Montero grimaced but didn’t comment.
Zach turned to Porter. “Logan, you need to slow them down as much as possible, but this is not a suicide mission.”
Porter smiled easily. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Doesn’t look good.”
Zach handed his binoculars to Porter. “Look down at the second notch. The eastern side of the ridge breaks into massive boulders and outcroppings several hundred feet upslope.”
Porter did as was told.
“Okay,” said Zach. “Once it looks like they are starting to flank you, or they push forward enough that you can’t effectively fire, haul your ass into those rocks, find a hole, and hide. Remember, saving time is their priority. They’ll know they’ve lost the element of surprise, so there’s no way they’ll spend time trying to root you out. The worst that’ll happen is they leave a small number of men behind to keep you hunkered down. However, I don’t expect that to happen. Once you quit firing, they’ll continue pushing forward to the site. I can’t guarantee that, but hey, that’s why we get the big bucks. If you’re hit and we survive, we’ll come looking for you and search until we find you in whatever condition you’re in.” Zach smiled.
Porter smiled back. “God damn, Zach, that’s one thing I like about you, you always sugarcoat things. And you’re right, with what they’re paying us, I guess all those months of living easy at the site have come home to roost. Now I’ll have a chance to prove that I’m worth every penny our great government is paying me.”
“I think that’s the best we can do,” said Zach. “If you do happen to survive in good shape, follow them back to the camp and do whatever you think you can.”
Zach turned to Andrew with an expression that implied he was looking for either agreement or argument. Andrew dropped his pack and shrugged his harness into a more comfortable position. “Let’s do it.”
Ambush from Afar
It took the six of them almost an hour to race down to the farthest notch. Despite the urgency, most of their path was over broken rock, and only scattered tracks of bare ground allowed running. It was more strenuous for them to constantly watch their footing and zigzag than to break out in a straight run. All of them were seriously puffing when they reached the notch.
Halfway there, Logan gasped, “If I survive this, I’ve got to lose a few pounds and get in better shape.”
Zach grunted. “If I get out of this, I’m moving to a small quiet town and spending the rest of my life watching grass grow.”
Logan laughed—between gasps.
They picked a spot slightly elevated from the surroundings and with clear fields of fire.
“I’d estimate we have good sight from here out to about twelve hundred yards,” said Zach. He knelt behind a rock ledge and surveyed to the south with his rifle’s scope. “What do you think, Logan?”
“Maybe a tad closer to fourteen hundred yards. We can let them get to nine hundred yards before we fire. That’ll leave them in the open for several hundred yards before they can reach heavier cover. It’ll be luck if we hit anyone after the first couple of rounds, but it’ll keep their attention.”
Zach and Logan walked back and forth until each found a position where he felt comfortable setting up his rifle.
Andrew noticed they didn’t start examining the ground closely until they were about thirty yards apart. Zach caught the major’s questioning look.
“We won’t have spotters, so we’ll have to realign to targets on our own and quickly. Firing too close to each other is a distraction we don’t need.”
Zach moved rocks to prepare for a prone position and kept talking. “Both scopes are sighted at hundred-yard intervals—we took them out a month ago far enough from the site so no one heard us. Normally, we’d have laser range finders and spotters, but Logan is almost as good with his estimates.
“We’ll try for the leaders on the first shot. The second round will be on the way by the time the first one arrives, so we’ll either estimate how they’ll move the first few seconds after they realize what’s happening—or we’ll pick out a clump of them and hope we hit something. We’ll fire three more times, but the odds of hitting anything after the second round are about zero if they’re elite troops, like I assume they are.”
“Here we go,” Porter said calmly.
Andrew used his binoculars to look south. He could pick out a file of men emerging from behind a rock rise, at first visible only from the waist up. The white clothing still made them stand out against the shades of gray rock. “I don’t see the rest of us doing any good here,” he said. “I’ll take the other men, and we’ll head to the second notch and pick out positions.”
“Take our packs with you,” said Zach. “Logan and I will need to hightail it to you when they start to flank us.”
From his position near the front of their single-file column, Major Jun Peng consulted his watch. They were over an hour behind his timetable, not that he blamed himself. Satellite pictures and the few photographs that were available for the Ellesmere Island terrain didn’t do justice to the broken ground, necessitating frequent short detours. At times, they moved at a brisk pace over smooth surfaces, only to slow over rock or boulder fields. Even worse had been a marshy valley floor covered in small hummocks of moss that boots easily slip off of and into water or threatening to turn ankles. Once out of the flatter land, slopes of hills and ridges varied from scree of different sizes to solid rock.
He was able to push the men more than he would have typical members of the People’s Army only because they were handpicked for their physical condition, as well as their skills and dedication to the Party.
He could see Captain Gao rotating the three men scouting ahead for the easiest, quickest paths. He hadn’t known Gao before the unit was assembled with a rank-heavy organization. Besides himself and the four captains, there were six lieutenants and no noncommissioned soldiers of lower rank than sergeant. Although only Peng and the captains knew the mission’s rationale, all the men had been apprised of its importance and the requirement that none of them be taken prisoner under any circumstances.
