AIDATA ISLAND, GULF OF FINLAND
Frank Leighton had called the number from his satellite phone two times more than he probably should have. Nothing was making sense. He was completely isolated. He had had no human confirmation of his assignment at all and that made him even less comfortable than he already was about what he was preparing to do. If his handler failed to make contact, he would have no choice but to assume the worst and put the final plan into action. He would get the device as close as he could to his target, set the timer and run like hell. God, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Once again he heard the words as if they had just been spoken to him, “The protocol is infallible. The protocol will never be wrong.” Frank Leighton had been trained to follow through on his orders and that was exactly what he was going to have to do. Still, if he could just get some sort of confirmation…
There was no choice but to slam the iron door back down on his misgivings and focus his energy on the task at hand. According to his initial readings, the device was still stable even after all these years. Good, that only helped to make his job that much easier. He didn’t want this to turn into a suicide mission.
Leighton used nothing more than the light from a filtered headlamp to illuminate the rocks he was clearing to create a makeshift path down to the beach. Once the slope was clear, he unpacked what could best be described as a child’s wagon on steroids. The lightweight, brushed aluminum cart boasted knobby rubber tires attached to a sophisticated air shock suspension system. Frank Leighton wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
He loaded the wagon with stones, equivalent in weight to the deadly payload he knew he would soon have to transport, and maneuvered it down to the beach where his dinghy was moored. He went back and forth several times, memorizing the terrain, paying close attention to every potential pitfall until he knew it well enough to make the trip with his eyes closed.
His task complete, he disassembled the wagon, covered over its tracks and rowed the dilapidated dinghy back out to the rusting fishing trawler. On board, he brewed a small pot of strong Finnish coffee and prepared a meal of pea soup, rye bread, herring, and pickled cucumbers. His training had taught him that food was a cover just as important as being able to speak the local language. While it might seem strange to the uninitiated, a good operative knew that mankind still relied on its sense of smell, though not nearly as much as other senses. Many Special Forces soldiers in Vietnam were convinced that their ability to elude detection came in part only after they began eating, and thereby smelling, like their enemy. The additional benefit of eating like a local was that should the galley of the trawler ever be searched, it would yield nothing out of the ordinary.
He took his meal to the wheelhouse and listened to the marine radio chatter of lonely Finnish and Russian fishermen plying the cold Baltic Sea. Several men spoke of an approaching storm, and Leighton felt a chill as a gust of wind found its way through a poorly insulated gap between two of the windows. He was glad he didn’t have to be out there tonight, but at the same time, he dreaded how soon he would have to move. He decided to try to make contact one more time.