Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

  By the time the middle of the line reached the top of an escarpment, Peng had moved toward the front of the line. He stopped and looked back at the flat, barren sea. The submarine was gone. He imagined it moving farther from shore to wait for their triumphal return.

  Before starting off again, he took a minute to examine the terrain more closely for the first time. Hills and slopes without definite vegetation lay wherever he looked. In places, a tinge of color might suggest lichen or low-growing plants. He could just make out the whistle of wind moving over the stark ground and rocks, though the main sound was of boots pushing gravel and grit together as his men passed.

  He turned and moved out with the line, hustling a little faster to be back at the forefront by the time they reached the next ridgeline.

  The lead man in the three-hundred-yard single file was Amaruq. He was not pleased. He had not known why they had returned to the point where he had met the Yupik arriving on Ellesmere. Once there, the surfacing of the submarine and the subsequent transfer of sixty armed soldiers ashore were more than he had bargained for.

  Money was money, and he felt no loyalty to Canada or the United States. Despite those nations’ efforts in recent years to atone for past behavior, his people’s memories of injustices were chiseled in stone. But this was different. It was bad enough when he was picked up by a submarine and taken to Ellesmere Island. Then he found the people to be Chinese (he recognized the language), instead of Russian as he had suspected, though it was odd to hear them speak Russian to the Yupik. Why they were here, in the land of his ancestors, did not bode well for his people.

  He would abandon them as soon as he could and leave Ellesmere. But how? Find a passing ship to hitchhike on? Flights were rare and only embarked from a few settlements. Grise Fiord was the closest, but it was too small for him to remain anonymous and too close to whatever was happening on Ellesmere. Even Resolute was a risk. Arctic Bay to the east had been his location when first contacted. He was known there, and the settlement had a population of more than nine hundred, where he could blend in easier. Better, he decided, was to go much farther south and west to Kugluktuk with its larger population. He would then be closer to his family’s territory, though he hadn’t been there for many years. The trip would be long and arduous, but he would first go south to Taloyoak, an Inuit settlement on a peninsular part of mainland Canada.

  How he would get there across open water, he didn’t know, but he never doubted his ability to do so. Once there, he would either try to winter over or look for boat or plane rides on to Kugluktuk. It was time for him to sever any relationship with Ellesmere or any settlements that had seen him come and go the last few months. He also decided he didn’t want further contact with the Chinese. They had paid him through a fund transfer into an account with a Canadian bank—he accepted technology when it was useful. He would draw on the account in settlements that had banking connections.

  He reaffirmed that the time had come for him to quit roaming. It had been a good life, but he was realistic that age and infirmity approached.

  Ancient Eyes

  The wolves stood or lay on the slope as they watched the activity a half-mile down slope at the shore. They had arrived at the western edge of their territory after following a group of six caribou for most of a day, hoping to isolate one and bring it down. Disappointingly, the caribou had stayed clumped together. If the wolves had been hungrier, they would have pressed an attack to scatter the caribou, but they had consumed a half-grown musk ox three days earlier, and their hunger pangs were muted.

  They had passed the human area two days earlier. Whenever they were near, the leader would stop the pack and watch the base for an hour or more. He wasn’t afraid of the humans, but keeping a distance was only prudent without a reason to do otherwise.

  However, today was somehow different. The humans who came ashore moved differently than the others he had seen during his lifetime. Something about them signaled caution. Another reason was their numbers—far more than he’d ever seen at one time. Whatever they were doing, they moved directly toward the other human place.

  The humans were moving fast—for humans—and relatively quietly, which was also unusual. The wolf leader also sensed purposefulness to their movement. Like when the pack was stalking the musk ox.

  The first human reached the closest point they would be to the pack. In their frozen posture, the wolves were almost invisible against the rocky slope and shadows. The leader’s eyes widened slightly at the first human. Somehow . . . he seemed familiar. Maybe in the way he moved and constantly looked back and forth, the way the leader did when at the pack’s forefront. Almost like a wolf moved.

  Then the alpha wolf shifted his eyes to the second human. His eyes partially closed, his hackles rose, his upper lip parted to slightly show his teeth, and a low growl rumbled in his chest. The other pack members picked up on the change, and a general unease roiled through them. Something about the second human was different. The leader looked down the line of figures, back to the first human, and then again to the second. His reaction was the same as before. He didn’t know the cause. There was something unnatural about the creature, something ominous that portended danger to the pack.

  The leader emitted low vocalizations to signal the pack to calm down and stay frozen. When the last human was out of sight, he led the pack to pick up the caribou’s trail.

  CHAPTER 38

  IMPROBABLE OR NOT

  Searching

  From Site 23, the eight men descended the shallow slope to the valley floor. They crossed the many sections of a braided stream, then paralleled the main course as the valley opened to a half-mile wide before narrowing again where the stream threads concentrated and roared through a gorge. There, they climbed the next ridgeline and continued moving south in the direction where one of Montero’s men thought he had seen figures in the distance. That direction was also along the easiest path from Site 23 to the Ellesmere coast, where they suspected interlopers might land. They moved as quickly as they could over the rough terrain, staying below ridge crests whenever possible to avoid being outlined against the sky. At the ridge tops, they used binoculars to scan the terrain, both in front of and behind them. After four hours, they were eight miles from the site. It was a pace they couldn’t keep up for long over the broken terrain.

