SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (37 page)

"I'm fine, Colonel, I stumbled on a rock,"
Zhang assured me.

"Good," I said stupidly. Damn, as a
commanding officer, I wasn't being very helpful. "Captain Smythe, we have
a lot of people in cold, wet clothing here, and a storm is coming." The
wind was now gusting, and rain was occasionally coming down almost sideways.
Find us some place out of the weather, and make sure everyone uses their heat
packs, if needed. I don't want anyone getting sick out here." Everyone
had, or should have, chemical packets that could be mixed to generate heat,
they are available in any hardware or sporting goods store, not some fancy
alien technology. "Lieutenant Williams, you SEALs are our swimmers, bring
the suit components over here. Let's put it together and see what we can do
with it."

While Williams and his team got the suit sorted out,
checked out, and Taylor into it, I took a moment to get my head together. This
could be a disaster; all our equipment, all our weapons, all our food, all our
extra clothing, tents, everything we needed for survival, was in that sunken
RV. I was in shock, trying to process how things had gone so bad so quickly.
Skippy later figured out what happened. The storm had dumped an enormous deluge
of water to the north of us, water that very rapidly rushed down streams,
swelling the river. Because a tongue of a glacier blocked two thirds of the
river channel, the water briefly piled up behind the glacier, until the
pressure fractured off pieces ice ancient ice, and the wall of water found a
path downstream. When we arrived at the river, we should have noticed that the
water was already over its usual banks, that was why there as a nice gentle
grassy slope for us to drive down. We should have been suspicious, I should
have been suspicious of the high water, I'd thought it an optical illusion that
the river seemed to be rising. It wasn't an illusion. The chunks of ice
floating down the river should also have caused me to be extra cautious, there
was a lot of ice in the water. If I'd ordered us to wait for morning, like I
should have, we would have noticed that the water level was rising, and more
and larger chunks of ice were coming around the bend upriver. I was too damned
eager to get across the river before the storm hit us. Like an idiot, I had not
even considered what the storm might be doing upriver.

It was both an accident, and my fault.

Looking back, I should have taken more time to study
the river, even pulled the RV back under a bluff to shelter for the night, and
crossed the next morning. We were ahead of schedule, the RV had enough juice
left in its powercells for another day and a half, before we would need to find
a place to hide it and begin walking. Maybe waiting for the morning would have
avoided the disaster, or maybe we would still have gotten rammed by a mini
iceberg, there were still plenty of them floating down the river.

Williams was satisfied the suit was fully operational,
and he reported Taylor was ready to try using it in the water. "We're go
for a test, sir," he reported.

"Skippy," I asked, "what's our weather
forecast?"

He responded immediately. "The storm to the north
has abated somewhat and shifted its track to the west, I now expect most of it
to miss your location. You will get gusty winds and rain in about two hours,
lasting several hours."

"Thank you, Skippy. All right," I declared,
"let's move now, before the weather gets worse. The longer the RV is in
the water, the greater risk it will shift, or equipment will spill out and get
lost downstream. It would be best for a recovery operation to wait for morning,
we don't have that long."

"We recover weapons first," Smythe
suggested.

"No," I said emphatically. "Taylor,
your first priority is to recover the parts for another suit, then two divers
can get the components for the other two suits. We need the suits first, we
don't know how long it will take to get everything we need out of the RV, and a
single suit may run out of power before then. We'll use two suits for
recovering our equipment, save the other two suits for the assault."

"Makes sense, sir," Williams agreed, and
helped Taylor attach his helmet.

"Spotter team," I asked over my zPhone,
"How is it looking?"

The spotter team was two people on a hill upriver,
where they had a good view. Setting up a spotter team is what I should have
done before we tried to cross the river. "Good, sir, some ice coming down,
nothing like before."

Through their zPhones, I could see what they were
seeing. Widely scattered pieces of ice, a diver should be able to avoid them
without too much trouble. We didn't have much of a choice anyway. "The ice
situation is manageable. Are you good in there?" I asked over my zPhone
earpiece to Taylor.

