Ice War (17 page)

“I have three vehicles heading west at high speed,” Watson announced.

“Running like dogs,” Russell said.

“Light ’em up,” Whitehead said.

Already, hits were coming in from the battlefield. Some of the icebreakers were getting through; others were being shot down by the concentrated surface-to-air defences of the Bzadian invasion force.

As Wilton watched, an icebreaker landed, disappearing into the ice with what looked like no more than a puff of smoke.

It wasn’t smoke, he knew that. It was pulverised ice. That’s what the icebreakers did. They didn’t have to hit their targets. Their job was to fracture the icefloes, weakening them. A succession of them would turn the floes into crushed ice, dumping anything on them into the sea. There was little to see from above, because all of their energy was directed into the ice itself.

Another icebreaker landed, but more and more were exploding in midair above the ice. The Taranis drones too were falling from the sky, victims of a vicious response from the ice below.

Wilton had seen too much.

He had heard nothing from Monster. That meant the Angels had not got out. They were somewhere down there. Right in the middle of the kill zone.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1130 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[BERING STRAIT, SOUTH-WEST OF LITTLE DIOMEDE ISLAND]

“Icebreakers!” Monster yelled, picking himself up from the ground.

The entire icefloe had just shuddered as if the world itself was breaking apart. A plume of snow and ice had erupted, somewhere to the south-west.

“Get down! Here they come,” Nukilik said.

The first transporter appeared from behind one of the mounds.

“Any second,” Nukilik shouted.

The vehicle’s top-mounted machine gun was firing a constant stream of high-calibre bullets at the transporter behind it, which was returning the fire.

“Why are they shooting at each other?” Nukilik asked.

“Angels!” Monster said.

It had to be! But they were heading right for the trap that he and Nukilik had laid.

He leaped out from behind the safety of the ridge, yelling and screaming at the transporter.

The transporter made no attempt to slow. The tracks of the machine hurled ice in the air. At the last minute, the driver must have realised that something was wrong and the tracks jammed, the DT-30 slewing sideways as it hit the pool of slush.

The machine’s nose completely disappeared, all the way back to the driver’s door, water spraying up in all directions. Then came a judder that Monster felt through the ice as the vehicle hit a solid wall on the far side of the pool.

The articulated DT-30 jackknifed vertically. The connecting rods snapped with an explosive crack and the trailer bounced up over the cab, landing on the other side, first with one track, then the other, sliding a dozen metres before flipping onto its side, wedged against a projecting slab of ice. The second vehicle locked up its tracks and slid across the ice, ramming into the now vertical tracks of the first vehicle and pushing it over onto its roof.

Half a second later, there was a streak of light from the sky: a lightning bolt that struck the ice just a few metres in front of the vehicle. A fountain of pulverised ice shards sprayed into the air. If not for the pool of slush stopping the DT-30 in its tracks, it and anyone on it would have been vaporised.

The third vehicle skidded to a halt well clear of the jumble of twisted metal.

Monster was already running, leaping down the jumbled slope of the ridge. Nukilik was right behind him.

Price lay on the ice, struggling for breath. She had seen the ice shimmer in front of her as she’d had driven the machine down the slope and had known that something was wrong. But there was no time to do anything about it, no time to stop, no way to change direction.

The transporter had slammed into a brick wall. At that point things got confused. She remembered hurtling through the windscreen, already smashed by the explosion of the SAM battery. She seemed to be flying briefly then the ice had come up to meet her and there was a moment of blackness.

Now there were vague shapes around her, whirling and turning in the wind. Animals. No, humans in animal furs.

Shouts drifted to her as one of the shapes helped the other Angels out of the wreck of the transporter. She strained to catch their words but heard only scraps because of the wind and the buzzing in her ears.

She tried to lift herself up, but the ice clung to her, refusing to let her go.

One of the fur-clad shapes slid to a halt beside her and she was lifted up. She heard gunfire but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Bullets kicked up puffs of ice around her and sparked off the side of the wrecked vehicle.

There was a roar overhead and she glanced up, catching a glimpse of a blur of black metal. The ice thundered, not far away, and she was back on the ground, the man lying across her. He was a native of the area, she realised. An Inupiat.

Her strength started to return and as the man stood, she pushed away his hand and stood on her own, a little wobbly but okay.

The firing had stopped with the explosion of the missile and the other Angels were already running for the safety of the ice ridge.

The man shouted “run” in her ear. Was there something familiar about his voice, or was that her imagination? He pulled her with him, running after the others.

There were more gunshots now, but they didn’t seem directed at the Angels. When she glanced around she saw the Bzadians firing at the ice ridge. As she watched, a barrage of small spears came flying over the ridge.

