Decipher (45 page)

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Authors: Stel Pavlou

BOOK: Decipher
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Directing everyone else to hold position, he doubled back and pulled out his set of binoculars. “Christ almighty … Richard, what are you
doing
?”
Hackett turned back, concerned. “What is it?”
Scott was pulling his arm back. Balling his fist. He was swinging—
 
Wham!
The sock to the Chinese soldier's gut was so intense the man dropped on the spot, doubled up in pain. Gant was impressed. “And that was Chinese for
what?”
“My fucking leg!” Scott looked to the others who were dumbstruck. “Like I said, I can
read
it! I didn't say I can
speak
the damn language! Come on!”
Gant was immediately on it with him. He dragged the soldier behind a tent. Grabbing his knife, he was about to jab at the base of the young soldier's neck when Matheson asked him to stop.
“What are you doing?”
Gant was exasperated but they were in too much of a hurry to argue. Instead they had him gagged, bound and relieved of his weapon within seconds. But they still only had seconds maybe before that discovery was made too.
Sarah was confused. “But you translated that soldier's speech. At
Jung Chang
when Bob projected himself over—”
“Cantonese, he was speaking Cantonese,” Scott snapped. “This joker speaks Mandarin.”
Gant jabbed a finger out at the APC. “Okay, Matheson, hotwire that thing.”
Matheson nodded. “I think I can.”
“Don't think,” Gant ordered. “Just do it.”
Michaels was perplexed. “There are
two
types of Chinese?”
Scott indicated the warhead. “Let's go.”
 
“Shit, shit, shit!” Pearce exclaimed, in the loudest, harshest whisper. he could allow himself in his position. “They've taken a guard out!”
Hackett crawled up next to him. “That was the idea.”
“Yeah, well it's the wrong guard. Look.”
Hackett pulled his own binoculars out to peer deep into the enemy encampment. At the rear of the APC the team had the deployment doors wedged open and were dragging the warhead up inside. While in the cab, Matheson was ripping open a panel. Crossing wires. Smoke was pouring out the vertical exhaust at the rear of the vehicle.
The APC roared into life. Even at this distance they could hear its distinct and familiar growl and whistle. As around the far corner, from behind some mobile command trucks, another man was emerging. The real vehicle guard.
That
was the man they were supposed to have taken out.
And he was making a beeline straight for them.
Hackett flipped onto his back, beckoning Brandes over. “What heavy explosives do you guys carry around?”
“You mean like mortars, grenades?”
“Yeah.”
“Mortars and grenades,” the medic shrugged.
Hackett jerked a thumb at the encampment. “Then I'd think of something fast if I were you. Any minute now they're gonna need a diversion.”
That was when the gunshot rang out across the encampment.
Pearce was mortified as he spied the team. “Uh-oh.”
 
Gant stepped away from the APC, his hands raised above his head as the Chinese guard waved the muzzle of his gun through the window of the cab. Matheson didn't seem to twig he was being ordered to get out. But the second shot into the air soon brought it home. He shifted, but the scowl on Gant's face said it all: “Don't move.”
Gant took a step forward. The soldier screamed back at him, while across the camp other soldiers were emerging from their tents to see what all the commotion was about. An officer irritably stepped down from his command truck, flanked by his juniors as he struggled to do up his coat. While at the rear of the APC, Michaels looked up at Sarah, frozen in the doorway, and silently raised his finger to his lips. Standing next to him was Scott on one side, Hillman on the other. With the warhead safely inside, one
of the rear doors was already bolted shut. The other was midway.
Slowly, very slowly, Michaels eased the door toward Sarah for her to jam shut and whispered: “Tell Ralph to floor it.”
She nodded that she understood. Shared a brief worried look with Scott and closed the door tightly.
Soldiers across the encampment were edging forward now, not particularly sure they knew what was going on. Suddenly a snatch of Cantonese Scott could understand came his way.
“He thinks we're deserters,” the epigraphist explained. “He thinks we're trying to steal this carrier and escape.”
“He thinks right,” Hillman replied.
But the conversation was cut short as the entire vista of black tents lined up before them suddenly exploded into livid flame. Soldiers were blown sky high. Munitions caught in the blast reacted with volatile spitting flame for meter upon meter.
And it was all the excuse Gant needed to hurl his knife directly at his would-be captor.
The blade buried itself deep into the young man's left eye-socket right up to the hilt as the Major glared at Matheson.
“Go!”
The engineer crunched the vehicle into gear and shot forward, tearing through the tents and leaving nothing but devastation in his wake. Gant dived for the dead soldier's gun, coming back up on one knee to lay a burst of suppressing fire while Hillman grabbed Scott by the arm.
“C'mon, Professor! You may know a lot, but do you know how to drive one of these things?” the marine yelled, indicating one of the snowmobiles.
Scott shrugged him off, because as it turned out, he did. Slinging one leg over and punching up the power, he slipped the throttle out and careened off into the carnage.
Hillman, Michaels and Gant were not far behind.
And neither was the People's Seventh Armored Division, Elite Guard.
 
“Fire one more!” Brandes ordered.
“But our people are comin' straight at us!” one of the privates manning the mortar yelled.
“So fire it over their heads!”
The soldier complied, turning one of the Chinese command trucks into a screaming ball of orange fury. But the devastation was far more than they could have expected. The ground opened up under that entire section of the encampment, turning sheet ice into a seemingly bottomless rift valley. Volcanic steam from deep within the glacial interior blasted out.
 
