by Ryder Stacy
They slept for six hours then moved on.
Twenty-Two
Rockson took a sextant reading on the low sun. They were five miles from the Arctic Circle. Scheransky set up the antimeter tracker. He excitedly reported to a numbed-cold Rockson that the readings indicated the five missiles were less than six miles away. Killov hadn’t moved since their last reading.
Rockson looked north through the snow flurries at the rolling hills of tundra ahead of them. Killov. At last.
Rockson wondered if Killov was making camp for a few hours or had set up what would be his launch base. He suspected the latter. The mad colonel didn’t have to go any further. He was at the right latitude now, the Arctic Circle, to threaten Moscow, Colorado, the whole damned world!
The date was December 22, the date of the winter solstice. At this extreme altitude, the sun wouldn’t come up again for three months. Rock and his attack force would have the first Black Day, total darkness on their side, when they attacked. Today, at noon!
They set off on skis, moving quickly over the rolling terrain. The weather was good and they could steer by the faint light of the stars.
A few miles on, Rock’s calculations were proven correct. They had effected the overland shortcut and intersected the Alaskan Highway. They saw it when they crested a tundra hillock—snow-covered, a long smooth roadway stretching back toward the southwest.
Detroit excitedly pointed. “Look, there are tire tracks from large vehicles in the snow.”
The Freefighters skied down to the roadway, and Rock inspected the big tracks more closely.
“I’d say these were made less than a day or two ago.”
Rock scanned the horizon on the north with his electron binoculars. There! At the side of the road some miles up—a row of structures. Killov’s base, alongside the highway. “Let’s get up the hill again, under better cover behind those rocks,” the commander ordered, “and take a look from there.”
A scan of the base with the high-power light-amplification lenses showed that the KGB force were busy as bees, constructing quonset-type buildings, guard towers, and the like. There were lots of troops down there, possibly a hundred. “The trailer with the large radio antenna jutting from it must be Killov’s headquarters,” Rock said. “It’s right in the middle of the base.” The three-hundred-meter-wide base was surrounded by double razor-wire coils ten feet high. There were electric wires running to the coils.
Rock wondered for a while what the KGBers were doing in their heavy Arctic work overalls out beyond the camp. Rock focused in on the workers. They were smoothing out the bumpy ground, making it flat. Were they completing a rough airstrip? Rock wondered. It looked like it.
“We have no time to lose,” Rock said. “God knows, he’s expecting planes—they’d be very unwelcome company for us. Once Killov has completely fortified and brought in additional troops by air, we may not be able to stop him.”
Further scanning showed the trucks—ten of them—that had carried the troops, and five large balloon-tired vehicles, presumably the ones that had carried the missiles. But these missile trucks no longer carried anything. Rock scanned the camp again. Those corrugated-metal quonset huts, they were really missile bunkers. Five of them, each fifty feet long by twenty wide. Scheransky said, “See the hinges at one side of the roof of each of the huts? They open up like a cigar box. The missile pops up on its launcher arm, and is fired. Those are the standard field bunkers for the missiles. The launch crew, four men to each missile, stay inside the building—until launch, of course, which requires a four-minute countdown.”
Tinglim put down his binoculars, and smiled broadly. “I might have good news. Remember the oil shortages of the twentieth century? How a great pipeline was built by you Americans through Alaska and through part of the Yukon to carry oil from the north southward?”
“Yes. What’s that got to do with attacking Killov?”
“Rockson, when you again scan with your binoculars, don’t fail to notice the slight bump in the terrain. It cuts diagonally through the compound, difficult to see at first. That bump, if I am not mistaken, is the covered-up pipe of your ancestors, Rockson—empty, I hope.” Tinglim fairly beamed.
Rock took another look. When he crawled back down he said, “If it is the old pipeline, it used to be mostly above ground, as I recall from the history books. So someplace back to the south it must still break the surface. There’s no way of telling, though. And a lot of it could have collapsed. But we’ll give it a try. I think I remember reading it was big enough to walk through. Chen, we still have the cutting torches, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Chen assured the Doomsday Warrior. Chen was in charge of the remaining stores. “No food left, no heating oil, but thank God, we managed to hold onto the torches.”