"Good," Taylor replied over the radio, with
his helmet faceplate closed, he gave us a thumbs up. "We've never used
these for swimming."

"Understood, do your best. Don't rush to get to
the RV, go out and practice swimming first, we can't risk you crashing into the
RV, or breaking the suit on a rock, or getting hit by ice. Approach the RV from
downstream," I advised stupidly. A SEAL didn't need my advice about
underwater operations.

Taylor walked confidently to the shore, stepped in
carefully, then awkwardly as he got in deeper and the current threatened to
knock his feet out from under him. "I'm going to dive in now, the footing
is loose here," he said, and leapt into the water. For a heart-stopping
moment, he disappeared under the surface. We could hear him breathing heavily on
the radio. Then, he popped to the surface, swimming strongly, making progress
against the current. "I'm getting used to it," he reported, "the
power in this suit is really incredible. The stabilizers help, I don't know
that I could control the suit without them, they do a lot of the work for
me."

"Keep going," Williams ordered, "go up
to that rock, turn around, and see how it is moving with the current. Watch out
for that ice."

"I see it." For twenty minutes, not
venturing out any further than the sunken RV, Taylor swam on the surface, under
the surface, with the current, against the current, dodging chunks of ice.
"I'm ready, sir, I've got the hang of this. I want to recon the RV
now."

"What do you think?" I asked Williams.

He thought a moment, and replied "Typically we'd
call a rest before proceeding."

"I'm good, sir, really I am," Taylor said.
He was treading water easily, just downstream from the sunken RV. "This
suit does most of the work for you, it's very strong. The radar even works
pretty good underwater, I can see underwater obstacles on the faceplate
display. I'd like to go now, sir, this make take a while, and we're losing
daylight, and I hear the wind is going to pick up soon."

"I recommend he goes, sir." Williams said.

"Lieutenant, I know nothing about underwater
recovery," I admitted, "this is your operation. Get us another suit
first, so we can have two divers working together."

Our three SEALs worked through the night, using two
suits. With people on land acting as spotters for ice chunks, the divers were
able to avoid a single accident, other than a minor incident of one diver
getting a foot tangled in cables inside the RV, it only took a minute to cut
himself free and he was never in any danger. The wind hit us after dark, and
the divers took a break for an hour until the worst of the weather had blown
over us. Taylor first recovered all the components of the second suit in seven
dives. We assembled the recovered suit, checked it out and Williams declared it
ready for use. Williams took one dive with Taylor to learn, then Taylor led
Williams inside the RV, working as a team. As ordered, they got the other two
powered suits first, then I instructed Williams to bring up tents and food
before weapons, everyone on shore was still shivering and I thought we couldn't
risk people becoming seriously ill. By that time, Williams was confident in the
SEALs' diving abilities, and that the RV was solidly wedged against a rock and
not going anywhere. By the middle of the following morning, they had recovered
everything we truly needed from the sunken RV, and, incredibly, even the stupid
Barney doll.

At first, I was a little bit pissed. Not that I would
continue to be taunted by Barney, but that one of our SEALs had risked his
life, and expended precious suit power, to recover a stuffed doll. Williams
calmed me down, explaining that the windshield had broken sometime during the
night, and the Barney had torn loose and ended up wedged under a seat. He had
brought the Barney back as a sort of mascot, or good luck charm, and I had to
admit, people had cheered loudly when he emerged from the river, holding Barney
above his head. So, we were stuck with it, damn it.

The two suits that had been used by the SEALs were
down to less than 15% of their normal power charge, the one Taylor started with
had only 12%. The energy required for swimming against the river current had
drained power quickly from the suits, and because of the frigid water, the
suits had to run their heaters, draining power even faster.

"Suits can't transfer power one another,"
Smythe observed bitterly. "We've got two disassembled, fully charged
suits, and two that will only last maybe one day of walking."

"Yeah. Hey, Skippy," I asked, "can you
run the math for us on how much weight each of the depleted suits can carry,
for the best trade-off between cargo capacity and range? We'll remove the
helmet and arms from the depleted suits."

