Deep Black

24

Dean followed Karr through the marshy tundra for nearly three miles, once or twice losing sight of him. Water from the boggy soil soaked through his boots and well up his pant legs. The dampness and fatigue began to tighten his muscles, and he felt a massive knot forming between his shoulder blades.

They walked parallel to the highway, for the most part along what looked like an abandoned farm path or perhaps the original road before it was improved and paved. No vehicles passed; Dean realized the area was about as desolate as any he’d ever been in and wondered how much emptier the extremely cold northern stretches of Siberia must be.

Karr finally began angling toward the road, and Dean saw that the terrain rose toward a knoll that would give them a fair vantage point. Sure enough, Lia was already there, watching the wreckage and the Russians who had come to inspect it.

“They’re not helping the survivors,” she said.

“Why not?” said Dean.

Lia ignored him, talking directly to Karr. “They went into the cabin. I haven’t seen them come out. Two men.”

“What kind of chopper?”

“Helix, I think. I can’t tell if it has a star on the tail or not. Could be civilian.”

“Out here?”

“One man in the cockpit. If it was military, there’d be more. Besides, Helixes are normally assigned to the Navy.”

“No way it’s a civilian. Gotta be Army or something.”

“Or something.”

Karr took out a PRC radio to communicate with the Hind. The discreet-burst unit was similar to those used by Spec Ops and downed airmen. Dean went over to Lia and asked for the binoculars she was using.

“It’s polite to share,” he told her.

Somewhat to his surprise, she passed the binoculars to him. “You don’t sound like you’re from Missouri.”

Dean tended to be defensive about his home state; in his experience, most people who brought it up did so only to put it down. But he simply grunted, trying to arrange the binoculars in front of the night gear and get them to focus.

“Hold them directly on the lens, at the exact center of the eyepiece. It’s calibrated to focus.” She pushed them onto the glass. “It takes a second.”

It felt awkward, but it worked well enough for him to see something coming out of the plane.

“Got a bag,” said Dean.

Lia grabbed the binoculars back, taking a step forward on the knoll. “He went in with that.”

“What are they doing?” he said.

“Going back to the helicopter.”

“There’s a kid in the field on the other side of the plane,” Dean told her. “He’s alive.”

“Really?” Her voice was sincere and surprised.

“Little kid.”

“Blades are turning. They’re taking off.”

Dean put his hands on the sides of the glasses, steadying them, as if that would help him see farther. But the helicopter was nearly three miles away, and all its running lights had been extinguished.

“They’re leaving them to die?” he asked.

“They’re probably the ones who killed them,” said Karr. “We’ll follow them once Fashona picks us up.”

“What about the kid?” said Dean.

“What kid?”

“Dean wants to play Florence Nightingale,” said Lia.

“Oh, that kid,” said Karr. “Yeah, Dean, just one fly, OK? You used like four on him.”

“How do you know?”

Karr took his handheld and showed it to him. There were pinpoints of light on a grid — the locations of the small bugs.

“They took the flight recorder,” added Karr. “That’s what they went in there for. To make sure there was no indication who shot down the plane. Probably unnecessary, but they didn’t want to take any chances.”

“We going to help those people or what?” demanded Dean.

Karr ignored him. “Who do you think they were?” he asked Lia. “PVO?”

She shrugged.

“Probably not the GAI or militsiya,” said Karr, referring to police agencies. “They wouldn’t have come by helicopter.”

“Probably not.”

Dean was about ready to punch both of them.

“Closest town is fifteen miles away,” said Karr. “And it’s not much of a town. But maybe that’s our best bet.”

“Well, let’s just do it.” Lia took her satellite phone out from inside her vest.

Dean finally realized that they were discussing how to get help. “You have the number memorized?” he asked.

Lia scowled. The Hind was approaching from the south, its throaty TV3s considerably louder than the engines that had powered the other helicopter.

