by Greig Beck
“Magic?” Alex scoffed. “Is that what you’re calling lumbering around, breaking all the office furniture these days?” He laughed easily with his big friend.
“Well, I get to stay right here where it’s nice and warm.” Sam slapped Alex on the shoulder. “You can freeze your butt off all on your own.”
“Hey, maybe I’ll tell Hammerson I need a bulldozer – a Samdozer. We’ll see who freezes first.” Alex raised his eyebrows.
“Samdozer, huh? Yeah, I like that.” Sam looked at his HAWC team leader. Hunter never seemed to age; probably another side effect of his treatment. But it was his eyes that carried the scars; they were haunted. “You okay?”
Alex nodded, looking away. But after a moment he stepped in closer. “Aimee’s place … there was an incident. You know about it.” It wasn’t a question.
“You heard about that?”
“Hammerson told me.” Alex’s gaze was steady.
Sam waved it away. “Was nothing, we took care of it. Don’t worry about it.”
“Can’t do that, Sam, ever. What happened?” Alex’s eyes bored into his.
Sam remained tight-lipped for a moment longer. “Okay.” He guessed if Hammerson had already told him, then what the hell. “We had a minor intrusion at the family home. What we ascertained from the bodies, it was a couple of Chinese Special Forces. They were good, we were better, so they’re dead.” Sam held up a hand. “And don’t sweat it; they never laid a hand on Joshua.”
“He was there?” Alex’s eyes widened. “He was fucking at home when those torpedoes came in. It was a hit?” Suddenly Alex was in Sam’s face. At around six-two, Alex was about four inches shorter than Sam, but the big HAWC knew Alex could tear him in half in the blink of an eye. Sam went to back up a step, but Alex’s hand came up fast, catching hold of his wrist.
“What happened, Sam?”
Sam remained calm. “They came in hot, and went out horizontal. We took ’em down hard. But there’s no ID, no traces, no leads – like I said, they were good.”
“Where are they?” Alex’s words now came from between his teeth.
“The bodies?” Sam frowned.
“No, fuck the bodies. Joshua, Aimee?” Alex’s fingers started to compress on Sam’s wrist.
“Safe – nothing can get to them. Rein it in, boss.”
“Where the fuck are they?” Alex’s words were more a roar. The pain in Sam’s arm was now intense, his own huge hand was beginning to go numb as the blood flow was cut off and the bones ground together. Sam gritted his teeth, watching and waiting, knowing escalation was only seconds away. Veins began to show in Alex’s temples, and his other hand had curled into a fist.
“I’m not fighting you,” Sam said evenly. “But know this, while I’m alive, nothing, nobody, no time, will ever touch them.” Sam laid his other hand over Alex’s.
Alex’s entire body seemed to vibrate, and Sam knew the war with the Other inside him was raging. He hoped to god he was able to contain it.
“Rein it in, boss. We’re in this together. While you’re on-mission, I’ll look after them.”
Like a pressure cooker having the lid removed, Alex let go of Sam’s forearm and stepped back. The veins in Alex’s temples vanished and the fire in his eyes subsided.
“Yes.” Alex exhaled, blinking. “Yes, I need you to do that, Sam. Be their guardian.” Alex looked up, his eyes now dark and haunted. “Where I’m going, things will get a little … crazy. If anything were to happen to me, I need someone here to look after them.”
Sam put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I can do that.” Sam didn’t bother with the bullshit you’ll be fine speech. Every mission the HAWCs were assigned to was one where good people died.
Sam gripped Alex’s hand. “We are ghosts; in and out without a trace.” Alex smiled, repeating the words in unison with the big HAWC. “We are the sword and the shield. If any get in our way, they will fall.”
Alex’s expression hardened. “Yes, and they will fall.”
Sam nodded, and turned away, trying hard to resist the temptation to reach down and rub his bruised wrist. One thing he knew for sure: he’d hate to be the guys who tried to stop the Arcadian on this mission.
