Two hours later, refreshed, he skied the track of a frozen river at a rapid pace. Pride and ego spurred him on through the frigid, never-ending darkness. No other man could accomplish what he was now enjoying. Single-handed, he was defeating the Russians at their own game.
Anticipation of success, the thrill of superiority, each played a part in his undoing. The prepositioning of such vast arms supplies could not go totally unprotected, regardless of the hostile environment. A small unit of KGB guards had been attached to a post near the tank depot. They had no need to patrol their position. Rather, they utilized electronics to monitor their surroundings. The American had no indication when he tripped the beams, but a red light and soft warning buzzer alerted the KGB duty team.
The Russians employed snowmobiles. They were protecting their own assets and had no reason to be elusive when the alarm was tripped. Each man covered a preplanned sector. With no idea of the cause of the warning or its threat, they traveled without lights. There was no wildlife able to trip their beams, so it was almost certain their quarry was human. And, in such a hostile locale, there would be only one purpose. The well-armed troops remained in constant radio contact.
The American had instinctively gone to the rear of the tank depot rather than following the ravine, Half a dozen KGB guards moved out to cover the approaches. Nothing. Then another light flashed on the security board in the guardhouse. It was relayed to the leader’s machine. Someone was moving near the back of the depot.
The American found exactly what he was looking for. Cutting through the heavy camouflage cover, he briefly illuminated row after row of T-80 main battle tanks. Perhaps the mental effort of estimating the numbers so quickly decreased his alertness. Whatever the cause, the first sound he heard — small, high-speed engines — was much closer than he ever should have allowed.
Moving rapidly into the open, he flashed a rough coded signal of what he’d seen in the direction of the satellite, realizing the intelligence was now more vital than his life. However, every move he made at this stage now became guesswork, as his signal was aimed skyward in a direction he anticipated the satellite was located. His tank estimate also seemed jumbled as the sound of engines drew dangerously near, and he repeated his signal, adding a warning at the end to indicate he was in danger.
With still no confirmation of what he faced, the American skied quickly away from the approaching machines. There was no way he could outrun a snowmobile, but he might confuse them, then burrow in the drifts until they gave out. With long, purposeful strides, he increased his speed to the maximum. He knew his limits but he had maintained such a pace in training for as long as fifteen minutes at a time. No other human had ever been able to keep up with him. There was as yet no doubt in his mind that he was able to survive any challenge.
The KGB team leader carried an infrared detector. When a third beam was momentarily broken in an adjacent sector, there was little difficulty in locating a warm-blooded creature in the frigid Arctic. The Soviets closed their target like a pack of wolves. They could neither see nor hear their quarry, but they could track the minimal heat he was radiating.
The American knew his odds were limited when he recognized engines on either side and he accepted his fate when the roar of another was directly in front. The crack of the first rifle shot came to him through the chill blackness at the same time as the muzzle flash and the impact of the bullet in his thigh. He went down in a heap as more bullets cracked above him.
Rolling to his belly, he unhooked the lightweight, automatic rifle from his hip. There was no way a man could escape this godforsaken region with one leg, but he promised himself that others would remain with him as he brought the weapon to his shoulder. The firing subsided. They were moving closer, and at twenty yards they opened fire again. He selected the flash of two weapons too close together, set the selector on automatic, and squeezed the trigger, moving his gun barrel rapidly from side to side, then up and down.
There was no further response from that direction. He waited, hoping against hope that someone else might fire on him and miss. But they were too smart. Nothing.
Then a steady blast came from his right side, no more than fifteen yards away. His head moved in that direction and he tried to bring his weapon around, but he was unable to wheel fast enough. The firing continued long after the American had died.
Their leader came over and kicked at the body. Satisfied, he roped the intruder’s feet, attaching the other end to the back of his snowmobile. He flicked on his homing device, and the vehicles raced back to their quarters. The American bounced along behind, face down in the snow.
The loss of two such superb operatives was not to be the last — for either side. The disc recording left by Kovschenko established beyond a doubt that a submarine of great magnitude was building on the Washington coastline. The death of fine men before and after him would prove that great sacrifice was necessary to learn the capabilities of this immense submarine. Similarly for the Americans, the knowledge that a prepositioned invasion force was developing near the Norwegian border was proof of Soviet designs on the North Atlantic in the near future.
For more than a decade, the Russians had been designing their ballistic missile submarines to operate under the arctic icepack. They reinforced their craft for surfacing through the ice. improved communications gear to keep in touch with their commanders, and developed navigational devices to perfect targeting from that region. Under the ice, they were as close as necessary to their American targets without the need to expose themselves to sophisticated detection equipment by transiting to the Atlantic or Pacific. They could depart their own arctic ports and commence directly north to the safety of the ice. The only method of locating them after that would be another submarine — an attack submarine designed to seek them out, without being detected first, and sink them before they could fire their missiles. ICBMs raining down on American cities from unknown sources in the Arctic were almost impossible to defend against, The Russians were converting the Arctic Ocean into a Soviet domain.
The American response had been to produce faster, deeper-diving submarines, vessels so quiet they could sneak up on their opposite number and fire before they themselves were heard. There were two direct routes to the Arctic Ocean: one through the shallow Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, the other through the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea. The former could be easily monitored by the Soviets; the latter presented a challenge. The Kremlin determined that the only method of protecting their territory — for they felt quite defensive about the waters north of the Scandinavian countries — would be to eventually control Norway and convert the Norwegian Sea into a high-threat environment. With naval bases in that country and Soviet planes flying over the ocean between it and Greenland, they were confident that they could protect their missile submarines under the icepack.
Soviet intelligence estimates indicated that they’d have to respond rapidly or the Americans would move additional attack submarines into arctic waters. Control of the Norwegian Sea appeared a necessity. The Norwegian Constitution denied quartering of foreign troops in that nation in time of peace. American and Canadian military supplies had been prepositioned there, but they would be useless if the land was in Soviet hands before troops could be landed. The Soviets moved their own prepositioned material for a blitzkrieg-type offensive into position in the dead of winter. The troops were less than a hundred miles away in Murmansk.