The Arctic Event

Chapter Forty-three

The North Face, Wednesday Island

Randi Russell was on her feet and moving again before she regained true consciousness. Nor was there any clarity to that consciousness. She had no memory of how she had freed herself from the snowslide. Nor did she have any idea where she was or where she was going. It was all dying-animal reflex now.

She no longer felt particularly uncomfortable or fearful. The false warmth of hypothermia was on her, and point by point, she was detaching from the world. The imperative to keep moving was still present, but even that was fading. The next time she fell would be the last.

There were no destinations left in the cold, black emptiness surrounding her. She moved downward toward the shoreline simply because that was the easiest direction to go, the terrain working in her favor.

Randi did not realize the meaning of the jumbled piles of ice blocks she’d started to encounter. It was the broken rim of sea ice building up along the northern coast of Wednesday Island. She was only dimly aware that the searing, deadening wind was being blocked, and she turned parallel to the ghostly stacked rubble, stumbling along the snow-jacketed gravel of the beach.

The ghosts were dominating her now-sounds, voices, visions out of her past, pleasant and not, replaying in random fragments. Santa Barbara, Carmel, UCLA, Iraq, China, Russia, the lesser places in between. People known. Things experienced.

She tried to cling to the pleasant memories: playing on the beach below her parents’ home, conspiring in happy sisterhood with Sophia, Mike undressing her and lowering her to the soft grass on that first sweet, trembling time.

But the blackness and the cold kept bringing in the other occasions: standing at Sophia’s side, scattering their parent’s ashes. The awful pain of the open grave at Arlington, hearing taps played for the bold, smiling other half of herself. The anger and the need to strike out at something, anything, that had changed her from a CIA linguist-analyst to a wet-work field agent. The face of the first person she’d ever been forced to kill. Standing at the edge of that second grave at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, with the last person she had to love in the world leaving her behind.

Randi’s boot twisted on a frozen stone. She made no effort to catch herself as she fell. A faint voice in the back of her mind raged at her to get up, but it was too much bother to listen. She crawled a few feet into the lee of an ice mass and curled up, husbanding the last fading remnants of body warmth as the snow sifted over her.

This would be where she would die. Randi would fight it no further. There was no sense to it. She gave herself to the phantoms, reliving the dimming, fragmented kaleidoscope of memory.

The recall of Sophia became especially strong, and Randi was pleased. She was with her sister again.

But Sophie kept taking her to the wrong places. Back to Mike’s death. Back to stand before that other tall, sober soldier in a black beret. Back to the one truly serious argument she’d ever had with her sister. Back to the one unforgivable thing Sophia had ever done to her.

“I’m going to marry Jon, Randi,” Sophie said again.

No!

“Jon is sorry for what he’s done to you, Randi. More sorry than you will ever know or be willing to understand.”

“I don’t want for him to be sorry! I want for him to have saved you!” Randi cried back, their argument flaring, as raw and as painful as ever.

“No one could have saved me, Randi. Not Jon, nor even you.”

“There must have been a way!”

Sophia’s eyes filled her universe now. “If there had been a way, Jon would have found it. Just as you would have found it.”

“No!”

“Say Jon’s name for me, Randi.”

“I won’t! I don’t want to!”

Sophie’s voice grew urgent. “Say his name, Randi!”

Randi couldn’t refuse her. “Jon,” she sobbed.

“Louder, Randi.” Sophie’s eyes were loving, frightened, demanding, “Say it louder!”

“Jon!”

Why was her sister doing this? Randi just wanted to sleep. To go away.

Sophia wouldn’t allow it. She was bending over her now, shaking her. “Again, Randi! Call to him! Scream it! Scream Jon’s name!”

“JON!”

Smith broke step and looked up, scanning the night. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Valentina inquired, coming up behind him. Smith had taken the point, breaking trail with Valentina and Smyslov trailing on the safety line. Following the icefall, fortune had turned in their favor, and the remaining descent to the north shore had gone easily and swiftly. They had been trudging steadily along the beach, making good time in the shelter of the pressure ice, when Smith had checked at the faintest alien sounds rising above the storm.

“I don’t know. It sounded like somebody calling my name.”

“Not likely.” Valentina shoved up her snow goggles. “Who could be out here to call you?”

“Randi! Who else?” Smith unlatched from the safely line and snapped on the lantern clipped to his belt. “Illuminate and fan out! Start looking! Move!”

