Arctic Gold Read Free

buildings, sir, Jeff Rockman said. He used a laser pointer on the screen, indicating several tall warehouses and skyscrapers across the river on the south bank of the Neva. They must be blocking her signal.
Rubens picked up a microphone. Romeo. This is Shakespeare.
Copy, a voice said from an overhead speaker, harsh with static.
Where are you?
If you’re in the Art Room, I assume that a rhetorical question, sir, Akulinin replied. But he added, I’m driving southwest on Kosaya. Just passing Detskaya.
Rubens glared at the satellite map on the wall above him, which mirrored Akulinin description. Damn it, Lia should have clapped a hold on things until her partner could get into position
. Alekseev, their Russian contact, had been too anxious, however, too skittish, and Lia had told the Art Room that she was going in, whether she had backup or not.
We think Lia is inside the building. We’re not getting a clear signal. We need you in place to relay her transmissions and to watch for the opposition.
Yes, sir. Akulinin voice was momentarily garbled by static. Then, I should be there in five minutes.
Make it faster. I don’t like the way this one is playing out.
Operation Magpie had been running rough since its inception. A good intelligence op flowed, like a carefully orchestrated ballet. Every operative had a place and a task, a precise and meticulously choreographed passage of a ballet. Of course, many of the dancers didn’t even know they were performingthe local contacts, the informers, the marks, the opposition. The only way to keep them in the dance was for the operatives to stay in complete control of the situation
meaning each of them was where he or she was supposed to be when he or she was supposed to be there, leading the unwilling and hopefully clueless participants in the drama through their steps and turns without their ever knowing they were onstage.
Of course things were bound to go wrong from time to time, but good operators could ad lib until things were back in control, back in the flow.
This time around, Rubens thought, someone had lost the beat, and now the situation was fast slipping into chaos.
The ballet, he thought, was fast on its way to becoming a brawl.
What is the current position of Ghost Blue? Rubens demanded. He didn’t want to use that option, but
Ghost Blue was an F-22 Raptor deployed hours ago out of Lakenheath. Stealthier than the F-117 Nighthawk, which it was currently in the process of replacing, more reliable than the smaller, robotic F-47C UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), the F-22 had sophisticated avionics and onboard computer gear that allowed it to serve as an advance platform for ELINT, electronics intelligence, enabling it to pick up transmissions from the ground and relay them back to Fort Meade via the constellation of military comsats.
Ninety- six miles west- northwest of St. Petersburg, sir, James Higgins replied from another console. Over the Gulf of Finland, tucked in close by the Finnish- Russian border.
Send him in.
Yes, sir. Higgins hesitated. Uh, that requires special
I know what it requires. Send him in.
Yes, sir.
Ninety- six miles. Ghost Blue would be staying subsonic to maintain his stealth signature, so that was seven and a half minutes’ flight time or a bit less to a point where he would be able to intercept Magpie transmissions. Call it seven minutes.
Of course, this was a flagrant violation of Russian airspace and territorial sovereignty. At the moment, the Raptor was loitering unseen within Finnish airspace, also a violation of territorial boundaries, but not so deadly a sin as moving into Russian territory. St. Petersburg sat like a spider within a far- flung web of radar installations and surface- to- air missile sites, protecting dozens of high- value military installations in and around the city.
And if anyone could defeat U.S. stealth technology, it was the Russians. In 1999, Yugoslav forces had scored a kill, probably with Russian help, shooting down an F-117