Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (readera ebook reader .TXT) 📗

jacket, Gore-Tex pants, and waterproof boots,Pavel Voronin strode down the ramp and around to one side of the big helicopter. As it climbed above one of the neighboringpeaks, the morning sun threw his shadow far across a dazzling white field.

Several men were already headed his way from out of a clump of dwarf black spruce and willow trees. Behind them, a handful of carefully camouflaged tents nestled among the trees.

Voronin nodded a greeting to their leader, a lean, wiry man carrying a scoped rifle, who trudged up to join him while therest moved on to start unloading cargo from the helicopter. “Zdravstvuyte, Sergei Bondarovich.”

“Welcome to Voron’ye Pole, Crow Field,” Bondarovich replied. Like the others on this small, covert operations team, he had served in Russia’s eliteSpetsnaz special operations forces. Before he left the military to work for Dmitri Grishin and North Star Capital, he hadattained the rank of major.

“Crow Field?”

Bondarovich shrugged. “We had to call this place something.”

“True,” Voronin agreed. Almost none of the hundreds of mountains, ridges, valleys, rivers, and streams inside the enormousArctic National Wildlife Refuge bore official names. The absence of identified places on maps made the wilderness seem evenmore alien and inaccessible—a trackless region the size of Scotland that was virtually untouched by humans or any of theirworks and words. But Bondarovich’s choice made sense since the little icebound stream bordering this concealed camp eventuallyjoined one of the rare exceptions to that rule, the Old Crow River. And, he thought, when one considered how North Star plannedto use this remote valley, calling it Crow Field was even more apt.

He moved off to the side, making way for the first drum roller as it trundled down the helicopter ramp and turned toward thecamp. A shallow trail of densely compacted snow and ice marked its passage across the tundra. Pleased by this first evidenceof the construction equipment’s effectiveness, he knelt and pushed at the trail with his gloves. It felt solid, unyieldingto the touch.

Voronin got back to his feet. “That should do the trick,” he commented.

“No doubt,” Bondarovich said. “Once you give us the go-ahead to start full-scale operations, we’ll start clearing the valley floor of any obstructions and compacting the snow layer to the required depth.”

“How long will you need?”

Bondarovich pulled at his chin. “Three days at a minimum,” he said. “But more likely four. Or even possibly five. We’re downto only about seven and a half hours of sunlight already, and we lose more than nine minutes every day. If we rig lights tokeep working after it gets dark, we could easily blow our cover here.”

Voronin nodded his understanding. There were no other settled places anywhere near this valley. Lights glowing here at night,in what should otherwise be unbroken darkness, would stand out like a sore thumb to any passing aircraft, triggering any numberof inconvenient questions. Currently, the local Canadian authorities in the little town of Fort McPherson believed the heavy-liftVertol 234 helicopter’s job was ferrying supplies north to an environmental group that was supposed to be studying the effectsof climate change on the Beaufort Sea coast. Nothing could be allowed to shake that conviction, especially with Grishin andPetrov’s high-risk, high-reward plan moving rapidly to fruition.

A low warning whistle from the edge of the camouflaged encampment interrupted his thoughts. He looked up in surprise and sawa lone figure with what looked like a hunting rifle slung over one shoulder slowly hiking down a snow-covered slope at thewestern edge of the valley.

“Ah,” Bondarovich said with a wry grin. “It seems our unwanted guest has decided to show himself at last.”

“What unwanted guest?” Voronin demanded.

“An American. A hermit fur trapper working this part of the refuge,” the ex-Spetsnaz major said calmly. “We’ve been awarethat he’s had us under observation for the past couple of days.”

Voronin’s mouth tightened in exasperation. “And you let him do this? Knowing the stakes involved?”

Bondarovich shrugged. “The American knows this territory like the back of his own hand, and he’s wary of strangers. I saw no point in spooking him unnecessarily.”

“Do you have any more information about him?” Voronin snapped.

The other man nodded. “I had Makeviĉ check him out,” he confirmed. Besides being an experienced bush pilot, Felix Makeviĉ had worked as a deep-cover GRU agent in Canada for years before switching his employment and loyalty to Grishin and NorthStar Capital. “His name is Jensen. Trig Jensen. And his only contact with the outside world is through bush pilots who flyinto his isolated camp from time to time. Not more often than every three or four months, if that.”

“Does he have a radio or a satellite phone?” Voronin pressed.

“Only a one-way radio that he uses to listen to gospel music from a religious station outside Fairbanks,” Bondarovich answered.“This fellow Jensen is a throwback, a man trying to live almost entirely on his own, outside the modern world.”

“For that I give thanks,” Voronin answered sardonically. With the ex-Spetsnaz major at his side, he moved out to meet thetrapper at the edge of the camp.

Up close, Jensen was a short, broad-shouldered man. His full brown beard was streaked with gray. Hard blue eyes peered outat them from under a fur-lined hood. He certainly didn’t waste any time with meaningless courtesies. “What the hell are youfolks doing up here?” he demanded. “With your goddamned, noisy helicopter and all? You’re going to scare away the game fortwenty miles or more. Damn it, this is a wildlife refuge. It’s totally off-limits to all of this techno bullshit.”

“I do apologize, Mr.—?” Voronin said smoothly, in utterly unaccented American English, pretending that he didn’t know theother man’s name.

“Jensen.”

Voronin nodded gratefully. “Mr. Jensen.” He spread his hand. “I sincerely regret any inconvenience or disruption of your work, but I assure you that our efforts here have official status.”

“Exactly what kind of official status?” the trapper growled, somehow managing to make the word “official” sound like profanity.

“We’re here as part of a federal climate change research project,” Voronin answered patiently. “And I can assure you thatany unintended degradation of this pristine landscape will