“Okay, I’m with you,” Stern said, his voice a whisper after all the yelling he had been doing. “What do you have in mind?”

“You’ve done plenty of business in Eastern Europe, I’m sure.”

“When they tore down the Berlin Wall, they might just as well have given me the key to the bank.”

“Then I assume you have effective contacts who can help us learn all we need to know about this Russian Mafia?”

They could almost hear the moneyman smiling now on the far end of the telephone line.

“Smythe, you’re still a fruit, and your partner there is a dumb lard-ass, but I like the way you’re thinking.”

SEAL commander Bill Beaman huddled with his team under the scrub birch and jagged rock that sheltered them from the windblown snow. Martinelli and Hall were back from scouting the western perimeter of the Russian sub base. Their report had not given them any ideas for getting inside.

“Skipper, I don’t get it,” Hall said. “The Russians are usually sloppy with internal security. We should be able to stroll right in through the main gate at high noon without anyone seeing us. What’s with all this patrolling?”

Beaman bit off a chunk of energy bar and chewed. He downed it with a swig of water before he answered, “Yeah, that’s been bothering me, too. We shouldn’t be surprised. That’s why they sent us up here to this pleasure spot in the first place. Someone has a bee in his bonnet about security on this base all of a damn sudden. That confirms that there’s something important happening here. Otherwise, Ivan would be sound asleep in his nice warm guard shack over there and the only traffic would be your occasional reindeer herd.”

Chief Johnston nodded his agreement. “I sure as hell wish we had the blueprints of that place to study before we left. That would’ve made this a lot easier.”

Beaman didn’t say anything. He chewed on another chunk of the energy bar as his mind turned over and considered all the possibilities. The rest of the team stayed quiet as they hunkered down eating while they waited. They knew Beaman would come up with something. He always did.