Ice War (15 page)

Nukilik scrambled up alongside him, careful to keep below the brow of the ridge.

“Any sign?” Monster asked.

“Be patient, the demons will come,” Nukilik said.

“Do you really believe they are evil spirits?” Monster asked.

“I believe what my father believes,” Nukilik said.

Monster looked at him without comment.

Nukilik laughed. “You can give me all the logic and the science you want. If my father says they are demons, then they are demons. In my culture we respect the wisdom of our elders.”

He handed Monster a large, heavy plastic bag. Monster opened it to find it full of powdery granules.

“What is it?”

“De-icer,” Nukilik said.

“Where did you get it?” Monster asked.

“Walmart,” Nukilik said.

“What is the plan?” Monster asked. “I do not understand.”

“It will melt the ice,” Nukilik said. “We use it to dig a hole for the demons to fall into. A trick we learned in the last Ice War.” He paused and reflected on that. “It was my wife’s idea,” he said with more than a little pride.

“Is Corazon all right?” Monster asked, scanning the rough white horizon of the icefield.

“She is as strong as a walrus,” Nukilik said. “Why do you ask?”

“When I first met her, she was sick. Shivering,” Monster said.

Nukilik smiled. “She said you had asked about that.”

“But she is fine?”

“Yes, she is well. She was cold because she had shared her warmth with you.”

“Shared her warmth?” Monster asked.

“For the first hours, after I brought you in, she lay next to you in the bed,” Nukilik said. “To bring up your body temperature.”

Monster was silent for a moment. “I had no clothes,” he said.

Nukilik laughed again. “Neither did she. That is how it is done. But your virtue is intact. Think of it only as a medical procedure.”

“I am not sure what I can say,” Monster said. “Will you for me thank her?”

“It is not necessary,” Nukilik said. “It is what is done.” He raised a hand and pointed at the icefield. “There!”

Monster followed his finger. A slight thickening of the horizon was all he saw, but if Nukilik said something was there, then he believed him. It was approaching from the west, from the direction of the Chukchi Peninsula.

“They are bringing up a transporter to take away your friends,” Nukilik said.

Whatever it was drew closer, resolving into a moving cloud of snow. It was definitely a vehicle of some kind, and he assumed that the snow was being thrown up by its tracks, although as it appeared over a rise in the ground, he saw that was not true.

A nozzle on top of the vehicle was spraying water straight up into the air, the droplets immediately freezing in the sub-zero air and turning before their eyes to a cloud of snow, which not only helped conceal the transporter from satellite eyes, but which fell to earth after the vehicle, covering its tracks.

“That is new trick,” Monster said. “They not have this in last Ice War.”

“They’re learning,” Nukilik said.

The vehicle itself was tracked, like a tank. Monster recognised it from its low profile. It was a Russian DT-30 Vityaz, one of the many human vehicles that the Bzadians had commandeered.

“There’s more than one,” Nukilik said.

He was right. A second vehicle followed, and another behind that.

“If those are full of troops, then we might be biting off more than we can chew,” Nukilik said.

“Monster have big appetite,” Monster said.

Nukilik threw back his head in laughter and clapped him on the shoulder. “I think I understand why my father likes you.”

The DT-30s passed by, not far from where they were hiding on the ridge. Ugly, squat, articulated vehicles, the front cab about the same size as the trailing cabin. Four small windows across the cab were constantly cleared by fast moving wipers. The trailing cabin had no windows.

The transporters veered close to the ridge, avoiding a large crack in the ice that was on the verge of becoming a fissure, then disappeared behind the snow-covered battle tanks in a roar of diesel. As soon as they were out of sight, Monster and Nukilik ran down to the tracks, which were already nearly covered by the freshly created snow. They scattered the granules around them, as though sowing seeds, crushing them into the ice with the soles of their boots.

The ice almost instantly turned to mush under their feet, then to a semi-frozen slush that sloshed around their boots.

“How far down it go?” Monster asked.

“A half a metre, maybe more,” Nukilik said. “By then it will have diluted too much. But that’s good. We don’t want to melt all the way through the ice, because then the liquid will just flow down out into the ocean. But we want it deep enough and wide enough to stop the transporters.”

“What if they not return this way?” Monster asked.

“They will,” Nukilik said, gesturing at the crack in the ice. “There is no other way.”

Nukilik walked around the edge of the pool of slush, testing the depth with a stick, occasionally pointing to an area where he wanted more granules.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Nukilik called. “Let’s take our positions.”

