B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (6 page)

“Precisely,
and it may have come from the same mysterious object that exploded over Tunguska.”

“And
this Iceland Spar is refractive; it splits and doubles light rays passing through
it.”

“Correct.”
Kapustin smiled. “It’s distributed all through this particular control rod, scattered
like powder. If it can split light rays, who knows what else it might be doing
when exposed to the radiation within a nuclear reactor?”

“Amazing,”
said Kamenski. “The other two rods from this batch, do they also show this same
residual material?”

“Of
course. Like father and son. In fact, the one we had stored here had even higher
readings than Rod-25. So these other control rods may exhibit the very same
properties and effects, unless all of this is completely irrelevant. Who knows?”

“I
don’t understand the science,” said Volsky, “but there is no denying the effects.
I’ve lived them. It was mere happenstance that we eventually came to see the
twelve day shift pattern aboard
Kirov
, and mate it with Dobrynin’s
maintenance schedule on the reactor. And you have already told me that a
significant nuclear explosion produces time displacement. That alone is cause
for amazement.”

“Or
a massive geothermal explosion,” Kamenski put in. “Perhaps this control rod redoubles
the effects of nuclear fission in some way when it is inserted into the
reactor,” Kamenski held up a finger, thinking about it further. “We won’t figure
all this out here, but let’s put some good minds to work on this—quietly. In
the meantime, we have already seen the effects produced by this control rod,
and seeing is believing. If these other two rods also have this material in
them, and they work as we hope they will, then we may have made one of the
greatest discoveries in human history. Congratulations, Gerasim! You may have
just discovered the secret of time travel!”

Volsky
recalled the look on the Inspector’s face, a restrained jubilation, clouded by a
squall of confusion and surprise. Yet he realized now what Kamenski was saying—they
could now willfully create these control rods, experimenting with different
materials and quantities of this strange substance mined from the perimeter of
the Tunguska explosion, and yes, they would figure this all out in time. In
time…Assuming they had any to spare in the enterprise.

What
have we done? If these other control rods also work…if these effects can be duplicated
any time we wish…What have we done? The implications of the discovery loomed
like a massive eruption of that volcano in his mind, clouding his thoughts with
the ashfall of a thousand generations.

Chapter 6

“You
want us to attack the operation?” MacRae had
an astonished look on his face. “With three helicopters and thirty men?”

“Can
it be done?” Elena Fairchild knew that if she wanted it done something would happen,
but she wanted to know what her odds were.

“That
depends,” the big Scott folded his arms, thinking. “What does Mack Morgan have for
us on the situation?”

“They’re
up to something. That much is clear. The activity is centered on this floating nuclear
reactor site, the
Anatoly Alexandrov
I told you about earlier. Mack says
they’ve moved in hovercraft from the naval base at Kaspiysk, and set up
additional SAM batteries there. Now he’s learned there’s a contingent of Russian
Naval Marines out on that ship, barge, whatever it is. And they’ve moved in a
big helicopter as well. Drones got a good look at it before the Russians
painted them with targeting radars and NATO pulled out. They’re loading a lot
of aviation fuel, and something that looks like missile canisters.”

“Well
there’s a war on, and you may have noticed that when
Princess Irene
went
down.” MacRae was frustrated, and still bothered by his failure on that score.
“Why and God’s name do we have to get involved? To even the score?” Now he
realized his remark was a bit too pointed, and he apologized.

“Don’t
worry about that, Gordon,” said Elena. “The oil doesn’t matter now.”

That
took MacRae by surprise. “It doesn’t matter? Don’t tell me you’re giving up the
ghost on this mission because we lost
Princess Irene.
Look, we’ve still got
two million barrels of oil on the other two tankers, and we’re well protected
now that the Turks have thrown in with their naval/air assets. And Mack tells
me they were able to get a significant amount of oil off
Princess Royal
and
pump it into another empty tanker. No room to bunker it at Fujairah now. The
Iranians made a mess of the whole storage sector, and they’ll be fighting fires
there for weeks. But we got a goodly amount off and you can count that toward
your debt to Chevron. With the oil at $300 a barrel now you’ve still got good
margins here.”

“That
may be so, but there’s something else involved.” She seemed to hesitate, as if about
to say something and then catching herself. He could see her thinking, wondering,
as if she desperately wanted to tell him something but was holding back.

MacRae
decided he had enough good will in the bank after his years of service to press
her. “What is it, Elena?” There, he’d did it. He finally used her first name, dropping
the veil of propriety and protocol now and taking the matter to a personal
level.

