Phoenix Force 06 - White Hell

by Gar Wilson

  "Maybe some caribou yarding," Manning offered. "Wildlife of some sort. A grizzly with insomnia. . ."

  "Wildlife, all right," McCarter snorted. "Goddamned micks is what it is. They got a ripe smell all their own." Instantly he lifted his AK-47. "How about it, Yakov? We go down?"

  Katz turned to Grimaldi. "Take us down, Jack. Off to the left there. Give us some distance so we're out of range if they are down there."

  Immediately there was flurry of activity in the crowded cabin, everyone checking his weapons, strapping on ammo belts, securing snaps and zippers on their Arctic jump suits. Special fur-lined leather gloves were donned. Their parkas were snugged tight, the cowl almost hiding their faces. Wool face masks were pulled down.

  "How'n hell are we gonna fight in all this?" Rafael said. "I feel like a walking mountain."

  "Don't knock it," McCarter replied. "Your blood'll turn to ice without that stuff on."

  "Remember your orientation," Yakov reminded everyone as the helicopter settled into the snow, and the team crowded the door. "Move slowly, with deliberation. Keep your hood up. No quick breaths. You'll freeze your lungs. Keep your gloves on at all times, no matter what. Otherwise," he saluted briefly with his steel claw, "you'll have fingers like mine."

  And then, as the door was forced open, ice falling like brittle glass along the seams, Yakov said, "Spread out as we approach the line. We play it by ear after that." He called back into the cabin, "Keep your radio open, Jack. In case we need some help."

  Moments later the five men were down, weapons ready, scuttling away from the rotor backwash as fast as they dared. The wind tore at their eyes and fought for entry at every careless opening in their gear. It was fifteen below, but the wind-chill drove the temperature to fifty below within seconds, hammering home the meaning of the term, flash freezing.

  All weapons had been treated with CLP, an application of submicron Teflon particles suspended in a special solvent. The guns were free of all traces of oil, which would freeze.

  Grateful for the long fur about their faces, they began slogging slowly through the knee-high snow, eyes darting, alert for any telltale movement ahead.

  The pipeline, dimly outlined against the clouding snow, lay a quarter mile away. Pausing often, searching the brush, the pine and tamarack stands, they advanced, foot by cautious foot.

  At the base of the line, the forty-eight-inch pipe looming overhead, they studied the tracks around one set of VSMs and saw caked snow on a cross trestle, a clear indication someone had climbed up.

  "What did I tell you?" McCarter chortled, examining the tracks, following them to the left, where they trailed up a slight rise and disappeared over a second hill. "Paddies, sure's hell. Six or eight of 'em from the looks of it."

  He was champing at the bit to be off in pursuit. "Just left, I'll bet. Heard our chopper and broomed off." His eyes were expectant. "We go after 'em, eh, Katz?"

  Katz silenced him with a brusque wave. "What do you see, Gary?" he asked Manning, who had climbed up the steel piling and was carefully examining the pipe.

  "Nothing here. No sign of any explosive device at all. McCarter's right; we must have scared them off."

  Katz then got on the Johnson 577 and directed Grimaldi to fly a quick recon. They were splitting up, he told Grimaldi, heading into the high country. The ace pilot complied and was racketing over their heads within a minute.

  "Got a fix on you guys," his voice crackled. "I'm heading out."

  "Keep some distance," Katz cautioned. "Even the Cong brought down helicopters with rifles."

  "Got you, chief. On course." The Bell Long Ranger swung sharply on its rotors, quickly disappeared over the treetops.

  "McCarter—" Yakov pointed direction "—you and Keio take the right flank. The rest of us will shake out the left. Spread out. No shooting unless it's absolutely necessary. Got your two-way, Keio?"

  "Check."

  "And don't get too far afield. This storm is definitely picking up. I don't want anybody lost in this mess."

  The team split up and headed out.

  "They must have a chopper stashed back there somewhere," Encizo said as they slogged deeper into the brush, stopping often to watch and listen for any movement ahead. By now their face masks were rimmed with ice, their eyelids heavily frosted.

  "More than likely," Yakov replied. Then, shortly, there was excitement in his voice. "Then again, they could have come overland. Perhaps from that base camp we've been breaking our ass to find. Maybe we've stumbled onto something at last."