CHAPTER 12
Hours later, Hammerson sat in his office, flicking through his HAWC profiles. Alex was on his way, and now he needed a backup team. He wanted HAWCs who could secure the Chinese base, and their mining tunnel system, so when Alex came back up, he’d find an open door.
He had no doubt the Chinese would make the job red-hot. So his team needed to be lasers – burn their way in, and then keep the door open at all cost. Hammerson hoped the Chinese saw reason. But there was too much at stake and too little time now. Bottom line was, his team wasn’t there to make friends.
Chilton had asked him personally, The Hammer, to get the job done, and he’d get it done the only way he knew how, by hammering. He sat back and smiled. The toughest jobs were the ones Joe Public never knew even existed … just the way they liked it.
Once again Hammerson checked Alex’s vital signs on his monitor – strong and calm – the man could be taking a stroll in the park, instead of where he now was.
*
20,000 feet above the Southern Ocean
The B1R Lancer cut through the atmosphere at 20,000 feet doing just under Mach 2. The high speed, high altitude bomber had departed from the southern tip of Australia several hours back, and was already approaching its destination – the edge of the ice shelf of Antarctica.
The single pilot began to ease back on the throttle, the plane immediately slowing among the freezing clouds, and dropping down below Mach 1 with an associated boom. He turned to look back into the small hold. There was one delivery package – a single passenger, designate unknown. He was simply referred to as Mr. Hawk, and that was it.
The huge figure hadn’t moved a muscle the entire trip. He sat like he was carved from stone, with hands clasped together and resting on his knees, his head tilted down at the now closed bomb-bay doors. He looked more machine-like than human. The pilot eased back around; he wasn’t paid to ask questions.
“Crazy bastard,” the pilot whispered. No one was going to survive the descent, even if he was wrapped in all the freaking tech in the world. The bulky outer suit the guy wore had rigid folds between the legs and under the arms. Normally a Spec Op high altitude drop would mean a torpedo frame made of high tensile steel, but as no metals could be worn that would cast a radar signature, it had to be a ceramic and polymer framework. He doubted it would be effective when fighting the cold, and speed, and then there was the final impact with no chute. At least he’ll be an invisible dead man, the pilot thought gloomily.
The radar pinged and the pilot turned back to the controls momentarily before switching the cabin lights to a deep red. He swung around and held up two fingers. Eerily, the figure was now facing him, and he nodded once. His head and face were encased in a bullet-shaped helmet, his eyes impossible to make out. He could have been a robot for all the pilot knew – a robotic human-shaped wing.
The pilot exhaled, opened the bomb-bay doors, and then hunched over. Even from where he sat he felt the murderous waves of ice-pick cold air screaming up into the interior. He gritted his teeth, and then after another moment, turned again. The cabin was already empty.
“Good luck … Hawk.”
He switched on the mic. “Package away.” He banked and kicked the dart-shaped bomber back up to Mach 2. He’d be long gone before the guy’s body even hit the water.
CHAPTER 13
Alex stayed rolled in a ball for the first few thousand feet, falling fast. He needed to minimize surface area exposure to the biting cold. Even though he wore multiple layers, and had a metabolism that could deal with extremes, he would be powerless to stop his extremities freezing solid, making fingers useless when suddenly called to do rapid or complex work.
He had a simple job to do – take out the Kunming’s offensive strike capability. The Chinese de
stroyer could not be allowed to rain hell down on the McMurdo base. Defang the dragon, Hammerson had said to him. Defang the dragon, and then all you’re left with is a big ugly lizard, he thought and smiled.
Alex reached a number count in his head, knowing it was time to slow his descent. He unrolled, opening his arms and legs wide. The effect was instantaneous, as the folds of synthetic material acted like a combination wing and air brake on his body, slowing him from 220 miles per hour, down to just over a hundred.
Alex bit down hard on the air tube pumping warm oxygen into his lungs. The rising atmosphere was punishing as it pummeled his body, and the cold was a thousand razor blades slashing and stabbing at him, furiously seeking any exposed flesh. He grinned around the breathing tube inside the contoured helmet. He was looking forward to hitting the water.
