Arctic Gold by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page A

backseat. Determined to maintain a professional bearing, he kept his eyes rigidly on the road, not even checking the rearview mirror.
Professional or not, though, nothing said he couldn’t try to imagine
the scene at his back. Lia was an extremely attractive young woman.
Soon Kozhevennaya came to a T at Bolhoy Prospekt, and Akulinin turned left, then began hunting for the entrance to a parking lot. The cruise ship terminal was just ahead. The atmosphere of their surroundings, he noticed, had changed dramatically, clean, well kept, well lit, and open, where only a few blocks away the decrepit warehouses and abandoned machine shops brooded over fog- shrouded darkness.
St. Petersburg, Akulinin knew, depended these days upon making a good impression on tourists for its economic survival.
Pulling the CitroICn into an empty space in the parking lot, Akulinin took a moment to peel off his worker coveralls. These went on the floor under the passenger side seat, leaving him in a suitably tacky short- sleeved shirt that fairly shouted American tourist. The MP5K, along with Lia SOCOM pistol, went under the seat. Pulling a small stack of papers and booklets from the glove box, he stepped out of the car. Lia was transformed, wearing a pale blouse displaying significant cleavage over a short black skirt and heels, with a sweater over her shoulders to keep off the night chill.
Gallantly he held out his elbow. It been a lovely evening out on the town, my dear. Shall we?
I don’t go out with Romeos, she told him, smiling. At least not with any
old Romeo.
Together, they started for the building entrance that would take them through to the cruise ship.
Ghost Blue
Ten miles west of St. Petersburg
0056 hours
Dick Delallo was holding his F-22 in a gentle right turn above the Gulf of Finland when the threat receiver lit up and the warning tone sounded over his headset.
Haunted House, Ghost Blue, he called. The Oscar Sierra light is lit. Do you copy?
Ghost Blue, Haunted House, came over his headset. Copy. You are clear to get out of Dodge. Over.
Ah roger that. He was already tightening his turn, trying to identify the source of the threat. On my way back to the barn.
Oscar Sierra was a pilot inside joke, using the phonetic alphabet letters for O and S
to represent the words oh, shit. It meant someone was painting him with a target acquisition radar and that a missile launch could be imminent.
The signal from the threat radar, though, was weak and intermittent. The frequency suggested that he’d been briefly painted by the acquisition radar code- named Spoon Rest by NATO, which meant they were trying to target him with an SA-2 Guideline.
Guideline was the NATO reporting name for the Lavochkin OKB S-75 surface- to- air missileancient by the standards of modern military technology but still deadly. Gary Powers’ U-2 had been downed over Sverdlovsk in 1960 by a barrage of fourteen SA-2 missiles, a barrage that had also managed to take out a MiG-19 trying for an intercept.
Just because Delallo was being painted didn’t mean the Russian radar operator could see him. In fact, the operator probably didn’t. The whole point of stealth technology was to prevent the energy of the threat radar from
returning to the emitting dish, rendering it blind. Still, the pucker factor for Major Dick Delallo was rising.
Operation Magpie
Waterfront, St. Petersburg
0058 hours
Akulinin and Lia walked up a low concrete ramp toward the entrance to the cruise ship wharf. The ship, the North Star Line St. Petersburg 2,
was tied up on the pier just beyond the high chain- link security fence, her lights ablaze stem to stern, like beacons promising refuge and safety.
To get to that promise, they needed to go through the security checkpoint and customs. A pair of Russian MVD police eyed them suspiciously as they approached.
Good evening! Akulinin called in his most jovial dumb tourist voice. Some fog out tonight, huh?
One of the men pointed his weapon, an AKM, at Akulinin chest.