“She’s calling home,” explained Karr. “They’ll handle the details.”

“We have to help that kid,” said Dean.

“Charlie, we’re going to have to take our chances on that one.”

“It’s his chance, not ours.”

Karr slapped his back and nodded grimly, but he’d made up his mind.

They lost the helicopter somewhere near Sym, a city that passed for large in the central area of Siberia on a tributary to the Jenisej. Running low on fuel, they finally set down about a mile from a hamlet called Sitjla, a good hundred or so miles due north of Tomsk.

“Run the engines dry,” Karr told Fashona.

“No way, man,” he replied. “We’ll never get them started again.”

“I don’t want the helicopter stolen if we have to leave it.”

“Who the hell’s going to steal it?”

“It’s worth more than the whole damn village.”

“Shit, they won’t fly it. They’ll take it apart and sell it for scrap.”

Fashona finally convinced him that leaving only three or four minutes of fuel in the tanks was good enough. He killed the engines the second the gear plopped onto the ground. It was still night, and Karr decided they’d take shifts standing guard and napping until morning. He left Dean conspicuously out of the rotation. Dean said he’d take a spot, but Karr told him not to worry.

“Age before beauty,” Karr told him. “Just sleep.”

Dean, angered by the reference to his age, told Karr to screw himself. He just laughed his usual laugh.

“Don’t be stubborn,” said Lia a while later when she saw Dean wasn’t sleeping. “You’re going to be sorry later.”

“Right,” he snapped, but he did bed down and fell asleep for a few hours.

The next thing he knew, Fashona was tugging at his feet. “Time to hit the road,” said the pilot. “Let’s go check out the big city.”

Dean, his muscles knotted and stiff, followed Fashona unsteadily. The sun poked through some of the mist rising from the ground, shafts of yellow swirling in the humid air.

Karr and Lia had just finished stowing the team’s gear away from the helicopter, hiding the A-2 guns and some of the high-tech equipment in the nearby field. They took a GPS reading, then returned to the aircraft. The first order of business, Karr told the others, was to find some food. They were no longer using the com system to communicate with the Art Room, relying on the sat phones instead for periodic updates.

“Hey, Charlie,” said Karr as they started to walk. “Your kid’s in a hospital. Fair condition.”

“Good,” grunted Dean.

“Don’t sound so enthused, tough guy.” Karr laughed. As they continued to walk toward town, he told them that the Art Room had changed their mission priorities.

“They want to know about the Helix,” he told the others. “So that’s our gig.”

“What about the trash in the chopper?” asked Fashona.

Karr shrugged. “They want it eventually, just not right away.”

“What about him?” Lia jabbed her thumb toward Dean.

“I think they forgot about you, Charlie,” said Karr. “Didn’t even mention you.”

“Then I’ll just walk home.”

“Go for it,” said Lia.

“So how come with all their satellites and other gadgets they lost track of the Helix helicopter?” said Dean. “How come they can’t just push a button and find out about it?”

“Man, you’ve been hanging around Princess too long,” said Karr.

“Don’t blame him on me,” said Lia. “He was whining when I found him.”

“Truck,” said Fashona.

It made no sense to hide — the helicopter was clearly visible, and in a place like this, the fact that it had landed would undoubtedly soon be common knowledge. So Karr turned and waved.

The truck looked like it had been made in the 1950s or even earlier. The driver stopped; it took less than a minute for Karr to talk him into giving them a ride into town. It wasn’t particularly hard, the op explained as they climbed into the back; the fifty rubles he offered the driver amounted to more money than the man would make that week and perhaps that month.

Downtown Sitjla consisted of a dirt road bordered by a trio of sheds, a few piles of bricks that had possibly once been houses, and a two-story building covered by the large asbestos tiles common in the States during the 1950s. The building’s facade, off at a slight angle to the street, had a wooden door and no windows. It proved to be a combination restaurant, inn, and meeting place for the local inhabitants. A collection of trailers sat about a half-mile farther down the road, but there were no oil derricks or factories or anything else nearby that showed why anyone would live here.

