The Arctic Event

Chapter Twenty-eight

The Misha Crash Site

“It strikes me that a lot of people are going to feel awfully stupid if we get in there only to find that containment vessel has been lying on the bottom of the ocean for the past fifty years.” The MOPP biochemical warfare suit had been designed to fit over his cold-weather clothing, and Jon Smith suspected that he looked very much like the Michelin Tire man.

“That is a stupidity I could live with,” Smyslov replied, passing him the headset for the Leprechaun tactical radio.

“So could I.” Smith flipped back his parka hood and settled the headset in place, wincing a little as the searing chill bit at his momentarily exposed ears. “Radio check.”

“I’ve got you.” Valentina Metrace hunkered down on the ice beside him, wearing a second tactical headset. “We’re all right for line-of-sight distances at least.”

The team had set up some fifty yards upwind of the crash site, behind the meager windbreak afforded by their backpacks and a low ledge of extruded ice. Evening was standing on, but there was nothing in the way of a sunset; the grayness around them simply grew darker and the wind colder. Time and environment were becoming critical.

“Okay, people, this will be a fast in-and-out to learn if the anthrax is still aboard the aircraft, and to see if anyone else has been in there.” Smith popped the plastic safety covers off the MOPP suit’s filter mask. “You two know what I should be looking for, and you’ll walk me through it. There shouldn’t be any problems, but I’m putting one absolute in place now. If, for any reason, something goes wrong-if I don’t come out, or if we lose contact-nobody goes in after me. Is that clearly understood?”

“Jon, don’t be silly…” Valentina started to protest.

“Is that understood?” Smith barked the words.

She nodded, looking unhappy. “Yes, I understand.”

Smith looked at Smyslov. “Understood, Major?”

In the shadow of his parka hood, Smith could see some emotion roiling beneath the Russian’s stony features, an effect Smith had noticed several times before during the past week. Again Smyslov was struggling with something down in his guts where he lived.

“Colonel, I…It is understood, sir.”

Smith pulled the anticontamination hood over his head, adjusting the mask straps and sealing tabs. He took his first breath of rubber-tainted filtered air and drew on the suit’s overgauntlets.

“Okay.” His voice sounded muffled even in his own ears. “Dumb question of the day: how do I get inside?”

“The fuselage appears to be essentially intact,” Valentina’s voice crackled over the radio channel, “and the only way into the forward bomb bay is through the forward crew compartment. Unfortunately the conventional access doors are located in the nose wheel well and in the forward bomb bay itself, both of which are blocked. Your alternatives are through the port and starboard cockpit windows, which would be hard to wriggle through in that outfit, or the crew’s access tunnel to the aft compartment. The latter is your best bet.”

“How do I get into the aft compartment, then?”

“There is an access door in the tail just forward of the horizontal stabilizer on the starboard side. You’ll have to work your way forward through the pressurized crew spaces from there.”

“Right.” Smith stood awkwardly and waddled toward the murky outline of the downed bomber.

The port-side wing of the TU-4 had been torn loose in the crash and folded back almost flush against the fuselage, but the starboard approaches to the bomber were clear. As he circled around the great aluminum slab of the horizontal stabilizers Smith found himself marveling a little. Even in an age of giant military transports and jumbo jet airliners, this thing was huge. And they were actually flying these monsters during the Second World War.

Smith approached the great cylindrical body and ran a hand over the ice-glazed metal.

“Okay, I’m here and I’ve found the entry door. There’s a flush-mounted handle, but it looks like it’s been popped out.”

“The emergency release will have been pulled from the inside,” Valentina replied. “It should open, but you might have to pry it a bit.”

“Right.” Smith had a small tool kit slung at his belt, and he drew a heavy long-hafted screwdriver from it. Fitting the tip of the blade into the frost-clogged slit around the door, he slammed the heel of his hand against the butt of the tool. After a couple of blows there was a sharp crack as the ice seal broke. A few more moments of levering, and the door swung outward, the wind catching at it, leaving a rectangular shadowed gap in the fuselage.

“You were right, Val. It’s open. Going inside now.”

Bending low, he ducked through the small door.

It was dark inside the fuselage, with only the trace of dull exterior light at his back. Smith removed a flashlight from his tool kit and snapped it on.

“Damn,” he murmured. “I never expected this.”

“What are you seeing, Jon?” Valentina demanded.

Smith panned the flashlight beam around the fuselage interior. No appreciable amount of snow had leaked inside, but ice crystals glittered everywhere, thinly encrusting the battleship gray frames and cable and duct clusters. “It’s incredible. There’s no sign of corrosion or degradation anywhere. This thing might have rolled out of the factory yesterday.”

“Natural cold storage!” the historian exclaimed over the radio. “This is fabulous. Keep going!”

“Okay, there’s a catwalk leading aft past a couple of large flat rectangular boxes to a circular dished hatch right in the tail of the airplane. The hatch is closed, and there is a round window set in its center. A couple of what look like ammunition feed tracks are set on either side of it. I guess that must be the tail gunner’s station.”

“Correct. Is there anything else noteworthy back there?”

“There’s some kind of a mount or pedestal with a couple of unbolted cables hanging from it. It looks like some piece of equipment has been dismantled.”

“That would be the generator set of the auxiliary power unit,” the historian mused. “That’s rather interesting. Now, just to your right there should be a bulkhead with another pressure hatch centered in it, leading forward.”