She
could hear it in his voice, the softening of his tone, and see it in his eyes now
as he looked at her. He had the look of a man who would do anything he could to
take the burden from her shoulders, and she had seen it in the eyes of few
other men in her life. Deep down, she wanted to think she saw love there, real
love, not mere concern and dutiful attendance from a subordinate in her employ.
And when she looked at him her heart ached to tell him more, to tell him
everything, and to finally feel that the burden she carried might be shared by
the two of them, up on his broad shoulders where she knew he could carry it easily—everything
she had dragged about in her life for decades, all in his big arms. And they’d
carry it together.

The
two of them…

“I…
I can’t say more, Gordon. You’ll have to trust me on this.” The words stumbled out,
even as she chided herself inwardly for not going further, for not reaching for
what she longed to take hold of in her mind and heart. Gordon MacRae, she
thought in a wink of her soul. My God, I love the man…

MacRae
looked at her, seeing more there than she realized she had shown him. He put his
hands in his jacket pocket, surprised to feel the note he had received from the
Black Line days ago warning of the imminent attack on
Princess Royal
in
the Gulf. He realized he was still wearing dress whites! One thing had led to
another and he never found time to switch out to his navy blues. Now he stood
there, his mind alert enough and perceptive enough to know that she was hiding
something she dearly wanted to reveal. And the only big mystery in the woman’s
life is right behind that movable bulkhead on the other side of the room, he
thought. Then he spoke his mind.

“It’s
that damn red phone back there, isn’t it?”

She
looked at him, lips tightening.

“Another
call came in, am I right? What is it, Elena? Is it government business? The Prime
Minister chewing on your ear for something? Well, the Royal Navy has been able
to see to the Crown’s business for the last thousand years well enough. What in
God’s name have we got to do with this? It was good of them to lend a hand here
with the
Iron Duke,
but we’ve no need to repay the favor.”

“It’s
something more,” she said it before she could stop herself. “And it has a long,
long tail, Gordon.”

“Yes,
and you’ve had hold of that tiger since the first day I set foot on this ship. What
is it, Elena? What’s so damn important about that red phone?”

She
lowered her head, eyes glassy, her hand on her brow. The stress of these last days
had been heavy on her, and she needed sleep. Her head suddenly felt as light as
her heart as she imagined herself telling him everything, opening up the doors
and letting him in at long last. Then she did what women have done for
generations when there was simply no other way to cross that last impossible
gulf between a man and woman so obviously drawn into the well of one another,
but forever harried by the curse of forbidden love.

She
fainted.

“Elena!”
MacRae saw her legs go limp and stepped forward quickly as she fell, taking her
in his arms. He lifted her easily, carrying her to the nearby sofa and laying her
gently down. As he did so her eyes fluttered open again, unfocused, and she felt
the heat of the moment, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.

“You’re
not well,” said MacRae. “Fainted dead away on me. Here, let me get you some water.”

He
was up and over to the wet bar and soon had a glass of cool ice water in hand. He
put one big hand behind her head to help her as she took a long sip. Then she
closed her eyes, flushed with embarrassment, yet somehow feeling she had just
leapt over a great crevasse between them.

“Oh
Gordon,” she said softly. “If you only knew what I know…”

“What?
About this business in the Caspian? Alright, so you’ve got your private line there
and the Government leans on you from time to time for special favors. I understand.
You’ve called in a number of favors yourself in your day, or why else is
Iron
Duke
out there watching our backside, eh? What’s the big secret this time?
You want me to send those men out there in after this
Anatoly Alexandrov
?
Why? Has the government gotten wind of something? What’s itching the Prime
Minister’s backside this time?”

She
smiled. “No, it isn’t that,” she said skirting the edge of the hidden truth again.
“It’s not the government. Neither Whitehall nor Ten Downing Street has anything
to do with it.”

“What
then? Will you at least give me that much before I give the order. Can we hit this
operation? Yes we can, but we’ll likely lose good men if we do this, not to
mention the X-3s. Tell me why Fairchild Inc. needs to get in on this bar fight,
Elena? You tell me that and I’ll move heaven and earth for you. You know I
will, but I’ve been mucking about in the dark all these years, carrying on behind
these Captain’s stripes. Ours is not to reason why…You know the drill. I’d give
you the world if I could hold it in my arms, but you’re a damn hard woman to
love…”

My
god, he thought. I’ve said it.

And
she heard it at once, heard what she had been longing to tell him for years.
She did something that surprised him now, though it seemed a natural thing to
do in the situation, reaching up and touching the side of his face, her hand
soft on his cheek, a longing in her eyes, and the beginning of tears. “Gordon
MacRae,” she started.

