“How long will that take?”
“The initial installation will only take a few minutes, but establishing the link between these servers and the satellite could take a while. It’s a lot of data that they’ll have to upload. In fact, it’s thousands of terabytes of data. God, you know, when you sit down and really think about all the computing power we’re able to handle, it’s quite impressive. Did you know that the first computer system only—”
“Bryce?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you go on tangents like these with Sarah during her missions?”
“Um, well, sometimes. It’s not intentional.”
“I see.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I think I’m just beginning to understand some of her insubordination. I think it comes from having to listen to you.”
Mack finally looked up from his pad of paper, and Bryce frowned then turned away from Mack and returned to the computer pieces lying on the ground. He sheepishly picked up one of the pieces and kept his head down, muttering softly to himself. “And I can see why Sarah doesn’t listen to you.”
“What was that, Bryce?” Mack asked.
“Nothing, sir,” Bryce answered quickly.
Sarah’s boot crunched into a patch of crimson-stained snow and kicked up a flurry of red slush on her sprint toward the Humvee just before bullets impacted the other side of her cover. The blizzard hadn’t let up, and her fingers had gone numb from the cold. She no longer felt the sliver of metal under the skin of her trigger finger. Her ears, nose, and the tips of her hair were red and frozen stiff. Fire burned in her lungs with every breath. The bits of white falling against her eyes made it harder to see everything, including the Russians she was trying to shoot. The gunfire sounded like shattering ice in the cold. Everything was harsher in the deceptively soft snow.
One of the U.S. soldiers pinned up next to her jammed his palm into the magazine he was trying to load in the rifle. He smacked it three or four times, but it wouldn’t go in. Sarah snatched the rifle from him and slammed the end of the magazine into the Humvee door, where it clicked into place. When she handed the rifle back to him, she noticed that it was one of the same soldiers from earlier who had guarded the commander’s post. “Well, well, well, look who we have here.”
“Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out here right now.”
“Well, if I weren’t out here, who would have reloaded that rifle for you? Don’t worry, though,” Sarah said, gripping both pistols in her hands. “It’s not uncommon for men to have performance issues under duress.” He gave her another slack-jawed face that she’d seen before as she jumped out from behind the Humvee and into the storm of snow and bullets.
The Russians had landed just off the coast and had established a beachhead, where the U.S. military was trying to keep them contained until their ships were in a position to take them out. Sarah could see the boats the Russians had used to come ashore amid the floating chunks of ice crashing into the shoreline of frozen mud.
Hundreds of Russian soldiers had declared war on the United States the moment they set foot on that beach. The hostile move would no doubt send repercussions rippling through the rest of the world. Sarah just hoped that none of it would be nuclear.
The colder the air, the denser it became, causing her firearms to lose their accuracy and distance. The first few shots went wide left and right, but as she adjusted for the temperature, she started to hit her marks. With each pull of the trigger, the snow that fell and rested on the barrel shook off from the recoil of the shot.
Sarah worked her way up the battlefield, using the snow and the warming sensors in her boots as advantages. Once she made it all the way to the front lines, she slammed her shoulder against a glacier pack near a cluster of soldiers under fire. “So what’s the word from command?” Sarah asked.
The lieutenant looked back at her with a puzzled look until she shot two Russian soldiers advancing toward their position without him seeing it. That was enough to solidify her as a good guy. “We have a destroyer three miles out, ready to hit the target, but we need to get it marked.” He held up the targeting device. “This snowstorm is affecting the range of the laser. Someone would need to be right on them in order for the strike package to be delivered.”
“How close exactly would that be?” Sarah asked.
Bullets chipped off ice chunks from the cover of their glacier. The gunfire increased along with the snowstorm. The Russians were in their element.
“Less than fifty feet,” the lieutenant said, firing into the white abyss where the shots came from.
“That’s not gonna give me much breathing room,” Sarah muttered to herself.
“What?” the lieutenant asked, shouting above the gunfire, but before he received an explanation, Sarah ripped the targeting device from his hands along with his radio and sprinted toward the epicenter of the Russian invasion.
Massive pieces of ice and piles of snow extended from the earth, either growths from the rocks they covered or pieces of the glacier itself that had broken apart, but regardless of how they had gotten there, Sarah used the natural barriers for cover when the rain of lead became as thick as the falling snow.
Ice collected in her lungs, and she could feel her breaths shorten with every step forward. The pistol in her hand turned into an awkward chunk of ice the longer she held it, affecting her aim. A wake of .45 shell casings sat nestled in the snow behind her, and it didn’t take long before the shiny pieces of copper were buried under the endless barrage of white.
Sarah ejected the empty magazine and slammed the gun down on the spare magazine around her belt, and the top rack slid forward, pushing the first round into the chamber. She knew she was getting closer to the Russians’ center as she saw the edges of the erected tents swaying in the storm. She planted the targeting device in the snow, aiming it straight at the tent, and radioed the military. “Okay! I have contact with the beachhead!”
The radio scrambled and echoed on the other end. “Negative. We still do not have a good lock. I repeat, we do not have good lock on target.”