“There is. It’s closed.”

“The B-29/TU-4 family was one of the first military aircraft designed specifically for high-altitude flight. A number of its compartments were pressurized to allow its crew to survive without the need for oxygen masks. You’re going to have to work forward through a series of these pressure hatches.”

“Got it.” Smith shuffled over to the hatch and tried to peer through the thick glass of the port, only to find that it was frosted over. “What should be in this next compartment?”

“It should be the crew’s in-flight rest quarters.”

“Right.” Smith gripped the dogging handle of the hatch and twisted it. After a moment’s resistance, the lever started to yield.

“Jon, wait!”

Smith yanked his hand away from the handle as if it had gone red hot. “What?”

Smith heard a background muttering in his earphones. “Oh, Gregori was just saying that it’s very unlikely there would be booby traps on the hatches or anything.”

“Thank you both for sharing that with me, Val.” Smith leaned on the lever again until it gave. The hatch swung inward, and he probed with the flashlight.

“Crew’s quarters, all right. There’s a set of fold-out bunks on either side and there’s even a john-no relation-up in one corner. The cabin appears to have been stripped. There are no mattresses or bedding in the bunks, and I can see a number of empty, open lockers.”

“That’s understandable.” Valentina sounded thoughtful, obviously cogitating on something. “The next space should be the radar-observer compartment. Let’s see what you find there.”

Working his way forward, Smith ducked through a low nonpressure hatch. Here there was dim outside light. Plexiglas bubbles, sheathed in ice and hazed with decades of wind spalling, were set into the port and starboard bulkheads and into the overhead. Skeletal chairs faced the two side domes, and a third seat on an elevated pedestal was positioned under the astrodome in the top of the fuselage. In a bomber mounting its full defensive armament, Smith imagined that these would have been the gunners’ targeting stations for the remotely controlled gun turrets. Valentina verified the supposition as he described the space.

“This compartment has been emptied out, too,” Smith reported. “A lot of empty lockers, and even the padding has been stripped out of the seats.”

“All of the survival gear will have been taken, along with anything that could serve as insulation. There should also be a large electronics console against the forward bulkhead.”

“There is,” he concurred. “The chassis has been completely gutted.”

“That’s the radar operator’s station. They’d have wanted the components,” Valentina finished cryptically.

“There are also two circular doors or passages in the forward bulkhead, one above the other. The larger lower passage has a pressure hatch on it. The upper one has a short aluminum stepladder leading up to it.”

“The lower hatch opens into the aft bomb bay. There won’t be anything in there but fuel tanks. The upper passage is the one you want. It’s the crew crawlway that runs over the bomb bays into the bow compartment.”

Smith crossed the compartment and peered down the aluminum-walled tunnel. It had been designed large enough for a man in bulky winter flight gear to negotiate, so he shouldn’t have a problem with his MOPP suit.

“Going on.” He put his boot toe in a ladder step and heaved himself into the tunnel, hitching and shouldering his way awkwardly toward the circle of pale light at its far end.

The forty-foot crawl down the frost-slickened tube seemed to take forever, dislodged ice crystals raining around him with each inch gained. Smith was startled when he finally thrust his head into the comparatively open space of the forward compartment.

The last of the outside light trickled in dully through the navigator’s astrodome and the hemispheric glazed nose of the old bomber, and again the state of preservation was astounding. The plane was frozen in time as well as in temperature. Ice diamonds sheathed controls that hadn’t moved for five decades, and glittered over the ranked instrument gauges frozen on their last readings.

“I’m in the cockpit,” he reported into his lip mike, panting a little with the exertion.

“Very good. Is there much crash damage?”

“It’s not bad, Val. Not bad at all. Some of the windows in the lower curve of the bow were caved in. Some snow and ice has packed in around the bombardier’s station. A drift seems to have built up around the nose. Beyond that, everything’s in pretty fair shape, although some inconvenient SOB unshipped the tunnel ladder. Just a second; let me get down from here.”

Smith rolled onto his back and used the grab rail mounted above the entry to draw himself out of the crawlway. “Okay, on the deck.”

“Excellent, Jon. Before you examine the bomb bay could you check a couple of things for me?”

“Sure, as long as it won’t take too long.”

“It shouldn’t. First, I want you to examine the flight engineer’s station. That will be the aft-facing seat and console behind the copilot’s position.”

“Okay.” Smith snapped on his flashlight once more. “It’s a lot roomier in here than I figured.”

“In a standard TU- 4 a lot of the space in the bow compartment would be taken up by the basket of the forward dorsal gun turret. That was one of the weapons mounts pulled in the America bombers.”

“Yeah.” Smith tilted his hood faceplate up. “I can see the turret ring in the overhead. Again, I’m seeing the empty lockers, and the seat cushions and parachutes are gone. Looking toward the bow, I’ve got what looks like the navigator’s table on my left, and another stripped electronics chassis to my right.”

“That was the radio operator’s station. I suspect the plane’s crew built a survival camp somewhere around here, someplace that would provide a bit more protection than the wreck’s fuselage. They must have transferred all of the survival and radio gear there along with the plane’s auxiliary power generator.”

“That camp will be the next thing we’ll be hunting for.” Smith lumbered to the flight engineer’s station and played the light across the gauge- and switch-covered panel. “Okay, I’m at the engineer’s station. What am I looking for?”

