Season of the Harvest

by Michael R. Hicks

  Halvorsen did as he was told, and his eyes bulged as the pilot brought the plane into what the infantryman thought was an insanely tight right-hand turn, straight at the side of the plateau. It was all he could do to keep from grabbing the wheel himself and hauling it back as far as he could.

  Just when Halvorsen was sure the plane was going to smash into the snow-covered slope, the nose eased over the top by what must have only been a handful of meters. The entire fuselage shuddered violently as the airspeed fell off and the plane entered a stall, the air over the wings no longer moving fast enough to generate lift.

  Cursing, the pilot eased the nose down, but Idunn was through flying. With a shuddering lurch the plane stalled and literally fell from the sky, slamming its flaming belly down onto the snow from an altitude of three meters. The tip of the left wing, heavier with its two engines than the right, canted down and dug into the snow, and the propeller on the outboard engine disintegrated as it chopped into the white landscape, still at full throttle. As the wingtip bit deeper, the plane was thrown into a tight ground loop, finally coming to a stop in a great geyser of snow.

  “Get everyone out,” the pilot gasped. “Quickly. Fire.”

  Halvorsen called back to his men, who were already busy trying to get the emergency hatches open. Then he turned back to the pilot and undid his harness. Dragging him out of his seat, he helped him off the flight deck and handed him off to a pair of his men.

  A few minutes later, the survivors of his company had pulled the wounded from the plane and salvaged what equipment they could. Halvorsen stood next to the pilot, his wounds having been quickly dressed by the company medic. Unlike the mysterious explosion that took the Il-76, there were no spectacular pyrotechnic displays here. Idunn simply burned. Watching his plane being consumed by flames caused the pilot far more pain than the shrapnel had.

  “We’ll head toward the SvalSat station,” Halvorsen ordered. SvalSat, short for Svalbard Satellite, was a satellite communications facility located on the plateau fifteen hundred meters away. It boasted six large satcom antennas and an operations building that would provide shelter for the wounded while the rest of the company dealt with the Russians. Halvorsen could clearly see the big domes covering the dishes from where he stood. “Once we get there,” he told the pilot, “I’d like to leave you in charge of the wounded while I take the rest of the men to deal with the Russians.” From the SvalSat station, the seed vault was another fifteen hundred meters to the east, in the direction of the pyre that was the airport. “We should be able to contact Oslo and tell them what’s happened here.”

  The pilot nodded absently. The flames of his burning plane, fanned by the chill wind, were reflected in his eyes. “Then we’d better get going,” he said.

  ***

  Al Ferris concentrated on the view of the approaching runway while glancing at his instruments, trying to ignore the still-raging conflagration of the destroyed Il-76 directly ahead. Carrying such a heavy load, the Falcon was going to need over two thousand feet of runway, and if he was estimating the distance right, the Il-76 was at around the thirty-five hundred foot mark. That was the good news. The bad news was that the explosion that had consumed the Russian plane had sent burning fuel and debris hundreds of yards in every direction, including down the section of runway that Ferris needed.

  “If we don’t prang the nose gear or suck something into the engines,” he muttered as he cycled the landing gear down, “it’ll be a goddamn miracle. Or we might get a SAM stuffed in our face. Jesus.” Over the intercom, he said, “Hang on, boys and girls!”

  Normally he would have made his intended touch-down point a few hundred feet down the runway to provide a generous safety margin. Now he didn’t dare: he needed every inch he could get. Sweeping in from the seaward side, he was aiming for the very end of runway 10.

  The runway rapidly grew in the windscreen as he took the plane in, bringing it down as fast as he dared. “It’s like a goddamn carrier landing in a thirty knot crosswind,” he muttered.

  At the last second he pulled back on the throttles and up on the control yoke, flaring the Falcon and dampening its descent just enough to keep from breaking the landing gear as the plane slammed into the runway, the main gear wheels shrieking with the stress and streaming plumes of smoke from the tires. He dropped the nose gear down to the runway, then activated the thrust reversers and rammed the throttles forward to help slow the plane. The Falcon shuddered, and he began tapping on the brakes, praying they wouldn’t overheat.

