Night Strike

Book 4: Blake Sanders Thrillers

by Michael W. Sherer

Genres: Thrillers; Conspiracy Thrillers; Spy Thrillers; Military Thrillers; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

An ex-Navy SEAL parachutes onto a glacier in Greenland under cover of darkness. A Russian admiral sails his Udaloy-class destroyer to the newly reopened air base on Kotelny Island in the East Siberian Sea. A research scientist in Seattle arranges a midnight meeting with an NCIS counterespionage agent. A navy intelligence agent goes AWOL in a quest to clear her name of murder.

The only common thread among them is unsuspecting newspaper delivery driver Blake Sanders. When the scientist’s surreptitious rendezvous is interrupted by Russian mafiosi and goes bad, the wounded scientist rabbits. Desperate to get away, he hijacks Blake’s car at gunpoint. Shortly after, the man bleeds out in the back seat and dies, but not before giving Blake a photo of a young girl and extracting a promise to find and protect her.

Carrying out that promise launches Blake on a frenetic and dangerous race against time to find the girl and the secret she holds, a secret that could put technology in the hands of the Russians that will tip the balance of world military power. On the run from NCIS, police, the Russian Organizitsaya, and even his former lover, naval intelligence officer Reyna Chase, Blake’s only hope of stopping a secret plot against Putin that could put Russia and the US at war is saving the girl.

First, he has to stay alive…

Release date: October 15, 2015

Publisher: Cutter Press

Print pages: 342

Sample

Chapter 1

He stood in the shadows under a small grove of trees and watched the figure on the far side of the freeway advance on foot across the overpass. At this hour of the night, light traffic made it easier to tell if the man had been followed. He himself had worked his way around an area of the city, first in his car and then on foot and by bus to be absolutely certain no one followed. Years had passed since they’d taught him how to evade surveillance, but after several hours he felt sure he was black. He’d seen no familiar faces, no face more than once, had caught no one ducking into doorways when he’d doubled back on his route. Unless they had an army—highly unlikely given their command structure—they had no clue to his whereabouts.

What worried him, though, was that he had no idea where they were, either. On one of the few occasions he’d had to endure face-to-face time with them—in a too-small, older model car that reeked of stale, greasy fast food remains, cheap cologne, fear and intimidation—he’d planted a tiny bug on the side of the front passenger seat down near the floor. The transmitter had a range of a quarter-mile at most, so their silence could mean they were farther away. But he hadn’t heard a peep all night, only static from his earpiece, and he worried that the bug’s battery may have run out of juice.

Clear skies had allowed daytime temperatures to rise into the mid-70s, but now, without a blanket of clouds, the heat dissipated rapidly. He was grateful for the black windbreaker to

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insulate him from the relative chill. For a moment he let his focus soften, let his mental gaze pull back to take in the wider portrait. The white noise of tires on the freeway below couldn’t block out the gentle lap of water on boat hulls moored in the yacht club marina a few hundred yards away. The view of pavement, some trees and little else couldn’t blot out his mental vision of Lake Union’s sparkling blue water, the Space Needle blasting off into a turquoise summer sky, the snow-capped peak of Mt. Rainier rising above Seattle’s hills in the distance. He loved this place. It was his home.

He opened his eyes. The overpass in front of him was six lanes wide with a sidewalk on either side, an empty concrete and asphalt desert that seemed to stretch forever before more trees sprouted from the median and parkways far on the other side of the freeway. On the closest end, stairs led down from both sidewalks to an express bus stop lane on the freeway below. He waited until the approaching figure started down the stairs on his side of the overpass before he stepped out from under the trees and crossed the intersection. Craning his neck to see if his appearance attracted anyone’s attention, he hurried across the open expanse of pavement and down the long flight of stairs. His knees groaned accusingly, reminding him again that he was too old to be playing this young man’s game. Those who had survived to an age where they enjoyed grandchildren and a slower pace in life were the ones who sat behind desks and pushed them around like chess pieces.

Nearly forty years since he’d come to this country. Forty years he’d answered to the name “Tony D’Amato” instead of “Anton Kuznetzov.” Since before the dissolution of the union. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before glasnost. He’d been in Amyerika since the days the Cold War was as frigid as Yakutsk in January. And they’d waited all those years, biding their time until he’d thought they must have forgotten. They’d waited until he’d almost forgotten what it was like to live in a country without the freedoms he’d now enjoyed for close to half a century.

