“Now do I request permission to come aboard?” Marko Ramius asked.
” ‘Gator?”
“All systems aligned and checked for dive. We are rigged for dive,” the navigator reported. Mancuso turned automatically to check the status boards.
“Very well. Dive. Make your depth one hundred feet, course zero-seven-one, one-third.” He turned. “Welcome aboard, Captain.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Ramius wrapped Mancuso in a ferocious bear-hug and kissed him on the cheek. Next he slipped off the backpack he was wearing. “Can we talk?”
“Come on forward.”
“First time I come aboard your submarine,” Ramius observed. A moment later a head poked out of the sonar room.
“Captain Ramius! I thought I recognized your voice!” Jones looked at Mancuso. “Beg pardon, sir. We just got a contact, bearing zero-eight-one. Sounds like a merchant. Single screw, slow-speed diesels driving it. Probably a ways off. Being reported to the ODD now, sir.”
“Thanks, Jonesy.” Mancuso took Ramius into his stateroom and closed the door.
“What the hell was that?” a young sonarman asked Jones a moment later.
“We just got some company.”
“Didn’t he have an accent, sort of?”
“Something like that.” Jones pointed to the sonar display. “That contact has an accent, too. Let’s see how fast you can decide what kinda merchie he is,”
It was dangerous, but all life was dangerous, the Archer thought. The Soviet-Afghan border here was a snow-fed river that snaked through gorges it had carved through the mountains. The border was also heavily guarded. It helped that his men were all dressed in Soviet-style uniforms. The Russians have long put their soldiers in simple but warm winter gear. Those they had on were mainly white to suit the snowy background, with just enough stripes and spots to break up their outline. Here they had to be patient. The Archer lay athwart a ridge, using Russian-issue binoculars to sweep the terrain while his men rested a few meters behind and below him. He might have gotten a local guerrilla band to provide help, but he’d come too far to risk that. Some of the northern tribes had been co-opted by the Russians, or at least that was what he’d been told. True or not, he was running enough risks.
There was a Russian guard post atop the mountain to his left, six kilometers away. A large one, perhaps a full platoon lived there, and those KGB soldiers were responsible for patrolling this sector. The border itself was covered with a fence and minefields. The Russians loved their minefields . . . but the ground was frozen solid, and Soviet mines often didn’t work well in frozen ground, although occasionally they’d set themselves off when the frost heaved around them.
He’d chosen the spot with care. The border here looked virtually impassable—on a map. Smugglers had used it for centuries, however. Once across the river, there was a snaky path formed by centuries of snowmelt. Steep, and slippery, it was also a mini-canyon hidden from any view except direct overhead. If Russians guarded it, of course, it would be a deathtrap. That would be Allah’s will, he told himself, and consigned himself to destiny. It was time.
He saw the flashes first. Ten men with a heavy machine gun and one of his precious mortars. A few yellow tracer streaks cut across the border into the Russian base camp. As he watched, a few of the bullets caromed off the rocks, tracing erratic paths in the velvet sky. Then the Russians started returning fire. The sound reached them soon after that. He hoped that his men would get away as he turned and waved his group forward.
They ran down the forward slope of the mountain, heedless of safety. The only good news was that winds had swept the snow off the rocks, making for decent footing. The Archer led them down toward the river. Amazingly enough, it was not frozen, its path too steep for the water to stop, even in subzero temperatures. There was the wire!
A young man with a two-handed pair of cutters made a path, and again the Archer led them through. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and he went more slowly now, looking at the ground for the telltale humps that indicated mines in the frozen ground. He didn’t need to tell those behind him to stay in single file and walk on rocks wherever possible. Off to the left flares now decorated the sky, but the firing had died down somewhat.
It took over an hour, but he got all of his men across and into the smugglers’ trail. Two men would stay behind, each on a hilltop overlooking the wire. They watched the amateur sapper who’d cut the wire make repairs to conceal their entry. Then he, too, faded into the darkness.