“Good, there should be three banks of four levers across the bottom of the console, a big one, a middle-sized one, and a small one-papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear. The big ones are the throttles. They should be pulled all the way back, I imagine, to the closed position. The others are the propeller and fuel mixture controls. How are they set?”

Smith scrubbed at his faceplate and swore softly as the haze turned out to be on the inside. “They’re both sort of in the middle.”

“Most interesting,” the historian mused over the radio circuit. “There would have been no reason to fiddle with them after a crash. All right, there is one more lever I want you to check for me, Jon. It will be located on the control pedestal outboard of the pilot’s seat. It will be very distinctive in appearance. The knob on the end of it will be shaped like an airfoil.”

Smith turned in the aisle between the flight control stations, peering awkwardly over the back of the pilot’s chair. “Looking for it…There’s a hell of a lot of levers all over this thing…Okay, I found it. It’s all the way up, forward, whatever.”

“That’s the flap controller,” Valentina murmured. “This is coming together…This is making sense…” There was a moment of silence over the channel, and then the historian continued with a rush. “Jon, be careful! The anthrax is still aboard that aircraft!”

“How can you be sure?” Smith demanded.

“It will take too long to explain. Just take my word for it. The crew never jettisoned the bioagent reservoir. It’s still in there!”

“Then I’d better have a look at it.” Smith straightened and returned to the forward bomb bay access.

In a mirror image of the rear compartment, it was a circular dished pressure hatch with a round window in its center, located directly below the crawlway tunnel. Smith knelt down.

“Okay, I’m at the bomb bay,” he reported. He paused for a moment to catch his breath and reached for the undogging lever. “I’m opening the ha…” His words trailed off.

“Jon, what is it?”

“So that’s why the tunnel ladder was been moved. Somebody has been here, Val, and recently. Everything in here is covered with frost. Everything but the release handle on the hatch. It’s been wiped off. I can make out the finger marks.”

Smith twisted and whipped the flashlight beam around the cockpit. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could spot the smears and scrapes in the frost cover where someone had moved around the cabin. “He got in through the pilot’s-side window.”

“Did he get inside the bomb bay?”

“We’ll know in a second.” Smith got a grip on the dogging lever, twisting it. The hatch unlatched and swung open with disconcerting ease. Hunkering lower, he peered into the dark opening.

Smith’s strained breath caught in his throat.

It filled the entire upper half of the bomb bay: a great lozenge shape held in place by a network of struts and braces, the iced stainless steel of the case sparkling. The latent death of entire cities whispered from within it, billions upon billons of lethal disease spores slumbering in icy suspension, waiting for revival, waiting for release.

Confronting such horrors were part of Jon Smith’s profession, but he still had to suppress a shudder.

“Val, you were right. It’s in here. Put Major Smyslov on. I’m going to need him.”

As he waited for the Russian to come online, he quartered the interior of the bay with his light, looking for damage to the containment vessel or for the deadly telltale gray-brown stain of spore spillage. After a few moments Smyslov’s filtered voice filled his earphones.

“I gather we have a hit, Colonel.”

“We surely do, Major,” Smith replied. “I’m looking at the reservoir now. From this end at least, it appears to have survived the crash in good shape. The bomb bay doors are partially caved in, but the casing doesn’t appear to be involved. The mounts and bracings seem to be intact as well. Did Val tell you that we’ve had at least one snooper inside the aircraft?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“He’s been in here as well. There is an instruction plate on the front of the reservoir casing directly opposite me. The frost’s been wiped from it. I can see a Soviet Air Force badge, a hammer-and-sickle insignia, and a lot of bright red writing. I’m not up on my Cyrillic, but I gather it’s a bioagent warning advisory.”

“Quite correct, Colonel. That would tell the inquisitive one everything he would need to know about the payload.”

“Then I think we’ve found our information leak. Now, Major, the containment vessel and the anthrax dispersal system are your babies. Walk me through what I should be looking for.”

“Very well, Colonel. If the casing is intact, you should next inspect the dispersal system manifolds to ensure that the manual containment valves on the pressurization ducts are still closed and sealed. The valves shouldn’t have been opened and the system armed until the bomber was coming in on target, but…”

“But, indeed. From those diagrams you showed me, those containment valves should be right over my head.”

With his head and shoulders inside the bomb bay, Smith carefully rolled onto his back and found himself looking up into a tangle of large-diameter stainless steel piping.

“Okay, I’m looking up into the manifold assembly. I see two large lever valves directly above me. The valve gradations seem to just be marked with red and green zones.”

“That is correct. Those are the forward containment valves. How are they set?”

“The levers are turned all the way to the left and right, with their pointers aimed at the green zones. There appear to be intact wire seals on both valves, and the frost buildup hasn’t been disturbed.”

“Very good.” Smyslov sounded relieved. “The containment valves are still closed. The system was never armed for drop. Now, just to the right, looking aft, next to the access hatch, you should see two more levers marked and sealed as were the overhead valves. These control the valves on the dispersal vents at the rear of the reservoir.”

Smith squirmed onto his left shoulder. “Okay, I see them. They are set vertically, in the green, and the wire seals are still in place.”

“Excellent!” Smyslov exclaimed. “Those are all metal-to-metal knife valves with single-use lead gaskets. Nothing will get past them. We still have full containment.”

