Thrilling Thirteen

by Ponzo, Gary

  Ten long seconds dragged on, toying with their nerves. Then the profile of a snowmobile became visible, as it came to a jerky halt on the wrong side of the road. Justin looked sideways but did not recognize the feeble-looking man wrapped in a white parka. He had black gloves, a red toque, and a large pair of ski goggles.

  “Who’s that guy?” Justin asked, noticing Ned was grinning and had already lowered his weapon.

  “False alarm,” Ned replied. “That’s Amaruq, one of Kiawak’s old buddies.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Before Justin could say anything, Amaruq had removed his goggles. “What the hell?” he blurted at the welcome wagon, but staring mostly at Ned. “You’re fighting without me? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this party, eh?” He staggered toward Ned, his shaky feet sliding over ice patches on the road.

  “You’re drunk, man.” Ned shook his head in disgust. “What good are you to us? Go back home.”

  “Oh, get out of my face.” Amaruq waved him off. “If I’m drunk, which . . . which, OK, I am, then you . . . you’re stupid, yes, you are.”

  Ned turned around, heading toward his fighting position.

  “Yeah, get lost, move it,” Amaruq yelled at Ned. “You’re not in charge anyway.”

  “But I am.” Justin took a step forward. “What do you want?”

  Amaruq peered at Justin’s face, then at the assault rifle in Justin’s hands.

  “I want to fight. I got up this morning and one of the guys told me everyone was fighting some Swedish badasses—”

  “Danish,” Anna corrected him.

  “Uh-huh, yeah, Danish. So, I’m saying to myself, what the hell, they forgot me?”

  “You can fight?” Justin asked.

  “Hell, yeah. I’ve been hunting before you were even born.”

  Amaruq’s breath stunk like an Irish pub. Justin doubted it would be a good idea to give a gun to him.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Justin said, worried about enraging the old man any further. “You can help with the wounded down there.”

  “Do I look like a nurse to you?” Amaruq spewed out, taking a step forward. “I’m a . . . I’m a hunter and yes, I do drink. Sometimes. I . . . I ran out of Listerine today and I needed . . . needed to wash my mouth. Verbal hygiene’s important, you know.”

  “Oral hygiene, you boozer,” Ned shouted. “Send him home, for Pete’s sake, before he kills one of our guys.”

  “You shut up or else . . .” Amaruq charged in Ned’s direction.

  Justin held out his hand. “Whoa, whoa, hold it! The battle’s down there, soldier. If you want a gun, I need to know you’ll follow orders. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir. I can, sir.” Amaruq attempted a standing guard position. His right arm trembled as he brought it up to his temple.

  “OK, I’ll get you a gun.” Justin gestured at Anna, who brought him a Lee Enfield rifle from a stash of boxes behind them. “You know how to use this?”

  “Bring it here.” Amaruq snatched the rifle from Justin’s hand. “I fired rifles before you were even born.”

  Yeah, I know, you said that earlier. And I know I’ll probably regret doing this. “Shoot only when you can hit the target. That’s the only mag you’ll get. And stay close to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Amaruq replied. This time he did not bother with the military salutation. He cocked his rifle and ran toward the closest truck set up as a barricade.

  “I said . . .” Justin began to talk, but realizing his words were useless, he hurried behind Amaruq. “Don’t go anywhere else,” he shouted. Amaruq nodded and pointed his rifle at the Danish positions.

  * * *

  Carrie did not have to consult her radar screen to determine the location of her tail. The Twin Otter airplane was visible on the horizon, as she hiked her way up and pivoted to her left. The airplane was tailing her at a distance of about two thousand feet. It was within her missile striking range, as indicated by the Remote Hellfire Electronics system incorporated into the control panel.

  The Twin Otter would have no chance of survival once Carrie fired the laser-guided missile. She would push a button and forget about it, while the airplane disintegrated into a million pieces. As she flipped the switch encasing the weapon activation button, another thought crossed her mind.

  She remembered the Bell helicopter smashing through the ice sheet and wondered if she could orchestrate the crash of the Twin Otter over the combat lines of the Danish troops. It would lend a helping hand to the explosives-planting mission. Even if the airplane crash did not burst open the ice sheet, it would trample the soldiers and demoralize the rest of the troops.

