SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (36 page)

"Taylor," I said, "it wasn't your
fault. Besides, what are the odds that will happen to you twice?"

Skippy chimed in. "Was that a question for me,
Joe? Truly, I don't have enough data to calculate the odds. I'd need
ground-penetrating radar to examine the soil-"

"That was a rhetorical question, Skippy, no
number crunching needed."

"Good. Because without further data, my estimate
of the odds would only be accurate within sixty five per-"

"Thank you, Skippy, we've got it from here.
Taylor, do your thing."

The RV drove just fine, Taylor went forward a hundred
meters, then backed up to us. If the soil of the shelf was saturated with water
and unstable, running the RV back and forth over it should have caused it to
shift. Smythe and I walked the tracks the RV had made, there were no cracks in
the soil, no signs of the ground shifting at all. Satisfied that we were as
safe as we could be, we fixed the roof rack as best we could, loaded up the RV,
and drove off again. This may not be a fun-filled family vacation, but it sure
was turning out to be memorable. Smythe was looking at the photos I had
forwarded to everyone's zPhone. "Bishop," he slipped for a moment,
"Colonel," he was smart enough not to call attention to his mistake,
"in Afghanistan, I was in a helicopter that went down, we were high up in
the mountains, and the trailing rotor blade stalled or some bloody thing like
that. We only fell fifty meters, onto snow, it could have been worse, the helo
slid down the mountain and lodged against a rock before it would have fallen
over a cliff. We had some broken bones, nothing serious," he said in a
nonchalant SAS manner. "Before the rescue helo arrived, we posed for a
photo in front of the busted bird." He pressed a few buttons on his zPhone
and pulled up that photo. "That's me on the left."

The photo didn't look any different than he did now,
it must have recent. When was the SAS in Afghanistan? "When was this, oh,
never mind. You shouldn't tell, me, and I don't care." If I'd cared, the
details were in his service record.

"Ha!" Smythe laughed. " As if that
matters now, sir. We know the only bloody secret that matters now, about Skippy
playing games with wormholes. What I was going to say, sir, is until today,
that pic of the downed helo was my favorite. But now, a photo of us having
survived rolling down a canyon, in a stolen alien RV, on a planet thousands of
lightyears from Earth? That beats all, in my opinion."

The second and third river crossings were close
together, we'd swim the RV across them in the same day. We reached the second
river in late afternoon, and unlike the first river, where we'd had to hack a
ramp down to the water, we expected this one to be an easy drive down into the
river for the RV. That's how it appeared from the satellite image. That was not
the reality we saw on the ground. The river banks on both sides had places where
the land led straight down into the water on a fairly gentle grade, easy for
the RV's treads. What was not easy was that in those places, the ground at the
water's edge was slippery, thick mud. Skippy advised that even our RV's
miraculous treads might get stuck. We got out and scouted up and down the river
to find a better place to cross, there wasn't one. Our best option seemed to be
to hack another road down to the water, in a place that wasn't too muddy. On
the far bank, we'd need to get the RV to climb the bank as high as it could,
then tie a line around a rock and use the RV's winch to pull itself up. It was
growing dark by the time we got the road hacked out manually with picks and
shovels, I decided against attempting a crossing in the growing darkness, and
ordered a camp set up for the night. It was a decent evening, dry, warm for
Newark, and the following day's forecast was for high winds and torrential
rains. People needed a break. To stretch our legs that had grown stiff from
sitting in the RV all day, most of us hiked up a hill above the river and
watched the sun set. It was only the second time during our entire stay on
Newark that I'd seen the local star set over the horizon, most days there were
clouds in the way, or it was solid clouds and rain. Seeing a sunset was a
treat, I took it as a good omen.

Crossing the second river was uneventful, we all
complained what a pain in the ass it was to get the big RV up over the far
river bank. Honestly, every single one of us loved seeing the RV winch itself
up, carving a big gouge in the river bank. The treads got completely,
hopelessly clogged with giant clods of sticky, gooey mud, and, darn it, we all
had to stand in the drizzling rain and watch as the driver, an Indian
paratrooper lieutenant named Patel, gunned the throttle and spun the treads
clean, flinging mud everywhere as the RV fishtailed up away from the river. We
all laughed and clapped heartily, Patel had such a huge grin that I thought it
might crack his face wide open. Damn it, why had I not pulled rank and taken
the driver seat?

