“I did find this just outside of the cave mouth, though.” Valentina held up a silver cigarette lighter.
“Smyslov’s?”
“So I would suspect. Look…” She turned the lighter upside down and squeezed some concealed catch. There was a soft snick of a releasing spring, and a short spike antenna extended from what had looked like the filler cap. “A radio transponder beacon operating on a preset frequency. When the penny dropped with its loud resounding clang, friend Gregori only had to push the button to call down the wolves.”
“That’s a pretty small transmitter,” Smith replied, uncasing his binoculars. “They must be close by. I wonder what’s holding them back.”
“It could be they’re waiting for their Judas goat to give them the final high sign.” Valentina pressed the antenna back into the lighter/transponder, then snuggled in behind her rifle sights again. “I wonder why he tried to take us alone as he did. Grandstanding?”
“It’s just barely possible he was trying to keep us from getting killed, Val,” Smith replied.
“Oh, really? You think?”
“I like to maintain a positive worldview.”
From the protection of the shadowed interior the two scanned the approaches to the cave mouth for long, silent minutes. Nothing seemed to move on the ice save for an occasional wisp of snow slithering past in the wind. Then the tracking barrel of the model 70 stopped and steadied like a pointer dog fixing on a game bird.
“Jon.” Valentina’s voice was casual. “At our two o’clock, about two hundred and fifty yards out, just beside that little uplift.”
Smith swung his binoculars onto the called target. It took him a few moments to pick up the low ridge in the glacier surface. There was nothing out there that looked like a man. But there was a small drift built up at the foot of the ridge. There was nothing exceptional about the lump of snow. Nothing outstanding. But there was something subtly wrong just the same. The drift’s contours didn’t quite match the fractile flow of its surroundings.
“I think there’s something there,” Smith said finally, “but I can’t be sure.”
“Neither can I. So let’s…just…make sure.” There was a piercing whip-crack report as the vicious little.220 round screamed on its way. The “snowdrift” quivered under the impact of the hypervelocity hollowpoint. Then as Smith looked on, a dot of color became apparent on the whiteness. Spreading, it became a stain, the red of the spilling blood darkened by the overcast.
Valentina flipped open the Winchester’s bolt, ejecting the spent brass. “Well, now we know.”
“Indeed we do.” Smith nodded slowly. “Probably one of their fourteen-man Spetsnaz platoons. Anything bigger would have been spotted by our satellites.”
“Um-hum.” She drew a fresh round from the shell carrier, pressing it into the Winchester’s magazine. “I’ll wager they’ll be out of the Vladivostok garrison, either Mongolian Siberians or Yakut tribesmen under a Russian officer. The Soviets used them to guard the gulags. They’re totally adapted to an arctic environment and generally nasty to cross. Arms-wise, I think we can expect AK-74 assault rifles and at least three RPK-74 squad automatic weapons. They’ll be in light marching order in this terrain, so I don’t think we’ll see an RPG grenade launcher.”
“But they will have rifle grenades.” Smith looked across at her. “I figure you understand where that leaves us.”
Valentina lifted an eyebrow. “Very much so. For the moment we’ve got the range on them. As long as we can keep them out there with the long guns, we’re all right. But as soon as night falls or the weather closes in and they can work closer to, oh, say, about seventy-five yards, we’re quite dead.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Wednesday Island Base
“Wednesday Island Base calling Haley, calling Haley. Do you copy? Over.” Randi repeated the call for the dozenth time. Lifting her thumb from the transmit button, she tried to listen through the static that squalled from the speaker of the little transceiver.
For a moment her heart leaped. Beyond the electronic rage of the solar flare she heard a faint voice responding with what sounded like the Haley’s call sign. Then she caught the repetitive cadence of the transmission. It wasn’t a reply. It was an interrogative.
She glanced at her wristwatch. It was on the hour, and the Haley’s radio operators were calling Wednesday Island, trying to establish contact from their end according to the radio schedule. And if this was the best the ice cutter’s powerful transmitters could do in this anarchistic communication environment, there was no hope of the little SINCGARS set being heard.
Angrily she twisted the frequency knob to the tactical channel and lifted the mike once more. “Wednesday Island base to aircraft party. Wednesday Island base to aircraft party. Jon, are you receiving me? Over.”
She lifted her thumb, listening impatiently, wanting to scream back at the jagged static roar issuing from the speaker.
“Jon, damn it, this is Randi! Can you hear me? Over!”
Nothing discernable.
Solar storm or not, she should be hearing from the others. They should be on their way back by now and clear of the mountain. What in the hell was going on up there? Randi had the growing sensation that things were rapidly reaching some kind of a nexus, that the situation was collapsing in on her in a way she didn’t and couldn’t understand.
“What will happen when they don’t hear from us?” Dr. Trowbridge inquired.
Randi resumed awareness of the room around her. After a sleepless night spent keeping a vigil over Kropodkin, she had moved the station party across to the laboratory hut, where she had spent the morning fruitlessly rechecking the station’s big SSB radio and satellite phone and making equally futile calls on their backup transceiver.
“Don’t worry, Doctor. If we’re out of communication for a certain length of time, a contingency plan goes into effect.” Randi snapped off the transceiver and replaced the microphone on its clip. “We’ll get all the help up here that we can ever use.”
“Good, perhaps we will get someone in here other than the Gestapo.”
Randi ignored Kropodkin. With his hands bound behind his back, he sat perched on a stool in the far corner of the lab. He’d spoken intermittently and ingratiatingly with Dr. Trowbridge, mostly about inconsequential matters, but he’d been sullenly silent with her, barring the occasional barbed comment.
But he was listening, his eyes intently taking in everything. Randi could almost hear him thinking. She could sense expectancy in him. Kropodkin knew that something was going to happen.
Randi sank down on another of the stools and braced her elbows on the lab table. God, but she was tired. She hadn’t slept or even gone off alert for two nights. She had her little packet of go-pills in her kit, but she didn’t like the chemically enhanced overconfidence that came with them. She also knew that when she came down off the drug, she would crash into total worthlessness.
She rubbed her burning eyes and looked out of the frost-fogged windows of the hut. What she hoped to see was Jon coming into camp. She wanted to be able to let her guard down just for a little while. Just to close her eyes for a minute or two.
“Ms. Russell, are you all right?” Dr. Trowbridge asked warily.
Randi snapped erect. Her eyes had closed for a moment, and she had swayed on the stool.
“Yes, Doctor, I’m fine.” She got to her feet, mentally slapping herself back into wakefulness.
Over in the corner she caught Kropodkin smirking at her, sensing her growing vulnerability.
“All right,” she said, turning abruptly to face him. “It’s time somebody tells us how he sabotaged the big transceiver.”