  Carrie grinned. She imagined the gray, metallic bird gravitating toward the ice surface after she had clipped both its wings. She slid the cover over the missile launch button and tapped the throttle, propelling the Seahawk into a swift ascent. Never bring an otter to a dogfight. She smiled to herself.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Nanisivik, Canada

  April 14, 10:57 a.m.

  Kiawak, the driver, felt pain jolting upwards from his leg at the same time he heard the metallic clunk. The bullet pierced the door of his Toyota and landed in his right shinbone. He glanced down. The first trickle of blood seeped through his ski pants. He tried to ease up on the gas pedal but realized he had lost control of his right foot. A second later, the truck slammed into an ice boulder.

  “What the hell, man?” Nilak yelled from the truck box. The impact had thrown him against the rear window. He saw sparks coming from the tailgate. “Freak, we’re getting shot at.”

  “I can see that,” replied Sam. A foot away from Nilak, he was lying on his stomach on the truck bed and blasting his gun at the Danish recruits.

  Iluak peered into the cabin through the small window. “Are we stuck?”

  “Shit,” Kiawak replied.

  He tried to lift his foot from the gas pedal. The Toyota roared and jerked, going nowhere.

  “What’s going on?” Nilak asked.

  “We’re not stuck. I’ve got a bullet in my leg. I can’t move.”

  “I’ll come and get you out,” Iluak said.

  He jumped from the truck box and landed in a snow bank. He lost his footing, slipped, and fell on his back, just as a bullet shattered the passenger’s window. Other bullets rained on the stalled vehicle.

  “Shit.” Kiawak pushed the driver’s door. “Iluak, stay down,” he yelled.

  “Kiawak, we’re sitting ducks here,” Nilak shouted. “Do something!”

  “I’m trying.” Kiawak pressed his shoulder against the door, gritting his teeth and dragging his leg. “Get out of the truck, both of you,” he shouted. More bullets hammered the vehicle.

  “Sam, Sam,” Nilak said and began shaking the unresponsive gunner. Sam’s head was hanging to the side, and Nilak saw a large wound in the man’s chest, as he rolled over the lifeless body. “Kiawak, Sam’s dead, Ki—”

  “Nilak.” Kiawak was halfway out of the truck, when he heard a thud from the truck box. “Nilak.”

  “Is he OK? Is my brother OK? Nilak,” Iluak shouted from the other side of the truck.

  “Stay down, stay down there,” Kiawak shouted back. “He’ll be fine. Still got your walkie-talkie?”

  “Eh, yes, I think . . . I think so,” Iluak replied, searching for the radio in his jacket pockets.

  “Call Justin and tell him we’re hit. Ask him to get the other men out of here. Tell him . . . tell him it’s over.”

  * * *

  “I was wondering why they were staying there,” Joe shouted at Justin over the radio, while Neville and Max, his team members, kept alternating their shots.

  On the other side of the hill, Joe’s team had advanced deep into the enemy’s right flank. The terrain sloped at a much softer angle, and the three-man team encountered little resistance. With the Danish army largely destroyed and the suppressive fire from the Canadian positions up the road
, Kiawak’s vehicle had been the main target of the enemy’s sporadic fire. Until now. Once the Danish shooters stopped the advancement of the Toyota, they turned their attention to Joe’s Mazda.

  “There we go, whoa.” Neville exchanged a quick fist jab with Max, celebrating another casualty in the enemy ranks. “What’s going on, chief?” Neville asked Joe. “Are we gonna do this or not?”

  Joe looked at the adrenaline-pumped young man, a white skull bandana wrapped around his head. He flashed Joe an evil grin, while checking the status of a rifle magazine by tapping it lightly against his head.

  “Kiawak’s shot,” Joe replied. “Sam’s gone.”

  “Oh fu—” Max bit his lip, as a bullet drilled a deep hole in the front bumper, sending a few metal slivers above his head. “That numbskull almost whacked me.”

