by Dale Brown
“Copy that, descending,” Ingalls said with a tight nod. He pushed the steering yoke forward very gradually, not by much, no more than a degree or two. This approach to the drop zone was a tricky one. Past the midpoint of the Brooks Range, the highest peaks tended to diminish in elevation, but some of them still spiked nearly a mile into the sky. If the HC-130J came in too low, it risked slamming head-on into a mountainside. If it came in too high, there’d be no way to descend rapidly enough to drop Flynn and his men from a safe height.
Ingalls saw the airspeed indicator on his HUD rising and throttled back a bit. Ideally, he wanted to cross the drop zone at no more than 130 knots. Much faster and any parachute jump would be far too hazardous. Much slower and he risked stalling out, especially with the drag from their dead Number Two engine. He blinked away a bead of sweat. This was a high-wire act from beginning to end, with no safety net waiting to save anyone if he screwed up.
Aft of the HC-130J’s cockpit, Flynn sat hunched over in one of the mesh seats that lined the sides of the cargo compartment. Between his parachute harness, weapons, and other gear, he was carrying well over a hundred pounds of extra weight strapped to his back, chest, and thighs. Add the tendency of the big aircraft to shimmy and shake in turbulence every few seconds, and there was no way he could hope to get comfortable. Thank God this was such a short flight, he decided.
He turned his head to look at the rest of his team. Soldiers and airmen gave him answering grins or flashed thumbs-up signs. Another positive of the quick trip, Flynn thought dryly. Nobody’d had much time yet to consider what a really dumbass idea this was.
And then Staff Sergeant Wahl was leaning over him, holding on to a seat frame. “Six-minute warning, sir,” the HC-130 crewman yelled into Flynn’s ear. For the purposes of this flight, Wahl was acting as both loadmaster and jumpmaster. Despite the half-inch-thick insulation covering almost every exposed metal inch of the aircraft’s fuselage, the deafening roar from the Super Hercules’s big engines made it sound like the other man was a hundred yards away.
Wahl saw his answering nod and moved out into the middle of the compartment. He waved his arms to get everyone’s attention. “Get ready!” He used hand signals to make sure he could be understood over all the pounding racket.
Obeying the command, Flynn and the others unbuckled their seat belts.
“Port-side personnel, stand up!”
Made awkward by all their heavy equipment, Flynn and the five men with him on the HC-130’s left side staggered upright and turned toward the rear of the plane. As the first man slated to jump, he was at the head of the line.
“Starboard-side personnel, stand up!” Wahl shouted next.
Now those seated on the right side clambered to their feet. Sergeant Andy Takirak, who would be the last man out, was at the back. A gauze bandage covered the jagged cut on his forehead. He met Flynn’s gaze and nodded confidently, as if to confirm that he was ready to go despite his minor injury.
Wahl spoke briefly into the intercom mike attached to his flight helmet, checking in with the cockpit crew. He nodded sharply at what they told him and then looked back at the waiting paratroopers. “Hook up!”
Flynn grabbed his static line and snapped its hook over the anchor cable stretched above his head. Behind him, the others in his stick did the same. Those to his right followed suit, hooking onto another anchor cable running down that side of the aircraft.
Wahl moved down the line of heavily burdened soldiers and airmen, watching closely as they checked their static lines and equipment and then did the same for the man in front of them. Satisfied by what he saw, he nodded to Flynn. Then he moved around to the side of the equipment pallet loaded with their two snow machines, sleds, and other heavy gear. The jumpmaster clipped his own safety line to a bracket. “We’re opening the rear ramp now! Get set!”
Flynn and the others shuffled carefully into position several feet behind the pallet.
The tail section of the HC-130J split in two, with the top half elevating out of the way as the big rear ramp whirred down and locked in position. The whole process took just twenty seconds. Immediately, the noise level ratcheted up to an almost unimaginable level. Between the suddenly magnified roar of the huge Rolls-Royce turboprops and the howling ice-cold wind gusts whipping down the length of the compartment, it was now virtually impossible to hear anything.
