Page 96 of Enemy Within

“Evacuated after the coup?” Adam stood in a loose circle with them, Faisal at his side, as his team spread out, poking through the station’s remains. Over Adam’s shoulder, Ethan watched Ruiz take a drink from one of the glasses, make a face, and spit the slushy tea back into the glass.

“If they were evacuated, then why are snowmobiles still here?” Sasha shook his head. “Russians do not leave equipment behind. Not like you Americans.”

Adam frowned and opened his mouth, but Wright’s voice stopped him. “Hey, L-T! Come check this out.”

They trooped over to Wright. A map of RusFuel drill and research locations hung on the wall, tacked at an angle. The map was in Russian, but they got the gist. “Looks like we’re… here.” Wright plopped his finger down on a yellow RusFuel symbol seemingly in the middle of endless white space marked “Arctic”. Sasha grunted and nodded when Wright looked to him for confirmation. “These stations will take us south. Right to where we want to go.” Wright dragged his finger along an arc of yellow RusFuel symbols, heading south into the Kara Sea, on the ice cap and stretching toward Novaya Zemlya. “All the way to Madigan.”

“I saw stations destroyed when I flew over. Burning.” Sasha set his jaw and glared. “Madigan destroyed many. These.” He pointed to the stations nearest to Madigan’s position, halfway up Novaya Zemlya and on the sea ice.

“Well, he didn’t get this one,” Wright snapped and turned his attention to Adam. He flicked a polite glance to Ethan and Jack. “We can use this station as a base for now. It’s close toHonolulu, we’ve got four walls and a roof, and wheels. Well, treads. Snowmobiles. We should recon to the south. Check out the next station.”

Adam nodded. “Sir?” He glanced from Ethan to Jack.

“Do it,” Jack spoke first. “Take your team out and report back what you find. We’ll remain here. Try and find some answers.”

Footsteps from down the hallway made them all spin on their heels. Sasha and Ethan had their rifles up to their shoulders a second before Adam and Wright. Around the main room, the rest of Adam’s team took up firing positions, each dropping for cover or flattening to walls as they watched and waited.

Sergey’s voice broke through the darkness. “I found the safe, and the weapons locker—” He turned the corner to the main room and stopped dead, his arms full of rifles and fingers stuffed with plastique explosives.

Sasha dropped his rifle first, almost exploding as he cursed and growled at the same time. Deep Russian rumbled from him as he snapped at Sergey, pointing his finger and shaking his head. Sergey’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead.

Scott chuckled.

Adam’s team slowly dropped their weapons, all of them glaring at the Russian president. “We head out in five,” Adam snapped. “Everyone be ready.”

THE TEAM SET OUT on snowmobiles, everyone taking one, except for Faisal, who sat behind Adam and pressed his face between Adam’s shoulder blades for the ride. They left enough snowmobiles for Ethan and the others to follow later.

Adam’s GPS pinged twenty minutes after they set out. He called the team to a halt and sent Coleman, Park, and Kobayashi in to check it out on foot. Five minutes later, Coleman radioed back the all-clear signal and they came in on the snowmobiles.

It looked almost the same as the last station, except bigger. The central building was larger. Another grid of shipping containers sat in the snow and ice, with heavy drifts built up against the north and west sides. Red flags flapped in the wind, staking out the perimeter and the walkways, and, at this station, down the length of a smooth ice runway. At one end of the runway, a small Russian Beriev propeller plane rested on skis. The plane had spent its whole life in the Arctic.

Behind the main station, a hole had been blown in the ice cap, a perfect circle down to the ocean. The ice cap was thinner by this station; only thirty feet or so, at best guess, looking down the crevasses they passed.

A winch hung off a steel girder, drilled into the ice cap next to the blast hole, and a thick suspension cable ran from the winch to a commercial mini-submarine, a technical submersible designed for underwater drill operations. The sub, built for maybe four people, was staked to the ice and snow by a thick, frost-crusted chain.

There was no movement. No sound. No signs of life.

They crept in slowly, parking the snowmobiles across the runway and slipping in over the smooth ice and windblown snow. Adam sent Coleman and his team around the back and put Wright out by the runway, watching the horizon and keeping his eyes peeled for any unwanted visitors. Together, he, Faisal, Doc, and Ruiz breached the main building at the same time, running up the stairs and throwing open the doors, shouting at the top of their lungs for anyone inside to drop to the ground.

No one answered. The station, like the previous one, was abandoned.

Except, Adam spotted a half-full mug on the edge of a table. Coffee gently sloshed up the sides of the mug, like it had just been set down.

He caught Faisal’s gaze.

“SOMEONE IS HERE. WE’RE going to find them.” Adam briefed his team in the main room, speaking softly. “Wright, is the perimeter set?”

Over the radio, Wright answered back. “Just finished, L-T. Lasers are up and running.” Static cluttered his words.

“Good.” Invisible, anyone crossing Wright’s perimeter wouldn’t even know they had tripped the laser. “Anything going in or out, we’ll know.”

“What’s the plan, L-T?” Coleman set his jaw, staring with narrowed eyes at Adam.

“We need to find out who’s here. If it’s one of Madigan’s men, we grab him. Get every single thing out of him. If it’s a RusFuel guy, we figure out what he knows. What he’s seen. And why he’s hiding. Whose side he’s on.”

He sketched out a basic map on a piece of paper, the layout of the station, the outlying buildings, the shipping containers, the ice hole behind them, and the runway. “Coleman, take your team and search the shipping containers and the drill hole. What’s in there? What do they have on-site? Ruiz, Doc, you two search the generators, the antennae farm, and the snowmobiles. Any footprints? Anything jacked with the equipment? Check everything over. Wright, you check the plane. See if anyone is hiding in there.”

“Roger that, L-T.”