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And at an age when he, too, should be enjoying a few vnooki playing games at his feet as he sat by the fire with his newspaper, they had activated him.

The man far down the bus platform at the bottom of the stairs could be his ticket out of this life of spying. A strike hound that had been loosed on his tail, the man had sniffed Tony out with every intention of marking him to ground until the rest of the pack could come in for the kill. But Tony had thrown the man off the scent by proposing a deal—he’d give the man exactly what he wanted in exchange for protection, a new identity and a new life.

The man raised his head and looked in Tony’s direction. He appeared relaxed, unconcerned, which worried Tony as much as if he’d seemed too nervous. Tony took a last look around as he stepped down onto the platform. No turning back now. He strode forward with purpose, ready to start a new life. He’d been an American too long to continue helping those svinyey, those pigs. The man watched him come, and Tony could see he missed nothing despite his casual air. His windbreaker had a roomy cut, so Tony knew he was armed, but his hands remained at his sides.

Twenty yards away now, and the man’s head bobbed almost imperceptibly in greeting. D’Amato opened his mouth to begin the dance, but the crackle in his earpiece prevented any words from escaping.

“Von tam!” a voice yelled in his ear. “I see him! Over there!”
D’Amato jerked his head around, looking for the car in which he’d planted the bug.
A different voice came through the earpiece. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”
“Down there, fool!”
D’Amato dropped to one knee and swiveled around. From the corner of his eye he saw the

man at the end of the platform reach inside his jacket. The sound of a car engine revving took his focus to the overpass above them and then to the sweep of headlights as a car rounded the

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cloverleaf onto the ramp down to the freeway. D’Amato ran in a low crouch toward the man on the platform now, yelling to be heard over the screeching tires and whining engine.

“Get down!”

The man ignored him, focused instead on the car racing down the ramp toward them on the other side of the platform. He had a semiautomatic out now and planted his feet like a gunslinger from the Old West, gun hand extended as he fished in his pocket with the other. The car flashed past D’Amato and pulled even with the cowboy in a cloud of blue smoke, tires shrieking. The man got off one shot before a Jack-in-the-box popped out of the passenger side window and returned fire over the roof—pop-pop-POP! The man on the platform flailed as the first bullet ripped into his chest, his gun flying from his hand and skittering down the platform. The second and third bullets thunked into the man’s chest and head and he crumpled to the platform before his pistol stopped at D’Amato’s feet.

D’Amato snatched up the gun and backpedaled, feet scrabbling on the cement for a purchase as the driver threw the car into reverse, tires burning rubber as the engine redlined. They won’t shoot, he told himself. You’re too valuable to them. But his body had already reacted, turning him toward the stairs at a dead run. He couldn’t let them capture him, either. Another set of headlights swept down the freeway on-ramp, and D’Amato’s heart leaped in his chest. A delivery truck rumbled toward him, the driver quickly preoccupied by the sight of a car reversing up the ramp at full speed. As the trucker laid on his horn, D’Amato willed his aging muscles to put on more speed. The truck lumbered by, horn blaring, but D’Amato didn’t turn to look at the impending crash. He rushed headlong toward the stairs and raced up two at a time, heart pounding so loudly in his ears he barely heard another pop-pop behind him.

But no whump or sounds of rending metal and breaking glass split the night, just the squeal of brakes and irate bleat of horns. Through his earpiece, D’Amato heard a scream of obscenities

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in a language he wished he’d never known. The truck wouldn’t stop them for long, only slow them down. And they’d be on him again. Now he had no choice. His life here was over. He had only one option.

Run!

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July 4—Greenland, three weeks earlier.

Night Strike—Sherer

Chapter 2

The wind whistled in Macready’s ears, cold biting into the small amount of bare skin on his face not covered by goggles or the arctic survival suit’s balaclava under his helmet. Behind him, the monotonous rumble of turboprop engines faded as the C-130J flew off into the watery permanent daylight in this part of the world. Doubtful anyone was awake at this hour despite the light sky, and the drop zone was several miles from the target, but the Super Hercules looked enough like an Antonov An-12 in profile that he had a plausible story ready if anyone happened to spot it.

