Alaska Republik-ARC (15 page)

“Thanks, Eric. Guys, this is First Lieutenant Jerry Yamato of the Republic of California Air Force. His fighter was shot down in a fight with a Russian armored column that was on its way here. Jerry lost five of his friends in that fight.”

“Welcome to Delta, Lieutenant.”

“Glad you’re here, man.”

“Thanks for helpin’ us out.”

Every man except the thirteenth made him welcome and he felt emotion rising within him. They all went silent and everyone looked at him. Jerry hated public speaking.

“It’s a privilege to be here, thank you.”

“Here’s Frank,” Williams said. “Everyone listen up.”

Frank’s face looked grim and Jerry noticed the smiles of moments ago had all evaporated.

“Okay, what we have out there is a small army of mercenaries which outnumbers us about twelve to one. We are going to rescue Pelagian, Bodecia, and a Russian named Rudi.”

“A Russian. Why do we give a shit about a Russian?” Alexi asked.

“Ask Jerry, here, sometime. Rudi’s on our side; leave it at that. So we have to create a diversion without getting any of our people hurt while getting Magda’s folks out safely.”

“With just seventeen of us?” Eric asked.

“No, the Russian garrison here is going to give us some help, too.” Frank picked up a stick and began drawing a diagram in the dirt. “Okay, here’s the setup.”

***

38 miles south of Delta

Clutching his machine pistol in a sweaty right hand, Jerry Yamato carefully crawled through the brush surrounding the Freekorps’ motor pool. Like each of the five men with him, he carried two explosive charges that were not supposed to detonate without a radio signal on a specified wavelength. He fervently hoped the Freekorps didn’t have any radios on that wavelength.

He stopped and the men behind him melted into the brush. Jerry put his face down between his arms and waited while a silent perimeter guard of two men no more than fifteen meters away inched past in the long dusk of the subarctic evening. After a few minutes Jerry carefully peeked up, half expecting to see them standing over him and grinning while pointing their weapons at his head.

They were gone. He lifted up onto his elbows and began crawling again. He sensed his squad moving behind him.

Never before had other men depended on his leadership. That was one of the things he liked best about being a fighter pilot: if he screwed up he was the only casualty. Now five other lives depended on his ability and leadership acumen, so he was being cautious. He also didn’t like being dirty.

And he didn’t like Viktor Mitkov, “the thirteenth man” as Jerry thought of him. Not only had Viktor not welcomed Jerry, at his first opportunity he had shouldered Jerry away from the others and spoke quickly.

“Magda and me are gonna get married, so don’t get any ideas, Hero Fly Boy.”

Even though the man was much larger than him, Jerry wasn’t cowed. He had met bullies before, and they all had believed their sheer size would open doors for them.

“That’s odd,” Jerry said in a musing tone. “When I asked her about it a couple of days ago, she said there was no one special waiting for her back in Delta. Are you sure she knows about this engagement?”

As he goaded the bigger man, Jerry had carefully pivoted on his feet. Realizing Viktor lacked more than a modicum of intelligence he expected a physical attack. As if responding to a script, Viktor lunged at Jerry, arms wide to crush the wise-ass pilot.

But Jerry ducked under the man’s arms, placed his right leg in front of Viktor’s right shin, and as the man stumbled over the obstacle, Jerry kidney-punched him as hard as he could. Viktor landed on his face, gasping in agony. Receiving a kidney punch makes it difficult for one to breathe.

Jerry knelt down next to the man and spoke into his ear.

“You approach me again with malice and I’ll kill you. That’s not a threat; it’s a promise. And if you treat Magda with respect and regard her as a thinking person, she might actually end up liking you: but you do not—in any way, shape, or form—own her. Do you understand me?”

Then he leaned on the injured kidney and Viktor cried out.

“Yeah, I understand!”

“That’s good. Because we’re going to need your help.”

Then they had commenced this mission.

Jerry pushed through more brush and nearly collided with an armored personnel carrier. He thought his heart pounded loud enough to be heard fifty meters away. Following the drill they had agreed on, he touched the machine and waved his arm once.