  Hearts revved up, fresh hope was born. Trigger fingers suddenly developed a bad itch. And yet there were doubts; such a turn would be altogether unexpected.

  Things seldom came easy for Phoenix Force.

  Yakov's radio came to life. "Got something here," Grimaldi's voice crackled. "Movement on the left side of the pipe. Heading east in quite a scamper. I figure five hundred yards ahead of your present position. Bring it on up."

  "Any sign of a copter?" Yakov questioned.

  "Negative. But that doesn't mean it isn't there. Our storm is here. Visibility's near zero. Barely make out the troops. We got ten minutes at best before we do a Dunkirk."

  "Not yet," Yakov said firmly. "Stand by. We'll take our chances."

  "Got a fix here," Keio's voice came on the second the pilot broke transmission. "A couple of stragglers. We're moving into your zone."

  "Get a live one if you can," Yakov said. "We need information in the worst way."

  "Okay," Keio came back. "Repeat. Moving into your zone."

  They pushed forward with as much vigor as they dared, Rafael and Manning drifting even farther left for an extreme flank and possible cutoff. Their boots crashed through the undergrowth and the caked snow. One moment they hurried across a solid surface, the next they dropped through to their waists in snow. Manning pinched his parka shut over his mouth to allow deeper breathing. The wind speed was twenty-five miles per hour.

  The clatter of the Bell's rotors became louder. Grimaldi, the original crazy man, was flying over the fleeing Grey Dogs, all but begging for a gut shot.

  They heard the distant pop-pop-pop of rifle fire to their right.

  The three men cursed in frustration, dug their feet furiously into the slippery slope, gasping in their eagerness to get on the line before it was all over. The weather was not cooperating with their efforts. Falling, blowing snow obscured trees ten feet away.

  The gunfire was closer. As Yakov, Rafael and Manning came over a thirty-foot incline, they could barely make out the battle arena. The pipeline glowed eerily through the screen of snow.

  Sporadic muzzle-flashes—merest fire-pricks in the darkness—ignited to their right. Return sparks could not be seen; the Grey Dog force was apparently nailed down in a protective, stone-shouldered shelter.

  "Must be Keio and McCarter," Rafael said, indicating the activity closest to the pipeline.

  Fifty yards ahead, on a higher bank, secondary gunfire erupted, the bark throaty, hollow, the chatter on the slow side.

  "Sounds like a Sten to me," Manning muttered, at once shifting, aiming his CAR-15 at the hardman's lair, forty feet above the main assault zone.

  He cursed softly as the trigger depressed and nothing happened. Manual action then. Finally, with a studied slam of the magazine section against a tree, the frozen part came unstuck. Anger filled him as he accepted blame for the halfassed winterizing of his weapon. He knew his gaffe was inexcusable. Any other time the miscue could have meant instant death.

  He opened up on the terrorist's nest, sending a half-dozen rounds, the CAR's muzzle-flash spitting a full four inches, illuminating the hard planes of his face. Gary then saw Yakov moving out, darting and dropping in short bursts down the incline.

  "Coming in, Keio," Yakov blurted into the Johnson portable, "at ten o'clock. Rafael and Gary are trying to sweep. How many you got?"

  "Three, I think. Hey, they're on the move. Out." The radio went dead. Red-hot slugs punched into the terro
rists' shelter. Then there was a smear in the dusk, the Phoenix duo sliding right to throw off their quarry and the hillside sniper in the bargain.

  Yakov, advancing in a crabbed crouch on the enemy's blind side, added pin-down rounds of his own.

  From the corner of his eye Yakov saw Manning and Encizo, smudged wraiths in the deepening storm, laboriously working their way up the bluff.

  "Spot 'em?" McCarter gasped, the extended exertion getting to him. "We must've winged one of those bastards at least." He spit. "Rather be shooting to kill, if you ask me."

  "No," Keio murmured, the Arctic cold making inroads on his remarkable endurance as well. "They're holed up again. Did you bring a grenade? That'll flush them out."

  "It just so happens ...." McCarter chuckled. He grunted against the binding winter gear and plucked an M-26 from his cartridge belt. Another grunt, a click as the pin came out. The tinny clatter of the ejecting handle. Then the grenade was swooshing through the air, homing on the Grey Dog position.