Without knowing it, Russia had supplied all his gear, in fact, from the pack full of supplies dangling on a strap twenty feet beneath his feet to the MP-443 Grach Yarygin PYa semiautomatic pistol tucked into a waterproof pouch zipped inside his suit. Even the Russian passport tucked in the same pouch, though forged, was real The only gear not sourced from Russia was the tactical parachute arching over his head. Made by an American company, the wing-like chute was the military version of the ram-air parachute used by the world champion Russian Army competition jump team. The Russian Army had adopted the new, square D-12 parachute for its ground troops, but if the American-made tactical chute was good enough for the Spetsnaz, he trusted it more than one from a Russian firm like Polyot. Hell, the Russians had even spec’d the new Strike One 9x19mm semiautomatic from Italy for its ground forces, replacing the old homegrown GSh-18. Then again, he’d seen Russian special forces commandos using Glock and Sig Sauer models, too, rather than Russan-made pistols. Whatever worked.

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He glanced up at the wing as he glided toward the drop zone, his forward speed nearly 15 meters per second—a little more than 30 mph. The specially made chute blended in with the sky. The non-porous material used for the bottom of the wing was blue and gray. The fabric forming the top of the wing was white, making him nearly invisible from above against the snow-covered tundra still far beneath his feet. In full flight, he descended vertically at a rate of about four meters per second, giving him another five minutes to endure the arctic summer air before he touched down.

He relaxed in the harness, alert to winds shifts, but keeping his muscles loose. These few moments likely would be his last chance to empty his mind and enjoy the nearly weightless feeling of flight. The wind rush was the only sound. Cloud cover dimmed the weak sunlight angling in from a few degrees above the northern horizon. The soft light bathed the vista below, making craggy mountains rising up from the sea stand out in relief, the ice sheet on top resembling the fissured, wrinkled surface of some ancient giant marble sculpture eroded by time. A wide, dark channel of water cut between rocky cliffs and formed a “V” as it outlined a large, rocky island stretching 20 miles in length.

Landing on a glacier was dangerous at best, deadly at worst. But the river of ice would give him a relatively straight, if challenging, shot to the target. He wouldn’t have much time after landing to find a spot and make camp before people stirred, increasing the chance he might be seen. He glanced up at the watch and altimeter strapped to the inside of his right arm, not wanting to lose his grip on the toggle that controlled his flight path and speed. Not much time. He scanned the icy terrain below in earnest now, looking for a relatively smooth place to come down where he wouldn’t slide into a crevasse.

On terra firma, the ground always appeared darker the closer he got until it looked like a black hole about to swallow him whole. The glacier was the same in reverse, a white mass with

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no features, no depth. The night vision goggles helped, lending definition to peaks and valleys, cracks and plains. Making a wide turn, he surveyed the inhospitable topography in a fast grid pattern until he found a spot he liked. Sixty seconds later he released the pack dangling below his feet and then he was down, boots digging into the ice and hard snowpack.

Before he could pull the canopy release mechanism, sudden wind shear gusted a canopy of snow across his vision, twisting the chute and blowing it sideways, yanking him off his feet. Pain shot up from his shoulder, and his arm went limp, fingers losing their grasp on the toggle. Cursing himself for attempting a stand-up landing, he twisted his torso sharply and fell the way he’d been trained in basic jump school then tugged the canopy release with his good hand. As soon as the mechanism released he stopped sliding across the ice and the chute billowed to the ground. He lay there for a minute and took stock.

His left shoulder was dislocated, the arm useless for the moment. He could fix that. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rolled over, got his good hand under him and pushed himself up onto his feet. When he stood, pain stabbed him from a new location. One of his ankles nearly gave way, threatening to topple him onto the snow-packed ice. A boot must have caught in a crack when the wind shift pulled him off balance. Feeling the strain, he cursed himself again for not wearing ankle braces. But he’d only been able to pack so much, and the braces would have meant more things to carry. He gingerly put weight on the sore ankle. Definitely strained, but not broken or sprained, thank god.

