Phoenix Force 06 - White Hell

by Gar Wilson

  "That's a bit farfetched." Yakov rejected the theory. "No," he sighed. "I think it's a simple hit-and-run with no long-range planning involved. That's why I say they're in the immediate area." But there was not that much conviction in his words; it was obvious that certain wheels were grudgingly beginning to turn inside his brain.

  But for now they all turned to the work at hand.

  Today Phoenix would venture farther afield in the Brooks range foothills. Where previously the width of their search had been limited by the Arctic inroads on human endurance, this morning they would spread across fifty miles of the landscape paralleling the pipeline's right flank. Mounted on snowmobiles, they would move deeper into the foothills. Returning in the afternoon, they would do the same for the TAP'S left flank.

  Last night, in crash indoctrination, they had driven for hours into the Prudhoe countryside. An expert snowmobiler had put them through rigorous paces, explaining all emergency procedures.

  And now, arriving at a lowland site twenty miles north of Toolik, Grimaldi began losing altitude.

  The Sikorsky also dropped. Again there was a flurry of activity inside the Bell. Weapons were checked, ammo stashed, special equipment packed into rucksacks. Emergency rations were divided among the team members. And finally, the chore of shagging into cold-weather gear, into boot-packs, into gloves. Again they became walking mountains of down, fur and wool.

  As they slung their rifles over their shoulders, Encizo noticed a bulky package partially hidden behind their makeshift arsenal. He pulled away a blanket to reveal an abbreviated bazooka-type weapon. "Who brought this monstrosity aboard?" he asked. "What in hell is it?"

  Manning answered, "It's something I picked up at Fort Greely when we were loading up. It's a Dragon M-47 antitank weapon."

  "Tank weapon?" Keio jumped in. "You're going to take on our own troops now? Grey Dog hasn't lifted any tanks. Not that I've heard of anyway."

  Manning was defensive. "It was just an after-thought," he said. "I figured we might be running up against a hideout of sorts, a mountain dig-in or some such. And since we don't have artillery. . . no cannon on the chopper.. .. Who can tell? It might come in handy."

  The blanket was dropped. Quizzical looks were sent Manning's way as they prepared for landfall.

  As Phoenix emerged from the Bell, boots creaking on the subzero hardpan of snow and ice, the hovering Sikorsky's deck was slowly coming down. Five Finncats—the Cadillac of snowmobiles—were lined up on the platform. Made by VPLO Industries in Finland, the Finncat was the most dependable, most economical and most responsive snowmobile in existence.

  As they approached the Sikorsky, waiting for the platform to touch down, McCarter was already bitching. "My poor aching ass. The drubbing that thing gave me last night."

  "Which accounts for your muddled mental state this morning, I suppose?" Rafael smiled. "How's that, mate? Come again?"

  "Seeing as your brains are located in your ass, no wonder everything's cloudy for you today."

  "Kindly piss up a rope," McCarter replied with a grin.

  Then they were kicking the Finncats to life, carefully edging them off the cargo deck, nursing the engines to full, throaty roar. Gas supplies were checked, and extra equipment was stored forward in customized storage compartments.

  As Gary Manning placed an extra long, scabbarded knife into his bin, Keio asked, "What the hell is that, another brainstorm? Are you setting out to cut sugarcane or something?"

  Manning's smile was evasive. "My Alaskan survival kit," he said simply, letting it drop.

  Ten minutes later Phoenix Force was ready for jump off. From the cockpits of the two helicopters, the pilots—Grimaldi in one, two Army men in the other—watched, glad they were to remain behind. Engines killed, an interior generator heater running at low throttle, they would await the team's return, late that afternoon. Radio contact would remain constant, with each member carrying a unit.

  There was a final briefing on position and May-day procedures by Katz. Then the snowmobile convoy was off in a boil of bluish gray smoke.

  The lightweight, fiberglass Finncats had no skis. Instead they were fully tracked from front to back, steering on the same principle as a tank: lock the left track to go left, the right to go right. They had a top speed of forty miles per hour and could cross any type of terrain—tundra, sand, underbrush, steep incline—where the conventional snowmobile was meant for snow alone. And low-incline snow at that.