  Ahead of him, the view of the Il-76’s inferno grew ever larger, and he winced as the Falcon’s thin aluminum skin was hammered by debris thrown up by the wheels. He murmured a non-stop prayer that the engines wouldn’t suck in any debris. If they did, he and the others might be able to walk away from the landing, but they’d be marooned here.

  He continued to work the brakes, instinctively finding the best balance between slowing the plane and losing traction with the snow-dusted runway if the brakes locked, which would likely send the Falcon skidding helplessly into the burning wreckage of the Russian plane.

  At last, with one final bang of something hitting the underside of the fuselage, the Falcon came to a stop a mere two hundred feet from the edge of the fire that ringed the dead Il-76.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ferris choked. He knew that he must have made more dangerous landings in combat, but he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head. After taking a deep breath, he keyed the intercom and said, “Okay, you suicidal idiots, we’ve landed. Thanks for flying EDS Airlines. Now get your asses off my plane and go shoot somebody.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Sergei Mikhailov was dreaming. It was a strange dream, unlike any he’d ever had before. Neither pleasant nor frightening, it was simply...strange. He could hear something – grunting, perhaps? – through a persistent ringing in his ears. In the dream, he saw concrete, heavily dusted with snow that swirled in a gusty wind that felt cold against his face. Tilting his head slightly, he could see feet, legs, and the buttocks of someone dressed in a camouflage uniform. There was a lot of blood on the man’s legs, and he could see rips in the fabric of his pants and matching wounds in his skin. The man’s legs and feet moved ponderously across the concrete in what Mikhailov suddenly thought was a comical dance.

  He also saw an arm dangling down, and after a moment realized that it was his own. He was also wearing a camouflage uniform, and much of the material was blackened. With a sudden start he realized that this wasn’t a dream. This was real.

  “Stop,” he croaked. His voice barely penetrated the ringing in his ears. “Put me down!”

  He felt himself slowly falling backward, and realized that someone had been hauling him in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder and was now setting him down. As he slid to the ground, he looked up to see Rudenko’s scorched and blood-streaked face staring back at him with undisguised concern.

  “Kapitan?” Rudenko shouted. “You were hit by debris from the explosion. Two of those Spetsnaz bastards planted explosives in the terminal while their buddies shot down the Norwegians.”

  “How many of our men survived?” Mikhailov asked grimly. The ringing in his ears was gradually fading, but he could still barely hear over it.

  “Nine,” Rudenko told him, “including you. A dozen more survived the blast, but the Spetsnaz bastards caught them by surprise and used guns and grenades on them. Our boys tried to take cover under that airliner sitting in front of the terminal, until the Spetsnaz blasted the shit out of it with an anti-tank rocket. Our men burned to death when the fuel in the plane’s tanks caught fire.”

  “What happened with your squad?” Mikhailov asked, trying to come to grips with the extent of the disaster. “How did you manage to get away?”

  Rudenko grinned, but there was no humor in the expression. “I thought those Spetsnaz shits were up to something from the beginning. I saw them run out of the hangar like their asses were on fire, just after the Il-76 exploded. Tha
t’s when I threw you on the ground.” He shrugged. “They thought we were finished. When they chased the other squad under the plane, we let them have it.” The grin faded. “Kapitan...they must have some kind of new body armor. I saw both of them take at least half a dozen rounds and it didn’t even slow them down.” He looked down at his AKS-74U assault rifle, a version of the AK-74 in general use in the Army that had a folding buttstock and a shortened barrel. He had killed a number of men with this very weapon in Chechnya, and knew that those Spetsnaz soldiers should have been dead. “I saw the bullets strike. But I don’t think it even pissed them off. Watching them kill our men...it was like they were exterminating insects. And I think they would have come for us, except that there was a pool of burning fuel that spread between us, and they didn’t come anywhere near it. That was the only thing they seemed to have any fear of.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They joined their two buddies who shot down the Norwegian plane and grabbed some snowmobiles that were parked not far from the terminal. Then they headed that way.” He pointed toward the eastern end of the runway, and Mikhailov saw four snowmobiles just making the turn to follow a winding road that led up the slope.