“Theoretically. I’m going into the bomb bay to do an eyeball inspection of the whole system to make sure.”

There was some thumping and murmuring at the other end of the circuit, Valentina’s voice taking over from Smyslov’s. “Jon, are you sure that’s wise?”

“It’s got to be done, and if I do it now, I won’t have to come back later.” Smith tried to sound offhand about it. In truth he wasn’t sure he could make himself come back later. Belly crawling into the freezing blackness beneath that concentration of megadeath was a singularly unappealing prospect.

In fact, he had to do it right now, immediately, or see his nerve crack. “I’m going into the bay,” he said shortly.

Backing his shoulders out of the entry hatch, he swung his legs in and dropped to the crumpled metal floor of the compartment. Sinking to his hands and knees, he began to squirm down the length of the bomb bay, hugging the starboard bulkhead to take advantage of the space offered by the curve of the containment vessel.

Even at that, the crawl was claustrophobic in the extreme, complicated by the crash-buckled aluminum of the bay doors. Smith had to carefully plan each move, flowing himself over the torn metal, striving to protect the MOPP suit’s integrity. He couldn’t help but flinch each time his shoulder bumped the brooding mass of the spore-packed casing.

The hood faceplate was fogging again, hampering his vision, and he had to partially feel his way ahead. He reached forward…and froze. Very slowly he lifted his head, trying to peer around the edges of the visor.

“Major,” he said deliberately, “my right arm is fouled in a wire. The wire is connected to a series of rectangular metal boxes attached by some kind of metal clip to the side of the reservoir. The boxes appear to be one foot by four inches by three, and there are half a dozen of them spaced out along the near side of the casing. I can’t tell if another set is mounted symmetrically on the far side. They do not appear integral to the reservoir. The boxes and wiring are frost covered and undisturbed. They’ve been there for a while.”

“You are all right, Colonel,” Smyslov replied promptly. “You are all right. Those are thermite incendiary charges. They are part of the bomber’s emergency equipment. They were intended to destroy the anthrax to prevent its capture should the plane be forced down in enemy territory.”

“Fine. What do I do about them?”

“You don’t have to do anything, Colonel. The charges are stable. They would have to be set off deliberately using a magneto box or a heavy battery, and if there are any batteries aboard the wreck, they would have been drained by the cold long ago.”

“Thanks for telling me.” Smith untangled his arm and paused for a moment, panting.

“This is odd,” Smyslov said. “The bomber’s crew must have deployed the incendiaries after the landing, with the intent of destroying the warload. I wonder why they didn’t fire them.”

“They would have saved everybody a lot of trouble if they had.” Smith resumed his crawl to the rear of the bay. He had never considered himself a claustrophobe, but the bomb bay was getting to him, and badly. The cold metal walls kept folding around him, and it seemed increasingly difficult to breathe. He was getting a headache as well, the beating of his heart pounding at his temples. He had to force himself to focus on the job, checking the casing, inch by deliberate inch, for cracks or other damage and for spore leakage.

He made the last yard to the rear of the bay, twisting onto his back to check the rear of the reservoir and the dispenser manifolds. The fogging of his faceplate was getting worse, and the flashlight seemed to be dimming. His head suddenly seemed to be exploding, and he gulped for air, cursing weakly. This was no good! He had to get out of here!

“Jon, what’s wrong?” Valentina was back on the circuit.

“Nothing. I’m fine. It’s just…tight in here. The containment vessel is intact. I’m starting back.”

He tried to roll over and turn in the confined space. He couldn’t seem to make it around. He kept hanging up on things that hadn’t been there before, and his suppressed panic flared. He lost his grip on the flashlight and swore again as it rolled out of reach.

“Jon, are you all right?” Valentina’s words were sharp this time, demanding.

“Yes, damn it!” He gave up on the flashlight and tried to drag himself toward the dim patch of outside illumination at the far end of the bay. Cold sweat burned in his eyes, and his arms felt as if they were encased in solidifying concrete. His breath hissing through clenched teeth, he commanded his body to move. Only his body refused to obey.

And then it reached him through his muddled mind. He wasn’t all right. He was dead.

“Get away from the plane!” he shouted weakly, his lungs suddenly on fire.

“Jon, what is it? What’s happening?”

“The plane’s hot! I’ve been contaminated! There’s something else in here! It’s not anthrax! Abort the mission! Get away from here!”

“Jon, hold on! We’re suiting up. We’re coming for you!”

“No! The suits are no good! It penetrates! The antibiotics aren’t stopping it, either!”

“Jon, we can’t just leave you!” Beyond Val’s frantic words he could hear Smyslov’s demanding questions.

“Forget it!” He had to force each word with its own racking breath. “I’ve had it! I’m already dying! Don’t come in after me! That’s an order!”

It had been bound to happen sooner or later. He’d dodged the biological bullet with Hades, with Cassandra, and with Lazarus. He had to take the fall sooner or later. That bit of his disintegrating consciousness that was still the researcher, the scientist, pushed its way forward. There was a last service he could render to those who would follow him into this black pit to learn and fight this thing.

“Val, listen…listen! It’s respiratory. It hits through the respiratory system. My lungs and bronchial tubes are burning…No congestion or fluid buildup…no pulmonary paralysis…but I can’t get oxygen…accelerated pulse…vision graying out…strength…losing…Get away…That’s…order.”

