Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (35 page)

“I know,” the pilot said as he
grappled with the wheel. “I’m going to try and get her up there,”
he nodded to the plateau off to their right. “It’s flat and
snow-covered. We might stand a chance. There’s nowhere else to
land.”

Halvorsen looked at the plateau off
the starboard wing. He knew it was only a few dozen meters above
their current altitude, and he didn’t hold out much hope that
they’d make it. But if the pilot could get them there, at least it
would put them in a good tactical position against the Russians:
they would hold the high ground above the seed vault. If they
survived the crash.

“Here we go!” the
pilot cried. He knew he was racing against time as the flames began
to spread on the wing: when the engine nacelle had been blown off,
its fire suppression system had gone with it.
Idunn
was also losing hydraulic
pressure, fast, from all the damage she’d taken. He only had a few
more seconds during which he’d be able to control the plane. After
that, simple physics would take over, and everyone on board would
be dead. “Let up on the rudder!”

Halvorsen did as he was told, and
his eyes bulged as the pilot brought the plane into what the
infantryman thought was an insanely tight right-hand turn, straight
at the side of the plateau. It was all he could do to keep from
grabbing the wheel himself and hauling it back as far as he
could.

Just when Halvorsen was sure the
plane was going to smash into the snow-covered slope, the nose
eased over the top by what must have only been a handful of meters.
The entire fuselage shuddered violently as the airspeed fell off
and the plane entered a stall, the air over the wings no longer
moving fast enough to generate lift.

Cursing, the pilot
eased the nose down, but
Idunn
was through flying. With a shuddering lurch the
plane stalled and literally fell from the sky, slamming its flaming
belly down onto the snow from an altitude of three meters. The tip
of the left wing, heavier with its two engines than the right,
canted down and dug into the snow, and the propeller on the
outboard engine disintegrated as it chopped into the white
landscape, still at full throttle. As the wingtip bit deeper, the
plane was thrown into a tight ground loop, finally coming to a stop
in a great geyser of snow.

“Get everyone out,” the pilot
gasped. “Quickly. Fire.”

Halvorsen called back to his men,
who were already busy trying to get the emergency hatches open.
Then he turned back to the pilot and undid his harness. Dragging
him out of his seat, he helped him off the flight deck and handed
him off to a pair of his men.

A few minutes
later, the survivors of his company had pulled the wounded from the
plane and salvaged what equipment they could. Halvorsen stood next
to the pilot, his wounds having been quickly dressed by the company
medic. Unlike the mysterious explosion that took the Il-76, there
were no spectacular pyrotechnic displays here.
Idunn
simply burned. Watching his
plane being consumed by flames caused the pilot far more pain than
the shrapnel had.

“We’ll head toward the SvalSat
station,” Halvorsen ordered. SvalSat, short for Svalbard Satellite,
was a satellite communications facility located on the plateau
fifteen hundred meters away. It boasted six large satcom antennas
and an operations building that would provide shelter for the
wounded while the rest of the company dealt with the Russians.
Halvorsen could clearly see the big domes covering the dishes from
where he stood. “Once we get there,” he told the pilot, “I’d like
to leave you in charge of the wounded while I take the rest of the
men to deal with the Russians.” From the SvalSat station, the seed
vault was another fifteen hundred meters to the east, in the
direction of the pyre that was the airport. “We should be able to
contact Oslo and tell them what’s happened here.”

The pilot nodded absently. The
flames of his burning plane, fanned by the chill wind, were
reflected in his eyes. “Then we’d better get going,” he
said.

***

Al Ferris concentrated on the view
of the approaching runway while glancing at his instruments, trying
to ignore the still-raging conflagration of the destroyed Il-76
directly ahead. Carrying such a heavy load, the Falcon was going to
need over two thousand feet of runway, and if he was estimating the
distance right, the Il-76 was at around the thirty-five hundred
foot mark. That was the good news. The bad news was that the
explosion that had consumed the Russian plane had sent burning fuel
and debris hundreds of yards in every direction, including down the
section of runway that Ferris needed.