This one would be the first target. His squad crept past him and infiltrated through the parked vehicles. Jerry crawled under the APC and carefully pushed the sticky explosive against the steel hull under the engine compartment.

After his long crawl through the brush and sphagnum moss, the underside of the machine reeked of cold steel, heavy engine oil, and petrol. All of his senses seemed hyperextended and even the earth and crushed foliage beneath his hands felt alien. He strained to see through the deep shadows.

Did they have alarms that could be tripped?

Something above him made a
clink
and he froze. When his heart slowed and the pulse thudding in his ears decreased, he could hear voices murmuring above him. He realized there were mechanics working on the engine.

Never before in his career had he been this close to people he knew would die because of his actions. For a moment he wavered, seeking a way around this fatal intimacy. But he knew if the tables were turned, they would not hesitate to kill him.

They are mercenaries, after all!

He slithered across to the other side of the machine and placed the second explosive on the fuel tank armor. After inserting a detonator in each deadly lump, he crawled back toward the fresh-smelling woods. A new confidence surged through him when he easily spied the wind-broken birch they had agreed on as a rendezvous point.

Clarence Charly already waited as Jerry crawled up.

“Man, that was pretty fast work,” Jerry whispered. “Good job, Clarence.”

“There wasn’t any reason to hang around, y’know?” His quick grin revealed poor dental hygiene.

Max Demientieff crawled up and rolled over on his back. “No more of this creepin’ around shit for me,” he said in a low voice. “Just give me a rifle and tell me who to shoot. Okay?”

“That’s next.” Jerry grinned at them as the rest of their squad came into view.

Viktor, the last man in, gave him a level look and nodded. Jerry nodded back. He pulled the small radio unit out of his pocket and pressed the button to give the go-ahead signal.

31

38 miles south of Delta

Major Timothy Riordan glanced at his watch and then at the sky. “This ‘midnight sun’ crap is irritating.”

“
Oui
,” Captain René Flérs said. “If you wish to do something under the cover of darkness, you must move quickly before the sky she lights up again.”

“And it doesn’t get dark until it’s bloody late at night!” Riordan shook his head. “Have the scouts reported back yet?”

“
Non
, and most confusing it is. I expressly told them to return before the midnight. Perhaps they have become disoriented and lost?”

“I’d be more willing to bet this has something to do with that Russian helicopter yesterday afternoon. That thing took more hits than a whore on payday, yet it stayed in the air.”

“But she did not return,
oui
?”

“That doesn’t mean a damn thing. We didn’t scare them off, René. They’re going to come at us in a different way. That’s why we’ve got to move out tonight.”

“The men are resting, but in full combat dress. The prisoners are under guard in the hospital. The machines are fueled and ready to leap into action.”

Riordan laughed. “All I have to do is push the button, is that it?”

“
Certainment, mon Majeur.
”

The major’s eyes never rested on one spot more than a few seconds. Only under fire was he able to stay still. Tonight his executive officer struggled to keep up with Riordan’s pace as they walked the perimeter of their camp.

“What’s Pelagian’s condition?”

“Doctor Revere says his wound improves
trés
quickly. He should be ambulatory by week’s end. The Russian also rapidly heals, but nothing like the large man.”

“Did you double the guard on the woman as I ordered?”

“
Oui
. She is unsettling, that one. My
grand-mére
would say she has the evil eye.”

“Keep that crap up and you’ll have me believing she can summon the black mariah or call down a banshee. She’s just an old woman who fights with her mouth. But she is damn good at it.”

“Where is roving patrol?” Captain Flérs asked, looking around in the twilight haze of midnight in summertime Alaska. “We should have encountered—”

An abrupt wave of concussion and heat swept across them as one of their three fuel trucks and two armored personnel carriers exploded in a thunder of detonations, lighting up the camp and surrounding forest by throwing burning fuel in all directions. Liquid fire cascaded down on four of the six tanks and both of the remaining APCs.

“Merde!”
Flérs shrieked. “We are under attack.”

Riordan already had a whistle clenched in his teeth. He blew three sharp blasts, paused and repeated himself. Spitting the whistle out he screamed, “As if that fooking explosion wouldn’t wake the very saints themselves! Go direct the damage control crew; I’ll direct the counterattack.”

