Primary Threat

“Can our friends repulse them?” Marmilov said.

“Given advance warning of their approach, and knowing the method of attack, it’s possible that our friends can be waiting for them, and kill them all. After that…”

The man shrugged. “Of course the Americans will bring the hammer down. But that won’t be our concern.”

Oleg Marmilov returned the young man’s smile. He took another deep drag on his cigarette.

“Exceptional,” he said. “Keep me informed of developments.”

“Of course.”

Marmilov gestured at the monitor on his desk. “And naturally, I am a great fan of sport. When the action starts, I will watch every moment of it on the TV.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

12:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (8:45 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time, September 4)

The skies above the Upper Peninsula

Michigan

The experimental airplane rocketed across the black sky.

Luke had never been in a plane quite like it. Everything about it was unusual. As the SRT team had approached it on the tarmac, the lights had been out. Not just the lights on the plane itself, but any nearby runway or airport lights. The plane was just sitting there in something close to total darkness.

Its airframe had an odd shape. It was very narrow, with a drooped nose like a bird dipping its beak into the water. The rear stabilizers had an odd triangular shape that Luke hadn’t seen before, and couldn’t quite make out.

Inside, the cabin layout was also unusual. Instead of being set up like a typical corporate or Pentagon jet, or even the SRT jet, with bucket-type seats and pull-out tables, the thing was configured like someone’s living room.

There was a long sectional couch along one wall, its high back blocking where there would normally be small oval windows. There were two recliners facing it, and between the couch and the chairs, a heavy wooden table, like a coffee table, bolted to the floor. Even stranger, directly across from the sofa was a large flat-panel television, blocking where the other row of windows should be.

Stranger than that, from where Luke was sitting on the couch, to his left was a thick glass partition. A glass door was carved into the middle of it. On the other side of the partition was another passenger cabin, this one with seating more typical of a small passenger jet. And strangest of all, two men were seated inside the cabin, discussing something and looking at the screen of a laptop.

The glass partition was apparently soundproof, because the men seemed to be speaking normally, and Luke couldn’t hear anything they were saying. The men were both crew-cutted and of military bearing, one wearing a jacket and tie, and one wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The man in the T-shirt was big and well-muscled.

“It’s an SST,” Swann said. He was sitting on the couch with Luke, just on the other side of Trudy Wellington, who sat between them, poring over documents on her laptop. The plane’s very existence seemed to excite Swann in a way that Luke didn’t quite understand.

“Supersonic, but not a fighter plane. A passenger jet. Since the French gave up on the Concorde and the Russians gave up on the Tupolev, no one on Earth will even acknowledge working on supersonic passenger jets.”

“I guess someone’s been working on this one,” Luke said.

Murphy, sitting in one of the recliners, gestured with his head at the glass partition.

“I’m wondering who the monkeys are behind door number three.”

Big Ed Newsam, slouched like a large mountain in the other recliner, nodded slowly. “You and me both, man.”

“Never mind about that,” Swann said. He pointed at the TV screen across from the couch. The screen was currently showing an image of an airplane, skirting the northern border of the United States above the state of Michigan. Data along the bottom showed altitude, equivalent groundspeed, and time to destination.

“Look at those numbers. Altitude 58,000 feet. Groundspeed 1,554 miles per hour, roughly Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. We’re in the air a little more than thirty minutes, and we’ve got only two and a half more hours to go. Absolutely mind-blowing for a jet this size, which I’d guess is about the same profile as a typical Gulfstream. Can you imagine the thrust this thing must put out to overcome the drag? I didn’t even hear a sonic boom.”

He stopped for a second and looked around.

“Did you hear anything?”

Nobody answered him. Everyone else seemed to have their minds on the destination, the mission, and the mysterious nature of the two men in the other room. How they were getting to the mission was beside the point. To Luke, the plane was just another big boy toy, probably overpriced.

But Swann loved his toys. “Notice something about our flight path. We’re on our way to the Alaskan Arctic, and by far the most efficient way to get there is by crossing into Canada and moving diagonally north and west across their heartland. But we hug the border instead. Why?”

