Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

FOURTEEN

‘Intercept on call to Krusenstern,’ a technician told Vitruk. ‘From Washington, DC to an American number, routed through a hotspot of one of ours in the 83rd Airborne. Signal encrypted both ways.’

Vitruk watched images of the two helicopters, one Russian, one American, now charred wreckage embedded on the sea ice, flames leaping, then dampened by the black oil seeping onto the white. His hope had been that he could take the American island without a shot being fired. He had also planned for the high chance of that not happening. He would now step up his reach to make sure America understood it should not mess with him. And he would deceive, too, by offering to cede his advantage here on the border. There didn’t have to be blood. At least, not here. ‘Break that encryption. Tell the Americans we’ll allow them to pick up their injured. We need our own rescue teams out there now.’

On the visual feed from Little Diomede, troops were moving off the helipad, isolating the single Russian helicopter, which, with the outbreak of violence, would be a missile strike target. Soldiers melted into cover around the buildings.

‘SU-35s ready to scramble, sir,’ reported a technician. The SU-35 strike aircraft would match the American F-22s. They would also escalate.

‘Not yet,’ said Vitruk. ‘Stand them by.’

He spoke to Yumatov in the school on Little Diomede. ‘Hold the Eskimos at the school until we have a peace deal. There must be no loss of life.’

‘One is missing, sir; Captain Raymond Ozenna of the Alaska Army National Guard.’ Yumatov spoke slowly, but he was not hesitant. ‘We are certain that he’s the one who guided in the helicopter. He has killed two, possibly three, of my men.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the village. He can’t have gone far.’

‘Find him.’

Rake flipped out the phone’s battery and SIM card so it could no longer be traced. He moved silently around the back of the hut and up the hillside to the next, higher level of walkways where the old church was. He found cover inside a wooden meat cache built like a huge outdoor cupboard, between the wooden struts of the building. Inside was frozen whale, seal, and walrus meat. If, behind that, there was a cache of Don’s weapons, he would have a chance of getting across to the Russian island in once piece.

The crossing would not be straightforward. Most of the ocean was frozen over, but there would be channels of open water, carrying chunks of ice on a fast-running northerly current. This was one of the most dangerous seas in the world. If he had been on the island these past few months he would know how it lay this winter. But he hadn’t. And there was no one to ask. It was shallow, making the current faster and more powerful. Out there, wind chill would drop minus 20 Celsius to minus 40 with weather that turned at any moment. He would have to check the weapons carefully. The Russian ones he had were close-quarter weapons and would be serviced with cold-weather lubricants. But Rake needed a rifle, an accurate long-range weapon that could take out a man from a distance. Don Ondola was a Diomede man and he understood that although the target of his dreams would not be Russians but agents from the American government interfering with the way he lived.

Ondola’s stolen weapons would have come from Iraq, which meant Rake might need to strip and dry them out to ensure no condensation would freeze and lock the mechanisms. He could do that quickly, but he needed to allow time to throw out any ammunition with casings damaged by the weather.

The Russian military gloves were cleverly designed. An outer cover could be removed leaving the trigger finger protected by a material thin enough to work inside the guard. That would prevent lethal cold-weather skin-on-metal contact. Rake had seen a man rip off half his face after resting against a metal rifle stock.

He was well hidden and had a clear view across to Big Diomede. The Russian base was out of sight on the north side of the island. He could see no way of getting to it unseen without going right around Little Diomede, or at least over the top, which would mean having to avoid the Russian observation position up there.

At the back, where the storeroom met the hillside granite, Rake found carefully packed weapons. There were two pistols, four M-14 carbines lubricated for Arctic conditions, a dozen grenades, and a Remington 700 rifle with a white Gore-Tex sleeve. He even found a roll of kitchen plastic wrap which would keep the weapon moisture-free until he needed to use it.

A dog barked, but it was not Henry’s mutt. Then came a crackle of radio communication and footsteps on the walkway. He heard voices in Russian looking for him. Strong flashlights swept around the small hillside homes, illuminating them as if it were daylight.

Vitruk looked hard into the face of the Eskimo soldier standing in front of him. He was no more than five feet four and thin like a wire doll, but strong. This was Sergeant Nikita Tuuq, aged thirty-four, from the village of Uelen in Chukotka. He stood impassive and unafraid, eyes squinted, nose skewed from being broken, his skin young but rough like leather.

‘Do you know Captain Rake Ozenna?’ Vitruk showed Tuuq a photograph.

Tuuq replied with a nod. Vitruk was familiar with this type of man and allowed the apparent lack of respect. Tuuq belonged to a special Arctic-warfare unit which had flown in from the Khabarovsk headquarters in case the Americans attacked Big Diomede. But that was not why Vitruk had summoned him. The Eskimo’s file stated that he and Ozenna shared a US-Russian Arctic search and rescue training course two years earlier in Alaska. Tuuq appeared to be the only Russian soldier who had managed to match Ozenna and another American there, Sergeant Don Ondola. In unarmed combat, Ondola was ahead. In long-distance tracking, Tuuq had edged in front. In tactical thinking and leadership, Ozenna had shone.

‘How well do you know him?’ asked Vitruk.

‘He is my cousin. Our relatives are in our home village of Uelen.’

It was a good answer because it was half right. Tuuq was smart enough to guess that Vitruk would know this. Among Eskimos, with the fractured nuclear family, anyone could end up as a cousin, and that made them neither a friend nor an enemy. In Tuuq’s case, Ozenna was more than just a cousin. After the cold war, when the border was relaxed, Ozenna’s father, a drunk, travelled to Uelen to meet lost relatives. During the visit, he had slept with Tuuq’s mother. The file said that Tuuq and Rake were almost certainly half-brothers, and Tuuq loathed Rake because of it.

Ozenna’s father never returned to America. He vanished inside Russia. Not even the FSB or SVR knew what had happened to him. Some years later, as a child, Ozenna was taken back to Uelen in the hope that he could find his father. The file said Tuuq beat Ozenna up, but gave no details. The man who took Ozenna to Russia was his surrogate father, Henry Ahkvaluk, the Eskimo who had come across with the pregnant girl.

‘If you were on Little Diomede, being hunted by us, what would you do?’ said Vitruk.

‘I would stay free.’ Tuuq remained expressionless.

‘How would you do that?’

Tuuq spent some moments studying the map on the wall. ‘I would cross to Wales to guide the American troops across the ice. Or I would come over here to be their eyes for an attack on this base.’

‘Which?’ asked Vitruk impatiently.

Tuuq remained impassive, his eyes on the map. ‘Here,’ he said finally. ‘This base.’

‘Can you find Ozenna and stop him?’

‘Yes. I can.’

Vitruk closed Tuuq’s file and, briefly alone, he called an encrypted number at the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC As he had anticipated, the ripple effect of his tiny military incision in the far-away Bering Strait had prompted an early morning crisis meeting at the American Federal Reserve.