“Then we’ll use the pipeline as a highway right into the camp. It’s probably very close to the surface there—hence the bump. Killov has no reason to believe he was pursued. We have the element of surprise. They think they are protected well by their razor-wire electric barriers.”
“There is a storm brewing in the east. It will bring a good blow and lots of snow for cover in a few hours,” Tinglim added.
“Detroit,” the Doomsday Warrior ordered, “I want you to equip five of us with stun grenades. We don’t want a big explosion near those missiles. And you, Scheransky, you know that Killov is here this far north because he wants to be in range of Moscow. We have to defuse those missiles. There can’t be any mistakes. Or boom, there goes Borsht-town. Do you understand? Not to mention my own city, which is still in range.”
“My wife is in Moscow—my children go to school there. There will be no mistakes, Rockson, I promise you that,” said the trek-hardened major.
They made good time despite a gathering snowstorm. Soon they reached the gigantic rusty pipe, jutting out of the tundra. It was perhaps eight feet in diameter. It looked solid enough.
“It’s true, there it is,” Rock said, half in disbelief.
“The northern gods have provided our salvation,” Tinglim said. “And they have provided us a storm to hide the noise when we cut out of the pipe in Killov’s camp.”
“Let’s get to work, men,” Rock ordered.
They broke out torches and set about cutting a man-sized hole in the pipe. Rock winced when the big piece fell out. He half expected crude oil to ooze out, but the pipe was empty, if somewhat crudded up and smelly inside. It had been, after all, a hundred years or more since it had functioned. The twentieth century steel alloy had held up pretty well. He played the light down the seemingly endless interior. It looked like it hadn’t collapsed anywhere. McCaughlin hefted the antimatter meter in on his huge shoulders. They needed the heavy piece of equipment to tell them when they were closest to the missiles. It was set to ping at the highest concentration of anitmatter radiation.
When they were all safely in the shelter of the eight-foot-wide oil pipe, the men huddled around Scheransky who opened the diagram of the deadly missile. Rockson played his flashlight beam onto the diagram.
Rock said, “There won’t be time for Scheransky to defuse all five missiles. The major will instruct us all on how to do it.” The major nodded. He looked shaky and pale, Rock thought.
For a precious half-hour, Scheransky explained. Detroit, McCaughlin, Chen, Farrell, and Rockson caught on, but the three Eskimo guides stared in bewilderment. The instructions brought a blank expression to Tinglim’s face too. He couldn’t fathom it either. Rock decided then and there that there would be five 2-man teams. “One man protects, while the other works on the missile. We use stun grenades to knock out the bunker crews. The grenades won’t cause enough shock to blow the missiles up.
“Now, the major has shown you how to open the missiles’ wiring sections—each missile is identical—and install the red boxes, the ‘antimatter drains’ as Scheransky calls them . . .”
Rockson set up each two-man team: Farrell and Dalmok, McCaughlin and Zebok, Chen and Ngaicook, Detroit and Tinglim. He and
Scheransky were the fifth team. If any other team didn’t make it, either one of them could rush to finish their job. They started walking in the pipe. Each had a Liberator, enough ammo for a few minutes of fire-fight. Their shotpistols were nearly empty. Ten cold and tired men against hundreds of fanatical KGB Commandos. Not good odds. But Rockson had faced odds nearly as bad in the past and survived.
Scheransky was a little weak-kneed at the idea of the unfair odds, and had to be encouraged along the interior of the pipe.
It took an hour and a half of claustrophobic trekking down the pipeline before the antimatter meter pinged once.
“We are there,” Scheransky whispered.
“This is it,” Rockson said. “Finally. What time is it?”
“Eleven A.M., hereabouts,” said Chen, checking his all-weather chronometer.
“Give it another hour,” suggested Tinglim. “By then the storm should be at its maximum.” Rockson nodded.
They sat there, as tense as they had ever been in their lives. At noon, on Rock’s order, Chen started cutting through. It didn’t take long before a rolling mess of tundra mixed with snow came tumbling in, nearly half burying them. But the flow quickly stopped. They could see the glow of a searchlight. They were through. The howling winds had covered their cutting noise.