“Because we like inefficiency?” Ed Newsam said, and smiled.

Swann didn’t even catch the joke. He shook his head. “No. Because if we cross into Canada, we have to explain to them what this thing is that’s moving twice the speed of sound above their airspace. They might be one of our closest allies, but we don’t want to tell them about this plane. That tells me it’s classified.”

“As a practical matter,” Trudy said, without glancing up from her computer, “we’ll have to cross into Canada at some point. Alaska isn’t attached to the rest of the United States.”

Swann stared at Trudy.

“Ouch,” Ed said. “Geography lesson. That had to hurt.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Murphy said. “Please?”

Luke looked at Trudy Wellington, sitting next to him. She was curled up on the sofa in a customary pose for her, legs curled under her. She could be sitting on her couch at home, eating popcorn and about to watch a movie. Her curly hair was hanging down, and her red glasses were at the end of her nose. She was scrolling through a screen.

“Trudy?” Luke said.

She glanced up. “Yes?”

“What are we doing here?”

She stared at him. Her owlish eyes went wide in surprise.

“Best guess,” he said. “Who are the terrorists, what do they want, why did they hit an oil rig, and why now?”

“Is that going to help you?” she said. “I mean, with the mission?”

Luke shrugged. “It could. We seem to be in the dark about everything, and no one seems interested in enlightening us even a little bit.”

“Or talking to us, for that matter,” Murphy said. He was still staring at the men on the other side of the glass.

“Okay,” Trudy said. “I’ll give you the easy part first. Why hit an oil rig and why now. Then I’ll do a very hazy guess about who they are and what they want.”

Luke nodded. “We’re all ears.”

“I’m going to assume no prior knowledge,” Trudy said.

Ed Newsam was slouched so low in his chair he looked like he might slide off onto the floor. “That’s probably the safest assumption I’ve heard all day.”

Trudy smiled. “The Arctic Ocean is melting,” she said. “People, countries, the media, large corporations, they’re all debating the long-term effects of global warming, or whether it even exists. The consensus among the vast majority of scientists is that it’s happening. No one has to agree with them. But what can’t be denied is that the polar ice caps, which have largely been frozen since the beginning of recorded human history, are now melting, they’re doing it quickly, and at an accelerating pace.”

“Scary,” Mark Swann said. “The end of the world as we know it.”

“And I feel fine,” Murphy added.

Trudy shrugged. “Let’s not go there. Let’s just stick with what we know. And what we know is that each year, the Arctic Ocean has less ice on top of it than the year before. Soon, possibly within our lifetimes, it’s not going to freeze over anymore at all. Already, the ice cover is thinner, and covers less of an area, for less of the year, than at any time we know of.”

“And this means…” Luke said.

“It means the Arctic is opening up. Shipping lanes that never existed before are going to open for traffic. On this side of the world, we’re talking about the Northwest Passage that runs between Canadian islands, and which Canada considers inside its sovereign territory. On the other side of the Arctic, we’re talking about the Northeast Passage, which hugs the northern coastline of Russia, and which Russia considers its territorial waters. In particular, when the ice opens for good, the Russian Northeast Passage will become the shortest and fastest shipping route between factories in Asia and consumer markets in Europe.”

“And if the Russians control it…” Murphy began.

Trudy nodded. “Correct. They will control much of the world’s trade. They can tax it, charge tariffs, and Russian ports that have been mostly frozen outposts for hundreds of years may suddenly become bustling ports of call.”

“And if they so desired, they could…”

Trudy was still nodding. “Yes. They could shut it down. Meanwhile, the Northwest Passage is a little dicey. If you look at a map, it really is part of Canada. But the United States wants to lay claim to it, potentially setting up strife between two neighboring countries, long-term allies, and trading partners.”

“So you think the Russians…” Ed began.

Trudy held up a hand. “But that’s not all. There are eight countries that ring the Arctic Ocean. The United States, Canada, and Russia of course, but also Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Denmark. Denmark’s claim is from owning the territory of Greenland. And the much bigger issue here is that up to one-third of the world’s untapped oil and natural gas reserves are thought to be under the ice in the Arctic.”