Crouched beside the equipment pallet, Wahl signaled the waiting men to stand by. They were ten seconds out from the drop zone. Abruptly, he yanked a restraining cord away. Freed, the pallet rolled smoothly down the ramp, tipped over, and vanished into thin air.
Given the “go” signal by Wahl the moment the ramp was clear, Flynn didn’t hesitate. He moved forward down the ramp and stepped off into space.
Instantly hurled away from the HC-130J by its freezing prop blast, Flynn tumbled through the night sky like a gale-borne leaf . . . until his parachute snapped open with a tooth-rattling jolt. Jesus, he thought dazedly, that hurt. Dangling under the chute’s billowing canopy, he slid downwind at a dizzying pace. Looking down past his boots, he saw a darkened landscape lit silver in places by moonlight spilling through fissures in the cloud layer overhead. Steep-sided hills and ridges rose on all sides of the snow-covered valley below. And the boulder-strewn slopes lining its southern edge were growing ever-larger with alarming speed.
Flynn held tight to his risers and twisted around, trying to find the rest of his team as they jumped behind him. He had time to catch only a brief glimpse of other moonlit parachutes scattering across the sky on the wind.
Everything after that happened very fast. The silvery snowpack below him took on shape and definition with horrifying swiftness. Hurriedly, he released his rucksack and weapons case, bent his knees, tucked his chin, and—
Whummp.
Flynn thumped down with a bone-jarring thud and rolled sideways. Despite the hard landing, this time he was able to unclip his left-side riser attach and spill the wind from his fluttering canopy before it could drag him very far across the snow. Moving quickly, he stowed his used parachute, shrugged out of his jump harness, and then checked over his weapons and other gear—pausing only to spit blood from a cut lip into the snow.
Clambering to his feet, Flynn turned through a complete circle to get his bearings. As best he could judge, he’d come down about two-thirds of the way across the valley. He strapped on a pair of snowshoes and set off back to the north, plowing determinedly through foot-deep snow toward where he judged their equipment pallet should have come down. Since the pallet held their only motorized vehicles and additional supplies, he’d told his team that would be their rally point. Gusts of wind whipped up glittering waves of snow and ice crystals that stung every exposed bit of skin on his face. Hurriedly, he pulled up his face mask, ducked his head down, and kept moving.
He found the pallet about 250 yards away, lying canted over at a forty-five-degree angle under its collapsed parachutes. Drifting down out of the sky, it had smacked straight into a little clump of dwarf willow trees with disastrous results. Both snow machines had broken loose on impact. Slammed against tree trunks with tremendous force, they were little more than crumpled masses of metal and fractured fiberglass. One of the two towed sleds was probably salvageable. The other was a complete wreck, with both its runners torn off and twisted out of recognition. Bags and boxes of medical and other supplies were strewn across the snow, most of them ripped open.
“Well, shit,” Flynn muttered with feeling, staring at the mess. The emergency search-and-rescue effort he’d been ordered to mount had just been knocked back to a nineteenth-century technological level. He was now entirely dependent on men on foot using snowshoes and cross-country skis to traverse difficult terrain.
Over the next several minutes, in ones and twos, more of his men straggled in, bowed down under the weight of their own weapons and gear. They all stopped dead when they saw the shattered pallet and its wrecked cargo. Growled profanity blistered the freezing a
ir, most of it directed at the “goddamn Air Force” for “managing to score a bull’s-eye on the one fucking clump of trees in a couple hundred fucking miles.”
“Now what?” Hynes asked bluntly. “Sir.”
Flynn forced himself to smile back at the square-shouldered, Army enlisted man. Boosting morale with stupid jokes and determined optimism was one of the most important tasks for any military officer, even when everyone knew it was total bullshit. “Now we all hoof it, PFC. Just like in the good old days. You joined the infantry first, didn’t you? Trekking through the wilderness on your own two feet ought to be right up your alley.”