Gao’s new scouts raced forward, as he was saying something to the three men returning to the column. Peng watched Gao gesture to one man and then slam to the ground, with blood spray hitting a second man. Another of the three spun in place, then fell face forward. His head hit the rock surface with a sound reminiscent of a melon splitting.
The two standing men stared for an eternity of seconds, three or four, while Peng screamed from where he hugged the ground. “Down, you fools! Someone’s shooting at us!”
One of the men dropped. The other made the mistake of glancing at Peng. Half of his head disappeared in a cloud of blood, brain tissue, and bone. The rest of the column, in front of and behind Peng, dropped and crawled to whatever nearby cover was available. From the reactions of the men hit, Peng immediately assessed that the shots came from the direction they were heading. Whoever the shooters were, and there had to be at least two, they were between Peng’s men and the target.
“Pull back!” Peng yelled. He could see that only the first twenty to twenty-five men had to be within gun sight of the shooters—the rest of his men hadn’t crested the bank of the streambed they were crossing.
“Well, that got their attention,” said Zach. “I think we got three. My second shot missed, and none of our following shots seems to have hit anything.”
“They reacted fast,” said Porter, “except for the one lunkhead I got on my second shot. I suspect these are experienced men.”
“Hopefully, my first shot got an officer,” said Zach. “He was yapping something at one of the others. Let’s see what they do next.”
The answer came less than two minutes later. They caught glimpses of figures, now without the white snow camouflage, working their way east and west of where the Chinese had withdrawn to.
“Yep, going to flank us,” said Porter. “Again, fast reaction.”
A rock between their two posi
tions split into fragments, a few of them hitting Zach. Several buzzes and more rock shards preceded hundreds of distant popping sounds.
“Don’t have us located yet,” said Zach. “Just getting our attention and diverting us from their flankers. Now that they’re looking our way, as soon as we fire again, they’ll start homing in on us.”
“So, fire and move?” said Porter.
“Fire and move,” said Zach. “Two rounds as soon as we have targets, then I think we’ll need to skedaddle to Andrew and the others. These guys are reacting too fast for my taste. The flankers are already two hundred yards out from where they stopped.”
Peng cursed in Mandarin, Shangainese, and Jin—the latter his native dialect. He could have continued in several other dialects, but he caught himself and came back to the immediate present. They were at the position where the enemy shooters had fired at them. Eight to ten bullet casings lay scattered in two clumps—he assumed where two shooters had positioned themselves. It was an assumption because they were gone. The rocky terrain prevented him from estimating from the tracks how many others there were. The men Captain Li had sent to flank the shooters’ position had signaled all clear, and Peng brought the rest of the unit forward to where he now stood.
In addition to the three men killed in the initial shots, two other men had been wounded, one with a gash along his hip where a round grazed the flesh above the hipbone. The wound hurt, but the man was able to keep up with the unit. The other man took a round through his left knee. Captain Li had saluted the man as a hero of the people and put a bullet through his forehead. His body was dropped into a cavity, and men hurriedly piled rocks on top. The body would never be found, except by the sheerest luck.
Peng now had fifty-six men to complete the mission. Radio traffic was still suppressed by the temporary coronal storm, but the last message he’d received via satellite relay was that the communication interference would subside in the next four to six hours. After the initial two shooters, the later shots indicated one man. He had to assume the other man had headed for the objective to give warning—the Americans would know he and his men were coming. The thought of aborting the mission passed briefly through Peng’s mind, then was discarded. There was still time if they pushed hard.
CHAPTER 39
ALERT
Ellesmere Island
Sergeant William Schmidt raced around a blind corner of Waste Building 2 and crashed into Marylou Stebbins, the site dentist and biological research assistant, knocking her on her backside. She was looking for Harriet, the adopted musk ox, to feed her an apple Stebbins had pilfered from the galley.
“Umph!” exclaimed Schmidt as he staggered back, gasping for breath.
“Sinclair . . . where . . . is . . . he?” the words wheezed out.
“The general?” said Stebbins from the ground, her heart rate still thumping from the sudden encounter. “I don’t . . . what’s up?”
Schmidt ignored her, took a deep breath, and pushed past her, heading for the headquarters building.
Three minutes later, the general alarm blared.
Sinclair didn’t worry about taking roll call—anyone late would have to catch up. They had no time for laggards. He started talking six minutes from when the alarm first sounded.
“Okay, people. Quiet! Listen up!” When the general hubbub didn’t immediately die away, he repeated his shouts. But that didn’t help, so he reached for his pistol, figuring he’d fire if he had to get their attention. Bre beat him to it by letting out an ear-piercing whistle. The talking subsided enough that Sinclair got their attention the next time he called out.
“Listen up! There’s no time for discussion. I’m going to give orders, and they WILL be obeyed without question. Major Jefferson and Lieutenant Montero report a hostile force of approximately sixty men headed our way. The assumption is they intend to attack this site.”
