Arctic Gold (26 page)

Tomorrow night then? Akulinin asked.

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

Beaufort Sea

75a! 18’ N, 129a! 21’ W

1732 hours, GMT7

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 progress with interest in the big plot board at the aft end of the control room, where an enlisted watchstander marked the Ohio

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 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

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 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 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 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 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. SEALsthe acronym stood for the three realms in which they operated, SEa, Air, and Landwere the Navy 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 recon element that had slipped ashore the night before. It was a tradition that had continued all the way through to Vietnam.

Taylor actually smiled. Dean hadn’t been sure that the hard- faced man could smile. Maybe you shouldn’t have told us you were a jarhead, he said. When you were just another spook, we didn’t know what

to make of you.

The Teams, Dean remembered, had long maintained a tradition of close work with the CIA, but also preferred to develop their own local intelligence networks where possible. The Teams were close- knit and band- of- brothers tight and tended not to play well with others.

His ID says he CIA, Grenville said. Maybe we should just leave it at that.

Dean said nothing. NSA operatives rarely admitted that they were from the No- Such- Agency when they were in the field, even to friends and allies.

What exactly is your mission here, Mr. Dean? Hartwell wanted to know.

Dean reached into the pocket of the dungaree shirt he’d been given to wear when he’d come aboard, and extracted a photograph laminated in clear plastic. He handed it to Grenville.

Nasty scar, Grenville said as he looked at the man in the photo. He passed it to Taylor.

Sergei Braslov, Dean told them. Also goes by the name Johann Ernst.’ Used to be GRU. Now he may be working with Russian State Security, but he also working for the Russian mob. He may be at the Russian base up here, and he may be involved in whatever happened to our people at the NOAA ice station. What we do know, beyond a doubt, is that he was behind the murder of another government operative, someone who was also a friend of mine.

Taylor nodded, and his eye met Dean for just a moment. He knows, Dean thought. Comrades- at- arms, and all of that. Or maybe he just knows what it like to lose a buddy

.

If you find Braslov, Dean continued, addressing Taylor, we want him alive for interrogation. The Russian mafia is putting together something pretty big. We think they’re trying to corner the whole Russian oil production network. Braslov may be able to give us some insight on that.

Okay. So the mafia takes over Russian oil production, Hartwell said. So what? No skin off our noses, right? What the big deal?

It is a big deal, Dean told him. Remember how gas prices soared in ‘08? They will again, especially if the Russians start playing games with the market. Gas prices at five dollars a gallon. Higher in Europe. High oil prices mean the cost of everything

goes up. High prices mean more unrest, turnovers in governments, even revolutions.

The Russian mob has been running their economy into the ground for twenty years. If they do the same thing to the Russian oil industry, it will have global repercussions. Bad ones. Half of Europe depends on Moscow for oil and natural gas. If Russian production goes under, it will be devastating.

And Washington is afraid they’re going to try to grab half of the Arctic Ocean, probably so that they can begin high- volume oil and gas exploitation up here. We know Canada and Denmark will fight their Lomonsov Ridge claim. A war over oil rights is going to shake the world market, too, maybe bring on a general economic collapse.

Taylor slid the photograph back across the table to Dean. And finding this one guy is going to stop all of that?

Maybe not. But he just might have the key to figuring out what the Russians are really up to.

Grenville looked thoughtful, then stood and walked around behind the table to a wall safe. He punched several numbers in on the digital keypad, pulled open the door, and extracted a thick manila folder marked Secret.

Your home office transmitted your clearance to see this stuff, he told Dean, selecting several laser- printer color copies and pulling them out of the folder. He grinned. Turns out your security clearance is better than mine. Have you seen these yet? Courtesy of the NRO.

The first print showed three large ships in the ice, a shot obviously taken from an oblique angle from high overhead. Black water was clearly visible around each vessel, and Dean could see disturbances in the water caused by station- keeping thrusters.

The next two zeroed in on one of the ships, massive and red- hulled. One showed the entire length of the ship from her starboard side, from far enough back that the entire vessel was visible, sitting in a large hole of black water surrounded by ice. She had a massive, blocklike forward superstructure and a large, open deck aft. Her name, in Cyrillic letters, was easily legible on her raised prowAkademik Petr Lebedev.

A civilian scientific research ship, sixty- six hundred tons, Grenville said. Launched in 1989, the second in her class. Designed for physical oceanography and ocean floor sampling. See that mast just forward of the stack, like an oil derrick? Used for drilling core samples.

The next photo was a close- up, focusing on the Lebedev

afterdeck. Individual crewmen could be seen, bundled up against the cold as they worked around a stack of long, slender tubes, each around thirty feet long, Dean guessed. One of the tubes hung off an A- frame over the stern, apparently caught as it was being lowered into the ice- free water next to the ship. A second tube was being lifted clear of the deck by one of five starboard- side cranes. Dean could even make out the face of one man who appeared to be in charge; he had his arms up, his gloved hands twisted in an obvious come on, keep coming gesture as he directed the operation.

More photos showed other details of a large- scale Arctic expeditionclose- ups of the other two ships, an ice breaker and a cargo vesselas well as a helicopter, small prefab structures on the ice, and piles of supplies and heavy equipment. Time and date stamps on each of the printouts indicated they’d been taken three days before in two passes about ninety minutes apart.

The NRO, or National Reconnaissance Office, was one of America sixteen separate intelligence agencies and was responsible for IMINT, or imagery intelligencephotographs shot by spy satellites, in other words. Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, it was officially part of

the Defense Department, but was staffed by employees from both the NSA and the CIA, as well as by military personnel and civilian contractors.

No, Dean said. I hadn’t seen these. That much was true, though Rubens had told him about the Russian base on the ice during his long- distance briefing at Menwith Hill.

What the matter? Hartwell said with a chuckle. Don’t you guys talk to one another?

You’d be surprised what we don’t even tell ourselves, Dean replied. He studied the photo of the activity on the Lebedev

afterdeck more closely. What are they doing? Pulling core samples?

According to the message transmitted with these photos, Grenville told him, the pipes appear to be the business end of an oil- drilling rig. However, there no sign of a derrick or platform, and the water at that point is over two thousand meters deep. So the whole thing is pretty much a mystery.

You can see that they’re stringing those sections of pipe together and feeding it over the transom, he said. The pipe sections are too thin to be a seabed pipeline.

I was wondering if it was a pipeline myself, Grenville said. But the ship isn’t moving, so she not paying it out astern. Besides, the water is pretty deep at that spotalmost half a mile. A regular pipeline would have to be a lot thicker, with lots of insulation to keep the oil warm enough to flow. He shook his head. It would also need some hellaciously big pumps, and we’re not seeing anything like that.

It might also be a natural gas well, Dean said, but that would still require a derrick. He remembered what Lia had told him a few nights ago about the movement of the ice. There something here that just not making sense.

Well, we should be at the NOAA station by twenty- two hundred hours tomorrow, Grenville said. We’ll surface there and maybe then we can start getting some answers.

Dean nodded. You’re not expecting any problem with breaking through the ice?

Grenville smiled and shook his head. Believe me, the ice is the least of our worries. The stuff so thin we won’t even need to look for a lead.

I heard it was two or three yards thick.

Normally, yeah. But the ice cap has been unusually thin for, oh, eight or ten years now. The people preaching global warming aren’t just blowing smoke. In August of 2007, over half of the usual summer ice cap was just gone. The Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and the East Siberian Seam all the way to well beyond the North Pole, the whole damned region was completely ice free. First time that ever happened since we started paying attention to the Arctic.