Arctic Gold by Stephen Coonts

the
Raptor throttles full forward, angling his thrust to increase his rate of climb.
Behind and below, the missiles began angling toward their high- flying target.
The question for tomorrow, Dick Delallo thought, was how did the Russians see this stealth aircraft? The pressing question of the moment, however, was how to avoid being shot down.
The Art Room
NSA Headquarters
Fort Meade, Maryland
1658 hours EDT
Charlie Dean walked past an Army sentry at the door and stepped at last into the Art Room, his glance taking in the dozens of technicians and communications specialists huddled over consoles around the room, the numerous monitors, and the huge central display on the back wall. Currently the main display showed a satellite map of a large city, but he couldn’t tell, offhand, which city it was. A river snaked in from the right, then split to flow to either side of a large triangular island. Major highways were highlighted with yellow or white lines.
Two time readouts glowed in the upper right corner. It was 1658 hours Eastern Daylight Time; wherever Lia was at the moment, it was just before one in the morning.
Radio chatter sounded from speakers overhead.
Haunted House, Haunted House, Ghost Blue. Oscar Sierra, repeat, Oscar Sierra. They have a lock.
Copy that, Ghost Blue.
William Rubens looked up as Charlie Dean walked in. They’re okay, he told Dean without preamble. She
okay.
Good to hear it, Dean replied, keeping his voice neutral.
Rubens knew that he and Lia were close, but neither of them wished to say so aloud.
Dean was afraid that someday someone higher up the bureaucratic chain of command would declare that his and Lia relationship was somehow unprofessional. In the modern, Orwellian world, the illogical, whimsical boundaries of political and sexual correctness could be redrawn overnight.
Jeff said they were in a shoot- out?
Rubens nodded. Things went bad. We think our contact was a dangle.
The word was tradecraft slang for someone deliberately exposed to a hostile intelligence service in order to lure that service agents into a trap or a compromising position.
For?
Not now, Dean, Rubens said, his voice brusque. We’ve still got a situation.
Dean almost asked if the situation involved Lia but managed not to say anything. He knew Rubens well enough to know the Deputy Director would fill him in whenand ifhe needed to know.
Launch! Launch, an anonymous voice said over the speaker. Dean could hear the stress behind the words. I’ve got three missiles coming up, probably Guidelines. Maneuvering
Dean understood Rubens’ curtness better now. If an NSA assetin this instance meaning an aircraft somewhere over the Gulf of Finland off of St. Petersburgwas being shot at, that was a serious situation indeed. The bad old days of the Cold War were long gone, but that didn’t mean there weren’t occasional problems with America new ally the Russian Federation. In the global arena, more often than not, Russia still reverted to her old role as America adversary. In fact, in some ways it was tougher now.
In the Cold War, at least, you knew the Russians were the enemy. Nowadays, they were nominal allies in the War on Terror, as long as their cooperation didn’t interfere with their own agenda, such as dominance of the former Soviet republics, or the struggle for influence in the Middle East, or the developing international crisis in the Arctic
Jeff Rockman was looking up at the big screen. Dean watched him a moment, then walked over to the coffee mess tucked away against one wall. He returned a moment later with two cups full. He set one on Rockman workstation desk.
Hey, Charlie. Thanks.
Who shooting at whom? Dean asked, looking up at the display. It was, at the moment, singularly unhelpful, showing a swath of satellite- revealed sea and land from Estonia to Finland. A white icon labeled Akulinin and DeFrancesca was blinking on the waterfront in St. Petersburg. Another, marked Ghost Blue, was drifting slowly north a few miles off