Robert Ludlum's The Arctic Event by Robert Ludlum & James Cobb

Author:Robert Ludlum & James Cobb [LUDLUM, ROBERT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446402125
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2007-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

Several hundred feet up the face of East Peak, on a ledge that overlooked both the glacier and the Misha crash site, the wide lens of a powerful spotting scope peered out through a crevice in an artfully camouflaged stone and snow windbreak. Two men lay behind the windbreak, sheltered by an ice-encrusted white tarp spread and supported over their heads. Even with the protection it was searingly cold on the exposed mountainside. Yet the two watchers stolidly endured, the one peering through the night-vision photomultiplier attached to the spotter scope, the other listening intently to the small radio receiver he had been issued.

At regular intervals the two men conducted a survival ritual, their free hands moving between their crotches and armpits and their faces, transferring body warmth to their exposed skin, keeping at bay the vicious, scarring frostbite.

Slithering on his belly like a lizard, a third parka-clad man crawled to join the two behind the windbreak.

“Anything to report, Corporal?”

“Nothing of importance, Lieutenant,” the man at the telescope grunted. “They have set up their camp inside the wreck. You can see lights through the windows of the rear compartment. Sometimes in the front as well.”

“Let me have a look,” Lieutenant Tomashenko said.

The Spetsnaz corporal rolled aside, making room for his platoon commander, and Tomashenko worked his way behind the night-vision scope, peering into the green and gray world it revealed. The bomber lay on the glacier below the observation post like a stranded whale. The faint wisp of illumination leaking from the downed plane’s astrodomes, all but undetectable to the naked eye, was magnified to a bright kelly glow by the photomultiplier. Intermittently the glow would pulse as a figure moved past the bubble windows.

“Apparently the anthrax spores are not loose inside of the airplane,” Tomashenko muttered. “That is something anyway.”

Tomashenko and his men had not ventured near the downed TU-4, nor had they even set foot on the glacier. The platoon’s orders were specific and stringent. Keep the crash site and the investigation team under long-range observation. Conceal their presence on the island. Avoid detection at all cost. Await the issuance of the alpha command by the point agent attached to the American party. Be positioned to intervene instantly on the transmission of said command. Be prepared to withdraw to the submarine should it not be issued.

Tomashenko started to ask the radio monitor if he had heard anything, but caught himself. If the signal had been heard, he would hear. Until that moment they must wait.

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