There was nothing left to breathe and speak with. They were calling to him over the radio, something about the MOPP suit. He couldn’t hear over the staggering hammer of his heartbeat in his ears. Was this how it had been for Sophia at the end, drowning in her own blood? No. At least Sophia hadn’t been so alone. He made a final effort to drag himself toward the light, just so he wouldn’t die in this hideous place. Then the light was gone, and the dark took him fully.

An eternity passed, or maybe only a second.

Smith became aware of fragments…Movement…Touch…Voices…Pressure on his chest…Lips, soft, warm, living, pressed against his, with urgency but without passion.

Sensation returned within himself. The lift of his chest; air, cold, pure, pouring into his lungs like water from an iced pitcher. Life stirred with its bite, radiating outward. He could breathe. He could breathe! He lay there in the suddenly pleasant cool darkness, almost orgasmically relishing each inhalation.

A small ungloved hand brushed back his hair, and those lips pressed against his again. Gently this time, pleasantly lingering.

“I think respiration has been fully restored, Professor,” an amused, accented voice commented.

“Just making sure,” a second lighter voice replied.

Smith realized that his head was pillowed on a rolled sleeping bag. Opening his eyes, he found Valentina Metrace kneeling beside him, her parka hood thrown back and ice crystals glittering like stars in her black hair. She smiled down into his face and quirked one of her expressive eyebrows at him.

Smyslov was looking over her shoulder, grinning as well. Smith realized he was lying on the deck in the forward compartment of the bomber. He was vague for a moment on just what they all were doing there; then full memory came crashing back.

“Damn it, Val! What do you think you’re doing?”

Both brows lifted. “So I’m enjoying my work?”

“That’s not what I mean!” he exclaimed, struggling to sit up. “This plane is a hot zone! There’s a contaminant-”

“Easy, Jon, easy,” the historian replied, holding him down gently with her hands on his shoulders. “There is no contaminant. You’re fine, we’re fine, and the plane is fine.”

“This is true, Colonel,” Smyslov interjected wryly. “I told you before, barring two tons of weaponized anthrax, there is nothing the least bit dangerous aboard this aircraft.”

Smith sank back and found he was still in most of the MOPP suit. Beyond the glare of the electric lantern that filled the cockpit, he could see a lingering trace of daylight through the windscreen. He must have been unconscious for only a matter of a few minutes. “Then what the hell did happen to me?”

“You almost protected yourself to death.” Smyslov held up the hood of the MOPP suit. “It’s cold in here. The moisture in your breath condensed and froze in the filters of your breathing mask. It gradually cut off your air.”

Valentina nodded. “Something similar happened in Israel during the first Gulf War. During the SCUD bombardment, when it was feared that Saddam might be using nerve gas, a number of Israeli citizens suffocated because they forgot to remove the filter caps on their gas masks. You were rebreathing your own carbon dioxide. Only with you the effect must have come on so gradually that you didn’t notice the buildup.”

Smith looked back over his clearing memories. “Yes. When I started to have breathing problems I first thought I was just having a bad attack of claustrophobia. Then I thought…”

“We know what you thought,” Valentina said softly. “You started to report the symptomology of your own death. But when you began to give us a very good clinical description of a man dying of suffocation, we realized what was going on. We tried to tell you to take off your mask, but you were too far gone to understand.”

She nodded toward the glassed-in nose of the bomber. “We came in through the cockpit window, and Gregori dove into the bomb bay and hauled you out. A little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and here you are.”

Smith grimaced. “Pardon me while I feel incredibly stupid.”

“I shouldn’t, Jon,” Valentina replied soberly. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, climbing into that chamber of horrors. Just looking through that hatch was enough to make my skin crawl.” The historian shook her head in profound distaste. “I love fine weapons, but that…thing…isn’t a weapon; it’s a nightmare.”

“I’m not going to argue the point.” Smith smiled up at her. “I suppose I should be making a stink over you and the major for disobeying my direct orders, but I can’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for it. Thank you, Val.”

He extended a hand past her to Smyslov. “And thank you, Major.”

The Russian gripped it firmly. “It is the duty of a good subordinate to point out factors in a situation possibly overlooked by his superior,” he quoted, still grinning.

Smith tried to sit up again, this time succeeding with only a hint of dizziness. His strength seemed to be returning rapidly. “Well, we’ve got some good news and bad news. The bad news is that we still have the anthrax to deal with. The good news is that the containment vessel seems to be intact and undamaged. Just in case, we’ll stay on the antibiotics, but I don’t think we have any spore spillage to contend with. Val, how did-”

She stood up abruptly, giving Smith a sharp but seemingly accidental bump as she got to her feet. “Thank God for that at least,” she chattered on. “Do you think it’s safe to fort up in the fuselage for tonight? It sounds like the weather is kicking up a bit outside.”

“Yes…I think that might be a good idea,” Smith replied. “I suspect it will feel a little odd camping on top of a mound of anthrax, but I think it should be safe enough. What do you say, Major?”

Smyslov shrugged. “I think it will still be bloody cold in here, but I think it will also be better than a tent out on that stinking glacier. I think we’d do better in the aft compartment though.”

“Marvelous!” Valentina said, offering her hand to Smith. “Let’s get our gear together and start playing house. I could use a dollop of that medicinal whisky you promised.”