Bullets peppered the snow to her left, forcing her behind the cover of an ice pack. “Fifty feet, my ass.” Her numb fingers fumbled over her belt as she reached for a grenade but suddenly stopped as she heard the loud crunching of boots in snow. She reached for her Colt, but the moment she had her hand on the pistol’s grip, a Russian soldier crashed into her, sending the two of them rolling into the thick blankets of hardened powder.
The Russian shoved Sarah’s face into the ground, suffocating her. She flailed her arms, trying to grab hold of the arm pinning her down. The icy snow felt like glass grinding into her face. She kept reaching her hand out blindly until she felt the side of a neck then squeezed, feeling the warm burst of blood on her skin. The grip on the back of her head lightened, and she lifted her head from the snow, taking huge gulps of air.
Though she was blinded from the snow still glued to her face, her training instincts kicked in, and her hands found the pistols at her sides. More boots crunched in the snow around the corner of the ice pack and, with her face still stinging red from the ice burn, she killed two more soldiers, discoloring the blanket of white around her with scarlet splashes.
Sarah picked up the targeting device as clumps of bloodstained snow fell off her coat. The wind picked up, and the snowfall thickened. The radio cackled on the ground. “Sarah! You need to turn back now!”
She scooped up the radio and pressed the side button. “Hang on, Commander. Almost there.” The heat sensors in her boots had malfunctioned, leaving her to trudge through the thick snow unaided. The temperature plummeted with the gusts of wind and snow that accompanied it. Visibility had shortened to less than a foot. She knew her arms and legs were moving, but she couldn’t feel her body anymore.
The sound of the gunshots ended, and Sarah did her best to keep the same line of sight that she’d had before, trying to locate the tent without being able to see it. A
nother burst of wind and snow blinded her and also brought with it two Russians who smacked into her, sending the three of them into the snowdrifts.
One of the Russians looked up at her, his eyebrows and beard covered in the thick, white powder. “Narushitel'!”
“I really need to start using that Rosetta Stone language software I bought.” Before the Russian rose to his feet, she swung her leg around, spinning like a top on the slick, snowy surface, and landed it right across the Russian’s jaw, knocking him out cold.
The brief lull of gunfire ended as the Russian’s scream triggered retaliation from his comrades. Sarah reached for the laser and then, through the large sheets of white raining down on the Alaskan coast, she once again saw the outline of the Russian tents, only a few feet away.
Sarah reached over and grabbed the unconscious Russian’s wrist and then pulled his belt from around his waist. She pointed the targeting system at the tent, wrapped the man’s hand around the trigger, keeping it in place with the belt, and then sprinted away, radioing the troops on her run. “Target locked.”
“Affirmative, we have coordinates. Package inbound in ninety seconds.”
Sarah pumped her legs through the knee-high snow, her bones feeling as though they would snap in half. The wind and snow worked against her as she tried to put as much distance between her and the blast site as she could.
More gunfire sounded to her left. She pulled her pistol, aiming into the white haze, and squeezed the trigger, firing into the cold, the recoil of each shot sending another splintering pressure through her bones, widening the fault lines in her frozen body.
The first missile that touched down behind her instantly melted whatever ice was on her body as the heat and percussive wave blasted her face first into the snow. With her head still buried in the snow, she could feel the ground beneath her shake from the secondary blasts. She lifted her head just in time to see the pluming clouds of fire and smoke rise from the white earth, melting the sheets of frosty rain. The explosions went up and down the coastline. Sarah lay there, exhausted, as the fires quickly died out in the cold, and along with it the small amount of warmth they provided.
A sudden falling feeling woke Mack from his restless sleep. He rubbed the fog and grogginess from his eyes as he tried to shake off the dream. He looked over at Bryce, who was sound asleep, encircled by a variety of computers. Mack wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. His knees popped as he pushed himself off the floor when a rumble outside drew his attention toward the door.
Despite the noise repeating itself, Bryce didn’t wake up. Mack shook his shoulder. “Bryce, get up.” Bryce simply moaned, kicking his leg out in a stretch as Mack pulled out his revolver. “Someone’s here.”
“Maybe it’s Sarah,” he said, the life in his voice quickly returning to him at the sight of the gun. “What time is it?”
Mack checked his watch. “Eight thirty.”
“P.m.?”
“A.m.”
“Holy shit! Sarah’s been gone the entire night?” Bryce asked, jumping to his feet.
Mack put his finger to his lips as the building shook slightly. With no windows, all Mack had to go on was the heavy machinery sound coming from beyond the walls. He aimed the pistol at the door. The pounding grew louder until the scraping was right up against the side of the door. Mack pulled back the hammer on the revolver, and the rumbling outside stopped. A few seconds later, Sarah’s muffled voice echoed through the wall.
“I swear to God, if you have your gun out right now, Mack, I’m going to shoot you in the ass.”
Mack gave an eye roll then lowered the revolver. The door opened, and Sarah stepped inside, her face red and her eyes tired and her clothes and uniform covered in snow. Sarah’s slushy wet boot prints trailed inside, where she handed Bryce the case he’d left behind.