Matheson shifted gears. “That explains it!” he tossed back over his shoulder.
“Explains
what
?” Sarah scowled, grabbing hold of a hand-rail on the ceiling to try to stop herself from being thrown across the rear section as the APC bounced along.
“Why the Chinese didn't camp closer to
Jung Chang.
That satellite image of Atlantis showed the city was several miles across—the size of Manhattan. We're directly above it, even this far out from
Jung Chang.
The ice must be fractured for miles all around here. When Atlantis powered up it started melting the ice underneath.”
“Great,” Sarah replied. “So Atlantis could be sunk all over again.”
“Shit,” Matheson realized. “I never thought of that. What the hell do we do if we can't get down there?”
 
As the Ski-Doos of Scott and the others dodged in and out of the tents, following in the wake of the receding APC, they suddenly found themselves cut off and had to double back, finding makeshift ramps they could use as jumping-off points. Under a hail of crossfire they each jumped the chasm, landing heavily on the other side.
 
The marines operating the mortar quickly disassembled it and stuffed it away for transport as the APC thundered across the ice, swerving into a skid and kicking up ice. Sarah threw the rear doors open. “Get in!”
No one needed telling twice. They scrambled to their feet, the marines laying down. cover fire as the scientists went first.
Hackett pulled himself up into the front passenger seat, saying: “Well, this is nice.” When suddenly he became
aware of several low thudding sounds peppering one side of the vehicle, like kids throwing stones. “Hey! We're being shot at!”
Matheson glowered. “No shit, Sherlock!”
“Ouch!”
Pearce screeched as he bashed his arm trying to sit up. November tended to him as he tried to stem the blood oozing from a wound on his arm.
“Come on!” Sarah screamed at the marines out the back door. “Get in, we gotta go!”
“Negative!” Brandes hollered back. “We gotta stay and cover those guys or they'll never make it!”
“You don't get up here now—
you'll
never make it!” But as she said it she was already starting to regret it as an explosion not far off rocked the entire vehicle and blasted two of the marines apart.
Sarah was in shock. She didn't know what to do. Frozen, she had no comprehension of the fact that Brandes had slammed the door shut in her face and was twisting the lock closed from the outside.
The APC shook again. Rocked by another explosion.
Matheson shot a look over his shoulder. “What's going on? Are we done?”
Hackett took a closer look and realized Bob Pearce was lying on the deck of the vehicle bleeding badly. “Let's get outta here!” he yelled.
Matheson shoved it into gear. They were away.
 
Scott dodged and weaved his way past scrambling enemy soldiers and crumbling ice flats in an attempt at a military zigzag. But in the end it was easier just to drive straight through any obstacles.
Coming up on his left flank was Gant, who slammed into one soldier, ripping the rifle from his arms. He swung the weapon back behind him and fired successive bursts as a cover fire until the entire clip was spent.
But even though every shot was off target, they all counted and they had a clear throughway by the time they had picked up the tracks of the APC again.
They swerved up to where the marines were waiting.
“Brandes, Jackson! Everybody! Climb on board—now!” Gant bellowed.
Hillman glanced over his shoulder at the approaching Chinese forces who had taken to their other Ski-Doos and APCs. Even two of the helicopters were powering up, their rotors starting to spin. “Oh Christ, c'mon, you guys, we gotta get the fuck outta here!”
Eventually the marines moved. Brandes even sat upright. But they weren't going with their commanding officer. They would never be going anywhere again.
They were dead. And they were being used as shields by the Chinese Special Forces Commandos who were lying in wait underneath.
Michaels was the first to react, plowing through his fallen comrade and crushing the commando caught underneath. The sharp metal tracks on the rear end of his vehicle spun and ripped the clothes off the dead soldier's chest, tearing into his flesh before catching traction again and zipping the marine off after the APC. The other three quickly followed on behind.
They passed by an ice mound, oblivious to the fact that two bemused Chinese scouts on their own Ski-Doos were sitting on top. As their radios kicked into life they swung their vehicles around and set off in pursuit.
 
“Where are we going?” Matheson demanded as he struggled to keep control of his vehicle at such a high speed.
Hackett turned the map upside down and around again, but try as he might he couldn't make head nor tail of it. “It's uh, all in Chinese,” he revealed, folding the document he'd found secreted away inside a compartment into a more user-friendly size. “I can't make it out. Hell, where's a linguist when you need one?”
“Well, they gotta have a sign for north or south or some such shit. It's universal.”
Hackett held the map up for Matheson to see and jabbed a finger at all the squiggles. “Not in China!”
“Hey, Bob's bleeding really bad, back here,” November cried out. “Anyone see a medical kit?”
Hackett scratched around. “Uh, no. That a problem?”
Pearce gritted his teeth as he held his arm. There was a blackened piece of sharp metal protruding from his forearm. “Yes!” he cried. “Yes, it's a fucking problem!”
Sarah winced when she got a good look. “Strong words, Bob. We'll think of something.”
“Excuse me?” Matheson interrupted.
“What?”
Matheson gesticulated at the windshield. “Which direction?”
Everywhere they looked there was just a vista of barren, desolate snow and ice.

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