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1520 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Being in the command centre was much like being out in the field, Wilton thought. You spent most of your time waiting.

He was waiting for contact from Monster. He had tried the number that Monster had given him a couple of times, but it would not connect.

He used the time productively though, hunting traitors.

He logged on to the main Pentagon system and was amazed to see a host of menus and options that, for him, had never existed before. Top security access opened all sorts of doors.

“Ten minutes to launch,” a voice called, startling him. He glanced around to see a woman moving to the front of the room. He brought up a list of the personnel in the room and identified her. Her name was Colonel Cheryl Watson. She was the command coordinator, responsible for relaying information to the decision-makers.

Next he brought up the staffing allocations page. Finding the operational orders that posted the Fezerker agent to Little Diomede was easy. The chain of command that put him there was long, and stretched all the way up to General Russell.

“Five minutes to launch,” Watson called.

Wilton glanced over at Russell, trying not to stare. Surely, Russell was above suspicion? But Chisnall had said to trust no one.

“We have launch,” Watson called out a few minutes later. “Taranis squadron is in the air. Time to target, twenty-three minutes.”

“You’re sure the enemy radar won’t pick them up?” Gonzales asked.

“Sure enough,” Hundal said. “They’re very stealthy. Plus they’re flying low, hugging the ice. If we’re lucky, the enemy won’t know they exist until they begin their climb.”

Wilton eased his nerves by focusing on his own work.

The list of people who had known about Operation Magnum was small. That list included General Whitehead, Marine Corp Commander; General Elisabeth Iniguez, recently retired; and Daniel Bilal. Magnum had taken the Bzadians by surprise. That put all of those people above suspicion.

He started digging into the Uluru operation. The first ever Angel mission. Again, that had achieved complete surprise. Anyone who knew about that was also in the clear.

The man with the olive green briefcase sat alone in an office on the second floor of the building, the main floor. The office was empty, as he had known it would be. He had unlocked the door using the key card that hung on a lanyard around his neck.

He checked the time, using his phone, not his watch, then retrieved a briefcase identical to the one he had been carrying from under the desk, where he had left it the day before. He opened both briefcases, placing them side by side on the desk. The first briefcase contained nothing more than a can of Pepsi.

He opened the plastic lunch container and removed the sandwiches, blowing into the container afterwards to remove any crumbs. The bread he discarded into the round, leather-clad bin under the desk.

The filling, which appeared to be some kind of gelatinous meat, he placed back in the plastic container. Opening the can of Pepsi, he poured it over the meat. An observer would have been surprised to see that the liquid that flowed from a perfectly ordinary can of Pepsi was not dark brown, but almost clear, with a light green tinge.

Whatever it was, it was not Pepsi, despite the label on the can.

As the liquid pooled around the gelatinous substance, it began to dissolve and the combination of the two elements fused into a pale pink colour. He stirred it with a metal ballpoint pen.

If a bomb-sniffing dog encountered the substance now, it would probably have a heart attack.

The man next opened the two muesli bars and placed them in the container, allowing them to soak up the liquid, turning them to treat both sides, until the container was empty. He placed the watch on top of the two jellified bars, pressing it down firmly and holding it there until it was dry enough to stick.

Then he replaced the lid and sealed it with packaging tape. It had taken two minutes.

His hand dipped into his jacket pocket and emerged with a phone. He placed it on the desk in front of him.

He waited.

“Price.”

The voice on the com was Wall’s.

Price glanced around at the others. The Tsar was still working on the radio. Barnard was sitting silently, thinking. She looked up at Price.

“Talk to him,” Barnard said. “See what he wants.”

Price nodded. “What do you want, Fezerker?” she asked on the com.

“Clever move with the grenade,” Wall said. “How did you get hold of that?”

Price glanced at the others.
Wall had given Tsar the grenade
. Why would he ask that question?

“It was a magic trick,” Price said. “What do you want?”

“You can’t go anywhere,” Wall said. “You can’t do anything. Come out quietly and we’ll make sure you get to a nice safe POW camp. I’ll personally guarantee that the PGZ won’t get their hands on you.”

“And why should I believe you?” Price said. “As if the PGZ would listen to you anyway.”

“I am Fezerker,” Wall said. “Not even the PGZ get to tell us what to do.”

Price thought back to Uluru and realised that he was right. Fezerkers outranked everyone, even the dreaded PGZ.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Barnard said. “But delay him a few more minutes.”

“What are you thinking?” Price asked, and Barnard explained.