“If we don’t prang the nose gear or
suck something into the engines,” he muttered as he cycled the
landing gear down, “it’ll be a goddamn miracle. Or we might get a
SAM stuffed in our face. Jesus.” Over the intercom, he said, “Hang
on, boys and girls!”

Normally he would have made his
intended touch-down point a few hundred feet down the runway to
provide a generous safety margin. Now he didn’t dare: he needed
every inch he could get. Sweeping in from the seaward side, he was
aiming for the very end of runway 10.

The runway rapidly grew in the
windscreen as he took the plane in, bringing it down as fast as he
dared. “It’s like a goddamn carrier landing in a thirty knot
crosswind,” he muttered.

At the last second he pulled back on
the throttles and up on the control yoke, flaring the Falcon and
dampening its descent just enough to keep from breaking the landing
gear as the plane slammed into the runway, the main gear wheels
shrieking with the stress and streaming plumes of smoke from the
tires. He dropped the nose gear down to the runway, then activated
the thrust reversers and rammed the throttles forward to help slow
the plane. The Falcon shuddered, and he began tapping on the
brakes, praying they wouldn’t overheat.

Ahead of him, the view of the
Il-76’s inferno grew ever larger, and he winced as the Falcon’s
thin aluminum skin was hammered by debris thrown up by the wheels.
He murmured a non-stop prayer that the engines wouldn’t suck in any
debris. If they did, he and the others might be able to walk away
from the landing, but they’d be marooned here.

He continued to work the brakes,
instinctively finding the best balance between slowing the plane
and losing traction with the snow-dusted runway if the brakes
locked, which would likely send the Falcon skidding helplessly into
the burning wreckage of the Russian plane.

At last, with one final bang of
something hitting the underside of the fuselage, the Falcon came to
a stop a mere two hundred feet from the edge of the fire that
ringed the dead Il-76.

“Jesus Christ,” Ferris choked. He
knew that he must have made more dangerous landings in combat, but
he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head. After taking a
deep breath, he keyed the intercom and said, “Okay, you suicidal
idiots, we’ve landed. Thanks for flying EDS Airlines. Now get your
asses off my plane and go shoot somebody.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

Sergei Mikhailov was dreaming. It
was a strange dream, unlike any he’d ever had before. Neither
pleasant nor frightening, it was simply...strange. He could hear
something – grunting, perhaps? – through a persistent ringing in
his ears. In the dream, he saw concrete, heavily dusted with snow
that swirled in a gusty wind that felt cold against his face.
Tilting his head slightly, he could see feet, legs, and the
buttocks of someone dressed in a camouflage uniform. There was a
lot of blood on the man’s legs, and he could see rips in the fabric
of his pants and matching wounds in his skin. The man’s legs and
feet moved ponderously across the concrete in what Mikhailov
suddenly thought was a comical dance.

He also saw an arm dangling down,
and after a moment realized that it was his own. He was also
wearing a camouflage uniform, and much of the material was
blackened. With a sudden start he realized that this wasn’t a
dream. This was real.

“Stop,” he croaked. His voice barely
penetrated the ringing in his ears. “Put me down!”

He felt himself slowly falling
backward, and realized that someone had been hauling him in a
fireman’s carry over his shoulder and was now setting him down. As
he slid to the ground, he looked up to see Rudenko’s scorched and
blood-streaked face staring back at him with undisguised
concern.

“
Kapitan?
”
Rudenko shouted. “You were hit by debris from the explosion. Two of
those
Spetsnaz
bastards planted explosives in the terminal while their
buddies shot down the Norwegians.”

“How many of our men survived?”
Mikhailov asked grimly. The ringing in his ears was gradually
fading, but he could still barely hear over it.