Looking around, he spotted an ice boulder the size of an economy car that had been thrust up out of the glacier, and slowly made his way to it. Bracing himself, he slammed his shoulder into the ice. Despite the pain, he felt immediate relief as the shoulder joint popped back into place. It would feel stiff and sore for several days, but unless he’d torn tendons or ligaments, it would heal fairly quickly with no lasting damage.

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The breeze still felt cold but balmy compared to what he’d descended through. He guessed the temperature hovered around freezing. Once the sun rose higher, it might warm to the low 40s, perfect for a day at the beach—an arctic one. He sighed as he gathered in the chute. He was getting too old for this shit.

He retrieved the rucksack and scanned his surroundings. The snowpack was hard, so he likely wouldn’t need the compact snowshoes strapped to his backpack. Removing some of the snowshoe straps, he used them to fashion a makeshift ankle brace. In what should have taken less than thirty minutes but took twice that, he erected a tent using the parachute fabric and a lightweight frame strapped to his rucksack. He worked steadily but not feverishly, stripped down to the dry suit under his survival suit. If he overheated in the dry suit he might chill too rapidly as the sweat evaporated when he stopped moving. Both shoulder and ankle were tender, but mobile, and the constant movement kept the muscles warm and loose.

The sky was marginally brighter but still cloudy when he climbed back into the survival suit and curled up on an inflatable mattress for a much-needed nap. He’d left California nearly forty- eight hours earlier and hadn’t put his head down since. Despite the excitement and pre-mission jitters, he fell asleep in seconds.

When he woke, the sun hung in the clear southern sky, the intensity of its reflection off the white expanses of snow and ice nearly blinding. His body and especially his injuries had stiffened during his few hours of sleep, and he moved the way his grandfather had in his final years. Putting on gloves and goggles, he ducked out of the tent and hobbled a few yards away, following the sound of trickling water. Rivulets of melting ice carved channels into the glacier, slowly eroding it. He filled two water bottles under the flow of one of the tiny rivers, and dropped a tablet inside each bottle to purify the contents. Back in the tent, he dug into his rucksack for an MRE, and sat down for a leisurely breakfast, his first in recent memory. By the

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time he finished eating, the water tablets had done their work, and he eagerly finished off one of the bottles.

The air temperature outside had risen to a comfortable 42 degrees F., but the glacial ice still radiated cold, keeping the air below his waist closer to freezing. Time to go to work. Consulting a GPS device, a map and compass, he computed the distance he had to cover to his target. Then he pulled contents out of the big rucksack—rope, pitons, crampons, biners, ice axe, tools, ice screws and other gear—and laid them out on the air mattress. The parachute harness could double as a climbing harness if he needed it. He’d break down camp later and hike at the end of the day—the evening, actually—when people would less likely be outside, lowering the chance that someone might see him. Satisfied, he repacked the rucksack with easy access to the tools he might need and left the remainder laid out for later.

Taking care to apply liberal amounts of sunscreen to exposed skin, including zinc oxide on his nose, he dressed in the white camo survival suit, grabbed a pair of binoculars and headed back outside to do some recon. After checking his compass, he limped a hundred yards northeast until he came to the top of a rise. Far below, in the crook of a small bay about five miles away, lay a haphazard jumble of buildings perched on the rocky shore. He eased up to the crest on his belly, put the glasses to his eyes and focused on the scene. Huge trucks moved mounds of rock and dirt from a hole near the top of a rocky cliff and trundled it to an offloading station where it moved by conveyor into a giant crushing machine. From there it disappeared into one of the buildings, for further processing, he assumed. Men scurried around the encampment like tiny ants, dodging the trucks and other vehicles. He panned back up the dirt road to the hole in the cliff. Inside the mouth of the cavern, a train of small ore cars disappeared into a tunnel.

Definitely a mining operation. That much he’d already known from a look at the satellite photos in his briefing packet. Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell he was doing

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celebrating the Fourth of July near the top of the world. The rolling breakers on the warm, sunny beaches of southern California and northern Baja waited for him to shred them with one of the half-dozen custom boards he’d collected over the years, but he was here, freezing his ass off. Nothing about his life had been boring down there. After nearly two decades of service to his country as a Navy SEAL, Trip Macready didn’t owe Uncle Sam a thing. Yet here he was.

