Cleary did not reply. He rose from his crouched position as Sharpsburg moved his Lion team forward.
On the face of it, the facility seemed like a bleak and austere layout. Cleary saw nothing special about it, but then trepidation began to mount. The compound appeared totally deserted. No workers showed themselves. No vehicles moved. It was too quiet. The entire inner compound was cloaked in a cold, eerie silence.
Karl Wolf stared at an array of monitors in the headquarters of his security guards on a floor below the main control center. He watched with bemused interest as Cleary and his assault teams made their way through the roads of the complex.
"You'll have no problem preventing them from interrupting our launch time?" he asked Hugo, who was standing next to him.
"None," Hugo assured him. "We have contemplated and drilled for such an intrusion many times. Our fortifications are in place, the barricades raised, and our armored Sno-cats awaiting my orders to move into battle."
Karl nodded in satisfaction. "You have done well. Still, these are the elite of the American fighting forces."
"Not to worry, brother. My men are just as well trained as the Americans. We heavily outnumber them and have the advantage of fighting on our ground. The element of surprise is in our favor, not theirs.
They do not suspect that they are walking into a trap. And we can travel through the facility's underground utility tunnels, emerge inside buildings, and attack their flanks and rear before they realize what is happening."
"Your overall strategy?" Karl asked.
"To gradually siphon them into a pocket in front of the control center, where we can destroy them at our leisure."
"Our ancestors who fought so many heroic battles against the Allies during the war would be proud of you."
Obviously pleased by his brother's compliment, Hugo clicked his heels and made a stiff bow. "I am honored to serve the Fourth Empire." Then he looked up and gazed at the monitors, studying the progress of the American fighting teams. "I must go now, brother, and direct our defenses."
"How long do you estimate it will take your men to crush the attackers?"
"Thirty minutes, certainly no more."
"That doesn't leave you and your men much time to reach and board the aircraft. Do not delay, Hugo.
I have no wish to leave you and your brave men behind."
"And lose our dream of becoming the founding fathers of a brave new world?" Hugo said spiritedly. "I don't think so."
Karl motioned toward the digital clock mounted between the monitors. "Twenty-five minutes from now, we shall set the ice shelf detaching systems on automatic. Then everyone in the control center will leave through the underground tunnel that leads to the worker's main dormitory safely beyond the battlefield. From there, we'll take electric vehicles to the aircraft hangar."
"We shall not fail," said Hugo, with iron resolve.
"Then good luck to you," said Karl. He solemnly shook Hugo's hand, before turning and stepping into the elevator that would take him to the control room above.
Cleary and the Lion team were only a hundred and fifty yards from the entrance of the control center when Garnet's voice came over his intercom. "Wizard, this is Tin Man. There's something wrong here. . ."
In that instant, Cleary spotted the barricade blocking the road in front of the control center, saw the dark muzzles of guns propped on its crest. He opened his mouth to shout, but it was too late. A deafening volley laid down by the security guards exploded in front of the Delta Force from every direction. The blasts from two hundred guns swamped and reverberated off the walls of the buildings, cutting the icy air with a deafening roar.
Garnet and his Marines were caught in the open and exposed, but they laid down a covering fire and took whatever cover they could find along the buildings. Despite the ruthless fusillade, they continued advancing toward the power station, until Garnet recognized an ice barricade that was nearly impossible to distinguish against the white background until he was less than a hundred yards away. His men began a counterfire, firing their Eradicator rifles' fragmentation missiles at the security guards behind the barricades.
In front of the control center, at almost the same moment, Cleary found himself facing the same type of ice wall and blistering fire that Garnet was experiencing. Vulnerable to the heavy fire, the lead man on the left flank of the Delta Force caught bullets in a knee and thigh and he went down. Moving flat on his stomach, Sharpsburg grabbed the wounded man by his boots and pulled him around the corner of the building.
Cleary ducked below a stairway leading into a small storehouse. Shards of ice rained down on his shoulders as a stream of shells burst into the icicles hanging from the roof above him. Then a shot struck his body armor square-on above his heart, sending him staggering backward, alive but with a pain in his chest as if someone were pounding it with a sledgehammer. Sergeant Carlos Mendoza, who was the best shot of the team, lined up the crosshairs through the scope of his Eradicator on the Wolf security guard who'd shot Cleary and squeezed the trigger. A black figure jerked up from the crest of the barricade before falling back and disappearing. The sergeant then selected his next target and fired away.
More bullets slammed into the roof above Cleary, scattering ice slivers in a hundred different directions. He saw too late that Wolf's security force was prepared and waiting for them. The fortifications had been designed and constructed for just such an attack. He painfully discovered that the lack of proper intelligence was killing them. He also began to perceive that his attacking force was badly outnumbered by the defenders.
Cleary cursed himself for relying on untested information. He cursed the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, who'd estimated the Wolf security force at no more than twenty to twenty-five men.
He cursed his lack of intuition, and in the heat of the moment he cursed himself for making the biggest mistake in his military life. He had badly underestimated his enemy.
"Tin Man!" he shouted into his microphone. "Report your situation!"