A fierce storm—ice and snow, frigid wind—was blasting across the frozen land, making for a near white-out condition. The searchlight that lit the camp merely reflected off the milky swirling snow. Rockson whispered, “Leave the searchlight alone unless we’re detected. Once the shooting starts, knock it out.” They listened for a while. Not a KGBer stirred in the camp, but the men working on the runway several hundred feet away were making their own noise banging down the hard tundra.
Rockson and the others clawed up into the frozen camp, into the numbing cold of the “Black Day.” Each man knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
Rock and Scheransky made the first run from the hole, right after the beam of the searchlight swept past. They made a dash for the closest bunker. They hit the snow ten feet from the bunker door and watched the four other teams make their own runs to the other bunkers. In seconds they were all in place. Rock flicked his flashlight for the others to proceed. Their flashlights flicked back.
Rock rose, pushing Scheransky forward. They ran right up to the bunker door. A light was coming through a crack in the metal doorway. They heard laughing.
“Here goes nothing,” Rock whispered. He tried the door; it wasn’t locked. Rock kicked open the door and threw the stun pineapple in, pushed Scheransky down and to the side in the snow.
Whumppp!
The two attackers entered the smoking interior, stepping over four bodies. Scheransky froze. Rock shook him. “Scheransky—over there, isn’t that the missile? Get to it, man!” The major snapped out of it, rushed forward with his red deactivator box and got to work. Rockson stripped off his parka and put on the least-messy Red uniform coat.
Rockson opened the door of the bunker a foot and emptied his Liberator at a squad of Reds caught in their own searchlight’s beam. He saw other running shapes out there in the strobelike flashes of gunfire—two of them were carrying something that looked like a mortar. “Hurry!” Rock screamed at Scheransky. “Hurry!”
“I am hurrying!” Scheransky screamed back.
Rockson snatched up a Kalishnikov rifle and continued firing in full auto, slashing the air, waving the gun like a wand in front of him, conjuring death. He succeeded in a few lucky shots, heard the crunches as the KGBers fell in front of him, lifeless eyes staring accusingly at him, blood trickling from noses and mouths onto the mauled snow.
Scheransky was dripping cold sweat as he carefully placed the Phillips screwdriver into the first screw-head and loosened it. He knew he’d do it right, but Detroit, Chen, McCaughlin, and Farrell were doing the same thing with very little instruction in the other bunkers. If any one of them made a mistake, they’d all be vaporized instantly, along with two hundred and fifty square miles of Arctic wasteland. The major loosened the second screw. Then, with a solid grip on both screws, he pulled them out simultaneously. He removed the cover exposing the wiring, took the red box, and jammed it into place.
“Done!” he yelled triumphantly.
“Let’s go!” Rock screamed back.
Rock and Scheransky scrambled out of a side window. When the beam of the searchlight had passed, they ran like jack rabbits out into the drifting snow, back toward their rendezvous with the others—the pipe hole. Seconds after they dove into the cover of the broken-open pipe, the beam of the searchlight passed again, followed by fierce submachine-gun fire. From their vantage point, they could see mortar shells kicking up snow near the bunkers. The fools would get them all killed! Seconds stretched to hours, minutes stretched to eternity, as they waited for the other Freefighters. Detroit came in next, diving in with Tinglim, closely followed by Chen and Ngaicook. A bear of a man came running through the night. It was McCaughlin. Alone. As they pulled his great hulk into the pipe hole, he gasped, “They got Zebok—Farrell and Dalmok too. I saw them lying in the snow outside the fifth bunker.”
“Did they defuse the missile?” asked Rock.
“I don’t know,” McCaughlin answered.
“Scheransky, you come with me,” Rock ordered. “The rest of you, cover us; and for God’s sake, get that searchlight and that mortar crew.”
Colonel Killov had been watching the video he had made of the torture of the wandering Eskimo boy they had captured. Suddenly there was shooting, explosions. He ran to the window. The sweeping searchlight silhouetted running figures. He saw bursts of flame from many rifles. Tracer bullets crisscrossed the darkness. There were attackers—many attackers out there. It would take a force of hundreds of commandos to break the camp’s perimeter defenses.
As Killov watched wide-eyed, the huge floodlight went out—hit no doubt by enemy bullets. The firing continued, even more wildly. He ran to the P.A.