The SEALs didn’t have a more gung-ho enlistee than Macready. After his two-and-a-half years of training, he’d been deployed with SEAL Team 3 and sent to the Mideast for Desert Storm in the early ’90s. But that little skirmish was over practically before it started, so when the former Soviet satellite Yugoslavia broke apart, pitting Serbs against Croats against Muslims, Trip had asked for a transfer to SEAL Team 2. There he’d gone through another six months of training in arctic warfare. But since the situation in Bosnia had been a UN “peacekeeping” mission, again he’d seen little action. By the late ’90s he’d transferred back to Team 3.

In 2002, he’d shipped out to Afghanistan as part of the extensive forces put on the ground to hunt down bin Laden and stamp out al Qaeda before the terrorist group could carry out another abomination like 9/11. Not surprisingly, his facility with Russian had come in handy there, since the Soviets had occupied the country for ten years. After two tours, he’d seen enough action to last a lifetime. When he’d shipped back to the States, he’d transferred into the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program. After all, that had been what he’d gone to school for, and why he’d studied at Woods Hole. But the move had been the beginning of the end of his navy career. The navy bureaucracy had soured for him. As much as he’d believed—and still believed—in what he’d done, in what he represented, he’d grown a conscience during his time with NMMP. Or rather, he’d expanded his consciousness.

So, he resigned his commission and opened a dolphin rescue facility near San Diego. And he’d “untrained” retired Navy dolphins so they could be returned to the wild. But that little

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venture had boomeranged. The Navy had sued him, the pair of dolphins he’d released had been found and repatriated by a group of terrorists intent on making a statement, and to top it off the group had kidnapped Trip’s attorney in Seattle. What a fiasco. But when all was said and done, Macready realized how much he missed the adrenaline-inducing action of fieldwork.

**** *
Six weeks earlier, he’d gotten a call from one of the few people in the service he still

trusted. John Granger, an Expeditionary Strike Force leader down in Coronado, and a damn good one, had been the only person he’d been able to turn to for help resolving the hostage crisis involving the McHugh woman. Molly. Hers had been a face he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for months. The first woman who’d had that effect on him in years, maybe ever. Granger had come through, so when he called, Trip was ready to return the favor, whatever it was. The favor John asked seemed small—wait for a guy to contact him, and hear him out.

Three weeks passed without a word. Macready had almost forgotten about it when a lean man with a golfer’s tan, thinning blond hair, board shorts that hadn’t seen water yet, and a nearly unblemished stick almost bumped into him on one of his favorite beaches south of Ensenada. A chonner by the look of him. And a little old to be learning, but then he could be one of the ex- pats who retired in Mexico and found themselves with nothing to do.

“Sorry,” the man said. “How’s the surf?”

Macready shrugged and planted his board in the sand. “Clean, but the swells are a little weak.” He snagged the towel on the beach with two fingers and rubbed it over his dripping head.

“Nice day for it, at least.” The man turned his gaze from the blue ocean to Trip and stuck out his hand. “Pete.”

Macready gripped it tightly. “Trip.”
Pete nodded as if he already knew. “Heard you might be looking for work.”

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Macready remembered Granger’s favor, but remained cautious. “I already have a job.” Pete’s smile stayed in place. “A mutual acquaintance says otherwise.”
Macready grunted softly. “Well, if you know him, then you know it depends on the job.” “Simple recon. Get in, infiltrate if necessary, find out what’s going on, report and get out.” “Nothing’s ever that simple.”

Pete conceded the point with a nod and waited patiently.

A field assignment. Macready’s knee-jerk reaction was to tell Pete he’d wasted his time. Trip had been out of the navy for several years, and he was starting to feel his age in small ways—joints that ached more when he woke in the morning, weight that threatened to balloon if he didn’t work out even more diligently than before, a mid-afternoon dip in energy that made him sometimes wish he could take a nap. But he shushed the little voice inside and thought about how much it had meant to take on that terrorist group up in Washington state, how much he’d actually enjoyed taking the bastards down.

“Why me?” Macready said finally.

