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Page 393
large enough to wriggle inside, out of the wind. The board creaked loudly as he climbed in, but the guards didn't look in his direction, thank goodnesstoo much background noise. He fixed his attention on the dark shape of the diving platform. Goddamn, he thought, what the hell is going on? It was some time since Karmann had been ferried out there. There was no use whatever asking for information from the sailor on duty. Military cretins, Ryerson thought. Junior John Morgans.
Ryerson began to consider the idea of abandoning his watch. Who could know how long they would be out there? Was that a splash he heard over the hum of the generators? Had they thrown some key equipment overboard so that the dive couldn't take place? But that didn't make sense, if Karmann was going to dive with the teams. He decided to stay, at least a little longer. He'd give his eyeteeth for a cigarette, and of course that was impossible. No, it was stand and shiver until either Marina or Arkady Karmann came ashore. Then, if it was Marina, perhaps he could milk some real information from her.
At 31,000 feet the Starlifter Alpha Bravo shouldered its way through repeated ranks of thunderstorms. In the passenger bay of the big transport a team of sixteen Russian divers and half that many Canadians braced themselves in their seats fighting off airsickness caused by the extreme turbulence.
On the flight deck, Wing Commander Ian Ahlgren, Officer Commanding Number 7 Transport Wing, Air Command, flexed his aching fingers and made ready to take another turn at the Starlifter's controls. The autopilot had packed up well and properly thirty minutes out of Montreal and the wing commander and his first officer, Flight Lieutenant Mark Macpherson, had been alternating half hours battling the yoke and rudder pedals as the aircraft worked steadily northwest toward Site X.
It was 0250 hours on what had turned into one of the most spectacularly nasty nights ever to engulf the Northwest Ter-

 
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