As he finally dropped through the cloud cover, he saw he was slightly off-target. The Kunming was a mile out to his left, and he angled his shoulder and one arm to tilt toward it, and then swept his arms back, and legs in tight together. Alex became an accelerating arrow shape. He was an insignificant dot, invisible to radar, and traveling again at 200 miles per hour. Even if someone happened to be looking in his direction, the color of his suit against the leaden sky was the perfect camouflage.
Directly below him, Alex could make out the huge torpedo shape of the USS Texas, lying about fifty feet under the surface … and then, he was in position. Once again, he opened his arms and legs, engaging the folds and struts of his suit to slow his speed – he counted down: nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one … impact.
The water surface collision was enormous, battering his entire frame. Multiple smaller bones in his body immediately fractured, and muscle, cartilage and tendon compressed and bruised. He had held his arms folded up and over his skull, but for several seconds he was stunned senseless. It was only the icy water that shocked him back to consciousness.
He sunk down several dozen feet, peeling himself from the wing-suit. He’d been lucky, since he’d missed all of the tiny bergs that dotted the water. They were impossible to see on the descent, and even though they might have been little bigger than a coffee table on the surface, below, they could easily be the size of a Buick. If he had struck one of those, he would have been paste and it was game over. As it was, he could feel the massive trauma to his body, but knew that his system rushed to repair the damage, while his mind screamed its urgency – the Southern Ocean, freezing water, the Kunming, USS Texas. His mind reset, and he let the drop-suit fall away into the dark water, leaving him just in the specially thickened wetsuit, with a slim pack attached to his stomach.
Alex kept the full helmet in place, as it provided both airflow and goggles. The keel of the Kunming soon came into view, and in another few moments he was clinging to its stern, praying they wouldn’t need to start the huge propellers as the churn would have drawn him in and shredded him in an instant.
His first task was the easiest – he needed to make the vessel go dark. To do that, he’d shut off all incoming and outgoing communications.
Alex opened a pouch in the pack on his front and brought out a flat disk which he attached to the hull, switching it on, so it first adhered, and then started to generate its white-noise net around the vessel. By the time they figured out it wasn’t a problem with their own technology, and began a search for the source, the Kunming would need to deploy divers before they found it – and that should give him more than enough time to finish his work below the ice.
Alex looked up at the shimmering gray surface, steeling himself and then rising slowly. He breached the surface and paused, taking off the helmet, its air supply exhausted. He let it fall. He then attached caps to his palms. Time to join the party, he thought, and began to climb the two dozen feet to the rear deck.
Agony; the cold air on his bare skin was a thousand daggers, but he ignored it and slowly looked along the boat’s guard rail – his plan’s success was predicated on the crew and officers’ focus being on the area where they knew the US submarine would be submerged. Then, one hand after the other, spider-like, he came up the side of the destroyer. He paused again and then slowly lifted his eyes above the railing. He slid over, tossing the suction pads back over the side.
Alex had memorized the Chinese boat’s schematics, every room, armament, and crew capability. He had several immediate targets to destroy – the Kunming had anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine missiles, deck-top mounted guns, as well as two 30mm close-in weapon systems (CIWS) that would be ferocious against an exposed submarine hull. The upside for him was that the missile launchers were single system, which meant the firing mechanism could shoot multiple missile varieties, but it was the same battery – knock it out, and you take them all out. The other guns would need individual attention.
Alex stayed low and moved fast. He was a dark blur speeding along the deck to his first target. The rear half of the destroyer was primarily multi-function phased array radar – numerous sensors and sonar. Basically, it was the eyes and ears of the ship, which was now blinded and deafened by the white-noise net that he’d attached to the Kunming’s hull. Their problem would not become apparent until the comm. team sent or expected to receive a communication.
Alex darted forward again. It was the front third of the ship where most of the dragon’s fangs were embedded, and that section was directly under the raised bridge; it would be impossible to avoid being seen. He needed to rely on speed and accuracy, and then be gone within seconds.