“You have the skill sets needed for the job.” Pete shrugged, and his smile faded. “You weren’t our first choice given the circumstances of your retirement. But there were only a handful of others who met the requirements. We discounted each of them for various reasons.”

“Leaving me.” Trip threw the towel over his shoulder and stepped into the pair of flip-flops he’d left on the sand next to his T-shirt. “Who for?”

Pete shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. It’s ‘need-to-know.’ And it’s off the books, so you’ll have no official sanction.”

Macready rubbed his jaw, feeling the day-old stubble there. No backing meant no protection if he was exposed or captured. And he didn’t like being kept in the dark.

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“We’re the good guys in case you’ve forgotten. And this is important.” Pete saw Trip’s hesitation. “Look, we’ll give you all the resources you’ll need, and you can name your price.”

Macready looked up the beach, squinting his eyes against the hot Mexican sun. “Where?” “Greenland.”
“Shit.”
Pete’s smiled more broadly. He knew Macready was hooked. “Welcome aboard.”

Now, weeks later, Trip was thinking about a woman half a world away and out of reach—in more ways than one—while he watched a bunch of Russians play in the dirt. He shook his head clear of the divergent thoughts and focused his gaze on the mining camp. Someone high up in the US intelligence community wanted him to find out what the Russians were looking for—or what they’d already found. The Danes, by way of Greenland’s P.M., didn’t know and didn’t much care as long as they and the royal family got their cut of whatever the Russians dug up.

On the other side of the country the native Inuit people had named a place “Savissivik,” which in loose translation meant “place of iron knives.” The area was known for its iron meteorite fragments dating back 10,000 years. The environment was far too hostile for the Russians to mine something as common as iron. Macready wondered if they’d found something else carried in on a meteorite, something that could be valuable enough to warrant the investment of money, machinery and manpower he saw down below.

**** *
Over the course of four days, Macready cautiously worked his way down the glacier,

picking his way around a small nunatak and through the dangerous seracs on the ice field, careful to use cover whenever possible. The sore ankle grew less painful and stiff each day until it barely hindered him. But the shoulder still had limited range of motion before pain radiated up his neck and down into his arm and back. He continued to baby it and pushed through the pain.

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Late on the fourth day, as the sun swung toward the northwest and dipped closer to the horizon, he pitched his tent within several hundred yards of the mining town. Close enough to hear the non-stop growl of gas generators and the guttural voices of men laughing and swearing in Russian. He awoke the next morning to the sound of diesel engines and rumble of machinery so close it rippled the tent fabric. But he was no closer to learning what they were doing, and his frustration mounted.

As he lay there, he closed his eyes and forced himself to relax, focusing on one muscle group at a time, starting at his feet and working up. He couldn’t afford to get sloppy now. He emptied his mind, pushing aside his agitation. Cold nipped at his ears and nose, by now a familiar friend, a gauge of how warm or cold other body parts were. His focus narrowed to the simple act of breathing—cold, dry air tempered in his nasal cavities before filling his lungs, warm, moist air expelled in a small cloud of vapor in front of his face. All sounds except the gentle wash of his breath disappeared as he went deeper into the meditation.

When he felt the chill of the arctic air in his limbs, he let his consciousness climb back out of the depths. As it rose toward the surface, other sounds intruded again—the trill and squawk of an arctic tern as it soared over his head toward the water, the monotone growl of generators and multi-pitched reverberation of truck engines and machinery. A new, unfamiliar sound reached his ears, one he felt before he heard it, its low vibrations working their way up through his core. He opened his eyes. Cloud cover acted like twilight, dimming the circling sun, making the lights moving in the channel of water offshore that much more evident.

Raising the binoculars, he took a closer look. A ship hove into view as it made a wide slow turn from the channel into the fjord carved out by the glacier on which he stood. Still three miles or so from the mining camp, the ship appeared to be a research and supply icebreaker, a little

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over 200 feet in length if Macready judged it correctly. Russian, according to the flag flying from the ensign staff at the stern. Excitement raced through his veins. This could be his chance.

