Ice War (20 page)

Price was at the rear of the group. Four Angels, with Nukilik leading the way.

The ice between the two islands was a series of undulating crests and irregular blocks, corrugated by the turbulent current between the islands.

Wall stumbled along in front of her, his hands still tied behind his back. He fell several times and, without hands to protect himself, each fall was hard. He had no helmet or visor, just a woollen hat and a scarf to protect his face from the cold. Each time he fell, The Tsar helped him back to his feet.

Was Wall with them, or against them? His actions said he was on their side, but it would be foolish to trust him, Price thought.

Nukilik led them through a maze of channels between the crests. He knew the location of the sensor buoys and avoided them, although he still made them walk in a strange shuffling manner, sliding their feet across the ice to reduce vibration.

They emerged finally at a jumble of huge ice cubes, as though a set of child’s blocks had been scattered randomly across the ground. There were gaps in and around the odd geometric shapes, offering many hiding places with a good view of the island, which was less than fifty metres away, over a beach of relatively smooth ice.

The cliffs of Little Diomede were sheer, softened by clinging sea ice. A sloping ramp led up from the beach to a chunky concrete building.

A security fence skirted around the base of the island, just above the ice-line. According to her mission briefing notes, it was covered by cameras and movement detectors, as well as infra-red heat sensors, all constantly monitored by computers in the station.

A row of automated heavy machine guns in narrow pillboxes stood like sentries a few metres behind the fence line. They were the last line of defence for the station in the event of an attack, a delaying tactic to give the station operators a chance to escape in their hovercraft.

Price crabbed sideways along to Nukilik and touched him on the shoulder to get his attention. He nodded and shuffled a heavy canvas sack off his shoulders.

Price took a camo sheet out of one of her utility pockets. She placed it on the ground and activated it, so that it picked up an image of the ice below. She had cut the camo sheet into a kind of rough coat, with holes for her arms. She took off her coil-gun then put the coat on, tying it in place with thin cord. The last time she had used a camo sheet was in the Australian desert, on the Uluru mission, but she pushed that thought out of her mind.

The camo sheet rendered her virtually invisible. It also blocked much of her heat signature.

From the sack, Nukilik produced the hide of an arctic wolf, complete with head. It belonged to Big Billy. According to Nukilik, he wore it to hunt Bzadians in the last Ice War.

Nukilik strapped the hide to her back, fastening it with leather straps. He tied the legs of the hide to her arms and legs. It was a far from perfect disguise, but in these conditions it might just pass.

She crawled across to Barnard.

“All good?” she asked.

Barnard looked at her and nodded without speaking. The Tsar gave her the thumbs up.

Price dropped to her hands and knees and crept forwards, out of the cover of the ice rubble, until she was in view of the station but still partially concealed by the blustering snow and ice. The infra-red cameras would have picked her up and she hoped that the camo sheet blocked enough of her heat signature to approximate that of a wolf.

There was no response from the station, nor had she expected there to be. Not yet anyway.

She continued on, trying to mimic the movements of a wolf. It wasn’t easy. A wolf had four legs and she had hands and knees. She didn’t make a beeline for the fence, that would have been too obvious. Instead, she wandered in an aimless pattern, investigating patches of snow, all the time moving closer and closer to where she really wanted to be.

She kept a close eye on the pillboxes that housed the two nearest machine guns. If either of those began to fire, she would have two choices. Drop, and play dead, or make a run for it. Neither option would help them get inside the station.

Closer now, the fence line barely five metres away. She moved up to it, careful not to touch the wires. The fence was electrified as a deterrent to animals like caribou. Or wolves.

She pawed at the snow outside the fence, as if something was buried there. Shuffling around, she brought her front “paws” up to one of the fence posts. In her right hand was a pair of wire cutters. She waited for a strong gust of wind, a thick flurry of snow, virtual white-out conditions. Being careful to avoid the electrified strands, she cut one of the wires that led to the sensor on top of the fence post, then loped away as rapidly as she could down the slope.

Able and Bowden would have to do something. At the very least they would have to investigate. Back in the shelter of the huge ice blocks, Nukilik helped her out of the wolf hide and they waited.

They did not have to wait long. A door opened in the squat building above them and a figure emerged. Price crossed her fingers. Which one was it? That would decide how they’d play the game that followed. From the height, it was Bowden. Able was much taller. Price stifled a huge sigh of relief.

Bowden wore a hooded parka and snow goggles. She had an automatic weapon, and was scanning the area through its sights as she walked cautiously down the ramp and along the fence line.

“Get ready,” Price whispered.

Bowden reached the fence post and began to examine it.

“Okay, go!” Price said.

She stood with the others, and opened the visor of her helmet. Icy wind stung her unprotected skin. Barnard and The Tsar raised their visors too and The Tsar pulled the scarf away from Wall’s face. It was painful, but it was essential that Bowden got a clear view of their faces.