Then she was climbing up among the jumbled ice rocks of the ridge itself, and over, to cover, to safety.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1540 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Wilton could not take his eyes off the main screen, switching between cameras on different drones. The screen was full of smoke, fire and bursting pinpoints of light. And somewhere beneath that were his friends.

“We are facing intense SAM activity,” Hundal said. “Whatever they’ve got on that icefloe, they sure want to protect it.”

“If they want to protect it, then we want to destroy it,” Whitehead said.

“The invasion force is much larger than we thought,” Russell said. “Based on the SAM activity, it spreads a long way to the south and the west.”

The picture on the main screen was not encouraging. The icefloes near the islands were crushed and broken, a large dark area amid the white of the sea ice.

But the dimpled effect of the mounds that hid Bzadian tanks spread far to the east and the south.

“If every one of those hills is a Bzadian battle tank, then that’s got to be over half the Bzadian army, right there,” Whitehead said. “This is the invasion we’ve been waiting for.”

“Most of our Taranis drones are down,” Hundal said. “Taken out by SAMs, or by the Type Ones. I’m pulling the other ones back.”

“How about the Tomahawks?” Whitehead asked.

“A good percentage of the first strike got through,” Hooper said. “By the time the second strike got there, the Type Ones were on station and they’re knocking them down as fast as we could fire them.”

“F-35s coming into range,” Hundal said. “That’ll draw off the Type Ones for you.”

“It had better,” Hooper said.

“We either stop this right here, right now, or it’s all over,” Whitehead said. “As soon as those Type Ones are engaged, I want you to blanket that entire area with the cruise missiles. Smash that icefield to pieces.”

“We’ve already committed over a third of our inventory,” Hundal said.

“That won’t matter if we can turn this attack around,” Russell said.

“Let ’em have it, Jack,” Whitehead said quietly.

“Let them have what?” Hooper asked.

“Everything,” Whitehead said. “Those tanks are not getting through. Not on my watch. Not this winter.”

“Angels, get out of there,” Wilton murmured to himself, “before it’s too late.”

But he had a bad feeling that it was already too late.

Monster helped Wall up a low section of the ridge. The Angels were not in good shape, dazed and bloodied by the crash. Wall seemed to have come off the worst and the front of his armour was blackened and burned. Monster put his arm under Wall’s shoulders and helped him climb.

Roaring over the top of them were the sleek shapes of Bzadian jets. From the way the sky was exploding, Monster could tell that a furious air battle was taking place.

The Bzadian soldiers had stopped firing altogether now and were climbing on board the one functioning transporter. Thin fissures were opening up all around the vehicle and it took off even as soldiers were still clambering on board. Many clung to handholds on the sides. Some unlucky ones chased after it on foot as it lurched across a gap in the ice and raced to the west.

Monster concentrated on climbing. On the other side of the ridge lay comparative safety. The icefloe behind them was collapsing but the thick, compressed ice of the ridge remained solid. With more and more missiles raining down behind them, it wouldn’t last long.

At the top of the ridge, Monster heard a loud grinding, cracking sound and looked back. The floe behind him disintegrated. No longer a solid sheet of ice, it was merely a loose collection of pieces. The crashed transporters wobbled then disappeared into the Bering Sea.

A massive piece of ice with three of the camouflaged Bzadian tanks started to turn turtle, tipping steeper and steeper until the white hillocks began to slide towards the black surface of the ocean. They disintegrated as they went, no longer mounds, now just low piles of crumbled snow. There was no sign of any tanks, but there was no time to make sense of what he had seen. Monster all but carried Wall down the far side of the ridge, although Wall pushed him away at the bottom and found his own feet.

Price was heading too far to the north, Monster saw.

“Price,” he shouted, running up behind her, catching her by the arm and pointing. “This way!”

She changed direction as instructed. She flipped up her visor, ignoring the ice that blasted her unprotected skin.

“Who are you?” she asked. “How do you know my name?”

That was when Monster realised that his head was still covered by a hood, and a scarf concealed his face. He pulled the scarf away.

She stared at him, not recognising him. He pulled back the hood, not minding a sudden flurry of snow that swirled around them both like a miniature tornado.

“Monster?” Her voice was so faint that he had to read the word from her lips. “You’re dead.”

“Not any more,” he said.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1640 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

The applause began in a far corner of the room. Wilton didn’t see who started it, but it quickly spread.

“That last strike seems to have been conclusive,” Hooper said. “While the fighters were engaging our planes, we got almost a full flight of missiles through.”

Each Tomahawk carried twenty-four individual warheads, and these were all a variant of the icebreaker. They were scattered over a wide area and the combination of the shattering explosions was too much for the icepack. It was now a crazy jigsaw, gradually drifting apart and away to the south where the ice would melt in the warmer waters of the Bering Sea.