three miles. Three miles, and Pathfinder 731 was well within those parameters.
“He’s seen us!” The Spetsnaz commander stood, hefting the missile easily on his shoulder. “No other choice, now.”
“Stop it!” Rogov struggled to his feet, wondering when the ability to move so quickly had left him. “Didn’t you see the tail markings? That’s an American aircraft.” He put one hand on the rugged missile barrel.
“So?” The Spetsnaz commander bore-sighted the aircraft, trapping its tail end easily in the cross-hairs of the simple scope. “If she gets a report back to her base, our mission is blown.”
“No! If you shoot down that aircraft, there’s no chance. Do you think the Americans would let that go unavenged?”
The Spetsnaz commander shrugged, barely moving the missile off its target. “It is already compromised beyond recovery if they’ve seen us. You failed to follow my advice in this matter.”
“You agreed with posting the sentries. You insisted on it,” Rogov shouted.
“Yes, but I also said that they should return to the cave if contact were gained. You ignored that. No, this is all your fault.”
Rogov saw the man’s finger curl around the firing trigger as he braced himself for the recoil. “No!” he shouted. As the Spetsnaz’s finger tightened, Rogov slammed his fist down on the top of the tube.
The Spetsnaz commander was quick, but not as quick as the missile. As the tube started its downward arc, the missile left out, quickly gaining speed. Before it could recover from its initial firing vector, and begin seeking out the heat source that had called to it so sweetly just moments before, it impacted the barren ice and snow below. The fireball explosion blasted both men.
“You fool!” The Spetsnaz commander tossed the empty tube away, murder in his eyes. “The rest of the missiles are in the cavern. There is no time-” His voice broke off suddenly as he saw the pistol in Rogov’s hand.
“There are many chances, Comrade,” Rogov said sarcastically. “You had yours — now, I’m afraid, we’ll have to do things my way.”
The Spetsnaz commander moved swiftly, almost blurring in Rogov’s vision. But he’d been prepared for that. At the first movement, he fired, aiming not for the head but taking the more certain gut shot.
The Spetsnaz commander howled as the 9mm bullet gouged out a bloody path through skin, muscle, and vital organs. The impact spun him around, and he finally fell to the ice, on his back, leaving a trail of spattered blood behind him.
His guts steamed, and blood pooled quickly over the parka, freezing almost immediately. Rogov watched the color drain from the man’s face. He was tough, he would give him that. The Spetsnaz commander, even with half of his midsection in shredded tatters, was trying to climb to his feet, reaching for his weapon, still fighting despite the soon-to-be-fatal shot.
Rogov watched him, unwilling to get too near the man while even a trace of life remained in the body. He saw the man fumble in his pocket for his pistol, and ventured close enough to him to kick his hand away.
Rogov crouched down in the snow, still well out of reach of the Spetsnaz, and aimed the pistol at the man’s temple. “You don’t understand everything — not at all,” he said softly, pitching his voice low. He glanced around him briefly, wondering if the other men had heard the shot. Probably not with the silencer still affixed, although there was no telling how long it would be effective in this climate. Even now, he suspected, the cold had frozen the extended cylinder permanently to the barrel.
“They will kill you for this,” the Spetsnaz managed to gasp. “Kill you.”
Rogov smiled. “Did you really believe that was our mission?” he asked. Rogov shook his head. “And I was worried about you,” he admitted.
He could see the Spetsnaz commander’s face turning pale as blood flowed away from the brain, struggling to replace the frozen, pulsing mass in the man’s midsection. “Since you’re dead, I’ll tell you,” Rogov said. “In memory of your bravery, however foolhardy. There are no missiles on the way, Comrade Spetsnaz. None at all. There never have been, there never will be. Do you really think that we would be so foolish as to provoke an international incident by planting our own guns and missiles on American soil?” He shook his head again, wondering about the inflexible military mentality that made such lies plausible to men like this. “No, it is a much deeper plan than that,” he finished.
The Spetsnaz commander gave one final gasp, and then grew still. Within moments, Rogov could see ice starting to rim the delicate tissues exposed to the elements.
Now what? he wondered. This possibility had been discussed, that he would have to eliminate one or more of the Spetsnaz commandos. It had seemed a far easier — and safer — plan back in Russia, but now the difficulties seemed to have increased logarithmically. If it had been anyone except the commander, he thought, and shook his head again. No, this is the way it would have to be. Tension between the men had already been running too high. With the commander eliminated, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance the rest of the men would obey him unquestioningly, yielding with that peculiarly Slavic resignation to authority. And perhaps this would increase his stature within the group.
He debated for a moment trying to hide the body, and then decided against it. The Spetsnaz would, he was certain, send out patrols to try to locate the missing commando. Better that they know where it was now, and that Rogov admitted responsibility.
He stood and watched the speck that was the P-3 Orion dwindle in the distance. Now it was time for the next phase of the plan to unfold. He trudged down the slope to the cavern to await his new subordinates.
“Jesus, did you see that?” Eel yelped.
“You betcha.” The pilot’s voice was grim, “And I don’t care what Intelligence says, there damn well is somebody down there. Radio emissions, ghost contacts — hell, it’s entirely different when somebody starts shooting missiles at YOU.”
“Better lucky than good,” Eel said automatically. He stared back aft at the frozen landscape fading in the distance behind them.
Had they been lucky? one part of his mind wondered. They had to be — what else could explain the missile impacting with the ground instead of clawing up the ass of the Orion? A misfire, perhaps? Or something wrong with the guidance system on the Stinger? He shook his head, wondering at the possibilities. The Stinger was among the most simple weapons to operate, a feature that made it popular with every insurgent nation around the world. Simple, easily transportable, and almost unbearably deadly. It had been the advent of Stinger missiles on the ground in Afghanistan that had driven back the potent Soviet air force, and forced the Russians to a virtual defeat there.
As the adrenaline started to fade away, he felt his hands quiver. One Stinger missile versus one P-3 Orion aircraft — no contest, he decided. A Stinger would do fatal damage to the aircraft too quickly, and the lumbering Orion had too few tricks up its sleeves to evade it. The flares might have worked, but at that point, Eel was unwilling to bet his life on it. And glad he hadn’t been required to.
“You mind giving me a fly-to point for home?” the pilot said harshly. “I think there are some folks on the ground who are going to be mighty interested in talking to us.”
Eel returned to his console, automatically running the configuration of speeds and distance vectors necessary to take them back to their home base in Adak. That done, he punched in the communications circuit of their home base and began trying to raise the operations officer. After a few seconds, he broke off, and called up the USS Thomas Jefferson, asking them to come up on the same circuit. He had a feeling that the carrier battle group to the south would be at least as interested, if not more so, in what he had to tell his boss.
White Wolf crouched behind the ice and rock, hugging up close to it. He felt the vibrations from the explosion radiate through his bearskin parka, felt the intricate crystalline structure of ice and rock tremble beneath his sensitive fingers. Some small part of him reached out to the surrounding cliffs and rocks, searching for any sign of instability. Long experience with avalanches and earthquakes had bred into the native Inuit population an uncanny
