Ice War (29 page)

Ahead of him, the giant Bzadian command tank rolled straight at the downed hovercraft.

It shoved it forwards, the spinning hull grinding into the smaller craft, bulldozing it towards the broken edge of the icefloe and the cold waters beyond.

“No!” he shouted, and before he thought about what he was doing he gunned the hovercraft. He considered firing his last remaining sidewinder, but it would have little effect on the thick spinning hull of a tank.

The nose of his hovercraft dipped as he accelerated, the wind shrieking, a heinous banshee noise, through the smashed windshield.

His face was completely numb and he sensed ice particles growing on his nose and cheeks. Only the visor of his helmet protected his eyes and he had to rub at it with a frozen, rigid hand to keep it clear.

He gave the machine full power. A burst of machine-gun fire from one of the tanks ripped along the side of the craft, shattering his armoured window. He felt a jolt in his right arm followed by a numbness that quickly spread down that side of his body.

His left hand still worked and he could steer with that. He aimed the nose of his craft at the front of the Angels’ hovercraft. The armoured windscreen of the craft was intact and he was close enough to see inside. Price was there; she was still alive. So was The Tsar, hammering at the side door of the craft, trying to get it open.

Price looked up, her eye catching the sight of Wilton’s hovercraft approaching.

There was a crunch as the nose of his craft slammed into that of the Angels’, now teetering on the edge of the icefloe.

The impact hurled him forwards in his seat, slamming him against the harness. The other craft was bigger, heavier, and jammed against the front lip of the Bzadian tank, but the impact of the crash was enough to jolt it free.

Still he kept the power on, ramming the Angels out of the way.

Price saw him, and knew him; he could see the recognition in her eyes just before the craft spun out from the front of the tank, sliding away from the edge of the ice. Price’s eyes were wide as the craft slipped out of his sight.

But now the tank had him. It ground into the spitfire, pressing it down, squeezing the air out of it. He gunned the engine, wrenching the steering to the left and right, but the grip of the tank was remorseless.

He was on the very edge of the ice. The thin wedge gave way underneath him, and the tail of his craft dropped. He was looking upwards, at a grey arctic sky that quickly turned to black, eclipsed by the crescent that was the front of the tank.

If anybody had seen the expression on Wilton’s face at that moment, they would have seen a face that had been frozen, a face in which the skin and muscles no longer had any feeling or movement. It was a rigid mask beneath a half-face visor that was icing up, as if to hide his eyes from what was to come.

But if anyone had seen that expression, as fixed and forced as it was, they would had thought that Specialist Blake Wilton, of Vancouver, Canada, was smiling as his hand found the firing button on his steering controls.

Nothing happened at first. The sidewinder missile leaped from its cradle on the stubby wing of the spitfire, clanged against the underside of the tank and rebounded down onto the ice, jammed against one of the big ball wheels as its rocket motor blasted, searing the underside of the tank and melting the ice around it.

The arming delay counted down and the fuse activated. Sensing that it was in proximity to a target, it did the only thing it knew how to do. The one thing it was made for. It exploded.

The nine-kilogram warhead, loaded with titanium fragmentation rods, pulverised the ice beneath the tank.

The ice cracked, then gave way, and as Wilton’s craft disappeared into the depths of the Bering Strait, the front lip of the tank slowly followed it, toppling, overbalancing and sliding off the broken ice shelf into the water. It stayed there briefly, wedged between the ice on either side of the channel, then with another ear-rending crack, the ice gave way beneath it, and it was gone, joining the gigantic bridging units and SAM batteries. A permanent metal graveyard at the bottom of the sea.

Somewhere below it, in the debris of his craft, Blake Wilton was still smiling.

[MISSION DAY 3, FEBRUARY 18, 2033. 1705 HOURS LOCAL TIME] [ACOG EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTRE, RAVEN ROCK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX, PENNSYLVANIA]

The door to the command centre opened and General Whitehead entered.

He was in a wheelchair, pushed by an adjutant. He looked frail but his eyes were focused and his hands were steady.

“Situation report,” he demanded.

“We have scattered reports coming in from spitfire teams,” Watson said. “The Bzadians just lost all their bridging units.”