A large woman in her early twenties met them inside the open hallway of the cement building. It was difficult to tell from her appearance whether she was the manager or a cleaning lady. She wore a thick polyester dress that didn’t quite reach her bulging knees, but her hands were covered by rubber gloves and her hair pulled back in a scarf that looked like a dust rag. Karr did the talking for the group, explaining in Russian that they were Westerners working for an oil company whose helicopter had broken down and would need repair. The woman smiled, frowned, shook her head, and finally said something about providing food, impressed by either Karr’s patter or, more likely, the wad of rubles he produced from his shirt pocket. Within a half hour, they were sitting at a tin folding table in a whitewashed room sipping a very hot and very bland red-tinted water that may or may not have been vegetable soup. Dean was so hungry he asked for a second bowl, which seemed to make the woman think he was flirting with her. About midway through the meal, Karr excused himself to go to the rest room.

“Olive says there’s a bus due soon,” he told them when he got back. “Fashona and I are going to take it to Tomsk. We should be able to buy fuel for the helicopter there. If not, we’ll be able to make other arrangements.”

“How long’s that going to take?” Dean asked.

Karr shrugged. “The bus was supposed to be here this morning. Sometimes it’s a whole day late. They stop a few more times along the way south. In theory it’s a four-hour trip. My guess is we’ll be back by tomorrow night.”

“We can get some sleep, at least,” said Dean.

“Actually, no,” said Karr. “Desk Three wants you two to find that helicopter ASAP. I was talking to them in the men’s room. They have some leads.”

“What?” snapped Lia.

“Olive says we can rent a pickup from her brother-in-law. There’s only three places the helicopter can be, according to the Art Room,” he added.

“What’s my cover?” asked Lia.

Karr shrugged. “Whatever you feel like, Princess. Far as I’m concerned, you can use the traveling prostitute bit. Dean can be your pimp.”

“Screw yourself, Tommy. Just screw yourself.”

Fashona was suppressing a smile. Olive — her actual name was something like Olenka, which would be Olga in English — returned, offering tea. This proved to be a green liquid that tasted as if it had been made from moss. Fashona and Karr downed theirs, but Dean tried only half a sip.

“Look, if you have a better idea, talk to them,” Karr told Lia when Olive had retreated. “You know the number.”

“Hardy-har.”

“She can’t just hear them talking in her ear?” said Dean derisively.

“Not too well. The Russians are picking up their jamming. They’re really getting obnoxious,” said Karr.

The communications system had high-orbit stationary satellites that provided coverage in important areas. The rest was supplied with low-earth, purpose-launched satellites that tied into the system. Partly for security purposes and partly to keep them small and disposable, their range was fairly limited. Jamming by the Russians made things even more problematic.

“How do you know the Russians aren’t listening in?” asked Dean. It was a serious question, not like his earlier sarcastic remark.

“Yeah, exactly,” said Karr. “That’s why we don’t want to overuse the system. Although it’s pretty good. I mean, anything can be broken,” said Karr. “But this one is very hard in real time. Besides the encryption, the frequency skips during the transmission. There are two different noise streams mixed in. In other words, if you’re intercepting it, you get three different conversations, and you have to figure out which one is real.”

“They’re I Love Lucy reruns,” said Lia.

Fashona laughed.

“They’re actual conversations,” said Karr.

“Having Washington talk in your ear isn’t a pain in the ass?” asked Dean.

Karr shrugged. “It’s not Washington.” He rose. “Supposed to be able to buy smokes down the road. OK, Princess, go find Olive’s brother-in-law. We’ll see you probably the day after tomorrow.”

“They give me a map?”

“They promise to download. Didn’t say when, though.”

“You know, screw them. Screw Rubens.”

“I hear he’s got a monster wad,” said Karr.