"I count sixty or more hostiles blocking the road in front of us," Garnet's voice replied in a monotone, as steady as if he were describing cows in a pasture. "We are under heavy fire."
"Can you force the issue and secure the power plant?"
"We are unable to advance due to extremely accurate fire. These are not your garden-variety security people we're facing. They know what they're doing. Can you send a team to relieve the pressure, Wizard? If we could band together in a flanking movement, I think we can take the barricade."
"Negative, Tin Man," replied Cleary. He well knew that the Recons were the elite of the Marine Corps. If they couldn't advance, nobody could. "We're also halted by heavy fire from at least eighty hostiles and cannot send support. I repeat, I cannot spare men to support you. Extricate as best you can and link up with Lion."
"Understood, Wizard. Withdrawing now."
With his Marines open and exposed, Garnet was frustrated to learn that he could expect no support, but had to retreat and find Cleary and Sharpsburg's Delta Force team through the maze of roads running through the facility. He wasted no time in considering going against orders and continuing the assault.
Charging a barricade manned by three times his force across an open road was suicidal and would accomplish nothing but the massacre of his command. He was left with no choice but to begin an orderly withdrawal, carrying out their wounded as they withdrew from the murderous fire.
Having advanced halfway around the control center, Jacobs and his SEALS were jolted by the thunder of conflict and the shocking reports from Cleary and Garnet. He urged his men forward in hopes of securing the control center from the rear and removing the heat from teams Tin Man and Lion. The SEALs were only a hundred yards from the control center building when two armored Sno-cats turned the corner ahead and opened fire on them.
Jacobs watched helplessly as two of his men were cut down. Madder than hell, he held the trigger on his Eradicator rifle until the fi
nal round ejected from the clip, then his sergeant grabbed him by the collar of his parka and pushed him behind a trash bin before a barrage of counterfire could strike him. A volley of fragmentation missiles from the SEAL team temporarily halted the Sno-cats, but they began to come on again.
The SEALs fought tenaciously as they executed their withdrawal up the road, using whatever cover they could find. Then, unexpectedly, two more Sno-cats suddenly appeared at their rear and unleashed a torrent of fire. Jacobs felt a knot form in his stomach. He and his team had nowhere to go except into a narrow side alleyway. He prayed they were not being forced into an ambush, but the alley looked clear for at least seventy yards.
As he ran after his men, hoping they could reach cover before the Sno-cats turned the corner of the alley and achieved a field of unobstructed fire, he reported to Cleary. "Wizard, this is Scarecrow. We are under attack by four armored Sno-cats."
"Scarecrow, do they carry heavy weapons?"
"None that show. I make four hostiles with automatic weapons in each vehicle. Our fragmentation missiles have little effect on them."
Cleary crawled under a stairway, using it as a shield, and studied his map of the mining facility. "Give me your location, Scarecrow."
"We are moving down a narrow road toward the sea behind what looks like a row of maintenance shops about a hundred and fifty yards from the control center."
"Scarecrow, go another fifty yards, then bend a right turn and advance between a series of fuel storage tanks. That should bring you close to the front of the control center from a side road, where you can flank the hostiles pinning us down."
"Roger that, Wizard. On our way." Then, as an afterthought, Jacobs asked, "What have we got for defense against the armored Sno-cats?"
"Tin Man has two LAWs."
"We'll need four."
"The man carrying the other two went missing during the jump."
"Tin Man is at the power station," Jacobs said, frustrated. "He's not facing the armored cats, we are."
"I ordered him to withdraw from his objective because of overwhelming concentrated fire. He should be converging with Lion shortly."
"Tell him to load up, because four of those nasty vehicles will be right on our tail when we step into your front yard."
Jacobs and the SEALS soon circled the fuel storage tanks without encountering organized gunfire.
Frequently glancing at his map of the facility, he led his men around a long wall that appeared to end near the front of the control center. It seemed like perfect cover, as they rushed to outflank the security guards behind the barrier who were blasting hell out of Sharpsburg and his Delta Force. Hardly had the SEALs come within fifty yards of the end of the wall when a blaze of concentrated fire struck them from the rear.
Unknown to them, a group of security guards had rushed through an underground tunnel and appeared from a building behind, a tactic that was happening with increasing frequency. Jacobs saw that it was virtually impossible to continue on his flanking maneuver, so he took his men along the path of least resistance and led them down a street strangely free of hostile gunfire.
Only eighty yards away, Cleary lay flat and peered through his binoculars, searching for a weak spot in the barricade blocking the entrance to the control center. He found none and realized that, like Garnet's, his position was rapidly becoming untenable, yet he was determined to make an assault on the control center as soon as he was reinforced by the Marine Recon Team, and the SEALs had begun their flanking attack on the barricade.
But down deep, doubts were starting to form as to whether he could still pull the coals of final victory out of the fire.
The security guards were waging war with a vengeance. In their minds, they were fighting not only for their own lives but for the lives of their families who were waiting on board the Ulrich Wolf. Hugo himself was in the thick of the fighting in front of the control center, directing his forces and tightening the noose on the American assault team. His arrogance while issuing orders reflected his supreme confidence and optimism. His battle strategy was going exactly as he'd planned it. Hugo was in the enviable position of a commander who could dictate the terms of the fight.
