Ice War (23 page)

“I kinda have that already,”
Wilton said.
“I’ll let you know what I find out.”

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1900 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

The man with the olive green briefcase walked casually along the Pentagon’s C-ring towards the sloping ramps that had been a part of the building’s design since its origins during World Wars One and Two. The ramps took him down into one of the inner rings where an elevator led to a heavily guarded underground level. Here the security was not handled by the PFPA, but by military police, and the weapons were not pistols, but snub-nosed submachine guns.

Again, the man’s credentials were checked, and again they passed scrutiny.

When the elevator doors opened on the lower level he entered casually and nodded to a few people as if he knew them. Most of them nodded back, certain that they had met him before somewhere, in a meeting perhaps or at a barbecue or a bar mitzvah.

No one doubted his credentials. If he had made it past all the layers of security that surrounded this room, then he had the right to be there.

He moved to one of the workstations on the outside wall and sat down, placing the briefcase beneath the table.

He dialled a short number on his phone and let it ring six times. He was rewarded by an almost inaudible click from the briefcase.

He dialled another number and hung up immediately.

A moment later his phone rang. He answered it, speaking the first words he had spoken since arriving at the Pentagon.

“Certainly, sir,” he said. “I will be there immediately.”

No one could know that the other end of the line was completely silent.

The man rose and walked towards the exit. He did not make eye contact with anyone. A naval officer, adjutant to Admiral Hooper, noticed that the man had left his briefcase, but thought nothing of it.

The bunker door slid shut behind the man. He was gone, as if he had never existed.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1510 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[LITTLE DIOMEDE ISLAND, BERING STRAIT]

They gathered in the main control room. Fierce gusts of wind hurled snow at the narrow windows. Monster had come down from the roof; there was no longer any point in being up there. He couldn’t see past the end of his rifle. Able was still outside, somewhere. And Big Billy was hunting him.

“We’re out of here,” Price said. “Mission’s over.”

“So we can relax in comfort while the Pukes take over the world?” Barnard said. “I can’t get behind that.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Wall said.

Barnard stared at him. “Or is that what you’d like us to think?”

“He’s right, Barnard,” Price said. “We’re a recon unit. It’s not up to us any more.”

Instead of replying, Barnard twisted around and punched a button on the control panel. Monster’s video began playing on a screen above their heads.

“See these?” Barnard said. “Bzadian bridgers. If we could take those out somehow, we could stop the whole Bzadian advance in its tracks.”

“Only if they run into another crevasse,” Wall said.

“They will,” Barnard said. “Our last line of defence is a minefield that stretches for kilometres around the western tip of Alaska. Pukes get within spitting distance of the coast and ACOG will blow it, leaving a dirty great channel of water right in their path. The way the currents are around the tip of Alaska, it could be days before it refreezes enough to carry tanks.”

“Wouldn’t they just bring up more bridging units from Chukchi?” Price asked.

“Probably,” Barnard said. “But that would mean a big delay. All that time their invasion would be stalled and vulnerable. The weather could change, and who knows what could happen?”

“These bridgers are very huge,” Monster said. “Heavily armour also. What can we do?”

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Barnard said.

“Meaning?” The Tsar asked.

“Monster and Nukilik stopped a Russian transporter with a handful of de-icing crystals,” Barnard said. “Who’s to say we couldn’t do the same for these bridgers? Melt the ice in front of them.”

“You’d need a truck full of the stuff,” Price said.

“We have a truck full of the stuff,” Bowden said.

Everybody stared at her.

“We have a small airstrip,” Bowden said. “There’s a pick-up truck in the hangar with a tank of it on the back. We use it for de-icing the runway.”

“It’s suicide,” Wall said. “You’re going to drive a truck out on the icefloe? Even if you did, the Pukes would pick it off before it got twenty metres. There’re six hundred tanks out there, or had you forgotten that bit?” He saw the looks of the others and protested, “There’s no point in committing suicide.”

“Are you with us, Wall?” The Tsar asked. “One hundred per cent? Now’s the time we gotta know. There can’t be any doubt.”

“I always have been,” Wall said.

Price gazed at him, thinking. She turned to Barnard.

“I believe him,” Barnard said.

“That’s good enough for me,” Price said.

“Wall’s right,” Bowden said. “You’d never make it in the truck. But you could use the hovercraft.”

“Is it large enough?” Price asked.

Bowden nodded. “Easily. It’s an LCAC troop carrier,” Bowden said. “A hovercraft. It’s rigged for stealth, and it’s armed with two heavy machine guns. We have a small forklift tractor too. I’m sure you could find a way to rig the de-icing tank onto the hovercraft.”

“In these conditions, we should be able to creep right up to their back door before they even know we’re there,” Barnard said. “A surprise attack.”

“Everybody just slow down,” Price said.

As Barnard had been talking, she had felt a familiar emotion. The thrill of the chase, the excitement of the hunt. The thirst for danger. But that was what had got Emile killed. Was she now really thinking about possibly sending the whole team to their deaths?

“You okay, Price?” The Tsar asked.

“We’ve been ordered home,” Price said. “We should go.”

“Are you crazy?” Barnard asked. “We have a real chance of doing some damage here.”

“And a real chance of all dying and achieving nothing,” Price said.

“But–” Barnard began, before Monster cut her off.

“It was not your fault,” he said.

As always, he seemed to know what she was thinking.

“Yes, it was,” Price said. “I am the one that gave the order. I should have waited.”

“And I should have try harder out on ice,” Monster said. “And the Pukes should not have invading. Is war. We take our chances. You make the impossible decisions in impossible circumstances. Sometime people die.”