The Archer didn’t stop until dawn. They were on schedule as they all paused a few hours for rest and food. All had gone well, his officers told him, better than they had hoped.
The stopover in Shannon was a brief one, just long enough to refuel and take aboard a Soviet pilot whose job it was to talk them through the Russian air-traffic-control system. Jack awoke on landing and thought about stretching his legs, but decided that the duty-free shops could wait until the return leg. The Russian took his place in the cockpit jump seat, and 86971 started rolling again.
It was night now. The pilot was in a loquacious mood tonight, announcing their next landfall at Wallasey. All of Europe, he said, was enjoying clear, cold weather, and Jack watched the orange-yellow city lights of England slide beneath them. Tension on the aircraft increased—or perhaps anticipation was a better word, he thought, as he listened to the pitch of the voices around him increase somewhat, though their volume dropped. You couldn’t fly toward the Soviet Union without becoming a little conspiratorial. Soon all the conversations were in raspy whispers. Jack smiled thinly at the plastic windows, and his reflection asked what was so damned funny. Water appeared below them again as they flew across the North Sea toward Denmark.
The Baltic came next. You could tell where East and West met. To the south, the West German cities were all gaily lit, each surrounded by a warm glow of light. Not so on the eastern side of the wire-minefield barrier. Everyone aboard noticed the difference, and conversations grew quieter still.
The aircraft was following air route G-24; the navigator in front had the Jeppesen chart partially unfolded on his table. Another difference between East and West was the dearth of flight routes in the former. Well, he told himself, not many Pipers and Cessnas here—of course, there was that one Cessna . . .
“Coming up on a turn. We’ll be coming to new heading zero-seven-eight, and entering Soviet control.”
“Right,” the pilot—”aircraft commander”—responded after a moment. He was tired. It had been a long day’s flying. They were already at Flight Level 381—38,100 feet, or 11,600 meters as the Soviets preferred to call it. The pilot didn’t like meters, even though his instruments were calibrated both ways. After executing the turn, they flew for another sixty miles before crossing the Soviet border at Ventspils.
“We’re heeere,” somebody said a few feet from Ryan. From the air, at night, Soviet territory made East Germany look like New Orleans at Mardi Gras. He remembered night satellite shots. It was so easy to pick out the camps of the GULAG. They were the only lighted squares in the whole country . . . what a dreary place that only the prisons are well lighted . . .
The pilot marked the entry only as another benchmark. Eighty-five more minutes, given the wind conditions. The Soviet air-traffic-control system along this routing—called G-3 now—was the only one in the country that spoke English. They didn’t really need the Soviet officer to complete the mission—he was an air-force intelligence officer, of course— but if something went wrong, things might be different. The Russians liked the idea of positive control. The orders he got now for course and altitude were far more exact than those given in American air space, as though he didn’t know what to do unless some jerk-off on the ground told him. Of course there was an element of humor to it. The pilot was Colonel Paul von Eich. His family had come to America from Prussia a hundred years before, but none of them had been able to part with the “von” that had once been so important to family status. Some of his ancestors had fought down there, he reflected, on the flat, snow-covered Russian ground. Certainly a few more recent relatives had. Probably a few lay buried there while he whizzed overhead at six hundred miles per hour. He wondered vaguely what they’d think of his job while his pale blue eyes scanned the sky for the lights of other aircraft.
Like most passengers, Ryan judged his height above the ground by what he could see, but the dark Soviet countryside denied him that. He knew they were close when the aircraft commenced a wide turn to the left. He heard the mechanical whine as the flaps went down and noted the reduced engine noise. Soon he could just pick out individual trees, racing by. The pilot’s voice came on, telling smokers to put them out, and that it was time for seat belts again. Five minutes later they returned to ground level again at Sheremetyevo Airport. Despite the fact that airports all over the world look exactly alike, Ryan could be sure of this one—the taxiways were the bumpiest anywhere.