  “You’re a lucky dude.” Neville snorted and fired two rounds. “So, we’re out of here or what?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m still talking to Justin.” Joe frowned at Neville, who shrugged and kept pulling the trigger of his Let Støttevåben. “You were saying, Justin?” Joe said, his back pressed against the truck’s front wheel.

  “Kiawak’s wounded. Nilak may be dead by now.” Justin sighed heavily. “I need to get them out of there.”

  “Are we going on with the explosion?”

  “How far along are you? Three, four more charges?”

  “Actually, it’s only one more, but we can blast them right away, if need be.”

  Justin paused to mull over this information. “Even if you do set them off, the chances of the ice shattering all the way around are not that good, are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe replied. “We’ll cause a huge blast on our side, but without Kiawak’s explosives I doubt the ice sheet will cave in entirely. Can’t Kiawak fire them up from where he is?”

  “He said he could do that, but they’re three charges short.”

  “That’s a hundred and fifty. Crap!”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

  “How about sending someone else to finish the job?”

  “The area’s too hot,” Justin replied. “At this point, I can’t send other men. Even a rescue mission is going to be difficult. Hey, where are you going?”

  “What?” Joe asked, confused about Justin’s question. “I’m still here.”

  “Come back here,” Justin shouted.

  “What? What did you say? Whom are you talking to?”

  “I’ve got to call you back, Joe.”

  “No, wait, what do we do? Huh? He’s gone.” Joe groaned.

  Neville looked up at Joe for a second. “My girlfriend does that to me all the time, hanging up on me and shit.” He placed his left eye once again on his machine gun’s scope.

  * * *

  “I ordered you to stop.” Justin followed Amaruq, who kept marching toward his snowmobile. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m saving Kiawak’s ass, since no one else seems to give a damn about him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard you talk to Joe on the radio about the rescue being difficult and all that bullcrap.”

  “I didn’t say we’re not gonna help him.”

  “Yeah, right. You stay here and talk, while I’ll show you how it’s done.” He turned his back to Justin, proceeding to start his snowmobile.

  “Amaruq, I can’t let you do this. It’s suicide.” Justin stepped in front of the snowmobile. Amaruq was busy tying his rifle to one of the saddles.

  “Well, in that case, you have to shoot me, because I ain’t staying here and watch my friend die.”

  Amaruq fired off the throttle. Justin sighed, staring at the M-16 in his hands. He held Amaruq’s dark blue eyes for a moment, realizing he was powerless against the storm brewing in the old man’s soul.

  “Fine.” Justin began to move aside. “Just pick up Kiawak and his men and get back right away. Don’t even think about—”

  His last words were lost amidst the snowmobile’s engine blast. Amaruq hacked his way into a snow bank and down the steep hillside.

  * * *

  Amaruq avoided the crooked trails plodded by the trucks’ tires. He cut through the snow as far away from the Danes as the broken and rugged permafrost would allow him. At first, he slalomed in a regular pattern, with slow, circular turns and rare jumps, as he dodged ice hills, rock boulders, and snow crevasses. Aware of his vulnerable position as he approached the enemy flanks alone, Amaruq picked up speed. At the same time, he shifted into a largely dangerous and mostly improvised descent. Sharp S curves, swift zigzag maneuvers, and random leaps over rifts, as well as increased cover fire from Justin and his men, allowed Amaruq to swoop unharmed close to Kiawak’s jammed truck.

  “Fifty more feet, you can do it,” Amaruq whispered to himself, hanging onto the handlebar while the snowmobile sprang over a pressure ridge and landed on an ice patch. “Crap,” he swore, his body bouncing on the seat.

  The snowmobile kept sliding and swerving, in danger of tipping over at any moment. His fingernails clawed through his gloves, as he tried to cling to the tottering vehicle. The left ski had broken off as a result of a bad landing. The sled was now tilting to that side. He steered to the right to counterbalance the drag and felt the snowmobile losing traction. The rubber’s probably broken or one of the lugs is damaged. He was not in control of the snowmobile any more.

