Man on Ice: Russia vs the USA - in Alaska

THIRTY-TWO

To Vitruk, the way the night-vision lenses conflated the image looked as if his soldier had fired a second shot from the pier.

That wasn’t the case.

The soldier was killed by a shot that came from out of the ice.

There was no convulsion, no arterial blood. The bullet came in at the top of the neck and severed the spinal cord. The body slumped instantly and lost life. Only a handful of men in the world could make such a shot. Vitruk had seen it only once before. He moved back just before another bullet struck the ground exactly where he had been standing. The second sniper looked up to sight the target. He was shot in the face.

‘Take her in,’ ordered Vitruk. Carrie was dragged to cover between the two buildings. Vitruk stayed exposed, moving back and forth so quickly that no marksman would get a shot. He looked for human movement and saw none.

A soldier ran up to him. Coming to a standstill, clicking his heels, he handed him a note. ‘Sir, urgent—’ He was about to salute when Vitruk hurled his body weight against him, throwing them both to the ground. A shot smashed into the wall behind them and, through a tiny flash, he thought saw the location of the trigger.

‘Floodlamps,’ he shouted. The wall of ice lit up like castle ramparts. Vitruk signaled toward the roofs of the two buildings. ‘Field of fire along the top.’

Each building had a 76mm anti-aircraft unit and two Kord 12.7mm heavy machine guns. There was a deafening roar of large-caliber gunfire. Snow chunks broke away like exploding masonry. Ice spun into the air. Mist mixed with gun smoke as layer after layer was peeled off. No one caught in that onslaught of lead could survive.

‘Hold fire.’

Through binoculars he saw the marksman.

‘The ridge.’

Two bursts of machine-gun fire slammed into the target. Vitruk swept the wider area through his night vision. There was no Joan Ahkvaluk out there; no husband. They would be next. But he had the sniper. He checked the mutilated top of the ice wall again and didn’t expect what he saw. He looked with his naked eye, patch by bullet-torn patch, to make sure he was missing nothing. He checked again through the binoculars. A shape lay flat and skewed from the gunfire. But this wasn’t a gunman. It was the skin of a wild animal, blended in with the ice. Staring directly at him like a calling card was the black skull of a dead polar bear. The killer had gone.

A heat of fury ran through him. He knew only one man who could have achieved what this marksman had, and he was Nikita Tuuq. Yet this was someone as good, probably better. Both were out there, which meant that Tuuq was compromised. Vitruk pushed himself to his feet and banged his gloved hands together. Should he summon back Tuuq, who would have gone to ground? His phone and radio would be off. They had a system of emergency flares. Red for recall. Orange for standby. Green for proceed to the kill.

Vitruk shared his soldiers’ own anger. So many hours into the operation and he had achieved little except the death of his men. Another two comrades were dead. Just over an hour ago, three more had died, two on the ice and one in hospital. The helicopter shot down, the six men on the top of the American island. It was a stream of catastrophe, the reality of war.

‘Sir—’ The soldier he had saved clambered up next to him. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Vitruk read the note. It was from the Kremlin.

‘They want you now, sir. In the communications room.’

Vitruk gave orders to check the ice wall, but to leave the bodies where they were. He would examine the trajectory of the two lethal shots which had avoided the soldiers’ Kevlar vests. He walked back inside the main building and, without taking off his coat, headed down steep spiral stairs into the old nuclear bunker sixty meters beneath the ground. It was a high-ceilinged chamber hewn out of the granite, the sides cylindrically curved like the hull of a ship and sealed with reinforced lead and concrete to protect hundreds of troops. Moisture dripped because of the outdated ventilation. The door to the communications room was open. He pulled out a chair and opened a bottle of water. A technician left, closing the door behind him.

‘Alexander, are you there?’ Lagutov’s voice was hesitant and tired.

‘Yes, sir.’ Vitruk pulled off his coat.

‘Holland called President Lo in Beijing and Lo called me. He is worried. I am worried. If we do not resolve all this before the inauguration there may be a war of such strength as the world has never known before.’

‘What did Holland want?’

‘For China to condemn Russia. Lo cut him off. But he is nervous about his economy.’

‘We need to hold firm,’ said Vitruk. ‘Not even Holland would risk taking on both China and Russia.’

‘But will China hold its course?’

‘The Chinese do not like direct confrontation. Leave it with me, sir, and I promise we will win.’

‘You mean I should trust you as my successor.’

‘Yes, sir. And sacrifice me as a renegade, should I fail.’

‘Which you will not.’

Vitruk had not told Lagutov about the deal he had made with General Bu Zishan, commander of the neighboring Shenyang Military Region when, a year earlier, he had hosted General Bu and an official from the North Korean People’s Workers’ Party to an extravagant banquet at his headquarters in Khabarovsk. He had won agreement from both men in exchange for promises to transfer Russian missile technology. Nine months later, he had covertly sent to North Korea two dismantled long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Topol-M — ‘topol’ meant ‘poplar,’ the tall evergreen tree. A Russian team assembled them in the massive underground facility at Toksong where North Korean engineers rebuilt the launch pad to fit, then left. The Topol-M was generations ahead of North Korea’s own missile design, which was basic and untested. The Topol’s speed of 15,000 miles an hour meant it could avoid detection to penetrate America’s anti-ballistic-missile shield. To launch, they only needed to arm and fuel it.

Lagutov would have known that Vitruk had plans to ratchet things up. He might even be aware of the North Korea operation. But, so far, he had not asked. Lagutov was half urbane courtier, half brutal apparatchik, but his soul lay in the warmth of an academic library where decisions and their impact were safely embedded in the pages of history books.

‘I am tired, Alexander, and you are full of energy,’ he said. ‘Your television interview was inspiring. Russia needs you in Moscow.’

This was Lagutov, offering Vitruk the mantle on condition that he won. His return to Moscow would need a dramatic entrance, an arrival at the Kremlin from a far-flung part of Russia’s newly expanded empire.

Vitruk calculated distances and obstacles. Alverov and his team had successfully crossed the border and were now at the Toksong site. One missile would be fueled and prepared for launch from a silo. The other would be taken in a trailer and hidden above ground. It was on a robust carrier that could handle off-road terrain and, like a nuclear-armed submarine, would be near impossible to find. If they began fueling now, there could be a launch before the inauguration with the hidden missile still at large as President Holland took office.

‘Leave China to me, Viktor,’ said Vitruk, deliberately using the Russian President’s first name.

‘Is it dangerous?’ asked Lagutov.

‘It is necessary.’

Vitruk waited for the secure line to clear, then put a call through to General Bu in China’s Shenyang Military Region.