Arctic Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

closer to the main door. Emerging from the warren, she crept over to the southeastern wall of the warehouse, keeping to the shadows. She could see one of the bad guys now, twenty feet away, standing with his back to the open door. He was visible to her in profile, holding an AKM in his right hand, gesticulating with the left as he shouted something to the others. Gdeh ona? Skarei! Skarei!
She studied him carefully. He had a distinctive face, scarred and weathered, with a cruel mouth revealing blackened teeth when he shouted.
A garbage can sat just this side of the open door, next to a clutter of janitorial toolsa push broom, a rusty bucket and a mop, a pile of filthy rags. She thought she’d noticed the can when she’d peeked in through the fiber- optic surveillance device.
The garbage can was overflowing with trash, its round, handled lid perched atop the pile precariously. She edged along the wall, moving closer.
Ilya
? she called softly, giving the name its correct pronunciation, with the accent on the second syllable. Ilya, do you copy?
I hear you.
I’m close to the main door on the southeastern wall. Is anyone outside?
Yeah. Two goons with AK-74s. They’re standing to either side, their backs to the wall.
Can you take them?
She heard a long pause as he studied the situation. Yeah. They’re about fifty yards away.
Don’t do anything until I tell you to.
You’re the boss.
Yeah. I’m the boss. And if I get out of this alive, Im going to have a hell of a time explaining to my boss
.
Rising from her crouch, she moved toward the garbage can.
Ghost Blue
Two miles north of Ostrov Kotlin
0034 hours
Major Richard K. Delallo eased back on the Raptor throttle, bringing the powerful twin Pratt & Whitney F-119-PW-100 thrust vectoring turbofans back to a purring near idle. According to his navigational display, he’d just passed the island of Kotlin, with its naval base at Kronshtadt, to his right. At fifty thousand feet, dense fog carpeted the waters of the Finland Gulf beneath him. He could just make out the diffuse glow of city lights beneath the fog ahead, eerily peaceful and quiet. Overhead, auroras flamed and shifted like pale, utterly silent ghosts.
His radio and radar receivers, however, showed a much busier picture. Pulkovo Airport was loudest, with traffic control radars banging away to the southeast, but he could distinguish the thready pulse of military search radars as well.
Nearest and most worrying was the big Kronshtadt
SAM-2 site on Kotlin, just eleven miles away, but there were several naval bases in and around St. Petersburg itself, all on the lookout for exactly this sort of incursion.
No one was targeting him, though, and none of the signals suggested they’d picked up Delallo Raptor. The F-22 actual radar cross section was highly classified but was widely assumed to be somewhat smaller than that of a sparrow.
He put the Raptor into a gentle, banking turn right and switched his receivers to the highly classified frequencies used by NSA operatives on the ground.
A man voice came through. about fifty yards away.
Don’t do anything until I tell you to. That was a different voice, a woman voice.
You’re the boss.
Delallo opened the com feed channel to Fort Meade.
DeFrancesa
Operation Magpie
Waterfront, St. Petersburg
0034 hours
Lia biggest advantage at the moment was that damned light the bad guys were waving around. It was a handheld spotlight with a pistol grip, and a civilian with an AKM slung over his shoulder was using it to try to penetrate the shadows deeper inside the warehouse. Any dark adaptation these people had possessed when they’d entered the building had been shot to hell by now. Lia was still in deep shadow in her combat blacks, though she would have to emerge into the glare of the overhead lights to reach the door.
The two Russians were less than ten feet away now,
their backs to her. Beyond, she saw Alekseev and two more Russians. She could hear the shouts and crashes of yet more Russians