They all watched her.

“Everybody wants those fossil fuels. Countries that have no valid land claims in the Arctic, like Britain and China, are also getting in on the action, seeking to build alliances and obtain drilling rights. China has started referring to itself as a near-Arctic country. Britain has begun talking a lot about their Arctic partners.”

“That doesn’t explain who did it,” Luke said.

Trudy shook her head and her curls bounced the slightest bit. “No. As I said, I was giving you the easy part first. Why attack an oil rig in the Arctic, and why now. The answer is the race is on for Arctic natural resources, and it’s going to be a death race. People are going to get killed, in the same way they’ve been getting killed since oil was discovered in the Middle East in the early part of the twentieth century. The Arctic is an emerging flashpoint for competition among the major powers, and as a result, for violence and even war. It’s coming.”

Luke smiled. Trudy always seemed to have the answers, but sometimes she needed to be drawn out a little bit to share her conclusions.

“So… who was it?”

But she wasn’t ready to play that game. She just shook her head again.

“Impossible to say with any certainty. There are more actors than just those countries involved. There are indigenous groups spread throughout the Arctic, such as Eskimos, Aleut, Inuit, and many others. All of these groups are worried about the new interest in the Arctic. They’re concerned about losing their lands, their cultures, and their traditional hunting rights. They’re concerned about oil spills and other environmental disasters. In general, indigenous peoples do not have a history of good experiences with powerful countries and large corporations. They’re very leery of what’s coming, and some of the groups are already radicalized.”

“But are they big enough, and well-trained…”

“Of course not,” Trudy said. “Not on their own. But we can’t assume anyone is acting by themselves. There are dozens of environmental groups, several of which are also radicalized. There are major corporations, especially oil companies, jockeying for position. There are Middle Eastern countries wondering if oil exploration in the Arctic is about to leave them in the lurch. And of course, there’s Russia and China.”

“The banner,” Luke said.

“Yes. The banner calls America hypocrites and liars. That doesn’t tell us much, but the simplicity and garbled syntax of it suggests that the people who made the banner are not native English speakers. Meanwhile, the apparent professionalism of the attack suggests at least a high level of training, including cold-weather training, and probably combat experience.”

Luke could see where she was headed with this.

“Most of the Arctic countries are either close allies of ours, like Canada, Norway, and Sweden, or have friendly to neutral relations with us, like Iceland, Denmark, and Finland. And I don’t think the Russians or Chinese would attack us directly, especially not after all the recent trouble. But would they fund and train a cat’s paw, a group that either feels disenfranchised by us, or expects they are about to become disenfranchised?”

She paused.

“Of course they would,” Swann said.

Trudy nodded. “They might just.”

“So a new, radical anti-American group, kind of like an Al Qaeda of the Arctic?”

Trudy shrugged. “I can’t say that for sure. Could be an armed and trained indigenous group or groups. Could be white supremacists from the old Viking world, who are hoping to see the glory of the Scandinavian countries restored. Heck, it could be Quebec separatists. I don’t know.”

To Luke’s left, the glass door to the other passenger cabin slid open. The two men came in. “Good guesses, Ms. Wellington,” the older of the two men said. “Probably wrong, but as scenario spinning goes, pretty good nonetheless.”

* * *

The younger guy wore jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans hugged his muscular legs. The T-shirt hugged his muscular chest. The shirt had two words across the front, very small, white on a black background.

GET HARD.

“Guys, I’m Captain Brooks Donaldson, of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, sometimes called DEVGRU, often called SEAL Team Six.”

He was holding up a thick orange wetsuit, complete with hood, gloved hands, and boots. Odd for a Navy SEAL, he had just put down a soft drink can on the table. Luke stared at it. Dr. Peck’s ginger beer.

“I want to talk to you all a little bit about hypothermia. It’s important for us to think about. For all we know of freezing and its physiology, no one can predict exactly how quickly and in whom hypothermia will strike—and whether it will kill when it does. We do know that it’s more likely to kill men than women, and it’s more lethal to the thin and well-muscled—and that pretty well describes everyone in this room—than it is to people with a lot of body fat. It’s least forgiving to people who are ignorant about its effects. In other words, if you’re not prepared for it, and you don’t know what to do about it, it can easily kill you.”

