Jenny called from the front, “They’re coming back around!”
Matt hauled himself up and crawled toward the copilot’s seat. Ahead, the Cessna banked sharply on a wingtip.
As Matt settled to the seat, he noticed his empty hands. He silently cursed himself for losing the rifle. “Do you have another gun?”
Jenny spoke as she worked the throttle. The plane fought for height. “I have my Browning, and there’s my service shotgun bolted to the rear cabin wall. But you’ll never hit anything in the air.”
He sighed. She was right. Neither weapon was accurate at long range, especially in these winds.
Jenny climbed the plane. “Our only chance is to make for Prudhoe Bay.”
Matt understood. It was the closest military base. Whatever was going on was beyond their ability to handle. But Prudhoe was four hundred miles away.
Jenny stared at the Cessna diving toward them. “This is going to get ugly.”
“Message for you, Admiral.”
Viktor Petkov ignored the young lieutenant at the stateroom door and continued to read the passage from the book on his desk: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He had often found this book by the dead Russian writer a comfort. In moments when his own soul was tested, he could relate to Ivan Karamasov’s struggle with himself and his spirituality.
But it had never been a struggle for Viktor’s father. He had always been Russian Orthodox, most devoutly so. Even after the rise of Stalin, when it became untenable to practice one’s faith, his father had not abandoned his beliefs. It may have been for this reason, more than any other, that one of the most decorated scientists of the time had been exiled — stolen away from his family at gunpoint — and sent to an isolated ice station out in the Arctic Ocean.
Viktor finished reading the section titled “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” where Ivan dramatically repudiates God. It stirred him. Ivan’s anger spoke to his own heart, his own frustration. Like Ivan, Viktor’s own father had been murdered — not by the hands of one of his sons, as in the novel, but by treachery nonetheless.
And the misery had not ended there. After the base’s disappearance in 1948, his mother had slipped into a black depression that lasted a full decade and ended one morning within the noose of a knotted bedsheet. Viktor had been eighteen years old when he walked in and discovered his mother hanging from a rafter in their apartment.
Without any other relatives, he had been recruited into the Russian military. It became his new family. Seeking answers to or some type of resolution for the fate of his father, Viktor’s interest in the Arctic grew. This obsession and a deep-seated fury guided his career, leading to his ruthless rise within the Russian submarine forces and eventually into the command staff of the Severomorsk Naval Complex.
Despite this success, he never forgot how his father was torn from his family. He could still picture his mother hanging from her handmade noose, her toes just brushing the bare plank floors.
“Sir?” The lieutenant’s feet shifted on the deck plating, drawing him back to the present. His voice stuttered, clearly fearful of disturbing Beliy Prizrak, the White Ghost. “We…we’ve a coded message marked urgent and for your eyes only.”
Viktor closed the book and ran a finger along the leather-bound cover. He then held out a hand to the lieutenant. He had been expecting the message. The Drakon had risen to periscope depth half an hour ago and raised its communication array through a crack in the ice, sending out reports and receiving incoming messages.
The man gratefully held out a metal binder. Viktor signed for it and accepted it.
“That’ll be all, Lieutenant. If I need to send out a reply, I’ll ring the bridge.”
“Yes, sir.” The man turned sharply on a heel and left.
Viktor opened the binder. Stamped across the top was PERSONAL FOR THE FLEET COMMANDER. The rest was encrypted. He sighed and began the decryption. It was from Colonel General Yergen Chenko, directorate of the FSB, the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, what the Americans called the Federal Security Service, one of the successors of the old KGB. New name, same game, he thought sourly. The message came from their headquarters in Lubyanka.
URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT
FM
FEDERAL’NAYA SLUZHBA BEZOPASNOSTI (FSB)
TO
DRAKON
//BT//
REF
LUBYANKA 76-453A DATED 8 APR
SUBJ
DEPLOYMENT/RENDEZVOUS COORDINATES
TOP SECRET TOP SECRET TOP SECRET
PERSONAL FOR FLEET COMMANDER
RMKS/
(1) NEW INTELLIGENCE HAS CONFIRMED US COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATION IS UNDER WAY. US DELTA FORCE MOBILIZED. OPERATION CONTROLLER IDENTIFIED AND CONFIRMED. COUNTERMEASURES HAVE BEEN ACCELERATED AND COORDINATED WITH LEOPARD OPS.
(2) OMEGA DRIFT STATION HAS BEEN APPROVED AS TARGET ONE. COORDINATE ALPHA FOUR TWO DECIMAL SIX TACK THREE ONE DECIMAL TWO, CHART Z-SUBONE.
(3) DRAKON ORDERED TO RUN SILENT FROM HERE UNTIL MOLNIYA GO-CODE IS TRANSMITTED.
(4) DEPLOYMENT GO-CODE SET FOR 0800.
(5) INTELLIGENCE UPDATE WILL BE RELAYED ALONG WITH GO-CODE.
(6) COL. GEN. Y. CHENKO SENDS.
BT
NNNN
Viktor frowned as he finished decrypting the message.
What had been stated in the missive was plain enough and no surprise. The target and time of attack were established and confirmed: Omega Drift station, tomorrow morning. And clearly Washington was now aware of the stakes surrounding the old ice base.
But as usual with Chenko, there were layers of information hidden between the lines of his encryption.
U.S. Delta Forces mobilized.
It was a simple statement that left as much unspoken as was written. The United States Delta Force was one of the most covert groups of the U.S. Special Forces and, when deployed, operated with immunity from the law. Once out in the field, a Delta Force team functioned with nearly complete autonomy, overseen only by an “operational controller,” who could be either a high-ranking military official or someone in significant power in government.
By the deployment of U.S. Delta Forces, the rules of the coming engagement were clear to both sides. The war about to be waged would never be played out in the press. This was a covert war. No matter the outcome, the greater world would never know what happened out here. Both sides understood this and had silently agreed to it by their actions.
Out on the polar ice cap, there was a vital treasure to be won, but also a secret to be buried. Both governments intended to be the victor.
Pity those who came between them.
Such covert conflicts were not new. Despite the outward appearance of cooperation between the United States and Russia, the politics behind closed doors was as rabid and retaliatory as ever. In today’s new world, one clasped hands in greeting while palming a dagger in the other.
Viktor knew this game only too well. He was an expert at its stratagems and deceptions. Otherwise he wouldn’t be where he was today.
He closed the metal binder and stood up. He crossed to the six titanium cases resting on the floor. Each was half a meter square. Stamped on the top were a set of Cyrillic letters, the initials for the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, located in St. Petersburg, Russia. No one, not even Moscow, knew what was in these crates.
Vikor’s gaze narrowed and settled on the symbol emblazoned below the institute’s initials, a trifoil icon known throughout the world.
![Ice Hunt _11.jpg](https://litlife.club/books/199844/read/images/_11.jpg)
Nuclear danger…
Viktor touched the symbol.