First Salvo

by Charles D. Taylor

  Perhaps five hours had passed since the last helo had chased him under the boulder in that first hidden valley. That bothered him. It meant that someone was thinking the way he was. There was no need on the Russians’ part to waste fuel or ammunition. If their plans had been for a short stay on Spitzbergen, their supplies would necessarily be limited. Why wouldn’t one of those Black Beret officers do exactly the same thing as he would? Figure out your quarry, then wait for him at the most logical spot.

  Ryng glared up at the peak in front of him. It was not especially high, but the path to the top was not a straight line either. He pondered his choices, mapping a course in his mind as his eyes searched out secure hiding places. The course became gradually steeper as it progressed, but not once did he allow himself to be positioned where he could not seek cover. The snow line began about halfway up. Once he reached it, he would be a perfect target. His blood photographed against the whiteness would provide perfect proof to Moscow that Bernie Ryng had been had.

  While he rose to begin the final ascent, that little voice echoed through his mind, quiet at first, then more insistent. If they’ve been letting you travel this far and this long, Ryng thought to himself, don’t you think they might have a plan? Do you really think a Black Beret officer would be dumb enough to let you go on your merry way without having something in mind? Ryng looked back up at the peak. The voice made sense. Don’t you think they have maps and photos equal to your own? he continued to reason. If you were chasing one of them, would you let him hop from shadow to shadow, or would you plot a logical track and wait until he gets to the snow? Why do it the hard way when there’s a nice, easy way to do the job without wasting precious fuel?

  Right, Ryng answered himself. I have to stop at the snow line and wait. He’ll be there, surer than shit, about the time he figures I’m far enough into the snow to thrash around like a scared rabbit. Just don’t pass the snow line, Ryng. Wait there until they come for you. Then take your chances. In the snow, you won’t have any.

  Colonel Bulgan stood to one side of the helicopter, his eyes fixed on the peaks across the harbor. He tried to pick out the exact one that Ryng would now be ascending, but they blurred together in the whiteness of the mountain range. The colonel had changed after his nap and was now outfitted in fresh black fatigues. Grenades and clips for his rifle hung off his uniform. His AK-74 was cradled in his right hand. Bulgan had no expectations of using it from the helo, but he would feel more comfortable with it if they had to settle down for any reason. It was only revenge now, revenge for a failed mission. He would pursue this vendetta if for no other reason than that this American had ruined his career, perhaps even the all-important North Atlantic strategy.

  The colonel looked at his watch again, then at the careful track laid out on his map. Ryng would be about to enter the snow, if he had not already. It was time now. He jerked an arm in signal to the pilot and climbed into the helo.

  ABOARD THE CARRIER H.M.S. ILLUSTRIOUS, THE GREENLAND SEA

  Admiral Sir Jonathan Harrow, O.B.E., had always been more than comfortable in making complex decisions. Yet right now he was involved in the most difficult one of his career.

  According to the best NATO estimates, it was little less than hours to D-Day. However, that point in time had already come and gone aboard his flagship, H.M.S. Illustrious, an antisubmarine aircraft carrier. Illustrious and her escorts, now positioned approximately two hundred miles west southwest of Spitzbergen, had been under attack by Soviet submarines for the past six hours. Illustrious had taken a torpedo in her forward engine room two hours before and had only just regained normal operating speed.

  Admiral Harrow’s escorts, along with the carrier’s helicopters, had been prosecuting subsurface contacts until he sometimes thought that the entire attack submarine contingent of the Soviet Northern Fleet had surrounded him. But he knew better. Most of them were already to the south, heading for the open waters of the North Atlantic. He was sure those harassing him had been detached to insure his group did not turn south.

  Now Admiral Harrow again extracted the message from his shirt pocket and reread it. He knew there was no choice. Land-based aircraft would never get to Spitzbergen on time, at least not without a challenge by Soviet forces. He had no choice but to obey orders. He called the commanding officer of Illustrious over to him and gave the orders that would launch the five Harrier attack fighters that comprised the tiny carrier’s air defense complement. Admiral Harrow also advised that he would speak to the pilots in the ready room in five minutes. It seemed that, in addition to the priority target, an unknown airfield on the southern end of Svalbard’s largest island, they should keep a lookout for any other provocative incidents. An American SEAL team, backed up by armed Norwegian fishing craft, was also operating in the area. But there had been no confirmation whether or not their mission had been successful. His was a desperation mission if they’d failed.

  Thirty minutes later, Illustrious turned into the wind to launch her Harriers. They orbited once over their ship before disappearing in the direction of Longyearbyen airport. Admiral Harrow had explained their mission, adding that there were no friendly aircraft in the region and that there were more Bear bombers, likely under fighter escort, headed toward the island. He silently wished them well as they disappeared to the east. Now Illustrious was alone, her meager missile defense the only protection from air attack. Harrow wondered who might be crazy enough to take a SEAL team into that godforsaken place.

  SPITZBERGEN

  Ryng wished he had a cigarette even though he hadn’t smoked for years. It would give him something to do with his hands. If he had been able to save even one weapon when their boat was hit, he’d be cleaning it now, or at least insuring that it would function perfectly when needed.