Their hands were clasped behind their backs as if tied there. Wall’s really were tied, but he was the only one.

Nukilik was right behind them, rifle raised. He called out as they emerged from the icefield.

“Hello, soldier!”

Bowden’s reaction was instantaneous. She forgot about the faulty sensor and grabbed for her gun. Price tried to imagine what she was seeing. Three soldiers in Bzadian uniform being herded along by an Inupiat with a hunting rifle. Would she take the bait? Bowden lifted her goggles for a clearer view.

“Who are you?” she shouted.

“I am Nukilik,” he called out, as they rapidly crossed the open ground towards her. “Of the Inupiat. I have captured these enemy soldiers scouting around your island.”

Bowden kept her gun trained on all of them, clearly nervous and unsure.

As soon as they were close enough, Price said, “Now, Wall.”

Wall spoke loudly and rapidly in the “high” language. What he was saying, Price could not know. But it did not matter. What mattered was how Bowden reacted.

Price watched the woman’s face closely and saw no spark of understanding. “Barnard?” she asked, needing confirmation of what she had just seen.

“She’s clean,” Barnard said, in English. “She has no idea what Wall said.”

If Barnard was sure, then Price was sure.

“What the hell is going on?” Bowden asked. “Where did you find these Pukes?”

“Specialist Gabrielle Bowden, please listen carefully,” Price said. “My name is Lieutenant Trianne Price, of Recon Team Angel.”

“Angels!” Bowden said, eyes wide.

“Nicholas Able is an enemy agent,” Price said. “He has done something to disable the sensor equipment in your station and, as we speak, an enemy invasion force is passing the island to the north.”

“To the north?” Bowden asked. “That’s not possible. We have already located the invasion force, to the south.”

Price understood her difficulty. It was a lot to take in. “It
is
possible and it
is
true,” she said. “We have to get into your station and apprehend Able, then try to work out what he has done to the sensors.”

“But …” Bowden spluttered.

“Before it is too late,” Price said.

It was already too late.

The sled slid to a halt. Now Monster felt it too. What he had thought was a vibration of the runners was clearly something more. The ice was quivering like it had before the ice quake. That seemed so long ago.

“What is it?” Monster asked.

Big Billy shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He removed his woollen hat, listening. Without speaking, he mushed the dogs and they started again with a jerk, towards a long high ridgeline. At the base of the ridge, he stopped again, stepped off the sled and began to climb.

Monster rolled out of the sled. His legs were stiff and sore from sitting on the cart too long. He needed a few minutes of shaking feeling back into them before he could scale the jagged surface of the ridge. Near the top, Big Billy had flattened himself on the ice. The entire ridge seemed to be juddering.

Monster crawled up beside Big Billy and eased his head up between two fractured ice pieces. At first, he could see nothing; the blast from the wind on the other side of the ridge plastered his visor with snow. He wiped it clear.

“Cheese and rice,” he said.

Below him, barely visible in the driven ice, was a Bzadian battle tank. It rumbled past right at the base of the ridge, so close that he felt he could touch it. Beyond it was another. And another. As far as he could see through the blizzard, there were tanks – and he could hear them, the sound of engines brought to him on the back of the wind. The roar was constant, the sound of hundreds, perhaps thousands of engines all melded into one never-ending thunder.

It was the tank wheels that were making the icefloes vibrate.

Big Billy tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow to the west. They crept along just below the top of the ridge. After a hundred or so metres, it stopped abruptly, sheared off at a crevasse, two or three metres wide and at least a metre deep. Peering over, Monster saw a metal bridge spanning the crevasse. A momentary lull in the wind revealed a row of bridges stretching into the distance. The bridges were temporary, he realised. Military bridging units with their own armoured carriers. As they watched, a battle tank crossed the bridge, followed by another. Behind that was a line of tanks all waiting to cross.

He unclipped his wrist computer and used the camera function to video the procession. They had to show this to ACOG. This was no decoy. This invasion was real.

“How long you think before they reach Alaska?” he asked.

“Not long enough,” Big Billy said.

“Okay, let’s go,” Monster said. “We have enough–”

“Get down!” Big Billy shouted, hurling himself back down the slope and dragging Monster with him as the crest of the ridge exploded in red-yellow flames and deadly shards of flying ice.

The gunshots sounded close by.

Bowden ducked instinctively and spun around, looking for the source of the sound.

Able was half-hidden by a large rock to the side of the ramp, his weapon steady on top of it. No one had seen him emerge from the building.

Price checked her team to see if anyone had been hit. They all seemed okay, but there was a grunt from behind her and she turned to see Nukilik drop to his knees before pitching forwards in the snow, the rifle falling beside him.