  Each man had been instructed to maintain a five-mile distance, establish frequent radio contact, keep to an average speed of twenty miles per hour, with turnback toward the pipeline slated for noon. During this mission, the Finncat's single headlight would be operational.

  It was 1000 hours when Yakov, taking the five-mile track, received word from Encizo to head out. The inner track was his deliberate choice; still holding to his conviction that Grey Dog was skulking nearby.

  At the outset the going was relatively easy, and by watching his compass, Katz was able to hold a straight course. But as he proceeded, he found the going got rougher with each additional mile. Time and time again he was forced to backtrack, make a sidelong pass at particularly rugged hogbacks. His speed was constantly cut.

  The Finncat was a sweet piece of machinery, with excellent stability and amazing traction. Its center of gravity superb, it clung to twenty-five-degree slopes effortlessly, and all fears of overturning were quickly dismissed.

  The temperature stood at twenty below, but the forward thrust of the snowmobile dropped that to sixty below. The high fairing granted enough protection so that the compactly built Israeli only suffered minor agony. His one hand, shoulders and feet began getting cold first, and he was forced to flex his fingers, twist his torso, stamp his feet intermittently. There was, however, no danger of frostbite. The wintersuit saw to that.

  Yakov's eyes darted nonstop from side to side as he searched the underbrush, probed swales and valleys below him and studied the higher elevations. There was a hypnotic monotony to the lurching, swerving ride, and there were times when the darkness contributed a further lulling effect.

  Often he braked and throttled the engine back to a soft purr. He listened for sounds, watched for movement. Repeatedly, when he saw outcroppings of rock resembling a camouflaged rooftop or a group of hastily constructed cabins, he veered off course and swept down for a closer look.

  But it was always just an optical illusion, and nothing more.

  He pressed on.

  The snarling drone of the snow-machine's engine enhanced the surrealistic mood. Alert, Katz knew full well that danger might be lurking just ahead.

  His was not a foolhardy, arrogant overconfidence, however. It came under the name of experience.

  Some might call it deja vu. The case-hardened warrior had been here before. Four decades of living on the brink of death were guarantee that he was more than equal to any challenge that might crop up. To the fifty-five-year-old ex-Mossad agent in the Israeli army, survival was a mere matter of knowing when to duck, when to charge forward.

  He had survived the Boche—Nazi bastards—in Paris, when as a boy, he had run courier for the underground. He had survived Hanoi when Ho Chi Minh had been laying groundwork for Vietnam. He had survived the founding of the Israeli nation. He had fought as a young man with Ben-Gurion against the Arab and English jackals—which were the more treacherous he could never decide.

  He had survived the Six Day War in 1967—although not totally, for he had left part of his right arm on that bloody killing ground.

  And he had suffered an even more grievous loss—a son, Torem, had been killed in yet another sector of that same battle.

  As if that was not tragedy enough, in 1974 Katz had lost his wife, Cynthia, in a late-night auto-mobile accident. According to the police, she had gone to sleep at the wheel. But Yakov knew better; he knew the "accident" was terrorist conceived. One day soon, he thought, he would settle scores on that one.

  Katz shifted his five-nine
, 185-pound frame on the snowmobile seat and tried to shake off the morbid memories. What good is it to dredge up that stuff, he asked himself.

  He was, beneath it all, a warm, kind, jovial and peace-loving man. He fought with Phoenix Force only to preserve peace—he felt it was something worth dying for.

  He recalled his last interlude with Jerusha and how she had begged him to retire. She would divorce her husband, marry Yakov; she would move heaven and earth to make him happy, to become a worthy successor to Cynthia.

  He had been tempted. Jerusha was a magnificent woman; he loved her dearly. But in the end, he had not hesitated for a moment when Colonel John Phoenix had summoned him for this latest mission.

  Regrettably Jerusha would continue to occupy second place in his life. There are men who talk of peace. There are others who do something about it.

  And yes, he agreed in near lament, he might be getting past his prime, a bit heavy in the middle, his hair thinning. But he was still a man.

  He was still a survivor.

  And heaven help the miserable bastard who might try to alter that status.

