The American had not taken the radio with him.
OK, so he wasn’t going to be able to make it back to Gambell, but his buddy could just as easily pick him up somewhere near Savoonga. Zubkhov was going to get that damned radio if it killed him.
Devlin’s car was navigating itself through the streets of a city that had gone mad. People were running, everywhere. They were running out of their offices and workplaces. They were running towards supermarkets and kiosks. They were running down the road with bags heavy with canned food and bottled water. Devlin closed her eyes, and swallowed the lump in her throat. She understood the people running home to be with their loved ones, but why were people queuing outside the shops? How did you shop for an apocalypse?
On the back seat of the limo, she began composing her message to State. It would be in short sparse sentences, as would the reports of all her people. There was no time for elegant prose, or making a collective report. State wanted raw, real-time feedback on the responses of the Russian nomenklatura.
Devlin’s report looked like this:
Met with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Popov in his offices and watched the Presidential address in his company.
He appeared shocked.
He called the nuclear weapons test ‘a declaration of war’
He accused the US of starting the conflict with the sinking of the Olympic Tsar and does not doubt the Russian version of the story that the US was behind this sinking.
He said the Russian military would be bound to respond to the nuclear test and that the USA had just ‘doomed itself’.
He then terminated the meeting.
She was about to hit ‘send’ when the car swerved around a group of people in the street and she saw them putting a large pole through the window of a closed shop, smashing the glass. Up ahead, traffic was at a complete standstill.
She returned to add to her message:
Moscow’s civil administration has declared a State of Emergency. There is panic in the streets, hoarding of food, looting of shops. On return to the embassy I will initiate a lockdown. Local staff will be allowed/required to leave, all US personnel ordered to return to the compound. All available security personnel will be put on the entrances with orders to admit no Russian nationals, whether civilian, police or military.
I will be authorizing armed security personnel to use lethal force to protect the embassy if needed.
“Ma’am?” her head of security said as the car jerked to a stop. Several people standing in the middle of the road were looking at the car; even though they had removed the traditional US flags from the wings, it still carried diplomatic plates. “My GPS says traffic is gridlocked. Looks like the whole city is trying to evacuate. I suggest we go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Very well.” Devlin hit ‘send’, then grabbed her briefcase.
The driver reached over and handed her his black knee-length coat, “Take this ma’am.”
She smiled at him, “Thanks David, I’ll be warm enough.”
“No ma’am, to cover your clothes. This isn’t a neighborhood you want to be seen walking around in a red power suit.”
“You warm enough mate?” Bunny asked Bondarev. “Sitting comfortably?”
“Enough Lieutenant,” Rodriguez said. She’d tied up Bondarev and attended to O’Hare’s wounded right hand. The pistol round had smacked into the hand wrapped around the grip of her rifle, passing between the metacarpal bones in the middle of the back of her hand and spinning the rifle out of her hand. In the heat of the firefight she’d been able to grab the rifle again and get her finger into the trigger guard but as every minute passed the torn muscles in the hand had stiffened and Rodriguez had almost to pry the hand off the gun to be able to sterilize and dress the wound. She probably needed stitches to close the entry and exit wounds on both sides of her palm but that would have to wait. Of course, Bunny had looked more pissed off than wounded as Rodriguez had given her a local anesthetic jab.
When she was done fixing up Bunny, they had dragged the bodies of the dead Spetsnaz troopers into a storeroom leading off the tool room that was their ‘keep’. Bunny had searched Bondarev and confiscated a small first aid kit, survival blanket, map and satellite telephone from the pockets of his flight suit.
Rodriguez pointed her gun at him, “How many men do you have up top?”
“Enough that you would run out of bullets before I ran out of men,” Bondarev told her.
“The last bullet would be for you, tough guy,” Bunny said. Bondarev looked at the young pilot. She still had her rifle slung over her shoulder, her wounded hand — trigger finger sticking out of the bloodied bandage — on the scarred grip. He had little doubt she was speaking the truth.
“You have no way out of here,” Bondarev said to the senior officer. “You fought a good war. But your war is over. You can’t hold me hostage forever. Let me contact my men, I will guarantee you are treated according to the conventions for prisoners of war.”
O’Hare laughed bitterly. “Because you are so respectful of conventions,” she snarled. “Like the convention against the use of massive ordnance air blast weapons, like the convention against the use of cluster munitions, oh and the convention against invading foreign countries? How about that one?”
Bondarev ignored her, kept his eyes fixed on her superior, “The Spetsnaz overhead would have protocols if contact is lost with their recon squad down here. They would be preparing, right now, to react to this situation. You were lucky once, you won’t be lucky again. And I don’t want to get killed in the crossfire.”
Rodriguez knew that what he was saying held a lot of truth. They had dealt with the first Russian force that had entered the Rock, but what about the next, and the one after that? She and O’Hare had not expected to survive the Russian assault, they certainly hadn’t expected to find themselves back in control, and with a Russian air force Major-General as their hostage as well. She had no doubt the troops topside were preparing a plan to come in and find out what had happened to their comrades. And when they came, they would come in hard and hot. It would not be a recon force they sent.
The only option Rodriguez saw was to trade this Major-General for their own safety. Some kind of mutual swap that might get them off the damn Rock.
It was as though O’Hare could read her mind. She looked sharply at Rodriguez, “Ma’am are you thinking what I…”
She didn’t finish her sentence. They had emptied the Russian’s pockets and Bondarev’s telephone was in a bag at her feet. It started ringing.
“The telephone is still switched on, and receiving,” HOLMES said. “Would you like me to call again?”
“Yes please,” Devlin said. She had arrived at the Embassy, got herself waved through by several nervous Marines, to find Williams standing at the gates.
“Carl,” she had said. “Whatever this is, will have to wait. I have a million…”
“HOLMES says the Russians are scrambling two TU-162 strategic nuclear bombers from Vladivostok,” he said. “Their target is inside Alaska. Don’t ask me how he knows. They’ll be airborne in five minutes!”
Devlin had put her hands behind her head and looked up at the leaden grey skies. The world had gone mad. “Carl, what do you want me to do about that? If HOLMES knows, then NORAD already knows too, or they soon will. They’ll probably try to intercept them.”
“There is not a single US aircraft that can get there in time!” Carl had said urgently. “Russia has air superiority over the Alaska theatre.”