Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (14 page)

The knife successfully stopped his collision course with
death. One of the Kazakhs was not so fortunate. As he careened across
the ice, Deckard reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve, holding
on to his hard point in the ice with one hand. It felt like his
shoulder was about to be pulled out of its socket, but he had held on
to his teammate.

Deckard and the young Kazakh watched in horror as several of
their friends got too close to the chasm, unable to find something to
break their trajectory forward. Two Samruk mercenaries slipped right
off the side, their howls disappearing into the night. Another formed
claws with his hands, trying to dig into the ice. It was to no avail;
he was unable to scramble away from the edge. He too disappeared into
the water.

The sheet of ice they were on was leveling out, but there
was now a huge lead in the ice between them and the enemy. Echoes
could be heard all around them as the ice floe cracked again and
again. The entire island-sized sheet of ice was breaking up.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Deckard grunted.

It was no coincidence that the ice floe started breaking up just
as they got the drop on the enemy.

Reaching down, Deckard pulled his knife out of the ground and slid
it back into its sheath. It was a Company Knife, made for commandos,
mercs, and black-helicopter types by expert knifemaker Newt Livesay.
Reaching down, he helped the Kazakh trooper to his feet.

“Six, we’re not going to be able to intercept. The ice
is cracking up all around us. What the hell is going on?”
Rochenoire radioed him.

“Good question. Just get back to the Carrickfergus.”

Just then, two black snowmobiles powered over a pressure ridge in
the distance. From across the chasm, Deckard watched them tear
through the snow and pull up alongside the destroyed hovercraft. They
got off their snowmobiles and began unloading something out of the
back. Deckard pressed the thermal sight against his eye.

Four men in black balaclavas unloaded a large plastic case that
looked to be about the size of a refrigerator. They held onto the
carry handles at the sides of the case and set it down on a sled
attached to the back of one of the snowmobiles. Meanwhile, the
submarine had completely slipped back beneath the ice, its status
unknown, but it couldn’t be good.

“On my tracer fire,” Deckard ordered.

Leveling his AK-103, he sent a stream of red tracer rounds at the
snowmobiles on the other side of the ice floe. The Samruk mercenaries
joined in, cutting loose on the enemy one more time. The
balaclava-clad men were already on their snowmobiles, vanishing into
the dark.

Deckard’s jaw tensed as he lowered the smoking barrel of
his Kalashnikov.

Everything about this was wrong.

Chapter 12

“Which way are we going?”

“Dammit, we can’t go that way!”

“Nyet, nyet!”

“It’s blocked, it’s blocked!”

“Go back the way we came!”

“We ain’t going back that way, the ice just cracked again.”

“What’s on our right flank? I can’t see shit!”

Deckard could hear the panic rising in their voices as his men
radioed back and forth, desperately trying to find a way off the ice
floe. They had spent two hours weaving across the ice, dodging fresh
breaks as the ice island continued tearing itself apart. Every time
they thought they had found an opening, they would run right into
another lead—20-foot openings with sloshing sea water at the
bottom.

“That’s it,” Deckard finally ordered over the radio.
“Put them in a file. Dag, get us the fuck out of here now.”

“Roger that,” the the former Norwegian FSK commando replied.
“On it.”

The Samruk mercenaries broke formation and began moving in a
single-file line, sacrificing security for speed. The ice was coming
apart under their feet, and if they didn’t rendezvous with the
Carrickfergus soon, they would drown, freeze, or be left squatting on
a car-sized piece of ice, floating toward Siberia like a lost polar
bear.

Dag led them over a chest-high pressure ridge, then
hand-railed alongside a fresh lead, driving them deeper and deeper
into the darkness of night. The men were frantic, eyes darting around
the ice, looking for ghosts that weren’t there. One of the newer
guys even let off a burst of Kalashnikov fire at an imaginary enemy
before Chuck Rochenoire blasted him in the face with a clenched fist.

Deckard was losing control of his element, and shit was getting
more gangster by the second.

“Otter, flip on the IR strobe for thirty seconds.”