He quickly made his way back to the swale in the ice where he’d pitched his makeshift tent, and ducked inside. From the rucksack he pulled workman’s clothes—long underwear, fleece- lined jeans, thick woolen socks, flannel shirt, fleece vest and down parka—and traded the survival suit for the clothes. He tucked his gun into a shoulder holster and slid a Kizlyar BopoH-3 combat knife into a sheath strapped to his leg. A small throwing knife fit into another sheath on his forearm. He stuffed pockets of the parka with an extra magazine for the pistol, a satellite phone and energy bars, and strapped a passport pouch stuffed with five grand in 50-, 100- and 500-ruble banknotes around his ankle. With a last look around, he wormed his way out of the tent and collapsed it. He stuffed everything into the rucksack and wedged it down into a nearby crevasse.

Picking his way through the remainder of the ice field down to the dry glacier bed took another forty minutes, and still he had another quarter mile to go. What had looked like a toy village from the glacier the day before now spread out in front of him, nestled into a bay in the fjord carved out by the receding glacier. A long wharf stretched at an angle into the water. Arrayed along the waterfront stood several large buildings that looked like warehouses. Just behind those stood the even larger building where trucks from the mine emptied their contents. Macready surmised it was a smelter or processing facility of some kind. Long Quonset huts staggered up the steep hillside in rows. Barracks for the men. On the other side of the road up to the mine entrance, white fuel tanks sprouted like mushrooms.

Activity still swirled around the docked ship, but Macready noted that the steady grinding roar of trucks moving up and down the hill had ceased for the day. The dirt and gravel streets were quiet, workers either in the mess hall or in their barracks. He calmly walked into the camp,

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his limp barely noticeable. Ominous clouds hung over the camp like a shroud, turning the arctic day dark. Floodlights on the pier snapped on, bathing the ship with light. Macready welcomed the shadows as he approached.

The larger of two cranes on the ship hoisted a pallet of supplies from the ship’s hold and swung it next to three others already loaded onto a flatbed truck. The driver threw a strap over the load, tied it down and climbed in the cab. Macready watched the truck drive up the pier toward one of the warehouses along the shore. Another truck took its place, but instead of a bare bed this one sported a full load of 55-gallon drums. The crane operator swung the hook into place, and the truck driver climbed onto the bed to thread a sling under a pallet and place the hook. The crane operator reeled in the cable until the hook pulled the sling tight and lifted the load off the truck. Macready counted two sets of four drums stacked on the pallet. His excitement mounted. Whatever the mine produced was now being loaded onto the ship.

Find out what’s going on Pete had said. They already knew about the mining operation from satellite photos. A look at the manifest for the drums now being loaded onto the ship probably would tell him what the mine was producing. But the only way to find out what it was being used for was to follow it. The idea was insane. Trip weighed his options. Skulk around the camp and learn what he could, or dog the mine output and find out its use. Either way he risked capture.

Mind made up, he quickened his pace and walked down the pier as if he belonged. Two of the four pallets on the truck had been loaded by the time Macready approached the truck. He climbed onto the flatbed alongside the driver and helped thread the wide canvas straps under another pallet. The driver looked at him curiously, but said nothing. They stood together and watched the load disappear into the ship’s hold. After several minutes, the hook rose out of the open hatch in the deck and swung back to them. They hooked up the last pallet, and as the driver signaled the crane operator, Macready stepped onto the pallet and grabbed onto the strap.

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Night Strike—Sherer

“They want me to double-check,” Macready told the driver in Russian as the crane lifted him in the air. “Go eat. Da svidaniya.”

“Poka,” the driver grunted. He pulled papers from his coat pocket and handed them to Macready. Then he jumped down, climbed into the cab and with a small wave, drove off without a backward glance.

Macready held on tight with his good arm as the pallet swung up into the air and over the side of the ship toward the forward deck. The crane operator expertly lowered the load through the open hatch into the dimly lit hold below. Three deckhands looked up as he descended with the load, mouths agape.

“What the fuck are you doing up there?” one of them muttered loudly in Russian. “This isn’t the circus.”

Macready knew three things about the Russian people: they were intensely distrustful of strangers; they only smiled in the presence of friends; and other than that little Bolshevik thing in 1917 they didn’t question authority. He crossed his fingers and hoped the latter was still true.

Staring at the man who’d spoken as the pallet lightly touched the metal deck, he barked in Russian, “I’m boarding your ship! Get your chief mate down here. Now!”