Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  Seated on his right, Ricci watched the world slant down and away. “How long till we’re over the plant?” he asked, his stomach lurching.

  “Should be any minute.” Oskaboose pointed out his window. A Cree-Ojibway Indian with a wide, bony face and dark hair worn in a buzz cut, he was on loan to Ricci from the Sword watch quartered amid the radomes and communications dishes of an UpLink satellite ground station to the southwest, located midway between the Big Nickel Mine in Sudbury and Lake Superior. “You see the twin rises over there, sort of rounded, got all those wrinkles in them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The local tribes call them Niish Obekwun. Means Two Shoulders. Past them’s a gap where a stream slices down to the White River. And then that third taller slope. Goes up pretty steep.”

  Ricci nodded.

  “Far side of it, on the west face, is our spot,” Oskaboose said. “Go ahead and check the moving map on the instrument panel. Groundhog like you, it’ll help with your orientation.”

  Ricci glanced at the nonglare video display, where a Real Time Geographical Information System map overlaid a live image of the rough, frozen vista below, plotting the airplane’s course with a series of flashing red dots, and enclosing Earthglow’s position in a bright green square. It was helpful, he thought. And precisely matched his recollection of the Hawkeye-I photos he’d seen back in San Jose. With a zoom resolution of under three centimeters, they had afforded detailed aerial close-ups of the custom biological facility and its perimeter defenses. But Ricci had wanted to get a visceral feel of the land that for him would only come with firsthand observation.

  Oskaboose leveled the aircraft. “In today’s world, Tarzan wouldn’t have to worry about being raised by apes,” he said. “You’ve got, what, a couple thousand gorillas left in Africa, that’s counting all five subspecies. And they’re more used to having their pictures snapped than models and movie stars. Some British kid in knickers being nursed at the breast of a furry mama would be spotted in no time by rich tourists on photo safaris. And brought back to civilization, heaven help him.”

  The guide’s apparent non sequitur drew a puzzled glance from Ricci.

  “Another instance of how the wilderness isn’t wilderness like it used to be,” Oskaboose said, noticing his expression.

  Ricci grunted.

  “Give you one more example,” Oskaboose continued. “People hear the name Tibet, they think robed Buddhist mystics levitating and astral-projecting in transcendental bliss. Or at least I do. But you know, it’s become just another getaway for Hollywood stars with personal problems. Donate a million bucks to the temple chest, they’ll issue you a wallet card listing the chakras, declare that you’re pure of spirit, and initiate you as an honorary monk of the order. I kid you not.” He made a sad tsking sound and motioned out the window again. “We’re about to head over the basin. You might want to take a peek.”

  Ricci looked downward. The folds of the rise they were overflying were thick with pine forest. On the almost perpendicular uplift at the basin’s far side, the growth was sparser, clinging to the rock face in stubborn, woolly tufts between wide, white expanses of snow. Directly below them now, the tributary was a crystalline blue ribbon in the midday sunlight.

  “That water frozen solid?” Ricci asked.

  Oskaboose shrugged his shoulders. “Hard to be sure from up here,” he said. “You can tell for yourself that there’s a surface layer of ice. But it only takes a little silty runoff for the crust to stay thin in patches. Especially this early in the season, when the temperature can still poke above freezing.”

  Ricci compressed his lips. “The snow on the slopes. You have any idea how deep it is?”

  “The precip hasn’t been too bad, so I’d guess about a foot, with drifts coming up maybe knee high.” He gave Ricci a quick glance. “Inexperienced climbers have to watch out for cracks in the rock that get covered by bridges of crusted snow. Fall into some of’em, and you can take quite a plunge.”

  Ricci nodded thoughtfully.

  “Okay,” Oskaboose said. “Soon as we cross that next hill, you’ll catch sight of Earthglow to your right, down on a ledge near its base.”

  “We do one pass. That’s it. No doubling back.”