“How?” Whitehead asked.

“That’s unclear, sir,” Watson said. “A gap opened up in the ice and they fell through, according to the reports we’re getting.”

“I believe it may have been Recon Team Angel that did it, sir,” Watson said.

Whitehead turned to Russell, tight lipped. “Is it true that you have a nuclear strike planned?”

Russell stood and faced him defiantly. “It’s our only option.”

“Against my direct orders.”

“You were incapacitated, General. That put me in charge,” Russell said.

Whitehead looked on the verge of an explosion, but restrained himself, barely. “Stand down your nuclear weapons,” he said.

“Sir?” Russell asked.

“Stand them down.” Whitehead’s voice was firm. “The Bzadians can’t get to Alaska without those bridgers. We can do this without nukes. How is their SAM cover?”

“Hovercraft teams have taken out a lot of their SAM batteries,” Watson said. “And they lost more when they lost the bridgers.”

“Get those remaining Tomahawks in the air,” Whitehead said.

“Straightaway, sir,” Russell said.

Without the bridging units, the Bzadian tanks could not move forwards. Without SAM cover, they were vulnerable. Unable to advance or retreat, the Bzadian tanks would be an easy target for the cruise missiles.

“Those Angels may have just saved our hides,” Whitehead said. “Again.”

“What Angels?” Gonzales asked. “They were never there.”

[MISSION DAY 3, FEBRUARY 18, 2033. 1630 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[BERING STRAIT, ALASKA]

The storm had blown itself out, in that fickle way of weather in the arctic. The skies were gradually shedding themselves of the dense black clouds. The sun was even out, hovering low above the horizon as always. The Angels were heading towards it, a bright orange glare across the windscreen of the pick-up truck.

They had taken it, with Bowden’s blessing, from the hangar at Little Diomedes. It was not really designed for driving across the broken icefloes of the Bering Strait, but they didn’t have a lot of other choices.

The cab was large enough for only three of them.

Monster drove, Price semi-conscious beside him, her head on his shoulder. Barnard drew the long straw and got the other seat. Wall and The Tsar lay on the back tray, in the space left where the de-icing tank had been removed.

They went as far south as possible before the ice got too rough and ridged. Even so, it was slow going, keeping a close watch out for crevasses or fissures.

As slow as it was, it was still safer here in the south than north of the islands where the battle still raged.

It was a different kind of battle now. No longer an invasion, it was a fighting retreat and the Bzadians were taking heavy losses.

“Did you know the icefloe would crack the way it did?” Monster asked.

“I kind of hoped,” Barnard said. “There was a lot of weight sitting on the edge.”

“Shame about your friend Wilton,” Wall said.

“On Operation Magnum,” Barnard said, “Wilton told me that he would give up his own life for his buddies. For us. If he had to.”

“I remember,” The Tsar said. “I said that was the mark of a great man.”

“I told him he wasn’t a man yet,” Barnard said.

“Yes, you did,” The Tsar said.

Monster strained his eyes, uncertain of what lay ahead. A grey blur on the horizon gradually resolved into snow-covered slopes and rocky falls.

“Greater love hath no man than this,” Barnard said. “That a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Around them the crushed and cracked floes of the icefield were gradually healing themselves. What had happened here today was no more than a flicker of an eyelid in the endless grind of the ice and the eternal flow of the sea.

“Is that Shakespeare?” The Tsar asked.

“It’s from the Bible,” Barnard said. “I think both Wilton and Emile would have appreciated that.”

[FEBRUARY 25, 2033. 0930 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Russell was in his office, staring at a map of the Bering Strait when Bilal arrived.

Bilal was in a wheelchair. He was flanked by two MPs.

“Daniel,” Russell said. “Glad to see you’re up and around.”

Bilal smiled. “It’s good to be out of that hospital. The food was all right, but the wine selection was terrible.”

Russell laughed. “How can I help?”

“I have a question for you,” Bilal said.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you do it?” Bilal asked.

“Do what?” Russell asked.

“We think we know, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Bilal said.

“You’re going to have to give me a clue here, Daniel,” Russell said.

Bilal was holding a plastic folder. He opened it and withdrew a large photograph, handing it to Russell who had to walk around the desk to take it.