He was flushing his enemy into one concentrated area for annihilation, as he had promised his brother Karl.
He spoke into an intercom mike inside his battle helmet. "Brother Karl?"
There was a moment or two of slight static before Karl responded. "Yes, Hugo."
"The intruders are contained. You and Elsie and the others can leave for the hangar as soon as the engineers set the nanotech systems on automatic."
"Thank you, brother. I'll soon meet you at the aircraft."
Two minutes later, as Hugo was ordering his two remaining armored Sno-cats to charge the American team, a security guard rushed to him behind the barricade and shouted, "Sir, I have an urgent message from the aircraft hangar!"
"What is it?" Hugo yelled above the gunfire.
But in that instant, Sergeant Mendoza squinted at the head behind the crosshairs inside his sniper scope and gently pulled the trigger of his Eradicator. The guard dropped dead at Hugo's feet, neither hearing nor feeling the bullet enter his right temple and exit the left. The message he had urgently wished to report, on the destruction in the aircraft hangar by a strange vehicle, died with him.
Garnet's Marines linked up with Sharpsburg's Delta team and took cover, as the four Sno-cats withdrew from chasing Jacobs and attacked them in a double column from the rear. They came on oblivious to the two antitank weapons aimed at them by the Marines, who at less than a hundred yards couldn't miss. The lead Sno-cats went up in an explosion of fire and flying debris and bodies, forming an effective roadblock that prevented the remaining vehicles from striking the already beleaguered Americans.
Cleary realized quickly that the reprieve had only short-term benefits and was temporary. It would be only a question of time before the security guards wised up to the fact that no more antitank shells were being fired because the supply was exhausted. Then the armored Sno-cats would attack, and there would be no stopping them. When Jacobs and his team hit the barricade from the flank, hopefully the advantage would swing to their side.
In Washington, the battlefield reports from the men under fire made it evident that the assault force was in deep trouble. It was becoming more obvious by the minute that Cleary and his men were being shot to pieces. The President and the Joint Chiefs could not believe what they heard. What had been launched as a daring mission had turned into a slaughter and a disaster. They were shocked by the growing realization that the mission had failed, and that the entire inhabited world was in jeopardy of vanishing, a nightmare they found impossible to accept.
"The aircraft carrying the main force," the President said, his thinking becoming disoriented, "when. .
.?"
"They won't be over the compound for another forty minutes," answered General South.
"And the countdown?"
"Twenty-two minutes until the currents are right for the ice shelf to break off."
"Then we've got to send in the missiles."
"We will be killing our own men as well," cautioned General South.
"Do we have another option?" the President put to him.
South looked down at his open hands and slowly shook his head. "No, Mr. President, we don't."
Admiral Eldridge asked, "Shall I alert the commander of the Tucson to launch missiles?"
"If I may suggest," said the Air Force chief of staff, General Coburn, "I think it best that we send in the Stealth bombers. Their aircrews are more accurate in guiding their missiles to a target than an unmanned Tomahawk launched from a submarine."
The President quickly made his decision. "All right, alert the bomber pilots, but tell them not to fire until ordered. We never know when a miracle might happen and Major Cleary can force his way into the control center and halt the countdown."
As General Coburn issued the order, General South muttered u
nder his breath, "A miracle is exactly what it will take."
<<43>>
Streets ran off the square between buildings that protruded from the ice. They were not on the massive scale of much later civilizations, but their architectural characteristics were unlike any Pitt and Giordino had ever seen in their travels. There was no telling how many acres or square miles the city covered.
What they saw was only a fraction of the magnificence that was the Amenes.
Rising up from one end of the square, an immense, richly ornate structure with triangular columns supported a pediment decorated with fleets of ancient ships in relief over a frieze carved with intricate sculptures of animals mingling with people wearing the same dress found on the mummies at St. Paul Island. The basic design of the colossal building was unlike any still standing from the ancient world. It would have been obvious to the eye of an architect that its basic structural form had been passed down through the millennia and copied by later builders of the great temples of Luxor, Athens, and Rome. The columns, however, were triangular, and looked foreign when compared to the much later round, fluted Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns.
A large entrance yawned beyond the columns. There were no stairs. The upper levels were reached by gradually sloping ramps. Spellbound, Pitt and Giordino exited the Snow Cruiser and walked past the columns. Inside the main chamber, a vast corbeled triangular roof soared above the ice-covered, rock-hewn floor. In huge niches along the walls were stone statues of what must have been Amenes kings, powerful-looking creations with round eyes and narrow faces carved out of granite rich in quartz that shimmered as they walked past them. Sculptured heads of men and a few women were set in the floor, staring upward through their thin coating of ice, with Amenes inscriptions engraved above and below them.
In the center of the great chamber, a life-size sculpture of an ancient ship, complete with banks of oars, full sails, and crews, stood on a pedestal. The sight was nothing less than spectacular. The sheer artistry, craft, and technical mastery of stone gave it an eerie mystique that mocked modern sculpture.
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