The strobe light mounted on the Carrickfergus would blink on and
off in the infrared spectrum, visible to those wearing night vision
goggles but invisible to the naked eye. Asking for 30 seconds of
strobe light wasn’t because Deckard was worried about the enemy
spotting their ship. At this point he could care less, but the
batteries in their PVS-14 night vision monoculars would freeze after
much longer than that.

“That’s it, I’ve got them,” Dag confirmed over the radio.
“Five hundred meters due east.”

The radio batteries would freeze as well, but they now made sure
they wore their inter-team radios under thermal layers of clothing
beneath their parkas.

“Get us there.”

After another 15 minutes of stumbling around the ice, they
could see the silhouette of their ship docked alongside the ice.
Fedorchenko spread his men out in a half-moon formation to pull
security while their sister platoon scaled the cargo net and climbed
up the hull of the ship. Once they were on board, the other platoon
collapsed down and climbed aboard as well.

Deckard was the last off the ice. Slinging his rifle, he
grabbed onto the net with one hand and looked over his shoulder.

All he saw was darkness.

All he heard was the howling of the wind.

The enemy was out there. Somewhere.

Deckard swung around and stuck his foot into the net, then
climbed up hand over hand, promising himself that he was going to
find them.

Then he was going to kill every single one of them.

* * *

Flinging open the door to the bridge, Deckard dumped his kit on
the ground and slammed his rifle down on a shelf.

“Where—”

Deckard interrupted the ship’s captain before he even had the
chance to ask.

“East. Just head east.”

Opening his laptop, Deckard punched in the number for the JSOC
guys in Tampa. He needed a word. The VTC opened and he was looking at
the usual four-man cast of characters.

“Deckard, what happened?” Gary asked. “Did you get them?”

“Prevented them from transferring the weapon. It was a
submarine, not an airplane, but they got away.”

“What? How the hell did that happen?”

“We need to talk. You level with me right now about what I’m
up against or I’m assaulting my way to Tampa to skull-fuck the four
of you once I’m done up here.”

“Whoa, hey, what are you talking about?”

“What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Hunting.”

“We told you, we’re still trying to fit the puzzle pieces
together. We don’t know who this is.”

“Beyond that. Whatever the fuck it is they stole, it isn’t
nuclear.”

“The Urals compound they hit is a nuclear research facility.”

“Bullshit,” Deckard said as he slammed his fist on the table.
“Whatever that thing is, they activated it just as we were moving
in for the kill. It shook the ice beneath our feet. The next thing I
know, the ice floe was coming apart right under us and my men were
getting sucked into the ocean. They made the entire ice floe
destabilize so that they could get the device back to their ship and
escape.”

Everyone in Tampa was silent.

“What the fuck am I up against here? I want an answer and I
want it right fucking now.”

Will cleared his throat.

“There have been stories—rumors really—coming out of Russia
since the Soviet years.”

“Rumors of what?”

“An entirely new generation of weapons. Direct-energy
systems, psytronics, stuff that can even steer weather patterns.
Sometimes defectors or recruited assets would pass on whispers about
this kind of stuff.”

“Consider the rumors confirmed. They’ve been holding an ace
up their sleeve.”

“None of it makes sense. We’ve had scientific review boards
come up with classified findings. None of the math adds up.”

“Humor me.”

“We know that it is possible for man-made earthquakes to be
induced. It has been done accidentally in India and China by building
massive water reservoirs on top of fault lines. Some scientists have
theorized that nuclear testing is also responsible for increased
earthquake activity, but there isn’t much proof of that,” Will
said.

“What about actual weaponization?”

“Well, even scientists more open to this idea only believe that
it’s possible to tickle seismic activity where there is already
great tectonic pressures, basically inducing an earthquake that is
already going to happen at some point, maybe making it a little
stronger.”

“There are already frictions on an ice floe; we know that
because of the leads and pressure ridges present. But that is nothing
like the tectonic forces of the earth’s plates,” Deckard replied.

“No, it isn’t,” Will agreed. “Which means the Russians
may be much further along with the weaponization process than any of
us had suspected. SCOPE employs a number of scientists as consultants
who we will have to call in to work on this.”