  Toward the seed vault, Mikhailov seethed. “Well,” he said, “now we know who our terrorists are, don’t we?” Turning back to Rudenko, he said, “You saved my life, sergeant. I...there’s no way I can thank you for that.”

  Rudenko’s wolfish grin softened into a smile. He had suffered more than his fair share of despotic and idiotic officers whom he would have been happy to leave burn. Mikhailov, on the other hand, was a good man, and had been an officer worthy of his respect. “I figured you’d be good for a bottle of vodka,” he said. “Oh, and one more thing,” he added.

  “What’s that?”

  “Another plane landed, not long after our plane exploded and the Norwegian transport crashed on the ridge,” Rudenko told him, pointing toward the runway beyond the flaming wreckage of the Il-76. “We couldn’t see it very well, but it looked like a small civilian jet.”

  “They picked a hell of a time to come visit Spitsbergen,” Mikhailov said wryly as he got to his feet. He was still shaken, but he wanted the heads of those Spetsnaz men, and he wanted them now. Turning toward where the snowmobiles were churning up the road toward the seed vault, staring at the four men who had murdered most of his company, he told Rudenko, “Are there any other snowmobiles or vehicles? We need to–”

  Mikhailov watched in amazement as the man riding the lead snowmobile suddenly blew apart into flaming chunks, as if his body had spontaneously exploded. Then the sound of a shot reached them, and he heard the sharp crack of a heavy rifle, firing from somewhere beyond the wreckage of the Il-76, near where Rudenko had seen the small civilian jet land.

  The three other Spetsnaz men veered wildly around the flaming remains of their comrade. There was a puff of smoke from the front of one of the other snowmobiles and its rear flew up as if the machine had run into a brick wall, catapulting the rider forward. The entire control column and front steering skis were smashed. As smoke boiled from the engine, the wreckage cartwheeled into the path of the remaining two snowmobiles. One of them crashed straight into the stricken machine, while the other spun out and rolled.

  “Now that’s something new,” Rudenko muttered. He had seen men killed by heavy machine guns and sniper rifles, but had never witnessed anything so gruesomely spectacular.

  “Indeed,” Mikhailov agreed. “It appears that the new arrivals aren’t civilians after all.” He turned to Rudenko. “I just hope we can get on their good side and they aren’t simply shooting Russians on sight.”

  The three surviving Spetsnaz men sprinted into the curtain of smoke streaming from the two burning planes and the shattered airport.

  ***

  Jack had spent a good deal of the flight getting to know the other members of his combat team, and the one he had been most impressed by was Craig Hathcock, the team’s sniper. A fellow veteran of Afghanistan, Hathcock had served in the Canadian Army, and had sent more than his fair share of Taliban fighters to Paradise. In two cases he had done so at ranges of over a mile in gusty winds.

  As soon as the Falcon came to a stop and Ferris opened the door with its embedded steps so they could get out, Jack led the team out onto the runway, where they formed a protective ring around the plane.

  Hathcock had already been eyeing possible firing positions from his seat in the plane. He and his spotter, another former Canadian soldier, dashed to the south edge of the runway, taking cover behind some of the rocky outcroppings that protruded from the snow. Hathcock carried his favorite weapon, a massive Barrett Model 82A1 with a Unertl telescopic sight. The rifle fired the same size rounds as the vehicle-mounted .50 caliber M2 machine gun. The weapon’s magazine was loaded with the standard rounds used by snipers who favored the Barrett, and which Hathcock hoped would be a very unpleasant surprise for the harvesters. It was the Raufoss Mk.211, which was named, somewhat ironically given the current situation, after the Norwegian town where it was manufactured. It boasted a nasty combination of armor piercing, high explosive, and incendiary capabilities. He had never had a chance to actually fight the harvesters, and he was eager to get a shot at them.