 Words
came to him, in the old tongue he still loved and knew so well: “
Tá sé níos fearr
chun iarracht a dhéanamh ná mar a súil,”
he said. “It’s better to try than
to hope.” Then he did something that surprised himself even more, and he leaned
down and kissed her…

* * *

Captain
MacRae got his answer, though
he sat for a good long hour trying to understand what it meant. Lieutenant Ryan
with the X-3 Helo contingent got his orders soon after. He was out on the tarmac
at Buzachi airfield north of Fort Shevchenko, watching as the air crews finished
up the refueling operation and were rolling the tanker truck away. It wasn’t
much of an airfield, just a single hanger and fuel station and a simple asphalt
runway. A thin, dull brown road led west toward the Caspian coast and the oil
worker’s settlement. His three sleek X-3s sat like birds of prey on the landing
strip, the only aircraft there that day, and though he knew he had one of his
men over in the number three bird watching radar returns, he still found himself
looking north with apprehension.

The
Russians, he thought…They let loose on the company and put
Princess Irene
on the bottom of the sea. I hope to God we gave them a bloody nose for that one.
Word is they have a reinforced rifle division up on the Kazakh border ready to
roll on a moment’s notice. If they do move, that will mean they’ll have air
cover up as well, and they know exactly where every airfield in the region is
now. The longer he sat there on the tarmac the more vulnerable he felt, and he
was itching to get his men aboard the X-3s and heading home—until the call came
in from Captain MacRae on
Argos Fire.

“Well
now,” he said, his Irish blood riled. “A bar fight, Tommy.” His co-pilot Tom Wicks
was checking one of the twin turbo-prop engines on the nearest X-3. “Looks like
somebody got her skirts ruffled over that incident in the Black Sea.”

“What
skirts?” said Wicks. “She’s got a pair of legs on her, no question about that, but
her ladyship never gives us a look at them. Always prancing about in those pants
suits and all.”

“You
have it in for the CEO, Tommy?”

“Me?
I’ll have it in anywhere I get a welcome,” he smiled. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?”

“I
can’t say as I know,” said Ryan. “Just like us Irish. We never know what we want,
but we’re prepared to fight to the death until we get it.”

“Is
Fairchild Irish? I thought she was proper British.”

“That
she is, but there’s a wee bit of good Irish honey in her blood, and those lips have
kissed the blarney stone, eh? Why else would she plant the company flag on the
Isle of Man, right smack in the Irish Sea?”

“Missing
Bradytown, are you?”

“Aye,
we’re a long way from home out here, Tommy. Now we get this new mission and something
tells me a good many of us may not ever get home again.”

Wicks
thought that one over, his eyes drifting to one of the rifle squads resting in the
open hanger across the way. “What is it we’re supposed to do, exactly?”

“There’s
a Russian base on the other side of that big lake out there.”

“Lake?
You mean the Caspian Sea?”

“Right-O.
Well, we’re paying them a visit, if you know what I mean. Mack Morgan thinks they’re
ready to run some kind of Spetsnaz operation from an anchorage just off shore.
They want us to crash the party.”

“Lord
almighty! What are we up against?”

“Not
much off shore. Just a big floating power plant, but the Russians seem to be using
it as a staging base for some pending operation. They want us to shoot the damn
thing up before they get it underway.”

“Where
is the place?”

“About
15 klicks off the coast near that naval base at Kaspiysk. I make it about 350 kilometers
from here.”

“That
sounds like a run and gun mission, Lieutenant. We taking the Argonauts?”

“Well
we’ve got to get them home some way, right? But you’re right, we won’t much need
them on a mission like this. My plan is to get them down to Baku—that’s a 500
kilometer run, so we’ll need to refuel there again at the BP facility. Then we
run up the coast, go in fast and low, paint the target, and let the missiles do
the rest. We can pick the Argonauts up on the way back.”

“If
we make it back,” said Wicks with a shrug. “We’re packing Hydra-70s in the rocket
pods. Their effective range is 8,000 meters, and they’re unguided, so we’ll
have to be pretty damn close. You think the Russians might know we’re coming?
They’ll sure as hell have radar and SAM batteries at that naval base. We’ve got
a fairly small radar cross section, but they’ll see us in time.”

“Aye,
and they won’t be happy when they do. Things are getting pretty dicey now.
Russians beefed up the 414th Naval Infantry at Kaspiysk. There’s a motorized
column from their 58th Army heading for Makhachkala. Could be trouble, and
Morgan thinks they mean to make a move on Baku, and grab the Kashagan
superfields up here while they’re at it.”