They found her within five minutes.

“Jon! Over here! Hurry!”

Kneeling in a notch in the wall of pressure ice, Valentina was brushing the snow away from a huddled form. Smith was on his knees beside them in seconds, struggling out of the straps of his pack frame. Smyslov came in behind him a moment later.

“You were right!” Valentina exclaimed. “What in all hell is she doing out here rigged like this?”

“Escape and evasion,” Smith snapped back. “The Spetsnaz must have hit the science station.”

“That’s not possible,” Smyslov protested. “Only the one platoon was inserted on the island, the one that engaged you at the crash site.”

“Then somebody else is here.” Smith spread a survival blanket on the snow, gently lifting Randi onto it. He tore off mittens and gloves, sliding a hand under the mismatched and inadequate jumble of clothing she wore, seeking for a heartbeat.

“She’s out solid,” Valentina commented, leaning over Jon’s shoulder.

“She’s dying,” Smith replied curtly. “There are chemical heat pads in the packs. Two each. Get them out. All of them.”

Valentina and Smyslov obeyed with all the speed they could, flexing the heat pads to trigger the thermal reaction.

“Shove them down her sleeves and pant legs,” Smith ordered. “When we start to move her the chilled blood in her limbs will circulate into her body core, and the shock could kill her.”

“Jon. Look at this.” Valentina had worked Randi’s left arm out from under the oversized sweatshirt. A handcuff had been locked around it.

“Son of a bitch! That explains the abrasions on her other wrist. She was a prisoner.”

“But whose?”

“I don’t know, Val. If it’s not the Spetsnaz, then it must be the others. The ones who tried to shoot us down in Alaska.”

“How bad is she, Colonel?” Smyslov asked from behind his other shoulder.

“If we don’t get her to some shelter and warmth fast, she’s gone.” Smith wrapped the survival blanket tightly around Randi. They had done all they could do out here.

“I will carry her, Colonel,” Smyslov offered.

“All right. I’ll take your pack. Let’s go.”

The Russian lifted his new burden with care. “It is all right, devushka,” he murmured. “You are with friends. Don’t leave us now.”

Valentina took up both the rifles. “We’ve got to assume the science station’s either been occupied or destroyed. Where can we go?”

“We either find another cave or build a snow shelter,” Smith replied, playing his lantern beam along the man-high stacks of pressure ice mounding along the shoreline. “Keep your eyes open for any place that looks good.”

“Right. We might as well run ourselves out of batteries along with everything else. God, she looks like she’s had a job of it.”

“I know.” His voice was as bleak as the night. “Maybe I’ve finally done it.”

She puzzled over Smith’s words, but she sensed this wasn’t the time to ask about them.

The probing sword of Smith’s lantern beam had started to cold-fade when it found the triangular gap in the ice wall. Hunkering down, he shined the light into it.

This was what he’d been seeking. A heavy slab of sea ice had been driven up onto the beach and lifted on edge by another, following shoulder of the pack, leaving a blue-white triangular cavern, twenty feet deep by six wide and high enough for a tall man to stand stooped in.

“This is it! We’ll fort up here! Major, take Randi to the back of the cave; then come up here and start walling off this entrance with snow and ice blocks. Val, you’re with me.”

Smith used the last of their light sticks to fill the little ice cave with a misty green chemical glow, and he took a moment to set up and light their tiny pellet stove. There wasn’t much fuel left for that, either, but if it couldn’t make their shelter warm, at least it could make it less freezing. As he worked with the stove he issued commands.

“Val, spread a couple of survival blankets on the cave floor; then zip your sleeping bag and mine together.”

“Right. Doing it.”

They eased the comatose Randi onto the combined sleeping bags.

“Okay Val, I’m putting you in with her. While I get Randi undressed, get out of your clothes. Everything has to come off.”

“Understood,” she replied, tugging down the zip of her parka. “But I was hoping to hear that request under decidedly different circumstances.”

As he stripped Randi he used a flashlight to run a lightning-swift white-light examination of her body, checking for the overt ravages of frostbite. Thank God she’d at least had the arctic boots. They’d protected her feet, the point of greatest vulnerability.