  The grim-faced man cursed in Yiddish again, jammed out his right foot to prevent a tip-over, an unseen log presenting a chance for disaster. Alter kocker, he castigated. You old fool. Keep your mind on what you're doing.

  On the far end of the search quadrant, Encizo was encountering smooth sailing; he would be in port well ahead of the others.

  Like Katz, he was finding no sign of enemy activity. "Hey, McCarter," he called into his walkie-talkie to the man patrolling his left, "enjoying the ride? Ain't you glad we came to Alaska instead of Hawaii? I'm spotting nothing here. Rocks and snow. Nada más."

  McCarter keyed his radio, replied snidely, "Ten-four, Rafael. I got me a couple of cow seals here. Both in heat. They been askin' about you. Other than that, nothing much to report."

  "I'll pass on the seals," Encizo shot back.

  McCarter had tipped over once and had struggled furiously to right his Finncat. Stymied by a series of cross-ridges, he knew he was lagging. Now he roared his engine, aimed into a meadow at full clip.

  On his left, Manning had drawn his Finncat to full stop and had killed the engine. Off to one side, caught in the glare of his headlight, was a blinking, scowling golden grizzly. Perched on the side of a hill, a shadowy area behind indicated his den; he would easily weigh nine hundred pounds, and though scruffy from hibernation, he was a fantastic specimen.

  Manning watched the bear for a few minutes more. But as the minor mountain became restless and made a tentative move toward him, Manning sparked the snowmobile to life and eased forward. At least, he thought, as he threw up blinding clouds of snow, he had something to show for his ride.

  Keio Ohara was similarly disgusted. Two-thirds of the allotted territory covered, and he had yet to see anything that even remotely resembled trouble. And they had another afternoon of this before them?

  At first he had been grateful for the solitude; there had been moments for meditation, and he had achieved an inner detachment of sorts. It had provided a resurgence of soul and had let him escape the penetrating cold.

  But through the minor nirvana, there remained a nagging presentiment of doom; he was fielding psychic emanations he could not begin to identify. Something was definitely wrong.

  Had he lifted his eyes, forgotten his scouting chores for a moment, he might have noticed that the sky was rapidly clouding over, the array of stars winking out overhead. He might have noticed an abrupt shifting of the wind.

  But no, dedicated soldier that he was, he concentrated on the terrain unwinding below him. Neither Keio nor any of the others noticed the distinct weather change until it was too late.

  EVEN AS THE TEAM ATE tasteless Army rations from individual insulated carriers—all gathered around a roaring fire Manning had ignited with an extra flare—they still failed to recognize encroaching jeopardy. The fire, the food, the windbreak, provided by the pipeline VSRs, helped isolate them from reality.

  But shortly, as the sand-hard snow became driving arrows, and wind gusts all but ripped their parkas away, pummeled their bodies with haymaker impact, they took notice.

  "Hey," Keio exclaimed, nearly flattened by a particularly severe blast. "And we're going to ride against that?"

  Katz's face grave, he ducked behind a Finncat, signaled Grimaldi, fifty miles to the north. "Where the hell does your weatherman get his forecasts?" he shouted. "From a fortune cookie? This is a squall? We've got at least a forty-mile wind here. I think we'd best call it a day. We'll ditch the Finncats, recover them later. Come pick us up, Jack."

  The signal was weak, Grimaldi's voice fading in and out, at times disappearing completely. "Negative, guys," his voice finally erupted from a roar of static, the panic in it unmistakable. "We're totally socked in here. Wind at fifty and sixty and rising. Visibility at zero." The signal died.

  "Grimaldi!" Katz barked, his alarm matching the pilot's. "Come in, Grimaldi. What's wrong with your radio? Do you read me?"

  "Already tried taking this crate up twice . . ." the static-mashed words came. "Can't get any lift . . . wind keeps putting me down . . . nearly capsized once." Then in a clear, crisp moment of transmission, "You guys tie down there as best you can. I'll get there the minute this blows over. Take cover, do you hear? Prudhoe says it's the blizzard of the century. They are totally buried."

