Perhaps two miles offshore, a small boat plowed through the waves, obviously bound for their island. “Where the hell did they come from?”
The other man shrugged. “One of the other islands, I guess. Though why the hell they’d bother to come here, I don’t know. Nothing to eat.”
“Maybe they’re just fishing.”
His companion shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’ve got some gear on board, but they’re not maneuvering like a fishing boat would. Look, they’re headed straight for us.”
The other man sighed. “We wait for them to come ashore and take them out, or we go back and report?”
“Let’s radio back for instructions. I think I know what the boss is going to want, but let’s double-check. You know what he told us.”
The other man grinned wolfishly. “Yes. No survivors.”
“What do you mean, natives?” Rogov demanded.
“Just what I said. My men have detected a small boat with approximately six people on board, inbound this location. Unless directed otherwise, I intend to eliminate these complications. Your orders?” The Spetsnaz commander’s voice was harsh and broken over the speaker. The Kilo was moving at steerageway just barely below the surface of the ocean, her antenna poking up above the surface for a scheduled communications break with the team ashore.
Rogov paused, staring at the microphone, then swore quietly. The key to executing this mission successfully required no interference from outside sources. At the very least, if the natives landed, they would be witnesses. They must be Inuits or Aleuts, or one of the many other bands of native Alaskans that roamed the waters between the islands, foraging from the sea and living as they had for centuries on the desolate islands. Since the Oscar had eliminated the prying Greenpeace intruders, that was the only possible explanation. From what the Spetsnaz commander had said, the boat was too small to attempt trans-Pacific voyages. Therefore, it had to have come from one of the other islands.
He paused and considered his options. Sinking the Greenpeace boat had been accomplished silently and stealthily with a submarine, and there was no evidence left behind to betray the mission. But Inuits — somebody might miss them, and one of the other isolated islands might have contact with the mainland. Finally, he reached a decision. “Avoid them if possible. If you are observed or if they come ashore, take them hostage. We’ll consider other options at a later time.”
“Very well.”
“And I will be joining you ashore tomorrow morning.” He glanced over at the Kilo’s executive officer, who was watching him with a faintly hopeful look on his face. “The Kilo will remain offshore to provide assistance as needed.”
He hung up the microphone abruptly, knowing that the Spetsnaz commander understood exactly what the phrase “other options” meant.
The executive officer didn’t. If he had, he would have known that no Cossack ever left an untrustworthy officer at his back.
CHAPTER 5
Commander Busby frowned and stared at the technician standing in front of him. “You’re sure about this?”
The technician nodded. “No doubt in my military mind, sir.” The younger man pointed at a series of lines stretching across the printout. “Look at those frequencies. Those aren’t from military communications. Not ours, anyway.”
“What are they from, then?” Busby asked. The three lines on the paper that the technician pointed to were cryptic strings of numbers, indicating frequencies and times of detection. To anyone else, it could just as well have been a report from a Supply logistics computer. He smiled for a second, wondering how many top-secret reports looked just as mundane.
“What’s your best classification?” he asked finally, tapping his pencil on one column of numbers. “These frequencies — this isn’t a long-range system.”
“You’re right about that. I’d call it some sort of short-range tactical system — maybe even hand-held. Look how the signal strengths vary so widely. Could be caused by geography — somebody walks behind a rock and the antenna’s not fully extended, you get that sort of dip.”
“Did you check with our SEALS? Maybe they were playing with some of their toys.”
The technician smirked. “Thought you might ask about that. And no, it’s not our SEALS. The frequencies don’t match up at all.”
Commander Busby sighed and tossed the paper on his desk. The last thing he needed right now was evidence of unknown short-range tactical communications in their vicinity. He closed his eyes for a moment, visualizing a chart of the area. Nowhere those signals could have come from but the islands to the north. He opened his eyes and saw that the technician had come to the same conclusion.
“This is impossible, you know. Just how am I supposed to explain to the Admiral that we’re detecting radio signals from the godforsaken rocks called the Aleutians? Nobody lives there, and we’re certainly not ashore. If we’re wrong about this, we’re going to stir up a hell of a lot of trouble for nothing. Every intelligence group on board and back home is going to get their shorts twisted in a knot over this.”
The technician nodded. “Yeah, but if everybody were where they were supposed to be all the time, they wouldn’t need us, would they?”
Busby motioned to a chair sitting next to his desk. He reached for his coffee cup, curling his fingers gratefully around the warm, rough ceramic mug. The temperatures in CVIC–Carrier Intelligence Center — consistently hovered around the sixty-degree mark. Maintaining a stable, cool temperature inside the most sensitive spaces on board the carrier was one of his continual headaches, and no one had ever been able to come up with a compromise between the needs of the sophisticated equipment jammed into these small spaces and the human beings who operated it. As usual, operational requirements won out over human comfort.
“Okay, we need a game plan,” Busby said finally. “Make me look smart here, Jackson.”
The technician scooted his chair over next to Busby’s and picked up the printout. “You can read it yourself, Commander; I know you can. Maybe some of those fellows believe you don’t know everything that goes on back there, but not me.”
“Pretend I’m dumb for a minute. Chances are, you’ll explain something I would have forgotten to ask about.”
The technician shot him a sardonic look. “Okay. See, here’s the first detection,” he said, pointing his pencil at the fifth line from the top. “Short duration — only two minutes. High frequency — you see, right here in this column?”
“Yeah, I’ve got that. But tell me how we know it’s tactical communications.”
“The signal breaks up. If this were a large transmitter, one drawing a hell of a lot of power, it would blast right around some of the obstructions. Instead, we get these changes in signal strength that indicate somebody’s moving around. Or maybe walking around a rock, or something like that. Not something you see, except on mobile field communications.”
“You ever seen these frequencies before?”
The technician shook his head, paused, and a thoughtful look crossed his face. “Something like it, but not this one exactly. Way back in A School, when we were studying the old Russian Bear. You remember, back when we had an enemy? Hearing about the Bear-J that’s been in the area reminded me of it.”
“So what does it look like?”
“I’m not certain, sir, but I remember one day they played back for us some short-range Spetsnaz communications. Looked a little bit like this.” The technician shrugged. “Course, no telling who’s using all that gear these days. They could’ve farmed half of it out to the border guards. And, like I was saying, there’s nothing really unique about this, except for the frequency. In the range of short-range tactical communications, and not one of ours. That’s about all I can tell you for certain.”