Valentina squirmed out of her heavy outer shell garments. Taking a deep, deliberate breath, she whipped her sweater and thermal top off over her head. Her bra and socks followed, as did the forearm sheaths. She positioned her knives within reach near the head of the bed, then pushed ski pants, thermal bottoms, and panties off in one wadded mass. Naked, she stretched out beside Randi, her head pillowed on a pack, the cold a flame against her skin.

“Ready,” she said, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

Smith supervised the nestling of the two nude ivory bodies together, Valentina shivering and Randi too deathly still.

He packed the thermal pads around the women, then zipped the sleeping bags closed. He spread Smyslov’s opened bag over them, along with their discarded clothing.

Valentina curled herself around the other woman’s unconscious form, cradling Randi’s head against the soft pillow of her breast and shoulder. Randi stirred, whimpered faintly, and tried to nuzzle closer to the source of warmth.

“She’s like ice, Jon,” Valentina murmured. “Will this be enough?”

“I don’t know. A lot depends on how much of this is simple exhaustion and how much is exposure. Hypothermia can be very mean and very tricky.” Smith rested his fingertips against Randi’s throat, taking a carotid pulse. “She’s been preloaded with a massive dose of antibiotics. That’ll help with any pulmonary complications. And she was keeping her hands and face covered. I don’t think she’s been too badly frostbitten.”

Smith shook his head, lightly stroking Randi’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “If her core temperature hasn’t fallen too far, she might be able to bounce back. She’s tough, Val, as tough as they make them. If her temperature has dropped too low…I don’t know. All we can do is keep her warm and wait.”

Valentina half-smiled. “You care a great deal about this lady, don’t you?”

Smith tucked the mouth of the sleeping bag closer around the two women. “I’m responsible for her. Both for her being here and for her being who she is.”

“You’re responsible for all of us, Jon,” Valentina replied, looking up at him. “And may I say that’s a rather comforting thought at the moment.”

Smith grinned back and lightly stroked back her dark hair. “I hope that confidence isn’t misplaced. Try and get some sleep.”

Taking the SR-25 and his medical kit with him, Smith moved up toward the mouth of the cave. En route he paused to fill an aluminum pan with ice fragments, balancing it atop the pellet stove.

Smyslov had finished walling off the entrance, leaving only an air vent at the top. Eliminating the wind chill gave their arctic clothing a chance to cope with the still air temperature, making the little cavern seem warm.

“How’s the arm doing, Major?”

Smyslov shrugged. “It isn’t a problem.”

“I’ll have a look at it anyway. You up on your tetanus shots?”

“I am good.”

With their backs to the opposing sides of the cave, Smith treated Smyslov’s arm. Working around the Russian’s blood-sodden sleeves, he removed the crudely applied field dressing. Cleaning and disinfecting the wound, he dusted it with sulfa powder and applied a fresh water-and-cold-proof bandage.

“You’re lucky,” Smith commented. “It’s a nice, clean penetration.” He lifted an eyebrow at the Russian. “In fact, it looks like it was made by one of Val’s knives.”

Smyslov grimaced. “It was, but with my approval.”

“What did happen up on that ledge while I was hanging at the other end of that safety line?”

Smyslov sketched out the chain of events from the icefall through Smith’s rescue. “Thanks for the assist.” Smith nodded. “It was greatly appreciated. Mind if I ask you a personal question, though?”

“Go ahead, Colonel.”

“Why didn’t you just cut Val’s throat and the safety rope?”

Smyslov was quiet for a moment. “That would have been in line with the standing orders I have received from my government,” he replied finally. “But you have a term in the American military for a situation such as I find myself in: ‘FUBAR.’ I believe it means ‘fucked up beyond all recall.’”

Smith applied a last strip of surgical tape. “It does.”

“Such is my current state,” the Russian continued. “I was placed within your team to prevent an international embarrassment for Russia and a shattering of relations between our nations. The Spetsnaz were inserted onto this island for that purpose as well. But now it is all FUBAR. Even had I chosen to kill you and the professor on the mountain, there would have been no realistic way to prevent this embarrassment and alienation. Things are too out of control now. Too chaotic. Your nation would investigate, and the truth would undoubtedly come out in the end. Probably it has been so from the beginning. This I have come to recognize, and I did not wish to murder my…comrades in an act of futility.”

Again Smyslov gave a bitter smile. “You see? We are not all like the Misha’s political officer.”

Smith rucked Smyslov’s bloodstained parka sleeve down over the fresh dressing. “I’d already come to that conclusion, Major.”