“Nine,” Rudenko
told him, “including you. A dozen more survived the blast, but
the
Spetsnaz
bastards caught them by surprise and used guns and grenades
on them. Our boys tried to take cover under that airliner sitting
in front of the terminal, until the
Spetsnaz
blasted the shit out of it
with an anti-tank rocket. Our men burned to death when the fuel in
the plane’s tanks caught fire.”

“What happened with your squad?”
Mikhailov asked, trying to come to grips with the extent of the
disaster. “How did you manage to get away?”

Rudenko grinned,
but there was no humor in the expression. “I thought those
Spetsnaz
shits were up
to something from the beginning. I saw them run out of the hangar
like their asses were on fire, just after the Il-76 exploded.
That’s when I threw you on the ground.” He shrugged. “They thought
we were finished. When they chased the other squad under the plane,
we let them have it.” The grin faded. “
Kapitan
...they must have some kind
of new body armor. I saw both of them take at least half a dozen
rounds and it didn’t even slow them down.” He looked down at his
AKS-74U assault rifle, a version of the AK-74 in general use in the
Army that had a folding buttstock and a shortened barrel. He had
killed a number of men with this very weapon in Chechnya, and knew
that those
Spetsnaz
soldiers should have been dead. “I
saw
the bullets strike. But I don’t
think it even pissed them off. Watching them kill our men...it was
like they were exterminating insects. And I think they would have
come for us, except that there was a pool of burning fuel that
spread between us, and they didn’t come anywhere near it. That was
the only thing they seemed to have any fear of.”

“Then what happened?”

“They joined their two buddies who
shot down the Norwegian plane and grabbed some snowmobiles that
were parked not far from the terminal. Then they headed that way.”
He pointed toward the eastern end of the runway, and Mikhailov saw
four snowmobiles just making the turn to follow a winding road that
led up the slope.

Toward the seed
vault
, Mikhailov seethed. “Well,” he said,
“now we know who our terrorists are, don’t we?” Turning back to
Rudenko, he said, “You saved my life, sergeant. I...there’s no way
I can thank you for that.”

Rudenko’s wolfish grin softened into
a smile. He had suffered more than his fair share of despotic and
idiotic officers whom he would have been happy to leave burn.
Mikhailov, on the other hand, was a good man, and had been an
officer worthy of his respect. “I figured you’d be good for a
bottle of vodka,” he said. “Oh, and one more thing,” he
added.

“What’s that?”

“Another plane landed, not long
after our plane exploded and the Norwegian transport crashed on the
ridge,” Rudenko told him, pointing toward the runway beyond the
flaming wreckage of the Il-76. “We couldn’t see it very well, but
it looked like a small civilian jet.”

“They picked a
hell of a time to come visit Spitsbergen,” Mikhailov said wryly as
he got to his feet. He was still shaken, but he wanted the heads of
those
Spetsnaz
men, and he wanted them
now
. Turning toward where the
snowmobiles were churning up the road toward the seed vault,
staring at the four men who had murdered most of his company, he
told Rudenko, “Are there any other snowmobiles or vehicles? We need
to–”

Mikhailov watched
in amazement as the man riding the lead snowmobile suddenly blew
apart into flaming chunks, as if his body had spontaneously
exploded. Then the sound of a shot reached them, and he heard the
sharp
crack
of a
heavy rifle, firing from somewhere beyond the wreckage of the
Il-76, near where Rudenko had seen the small civilian jet
land.

The three
other
Spetsnaz
men veered wildly around the flaming remains of their
comrade. There was a puff of smoke from the front of one of the
other snowmobiles and its rear flew up as if the machine had run
into a brick wall, catapulting the rider forward. The entire
control column and front steering skis were smashed. As smoke
boiled from the engine, the wreckage cartwheeled into the path of
the remaining two snowmobiles. One of them crashed straight into
the stricken machine, while the other spun out and
rolled.