The Arctic Event

Chapter Forty-eight

Wednesday Island Station

“We destroy the station when we leave,” Kretek ordered. “We burn it all.”

“Is that necessary?” Mikhail Vlahovitch looked up from the data file he had been glancing through. He was no man of science, and he did not understand the columns of carefully noted meteorological readings. But neither was he, by instinct, a wolverine.

“It will muddy the waters and destroy evidence, Mikhail. Besides, the people who scribbled all of that down are dead. What will it matter to them?”

“No doubt you are right.” Vlahovitch tossed the folder on the laboratory worktable. It was a wise time to be agreeable with his employer.

Through the lab hut’s windows, men could be seen at work, gray shades moving through the rapidly thinning fog. Preparations for departure and the final big job were under way. Down at the helipad, heater tents had been erected around the Halo’s engine pods, prewarming the heavy-lift copter’s turbines for flight. The riggers were connecting the heavy nylon strap sling to the belly hard point, and the members of the demolitions team were laying out their ribbon charges on the snow, checking the connectors and fusing.

“How do you think we are coming on time, Anton?” Vlahovitch had to ask again.

“I’ve told you, we have enough,” Kretek replied irritably. “They are coming, but if we make no more mistakes we will be well away before they arrive.”

“We should be ready to start engines within the next fifteen minutes.” Vlahovitch hesitated. “Anton, what do you wish to do about the boy’s body?”

“Leave it in the bunkhouse. It would be excess weight, and when it is found it will confuse matters even further.”

Kretek’s explosion of familial anger had passed, and his professional objectivity was returning. He would gladly kill his nephew’s killer, but he couldn’t be bothered with his corpse.

“No one will know exactly what happened here,” the arms dealer continued. He peered into his second in command’s face; his ice-colored eyes narrowed. “At least, no one will know as long as that girl is indeed dead.”

Vlahovitch ran his tongue across cracked lips, not liking the feel of that intent, cold stare. “I told you, Anton, she was swept away in an avalanche.”

“You are sure?”

“That was how it looked.”

“That might be how it looked, Mikhail, but is that what actually happened? You saw no body!”

“How could we?” Vlahovich lifted his voice. “It was at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot cliff, in the dark, in the middle of a blizzard! Besides, if she didn’t die then, she died later. She couldn’t have survived last night dressed as she was.”

Kretek maintained his glacial gaze for a moment longer, and then he smiled and gave Vlahovitch a bearlike slap on the shoulder. “Pish, pish, pish, no doubt you are right, my friend. What does it matter when she died, as long as the bitch is dead? Come, let’s be about the day’s work.”

The two men geared up for the cold, zipping parkas, donning gloves and taking up arms. Kretek had claimed the MP-5 the blonde girl had carried. Waste not, want not. The Heckler and Koch was a fine weapon, decidedly superior to the Croation-made Agrams he had issued to his men. Still, as he slung the SMG’s carrying strap over his shoulder, a muscle in his bearded jaw jumped. He did not like having things-people, money, or opportunities-taken from him.

Kretek swept a shelf full of hard-copy files onto the lab hut’s floor. Bracing a booted foot against the heater, he rocked it off its mounts. With a smoky clatter of falling stovepipe, it tipped onto its side, spraying burning coals. A score of flame tongues sprang up amid the scattered papers. The two men filed out through the snow lock, leaving the legacy of Wednesday Island Station to burn.

Outside, the quiet air seemed mild in comparison to the cold-fanged wind of yesterday. Directly overhead, the blue of a clear sky filtered down through the mist and the terrain around the station was swiftly regaining definition and color. As was frequently the case, the morning’s sea smoke was dissipating as rapidly as it had come on. The men’s voices lifted in exuberance, and their movements quickened in automatic response to the coming sun.

Kretek and Vlahovitch were just starting their trudge out to the landing ground when one of the perimeter sentries yelled an alarm.

A figure stood atop the antenna knoll-a small, slender figure clad in red ski pants and a floppy, oversized green sweatshirt, its hood drawn over her head. She looked down at the station and its startled inhabitants for a moment more; then she turned and was gone, dropping out of sight down the far side of the hill, a hasty burst of gunfire futilely chasing after her.

Kretek turned on Vlahovitch, massive fists engulfing the front of his lieutenant’s parka. For a moment Vlahovitch thought he was a dead man.

“So if she didn’t die then, she had to die later!” Kretek’s glare burned red-eyed with the focused rage of a charging boar. “I want her dead this time, Mikhail! For certain! Now!” He converted his grip into a shove. “Get after her!”

“At once, sir! Lazlo! Prishkin!” Vlahovitch lifted his voice in a half-strangled shout. “You and your fire teams, follow me! Move, you bastards! Move!”

Unslinging his submachine gun, Vlahovitch fled as much as he started to chase, laboring up the hill toward the place where the figure had disappeared. You simply did not fail Anton Kretek in this kind of catastrophic fashion and survive. Even if he succeeded in catching and killing the girl now, the odds of his getting off Wednesday Island alive were not good. But if he failed to bring her head back, they were nonexistent.

Valentina Metrace kept to the hard-packed and flagged station trails. Wallowing in the soft unbroken drifts would be slow death. There were several inches of fresh snow in the bottoms of the trail troughs, but she had the legs and lungs to cope with it. She kept in trim by running two or more miles daily, and not mere roadwork, but steeplechase orienteering over broken ground. In the field, she could match the old ivory hunter’s standard of twenty miles from dawn to dusk, walking and trotting, while carrying a light rucksack and a heavy-caliber rifle.

For this run though she was traveling light: clothes, knives, a single white camo survival blanket, and a steel signaling mirror. It enhanced her mobility edge over her more heavily laden pursuers.

After allowing herself to be seen, Valentina had angled down to the main trail along the island’s southern shoreline. Heading eastward, she alternated between an easy jog and a fast walk, carefully managing her breathing, ground coverage, and energy reserves. She had the edge here as well. She knew how far she had to go, how rapidly she needed to get there, and what was going to happen once she arrived.

She stayed focused on the trail ahead, taking care with each step and keeping to the easiest, safest, and most efficient path. For the moment a fall and a twisted ankle was all she needed to fear.

Looking back over her shoulder would be a waste of energy and distance. She’d had a good hundred yards’ lead at the start, and by the time her surprised pursuers could have reached the hilltop to acquire her trail, she would have lengthened that out.

The men coming after her would also be “blown” by their climb and would need to get their breath back. More time and space in her favor. As long as she kept moving, there was little chance they could get within pistol-caliber range before she’d drawn them into the target zone. All she had to do was to stay in their sight and keep them chasing and not thinking.

Of course, all this was predicated on Jon’s plan working and on Randi’s observation that the arms smugglers hadn’t brought a sniper with them. If either of them were wrong…There was no sense in worrying about it. If they were, she’d find out presently. As she ran along the landward edge of the piled shore ice she tossed a three-fingered Girl Guide’s salute to the rocky point of land a mile ahead.