“Yeah, cheer up, Cole,” one of the others said with a crooked smile of his own. “Sure, it’s fricking cold out. And it’s dark. And we’re all gonna have to drag our sorry asses through the snow for miles and miles—”
“I’m waiting for the ‘but’ here, Boyd,” Hynes said darkly.
“Well, I mean, how much worse could it get?” the other man finished.
“A lot worse,” another soldier said suddenly, looking off to the south.
Flynn turned and saw a little party trudging slowly toward them out of the darkness. Wade Vucovich was staggering along under the weight not only of his own equipment, but also that of Sanchez and Torvald Pedersen. The big New Mexican had Pedersen slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. In a rush, everyone moved to join them.
With a grunt, Sanchez stopped and kneeled down. Then, gently, he rolled the dark-haired sniper off his shoulder and set him carefully on the snow.
“What happened?” Flynn asked, squatting next to Pedersen.
“Screwed up my landing, sir,” the marksman said blearily. “I think I busted my leg.”
Sanchez nodded. “Me and Wade here splinted it and gave him some painkillers, but Tor can’t walk on that broken leg, so I had to carry him.” He saw the astonished look on Flynn’s face and said quickly, “It wasn’t that far, Captain. Not more than a half a mile.”
Flynn stared at him blankly. A half a mile. Through snow and ice in below-freezing temperatures. Damn, he thought with sudden pride, these men were good. And to think he’d first seen these guys as the Grimy Ten, a bunch of no-hopers foisted on him by other officers who were smart enough to get rid of them. He felt a moment’s regret that Airman Mitchell had been the one man who’d folded up in the crunch. Despite M-Squared’s occasional goofball tendencies, he’d seemed to be shaping up well.
“You’re not going to leave me here, are you, sir?” Pedersen asked suddenly, sounding worried.
“Oh hell no,” Flynn assured him, as a way to solve this problem abruptly unfolded inside his mind. It was just a question of applying their very limited but very real resources to the task in hand. “You can ride on the one sled that mostly survived the drop. We’ll fix it up and rig a couple of rope harnesses so we can take turns pulling you, like sled dogs.”
Behind him, he heard Hynes mutter, “Geez, M-Squared on the run, all our snow machines wrecked, and now a busted leg to top it off. Crap, the sarge is going to be really, really pissed off.”
Flynn raised his head in sudden concern. He looked around the circle of faces. Everyone else except Takirak had already arrived at the rally point. So where was the veteran NCO? Lying out there somewhere in the dark, injured himself or maybe dead? He scrambled back to his feet, ready to order out a search party to go look.
At that moment, Takirak came gliding into view, moving across the snow on snowshoes with easy, practiced strides. Despite the fact that he had the PRC-162 manpack radio slung over one shoulder, and his own rucksack and M4 carbine on the other, he looked surprisingly fresh.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” he told Flynn apologetically. “The wind carried me a ways farther than I hoped.”
“Glad you could finally join us, Sergeant,” Flynn replied with a slight smile to take away some of the sting of his words. Quickly, he outlined their current situation.
Takirak nodded stoically. “Well, it could be worse, I suppose,” he allowed.
Flynn saw Hynes roll his eyes dramatically and stifled a laugh. “I guess so, Andy.” He nodded to the radio the sergeant carried. “But if that thing’s still working, we need to report in.”
While the rest of the unit moved off to gather up any surviving supplies and work on the damaged sled, he and Takirak squatted down on the snow around the radio. Working efficiently, the sergeant unfolded the unit’s satellite communications antenna, angled it toward the horizon, and plugged in a battery pack.
As soon as he was done, Flynn flipped the power switches to on. They didn’t have any time to waste. The PRC-162’s batteries were rated to minus twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, but prolonged exposure to extreme low temperatures would reduce their effectiveness. He picked up the handset. “Kodiak Six to Jaybird One. Kodiak Six to Jaybird One. Come in, Jaybird.”
A squeal of static was the only answer.