Despite his previous warning to listen up, the uproar that followed obviated his delivering more information and plans.
Bre’s second whistle stopped most staffers from talking. Those who didn’t quiet down were aggressively shushed by nearby coworkers.
“The men who spotted this hostile force will be returning shortly and will help organize a defense. I reiterate that everyone is to do exactly what they’re told, which includes where they should go.
“We’ll be positioning all military personnel to repel any attack. Those of you with prior military experience or whom we judge capable of handling military-grade firearms will be conscripted to help man the primary defense. Everyone else will be put in sheltered positions within this building. It’s the safest structure on site because the outer walls were specially constructed. We will also be issuing shotguns and pistols to those we believe are able to handle them.”
The continuing low buzz threatened to rise again, and Sinclair held up both arms.
“I know this is shocking and confusing, but trust me there’s no time for anything except to prepare.” He reached out to Bre standing nearby, and she handed him a sheet of paper with quickly scratched writing. “I’m going to call off a list of names of those who will be issued assault rifles. All of you come and stand with Whitey over to my right. I’ll then read off a second list of anyone we think can handle pistols and shotguns. You people go to Bre. If you don’t think you’re capable of handling firearms, tell Bre, and she’ll scratch you off. Anyone not called on who thinks they can shoot, tell Bre.
“The rest of you stay right where you are, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can to tell you where to go and what to do.”
The next minutes were only slightly short of chaotic. Sinclair was not mollified by knowing the group had reacted better than his worst fears.
MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida
Lieutenant General Justin Hardesty was in a good mood. It wouldn’t last. His daydreaming about an upcoming vacation was interrupted by a knock on his office door. He could tell by the spacing and intensity of the knocks that it was his aide, Lieutenant Marlene Sixfeathers—as far as he knew, the only full-blooded Nez Perce Indian-American officer in the United States Army.
“Come,” he growled, moderately irritated at anyone disturbing his reverie.
The immaculately dressed, five-foot-tall officer closed the door behind her, held up a flash drive, and said, “Flash message, sir. Encrypted. ‘Your Eyes Only.’ Just delivered from communications. They said it was a short message and seemed to be repeated several times, each one broken up by interference. They had to assemble what they thought was the complete message by combining all the repeats.”
Hardesty held out a hand. Sixfeathers slapped the drive on his palm, whirled, and left the room without speaking. He looked at the drive for a moment, wondering what it contained and who it was from. His least favorite option for the last question was Major General Lionel Sinclair. He used his feet to roll his chair to the computer setup to the left of his desk. He put the drive into a USB port, watched for the recognition box to appear on the monitor, filled in the asked-for password, and waited for the decryption.
Sixty seconds later, he called the White House. It took another ninety seconds to connect with President James Chesterton. Six minutes from reading the flash message, Hardesty once again sat looking at his monitor, then shifted to his communication console. His computer screen showed the status of all USSOCOM units. He was looking for the fastest deployment possible. Seal Team 6 would have been his obvious first choice, mainly because of the security level surrounding them. However, the current commander was a little too conservative for Hardesty’s taste—this was a “get on the plane and take off” situation, and he didn’t have time to worry about foot-dragging from a Seal leader carping about needing more information. He also thought the man was a little too political. In addition, they had half the team on training exercises spread around the world. Yet by a stroke of good fortune, Seal Team 2 was just finishing an extensive training session in Alaska. They were the only Seal Team considered fully
Arctic capable—not that it was winter on Ellesmere, but who knew where this would lead?
He looked at the contact options at the Naval Amphibious base, Little Creek, Virginia. No, he was about to bypass chains of command, which he knew would ruffle feathers.
Tough shit, he thought and keyed in the only person he had to contact.
Less than a minute passed until the connection was made to Alaska.
“Commander Wilford here,” intoned a raspy baritone.
“Commander, this is General Justin Hardesty. You’ll shortly be getting a temporary transfer of command authority to United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Myself commanding. It will come directly from the president and will supersede all existing chains of command.”
“My chain of command is not going to like this, right up to the chief of naval operations,” said Wilford.
“Tell ’em to call the president if they bitch,” growled Hardesty. “I’m calling to alert you to an immediate deployment order coming down. I see Seal Team 2 is finishing its training deployment in Alaska. You spent time on the middle slopes of Mt. Denali, where it was essentially always winter. I’m also assuming the team has maintained its required status of being deployable anywhere in the world on short notice.”
Hardesty meant that they would have with them or have ready access to a full load of ammunition and other supplies for a combat deployment.
“Naturally,” answered Wilford, his tone oozing offense that a Seal Team would ever be unready to deploy. Hardesty also did not ask whether the men might be too tired—something else that was never expected to happen.
“Get ready to deploy your entire Seal Team 2 as soon as you can get them to the airfield at Eielson. I see you’re scheduled for a practice parachute drop in two days and the C-17 is already there.”
Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1) Page 51