Already, Luke didn’t like where this was going. Nobody had told him to expect anything about wetsuits or hypothermia or Navy SEALs who drank soda pop. The man, Donaldson, indicated the wetsuit in his hands.

“This suit is your first line of defense out there against hypothermia. The demonstration suit is orange, and your operation suits will be black, but don’t let that distract you. Just imagine this one as black. In orange or black, or purple or pink, or any color at all, these are state of the art, probably the best cold-water immersion suits in existence at the current time. It provides both flotation and hypothermia protection. Its features include lifting harness and buddy line, five-fingered insulated gloves for warmth and dexterity, inflatable head pillow, face shield and water-tight face seal, adjustable wrists and ankles, 5mm fire retardant neoprene, hailing whistle, light pocket, and non-slip thick-soled booties. But it’s a little bit of work to put on and take off in stormy conditions. And I’m going to show you how to do that.”

Everyone in the cabin was staring at him.

“Any questions before I begin?”

Murphy raised a hand.

“Yes, Agent…”

“Murphy.”

“Yes, Agent Murphy. Shoot.”

Murphy glanced at the ginger beer can on the table. He scowled, just a little bit. Murphy was an Irishman from the Bronx. It wasn’t clear to Luke what Murphy’s exact thoughts were about that ginger beer, but it sure seemed like he didn’t approve.

“What are we talking about here?”

Donaldson seemed confused. “What are we talking about?”

Murphy nodded. He gestured at the orange wetsuit. “Yeah. That. Why are you telling us about it? We’re not SEALs. We’re not really water people at all. Newsam, Stone, and I are all former Delta Force. Airborne assault. I was 75th Rangers before Delta, Stone was 75th Rangers, Newsam was…”

He paused and looked at Ed. Ed was slumped very low in his chair. Any lower, and he would ooze out onto the floor.

“82nd Airborne,” Ed said.

“Airborne,” Murphy said. “There’s that word again. You can show us that suit from now until we land, and all next week, but that’s not going to suddenly make us into divers.”

“I’ve done some diving,” Ed said.

Murphy stared at him. Luke wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen someone stare at Ed that way. Murphy was a vehicle that didn’t have reverse.

“Thanks,” he said. “You diving wrecks in Aruba really helps my argument.”

Ed smiled and shrugged.

The SEAL nodded. “I get your point. But this is an underwater operation. We will drop into the water at a temporary camp being constructed right now on a floating ice sheet about a mile and a half from the oil rig. I thought you knew that.”

Luke shook his head. “This is the first we’re hearing of it.”

“There’s no way to go in there by boat,” Donaldson said. “We have to assume that our opponents will have all the approach points covered. They appear to have heavy weaponry available to them. Any boat slogging its way through the ice to that oil rig is going to get hit, and hit hard.”

“Can we come in from the sky?” Luke said.

Donaldson shook his head. “Even worse. They’re expecting a storm to pass through that area in the next few hours. You do not want to be falling from the sky during an Arctic storm, I promise you that. And even if things clear, then they have a clean shot at you as you come down. It’ll be like shooting ducks. There’s only one way in, and that’s to come out from under the ice and take them by surprise.”

He paused. “And we’re going to need all the surprise we can get. As much as we’re going in hard, we need to keep at least one of the attackers alive.”

“Why’s that?” Ed said.

Donaldson shrugged. “We need to know what these men wanted, what their plan was, and whether they acted alone. We want to know everything about them. Assuming they don’t leave us some kind of manifesto, and since no one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far, we have to assume the only way to get that information is to capture at least one of them, and preferably more than one.”

Now Luke really didn’t like it. They were going in under the ice, and when they came up, they were supposed to capture someone. What if they were jihadis who didn’t give up? What if they fought until their last breath?

The whole operation seemed hastily organized and poorly thought through. But of course it was. How could it not be when the plan was to take back the oil rig the same night it was attacked, and in fact, mere hours later?

