Arctic Gold

given the possible consequences, he wasn’t about to experiment.

The best plan Dean had been able to come up with so far was to bundle a blanket over a guard when he came in with a tray of food and pummel him into unconsciousness with a can of vegetables. That might work if the guard was alone-extremely unlikely if he was carrying food-and if he carelessly stepped into the room without ordering the occupants back against the far wall with their hands in plain sight before he entered.

These people were not stupid. They weren’t going to make many mistakes, certainly not dumb-ass Hollywood villain goofs.

He leaned back against a damp metal bulkhead. “Well, a fine James Bond I turned out to be. Sorry, Miss McMillan.” He was still wrestling with possibilities. Maybe if they could cut a thin strip from one of those sheets and use it as a garrote. The trick would be to get the tear started without scissors or a knife. Maybe he could do it with his teeth?…

“I’m Kathy. And you’re doing just fine.”

He found he was almost missing the presence of Jeff Rockman or Marie Telach in his head. With his personal transceiver working, they would be feeding him all sorts of helpful advice about now… something involving turning urine and stewed tomatoes into plastic explosives, perhaps.

Of course, even without the problems of maintaining clear communications this far north, there was no way a radio signal could penetrate the thick tempered steel of this compartment, the pressure hull of the facility itself, and half a mile of water, plus the ice on top of that.

He was about as isolated from outside as it was possible for a person to be.

“The way I see it,” Kathy mused, “they can’t really afford to just out and out shoot us. They need to know how much we know about their operation. About this base.”

He nodded. “Not only that; our side knows we’re here. They can’t make us disappear and hope our people forget about us. They won’t.”

“You know, I think the Russians, the organized-crime bosses, I mean, have been really scared of bad publicity.” She looked pointedly at Benford. “He was put in to give Greenworld a bad name, I think. To discredit them, and anything they might say about Russian drilling in the Arctic.”

“Makes sense,” Dean said. “What can you tell me about Golytsin?”

“He seems to be the guy in charge of all of this… At least he was until the mean one with the scar showed up. Golytsin takes orders from him.”

“Braslov.”

“That’s him.” She folded her arms and shuddered. “He’s bad news. Golytsin? He made some pretty terrible threats when he questioned me, when he first brought me aboard the Russian ship… things like turning me over to the crew if I didn’t tell him who I was really working for, or leaving me out on the ice to freeze, but I think it was all bluff. He’s been looking after the needs of the prisoners, gave orders that they weren’t to be hurt or molested in any way. I think…”

“What?”

“My impression is that he’s proud of being Russian… a patriot, you know? But he sees the people above him being assholes, maybe even doing things that will hurt Russia in the long run. He has to obey their orders, but I don’t think he likes it.”

“Well, that’s something we might be able to use, then…”

Keys rattled in the lock outside. Dean shoved the opened crate aside and stood up. The door swung open, revealing Golytsin and a man in a Russian naval infantry uniform, both of them holding Makarov pistols.

Golytsin glanced at the open crate. “Hungry?” he asked. He pointed the pistol at Dean and gestured with it. “You. Come with me. No sudden movements, please.”

“Where are you taking him?” Kathy demanded.

“Never mind.” Golytsin gestured again. “Come!”

Hands raised, Dean stepped out into the passageway and watched as Benford and McMillan were locked in once more.

“It’s time, Mr. Dean,” Golytsin said, “that you and I had a frank chat. This way.”

23

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1132 hours, GMT-12

“BRIDGE, SONAR!”

“Go ahead.”

“Sir… the shrimp just cut a loud one.”

“Stay on it, Mayhew. I’m coming over.”

The Ohio’s sonar room was located just in front of the control room, adjoining it off the starboard passageway forward. Grenville walked down the passageway and stepped into the curtained-off room, a narrow compartment with four console workstations side-by-side, with a large acoustic spectrum analyzer at the far end.

At each station, display screens could be configured to show any of several key elements of the cascade of sonar data entering the Ohio’s AN/BSY-1 combat system, pronounced “Busy-One” by the men riding the boards.

Sonar Chief Kevin Mayhew was the sonar watch supervisor. At the other workstations, an ST/1 and two ST/2s sat at their boards, headphones on, their eyes locked on their sonar displays.

“Whatcha got, Chief?”

“An incidental, Captain. Wanna hear?”

“Play it for me.”

Mayhew touched a key. His sonar display winked out, then came back on, with a green trace drawing out a horizontal line. Grenville held a headphone to his ear. A moment later, he heard a sharp scrape, a thump, and a hiss as the green tracing zapped up and down like an earthquake seismograph. As the initial sound faded, he heard something in the background, a fluttering rattle… like the piece of cardboard he sometimes had attached to hit the spokes of his bicycle when he was a kid.

“Hear it, sir?”

“He bumped the ceiling.”

“Yes, sir. And did you catch at the end?…”

Grenville smiled. “He throttled up, probably to get the hell out of there, but he did it too fast. He was cavitating.”

“Exactly my thought, sir.”

Increase your speed too quickly and tiny bubbles built up on the surface of your propeller blades. When they popped, it made a hell of a racket, an effect known as cavitation.

“It’s not the ’Burgh,” Mayhew added. “Not a damned rookie trick like that. And we got enough of the engine noise to analyze. It’s a Victor III… probably the same one we recorded a year ago in the North Atlantic.”

“Not such a rookie trick, Chief,” Grenville said. “Let’s not underestimate him.”

If you scraped the ceiling of ice, it was because you were hugging the ice cap, staying tucked in close… and the only reason to do that was to lose yourself in the scatter of sound bouncing off the ice. In a way, it was like a helicopter pilot flying nape-of-the-earth in order to stay hidden for as long as possible.

Only very good sub drivers would try that.

And here was another possibility as well, a chilling one. That Russian sub driver out there might have brushed against an ice ridge and put the pedal to the metal for just an instant deliberately, knowing the American boat would hear… and just possibly respond a little too hastily, a little too carelessly.

No, Grenville did not intend to underestimate this fellow.