  “Understood.” Oskaboose shrugged again. “The point of what I was explaining to you, though, is that the sight of a plane is nothing to make anybody suspicious around here. Pukaskwa National Park isn’t too far to the south. Rangers there use fixed wing aircraft and choppers for wildlife observation, search and rescue, and supply transport. Then you have airmail deliveries to townspeople, recreational pilots, and so on. We don’t have to be too worried about being noticed.”

  Ricci kept silent, his pale blue eyes staring out the window.

  * * *

  In a large conference room at the Sudbury ground station, Rollie Thibodeau and the rest of the twenty-four-man RDT were gathered before a flat-panel wall monitor, viewing the same pictures that appeared on the Cessna’s video display as it made its flyby.

  The Earthglow facility was a low, concrete building backed directly against the almost vertical eastern slope, bounded on its other three sides by a high, industrial chain-link perimeter fence topped with multiple rows of electrical wiring. A sliding gate in the north-facing section of the fence opened onto a two-lane blacktop that curved along the base of the hill and then stretched off eastward toward the railway station at Hawk Junction — about a hundred miles distant, across rolling, heavily forested country. Small guard posts were visible at the southern and western corners of the fence. A third stood outside the gate at the terminus of the blacktop. A network of access roads branched from the gate to various building entrances.

  Watching the stream of recon images over his microwave link with the aircraft, Thibodeau muttered unhappily under his breath. He knew Tom Ricci better than he liked — would have liked not to know him at all — and could anticipate the mission plan he would present upon returning to base.

  What bothered him, in part, was that it stood to be dangerous to the extreme. But the thing that filled him with deepest distress was also knowing there was no workable alternative.

  * * *

  Back at the ground station an hour later, Ricci and Pokey Oskaboose had joined Thibodeau and the others in the conference room. The lights were dimmed around them. On their screen was a bird’s-eye color still of the Earthglow building and its surrounding terrain, the key tactical points highlighted with Xs.

  “That high slope behind the building is a natural defensive wall.” Ricci indicated it from his chair with the beam of his pen-sized laser pointer, feeling queerly as if something of the wicked Megan Breen’s persona had rubbed off on him. “Our pals at Earthglow don’t have a guard post there, either on the peak or any of the ledges. And it isn’t hard to understand why. It looks like they’re unapproachable from that flank.”

  “Be the reason it’s the best way for us to come at them,” Thibodeau said. His tone was grimly resigned. “Take advantage of their overconfidence, soit.”

  Ricci nodded and moved the pointer’s red dot to the right, focusing it on a small, flat hollow between the northernmost rims of the Two Shoulders hills.

  “We can land a chopper here. Off-load our equipment, and one of those radio-frequency-shielded tents that we can use as a command and communications center,” he said. “It’s a nice pocket of concealment. And as close to Earthglow as I want to set down.”

  “The RF-secure tents are cold-weather white, and should blend right in with the snow on the ground and slopes,” Oskaboose added. “Guess we can hide the copter under some cammo pretty easy, too.”

  “Sounds good.” Ricci’s laser dot jumped up and to the left onto the blacktop leading to the facility. “We’ll have an escape vehicle ready to roll around this area west of the bridge, not far from where the two-laner swings around the bottom of the hill toward the perimeter gate. My team’ll have to reach it on foot once we’re out of the building. Then it
takes us across the bridge, the chopper picks us up on the other side, and we’re off.”

  “You catch a break, make a clean getaway, sure,” Thibodeau said. “But we can’t depend on it. Got to figure there might be somebody on your tail wants to stop that from happenin’.”

  Ricci looked at him. “So your team prepares something to stop them from stopping us.”

  Thibodeau scratched his beard.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Suppose I got me an idea or two.”

  Ricci nodded again. Then he turned back to the photo image on the wall, slid the red dot down onto the icy stream spanned by the bridge, and tracked its course through the basin that divided Two Shoulders from the larger hill.

