer drop the recorded heat sources onto the deck plans.

“Team three!” Taylor snapped. “Hostages are at prime target area. Execute!”

Nearby, the four SEALs of fire team three moved closed on the large watertight door at the aft end of the Lebedev’s superstructure from either side.

20

Aft Stores Locker CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1030 hours, GMT-12

FEODOR GOLYTSIN REACHED the long passageway on the main deck outside the machine shops and stores lockers. This was the aft end of the Lebedev’s above-hull superstructure, a long block of large compartments used to support the mechanical aspects of at-sea drilling and bottom sampling.

The aft stores locker had been filled with crates of food at the beginning of the expedition but was nearly empty now. Days before, Golytsin had given orders that the compartment be carefully searched for anything that might become an improvised weapon. Then mattresses had been moved into the compartment, which had sinks and a toilet. The American “guests” could be housed temporarily there, at least until arrangements could be made to put them on board a helicopter, and they could be flown back to Mys Shmidta. A naval infantry guard stood outside the door, gripping his AKM tightly and looking nervous at the growing sounds of battle outside.

“Stand aside,” Golytsin ordered. “Open it.”

The guard undogged the hatch and stepped back. Golytsin stepped inside, exercising caution in case the prisoners had prepared an ambush inside. The prisoners, however, were gathered along the far bulkhead, slumped on mattresses or the bare deck.

“What the hell is going on?” one of the men demanded.

“Some of your countrymen have decided to launch a hostage rescue, Lieutenant Segal,” he said. During the past days, he’d closely questioned all thirteen of the prisoners, and now he knew them all by name. He raised his PM and pointed it at one of the women. “Miss McMillan, you will come with me.”

“Now wait just a damned minute!” Tom McCauley yelled, coming to his feet, fists clenched. Fred Masters got up as well… and then all of the prisoners were on their feet.

“Stay put, Kathy!” Randy Haines ordered.

“What the hell are you trying to pull?” Steven Moore demanded. “She stays with us, you Russian bastard!”

Golytsin smiled. Moore was one of the Greenpeace moviemakers. It was interesting to see how the two groups had forgotten differences and come together since coming on board the Lebedev.

Golytsin brandished the pistol. “I promise nothing will happen to her,” he said. “But if the rest of you don’t sit down and do exactly as you’re told, several of you will be dead!”

“It’s okay, boys,” the woman said. She crossed the deck to stand in front of Golytsin. She still wore the T-shirt she’d had on when she came on board; someone had found her a pair of BDU trousers, however, which were baggy on her. “So what am I, Feodor, your personal bargaining chip?”

“Something like that.” He grabbed her upper arm and steered her toward the door. “I suggest the rest of you lie down, cover your heads under those mattresses, and don’t move around. Hostage rescues can be… very hazardous for the hostages.”

He led the woman out into the passageway.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Somewhere safer than this ship,” he told her. He pointed with the PM. “That way.”

During the past week, he’d been quite impressed with Kathy McMillan. Threats of torture, of gang rape, of being abandoned on the ice or dropped into freezing water, none of those had shaken her resolve to tell Golytsin absolutely nothing.

Golytsin considered himself to be an ethical and moral man. He disliked violence, disliked bully tactics, and had never intended to actually carry out any of those threats on the woman. But she didn’t know that, and he’d been impressed by her stolid, almost Russian willingness to confront and endure whatever the future might hold for her.

Still, her silence, and that of one of her companions, Randy Haines, had confirmed for Golytsin that both of them were American intelligence agents, probably CIA. The third man the Dekabrist had plucked off the ice, Dennis Yeats, Golytsin was pretty sure was just another NOAA scientist. Haines was almost certainly CIA, but he was also a big man, with powerful arms, and Golytsin didn’t trust his own ability to keep control of someone that physically strong.

Those commandos outside could have the rest of the prisoners. McMillan, Golytsn had decided, was more valuable than the lot of them combined.

“Faster!” he urged as they hurried down the passageway.

Fantail CFS Akademik Petr Lebedev Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1031 hours, GMT-12

The SEALs reached the watertight door leading into the Lebedev’s superstructure and tried pulling the grab handle. “It’s locked!” one yelled.

“Blow it open!” Taylor called back.

One of the SEALs reached into a waterproof pouch, producing a strip of cutting charge. But it would take precious seconds to affix the charge and blow the door off of its dogs and hinges.

“Have your men step clear,” Dean said. He put the Sky-HUNTIR on an automatic search orbit above the ship and set the controller on the deck, retrieving the MGL-140. “And I mean way clear. We can kick the door in with this baby.”

Taylor nodded, clapping Dean’s shoulder with a gloved hand. “Do it.”

At Taylor’s direction, the SEALs stepped well back from the door, taking cover around the corners of the superstructure. Dean brought the MGL-140 to his shoulder and sighted on the center of the door.

The MGL-140 had been developed to meet a number of design challenges posed by earlier grenade launchers, like the well-known M-203. Besides being able to launch a tactical battlefield camera, the MGL-140 could also utilize a variety of new munition types, in addition to the large and varied family of 40mm grenades already in the military arsenal.

Among these was the MEI Hellhound round, an impact-detonation grenade with twice the lethal radius of the conventional M433 high-explosive grenade and far more hitting power. The joke was that the “hound” in the round’s name stood for “High-Order Unbelievably Nasty Destruction,” a rather too-cute acronym, which Dean was inclined to doubt came from real life, but which certainly told the story. Officially, the round was called “hyper-