“Lieutenant, I have White Bird leader.”

Tomashenko tore back his parka hood. Hunkering down beside the radioman, he accepted the headset and microphone.

“White Bird, this is Red Bird. Report!”

“Red Bird,” the radio-filtered voice whispered in the earphones. “We have no contact. We have swept the south descents and the main trail approaches for a second time. We have found no trace of them. They are not on the glacier and they have not climbed down on this side of the ridge. They must have descended the north face, Lieutenant.”

The descent Tomashenko had said was impossible the night before.

“Very well, White Bird,” he spoke curtly into the handset. “Commence a sweep toward the west end of the island and the science station. Engage on contact. We will be joining you shortly. Red Bird out.”

“Understood. Executing. White Bird out.” Tomashenko passed back the headset and mike. The Americans must have headed for the station. There was nowhere else to go. If so, there was still a chance they could be taken and eliminated. Even if it cost him another third of his command, the secret of the March Fifth Event would be kept.

The demolitions team had the charge leads wired into the detonator box now, and the lead man was cranking up the key. “Ready to fire, Lieutenant.”

“Carry on. Blow it.”

The demo man rested his gloved thumb on the detonator button and hesitated, looking over his shoulder at his platoon leader. “Lieutenant, those men in the cave…Sergeant Vilyayskiy and our people. Shouldn’t something be said…some words?”

“The dead are deaf, Corporal. Fire it!”

The detonator box magneto zipped, and thunder rumbled deep within the belly of the mountain. Ten thousand tons of basalt fractured, shifted, and resettled, sealing the crew of the Misha 124 and the four lost members of the Spetsnaz platoon in a black rock eternity. A brief burst of lava dust jetted from the cave mouth, only to be overwhelmed by the cascade of disturbed ice and snow flowing down the flank of East Peak, erasing the last trace. Even those who had been inside the lava tube would have a hard time finding it again.

As the misting avalanche cloud dissipated, the demolitions leader spoke, his words flat. “Your orders, Lieutenant?”

“Retrieve the detonator leads and let’s move out. I want to join up with the search party as soon as possible.”

The demo man gestured toward the wreck of the Misha 124 a half-mile distant across the saddleback. “What about the plane?”

“We leave it as it sits. The Americans know of it, and to burn it now would only make for more questions. Let’s move!”

At that moment, the radio operator stiffened. Tilting his head he pressed his earphones tighter to his head. “Lieutenant, I hear a signal on the transponder circuit! It is the radio tracer beacon Major Smyslov was carrying!”

Tomashenko bent over the radioman’s shoulder. “Are you certain?”

“It is the proper frequency and code pattern. It must be the same tracer.”

“Get a bearing!” Smyslov must still be alive and possibly pointing the way to his captors. As the radioman plugged the RDF loop into his set, Tomashenko squatted on the ice. Spreading out an island map, he readied a compass and a straightedge from his chart case.

“Signal bearing approximately two six six degrees! Signal strength five!”

Tomashenko’s all-weather pencil slashed across the map. A little south of west. That bearing would put Smyslov either on top of East Peak or on the south coast between this position and the science station. It must be the science station! At signal strength five it might be three or four miles out. Maybe his luck was turning.

“Radioman! Contact White Bird leader! Tell him the enemy is on the southern coast and they are heading for the station! Tell him to pursue with all speed! Corporal! Cache and conceal the radio and the other heavy gear, on the double! Light marching order! Weapons and ammunition only! We’ll have these bastards yet!”

Chapter Forty-eight

Wednesday Island Station

“We destroy the station when we leave,” Kretek ordered. “We burn it all.”

“Is that necessary?” Mikhail Vlahovitch looked up from the data file he had been glancing through. He was no man of science, and he did not understand the columns of carefully noted meteorological readings. But neither was he, by instinct, a wolverine.

“It will muddy the waters and destroy evidence, Mikhail. Besides, the people who scribbled all of that down are dead. What will it matter to them?”

“No doubt you are right.” Vlahovitch tossed the folder on the laboratory worktable. It was a wise time to be agreeable with his employer.

Through the lab hut’s windows, men could be seen at work, gray shades moving through the rapidly thinning fog. Preparations for departure and the final big job were under way. Down at the helipad, heater tents had been erected around the Halo’s engine pods, prewarming the heavy-lift copter’s turbines for flight. The riggers were connecting the heavy nylon strap sling to the belly hard point, and the members of the demolitions team were laying out their ribbon charges on the snow, checking the connectors and fusing.

“How do you think we are coming on time, Anton?” Vlahovitch had to ask again.

“I’ve told you, we have enough,” Kretek replied irritably. “They are coming, but if we make no more mistakes we will be well away before they arrive.”

“We should be ready to start engines within the next fifteen minutes.” Vlahovitch hesitated. “Anton, what do you wish to do about the boy’s body?”

“Leave it in the bunkhouse. It would be excess weight, and when it is found it will confuse matters even further.”

Kretek’s explosion of familial anger had passed, and his professional objectivity was returning. He would gladly kill his nephew’s killer, but he couldn’t be bothered with his corpse.

“No one will know exactly what happened here,” the arms dealer continued. He peered into his second in command’s face; his ice-colored eyes narrowed. “At least, no one will know as long as that girl is indeed dead.”

Vlahovitch ran his tongue across cracked lips, not liking the feel of that intent, cold stare. “I told you, Anton, she was swept away in an avalanche.”

“You are sure?”

“That was how it looked.”

“That might be how it looked, Mikhail, but is that what actually happened? You saw no body!”

“How could we?” Vlahovich lifted his voice. “It was at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot cliff, in the dark, in the middle of a blizzard! Besides, if she didn’t die then, she died later. She couldn’t have survived last night dressed as she was.”

Kretek maintained his glacial gaze for a moment longer, and then he smiled and gave Vlahovitch a bearlike slap on the shoulder. “Pish, pish, pish, no doubt you are right, my friend. What does it matter when she died, as long as the bitch is dead? Come, let’s be about the day’s work.”

The two men geared up for the cold, zipping parkas, donning gloves and taking up arms. Kretek had claimed the MP-5 the blonde girl had carried. Waste not, want not. The Heckler and Koch was a fine weapon, decidedly superior to the Croation-made Agrams he had issued to his men. Still, as he slung the SMG’s carrying strap over his shoulder, a muscle in his bearded jaw jumped. He did not like having things-people, money, or opportunities-taken from him.

Kretek swept a shelf full of hard-copy files onto the lab hut’s floor. Bracing a booted foot against the heater, he rocked it off its mounts. With a smoky clatter of falling stovepipe, it tipped onto its side, spraying burning coals. A score of flame tongues sprang up amid the scattered papers. The two men filed out through the snow lock, leaving the legacy of Wednesday Island Station to burn.