Smith accepted her hand and heaved himself off the deck. “Now that you mention it, so could I.”

Seated on the bare springs of the starboard crew bunk, Smith scowled at the walkie-talkie in his hand. “Wednesday Island Station, Wednesday Island Station. This is crash site, crash site. Randi, can you read me? Over.”

The little SINCGARS Leprechaun tactical transceiver hissed and spat back in his face. “Isn’t that just the way of it,” Smith said in disgust. He snapped off the radio and folded the antenna back into the casing. “You can communicate instantly with the farthest corner of the world except for when you actually need to talk with someone.”

“There is an entire mountain between us and the station.” Sitting cross-legged beside the tiny pack stove, Valentina carefully dropped a ball of hard-packed snow into the pan of water steaming atop it. Beyond melting a foot-wide circle in the frost on the overhead of the crew’s quarters, the little fuel-pellet burner was incapable of measurably affecting the temperature within the compartment, but it could produce hot water for an MRE and to refill the team’s canteens.

To save their batteries, the only illumination in the compartment came from a pair of chemical light sticks clipped to the bunk frames, the soft, all-encompassing green glow giving an impression of warmth.

The fuselage at least provided still air shelter from the wind whining across the glacier. The environment within the wreck would at least be tolerable for the night.

“What bunk do you want, Professor?” Smyslov asked, detaching his sleeping bag from his pack frame. “Ladies have first choice.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” Valentina replied. “But please indulge yourself. I’m taking the deck.”

“I’m doing the same,” Smith added, taking the last swallow of coffee from his canteen cup. “They apparently built aviators on a small scale in those days.”

“As you wish.” Smyslov started to unroll his sleeping bag into the lower port-side bunk. “Tell me, Colonel, now we know we do have anthrax to deal with. How do we proceed?”

“Well, I think your people had the right idea; we just take it a step farther. Since we still have full containment, I’d say we simply bring in a demolition team and pack the fuselage with a couple of tons of thermite and white phosphorous. We incinerate the whole damn thing right where it sits.”

“We most definitely do not!” Valentina exclaimed, looking up from the stove.

“Why not?” Smith asked, puzzled. “If we can just concentrate enough heat rapidly enough around that casing, we should be able to burn every spore before there’s any chance for them to spread.”

“Oh, good Lord! The blind who will not see!” She gestured expressively around the compartment. “Given its superb condition, this plane is a historic treasure! Come spring, if we can get an ice breaker and a helicrane in here, we could lift it off the glacier essentially intact! It could be restored. In fact…”

The idea flared behind her eyes, “In fact, with the components of this crash and the TU-4 that’s on static display at the Gagarin Institute, I’ll wager we could assemble one complete airworthy aircraft.”

She turned to face Smyslov, suddenly as excited as a schoolgirl with a new bicycle. “You’ve been to the Institute! You’ve seen the Bull they have in the air museum there! What do you think?”

The Russian officer looked up, bemused. “I really wouldn’t know, Professor, but I’m sure it would take a great deal of money.”

“You leave the fund-raising to me, Gregori! I know of a number of wealthy war bird fanatics who would give an arm and a leg to see the Fifi, the Commemorative Air Force’s Superfortress, doing a joint flyover with a genuine Russian B-29-ski. Champlain alone would be good for at least a quarter of a million!”

Smith couldn’t help but be impressed with her vibrant enthusiasm. Valentina Metrace obviously was a cobbler who stuck to her last. He whistled softly and aimed a thumb forward toward the bomb bays. “I’m afraid we still have certain other priorities here.”

Valentina waved a hand arily. “Details, details! I don’t care what breed of germ we might have to tidy up. No one is casually putting the torch to this aircraft if I have anything to say about it. This is history!”

“That will be for the powers that be to decide, Val,” Smith smiled. “Not me, I’m very pleased to say.”

Smyslov looked over his shoulder at Smith, his expression intent. “What do we do next, Colonel?”

“We know the anthrax exists and is still a factor, so reporting that is our priority.” Smith set the empty canteen cup on the deck. “Tomorrow morning, if we have decent weather, I intend to make one fast sweep around the crash site to look for the survival camp of the Misha’s crew. Then we hike for the science station. If we can’t make radio contact with the outside from the station, then I’ll send Randi back to the cutter in the helicopter to report.”

Smith studied Smyslov’s back as the Russian unrolled his sleeping bag in the crew bunk. “I’m also going to commit the reinforcement group and secure the island, Major. That’s going to mean bringing the Canadians on board, and a general escalation of the whole scenario. I know we promised your government that we’d try and keep this low-key, but now, with both the anthrax and the disappearance of the station staff to contend with, we may have no choice but to go overt.”

“I fully understand, Colonel. There is indeed no choice.”

Smyslov’s reply was unexpressive, and Smith had to wonder if the Russian was speaking in agreement with his words or with some thought of his own.

“Ah, me! That’s all for tomorrow’s worry list,” Valentina said, glancing toward the hatch set in the rear bulkhead. “In the meantime, there is something else I need to have a look at.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?” Smith asked.

She looked toward Smith so the minute tilt of her head and the lift of her eyebrow would be masked from Smyslov. “It’s nothing really. Shan’t take a second.”