By the time we reached the third river, the drizzle
had become a steady rain, not yet the gusty downpour we expected from Skippy's
weather forecast. Skippy was testy about that, assuring me that just to the
north of us was a near hurricane-force storm; high winds straight out of the
north, and rain coming down in sheets. We paused the RV to get out and evaluate
the river, there was a gentle grassy slope right down into the water, same on
the other side. To the north, the sky was so dark it looked like night was
approaching from that direction, and it was only mid-afternoon. The river was
rushing fast, icy cold black water, big standing waves piling up over submerged
rocks, to my eyes it appeared the water level was rising as we stood there.
Chunks of ice floated by, bobbing on and ducking under the surface as the river
bounced them violently. Satellite images showed the long tongue of a retreating
glacier jutted out into the river not more than ten kilometers north of us, out
of sight around a bend in the river, ice was continually breaking off as the
river ate away at the base of the glacier. Getting into and out of the river
was going to be simple for the RV, the tricky part was going to be avoiding
submerged rocks and floating ice chunks.

"Let's go," I decided. A sudden chilly gust
of wind almost made me stagger on the bank of the river, reinforcing my
decision. We need to get across before that wind hits us full force." I
didn't want the bulky RV acting like a sail in the wind, while we were trying
to get across the river.

"Yes, sir," Smythe agreed. "Up in those
hills," he pointed across the river, "are several good spots we could
wait out the storm overnight."

We got back in the RV, shed our wet jackets, and
started down the bank toward the river. Our driver was Patel again, he'd taken
a break after driving us across the second river, I wanted an experienced
person at the controls for this last major river crossing. Patel flashed us a
confident thumbs up before the nose of the RV hit the water, then he focused
completely on the task of getting us safely across. The RV bobbed alarmingly
once it was fully afloat, the current was so strong that Patel had to point the
RV's nose partly upriver in order to hold a straight course. A straight course
wasn't going to work, the river bed was cluttered with rocks we could see and
rocks we couldn't see, the RV was a technological wonder but for some reason,
the Kristang hadn't fitted it with sonar to detect underwater obstacles. We had
to guess where rocks were hidden under the surface by watching waves and
ripples, something many of us, including me, knew from canoeing or kayaking. A
canoe or kayak drew so little water that it could glide over obstacles that
were covered by very little water, that was not true of the RV, its bottom was
a meter or more below the surface, and with the pontoons plunging up and down
in the increasingly angry waves, at times the bottom of the RV was considerably
more than a meter deep. We hadn't gone fifty meters before there was a bump,
and the RV ground its way over a submerged rock, a rock too deep to create a
standing wave, but deep enough for the RV to bottom out. "Sorry,"
Patel said from the driver's seat. The RV was only hung up on the rock a moment,
it popped up and rode over the rock, then Patel needed to swing the RV
downstream to avoid another rock. In the seat to the right of Patel was SAS
Lieutenant Crispin, scouting for Patel to find a path across the river that
avoids underwater obstacles. Smythe suggested Crispin was well suited to that
task, he had gone to the Olympic Trails for the British kayaking team.

"Not his fault, sir," Crispin defended
Patel, "these rocks are damned hard to see. And this bloody caravan draws
too much water. Right, right," he shouted.

Patel swung the RV to the right again, and the RV
plunged downstream, rocking and rolling on the rough water. For the next ten
minutes, Crispin and Patel tried to get the RV into the middle of the river,
where we hoped deeper water would allow us to avoid hitting rocks, at that
point we had already bumped and scraped over three unseen objects. Patel got
the RV turned directly upstream and held it in place, while Crispin looked for
a way out of the box the RV was in. There were large rocks sticking out of the
water to the right, left and downstream. Upstream was an underwater rock we'd
already hit once, we didn't want to run over it again. Skippy said the RV was
tough, and had an extra tough skid plate on the bottom to protect against the
hull getting a hole punched in it from running over rocks. How tough that skid
plate was, if we hit a sharp rock, was something I didn't want to test.

"Take your time, Crispin," I said gently.
The motion of the RV was almost making me seasick, I wished the RV had more
windows.

"We'll get out of here, s- oh, shit!"
Crispin shouted.

Upstream from us, there were ice flows stretching from
shore to shore, coming around a bend in the river. A large piece of the glacier
must have broken off, and been battered into multiple chunks on its way down
the river. This was my fault, we knew the river had ice floating down it
regularly, and I should have anticipated that with the storm to the north of
us, the river level was higher than normal, bringing extra ice. What I should
have done was send a couple people upriver, someplace high where they had a
view of what was coming, to determine when was a good time for the RV to
attempt a crossing. Like an idiot, I blindly ordered us to drive the RV across.

Chunks of ice were smashing against rocks, against
each other, rolling over, breaking into smaller pieces, as the ice flood
rapidly approached. "Patel, go straight for shore," I ordered,
"as much as you can, I'd rather risk bottoming out on a rock, than getting
hit with some of that ice." Many pieces of ice were almost half the size
of the RV, they could break a pontoon, or even knock the RV over in the water.