“It’s not fair,” Price said, struggling to restrain her emotions.

“It is not fair,” Monster agreed. “It is war.”

“I … don’t know,” Price said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what Ryan would have done.”

Monster put his hand on her shoulder.

“Is not up to Ryan,” he said. “What is gut instinct telling you?”

Price waited, aware of all the faces watching her.

“That if we don’t try, and the Bzadians win, we will always wonder what would have happened if we did try.”

“Then there is answer,” Monster said. “I know you guys all thinking I am loopy, but I believe we are here, in this place, right now, for reason. Maybe this is reason.”

“We could die doing this,” Price said. “Anybody want to opt out, just walk away now.”

Nobody moved.

“We could die any day,” The Tsar said. “At least we’ll know why.”

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1910 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Wilton was hunting ghosts.

If Barnard was right, that would narrow down his list rapidly, but it all depended on finding a person who didn’t exist.

He kept an ear on the conversations at the big table, while he scanned lists of recently deceased soldiers and matched them against security logins.

“All right,” Gonzales was saying. “Tell me what’s happening here.”

Wilton still wasn’t sure who she was, but she carried some kind of weight. Although she was clearly new to the room, the others still deferred to her.

Russell looked at Whitehead, who nodded.

“Advance reconnaissance units report that the Pukes are advancing exactly as predicted,” Russell said. “Standard Bzadian spearhead attack formation. They are heading straight for the town of Wales. They will want to secure an airbase so they can start airlifting in the bulk of the invasion force when the storm finishes.”

“Once they have an airbase here, they’ll no longer be dependent on the ice coverage in Bering Strait,” Hooper said.

“Any chance they could use the old airport at Wales?” Gonzales asked.

“Unlikely,” Whitehead said. “We destroyed the runway pretty thoroughly when we evacuated the town. It’ll be quicker for them to ignore it.”

“Almost certainly they will just use it as a beachhead,” Russell said, “and roll towards Tin City. We’re already preparing to evacuate. Our fighters will remain there until the last minute as it’s the closest airbase we have to the strait. But we’ll pull them out too once the situation becomes untenable. Before the Pukes get their SAMs within range.”

“The runway there will be destroyed too?” Gonzales asked.

“Yes, as per our scorched earth policy,” Russell said. “The explosives are already in place.”

“But when they rebuild the runways at Tin City or Wales, or both,” Gonzales asked, “what then?”

“They’ll use the airbase to provide air cover for a ground attack, probably on Lost River,” Russell said. “What’s going to slow them down here is the terrain. There are few roads and the tundra is passable, but it’s hilly and rough. It will be slow going. However, they can keep hopping from airbase to airbase all the way to Canada.”

“After that, there will be no holding them back,” Whitehead said. “We have to stop them on the ice.”

“So tell me about the ice,” Gonzales said. “What is our strategy?”

“There is a significant ice ridge to the north,” Russell said. “We’re designating it the ‘Northern Ridge’. It extends from the fast ice around the coastline well up to the north. They’ll have to come south of that. They could try to skirt around it, but the icefloes north of it are unstable and very thin in places.”

“How significant is this crevasse to the south?” Whitehead asked.

“It’s a major rift in the icefloes,” Russell said. “Only happened a few hours ago. It may have had something to do with our bombing to the west. A large slice-of-pizza-shaped chunk of ice broke off from the main ice pack. It split in two, which created this jagged fissure through the centre. They could bridge it, but I suspect they will just avoid it. That narrows their approach considerably, but as they usually attack in a tight formation it probably won’t worry them.”

“So while they’re getting squeezed between this northern ridge and the southern crevasse, we’ll be hammering them,” Whitehead said.

“Yes, sir,” Russell said. “We’re deploying mobile anti-tank units along the Northern Ridge. The geography will give our guys a lot of protection from the tanks, while enabling us to get close enough to engage them. The Bzadian advance will stall until they clear the ridge.”

“They’ll hit it hard,” Whitehead said.

“We anticipate heavy attacks using rotorcraft and snowmobiles,” Russell said. “We’ve deployed three Spitfire squadrons, along with an entire infantry division backed by hovercraft.”

“They could bypass the ridge by breaking up their spearhead formation,” Hooper said.

“They won’t. It is their standard tactic,” Russell said. “If they break formation, that exposes the support vehicles inside. The SAMs and bridgers particularly. If we take out their SAMs, they’ll be vulnerable to our cruise missiles. They won’t break formation.”

“And the minefield?” Whitehead asked.

“Of course,” Russell said. “There’s a strip of mines from one end of the icefield to the other at the point where the drift ice meets the fast ice. We blow that and they’ll have a channel twenty metres wide to cross before they can continue.”

“But they’ll just bring up bridging units,” Gonzales said.

“Correct. It won’t stop them, but it will slow them down. It’s a war of attrition. If we can do enough damage to their force before they hit dry land, we have a good chance of turning them around.”

“Is there any way to stop them completely?” Gonzales asked.

Russell and Hundal looked at each other. “No, ma’am,” Hundal said. “Not without a nuclear weapon.”

As always, the threat of a nuclear strike made Wilton look up.

“That’s not an option,” Whitehead said.

“The concentrated nature of the attack makes it ideal for a tactical nuke,” Russell said. “If we stop them at the mine barrier and drop a nuclear weapon in the centre while they’re bringing up their bridgers, we would destroy most of the force, and the damage to the ice would make it impassable for days.”

“We have already had this discussion,” Whitehead said. “We are not starting a nuclear war.”