  The signal again went weak. "Sorry, you guys . . . truly am. One of those freak things . . . nobody . . . could predict. Hang on . . . hang on. . ."

  The copter radio went out completely; only static could be heard. Try as they might, none of the team members could raise Grimaldi.

  Katz clicked off his walkie-talkie, turned to the others, his eyes haunted. "The blizzard of the century," he muttered. "And we're a hundred miles from nowhere."

  8

  For long moments no member of Phoenix Force uttered a word. Deliberately they avoided looking at each other, none wanting the other to read the despair reflected in his eyes. What now? Huddle behind a rock? Struggle to keep a fire going? Even if the Arctic fury permitted it, how long would that last? They would be turned into ice statues within an hour.

  It would constitute the ultimate practical joke. They had faced down every danger the world's most ruthless terrorists could throw at them. Bullets, grenades, knives, demolition blasts—terror beneath and above the sea. Then, to buy it this way . . . To run in circles against the one enemy too big to handle. To be turned into large, economy-sized ice cubes.

  "Can we gather some branches?" Encizo finally offered. "Build a lean-to of some sort?"

  "Never work," McCarter said. "We'd just take a little longer to freeze, that's all."

  It was then they noticed that Gary Manning was gone. Searching the shrieking, shifting walls of snow, they saw no sign of him. The wind actually took Keio's legs out from under him, and he clawed for a fingerhold against its terrifying force.

  "Gary," Encizo howled helplessly against the storm. "Where are you? Get your ass back here. This is no time to be wandering off. Manning, do you hear me?"

  The wind whipped away the useless shouts, his outcry barely registering three feet away.

  Before the rest could take up with bellowings of their own, a dim shape solidified in the snow, and they saw Manning, an improvised sounding pole in his hands. They watched in bafflement as he poked it into the snow again and again.

  "What in hell?" McCarter challenged. "What're you doing, mate?"

  "Looking for snow."

  "Looking for snow?" McCarter screamed. "You dumb Canuck, there's a million miles of it all around us."

  "The right kind of snow," Manning called back. "Leave me be. The rest of you draw up the Finncats. Make a semicircle to the north of me, form a windbreak of sorts." He drove the probe into the snow a last time. "Here," he urged. "This feels right to me."

  By the time the snowmobiles were coaxed back to life, herded into tight revetment, Manning was studiously pacing a twelv
e-foot circle in the snow, stamping on the hard-packed crust that had been building in the Arctic since early November. "Keio," he commanded, "that funny looking knife in the boot you were asking about before. Bring it."

  The Canadian's sense of urgency was infectious, and the rest of the men gathered close, curious about Manning's behavior.

  "Gary," Katz insisted, "what are you doing?"

  "An igloo," he replied tersely, taking the knife—thin, razor sharp, over a foot long—from the scabbard that Keio now thrust into his hands. "It's our only chance."

  "An igloo?" Yakov gaped. "You know how to build one?"

  "I did once. Just pray I haven't forgotten how." Instantly he leaned forward, slashed the knife into the wind-packed snow. A moment later he sawed into the crust and brought up a block of snow that was fourteen by fourteen, at least a foot thick.

  "An igloo?" McCarter scoffed. "You're crazy, man. That'll take all day. We'll be frozen solid by then."

  "You got any better ideas?" Manning snapped, the knife flashing as it shaped the snow block to precise bias on both bearing edges. "You gonna stand there yammering, or you going to help?"

  "Sure thing, mate," McCarter said. "Just tell me what to do."

  "Get those packing tarps out of the Finncats," he urged. "Gather them in one place. Get the weapons under cover and any food we've got left, those aluminum containers it came in.... There should be some sterno stuff in those kits. I know there's a Hank Roberts stove-lantern in mine. Get ready for a bit of hibernation, my friend."

  And to Rafael he said, "Place the blocks as I dig them. Butt them as tight as you can." The knife never stopped, and shortly four ice cakes were lying on the outer rim of the ring he was rapidly digging himself into.

  The first blocks were cut on gradual incline, like a circular ramp. Later they were cut to uniform size, the cant thus produced giving the courses a spiraling configuration. Special taper was given to each succeeding block so the igloo dome gradually began to form.