  They stopped to rest at the next ridgeline. Ahead lay a series of three lower tops of terrain undulations cut by a stream fed from melting snow at the highest peaks. The sea wasn’t in view, but Zach knew it was only another ten or twelve miles south.

  He turned to Andrew. “If there’s anyone out here, and they’re a danger to the site, I still think the most likely approach is from the nearest place a submarine could surface. I’m assuming a worst-case scenario, of course, but that’s my job.”

  Andrew nodded, and his skeptical expression conveyed that he thought Zach was paranoid.

  Zach turned to Porter. “Logan, break out the big scope.”

  Porter shrugged off his large backpack and placed it on the ground. From it, he withdrew a large black velvet sack from which he pulled a monocular scope.

  “Christ,” Andrew said, “that thing must cost a fortune.”

  “Not our fortune,” muttered Zach. “Uncle Sam’s.”

  Porter withdrew a tripod and finished setting up the scope facing south. “Now remember, the magnification is such that any touching of the instrument or even nearby movements will make everything shake too much to focus on any distant object.”

  Zach nodded and turned to Andrew. “Tell the others to freeze where they are and don’t talk.”

  Andrew did as requested, then turned back to Zach. “If you can’t touch it, how are you going to adjust?”

  “No problem,” said Zach, holding up a remote control. “It has its own battery pack, good for about an hour and a half.” With that, Zach put his eye to the eyepiece and began to manipulate the remote, slowly sweeping the valley to the south. He periodically adjusted
the focus as he examined areas at varying distances. Andrew and the others waited patiently.

  Suddenly, Zach grunted. “Well, hello? What do we have here?” He made several finer

  Impatient, Andrew spoke softly. “What is it?”

  “It looks like visitors. They’re just coming up over a rise. So far, it looks like at least twenty of them.”

  “Who are they?” asked Andrew.

  “Not sure yet. At this magnification, they’re moving a little too much to focus any closer. If they’ll just stop for a moment, I can try and get a closer look.” Several minutes passed. “Well, shit. Looks like the last of them have cleared the rise, and I estimate around fifty to sixty. Wait—maybe they’re stopping.”

  Seconds passed. “Whoa, hoss,” Zach muttered softly. “They did stop—either taking a break or checking directions.”

  Zach adjusted the magnification with the remote. “Closer, closer . . . just a little closer . . . there we are. Now you, the guy standing apart from the others . . . just turn around, you sucker, so I can see a little of your face. Here we go. Well, fuck me! Looks like they’re Chinese.”

  “Chinese!” exclaimed Andrew. “What the hell are Chinese doing here?”

  Zach turned from the scope. “Come on. Think about it. What’s going on back at the site?”

  “But—” Andrew paused. “How do they know about it, and why would they be here?”

  Zach’s expression was dour. “I suspect they’ve figured out that something big is going on and have decided to throw the dice to try and take what’s here.”

  “What do you mean take it? There’s no way they’re going to take it anywhere!”

  “Well, we know that, but they don’t!”

  Zach returned to the scope and slowly panned across the distant group. “All white outfits. We might not have seen them at this distance if they were against snow. Right now, they’re moving over a bare rock region of the valley. That recent light snow wasn’t enough to stick, so their outfits will make them stand out—an advantage to us, unless they take off the white.

  “Looks like no heavy weapons. Assault rifles, grenade launchers, and one or two light machine guns that I can see. Makes sense. They need to move fast and expect to catch the camp by surprise. Probably the grenade launchers and machine guns are only as a precaution. Well, they’re going to need them.”

  Zach turned from the scope setup and looked at Andrew. “We’re all in trouble. If the Chinese are willing to take the risk of mounting such an operation, they don’t expect to leave anyone alive to tell tales. This is obviously well planned. We’re in the middle of solar flare disruptions of our communications, and we’re entering a period of both increasing darkness and potential snowfall.”

  Andrew’s face was made of stone. “Then we’re on our own. Even if we warn the camp, there’s no place for people to hide or run to. The military personnel might be able to evade, but there’s no way all the civilians can do that.”

  Lieutenant Montero had been listening. Finally, he blurted out, “Just what the hell is going on here? You say sixty Chinese? What? Soldiers, commandos, hitting the site? Why would they do that? What the fuck!?”

  Andrew turned to look at Montero, as Zach leaned over again with the scope. “Lieutenant, I can’t tell you much right now, except that the site is of the highest possible security. When I say that, I mean the protection of the site, the key personnel, and some of the activities have a higher priority than any other consideration.” Andrew’s steely expression and his stare straight into Montero’s eyes told the story.

  “So,” said Montero slowly, “you’re saying that this is a ‘protect the base to the last man’ scenario?’”

  “At all cost,” confirmed Andrew.

  Montero swallowed. “So, what do we do?”

  Andrew turned to Zach. “Obviously, the eight of us can’t stop sixty Chinese commandos, so what’s your recommendation?”