  The smoke from the burning planes and airport terminal was streaming to the south, obscuring the slope where the seed vault was located. The only view he had was along the south edge of the runway. The hot smoke rose in the cold air just enough to make a “tunnel” that was relatively clear before being carried away by the wind toward the slope where the seed vault was located. Since there was nowhere else to aim, he pointed the Barrett along the runway’s edge and put his eye to the ten-power Unertl scope.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Then, loud enough to key his voice-activated microphone, he said, “I’ve got four soldiers, Russians, I think, on snowmobiles heading for the road that leads up the slope to the vault.”

  Without hesitation, Jack said, “Take them out.” There was no question that the Russians had started this fight by taking out the Norwegian C-130 with a SAM. The last they had seen of it, the C-130 had disappeared over the top of the plateau just as the Falcon was coming in for its hair-raising landing. Even through the smoke obscuring the area around the runway, Jack could clearly see another thick plume of smoke rising from somewhere on the plateau. The C-130 hadn’t made it very far. He didn’t know why the Russian plane had blown up, but suspected that those four men on the snowmobiles somehow had a hand in this disaster.

  “Roger,” Hathcock replied. “Targeting the lead rider,” he said to his spotter.

  “Got him,” his partner, George Claret, replied quietly. He was looking through a spotting scope, tracking the snowmobiles as they raced up along the snow on either side of the road that led to the seed vault.

  Hathcock focused his concentration on the lead rider, who would be lost in the smoke in a few scant seconds. Holding his breath, his right index finger pulled back smoothly on the Barrett’s trigger.

  The weapon slammed against his shoulder, sending the index-finger size bullet downrange at over two thousand meters per second. He lost sight of the target in his scope as the weapon recoiled: keeping track of where his shots fell was one of the key duties of his spotter.

  “Hit,” Claret reported over the radio. Then, more softly to Hathcock, he said, “Blew the fucker into burning bacon bits, you did.”

  Hathcock got his sights back onto the three remaining targets, and decided that he didn’t have time for finesse. Instead of aiming for the rider of the next snowmobile, he aimed for the machine itself. Again he stroked the trigger, and again the big rifle slammed back against his shoulder with an ear-shattering crack.

  “Hit,” Claret reported again as he saw the round strike the steering column of the lead snowmobile, the impact sending the machine spinning out of control. It careened into the other two snowmobiles and tossed its rider high over the small windshield, while dumping the other
two Russians into the snow as they lost control of their own machines. “You earned some extra points with that one, mate. You pitched all three of the bastards into the snow with one shot.”

  Laying the gun’s sights on where the snowmobiles lay wrecked, he cursed as the three white-clad soldiers disappeared into the curtain of smoke. “Shit.”

  “Damn good shooting,” Jack said from behind him as he and the others moved up. The only one who would be staying behind was Ferris, who was busy turning the plane around and moving it farther away from the fires on the runway. “Let’s get going. The vault is almost due south, just a kilometer away up that slope. We’ve got a chance to beat them, but we’ve got to move fast. You two,” he said to Hathcock and Claret, “bring up the rear and cover our asses. Let’s move.”

  Taking the lead, Naomi right behind him, Jack took his team single file through the snow toward the vault, their white winter uniforms quickly disappearing into the acrid black smoke.

  ***

  The fifteen hundred meters from where Idunn still burned to the SvalSat facility was the longest march of Halvorsen’s life. The snow that the storm had left behind was deep, and his men struggled to make their way forward as they dragged the wounded in makeshift stretchers.

  He had heard the two reports of a large-caliber gun, which puzzled him: it had the distinctive sound of the heavy sniper rifles the Americans and some of the other allied forces in Afghanistan had used against the Taliban, but that made no sense. The Russians didn’t use those.

  It doesn’t matter, he told himself grimly, as long as they’re not shooting at us.

  Finally, they made it to the control building, which sat roughly in the middle of the array of large “golf balls”, the spherical environmental enclosures that protected the antennas, that together made up the SvalSat facility. The control building was two stories tall, with two deep blue garage doors on the front of the building, next to the personnel entrance. Nearby was the helicopter that was used to ferry the SvalSat crews to and from the station at every shift change. Halvorsen thought that was odd, because he knew that the scheduled shift change wasn’t for at least another three hours, and the helicopter should have been at the airport.