  “Our approach is going to be what’s trickiest,” he said. “From where we strike camp at Two Shoulders, my insertion team needs to hike to the stream, ski across its banks, then climb the northeast side of the hill and go down the northwest. That’ll leave us behind the building. From there we move along its side to the guard station at the gate, take out the sentries, and carry on with the rest of the program.” He inclined his head toward Pokey Oskaboose. “I know it seems like you’d have to be a damn spider to make it up that big slab of rock, but Pokey mentioned a couple of things I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “You and whoever built Earthglow figuring the hill would guarantee protection from the rear,” Oskaboose said. “Anybody knows this country could see how it’s tough but not anything near the worst. You’ve got all kinds of plants clumped on its slopes: juniper, pines, spruce, cedar, berry bushes. That means root systems to keep the ground from slipping out from underfoot. Also means plenty of handholds and matted branches to break your fall in case you do take a slide.”

  Thibodeau gave him a look. “An’ you intend on bein’ there to point out them mats an’ handholds?” he said.

  Oskaboose seemed unbothered by his dubious tone. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I usually prefer to get my high-altitude kicks in a pilot’s seat, but for special company like you boys, I’m thrilled to make an exception.”

  * * *

  That night, before his group set out on their cross-country hike, Ricci emerged out of the metalized fabric igloo tent and stood surrounded by the humped granite rises of Niish Obekwun, their furrowed contours other-worldly in the darkness. The temperature had fallen well below freezing with sundown, and continued to drop at a precipitous rate. The wind had also picked up. Swirling into, over, and through the snow- and brush-covered crannies and ledges of the hillsides, it filled the cavity below with a toneless idiot chant, as if the landscape itself was astir with some impersonally menacing ritual.

  Ricci stood there, alone, outfitted in a snow cammo shell jacket and pants, a polar liner, his Zylon vest, and thermal undergarments. He carried his baby VVRS on a shoulder sling and wore an ALICE pack on his back. His hands were covered with ultrathin-insulate gloves that wouldn’t get in the way of firing his weapon. On his feet were white rubber boots and tapered-tail aluminum alloy snowshoes. His sleekly molded full-head helmet was equipped with an integrated, hands-free wireless audio/video system, its dime-sized color digital camera lens invisible above his forehead, its microphone embedded in the chin guard. Ricci’s polycarbonate ballistic visor was pulled down over his eyes-only balaclava and shielded the exposed portion of his face from the fiercely cold air. But he could still feel its bite through his breathing vents, feel its tingle in his lungs with each inhalation. Never in the coldest, bleakest Maine winter had he experienced such inimical cold. No sane human being would expose himself to it without good reason. Ricci hadn’t had any desire to contemplate his own reason. He had simply wanted to be by himself before leaving: to be still, without thought, quiet inside. That was really all.

  He turned around now, stepped back toward the tent, and then leaned his head through its entrance flap to signal his men to gear up and assemble. He’d had his moment of solitude and was ready to get under way.

  * * *

  The glazed surface of the stream gave out with occasional complaints as they tramped across its banks, making crumpled-cellophane noises under the glittering snow cover. They proceeded in single file, Oskaboose at the head of the column, followed by Ricci and his Cape Green graduates: Seybold, Beatty, Rosander, Grillo, Simmons, Barnes, Harpswell, and Nichols. Three additions had been made to boost the number of men in the insertion team, a seasoned hand from Kaliningrad named Neil Perry, and Dan Carlysle and Ron Newell, both veterans of the Brazilian affair and recommended by Thibodeau.

  Oskaboose kept his eyes downward, wary of thin ice. He would test any suspect area by putting one leg carefully forward, shifting his weight onto it, and pressing in hard with the crampons of his snowshoe, alert for the slightest hint of cracking or buckling or a telltale flit of shadows around the snowshoe’s edges that would reveal the movement of water beneath a shallow, weakened crust. Although the group was on a networked communications link, he remained entirely silent, using hand gestures to wave the others forward when he was confident of the footing or to steer them clear of places where its soundness was questionable. Ricci didn’t need for him to explain why. It was the habit of someone who had spent a lifetime in this terrain, knew it inside out, and preferred to negotiate it without technological mediation. Who wanted his senses freed up to listen and feel for its hazards.