“We are in the shit right now. How is it possible for something
like this to work?”

“If I was to speculate,” Will said. “I would guess it
utilizes electromagnetic energy. Nikola Tesla claimed to have nearly
shaken a building to the ground with a device he built based upon
what he termed ‘telegeodynamics.’ From there, we are getting into
conspiracy theory territory.”

“An area of expertise for you, isn’t it, Will?” Craig said
as he turned to face his co-worker.

“Mine too,” Deckard added. “I’ve seen too many black
helicopters to discount it. Especially when it is right in front of
my eyes.”

“Where does this leave us?” Gary asked.

“We are heading east. With the Bering Strait cut off, they
won’t make it into the Pacific, and they won’t be double-backing
right into Russia’s Northern Fleet.”

“The northeast passage, then?”

“That is their only way out of this, through Canada and into
the Atlantic. That submarine took direct hits and won’t be
resurfacing anytime soon, if ever. What is the status of the Global
Hawk UAVs?”

“We have one platform flying up from Montana right now. It will
have to refuel in Fairbanks. ETA is almost twenty-four hours.”

“I’m going to pursue. We can’t wait for you guys to get
your shit together.”

“Deckard, we need—”

Slamming his laptop shut, Deckard grabbed his rifle and threw the
door open on his way out.

* * *

Opening his eyes, Deckard was immediately awake.

Despite only sleeping for five hours, he felt like he had just
woken up after hibernating over the winter. When you are so exhausted
that you start droning, even a little bit of sleep can make an
amazing difference when it comes to recharging your brain.

Tossing a Woodland camouflage poncho liner off, he rolled out of
his cot and pulled on a layer of thermal clothing before walking
through the ship. Most of the men were still asleep, but a few others
lay awake watching movies on portable DVD players or laptops. A few
Xbox One and PlayStation Four consoles hummed in the darkness; the
guys bunked in that particular area had fallen asleep watching movies
or paused the screen in the middle of a Call of Duty death match.

Climbing up the steep metal steps, Deckard entered the
bridge. Otter’s second mate, a younger sailor in his late twenties
named Squirrel, was on watch.

“Any updates?”

“Not much on our end. We are on course, heading toward
the northeast passage as you instructed. Back home, half of Los
Angeles lost its power grid and ISIS set off a couple car bombs in
Paris,” Squirrel answered.

“Someone keeping the pressure on us.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Sitting behind a desk, Deckard opened his laptop.

* * *

The blade master pulled back on the crossbow’s string. Most
warriors couldn’t draw back the bow on this particular weapon, but
with a flex of his shoulders, he was able to set the string in the
weapon. Inserting a poison-tipped quarrel, he scanned for his quarry.

The humidity of the jungle was thick in the air,
enveloping him in a haze into which the tangles of vines over his
head eventually disappeared. Somewhere, through the mist, was a
Drakkenborn. Ducking under a fallen tree, the blade master stayed as
stealthy as possible as he stepped into a stream. Decaying machines
of war lay scattered throughout the jungle. The one in front of him,
powered by steam, had been used in the Third Aqualonian War. It was
the technology that gave them life, long since lost. Now they were
just remnants of the past.

Moving around the arms of the broken mechanical cyclops, the
blade master noticed movement in the distance.

Jackpot.

The Drakkenborn was stalking something, not realizing that he
himself was the prey. As the blade master inched closer, the mist
parted, revealing the half-breed spawn of a human and a dragon, made
possible by the dark machinations of sorcerers and warlocks. He was
as tall as he was wide, wearing a golden tunic with heavy metal armor
on his shoulders and chest.

Holding a lance above his head, the Drakkenborn prepared
to launch his weapon at a giant neon-green spider creeping up a tree.

Leveling the crossbow to his shoulder and taking aim, the blade
master fired first. Depressing the lever on his crossbow, the quarrel
shot through the air and speared the Drakkenborn in the neck. He
recoiled as the poisoned dart struck its mark. Turning to face the
unexpected threat, the Drakkenborn cast a bolt of lightning.