  Instead, he was perched on a small, flat rock, snuggled close to a boulder that would initially keep him out of sight of any helicopter coming over the range to the east. The snow line was about a hundred yards above him.

  It was a good thousand yards to the summit, more than half a mile. It wasn’t as steep as some of the territory he’d covered in the past hour, and he had already picked out his course to the top, but it would be slower going than he liked.

  Ryng waited. A tempting voice in the back of his mind kept saying, Aw, go ahead, because once you get over the top it’s downhill all the way. But another voice, the one developed through years of training, was the one he followed. It told him that the odds for the downhill side were very long indeed if he tried to make it now.

  He waited—waited for the hum of the rotors that would presage a helo coming over the peaks to his right, a hum that would be followed by the louder beat as the craft closed in on his position.

  How the hell do you fight a goddamn helicopter armed with rockets and machine guns? Throw rocks at it? Ryng glanced around him. There were rocks, but nothing else. He picked one up and threw it in disgust. As it landed and bounced down the hill, a small cloud of birds rose at the intrusion. As quickly as they flew into the air, they settled down with irritated squawking at the disturbance. Stay quiet, he told himself. Disturbing those birds is like waving a handkerchief.

  It wasn’t long before the sound came to his ears. Ryng watched patiently as the craft came close over the snow of the adjacent peak, skirting first along the top of the ridge above him. It didn’t bother with the valley area below him. That convinced Ryng that this time someone who knew what he was doing was riding shotgun.

  For some reason, the helo swept the area to his left as it approached the snow line, keeping low, hovering whenever it neared a shadowed area. Each time, the birds rose whether in defiance or confusion, forcing the helo to rise and drift off to avoid fouling its rotors.

  That’s one idea, Ryng thought—piss off the birds and maybe they’ll do the work for me. The more he thought about the idea, the more feasible it became, considering that he had nothing whatsoever to defend himself with. Now, on the opposite side of the boulder from the hel
o, he collected a small arsenal of rocks, heavy enough, he thought, to upset nesting birds, light enough to be somewhat accurate.

  Time to waste some of his ammunition. He threw half-a-dozen stones as rapidly as he could down the slope to his left. He hoped that the disturbed birds would draw some fire.

  It worked too perfectly.

  With a roar, the helo banked in his direction, swooping toward the rising birds. Ryng saw the telltale smoke from either side as two rockets were fired into the slope above the frantic birds.

  Wham… wham. The rockets burst fifty feet above the spot, sending an avalanche of rocks down through the area. The loose surface would wipe out anything in its path as it increased in mass.

  Smart—but not so smart, Ryng said to himself. Went for the quick kill without checking first. Maybe he figures I still have some protection. On the other hand, he’s just used up half his rocket load—only two left.

  As he watched, fascinated by the small craft’s firepower, the helo circled at a slightly higher altitude. Then the air was shattered by the multibarreled machine guns. Something obviously had attracted the helo’s eye. Whatever it was, a deadly hail of bullets sprayed the area.

  Ryng thought about the snowfield. He would have been just about at the top of this point. Christ, there wouldn’t be enough of me left to color the snow!

  The air was filled with birds circling and turning in fear above their nests. There was no longer any way the men in the helo could use the bird population to find him. The helo was forced to a higher altitude to avoid fouling the birds. Anything that will do the trick, Ryng thought, trying harder to make himself one with the boulder that was his only protection. Now they have a problem too.

  The helo dropped farther down the slope, moving away from his position and the birds. Have they given up already? Not a chance. They’ve got time on their side. They’ll let everything settle down, then move in again.

  The son of a bitch knows I’m here, Ryng realized. He didn’t mess around in the lower valleys. He came right up near the snow line and fired at the first thing that moved. Being the object of a hunt when there was nowhere to run was not Ryng’s idea of fun.

  The helo swept back and forth below him, dropping farther down the slope then working its way back in his direction. Ryng looked around, determining where he might shift to next if there was even an inkling that he might be spotted. It was then that he realized he hadn’t been so damn clever after all. He’d selected the largest boulder in that section of the slope below the snow line. Could there have been a more obvious place to try to hide?

  The helo, moving back up the slope in his general direction, decided the same thing. Its zigzag movement halted and the bulbous nose dipped slightly as it settled on a course directly for his hiding place.

  Frantically, Ryng searched about him. There was nothing else big enough to use as cover, nothing that would serve as adequate protection if they opened fire with machine guns, and nothing at all if it used rockets. This was the only place, and Ryng, thinking exactly like Colonel Bulgan, knew they would be on top of him in a matter of seconds.

  The helo did not circle around the large boulder to search for its quarry. It headed straight in.

  Nearby birds rose from their nests, but this time the helo hovered about seventy-five yards away horizontal with Ryng’s position.

  What the hell were they going to do? As he mulled over that question, the answer became evident. There was a telltale wisp of smoke from the left pod. Ryng had seen rockets fired before—he had even used them himself—but he had never had the misfortune of being the target. He had no more than a second to ponder the sleek missile racing in his direction before his reflexes took command. He buried his head in his arms.