  The cold had seemed to deepen after they left the Two Shoulders camp, but perhaps as a result they only encountered a few potential trouble spots during their crossing of the stream… although on a single instance, just yards from its west bank, the ice cracked under Oskaboose’s foot with a sound that reverberated between the dark walls of the cleft like a rifle shot. The men started in their heavy packs, Ricci’s eyes briefly going to the slope, the buttstock of his VVRS gun raised against his shoulder. But then he heard a splash and turned to see Oskaboose pull his snowshoe out of the break, water gushing up around its frame, droplets of moisture wicking off the leg of his shell pants.

  “Sorry, fellas,” Oskaboose said over their comlink. They were the first words he’d spoken since they’d trod onto the ice. “Bad step there.”

  Ricci loosened his grip on his weapon and followed him the rest of the way across the stream without incident.

  * * *

  Ricci’s recollections of the climb would later streak to gether in his mind, staying with him as a mostly random shuffle of images and impressions.

  He would remember his men pausing at the base of the hill to remove their snowshoes and sling them over their backs, and then their first adrenaline-charged push up the lower ledges, the group surrendering themselves entirely to forward motion. Remember seeking out Pokey Oskaboose’s ascending shadow, following his lead, trying not to fall too far behind. Remember the feel of coarse, cold stone against his flattened body. And the gusts tugging at him. Snow spilling around him in loose talc-white clouds. Icicles snapping apart under his fingers. His gloved hands twisting into notches, grabbing hold of needled juniper branches, clutching at bare tangles of scrub that grew precariously out of hairline fissures in the rock. And, once, a startled bird bearing aloft with a querulous shriek, its wings flaying the air. He would clearly recall the moment he heard the scuff of Seybold’s boots below him and turned to see that he had stumbled, lost traction, and was swaying backward off a ledge, chunks of ice and pebbly material fragmenting underfoot to skitter down the slope. Then reaching for him with one hand, catching his wrist, driving his own feet against the rock as he pulled upward and steadied him. And drawing a long inhalation, and moving on, and on, always with Oskaboose in sight, toiling upward in that fury of wind and billowing powder.

  And then finally the crest of the hill was above him. And his right arm was over it. His left arm. His chest. His legs. And almost to his own surprise, he was standing beside Oskaboose, and both were giving Seybold a hand up, the rest of his party appearing in ones and twos and threes, helping each other gain the final bit of ground, gathering there atop the rise
overlooking the blockish spread of the Earthglow facility.

  They had allowed themselves only a brief period to catch their breath before starting the climb down. Two or three minutes, as Ricci recalled. They had made progress, yes, but that wasn’t the same thing as having achieved their objective. Not nearly.

  The job they had come to do was still ahead of them, and there was no time whatsoever to lose.

  * * *

  They descended the hill as they had started up its opposite side, in single file, and again the elements proved equal parts advantage and handicap.

  Open to the constant force of wind and storm unlike its basin wall, the hill’s western slope was almost scrubbed of vegetation and bore the insults of constant battery: crumbling juts of granite, craggy scars and pockmarks, and deep gouges that looked as if they were bites taken out of its stony hide by some great, vicious set of jaws. Any of these could have been serious pitfalls for someone who didn’t know the territory. But to Oskaboose they represented options: handholds, footholds, covered niches where his teammates could take momentary respite.

  The drawback was that the weather-blasted pieces of hillside had nowhere to go but down, an inevitable consequence of gravity that gave Oskaboose his full share of problems for the last fifteen or twenty yards of the descent toward its base. Picking his steps over and around tumbled boulders, pulverized rocks, and slippery cascades of pebbles, snow, and ice was a strenuous challenge complicated by his mindfulness of having to select a path that would be least difficult for those behind him.

  The guide’s effort was not lost on Ricci. When his boots touched ground, a glance at the tritium dial of his wristwatch showed that over two hours had passed since his group had left camp. Longer than he’d expected, maybe, but thanks to Pokey Oskaboose, they had gotten this far without a single injury worse than a bump or bruise.