With a frown, Takirak adjusted the antenna position. Above the Arctic Circle, it was often difficult to link with communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The extremely low angle required meant signals had to cross more atmosphere, with all the resulting distortion and loss of power. Plus, these high latitudes also adversely affected the refraction of radio signals. The Russians had far fewer communications problems in the Arctic, thanks to their own constellation of satellites in special polar orbits.
“Kodiak Six to Jaybird One,” Flynn tried again.
This time, a static-laden voice replied. “Jaybird One copies, Kodiak Six.” They’d reached Alaskan Command, six hundred miles south at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Swiftly and concisely, Flynn outlined their current status and location.
“Understood, Kodiak. Suggest you proceed to Site Alpha—” More high-pitched static squealed across their weak connection.
Flynn clicked his mike. “Affirmative on that, Jaybird.” Before it failed, satellites had picked up an F-22 Raptor’s emergency locator beacon about four miles southeast of their current position, somewhere near a range of steep hills that separated this particular valley from the next one over. It was labeled Site Alpha on their mission planning map.
“Recommend extreme caution,” Alaskan Command continued. “The Russians have already engaged in open hostilities to prevent CSAR operations in your area. Our runways here are still closed. We can’t provide any reinforcements or air support if you run into trouble.”
“Copy that, Jaybird One,” Flynn acknowledged. “Kodiak Six, out.”
He shut off the radio and waited while Takirak disconnected the battery and stuffed it back in his rucksack to stay warmer. “Nice to know they’re worried about us. Now, at least,” he commented.
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “Ass covering is a fine art,” he said irreverently. He looked at Flynn. “What are your orders, Captain?”
“We’ll march southeast along the valley toward that downed F-22,” Flynn decided. “But not until everyone’s gotten some food into them.” Extreme cold and exertion burned calories far more rapidly than anyone not used to Arctic conditions could imagine. And fatigue could easily become a lethal weapon in this climate. “Then we’ll move out, deployed in a skirmish line. I want to cover as much ground as we can. We know where one wrecked aircraft might be, but there are at least four others out there somewhere.”
Takirak nodded. “Sounds sensible, sir.” He stood up and slung the radio over his shoulder again. “With your permission, I’ll take point.”
“Good idea, Andy,” Flynn agreed. The older man had decades of experience surviving in this type of rugged terrain and severe winter weather. Relying on him to be their advance scout made perfect sense.
Thirty-Three
Crow Field, inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
That Same Time
Alexei Petrov stood in the shelter of the trees near their camouflaged encampment. He had his head cocked, listening intently as the sound of a large turboprop faded sl
owly in the distance. The aircraft, invisible in the clouds and darkness, had made one slow pass over the neighboring valley to the west before turning away to the north. He glanced at Bondarovich, standing next to him looking up at the sky. “You can relax now, Sergei. Whoever that was knocking on our door, they’re leaving now.”
The ex-Spetsnaz soldier scowled. “That was too close, Colonel.” He nodded toward the camouflaged aircraft shelter. “When can the PAK-DA take off? The sooner that bomber’s in the air and flying back to Russia, the sooner the rest of us can get out of here.”
“Not long now,” Petrov assured him. “No more than a few hours, so long as the winds continue to moderate.” He dug his boot into the snow layer, testing it. “Even after this storm, our improvised runway is still solid. So it’s just a question of waiting for the crosswinds to die down a bit.” He looked at Bondarovich. “I suggest you and your men grab some shut-eye while you can. Your prisoner, too. Poor Major Bunin has a long flight ahead, with the prospect of a cold welcome waiting for him at home. And the rest of us face what will certainly be a long, hard trek to Canada through these mountains, correct?”
The other man nodded in agreement. “True enough.” He smiled thinly. “Though at least our welcome will be much warmer than the major’s.” He raised an eyebrow. “What about you, Colonel?”
Petrov shrugged. “I want to refine the bomber’s return flight plan some more. Just to make sure Bunin won’t get picked up by American radar or patrols on his way out. After all, it would be bad business to take President Zhdanov’s money and then fail to return his property.” He waggled his steel hip flask with a knowing grin. “And if I get tired, I’ve always got a little pick-me-up to keep the party going.”