He continued up the ridge and came to a point where he could see even farther than he had earlier in the day. It was the best place for miles to get a signal. If there was a satellite somewhere on the southern horizon somewhere above the point where Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia met, perhaps his SAT phone would pick it up.
Looking back down the ridge toward the helo, he hoped Anna and Kjersti were staying warm. His mind drifted for a microsecond about what Anna had said earlier. He knew she was kidding, but he also knew that she knew how to play with a man’s natural thoughts.
He tried the SAT phone, angling it in all directions, hoping he could get any signal at all. Nothing. Yeah, the Aurora Borealis was playing with the satellites. They were beautiful but destructive.
Then he lifted the binoculars from his chest and scanned in all directions. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he knew that he couldn’t go back to the helo at this time. It was tight in there and he would more than likely start to shake uncontrollably. Anna didn’t need to see that, nor did Kjersti. Their confidence in him would be shot all to hell.
There. Nearly a mile to the northeast. A large figure and a smaller one lumbered across the glacial plain — a polar bear sow and her cub. They were vectoring away toward the east of their location. Better check for company. He quickly scanned in three hundred sixty degrees. Nothing.
He set the binoculars to his chest and took in a deep breath, when something green glimmered just thirty yards away. Then it was gone. Then again. He looked up at the Northern Lights and saw they were mostly green at this time. But something had reflected the light.
Pulling up the binoculars again, he couldn’t tell what was causing the reflection. So he walked over there for a closer look.
As he got closer, he saw that the ridge had an overhang — an indentation like a half cave. He clicked on his headlamp and directed the beam of light lower. Then he saw it. With the warmer temps and the wind, snow had cleared from a trailer. Brushing further ahead, the trailer was attached to a snowmobile. The missing snowmobile.
His old friend, Captain Steve Olson, had to be close by. What would Jake have done? Steve had been either hiding or trying to find protection from the elements. The overhang would have provided some cover for both. And until recently, Jake guessed, the entire cave-like structure would have been covered in heavy snow. It was only because of the warm trend that summer that any of these things — the MiG and the snowmobiles — had been exposed.
Jake set down the rifle and moved to the deepest point under the overhang, got to his knees, and started digging with his hands. Moments later he hit something solid. Not rock solid, but something out of place.
It was a body.
Exhausted, he rolled to his side and something sharp stabbed him in the back. Damn it.
He dug to see what it was. His headlamp soon started shining back at him. Metal of some kind. He dug faster now and quickly uncovered a one foot cube metal box.
There was no doubt that the box had been a perfect fit to the foam hole inside the MiG. So his old friend had actually gotten the box, whatever it was, away from the Soviets. And he had somehow survived the shoot-out, escaping to this place. Jake imagined his old friend’s face and tried to understand what had gotten him to this location. On top of the trailer, the item that had reflected the Northern Lights had been one of the old collapsible satellite dishes the military and the CIA had used back then for remote communications. Maybe Steve had also gone to high ground to call in their location, call in for extraction. But maybe he had been injured. Or maybe the weather had been severe. It had been October, an unforgiving time up here. Regardless, Steve had gotten the item from the MiG and now Jake had it.
He wiped snow from the metal box and saw the Russian symbols on the side. Although he couldn’t read the words, he had seen the symbols before many times.
Biohazard.
Crap.
7
Colonel Reed had gone back to his hotel after being shot at during his meeting with Oberon at the café. He had sat for a while eating and drinking from the mini-bar, wondering what had happened and why. His mind flicked back and forth considering if the shots had been aimed at him or the Russian. But one thought stuck with him — the little Russian, the former KGB officer, had warned him just in time to save his life. Sure it could have been self preservation coupled with a natural inclination to help a fellow human being. Yet, Reed guessed it had been more than that. For some reason Oberon, or Victor Petrova, had wanted him to live. The why was the difficult conundrum. After all, they had been adversaries at one time. A time when spy versus spy had rules of civility — if that were even possible. You didn’t kill your adversary just for the hell of it. You tried to use your opponent to gain some intelligence advantage, some piece of information you could exploit for your side. And maybe that had been the motive of his little friend.
Later in the evening, the colonel had gone to a section of Stockholm where he knew he could satisfy himself to make him feel alive. For he had survived the shooting, and that type of close-death activity had always led him to the arms of a woman. At first it had been his wife, who had come to almost enjoy those close calls just so she could benefit from a rough encounter afterwards. But they had been divorced for nearly fifteen years now, so his pleasure quests had to come elsewhere.
Although he didn’t like to do so, paying for sex was the most efficient form of un-subdued intimacy, if he could call it that. With a hooker he didn’t have to screw around pretending he was something or someone he wasn’t, spending hundreds of dollars taking a woman out to dinner, to the movies, or some other expensive activities. And then when all that worked and he finally got to sleep with a woman, it was usually underwhelming. A flat on the back hair twirler, while he pumped away. No, a call girl was much more efficient. He got an experienced woman who would do damn near anything, within reason, and they could cut all the damn games and pretense. A business transaction. That’s what he liked. And that’s what he needed after being shot at.
Now, laying awake at zero three hundred, the tall blonde naked Swedish goddess snoring lightly at his side, Reed thought about his old friend Jake Adams, who was still up on Spitsbergen Island. He hadn’t been truthful with Jake, and that did bother him.
Jake was supposed to call him hours ago for an update. When that call didn’t come, Reed had contacted the charter helicopter service he had arranged for them. They had not returned to Longyearbyen yet, but that didn’t concern them, since the pilot was experienced and they had brought plenty of warm weather gear, including sleeping bags that went down to fifteen below zero. They were also armed. Reed wasn’t sure why the man had told him that. They both agreed to wait until noon the next day, this day now, before they would send someone out to look for them. The weather was clear and had been displaying amazing Aurora Borealis, which was strange for that time of year. They were far more prominent in the winter. But that had also made Colonel Reed understand why Jake had not called him on the SAT phone. The Boreal activity had probably wiped out the SAT communications. He was sure Jake was all right. A more capable man the colonel had not met.
The woman at his side rolled over, exposing her tight body to him, her perfect round breasts rubbing up against his arm. God, he would have never been able to get a woman that hot no matter how many dinners he had paid for — unless he was rich. He smiled thinking about having more money. More money than he would ever have dreamed possible.
A hand reached down and grasped his erection, stroking it gently.