  Zach spoke without raising his head from the scope. “We need to do three things. One is to get a warning back to the site as fast as possible. Two is to slow them down to give the site as much time as possible to prepare. And three is to get our own asses back to the site . . . we need to do all three, like, now.”

  “By slow them down, I assume you don’t mean talking with them or firing warning shots,” Andrew said sarcastically.

  Zach didn’t look up from the eyepiece. “Is there a minute possibility of some benign reason for them to be on Ellesmere and heading in the direction of Site 23? Sure, but it’s hardly likely. Given the stakes, we’ll assume the worst and act accordingly.”

  Andrew whirled to Montero. “Lieutenant, which two of your men are in the best physical shape?”

  Montero glanced at his men standing and sitting thirty feet away. “Well, Schmidt could probably run an antelope into the ground, and Shalton may not look it, but he can drive himself until he literally collapses.”

  “Okay, send them back to the camp to report directly to the general,” said Andrew. “We’re sending two in case something happens to one of them on the way. Emphasize that the message has to get back to the site. If one of them gets injured on the way, the other man is not to assist but to keep going to the camp, no matter how serious the injury. Under no circumstances is the message to be delayed. Let them give the general the simple message that an estimated sixty-man Chinese strike force is approaching the site from the south. We’re assuming hostile intent and will attempt to delay them.”

  Montero repeated the message twice, then hurried to talk to his men. After some exclamations and urgent back-and-forth exchanges, the two designated messengers dropped their packs and took off at a lope to the north with only their weapons, equipment harnesses, and one canteen each.

  Montero returned to Zach and Andrew. “What now, Major?”

  Andrew turned to Zach. “I assume you and Porter brought those sniper rifles because you know how to use them?”

  “That’s a fair assumption,” said Zach. “I’ll say that while I’m good with the thing, Porter is something you have to witness to believe. And while we can’t stop them, the question is what can we do to slow them down? From the route they’re taking, once they clear the next low ridgeline, it’s a straight shot to the site. My thinking is that we move down into the valley ahead of them and find a spot with cover and a withdrawal route. Once they get within a thousand yards, we try to pick off a couple of the leaders and as many others as we can.”

  “You really think you can hit something with those rifles at that range?” asked Andrew.

  “They’re rated out to seventeen hundred yards, but realistically a thousand yards is about the best if you expect hits, and then under ideal conditions. Right now, we need to get down in the valley to avoid most of the wind and let Logan decide when to engage. At those ranges, the slightest wind will throw off a shot.”

  “You know that’s not going to stop them,” said Andrew. “What they’ll do is send out flankers to both sides. After the first shots, they’ll move faster than you can expect to hit anything.”

  “You’re right,” said Zach. “Our first shots will be the easiest, and we might hit a couple of them before they react. Then we’ll hope to get a couple more as they close. However, the real objective is to slow them down.”

  Andrew aimed his binoculars down into the valley where the stream had cut notches through the hillocks. “I’d suggest we move down to the first notch. From there, it looks flat enough out past a thousand yards, and they’ll have to cross open ground to get to us once you fire. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a couple of sniper rifles with them to try to answer your shots while they attempt to flank us. Once they’re closer, we could pull back to the second notch before they realize what we did.”

  Zach used his binoculars to survey the notches. “Looks like five to six hundred yards from the first notch to the second. We can wait until they come forward and then try to delay them more. The problem is at that range, even assault rifles
are effective if there’s enough of them. They’ll overwhelm us with ten to one odds.

  “The six of us wouldn’t hold them, and they’d push right on through us to the camp, which would be short six of the few trained military personnel. As soon as they pin us down from firing, they’ll push forward as hard as they can, regardless of their losses. I suggest at the second notch we fire everything we’ve got.

  “And by everything, I mean everything. Save only one magazine. It’ll force them to hesitate, not knowing how many of us are here and how much ammunition we have. Then most of us will hightail it back to the site.”

  “Most of us?” asked Andrew.

  “Once our fire dissipates, and their further movement isn’t answered with more barrages, their leader will know we withdrew back to the site. We need to keep up some type of fire to stop them from racing after us. From what I see with the binocs, the second notch back to the site is pretty flat terrain, especially the next three or four miles. It’s the fastest way back, but we need to delay them, or we’ll be within the edge of their weapons’ range. I’d estimate we need at least a ten-minute head start before they push forward.”

  “So,” said Andrew slowly, “someone has to stay behind.”

  “It’ll improve our chances—slightly,” said Zach.

  “Who would that be?” Andrew asked. “You?”

  “No,” said Porter, “that would be me.” He never looked up from checking his sniper rifle, inspecting the scope and making fine adjustments. All the while, he appeared serene, as if announcing he was going out for a routine workday, instead of slowing down sixty Chinese commandos.

  “Yes,” said Zach, “it has to be Logan. He’s the best shot. You and I need to get back to help organize whatever defenses we can muster. There’s no point leaving Montero and his other two men here. They wouldn’t appreciably contribute to slowing down the Chinese enough to throw away their lives, and they’ll be more effective at the site.”