‘Apparently, that’s fixed.’ Swain’s tone hardened slightly. Prusak motioned that he should keep talking. ‘It seems with helicopters we’ve gone from famine to feast, a Black Hawk at Teller and one at Kotzebue, both mainland settlements. So, we’ll send one straight to your base on Big Diomede to pick them up—’
‘Hold, Chris,’ interjected Lagutov. ‘Someone here’s updating me.’
The ticker tape read: Nuclear submarines Seawolf-class Connecticut and Virginia-class Washington in Arctic region. 190 minutes out.
Prusak switched the line so the Russian side could hear nothing.
‘If those subs are under the ice, they’re not much good against these.’ Holland’s finger jabbed towards the images of the four Russian attack helicopters.
Defense Secretary Mike Pacolli contradicted him: ‘The Connecticut carries IDAS missiles that can bring down a helicopter from a submerged position, and if you’d ever seen one of those beasts break up through ice, you would not treat their presence lightly.’
Holland glared. ‘This is a ground war, Mr Secretary. It needs boots on ice, not computers under the sea.’
‘What else do you have, Mike?’ asked Swain.
‘Refueling tankers for the F22s are airborne, sir. Drones, two AWACs, and satellites deployed. A marine battalion is on its way to Wales. That is twenty-five miles from Little Diomede. They’ll go in by helicopter or across the ice to the island.’
Holland brushed his hand down his cheek, unable to hide his surprise at the speed with which the whole range of American military options had swung into action. His campaign had been against a coward who had failed to protect America. He was seeing for the first time how the authority of one man can deploy such immense military power.
‘This is the easy part,’ said Swain. ‘The tough bit is making sure we don’t use them.’
Lagutov was back, his tone formal. ‘President Swain, I’m patching you through to Admiral Alexander Vitruk, the commander of our Far East Military Region. He took the initiative to go straight to Krusenstern when he heard of the medical emergency. Admiral Vitruk can enlighten us all.’
‘Krusenstern is Little Diomede,’ Stephanie mouthed to Swain.
A photograph of Vitruk, tanned, lean, purposeful, appeared on one of the Oval Office screens. As soon as he spoke, voice authentication confirmed that this was indeed the dominant figure who ran the Russian Far East. His bio-data unfolded next to the photograph. A veteran of Russia’s campaigns in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria, he had forged friendships with the Chinese, North Koreans, and Mongolians. He had been a defense attaché in Washington, DC, had visited Nome and Anchorage, and had even initiated joint US — Russian training exercises out of Elmendorf-Richardson.
‘This is a humanitarian mission, Mr President,’ said Vitruk. ‘They pleaded with us to save these lives and that is what we are doing.’
Without identifying himself, Matt Prusak cut in. He could not allow the President to speak directly to the regional commander of a foreign adversary. The Russian would put it all over their media as President Swain pleading for help. ‘We have a Black Hawk en route to bring back the patient, Admiral,’ Prusak said. ‘You are being patched through to General Davies of our Northern Command with whom you can discuss details.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Vitruk replied. ‘Your aircraft cannot enter Russian sovereign airspace. If it does, I cannot guarantee its safety.’
TEN
Rake wore the uniform of the dead Russian.
The surviving soldier was Sergeant Matvey Golov of the 83rd Airborne Brigade based in Ussuriysk, north of Vladivostok. Disarmed and with his helmet removed, Golov came across as a squat imposing figure, the surface of his shaved skull rutted like a bad road, his eyebrows thick and his eyes drawn in.
Golov said his unit had left for this mission two days ago. He had family in New York, and didn’t plan to become an enemy of the United States. Rake interrogated him quickly and neither believed nor trusted him. However, Golov could have killed him and hadn’t, and he would now be Rake’s ticket out.
‘If you cross me I will cripple you and leave you for your colleagues to finish you off as a traitor to Russia,’ Rake told him. Golov didn’t respond.
To get across the ice to the mainland, Rake would need more weapons. Russian small arms were not enough. The closest would be in the sealed and abandoned Alaska Army National Guard observation post that stood among civilian homes in the middle of the village. That’s if they hadn’t been cleared out. No military had been posted to Little Diomede since the 1990s when the post was closed. Weapons and communication equipment were inside, logged, stored, and long forgotten within the army bureaucracy. But Rake had no idea what condition they would be in. More weapons might be further along in a wooden cache underneath the church where they kept seal, walrus, and other meat over the winter months. Don Ondola had hidden them there, and Rake doubted they had been touched since Alaska State Troopers took Ondola away for murdering Akna’s mother. Ondola was a rough man, selfish, drug-crazed, and violent. But he knew how to keep a weapon functioning against the wet and the cold.
Rake flipped the magazine out of Golov’s Vityaz automatic, ejected the 9mm rounds, and handed the weapon to Golov. Other Russian troops must not see him unarmed. Rake did the same with the Makarov pistol. He took Golov’s phone and asked how it worked. The Russian explained that men on each post would be setting up their own Wi-Fi hotspot that only they could use.
They carried the body into the school kitchen and slid it down the rubbish chute where it landed with a thud on the trash of the past days.
Helmets on and faces covered, Golov led the way out of the school. Two soldiers guarded the entrance. There was a short conversation, which Rake had anticipated. Where was the American Eskimo? Golov pointed back inside. Change of plan. The American was staying in the school. They were off to search his house.
They walked on. Troops were positioned between the school and the helipad. They were on the roof of the old wooden building containing the clinic and launderette and along tiers of walkways that linked the small homes. On the top of the circular concrete water-treatment plant, they were positioning a heavy machine gun. Another machine gun had been set up by the cemetery that overlooked the village. More dangerously, troops were walking up the hillside toward the snow-covered plateau. From there they would have a view to the mainland to see anyone crossing in either direction.
That high watchpoint might make it impossible for Rake to escape the island. It rarely got completely light, rarely dark either because of moonlight. In this second half of the month, the moon hung in the sky, blending with the ice and sun that hovered around the horizon. Rake also had no idea of the thickness of the ice. Someone had gone through it near Wales, which was the closest landfall and where he might go. When he was a child, they used to clear a runway on the ice for a plane to land. Now winter was too warm and the ice too thin.
Rake led Golov up wooden steps to a landing with a bench and space for people to hang out. Two Russian sentries leant on railings, their gaze fixed to where Russian helicopters, red and blue lights blinking, hovered in the sky just behind the border. On the island’s helipad, the blades of an M-8 transport helicopter rotated slowly while soldiers unloaded equipment. Rake saw a Kord 12.7mm heavy machine gun, powerful enough to send a wall of lead against an approaching helicopter. He counted three Igna hand-held surface-to-air missile launchers.