The headquarters compound sat inside a high-security fence just outside the main base. Elaborate electronic monitoring systems checked every inch of the chain-link enclosure. The gates looked as though they would stop anything short of an all-out assault by an M-1 Abrams main battle tank.

After running their ID cards through a computer search, the armed Marine guard waved them through the fortified gate. Ward swung the car into a parking space and the two walked briskly up the steps to the glass doors of an ugly concrete building. Another armed Marine, this one behind a bulletproof glass window, checked their IDs before he waved them through a metal detector and electronic door.

All this security only gave them access to the routine section of the SUBLANT building. The special intelligence section was upstairs, in the far corner of the windowless building. Another armed, grim-faced Marine checked their IDs once more, and then they faced a small device that scanned the retinas in their eyes before the heavy steel door swung open. They were now in the inner sanctum of the most successful military intelligence-gathering operation in the history of the United States.

Despite all the elaborate security measures…the armed Marines, the computer ID checks, the retinal scan, the double-locked doors…there wasn’t a lot of information to give to Beaman. The two men spent time poring over the latest satellite images of the Kola. Heavy cloud cover obscured the visible light photography, but the millimeter-wavelength radar images were quite clear and distinct. The land was rough and, except for the larger cities and towns, mostly uninhabited. Heavy birch and pine forests covered the rolling hills, deeply cut by river-fed fjords that dumped into the Barents Sea.

Even the pictures of Polyarnyy revealed little. Long piers littered with a few rusting hulks, heavy block buildings looking ramshackle after years of neglect. The gigantic, covered fitting-out shed jutting out over the harbor looked to be the only possible target of interest.

The briefing officer, a young lieutenant, was apologetic but not very helpful. His briefing package was embarrassingly empty.

Later, as Ward cranked the car and pulled away from the parking space, he apologized to the SEAL.

“Sorry, Bill,” Ward said. “Looks like we’re not going to have a lot of help on this one. Come on. Ellen has a mess of crabs ready for dinner, and I suspect the beer is cold and waiting for us by now.”

“Lead the way, Commander. I’m starved.”

Bill Beaman leaned back and sighed contentedly. “Damn, Jon. You got the life here.” The SEAL commander sat in an overstuffed chair in the family room of Ward’s comfortable Virginia Beach home. A blazing fire burned brightly in the fireplace, a warm counterpoint to the choppy, iron gray water of Lake Christopher that washed up at the foot of the lawn, and the dirty, threatening clouds overhead. “How did you luck into this place?”