‘Go, Captain,’ Yumatov said softly. ‘And, as you say, walk as a free man.’
The guards stayed with him, but kept their hands away. One was tall, head shaved, a powerful man, but with a face of youth and hope that could have made him a military poster model. The other was smaller, wiry, narrow eyes, ferret-like, tougher and probably more dangerous. His face carried a knife scar.
They assessed him like military escorts do. He wouldn’t give them time to draw an accurate conclusion. Two against one were probably the best odds he was going to get and those wouldn’t last long. He had a home-ground advantage. This was his island and his old school. He would move on his own schedule. He had a couple of minutes at best. The next soldiers would be around the corner.
Outside the gymnasium, Rake slowed at the top of the stairs where the wall was decorated with photographs of walrus and seal hunts and instructions on how to make kayak canoes and boats from animal skin. He started talking in his bad Russian about how skin boats were used to hunt marine life, even whales at times. Further along there were display photographs of bridges in American cities. God knew who put them there and why, but they bought him more time. ‘Brooklyn Bridge.’ He indicated an arty black-and-white portrait of the ageing bridge running out of Manhattan. The younger soldier paused to look.
‘And the Golden Gate,’ said Rake. ‘San Francisco.’
‘Move,’ said the older one.
Rake would have to take him first, and doubted he could do it without killing him. With two trained men, you often had to kill one to show the other that things were serious. ‘Maybe one day they’ll have a bridge like that between our two countries,’ said Rake.’ I’ve relatives over there, you know. In Uelen. You been to Uelen?’
At the bottom, stairs led straight into a corridor with rooms running off each side that turned at right angles into another corridor. More soldiers would be by the main entrance. He pointed to the boys’ restroom. ‘Give me a moment.’ The older one nodded. Rake left the door ajar. The young soldier kept watch. Rake kept up the chatter, explaining every detail. It was a big restroom so it could take a wheelchair. It had a high ceiling that gave a sense of space and there was a single shining white commode with a stainless-steel rail for the disabled.
He zipped up, flushed the bowl, and moved to the sink, taking time with the soap. In the mirror, he saw that neither man had moved. But their alertness levels had dropped. Naturally. This wasn’t Ukraine. They were watching a guy take a piss in a village school. He shook water from his hands, but kept the tap running as he reached for a paper towel. Rake caught the eye of the younger soldier in the mirror. ‘They have this idea for a tunnel. Chukotka to Alaska. Sixty miles,’ he said. ‘You heard of that? Sixty miles under the sea.’
The military equipment was standard — helmet with goggles hitched up on the rim, pouches on the Kevlar vest, a routine issue Vityaz automatic rifle, Makarov 9mm pistol, and a sheathed knife about five inches long, probably with a double-edged blade. The challenge was the radio that was in a pouch at the bottom of the Kevlar. Its wire trailed up to the mouth and earpieces. On an operation like this, it would be button and not voice activated to avoid clustering the radio channels.
He took half a step to his right, shifting his weight as he turned, towel screwed up in his hand, arm raised to drop it in the bin. The tap still ran. The toilet cistern was filling up; plenty of background noise. From the outside, Rake looked nice and relaxed.
Inside he was taut like a spring, and he needed to wind tighter. In a hairsbreadth of a second, he hurled himself forward, the heel of his hand smashing the younger soldier’s nose so that shards of cartilage protruded into the brain. He wrapped his arms around the helmet and wrenched back the neck, snapping it and severing the spinal cord. The man crumpled, but Rake held him up as a battering ram, crashing into the older soldier’s chest, a solid strike of Kevlar against Kevlar, helmet against helmet.
Rake let go of the dead soldier and kicked the older guard hard in the groin. As his legs buckled, Rake ripped out the radio wire. He fisted his bloodied fingers, pushing out the forefinger, and struck towards the windpipe.
The soldier was too fast for him, bringing up his arm, intercepting and gripping. He held it with enormous strength, his eyes narrowed into a pinpoint of focus. The two men’s faces were an inch apart.
‘Stop,’ said the soldier in Russian. ‘I will help you.’
NINE
Stephanie stood to the left of the Oval Office desk listening to the conversation between the Russian and American leaders on speakerphone. President Christopher Swain stood, hand on hip, his eyes moving around the information on screens on his desk. He was an athletic figure with short curly gray hair and the face of a ponderous academic with eyes that emanated authority. A dozen or so officials from Defense, State, and the intelligence agencies clustered around two pastel-yellow sofas that faced each other midway in the room. Holland stood next to Slater by a window in the oval curve.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, Viktor,’ Swain said with a tone far more relaxed than the atmosphere of the room.
‘Not at all, Chris,’ said Lagutov. ‘I would have called you, but I only learned this myself from news broadcasts. We have a new regional commander in the east. He told me that an emergency radio call was intercepted at our base on Ratmonova, the island that you call Big Diomede. A pregnant girl’s life was in critical danger, and he ordered a helicopter across to help her. In the heat of the moment, no one remembered to let you guys know. I’m sorry for the panic. But the good news is that I’ve just heard the baby has been delivered by emergency Caesarean section, a little girl, and both she and the mother are stable.’
‘Thank you, Viktor.’ Swain kept glancing at his own tablet and a wall screen constantly updated with satellite and radar images. ‘And are they still with you?’
‘They are,’ continued Lagutov in his casual tone. ‘The baby has been named Iyaroak, which means apple of the eye in Inupiat, their native language.’
A ticker tape processed from the Situation Room below ran on the screen. All cellphones jammed. No contact Little Diomede.
‘And are her parents with her?’ The ticker read: Russian attack 4 KA-52s 3 troop carrier M-8s.’ The screen showed radar images of Russian helicopters crossing the border.
‘Two relatives are there.’
‘That’s good. She needs family with her.’ The ticker read: Heavy cloud. No satellite. Holland paced, a measured contrast against Swain’s calmness. Swain’s tablet relayed a feed from the Tin City radar station, the closest site to the Diomede islands. Four Black Hawk helicopters were an hour away. Six F-22 fighters had been scrambled from the Elmendorf-Richardson airbase in Anchorage.
‘We’ll send a helicopter across to pick up the mother and baby and fly them to Nome,’ said Swain.
Lagutov allowed a moment of hesitation which Swain filled. ‘Jim Hoskins, Governor of Alaska, can fly to Nome with your consul-general. They’ll do a photo op. You and I can talk about our friendship and Russia helping an American in crisis.’
‘I’m told you don’t have helicopters available,’ Lagutov said abruptly.
The Oval Office atmosphere tensed. The Russian radar stations on the eastern coastline would detect that Black Hawks and F-22s were close. Either Lagutov was lying or he wasn’t being briefed, which could be worse because it meant he wasn’t in charge. Or he did know and he was winging it because he did not have a Plan B, unimaginable as it might seem.