"Please, Joe, that kind of kindergarten
arithmetic is beneath me. Since you asked, I recommend a payload of fifty seven
kilos for each suit. That will allow travel of roughly sixty kilometers, in the
terrain you have in front of you."

"Great, thank you, Skippy." To Smythe, I
said "Having suits carry part of the load for a while will help us ease
into walking. Sitting in the RV too many days made my legs stiff. Take the
helmets and arms off the two suits we'll be using as pack mules, and bury them
along with whatever else we're not taking with us. Divvy up the loads first so
I can see how much each person will be carrying, and Captain?"

"Sir?"

"I know you special forces types are hard core, I
do not want to see anyone so loaded down with gear that they risk injury, or
being too worn out when we get to the scavenger camp. Skippy made his pizza
delivery, we can count on replenishing our food supply. I want to move out in
two hours, that will give us seven hours of daylight for walking and setting up
camp tonight. We're going to take it easy the first day."

"Yes, sir," Smythe said, and I could see in
his eyes he was unconvinced. And probably regretting that the team included me
and two civilians.

"Good. Plan for me to carry ammo packs and part
of a suit. Don't worry, Captain," I added after seeing his skeptical look,
"if I can't handle it, I will tell you."

Leaving Smythe to bark orders, I walked over to Doctors
Zheng and Tanaka, who were helping sort through a pile of wet, muddy clothing.
It was all wet from being in the river, and despite laying out a collapsed tent
to keep the clothes off the ground, most of it had some mud smeared here and there.
"How are you?"

"I'd be better if I could get into some dry
clothes," Zheng admitted. "Colonel, training for triathlons can
involve getting cold and wet for a while, I'm used to that. What I'm not used
to is not getting a shower and warm dry clothes after. It's tiring. This is
like one of those twenty four hour endurance events that I've always
avoided."

"If I were one of my patients," Tanaka
remarked, "I would be treating myself for exposure, and possible
hypothermia."

"I understand that. We'd all be doing a lot
better if the RV hadn't sunk. We're going to start walking in about two hours,
I know that will help me warm up. We'll be walking further than planned, we'd
hoped to stretch the RV's power supply for another two days. Don't worry, we
anticipated setbacks in the schedule. You only need to carry your personal gear
and medical supplies, the SpecOps team will take everything else."

"What are you carrying?" Tanaka asked.

"My personal gear, plus ammunition, and part of
an armored suit. This is not going to be easy, I really appreciate you coming
with us, and the sacrifices you're making."

"We'll get through it," Zheng said with
determination. "I hope this is all a waste of our time."

"Oh?" I said in surprise. "Why?"

"Because," she explained, "if you need
doctors on this mission, something will have gone wrong, won't it?"

We began the walk without ceremony, once I was
satisfied people were not carrying unrealistic loads, I gave Smythe the
go-ahead order, and he sent two men ahead as scouts. Knowing what the terrain
along our projected path looked like from satellite images was one thing,
seeing the real conditions on the ground was quite another. The scouts would
check out our route, advise of shortcuts, impassible terrain, and hopefully
avoid everyone else having to double back. Smythe planned to rotate the scout
duties; two people in the morning, two in the afternoon. Being a scout was a
highly sought-after assignment, as the scouts carried only light loads, and
weren't tramping along in well-trodden mud with the rest of us.

I began walking with the Rangers, out of service
loyalty, then dropped back in the column to check on the SEAL team. While the
rest of us had been shivering on shore, trying to catch sleep in shifts, the
three SEALs had worked through the night. "How are you, Lieutenant?"

"We're all right, sir," Williams answered.
"Compared to some of our training, this is a piece of cake."

"And the food is better," Garcia said while
eating something out of an MRE pouch.

"Any food is good at this point," Taylor
agreed.

"When we came out here, I didn't think the 'Sea'
part of SEa Air Land in 'SEAL' would be of any use," Williams admitted.