"Take your time, Crispin," I said gently. The motion of the RV was almost making me seasick, I wished the RV had more windows.
"We'll get out of here, s- oh, shit!" Crispin shouted.
Upstream from us, there were ice flows stretching from shore to shore, coming around a bend in the river. A large piece of the glacier must have broken off, and been battered into multiple chunks on its way down the river. This was my fault, we knew the river had ice floating down it regularly, and I should have anticipated that with the storm to the north of us, the river level was higher than normal, bringing extra ice. What I should have done was send a couple people upriver, someplace high where they had a view of what was coming, to determine when was a good time for the RV to attempt a crossing. Like an idiot, I blindly ordered us to drive the RV across.
Chunks of ice were smashing against rocks, against each other, rolling over, breaking into smaller pieces, as the ice flood rapidly approached. "Patel, go straight for shore," I ordered, "as much as you can, I'd rather risk bottoming out on a rock, than getting hit with some of that ice." Many pieces of ice were almost half the size of the RV, they could break a pontoon, or even knock the RV over in the water.
We almost made it. Fifty meters from the shore, Patel swung upriver to the left in order to avoid a rock that was barely under the water, and a large chuck of ice slammed into the left pontoon. The impact swung the RV's nose upriver, and the raging water made the nose keep going to the left, out of control. Suddenly, the RV was pointed downriver, gathering speed, headed straight for two large rocks. Patel had the water jets screaming in full reverse, he was barely able to hold position. "I think the left pontoon is taking on water," he shouted, "the RV wants to spin to the left. Crispin, do you see a way-"
His words were cut off by a sickening crunch as the RV was battered again by a small iceberg. Looking out the small window, for a flash all I saw was a wall of ice, and for a moment my idiotic brain thought of the Titanic. The RV lurched down and to the left as the iceberg hit, then rode up on the pontoon. There was an earsplitting screech as the pontoon slid along the iceberg, then it was gone in one direction and the RV spun the other way.
The left pontoon was now clearly battered and sinking, I was sitting on the left side of the RV and I could tell. Patel reported the left side water jet was operating sluggishly, and I directed him to head straight for shore. The RV was going under, I wanted us to get as close to the river bank as possible before it went down. Patel did a great job driving, he got the RV downstream from a large rock, semi protected from large pieces of ice, and headed for the shore using what power remained. The water jet in the left pontoon was barely functioning at that point. The RV grounded on an unseen rock, and couldn't move. "I think we're stuck, sir," Patel said with regret. "The water jets are on full power, but we can't go forward or back."
That was it, I wasn't waiting any longer. Out the front windows, the shore was tantalizingly close. "We're sinking! Captain Smythe, get everyone to shore, Williams, you're with me!"
I staggered to the back of the RV, Williams and his three man SEAL team right behind me, and opened the door to the cargo compartment. The RV was sinking fast now, tilted to the left at a thirty degree angle and judging by the grinding sounds, was being pushed back out into the river. We had less, far less, than a minute before the RV would have slid back away from the river bank and into water deep enough to be over our heads. In that icy cold, fast-moving water, it was unlikely anyone who had to swim would survive. "Armor, we need one full set of armor, leave everything else," I explained. Between the five of us, six because Smythe of course interpreted my orders broadly and came back into the cargo box with us, we got all the components for a set of armor. "Leave it," I ordered, as Smythe tried to pick up a rifle. "That's an order, go!"
Behind me, I closed and firmly latched the door to the cargo compartment, where almost all our precious supplies were stored. Water, bitterly cold water was already collecting around my ankles as we squeezed through the door, bumping into each other as the RV rocked back and forth. Water was pouring in through the right side emergency hatch, I saw people were shuffling along the right pontoon to hop into the water, Patel and Crispin were still in the RV, they'd given up trying to get out the right side hatch, and Patel was working the controls of the roof hatch. He got it open, took hold of the lip around the hatchway, and swung himself through it. At this point, the RV was at a forty five degree angle to the left, and bucking like a bronco as it slid backwards, battered by waves.
How we all got out, I don't remember exactly. Somehow, both Smythe and Williams got out behind me even though I'd intended to be the last to leave. By the time Smythe came through the hatch, the RV was almost laying on its left side, and we had to crawl along the right side to the nose, kneel on a front window, and jump into the water. It was up to my chest, and I gasped in shock at the deathly cold. The cold and strong current, combined with the armor suit leg I had a death drip on, made me unsteady, I would have fallen backwards and been swept away except people had formed a human chain to the shore, Ranger Samuels got a firm grip on my arm and guided me to shore. "Thank you," I told her, and handed the armor suit leg to her once the water was only as deep as my waist. I stood in the shockingly cold water, trying to ignore it, helping Williams and then Smythe get to safety, more importantly, assuring the precious components of the armor suit got safely to shore. As Smythe, last to leave, jumped off the nose, the RV lurched backwards, partly afloat again. We got onto the shore, me crawling the last meter on my hands and knees, then we all stood in stunned silence for a moment, as we watched the RV drift down the river, sinking quickly, until it hit and became wedged between two rocks, then it slowly disappeared. The right pontoon was visible under the water from time to time, in the troughs of waves.
Shaking myself back to awareness, I stepped onto a rock so I could see the assembled crowd. "Is anyone hurt? Other than wet and cold?"
"Mild ankle sprains, nothing more," girl reported, she was kneeling next to Captain Zhang, who had his right boot off and winced as girl manipulated his ankle.
"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."
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
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?"
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Page 33