  The afternoon was torn apart by a flat, metallic concussion. Raising their heads, they saw a glittering afterglow, a rainbow of death captured in the scattering snowflakes. They heard a single agonized scream, a fresh rattle of submachine-gun fire.

  "Pay dirt," McCarter yipped. "Blood on the snow."

  Yakov, well out of range, lurched up, using the diversion to move still closer to the enemy. He keyed the radio. "I'm moving in," he informed Ohara. "Give me high fire."

  For an answer the two men opened up with an M-16 and an AK-47, deliberately aiming above the terrorists' heads. Instantly they rolled away to avoid incoming rounds.

  In that moment Katz darted forward another twenty-five feet and got a clear fix on the crew. There were three of them, one writhing in the snow, the others hunkered down in a stony cul-de-sac. He belly-crawled closer, his white suit and the storm granting almost total camouflage. He lay still, prepared to perform battlefield lobotomy.

  It was then that the overhead scout saw the Phoenix Force member. The Sten Mark 6 cut loose, and Yakov felt the smashing impact in the ground, the slugs tearing up solid rock to his right, chips spattering his face. Acting on sheer reflex he rolled left as four more rounds blazed in, pounding the spot he had just occupied.

  The remaining hardmen, seeing the commotion, spun, prepared to finish Katz off. They relished the prospect.

  They waited one second too long, McCarter and Keio charged forward with matching instinct. Orders forgotten, murder in their hearts, they started a savage fire on the surviving terrorists, sending a combined forty rounds into their lair, chopping them into stewing meat. Sheets of blood spread out around their bodies, forming stark, black stains in the snow.

  Up on the hill the panicky scout rose to kneeling position, crazy to exact gory retribution of his own. He fired three wild shots, then discovered his weapon was empty.

  Cursing, he dropped back and groped for a fresh magazine with cold-deadened hands. He was just slapping it into his Sten when he realized he was not alone.

  Two men, their assault rifles poised in unmistakable menace, towered over him. "Hold it right there, mister," Encizo barked, hard put to keep excitement from his voice. A live one Yakov had said. This was just what the doctor ordered. "Put the piece down. Drop it, I said."

  But the terrorist was no fool; he knew exactly what lay in store for him should he be taken alive. With a swift, sideways lunge the scout deliberately propelled himself over the edge of the outcropping on which he had chosen to make his stand.

  Two rifles blasted in tandem bass, aiming low. The scout rolled headlong down the hill, his maimed legs unable to provide any braking traction. Twenty feet down he struck his head on a rock, the impact snapping his neck like a brittle twig.

  He was dead long before his fur-swathed body came to rest at the bottom of the hill.

  There was no time for pursuit of the remaining members of the terrorist force. Even through the increasing howl of the wind, the snow descending in buckets, they detected the distant thunder of a helicopter as it gained altitude about five hundred yards to the south. The rotors clacked more rapid-ly, and the sound faded, the craft fleeing deeper into the Brooks mountain range.

  Instantly Katzenelenbogen was on the Johnson. "Grimaldi," he bawled, "do you see that chopper? Any chance of us catching it? If you could drop down here fast, pick us up. . ."

  "No way, Colonel," the pilot rasped. "In the first place I can't see the other bird. In the second, I'm having trouble holding this one on track. Another five minutes and I can't guarantee taking us out of this. I'm coming down. We go. Fast."

  The men of Phoenix Force were decidedly humbled by this firsthand demonstration of the awe-some power of nature on the rampage. As they went through the clothing and rucksacks of the dead hardmen, searching for clues—identity, location of the hideout, actual mission—they wondered which was the worst enemy. The Alaskan winter or Grey Dog?

  "They're not holding any demolition gear," Manning yelled over the wail of the blizzard. "Maybe it was just a scouting mission. Or else the hard stuff went on ahead with the forward party; these heroes were just covering ass."

  Encizo picked up one of the M-16s, casually snapped congealed gore off it with his glove before slinging the gun over his shoulder. "I'll bet any money that these came from Greely."