Catching up a flashlight, she got to her feet and moved aft. Undogging the pressure door, she ducked low through it. Assorted thumps and bangs followed as she worked toward the very tail of the aircraft, followed by a few minutes of involved silence. “Now, this is interesting,” her voice reverberated with a metallic hollowness. “Jon, could you please give me a hand back here for a second?”

“On my way.” Smith followed Valentina into the dark of the passage. The historian was crouching on the gangway between the stinger turret’s ammunition magazines. With her flashlight aimed at her face, she silently mouthed the words “Shut the hatch.”

“Damn, Val. Were you raised in a barn! It’s even colder out here.” He pulled the pressure door closed and twisted the dogging lever to the locked position. Moving back to the magazines, he sank down on one knee beside Valentina. She was turning a wicked-looking autocannon shell over and over in her gloved fingers.

“What’s that?” Smith inquired over the whine of the wind playing around the tail surfaces.

“A Soviet 23mm round. From the tail gun belts,” she replied.

“All right. What’s going on?”

“Something odd, Jon. Things aren’t adding up, or rather, they’re adding up in a very peculiar way. That’s why I cut you off up in the cockpit this afternoon.”

“I thought as much,” he replied. “What are you seeing?”

“This airplane was fully outfitted for combat. In addition to having its anthrax warload aboard, its defensive armament was also fully charged. Furthermore, this plane didn’t make an emergency landing here. This was an accidental crash.”

Smith wasn’t quite sure of the differentiation. “Are you sure?”

“Quite. The bomber wasn’t configured for an emergency landing when it hit the ice. Remember when I asked about the propeller and fuel mixture controls in the cockpit? They had been left at their cruise settings. Also, I asked about the flap lever. The wing flaps hadn’t been lowered, as would have been done for any kind of a deliberate landing.”

Valentina rapped the top of the magazine housing with her knuckles. “Finally they didn’t eject the gun turret ammunition magazines. In a B-29 Superfortress or a TU-4 Bull, that would be a standard procedure in a ditching or emergency landing scenario.”

“Then what the hell did happen?”

“As I said, a freak crash, a total accident,” she continued. “According to the maps of Wednesday Island, this glacier has a gradual descending gradient toward the north. The bomber must have come in from the North. They also must have been coming in at night, flying low and on instruments because they never knew the island was here. They came in between the peaks, and the terrain rose up underneath the aircraft. Before the pilots realized what was happening they struck the ground, or rather the ice. They must have been traveling at full cruising speed, way too fast for a conventional landing, but as fate would have it, the glacier’s surface at that time must have been comparatively smooth, without any ledges or crevasses to trip the aircraft. So they hit flat and skidded cleanly.

“There have been similar crashes in the Arctic and Antarctic,” she continued in her whisper, “when aircrews have lost situational awareness in whiteout conditions. To put a bottom line on this, this aircraft was not in an emergency state when it went down. They weren’t lost, and they weren’t landing. They were in a controlled cruise configuration, bound for somewhere else.”

“If that’s the case, wouldn’t they have seen the island on their charts?” Smith asked.

“You have to remember that in 1953 detailed navigational information on this part of the world was all but nonexistent. The closest thing to an accurate chart was an American military secret. Wednesday Island is also something of a freak. It’s one of the highest points within the Queen Elizabeth Archipelago. At that time, whoever plotted this plane’s course had no idea that a bloody great mountain would be parked out here in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.”

“It’s not all that much of a mountain,” Smith mused. “We’re only about twenty-five hundred feet above sea level here. Wouldn’t that be a pretty low cruising altitude for a pressurized aircraft like this one?”

“Very much so,” she agreed. “In fact, a TU-4 or B-29 would only follow such a low flight profile for one reason: if its crew were worried about being picked up by long-range radar.”

Jon forced himself to play devil’s advocate. “Wouldn’t they have seen the island on their own navigational radar?”

“Only if they were using it. What if they were maintaining full EMCON, full emission control, with all of their radio and radar transmitters deliberately shut down to avoid detection?”

If such was conceivable, it seemed to grow colder. “So what do you think, Professor?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know what to think, Colonel,” she replied. “Or rather, I don’t know what I want to think. One thing I am certain of. Tomorrow morning we have got to find the crew of this plane. It might be more important in the greater scheme of things than the anthrax.”

“Do you think this might have something to do with this Russian alternate agenda?”

He saw her nod. “In all probability. I suspect when we find the survival camp, we’ll know.”

“I suspect we’ll know about Major Smyslov by then as well,” Smith replied grimly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Smyslov watched Smith disappear into the tail. All evening he had been waiting for the opportunity to act, for a moment when the others were involved or distracted. This might be the best, if not his only chance.

He headed for the crawlway tunnel leading forward, snaking down its length as rapidly and as quietly as he could. He knew exactly what he was to look for and exactly where it should be. He also had the set of fifty-year-old keys in his pocket.

Earlier in the day, when he had been in the cockpit with Smith and Metrace, he hadn’t dared to search. He couldn’t risk drawing possible attention to the Misha 124’s official documentation until he could ascertain its status.

Bellying into the forward compartment, he removed a pocket flash from his parka. Clenching it between his teeth, he sank down on one knee beside the navigator’s station and sent the narrow beam stabbing across the map safe below the table. Drawing the key ring, he fumbled with the safe’s lock.

