Arctic Gold by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online Page B

You stop, please, the man said in thickly accented English. Passports.
Akulinin and Lia both handed their passports over.
The guard grunted as he looked at the stamps, then added, Your other papers. ID. All.
When these were produced, the guard went through them with microscopic attention while the other watched the two with a sullen expression.
Your papers not in order, the first said after an interminable examination.
Why? Akulinin said, putting on his best naIove- American expression of surprise and confusion. What the matter?
Our papers were perfectly in order before, Lia said. What the hell is going on?
Papers not in order, the Russian said, his broad Slavic features betraying no emotion. You come with us.
We’re alerting Mercutio, Rockman voice said in Akulinin ear and presumably in Lia as well. Stall them.
Stall them, Akulinin thought. Right. Maybe I should do a little soft- shoe?
MercutioRomeo best friend in Romeo and Juliet
was running Magpie support operation in St. Petersburg, the stage crew behind the scenes who let Lia and Akulinin play their roles. The support team was on board the cruise ship, which was serving as a kind of impromptu safe house for the op.
Of course, in the original Romeo and Juliet
Mercutio had been killed in a duel.
Akulinin hoped to hell it wasn’t going to come to that.
Ghost Blue
Twelve miles west of St. Petersburg
0058 hours
Major Dellalo pushed the throttle forward as he brought the stick back, sending the F-22 higher and yet higher into the thin, cold air. The SA-2 Guideline had a range of about thirty miles and a ceiling of sixty thousand feet. Thirty miles from the SA-2 site on the western end of Kotlin Island would reach to the far end of St. Petersburg to the east and halfway back to the Finnish border to the west.
His F-22 had two advantages if the Russians could actually see his plane and target itspeed and altitude. The top speed of the F-22 Raptor was classified, of course, but his baby could crowd Mach 2.5 and have knots to spare. Her service ceiling was sixty- five thousand feet.
It should be possible to get above a Guideline reach, and while he couldn’t outrun onethe SA-2 had a velocity of about Mach 3the speed of his Raptor would
make it nearly impossible to catch if the missile was launched from a stern position.
His major disadvantage at the moment was the fact that Kotlin Island, with its SAM base, lay only eight miles ahead, and perfectly blocked his route back to international airspace out over the Baltic Sea. If they wanted to, they would get at least one clear shot at him.
How had they spotted him? His radar screen showed a number of targets in the immediate vicinity, all at lower altitudes. Most of them were civilian aircraft, but a few had the characteristic signatures of Russian military aircraft. A JOINTSTAR E-3 Sentry AWACS over the North Sea was feeding him data on possible threats. There were two radar returns that worried him in particular streaking in over Vikulova, from the south. The Sentry was identifying them as MiG-31s.
His threat receiver lit up again, and this time it stayed lit and he heard a high- pitched warble in his ears, which meant that the threat radar had switched to a high PRF tracking mode. So the Russians did see him, after all.
Haunted House, Haunted House, Ghost Blue, he called. Oscar Sierra, repeat, Oscar Sierra. They have a lock.
Copy that, Ghost Blue.
He suppressed a momentary flash of anger. It would be nice if Haunted House, the radio handle for the op controllers at Fort Meade, had something constructive
to say.
The warning tone wailed away incessantly. A launch, a dim flash of light in the gloom immediately below
By lowering a wing he could see the exhaust plume of the missile climbing through the fog, its exhaust illuminating the white haze below. A second missile rose close behind the first, followed by a third.
He was still climbing, passing through fifty- four thousand feet.
It was time to go balls to the wall. He slammed