They had no intel on the attackers. There had been no communication. They didn’t know where they were from, what they wanted, what weapons they had, or what other skills. They didn’t know what the attackers would do if they themselves were attacked. Would they kill all the hostages? Commit suicide by blowing up the rig? No one knew.

So instead, the whole group was going in blind. Worse, Luke’s team was supposed to be the civilian oversight, but they were participating in a mission that was underwater—ice water—something they had no training for. Precious few American soldiers had training for ice water immersion.

“This whole thing,” Murphy said, “strikes me as FUBAR.”

Luke wasn’t sure if he agreed completely. But he was sensitive to the fact that Murphy still probably thought Luke’s poor decisions had led to the deaths of their entire assault team in Afghanistan.

If Murphy, or Ed, or even Swann or Trudy decided they wanted out of this mission, it was fine with Luke. People had to make their own decisions—he couldn’t decide for them.

Suddenly, he wished he had talked to Becca before leaving on this trip. Now it was too late.

“We’ve got less than two hours until our ETA,” the older man said, glancing at his watch. He looked at Donaldson, who was still holding the thick orange bodysuit. Then he made a spinning motion with his hand, like the arms on a clock moving rapidly.

“I suggest you get this demonstration underway.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

9:15 a.m. Moscow Daylight Time (10:15 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time, September 4)

The “Aquarium”

Headquarters of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)

Khodynka Airfield

Moscow, Russia

Blue smoke rose toward the ceiling.

“There is a great deal of movement,” the latest visitor, a pot-bellied man in the uniform of the Interior Ministry, said. His voice belied a certain anxiety. It was nothing in the timbre of the voice. It didn’t tremble or crack. You had to have the right ears to hear it. The man was afraid.

“Yes,” Marmilov said. “Would you expect anything less from them?”

Although the office had no windows, the light had changed as the morning progressed. Marmilov’s swooping, hardened hair now resembled a type of dark plastic helmet. The overhead lights seemed so bright it was as if Marmilov and his guest were sitting in the desert at midday, the sun casting deep shadows into the fissures carved into the ancient stone of Marmilov’s face.

People sometimes wondered why a man with such influence chose to run his empire from this tomb, underneath this bleak, crumbling, run-down building well outside Central Moscow. Marmilov knew about this wonder because men, especially powerful men, or those aspiring to be powerful, often asked him this very question.

“Why not a corner office upstairs, Marmilov? Or a man like yourself, whose mandate far surpasses just the GRU, why not get yourself transferred to the Kremlin, with a wide view of Red Square and the opportunity to contemplate the deeds of our history, and the great men who have come before? Or perhaps just watch the pretty girls passing by? Or at the very least, a chance to see the sun?”

Marmilov would smile and say, “I do not like the sun.”

“And pretty girls?” his friendly tormentors might say.

To this Marmilov would shake his head. “I’m an old man. My wife is good enough for me.”

None of this was true. Marmilov’s wife lived fifty kilometers outside the city, in a country estate dating to before the Revolution. He barely ever saw her and neither she nor he had a problem with this arrangement. Instead of spending time with his wife, he stayed in a modern hotel suite at the Moscow Ritz Carlton, and he feasted on a steady diet of young women brought directly to his door. He ordered them up like room service.

He had heard that the girls, and for all he knew, their pimps as well, referred to him as Count Dracula. The nickname made him smile. He couldn’t have chosen a more fitting one himself.

The reason he stayed in the basement of this building, and didn’t move to the Kremlin, was because he didn’t want to see Red Square. Although he loved Russian culture more than anything, during his workday, he didn’t want his actions tainted by dreams of the past. And he especially didn’t want them handicapped by the unfortunate realities and half-measures of the present.

Marmilov’s focus was on the future. He was hell bent on it.

There was greatness in the future. There was glory in the future. The Russian future would surpass, and then dwarf, the pathetic disasters of the present, and perhaps even the victories of the past.

The future was coming, and he was its creator. He was its father, and also its midwife. To imagine it fully, he couldn’t allow himself to become distracted by conflicting messages and ideas. He needed a pure vision, and to achieve this, it was better to stare at a blank wall than out the window.