Alex flattened himself on the external shielding, and paused to suck in a deep breath. He blinked hard to dislodge ice crystals that had formed on his lashes. His short dark hair was frozen solid against his scalp. His body’s regeneration capabilities had to continually work to repair a body under attack from the freezing cold and its determination to turn his limbs, and face, to solid ice. He laid his head back against the cold steel and counted down.
Three, two, one, zero … Alex exploded forward, his hands going to the pack on his front, and drawing forth several discs that looked like hockey pucks. His first destination was the two 30mm CIWS cannons. To each, he fixed a plasma disc, and pressed down on their timers. He then sped away to the smaller deck-mounted weapons. Once again, he attached several of the pucks, flicking on their pulses, and darting away.
By now, shouts had come from the upper deck, and the sound of running boots on steel. They would find him with their gun sights soon, and he had just one last job – the huge single system multiple missile launcher. No matter what came, this weapon needed to be taken out. Alex ran hard, a puck in each hand, his focus on the central launching barrel, when the bullet caught him in the shoulder, spinning him to the deck.
The bullet was a small caliber high velocity slug – probably fired from a QBZ-95 assault rifle. Alex was glad that whoever had fired it didn’t have it on full automatic, as the Chinese gas powered weapon had an 80-round drum, and could spit them all in under a minute.
Alex rolled and came up fast. More bullets pinged off steel around him, and he rolled and ran hard now, swerving and running to complete his mission, and also running for his life. Within ten feet of the missile launcher he leapt, and threw the discs hard – one went in, the other stuck to the outside, near the base – had to be good enough, he thought, as there would be no second attempt.
Time to go. He turned, accelerating. More bullets whizzed past – angry lead bees looking to inflict their fatal sting. When Alex was six feet from the railing, he dived, spearing down the forty feet of the raised hull towards the dark water of the Antarctic.
It was like a cold fist on his face and head, but he swam down deep, feeling the grind of the bullet in his shoulder, and aware of the air bubble tunnels the bullets made as they chased him down.
He had about a thousand feet to cover to make it to the USS Texas for an underwater entry. The Chinese would have high velocity sniper rifles deployed on the deck now, so surfacing was out of the question. The wound in
his shoulder was a dull throb, but the puncture in his suit allowed more of the sub-zero seawater to enter, thankfully numbing the wound, but also freezing his limbs, and making his movements slower and more cumbersome.
The gunfire had ceased, or perhaps his hearing had shut down as he swam. He concentrated on counting his strokes, knowing each one took him six feet closer to his goal, but burned just a little more energy from his limbs, and a little more oxygen from his lungs.
How many strokes have I made? A hundred? More? CO2 was building up now, entering his blood stream and his brain, and making him drowsy. Flashes of light began to go off in his head, as the oxygen in his lungs was depleted. He was so tired, and all that remained was a calm voice in his head, Aimee’s maybe, he wondered, that told him to relax, to sleep. To simply stop and take that first big, deep breath of pure, warm oxygen. He hadn’t even realized he had stopped swimming. Then came the soft voice, sniggering at him. You lose, it whispered.
As his vision clouded, something loomed huge in the dark water before him. There came a sudden tightness as something circled his wrist, and then wrapped around his waist. He stopped caring, and his body simply hung limply in the thing’s grip as it came at his face, pushing something into his mouth.
For Alex, everything went black.
*
Onboard the Kunming, confusion, chaos, and shouted orders rolled across the deck and out over the freezing water. Diver detection systems were brought online, and these used sonar and acoustic location to track small movements in the water. Snipers waited, rock steady, for the intruder to surface or for the system to pinpoint his position. Below deck, engineers were running system checks, trying to ascertain if the intruder had disabled any of their infrastructure.
The loud and blaring klaxon horn was finally shut down, but the entire crew was deployed to searching the ship. Seaman Qui Long was the first to find one of the discs, stuck limpet-like, to the top of the 30mm cannon. He tried to dislodge it. It wouldn’t budge. He called over his shoulder for assistance, and then drew forth a knife from his belt and tried to wedge it under the object, without success. It was like it had become welded to the steel of the ship.