This had been a Soviet Air Force bomber, and in the old Soviet Union, maps had been state secrets, denied to all but authorized personnel.

After a moment’s resistance the tumblers of the lock turned for the first time in half a century. Smyslov swung open the small, heavy door.

Nothing! The safe was empty. The navigational charts and the targeting templates that were to have been issued to the radar operator were gone.

Wasting no time, he closed and relocked the safe. The bomber’s logbook and the aircraft commander’s orders would be next. Moving forward to the left-hand pilot’s seat, Smyslov thrust the second key into the lock of the pilot’s safe located beneath it. Opening it, the Russian groped in the small, flat compartment. Again nothing!

That left the political officer’s safe. The most critical of the three. He squeezed in between the pilots’ stations to the bombardier’s position in the very nose of the aircraft. Here the glass of the unstepped greenhouse had been caved in by the crash, and snow had drifted in and had refrozen. The bombsight itself was gone-it hadn’t been needed for this mission-and the rest of the station was buried in caked semi-ice. Drawing his belt knife, Smyslov hacked his way down to the deck-mounted safe.

Damnation! The lock mechanism had been frozen solid. Swearing under his breath, the Russian tore off his gloves. Pulled his lighter from his pocket, he played the little jet of butane flame over the keyhole area. Burning his fingers, he muffled another curse and tried the key again. The stubborn lock yielded grudgingly.

Empty. The targeting photographs and maps. The tasking orders. The political officer’s log and contingency instructions and the crew’s postmission action plan-all were gone.

Smyslov resecured the safe door, repacking and smoothing the snow over it, trying to erase the signs of his tampering. Standing, he drew his gloves on again, his thoughts racing. It was all gone. All the mission documentation. That was how it was supposed to be. The Misha 124’s political officer had been ordered to destroy every last scrap of evidence concerning the bomber’s mission and the March Fifth Event.

But the political officer had also been ordered to destroy the aircraft and its payload. The thermite incendiary charges in the bomb bay were proof that he had been in the process of doing so when he had been interrupted. But what about the documents? Had he been prevented from destroying them as well?

And what of the men? Tomorrow Smith would go looking for the bomber’s crew. What would be left for him to find?

Smyslov tugged down the zip of his parka and restowed the pen flash. He also removed the cigarette lighter from his shirt pocket. Not the little plastic butane he had purchased at the airport shop in Anchorage, but the other one, the stainless steel Ronson-style reservoir lighter he had brought with him from Russia. Balancing it in his palm, his mind raced through his rapidly shrinking number of options.

He could comfort himself with the thought that much of the decision making had been taken out of his hands. If the Russian Spetznaz troopers had killed the science station’s personnel, fate must run its inevitable course. The coming confrontation between the United States and Russia would not be his responsibility.

He need only concern himself with betrayal on a far more personal level. Today he had saved the life of a friend in this strange cold metal room. Tomorrow he might have to kill that friend as an enemy. And the disclaimer that it wasn’t his fault rang hollow.

“Hey, Major, you okay up there?” Smith’s voice rang up the crawl tube from the aft compartment.

“Yes, Colonel,” Smyslov replied, his fingers tightening around the little silver box. “I only…dropped my cigarette lighter.”

Several hundred feet up the face of East Peak, on a ledge that overlooked both the glacier and the Misha crash site, the wide lens of a powerful spotting scope peered out through a crevice in an artfully camouflaged stone and snow windbreak. Two men lay behind the windbreak, sheltered by an ice-encrusted white tarp spread and supported over their heads. Even with the protection it was searingly cold on the exposed mountainside. Yet the two watchers stolidly endured, the one peering through the night-vision photomultiplier attached to the spotter scope, the other listening intently to the small radio receiver he had been issued.

At regular intervals the two men conducted a survival ritual, their free hands moving between their crotches and armpits and their faces, transferring body warmth to their exposed skin, keeping at bay the vicious, scarring frostbite.

Slithering on his belly like a lizard, a third parka-clad man crawled to join the two behind the windbreak.

“Anything to report, Corporal?”

“Nothing of importance, Lieutenant,” the man at the telescope grunted. “They have set up their camp inside the wreck. You can see lights through the windows of the rear compartment. Sometimes in the front as well.”

“Let me have a look,” Lieutenant Tomashenko said.

The Spetsnaz corporal rolled aside, making room for his platoon commander, and Tomashenko worked his way behind the night-vision scope, peering into the green and gray world it revealed. The bomber lay on the glacier below the observation post like a stranded whale. The faint wisp of illumination leaking from the downed plane’s astrodomes, all but undetectable to the naked eye, was magnified to a bright kelly glow by the photomultiplier. Intermittently the glow would pulse as a figure moved past the bubble windows.

“Apparently the anthrax spores are not loose inside of the airplane,” Tomashenko muttered. “That is something anyway.”

Tomashenko and his men had not ventured near the downed TU-4, nor had they even set foot on the glacier. The platoon’s orders were specific and stringent. Keep the crash site and the investigation team under long-range observation. Conceal their presence on the island. Avoid detection at all cost. Await the issuance of the alpha command by the point agent attached to the American party. Be positioned to intervene instantly on the transmission of said command. Be prepared to withdraw to the submarine should it not be issued.

Tomashenko started to ask the radio monitor if he had heard anything, but caught himself. If the signal had been heard, he would hear. Until that moment they must wait.