“I hope you enjoy that,” Sarah said.
“Jesus, Sarah, what happened?” Bryce asked.
Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a candy bar that she started to unwrap. “Well, where do I begin? It turns out that one of the worst arctic storms in the past decade decided to come through yesterday, dropping over twelve feet of snow.”
“Oh my god,” Bryce gasped.
“Oh, and there was the couple hours where I was helping the United States military push back Russian soldiers who had snaked their way across the Bering Sea and onto the Alaskan shoreline.”
“What?” Mack asked, finally starting to pay attention to what she was saying.
“Oh, yeah. Russians. From Russia.” Sarah tore off a piece of the bar and chewed through the hard pieces of candy, smacking her lips loudly. Mack paced back and forth, rubbing his chin and muttering to himself. Sarah tossed a piece of ice from her boot at him to grab his attention. “Hey! You see this?” Sarah asked, pointing to her face. “This is ice burn. From ice.”
“You don’t have to keep saying where things come from,” Bryce said.
“Can we get the satellite link up so we can go and kill these guys? Please?” Sarah asked.
“It’s going to take a while for the uplink to connect,” Bryce said.
“How long?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. A day, maybe?” Bryce answered, wincing in anticipation of the physical blow that was about to consume his face.
But instead Sarah just stood there, her face blank. Finally, after a few moments of silence, she quickly turned on her heel and headed for the door. “I need to shoot something.” And then she disappeared into the high snowbanks outside.
While Sarah worked out her frustration, Mack tried to think of any other individual who could have helped the Russians find a way past the Americans’ defense. But his mind kept going back to one name, and the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. The data on Sarah’s family, the infiltration of HQ, the Russians invading—it was all too perfect. There was only one person who was connected to all of it: Vince.
8
Andrea reached for the glass of water and drank. The heads of state on the monitors in front of her were busy arguing with one another. The Japanese president demanded the United States send more ships to the area to aid with their defense against the Chinese aggressors. The Italians and French demanded the UK provide more troops to the eastern European border.
“The Chinese have already taken a handful of islands to the south,” the Japanese prime minister said. “That is our land.”
“I understand,” the American president replied. “We’re allocating our resources as best we can.”
“There are tanks rolling into Poland and Ukraine,” the French president replied.
“It won’t be long until the Russians make it to Germany, Italy, or Spain,” the Italian president said.
The back and forth had gone on for more than an hour. The Russian and Chinese aggression was quickly growing into a full-fledged war.
“They have the power back on,” the French president said. “How is it not possible that they are the ones responsible for what happened? How?”
“We were all contacted by the same individual,” Andrea said, trying to calm the hysteria. “It is all our nations’ priority not to negotiate with terrorists. The Russians and Chinese clearly do not follow that same principle.”
“The chancellor is right,” the American president said, “and all our intelligence suggests that those responsible for the attacks acted independently of any nation.”
“And whose intelligence is that, Mr. President?” the French leader asked. “You have yet to share anything with the rest of us. How do we know that you don’t have a hidden agenda yourself?”
“Our investigations are still ongoing,” the American president replied. “Once we have a better understanding and we’re no longer postulating, we’ll be sure to share anything that is pertinent.”
“How convenient,” the French president answered.
“Enough,” Andrea said, shaking her head in exasperation. “Now is not the time to bicker about such petty thin
gs. We are at war, gentlemen. Both the Russians and Chinese have sent very clear messages. We must band together.” The room went silent. The solemn lines on their faces flashed embarrassment.
“My apologies, Mr. President,” the French leader said. “The stress of the past week seems to have caught up with me.”
“I think it’s caught up to all of us,” the American president replied. “We’ll be sending reinforcement troops to Eastern Europe and a carrier to the south of Japan for support. I would request that the Japanese make whatever plans necessary to help support the American troops.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” the Japanese leader said, bowing his head slightly. “I’ll have a unit ready whenever you give the word.”
“And you can count on Germany’s continued support on the Eastern Europe front,” Andrea said. “I’ll be damned if I let those bastards past my country’s lines.”
“Thank you, everyone,” the American president said.
The conference call ended, and Andrea walked out of the secure room and back into the flurry that was the capitol building, meeting Alexander in stride as she made her way back to the main conference room to check the status of her country.
“Water and food supply routes just opened back up in the north,” Alexander said, “and we’re receiving word from the Dutch that they’ll be contributing one thousand soldiers to the efforts in the east.”
“Where are we at with the evacuation of the Polish?” Andrea asked, looking over the stacks of papers and notes that required her attention.
“We’re working on getting them out as fast as we can, but some of them are reluctant to move.”
“Well, tell them that they’re about to be put in the middle of war, and if they don’t want to be turned to rubble, they need to get the hell out of there now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He started to turn to leave as she made her way back into the main conference room, but abruptly stopped. “Oh, and I ran that query you asked.” He leaned in close so he could whisper, and looked around nervously. “On the woman.”
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