“Make sure Jake knows he’ll be compensated for his efforts,” he said.
She laughed. “You think Jake is motivated by money? He’d cut your balls off if he thought it would be good for the country. Money never concerned him.”
With that, she left him, and he watched her every deliberate step and the shake of her hips. He saw what Jake had always known, and perhaps what had motivated him more than even national security. It was her security. An even better reason to send Toni to Norway.
Jake’s drinking might have started with the revelation of his sister’s early death, but then probably accelerated once he realized he had lost two women in his life forever.
13
The three of them had flown from their perch on the glacier due south to the town of Sveagruva, a Norwegian settlement of some two hundred people, where they topped off the fuel tank. While there, Jake had come up with a plan to bypass Longyearbyen, where he assumed they would have run into more trouble. He had made a few calls and Kjersti had done the same. Together they had found a direction.
From Sveagruva they had flown out over the Arctic Ocean into the North Norwegian Sea, a huge leap of faith considering the four hundred mile distance from the Svalbard Archipelago to the Norwegian mainland, and were now running low on fuel. The winds had picked up and the cloud cover made it hard to see too far in the distance.
Jake checked his watch and then his own hand-held GPS. He guessed the ship had to be just over the horizon. Had to be. They were searching for a ship. Not any ship — a particular ship. He was sitting in the second seat in the front and Anna was laying in the back, her stomach still upset by the rocking craft jumping about in the turbulence.
“How much fuel left?” Jake asked Kjersti.
“Ten minutes. Maybe less. Where the hell are they?”
“Call in your Mayday,” Jake prompted. “We gotta be close enough.”
Kjersti didn’t hesitate, calling an in-flight emergency, heading, and fuel situation. Almost immediately, she got a response in Norwegian, and Jake could only guess what was being said to her. Clicking off the headset, Kjersti adjusted their heading and elevation.
“How far out?” Jake asked her.
“They had changed directions slightly,” she said. “Should be coming into view…now.”
Off on the horizon they could see the Norwegian Coast Guard patrol vessel KV Svalbard, the largest ship in Norway’s armed forces. Yet, even at 300 feet long, the ship seemed like a fishing boat as it cruised away from them. The large patrol icebreaker carried two helicopters.
“They gonna clear the deck for you?” Jake asked.
“One’s in the hangar,” she said. “And there’s the other one.”
As they got closer, they could see a helicopter airborne trailing the ship to the port side.
“Isn’t that an NH90?”
“Yeah,” Kjersti said.
They came alongside the large ship on the starboard side, slowing to the speed of the cutter. The ship had slowed somewhat to allow them to land.
With expert precision, Kjersti slipped her craft to the right and dropped her down in the center of the helo pad. They waited while crewmen scrambled to chock and tie the helo to the flight deck, and then Kjersti cut power.
“How much fuel we have left?” Jake asked her.
“Fumes.”
Suddenly their helo was surrounded by sailors with automatic weapons pointed at them.
“This doesn’t look good,” Anna said from the back.
Jake leaned into Kjersti. “We can’t let them search us. I hope like hell Norwegian Intel has some pull.”
She smiled and pulled her credentials from a small backpack beside her seat. Then she got out onto the flight deck, her hands up with her ID pointed at someone who looked to be in charge. Rifles still pointed at her and the helo. The man went onto his radio and moments later a man appeared from the hangar bay door. An officer.
“What’s going on, Jake?” Anna asked, moving from the back closer to him.
“She’s explaining who she is. At least that’s my guess.” If she had wanted to, she could have simply told them the truth. Then they would all be quarantined until someone came and broke open the box, rendering the virus inactive. Maybe she was doing that. But Jake didn’t think so. He had a feeling she wasn’t that close with the military, and didn’t trust that her government had the proper expertise to handle this type of virus. She had said as much on their flight. He just hoped she wasn’t playing him.
Moments later the coast guard officer handed her identification back to Kjersti and they were all smiles. He even had his hand on her shoulder as they both laughed. Then the officer ordered his men to stand down and he waved for the helo to be refueled.
Kjersti and the officer came to the pilot’s door, opened it, and the officer leaned in, his hand extended. They shook and the man introduced himself as Commander Berg.
“Nice to meet you,” Jake said. “And thanks for the drink. Didn’t think we’d make it.”
“No problem,” the commander said. “It’s always nice to help the CIA, or the new Agency. I keep forgetting the change.”
Jake hesitated, his gaze first on Kjersti and then back to Commander Berg. “I forget myself which organization I’m part of anymore. Thanks again.”
“Good luck tracking those terrorists,” Berg said before departing, shaking Kjersti’s hand again, lingering longer than normal, and heading back toward the hangar bay.
Kjersti leaned in and looked at Anna. “I’ve gotta hit the head,” she said. “How about you, Anna?”
“If that means going to the bathroom,” Anna said, “that would be a big yes.”
“Jake?”
“I’m good. I’ll watch our gear.”
Anna slipped by Jake, who pinched her on the butt as she scooted past him and out the pilot’s door. She turned with her evil eye look, which was only mock disdain, and closed the hatch on him.
He watched the two of them saunter off on the pitching deck like twin sisters walking to school. What was that TV commercial years ago? Double your pleasure? Forget it, Jake. You’ve got a beautiful girlfriend.
While they were gone, Jake looked at a map of Norway, memorizing the terrain, the cities, the roads, the rail lines. They had to stay one step ahead of whoever wanted to grab the box from them. He had to assume it was the Russians, but not to their exclusion. It could have been just about anyone who wanted the virus for their own purposes or to sell on the open market. He had no clue how much something like that could be worth, and he also had no intention of letting the box get into the hands of anyone who wanted to sell it. The unspoken possibility, that which he could not say out loud or seriously consider, was that his old friend Colonel Reed wanted the virus for that exact reason — to sell to the highest bidder. After all, the colonel was not officially working for the Agency. But there was no damn way the colonel would ever do such a thing. No way.
Finally, Kjersti and Anna came out of the ship and walked back to the helo. Instead of opening the side door, they piled back in through the pilot’s door.
The flight deck crew pulled back the fuel line and rolled it onto a spool and they were almost ready to go.
“What we waiting for?” Jake asked.
In a second Jake knew, as a couple men came out, one carrying a heavy flight bag and the other with a cardboard box. Kjersti said something to them and they laughed. Then Anna opened the side door, they set the items into the back, and she slammed the door shut. The men waived at Kjersti and returned to the inside of the ship.
“What you say to them?”
“I asked if they took Visa.”