He studied it before returning to his chair and placing it on the desk in front of him. He leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together.

“How did you get onto me?” he asked.

“It wasn’t me,” Bilal said. “It was Wilton. That kid I had working for me. Ex-Angel.”

Russell nodded. “I figured that must be the case. So he survived.”

“No.” Bilal’s expression was hard. “You sent him to the strait. Assigned him a front-line combat role, even though he was just out of his spitfire training. He should have been in the reserves. A convenient way of getting rid of a witness without any tough questions.”

“The battlefield can be a fickle thing,” Russell said. “Some live, some die.”

“And you thought you’d play the odds,” Bilal said. “You got him killed to protect your own hide.”

“And yet here you are,” Russell said.

“You know, I didn’t really trust Wilton,” Bilal said. “Occupational hazard. And you don’t give someone top security access without keeping an eye on them. Everything Wilton did, every key he pressed, every area he accessed, was copied to my computer.”

“Ah,” Russell said.

“And you still haven’t answered why.”

“It was a last resort,” Russell said. “I wasn’t prepared to see the human race wiped out. Nukes were our only option, and if the high command couldn’t see that, then the high command had to be replaced.”

“Turns out nukes weren’t our only option,” Bilal said. “We had the Angels.”

“It’s easy with hindsight,” Russell said. “There’s no way I would have done what I did, if I had thought we had a chance any other way.”

“But you did it,” Bilal said. He wheeled himself close up against Russell’s desk and leaned forwards, putting his elbows on the desk. “You want to know a funny thing? Wilton thought you were working for the Bzadians.”

“For the enemy!” Russell was shocked.

“Someone made sure that Able was on Little Diomede,” Bilal said.

“Not me,” Russell said.

“I know,” Bilal said. “We are already closing in on who was responsible.”

“Good,” Russell said. “That is treason.”

“Treason,” Bilal said, “still carries the death penalty. One of the few crimes that do. Some kind of historical anomaly, I guess.”

Russell went white. “I cannot be accused of treason.”

“You bombed your own command centre. Killed your own colleagues,” Bilal said. “Can you think of a better definition of your crime?”

“I acted in our best interests,” Russell said. “Not against them.”

“That, clearly, is a matter of opinion,” Bilal said. “And opinion can be a fickle thing.”

[MARCH 1, 2033. 1000 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[UNDISCLOSED LOCATION – NEW BZADIA]

Chisnall was doing press-ups, but stopped as the door opened and Doctor Royz entered. He appeared fit, she thought. For someone recovering from a broken spinal cord, he had thrown himself into the exercise program he had been given.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Success,” she said. “You’re going to Canberra.”

The Bzadians had long ago taken over the Australian parliament as the seat of their own government on planet Earth. Azoh himself resided somewhere in the capital, although the location was a closely guarded secret.

“Why are you doing this?” Chisnall asked. “Aren’t you betraying your own species?”

She shook her head. “Not all of us believe in this war. Millions of people are dying when we believe there are other alternatives. A peaceful agreement between our species.”

“When do I leave?” Chisnall asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “We have found you a position in the kitchen at the government building.”

“I don’t know much about Bzadian cooking,” Chisnall said.

“You’ll get on-the-job training,” she said. “The important thing is to trust no one except your contact.”

“A kitchen hand,” Chisnall mused. “And after that?”

“That will be up to you,” she said.

He went back to his press-ups as she left.

Kartoz stopped her in the corridor outside Chisnall’s room and spoke quietly to avoid being overheard.

“Do you think he believed you?” he asked.

“I think so,” Royz said. “Yes.”

Everything about the Allied Combined Operations Group (ACOG) was a mishmash of different human cultures. Tactics, weapons, languages, vehicles and, especially, terminology. The success of many missions depended on troops from diverse nations being able to understand all communications instantly and thoroughly. The establishment of a Standardised Military Terminology and Phonetic Alphabet (SMTPA) was a key factor in assisting this communication, combining existing terminology from many of the countries involved in ACOG. For ease of understanding, here is a short glossary of some of the SMTPA terms, phonetic short cuts and equipment used in this book.