We almost made it. Fifty meters from the shore, Patel
swung upriver to the left in order to avoid a rock that was barely under the
water, and a large chuck of ice slammed into the left pontoon. The impact swung
the RV's nose upriver, and the raging water made the nose keep going to the
left, out of control. Suddenly, the RV was pointed downriver, gathering speed,
headed straight for two large rocks. Patel had the water jets screaming in full
reverse, he was barely able to hold position. "I think the left pontoon is
taking on water," he shouted, "the RV wants to spin to the left.
Crispin, do you see a way-"

His words were cut off by a sickening crunch as the RV
was battered again by a small iceberg. Looking out the small window, for a
flash all I saw was a wall of ice, and for a moment my idiotic brain thought of
the
Titanic
. The RV lurched down and to the left as the iceberg hit,
then rode up on the pontoon. There was an earsplitting screech as the pontoon
slid along the iceberg, then it was gone in one direction and the RV spun the
other way.

The left pontoon was now clearly battered and sinking,
I was sitting on the left side of the RV and I could tell. Patel reported the
left side water jet was operating sluggishly, and I directed him to head
straight for shore. The RV was going under, I wanted us to get as close to the
river bank as possible before it went down. Patel did a great job driving, he
got the RV downstream from a large rock, semi protected from large pieces of
ice, and headed for the shore using what power remained. The water jet in the
left pontoon was barely functioning at that point. The RV grounded on an unseen
rock, and couldn't move. "I think we're stuck, sir," Patel said with
regret. "The water jets are on full power, but we can't go forward or
back."

That was it, I wasn't waiting any longer. Out the
front windows, the shore was tantalizingly close. "We're sinking! Captain
Smythe, get everyone to shore, Williams, you're with me!"

I staggered to the back of the RV, Williams and his
three man SEAL team right behind me, and opened the door to the cargo
compartment. The RV was sinking fast now, tilted to the left at a thirty degree
angle and judging by the grinding sounds, was being pushed back out into the
river. We had less, far less, than a minute before the RV would have slid back
away from the river bank and into water deep enough to be over our heads. In
that icy cold, fast-moving water, it was unlikely anyone who had to swim would
survive. "Armor, we need one full set of armor, leave everything
else," I explained. Between the five of us, six because Smythe of course
interpreted my orders broadly and came back into the cargo box with us, we got
all the components for a set of armor. "Leave it," I ordered, as
Smythe tried to pick up a rifle. "That's an order, go!"

Behind me, I closed and firmly latched the door to the
cargo compartment, where almost all our precious supplies were stored. Water,
bitterly cold water was already collecting around my ankles as we squeezed
through the door, bumping into each other as the RV rocked back and forth.
Water was pouring in through the right side emergency hatch, I saw people were
shuffling along the right pontoon to hop into the water, Patel and Crispin were
still in the RV, they'd given up trying to get out the right side hatch, and
Patel was working the controls of the roof hatch. He got it open, took hold of
the lip around the hatchway, and swung himself through it. At this point, the
RV was at a forty five degree angle to the left, and bucking like a bronco as
it slid backwards, battered by waves.

How we all got out, I don't remember exactly. Somehow,
both Smythe and Williams got out behind me even though I'd intended to be the
last to leave. By the time Smythe came through the hatch, the RV was almost
laying on its left side, and we had to crawl along the right side to the nose,
kneel on a front window, and jump into the water. It was up to my chest, and I
gasped in shock at the deathly cold. The cold and strong current, combined with
the armor suit leg I had a death drip on, made me unsteady, I would have fallen
backwards and been swept away except people had formed a human chain to the
shore, Ranger Samuels got a firm grip on my arm and guided me to shore.
"Thank you," I told her, and handed the armor suit leg to her once
the water was only as deep as my waist. I stood in the shockingly cold water,
trying to ignore it, helping Williams and then Smythe get to safety, more importantly,
assuring the precious components of the armor suit got safely to shore. As
Smythe, last to leave, jumped off the nose, the RV lurched backwards, partly
afloat again. We got onto the shore, me crawling the last meter on my hands and
knees, then we all stood in stunned silence for a moment, as we watched the RV
drift down the river, sinking quickly, until it hit and became wedged between
two rocks, then it slowly disappeared. The right pontoon was visible under the
water from time to time, in the troughs of waves.

Shaking myself back to awareness, I stepped onto a
rock so I could see the assembled crowd. "Is anyone hurt? Other than wet
and cold?"

"Mild ankle sprains, nothing more," girl
reported, she was kneeling next to Captain Zhang, who had his right boot off
and winced as girl manipulated his ankle.