He closed his medical kit and leaned back against the green ice wall of the cave, the SR-25 propped beside him. “I’ve also come to the conclusion that you’re right about the attack on the science station. The numbers don’t add up for it to have been Spetsnaz. I’ve got to assume our third faction is now present on the island, and given the way Randi was handled, that presence is nasty and formidable.”

“I would agree, Colonel.”

“Then, given that your mission to prevent the truth being revealed about the Soviet first strike is indeed FUBAR, would you agree that we again have common cause over our mission, preventing the Misha’s bioweapons from falling into the wrong hands?”

Smyslov smiled without humor. “My superiors might not agree, but personally, I should like not to fuck up entirely. That anthrax could find its way into the hands of the Chechen rebels or another of our domestic terrorist groups. It could be used against Moscow or St. Petersburg as easily as against New York or Chicago. This is what matters now.”

Smith extended his hand. “Welcome back, Major.”

The Russian accepted his handclasp. “It’s good to be back, Colonel. What are your orders?”

Smith glanced toward the rear of the cave. “Our best intelligence source concerning this new faction is unavailable for the moment. When and if we can talk with her, then we can make some plans. For now, how about a cup of tea?”

A few minutes later the two men hunched over steaming canteen cups, letting the warmth seep in through their fingers.

“I have to admit, Major,” Smith said, “that one question still keeps nagging at me. It’s the other half of the March Fifth equation: why the Soviet attack was recalled at the last minute.”

Smyslov shook his head. “I’m sorry, I cannot say, Colonel. I must respect the last remaining rags of my nation’s security.”

“You might as well tell him, Gregori,” Valentina’s voice issued from the mound of sleeping bags. “I’ve figured that bit out as well.”

Smyslov’s head snapped around. “How could you?”

Valentina’s sigh whispered in the ice cave. “Because I’m a historian and because I’m very good at playing connect-the-dots. The Misha 124 crashed on Wednesday Island on March fifth, 1953, and the USSR came within a hairsbreadth of starting the Third World War on March fifth, 1953. One other major sociopolitical event involving the Soviet Union took place on that date as well. Logic indicates this one must be related to the other two.”

“What was it?” Smith demanded.

“March fifth, 1953, was the day Joseph Stalin died.” Valentina twisted around so they could make out the pale oval of her face. “Or rather, the day he was assassinated. Your people did off the bastard, didn’t they, Gregori?”

For a long moment, the only sound was the nagging whine of the wind.

“We’ve always suspected,” Valentina went on. “As history currently records it, Stalin was stricken by a massive cerebral hemorrhage on the night of February the twenty-eighth, while he was in residence at the Kremlin. Supposedly he was incapacitated and rendered semicomatose by the stroke, remaining in that state until his death on March fifth. But the world has always wondered. It was held there was something ‘funny’ about the rather sketchy account made by the Soviet government of Stalin’s death. There were also rather broad hints made by Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, that the true story of her father’s demise was not being revealed.”

The historian shifted her position, trying not to disturb Randi. “Of course, rumors and conspiracy theories cluster like flies around the death of any controversial national leader. Call it the ‘grassy knoll syndrome.’ But given Stalin’s decidedly notorious nature and the nature of the Soviet regime at the time, this conspiracy theory seemed a little more solidly founded than most.

“Now, with the truth about the Misha 124 and the Soviets’ aborted first strike coming out, the whole question is going to blow wide open again. I’m sorry, Gregori, but there is not going to be a plausible deniability here, and anything we guess will likely be worse than the reality.”

Disgusted, Smyslov looked up at the roof of the cave. “Shit!” Closing his eyes, he was silent for a few moments more before replying. “You are quite right, Professor. As you say, Stalin was stricken with a stroke, but he did not pass into a coma. He was partially paralyzed but he remained conscious, alert, and capable of giving orders. And his orders were for the immediate launching of the decisive finishing attack against the Western democracies.

“Who can say why? Possibly his mental capacities were diminished by the stroke. Possibly he foresaw his imminent death and he wanted to witness the final triumph of the People’s Revolution before he died. Or possibly he just wanted the world to end with him. Be that as it may, there were other members of the Politburo who viewed such an attack as national suicide.”

“Would it have been?” Smith inquired.