Killov’s voice, cold and thin, but very loud, came over the loudspeaker. “Fools! Stop shooting at everything that moves. Turn on the vehicles’ headlights. See what you are doing. Beware of damaging the missiles.”
Rockson and Scheransky took advantage of the cease-fire order to rush for cover behind some crates.
Following Killov’s orders, the KGBers began turning on their headlights. The Freefighters knew what to do. They started shooting them out immediately from their positions as Rock fired from behind his crates. In a matter of moments the lights had been shot out again. Rock and Scheransky had to get the last bunker. They could see it strobed in the light of sporadic submachine-gun fire—fifty yards away.
Killov pressed the intercom buttons to contact all the missile bunkers. Only one bunker answered—the fifth. “We are under attack!” a hoarse voice screamed in reply to the buzzer.
“Fire the missile, you fool, fire the missile!” Killov yelled. “Do it immediately, it’s already target-programmed.”
“But—but we are in here with the missile. We will be killed by the launch flame!”
“Fire the missile on a sixty-second countdown. That should be enough time for you to make a run for it.”
“Missile will be fired,” the terrified voice replied.
Killov quickly got on the shortwave accessing the channel for Kamchatka Island. The radioman at the Siberian base answered his call immediately. Killov’s special channel was monitored twenty-four hours a day. The colonel screamed, “This is Killov, get me General Sirkovnak!”
There was a slight pause, then Sirkovnak’s gruff voice came in on the shortwave. “Killov! You are alive? Where are you?”
“I am in the Yukon. Zero in on my broadcast. I have constructed a short runway. Send a rescue jet right away,” Killov commanded. “A fast short-takeoff-and-landing plane. My base is under attack.”
Sirkovnak’s strained voice replied, “I cannot. Vassily has given orders that you are a traitor and that anyone helping you will be executed.”
Killov played his last card: “If the rescue plane is not here in twenty minutes, I will inform Vassily that you were part of my ‘Doctors’ Plot’ to kill him. As a matter of fact, you are the last conspirator yet alive. Send two planes: one to land and pick me up, one to fly escort. Do you understand what I say, you fool? Unless that plane picks me up—”
“They will be sent, Excellency! Two of my fastest jets. Twenty minutes at the most.”
Wham. A projectile of some sort hit the trailer. Killov fell over on his side, pieces of the trailer’s metal walls imbedded in his skin. But he was alive. All he could hear was a ringing in his ears. He staggered to his closet, put on a parka, ran out through the hole that had appeared in the side of the trailer. He ran for his life as tracer bullets lit up the air behind him.
Then he heard a rumble, saw the missile rising on its column of flame. The bunker crew had obeyed his order. He threw up his arms and laughed. Death, megadeath, for Century City.
Twenty-Three
Rock watched the deadly missile roar aloft with a despair he had never felt before in his life. There goes the whole ballgame, he thought. I’ve lost. He desperately directed his .9mm Liberator rifle fire up at the ascending thing, but it climbed too fast. It headed away. In a matter of seconds, the swift cruise missile was out of range—and he realized it was heading south, toward the U.S., not toward the Soviet Union.
His men were still engaged in a deadly fire-fight with overwhelming KGB forces. But for what purpose now?
“Withdraw,” he yelled. “Withdraw. There’s no reason to stick around now, get to the pipe—get the hell out of here.” He was about to do the same when he saw a figure running out of the trailer—Killov. He pulled up his electron binoculars and leapt behind a dune of bloodstained snow, adjusted them—yes! A lone black-clad figure, running. Killov. The bastard was getting away, heading toward the runway. Killov must have a plane coming in.
Rock abandoned his effort to leave the hellish killing field. He had to catch Killov. Had to wring his scrawny neck. At least that would be something. It was two hundred yards to the airstrip. Stumbling over dead KGBers, he zigzagged, avoiding a trail of bullets, tear-assing after the shadowy figure. Rock was determined not to lose the man. He dove headfirst over several snowy moguls and in quick time made it to the tarmac runway; he’d cut off Killov. Rockson pulled his shotpistol up to the ready and waited, concealed by a pile of construction supplies at the edge of the snow-blown tarmac.