The men raced away from each other. Riordan saw figures flitting about at the edge of the camp. He pulled his pistol out and fired the clip empty.

All was for effect. Despite his keen marksmanship, he knew hitting anything over fifty meters away would take an act of a very forgiving or forgetful Catholic God. His men boiled out of their four-man tents, armed and alert.

The fire silhouetted them perfectly if you were watching from the forest, Riordan realized. His thought became a cosmic cue as gunfire erupted from the trees. Ten of his men went down in the first few seconds.

The first group of mercenaries took cover and returned fire, shooting at the muzzle flashes in the shadowed woods. Another armored personnel carrier exploded in the middle of the motor pool, spraying the area with pieces of metal as lethal as bullets or shrapnel.

The camp seethed with pandemonium: men screaming in anger or pain, weapons firing nonstop, and the roar of an out-of-control fire created the backdrop of a scene from hell. Riordan looked around, assessed the situation, and knew he had to make quick decisions or they were lost to a still unseen enemy.

He ran over to his men while bullets snapped and buzzed past his head. Something bit his right ear and he grabbed it to discover the lobe shot away. The old, blind, killing anger surged through him and he fought it. If he went berserk now they would all die.

“Concentrate your fire, sweep the woods. Where’s the mortar crew? Bring up those fifties on tripods!”

He glanced back at the raging fire. It looked out of control. Every time his men attacked the flames, they were cut down.

How the hell did they surround us?
He picked up a rifle lying next to a dead Freekorpsman.

“Sergeant Ombekki,” Riordan grabbed the quick African. “Take charge here. I’m going to get some of our heavy weapons into this.”

“Yes, Major!” His filed teeth gleamed in the firelight. “I will hold them.”

Riordan raced toward the motor pool. Two of the tanks pulled away from the fire and he resolved to promote the men inside: the hulls had to be hot as ovens. Two burning trucks abruptly whomped into pillars of flame as their gas tanks burst.

A figure dashed from the forest and threw something at the lead tank. Riordan snapped the rifle to his shoulder and shot the man dead. Fire gushed over the side of the tank.

“Gasoline bombs, damn them!” He fired into the forest where the man had appeared. He
 
emptied the clip then threw the rifle down and sprinted for the remaining armored personnel carrier.

Behind him one of their heavy machine guns opened up, firing long bursts. Riordan scrambled up into the gun tub on the APC and grabbed the twin fifties. With a shriek he pulled his hands free—the metal was hot enough to blister flesh.

He ripped his shirt off and tore it in half, quickly wrapping the cloth around his hands. The heat from the burning vehicles less than thirty meters away was nearly overwhelming. Now he was
really
pissed off.

He fired sustained bursts into the forest. If he saw movement, he blew the area to pieces. Enemy fire slackened as both tanks fired machine guns and cannon into the forest even as fire licked over the leading hull. Riordan became aware that enemy fire hadn’t just slackened; it had stopped.

“Cease fire!” he bellowed. “Cease fire!”

The order echoed around the perimeter and the crackling flames seemed magnified in the sudden stillness. The heat defeated Riordan and he jumped down off the APC, shaking his hands free of the smoldering shirt rags.

“Officers on me!” he bellowed. “Sergeants, assemble your men. Everybody attend to the wounded.” Firelight reflected redly off his sweaty arms and chest.

The grim triage began immediately. Every member of the International Freekorps knew that if their wounds were too grave for them to travel, they were dead. They didn’t own an ambulance.

Captain Flérs hurried up to him and rattled something in French.

“English, René, English!”

“
Oui
. Yes, Major. We have lost a great deal of machines and men.”

A gun went off near them as a mortally wounded trooper’s misery ended.

“How many men?”

“Sixty, perhaps, seventy?”

“How the hell did they get past our patrols and perimeter guards?”

René shrugged. “Who is the enemy—Russians, Dená, somebody else?” He shrugged again.

“Well, I know we got at least one; let’s go look at him.”

Riordan hurried over to where the man had tumbled in death. A large amount of blood covered the ground, but the body had disappeared.

“Perhaps they are wraiths,” René muttered.