“In the spring of 1953, yes,” Valentina answered. “The West would have had a decisive edge in any nuclear exchange. By then, the United States and Great Britain possessed several hundred atomic weapons and even a couple of prototype hydrogen bombs. The Soviets had only a couple of dozen low-yield Hiroshima-grade nukes in their arsenal. Even with the first-strike advantage and augmented by biological and chemical warfare, it wouldn’t have been enough to deliver a finishing blow to NATO.

“More critically, the West had the superior delivery systems. The Soviets only had their poor old B-29skis, while the United States Air Force had the big B-36 Peacemaker, with range enough to hit any target in the USSR. The first generation of NATO jet strike aircraft like the B-47 and the Canberra were also coming into service in considerable numbers.

“Western Europe would have been made a thorough mess of,” Valentina concluded, “and the United States would have been badly hurt. But Russia and the Warsaw Pact states would have been A-bombed into a radioactive wasteland.”

Smyslov scowled and sipped his tea. “As I said, a clique within the Politburo fully recognized this reality. They also recognized there is only one way to impeach a dictator of Stalin’s kind. I regret to tell you, Professor, that history will never know the name of the individual who held the pillow over Stalin’s face until he ceased to struggle. It was most carefully not documented.”

“That’s all right, Gregori. It could only have been one of three men, and I can make an educated guess.”

Smyslov shrugged. “The clique was not able to act and secure power until after the first-strike wave was actually airborne and en route to their targets. These were the America bombers with the greatest distance to fly over the Pole. The attack was successfully recalled before it was detected by the North American air defenses, and all of the aircraft returned safely to base. All except for one biological weapons platform, the Misha 124.”

Smyslov emptied his cup. “The great konspiratsia of silence concerning the March Fifth Event began then and has continued to this day.”

“Why did they have to hold it a secret?” Smith asked. “They’d just saved the world from a nuclear holocaust, and it wasn’t as if any sane individual would weep any crocodile tears over Joseph Stalin, not even in the Soviet Union.”

Smyslov shook his head. “You do not understand the Russian mind, Colonel. Had Stalin’s killers been true liberators, this might have been the case, but they were merely tyrants killing another tyrant to save their own lives and to secure their own power base. Beyond that, the Soviet state still existed, and the mythology of the state demanded that Stalin be revered as a hero of the Revolution. Even after the Soviet Union fell, its fears and paranoias lingered.”

His lips quirked ruefully, and he set his empty cup aside. “Besides that, we Russians have something of a social inferiority complex. We pride ourselves as being profoundly civilized, and murdering one’s national leader in his sickbed is simply not kulturny.”

Smith snapped back into wakefulness, straightening out of his dozing slouch against the ice wall. Ignoring the stabbing barrage of protests from his collection of bruises, he listened, questing with all his senses.

He wasn’t sure how long he had slept; it must have at least been a couple of hours, but there was still a patch of full blackness in the entrance air vent. The sun had yet to rise, but the wind had died. The only sound from the outside was the distant creak and crack of the shifting pack ice. Inside the little cavern he could hear the deep, weary breathing of his sleeping teammates.

And a soft moan. “Sophie?”

Smith scrambled to the rear of the cave. Snapping on the lantern, he flipped down the hood flap of the combined sleeping bags that held Randi and Valentina.

In the lantern’s light Randi’s face was relaxed, and the color had returned to her skin, barring a single pale patch of frostnip on one brow and the shadows under her eyes. The dreadful gray flaccidity had passed. Her breathing was easy and uncongested, and when Smith lightly touched her throat, her heartbeat was even and strong and the flesh was warm.

As he had hoped, Randi Russell was rebounding.

At his touch, she grumbled softly and her eyes snapped open, blank at first, then questioning, then aware with the wonderment of still being alive. “Jon?”

Relief flooded through him. It wouldn’t be today after all. “You made it, Randi. You’re with us and you’re going to be all right.”

She looked at him almost in puzzlement, lifting her head. “Jon…I called.”

“And I heard you.”

The puzzlement lingered in her dark eyes for a moment more; then she smiled. “I guess you did.”

Valentina yawned and stretched, coming up on her elbow. “Good morning, all. Apparently somebody’s back with us.”

Startled, Randi twisted around in the sleeping bag, finding herself naked and not alone. “What in the hell!” she yelped.

“It’s perfectly all right, darling,” Valentina replied, propping her head on one slim wrist. “Nobody waits until after they’re married anymore.”