Then there were the Backfires. The convoy would be taking a southerly routing, adding two full days to the crossing time but forcing the Soviet bombers to stretch to the limit of their fuel. Also, thirty minutes before each satellite pass, the convoy would reverse course to a westerly heading in the hope that the Soviets would then vector their bombers and submarines to the wrong point. A pair of carrier battle groups was at sea and would offer support if possible. Clearly they wanted to spring a trap on the Backfires. The carrier groups would be steaming an evasive path, trying to avoid satellite detection entirely. Morris knew this was possible, an exercise in geometry, but it placed serious limits on the carriers' freedom of action-and having the carrier groups at sea would take up some of the antisubmarine patrol aircraft that the convoys depended on. A compromise, but then all life, and certainly any war operation, was a collection of compromises. Morris lit an unfiltered cigarette. He'd broken the habit years before, but halfway through the outbound leg of his first war cruise he'd found himself at the ship's store purchasing a carton of tax-free "at sea" smokes. The added hazard to his health, he judged, was no more than incidental. Already nine destroyers and frigates had been sunk, two with all hands.
ICELAND
Edwards had learned to hate the rust-colored contour lines on his maps. Each one announced a change of twenty meters. He tried to work it out in his head, but got no further than sixty-five-point-six feet for every one of the Goddamned red-brown lines. Sometimes the lines were spread apart by as much as an eighth of an inch. Other times they were packed together tightly enough that the lieutenant half expected to find a sheer wall. He remembered the one visit he'd had to Washington, D.C., and the time he and his father had scornfully walked past the tourists lined up to wait for an elevator ride to the top of the Washington Monument, preferring to walk the five hundred feet up the square-spiral staircase to the observation deck. They'd arrived at the top tired but proud. He was now making that same climb about every ninety minutes, except this time there were no smooth, even steps, and no elevator awaited them at the top for a more relaxing trip down... and no taxi to the hotel.
They climbed ten contour lines-two hundred meters, or six hundred fifty-six feet-three hours after breaking camp; crossing, the map said, from the Skorradalshreppur second-order administrative division to the Lundarreykjadashreppur second-order administrative division. There was no green highway sign to announce this, the Icelanders being bright enough to know that anyone who traveled out here lived here and needed no directions. They were rewarded with two kilometers of fairly level terrain as they walked between a pair of marshes. It was littered with rock and ash from what seemed to be an extinct volcano about four miles away.
"Take a break," Edwards said. He sat down next to a three-foot rock so that he'd have something to lean against, and was surprised when Vigdis came over. She sat down three feet away, facing him.
"How are you today?" he asked. There was life in her eyes now, Mike saw. Perhaps the demons that had awakened her the previous day were now gone? No, he thought, they'd never be completely gone-but you had to be alive to have nightmares, and they would probably fade in time. With time you could recover from anything, except murder.
"I have not thanked you for my life."
"We could not stand by and let them kill you," he said, wondering if it was a lie. If the Russians had simply killed all three people in the house, would he have attacked them or would he have waited and simply looted the house after they'd left? It was a time for the truth.
"I didn't do it for you, not only for you."
"I do not understand."
Edwards took his wallet from a back pocket and opened it to a five-year-old photograph. "That's Sandy, Sandra Miller. We grew up on the same block, all the way through school. Maybe we would have gotten married someday," he said quietly. And maybe not, he admitted to himself. People change. "I went to the Air Force Academy, she went to the University of Connecticut in Hartford. October of her second year, she disappeared. She was raped and murdered. They found her a week later in a ditch. The guy who did it-they never proved he killed Sandy, but he raped two other girls at the school-well, he's in a mental hospital now. They said he was crazy, wasn't really responsible. So someday the docs'll say he's cured, and they'll let him out, and Sandy'll still be dead." Edwards looked down at the rocks.
"I couldn't do anything about that. I'm not a cop, I was two thousand miles away. But not this time." His voice showed no emotion at all. "This time was different."
"You love Sandy?" Vigdis asked.
How to answer that one? Mike wondered. It sure did seem like that, five years ago, didn't it? But would it have worked out? You haven't exactly been celibate these last few years, have you? But it hasn't been the same, either, has it? He looked at the photograph taken three days before Sandy had been killed. It had arrived in his box at Colorado Springs after her death, though he hadn't known it at the time. Her dark, shoulder length hair, the tilt of the head, the impish smile that went with an infectious laugh... all gone.
"Yes." There was emotion in his voice now.
"You do for her then, yes?"
"Yes," Edwards lied. I did it for me.
"I do not know your name."
"Mike, Michael. Edwards."
"You do this for me, Michael. Thank you for my life." There were the first beginnings of a smile. She placed her hand on his. It was soft and warm.
27 - Casualties
"At First we thought that they simply drove off the cliff road. We found this in the vehicle." The major of field police held up the top of a broken bottle of vodka. "But the medical corpsman who collected their personal effects found this."
The major pulled the rubberized sheet off the one body that had been thrown clear when the vehicle hit the rocks. The stab wound in the chest was unmistakable.
"And you said that the Icelanders were as peaceful as sheep, Comrade General," the KGB colonel observed sardonically.
The major continued, "It is difficult to reconstruct exactly what happened. There was a farm a short distance away whose house was burned to the ground. We found two bodies in the wreckage. Both had been shot."
"Who were they?" General Andreyev asked.
"Impossible to identify the bodies. The only way we knew they were shot was the bullet hole in the sternum, so that was likely done at very close range. I had one of our surgeons look at them. A man and a woman, probably in their middle years. According to a local government official, the farm was occupied by a married couple with one daughter, age"-the major checked his notes-"twenty. The daughter has not been found."
"What of the patrol?"
"They were southbound on the coast road when they disappeared-"
"No one spotted the fires?" the KGB colonel asked sharply.
"There was heavy rain that night. Both the burning vehicle and the farmhouse were below the horizon for the neighboring observation patrols. As you know, the road conditions here have upset our patrol schedules, and the mountains interfere with radio performance. So when the patrol was late getting in, no particular note was made of it. You can't see the vehicle from the road, and as a result they were not spotted until the helicopter flew over it."