Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

Flynn glanced at his watch one last time. He sighed. “Okay, then. I guess that’s it. But it sure sucks to have to go withoutmy NCO or my radioman.”

“Uh, Nick?” Van Horn said suddenly, turning him back around to face the road from Kaktovik. She pointed at a figure trottingtoward them from out of the darkness. “Isn’t that Sergeant Takirak?”

His eyes widened in relief. “Yeah, it is.” Without thinking, he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Tell Major Ingalls we’rego for takeoff as soon as Andy’s had time to get into his parachute harness and check over his weapons and equipment.”

With a wry glint in her eye, Van Horn nodded and hurried away.

Flynn moved out to meet Takirak. The other man had a jagged cut across his forehead, and he was pale and drawn.

“Jesus Christ, Andy!” Flynn exclaimed. “What happened to you? And where’s M-Squared?”

“Mitchell happened to me,” the National Guard sergeant said angrily. “I found him okay, but when I briefed him on the mission,that son of a bitch said he wouldn’t go. He said it was nuts and he hadn’t signed up to kill himself.”

Flynn frowned. It figured that Mitchell would be the one man to react so strongly. The red-headed airman probably had a more vivid imagination than anyone else on the team—certainly vivid enough to see all the ways this night drop and planned trek through the wilderness could go very badly wrong. “Then what?”

“I told him I didn’t give a crap about what he thought,” Takirak said tightly. “And that he was going whether he liked itor not. And that’s when the bastard cold-cocked me with a loose board and took off.” He reached up, gingerly felt the cuton his forehead, and winced. “By the time I got back to my feet, Mitchell was long gone.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m reallysorry I let him jump me like that, Captain. I never saw it coming.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Andy,” Flynn assured him. He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have expected M-Squared to pull something like that,either.” For one thing, assault and desertion seemed wildly out of character for the usually happy-go-lucky young airman.Then again, he thought somberly, every man has his own breaking point.

“Let me go back into town and dig the son of a bitch out,” Takirak pleaded. “There aren’t many places he can hide.”

Flynn shook his head. “Not happening. We don’t have time for a manhunt, even if I wanted to drag Mitchell along under arrest.”He pointed at the big Super Hercules with its six-bladed propellers already spinning. “See?”

“Yes, sir,” Takirak agreed flatly. “I see.” He grimaced. “About Mitchell’s radio, Captain, the PRC-162?”

Flynn nodded. “That’s a problem. With the battery, the darned thing adds another thirteen pounds to our load. I hate to dumpit on one of the other men, especially since we’re all going to be toting extra weight. But we sure as shit are going to needcommunications, so—”

“I’ll carry it, sir,” Takirak said gruffly. “I took the radio operator’s course a while back, and, anyway, it’s my fault thatwe’re down a man. So if anyone’s going to haul the extra weight, it should be me.”

Flynn nodded, understanding the older man’s need to prove himself. Letting himself get jumped by a junior enlisted man was the first crack in Takirak’s hard-won aura of invincibility. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time, right at the start of a highly risky mission. “Okay, Andy,” he said briskly. “You’ve got the radio.”

Aboard the Converted SSBN BS-64 Podmoskovye, in the Beaufort Sea

That Same Time

“Come up slowly to one hundred meters,” Captain First Rank Mikhail Nakhimov ordered quietly.

“Coming up to one hundred meters, aye, sir,” his diving officer intoned. He pushed controls. With a faint hiss, compressedair pushed water out of Podmoskovye’s ballast tanks. Gently, with constant adjustments to maintain an even trim, the eighteen-thousand-ton nuclear submarineedged upward toward the ice-covered surface.

“Holding at one hundred meters,” the diving officer reported at last.

Nakhimov nodded. Now came the hard part. Or rather, the dangerous part. Side-scan sonar, temperature, and pressure detectorsall strongly suggested they had found a comparatively thin section of the polar ice cap—one where the ice was somewhere betweenone and two meters thick. But even the thinnest-seeming stretch of ice could hold hidden hazards, jagged-edged ridges, orstalactites pushed down by pressure from above . . . massive spears of ice that could shear open a submarine’s pressure hullon impact. “Activate our video cameras and turn on all the outer lights,” he said.

More officers around the control room obeyed. Screens brightened, showing a murky, half-lit view of the underside of the ice cap above. Nakhimov ran his gaze over each screen, closely studying the images they showed. He glanced at his executive officer. “Well, Maxim? What do you think?”

“It looks good,” the other man replied. He tapped one of the screens. “There are some pressure ridges off our starboard bow,but they’re well away from us.” He glanced at the diving officer. “If Senior Lieutenant Yalinsky can take us up straight,instead of weaving like a drunken whore, we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Anatoly Yalinsky smiled self-consciously. “I should be able to manage that, sir.”

Nakhimov nodded. “Very well.” He reached out and gripped the railing around the plot table. Other officers and sailors aroundthe control room did the same with other holds. “Sail planes to vertical,” he ordered. On camera, they saw the huge, winglikehydroplanes mounted on Podmoskovye’s sail swivel upward and lock in a vertical position. He signaled Yalinsky with a nod. “Surface, but like a genteel lady,”he ordered. “Not like Maxim’s drunken whore.” That drew the laughs he’d hoped for.

More air hissed into their ballast tanks, giving the submarine positive buoyancy. Gradually, it rose, covering the remainingdistance between the top of the sail and the underside of the ice cap in about twenty seconds. There was a sudden, sharp littlejolt. Podmoskovye stopped dead, now pinned against the ice above her. “Increase buoyancy,” Nakhimov said calmly.

Still more air flooded the tanks, expelling water. Steadily, the pressure against the ice