  Wham! The rocket hit the boulder directly with an earth-shattering explosion. The concussion rolled over him at the same instant, sucking the air from his lungs, the blast bouncing his body into the air, then smashing it back to the ground.

  Ryng was unable to move, even to lift his head or draw a breath into his agonized lungs. The silence that followed the blast was broken by the sound of small rocks dislodged by the explosion rolling down about him.

  The heavier ones were what jolted him back to the real world, the world of a helicopter moving in closer, its rotors piercing the air. Ryng struggled for air, desperate to return oxygen to his system before he blacked out. He could feel himself going, eyes clouding as his feeble chest spasms failed to supply the needed air. He arched his body into the air, let it fall to the ground, then increased the rhythm until the impact forced his body to react, to suck the crisp mountain air into his lungs.

  He was breathing again, painfully, but breathing nevertheless. The acrid smell of high explosives came to him. Ryng sensed, even before his eyes recorded the fact, that the helo was swinging out to the right. It swam before him as his eyes focused on the approaching perspex canopy. It was close enough to see the one remaining rocket and the wicked machine gun, its multiple barrels almost in line with him.

  On his hands and knees, hugging the ground, Ryng scuttled backward like a crab. The cloud of birds constantly fluttering between him and the helo seemed his only hope, but they flew to either side as the craft came closer.

  Just as he ducked back, the machine gun opened fire. They had seen him! The ground erupted. Hundreds of bullets ricocheted in every direction. He felt tiny shards of stone rip into his skin like a thousand little pins. Instinctively, he covered his eyes. As the noise of the gun-burst subsided, the only thought that came to him was how one-sided it all seemed. It was an alien situation to Bernie Ryng, being unable to shoot back.

  As he chafed at the problem, he was also aware of the movement of the helo, now maneuvering above and behind his boulder. He backed around, and again the guns pounded away at the spot he’d just left. The one advantage he knew he had was that the helo could not easily shoot down on him from its position between the boulder and the snowfield. But he couldn’t crab his way around this boulder forever either. Sooner or later he’d make a mistake when there was no room for even one slight error. A ricocheting bullet could solve the enemy’s problem, and the odds were good that if they fired enough, sooner or later one would get him.

  The thrust of the rotors saturated the air with dust and feathers. The mess penetrated his eyes and nose, and when he choked on it, it got in his mouth too. Through the haze, he could see the helo floating off to the other side, literally following him around the boulder. The guns let loose once more, kicking up the earth to either side as the craft bobbed in its own air currents.

  Ryng slipped in the gravel as he skittered backward, sliding momentarily with the curve of the slope into the open. Frantically he rolled back to safety as the helo drifted into view. Shards of stone sprayed over him, penetrating his skin.

  It was fast becoming a losing game for Bernie Ryng. There was no way a man could long protect himself from the hovering monster. Only instinct and the reactions he had left had protected him so far.

  Now the copter was downhill from him again, with more room to raise or lower its target angle. It swung back and forth in the air as if suspended on a string, persistently firing short bursts whether or not he was in sight. The Russians, Ryng knew, understood the odds of the stray bullet as well as he did.

  It was between the bursts of the helo’s machine gun that he heard another sound, something new added to the cacophony around him. Only, this was different, something alien to this snow-peaked, arctic hellhole. It was the screaming sound of a jet engine, and it was accompanied by a piercing shriek that he had rarely heard. The latter sound was followed by a tremendous burst below and to one side of the helo. It was much louder and many times more intense than the rockets that had been fired at him.

  Ryng looked up to see a jet fighter spiraling into a high turn. He knew instantaneously that it was a Harrier fighter, recognizing vaguely the British colors on its tail. The explosion must have been an air-to-ground missile. Where the jet came from
, or how, never entered his mind. Just the fact that the confrontation had evened out was all he cared about.

  As the possibility began to overtake him that it might be a one-shot deal, a second fighter screamed down. Though its missile also missed its mark, Ryng was overjoyed to see that it came closer than the last.

  He stared into the sky, wondering whether the first would return, and saw three others circling in a tight formation above. This was more like it. Now the helo was facing roughly the same odds as he had moments earlier. The odds that a third or fourth guided missile would miss its target were remote, and he waited with joy as he saw the first plane diving on its prey.

  The pilot of the helo was no fool. Only by hugging the ground, hoping to confuse the missile guidance with the surface clutter, could he hope to survive. This time the helo began a series of wild cuts and dives, much as Ryng had been forced to do to avoid its deadly fire.

  Whoever was piloting the first jet seemed to have little concern for his own safety. Since the Harrier could move at exceptionally slow speeds for a jet, it came in very low, picking a path that seemed to Ryng to be sure suicide, seeming to fly directly at the helo for a moment. As it pulled out of its flat pattern, climbing away from the mountain at the last minute, another missile was released.

  There was little the Soviet pilot could do at that point. He lifted the copter straight into the air, perhaps hoping the missile would lock on the ground. But that was not to be as the heat-seeking missile locked on the helo’s engine exhaust and detonated at the rear of the craft.