  Grimaldi brought the Bell Long Ranger down cautiously, homing on the MK-13 flare Manning had wisely packed. The five men clambered aboard, each appalled by the intense effort the simple act took, their fingers, arms and legs turned to wood by the relentless, strength-sapping cold. Before the door could be closed, two inches of snow had blown into the cabin.

  McCarter stared dully into space as the chopper jerked up. "Bloody hell . . . " he intoned in a despairing monotone, demoralized by the setback.

  His nose was running; drops of water from his thawing eyebrows cascaded down in a steady drip.

  His dejection was contagious. Every man in the cabin knew he had been in a fight with hell. White hell.

  7

  "And just where in hell have the filthy, rotten bastards got to?" Yakov Katzenelenbogen gritted, his usually imperturbable demeanor marred by rage, his scowl cowing even McCarter.

  "Easy does it, guy," McCarter ventured softly. "The weather hasn't been exactly cooperating, you know."

  "Weather be damned. We're just shifting blame if we fall back on that. We were out the better part of yesterday . . . once that blasted storm blew out. We'll be out all day today. We've patrolled our stretch on the TAP six times. And what have we accomplished? Absolutely nothing."

  Two days had passed since Phoenix's clash with the storm, and this morning, at 0900 hours, the team was again airborne, Grimaldi humming tunelessly at the controls, a U.S. Army Sikorsky S-45 plugging along in their wake. There was a slight pewter cast to the sky; stars twinkled merrily. On the horizon the northern lights were putting on a spectacular show, the layered, floating waves of color blinding. Good weather for a ground patrol.

  "The Army's uncovered nothing either. And when will they show themselves? Certainly they didn't come here for the skiing." He lapsed into Yiddish. Which he invariably did when he wanted to purge his frustration.

  Yesterday Phoenix had returned to the Toolik pumping-station area. They had donned snow shoes and had gone overland in all directions in hope of stumbling on fresh spoor. But there was nothing. The blizzard had covered all trace of the Grey Dog dead, all footpaths as well.

  Alternating between air and foot patrol, they had scoured every foot of the pipeline in the area for evidence of new terrorist movement. They had dropped down on every dismantled work camp in their quadrant and had reassured themselves that no secret underground burrows had been dug.

  And beyond that—the U.S. Army coming up equally empty—what was there? They had consulted with long-time TAP personnel, eliminating all other possibles. The barge hulks in the Beaufort Sea, trapped since 1974? The offshore drilling platforms?

  Quick reconnaissance
had established that these were vermin free. The barges were deserted, haunted only by howling winds. As for the drill hands? Dirty, raunchy, irreverent, resentful, eager to get back to their $32.80 an hour. Fleas perhaps, but no Grey Dogs.

  "What kind of weather report have we got today?" Rafael Encizo asked, staring glumly from the window at the desolate scenery below. The snow reflected a leaden luster, clouds of snow blowing fifty feet high in places, the terrain lined with endless dunes, a ribbing resembling waves, an eternal tide pool of ice and snow.

  "Another storm due later," Grimaldi replied, "but nothing serious. We should be back to base before it hits."

  "And another day wasted," Katz fumed. "When will those swine make their move?"

  "If it's any consolation," Manning interjected, "the weather's keeping the Irish on a short leash also. They're getting hurt more than we are by these delays. We can afford to outwait them."

  "Do you suppose," Keio Ohara suggested, "that we might be limiting our search too much? Maybe their base is a hundred, perhaps two hundred miles away."

  "Could be that some alien force just beams them down here during certain hours of the day," McCarter jeered.

  "But where?" Yakov persisted, considering Keio's idea. "It would be almost impossible for them to set up that far away. They don't have the network for that."

  "Don't they?" Keio's expression was arch. "Remember, some time back, how that Jeddah outfit infiltrated the military. Who's to say it isn't the same story here?"

  "It's possible," Manning agreed. "There could be someone masterminding the whole thing right in the midst of that Prudhoe hornets' nest. Outsmarting us at every turn."

  "But why?" Yakov came back, his mind distracted. "What does the inside agent hope to gain?"

  "Why does anyone sell out?" Keio said. "Money. I mean big dollars. There's always some malcontent in the woodwork, someone nursing an imagined grudge. If the INLA, thanks to some wealthy sheikh, could pass along a half million, tax free. . ."