  A barrage of bullets scraped the ice a few feet in front of him. Amaruq ducked. His head was at the same level as the snowmobile’s windshield. He released the throttle and tapped the brakes, seeking cover behind a tall mound of ice boulders. Then he screamed in pain from a sharp stab in his right arm. A bullet had struck him by the elbow.

  “Ah.”

  It was all Amaruq could grumble before finding himself airborne and rolling to his side in midair before plunging head first into a deep snow bank, a few feet away from a large crevasse in the snow.

  * * *

  Carrie completed a small circle around the Twin Otter. The airplane needed a much larger space to perform any rotational maneuvers and a much longer time frame. On the other hand, the Seahawk could change its direction in a matter of seconds. But the airplane had the upper hand if it came to a straight-line pursuit because of its two powerful turboprop engines.

  Understanding the Seahawk’s weakness, Carrie zigzagged left and right, climbing and dropping constantly, avoiding a fatal fall in the crosshairs of her pursuers, and always maintaining a safe distance of no less than three thousand feet. Beyond the maximum fire range of medium-caliber weapons, she felt relatively confident playing cat and mouse with the airplane. If they had any rockets or missiles, they would have launched them by now.

  The altimeter locked the Seahawk’s position at nine hundred feet above ground. Carrie searched the entire battleground for the best location to bury the enemy airplane. She noticed two trucks far to the sides and assumed they were the teams of Kiawak and Joe. Carrie looked through the helicopter’s camera mounted at the tip of the fuselage. The image on the screen was grayish and somewhat blurry, but she recognized human silhouettes spread out in fighting positions in trenches or stretched without moving on the snow.

  She veered to her left, dropping about eighty feet, and glanced at her radar screen, looking for the Twin Otter. It was still behind her. She glanced again at the field below, this time through the windshield, and noticed a quickly moving dot darting over the snow banks and the ice mounds. What on earth is that? Puzzled by the discovery, she dove in for a better look. At three hundred feet, the shape of the object became clear. A snowmobile is all Justin has for backup?

  Carrie tapped the throttle and the Seahawk responded with a swift ascent. The Twin Otter repeated the same maneuver, but at a slower pace. She reached for the radio just as the snowmobile slammed right into a snow bank, dropping out of sight. What the hell just happened? Did he get shot or lose control of the sled?

  “Hey, Justin,
come in.”

  “Carrie, where are you?” Justin replied.

  “About half a mile to the left of the field. Can you see me?”

  “I can’t see anything. We’re being hammered here and almost out of ammo.”

  “I hear you.”

  Carrie made a quick right turn.

  “I was planning to drop the Otter over the enemy to help with the explosion.”

  “No time for tricks, Carrie. Kill these bastards now before they wipe us all out. And the explosion plan failed.”

  “Repeat your last,” Carrie said. “Did you say it failed?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “Got it,” Carrie replied. “Did you send the snowmobile to extract them?”

  “Kind of. Don’t know if Amaruq made it.”

  Carrie swallowed hard before breaking the bad news to him. “Justin, he didn’t make it. I saw the sled crash into a snow bank and almost fall into a crevasse.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

  “And the driver? Amaruq?”

  “I didn’t see him, but I’m getting closer. Let me take another look.”

  The Seahawk circled at about two hundred feet. Carrie tapped a few controls, pointing the camera and zooming in on the snowmobile.

  “Wait a second,” she shouted. “Justin, I think he’s alive. This guy, he’s alive.”

  * * *

  Amaruq found it impossible to tell whether his dizzy head was spinning around or his body was still rolling on the ground. In any case, he drove his hands deep into the snow, scraping the ice layer underneath, desperately searching for something to cling onto and stop his fall. The burning pain coming from his arm did little to deter his efforts. He grabbed at the edge of a rock jutting above the ice and stopped sliding.

  He stayed there, lying on his back, staring at the gray clouds in the sky. A minute or two passed, as Amaruq tried to catch his breath. He noticed a bloody slush around his right elbow by the bullet wound. His left glove was missing, and his fingers were already beginning to suffer the frostbite. At least I’m alive. But where exactly am I?

  He stuck his head up after brushing snowflakes and ice chunks off his face. The crevasse was about two feet to his right.