Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (13 page)

With the two platoons deployed out on the ice, the more
experienced men in Arctic and winter operations took the lead to
guide the others through the darkness. Ice floes were dangerous to
begin with, even more so at night when you could run into a lead—an
opening or crack in the ice—at any time. Also present would be
pressure ridges. While leads happened where the ice was pulled apart,
pressure ridges were created where the ice had been pushed together.
Aside from that, new leads could appear as the ice cracked, and new
fissures were created as the ice came apart.

Deckard chambered a round into the chamber of his
Kalashnikov, the others quickly following suit. They were going into
combat in the most inhospitable environment on earth, and this time
they were all looking for some payback after a string of embarrassing
defeats.

There was one thing that scared every former special operations
soldier more than death, and that was failure. They had lost men, and
with everything happening back in the world it was clear that the
stakes didn’t get any higher. Once again, Deckard and Samruk
International found themselves shadowboxing an elusive enemy.

Fanning out in a series of squad-sized wedge-shaped formations,
the mercenaries crept forward, their boots crunching through the
snow. It was really the sound of the Arctic, or lack of sound, that
drove home how far away they were from everything. Other than the
wind in their ears and the snow under their feet, there was
absolutely nothing. In the dark, they were isolated, each man looking
back and forth every few steps to make sure he wasn’t abandoned and
alone.

The formation moved northeast toward the enemy position. From
what little Cody had been able to surmise from the drone’s imagery,
the enemy had docked their boat alongside the five-foot-thick ice
floe and looked to be offloading personnel and equipment. In a quick
planning session, Deckard and the others gave it a high probability
that the enemy would be flying out the nuclear weapon on an aircraft
with ski wheels for landing on the ice. They would do it tonight,
under the cover of darkness. Deckard had to make sure that didn't
happen.

A clenched fist was held up by Jacob, who was leading the
movement. The signal was then passed down the line by the other
mercenaries. They were taking a tactical pause; something was
developing up ahead. Jacob cut a hard right and led them around a
lead that they had almost walked right into in the darkness. The
movement wasn’t especially strenuous since they were on a nearly
horizontal plane with little snow, but it was nerve-racking
nonetheless.

Halfway through the movement, someone broke squelch over the
radio net.

“Six, there is a new thermal signature.” It was Cody. “Looks
like an engine block.”

“Can you tell what it is?”

“I can’t see shit. I'm barely keeping this thing in the air
with all the wind!”

“Roger.”

One day they were going to have to waterboard Cody until he
learned proper radio procedures.

The mercenaries continued through the night, crossing over
several pressure ridges, one of them almost six feet tall. As they
got closer to where the enemy had docked, Deckard gritted his teeth.
If their adversary had more operational radar-guided machine guns,
they would quickly come under fire. His only hope was that the wind
and snow would interfere with those systems if they had them.

Then a high-pitched whine sounded in the distance. It
sounded like a massive lawnmower closing in on them as the buzzing
sound got louder.

“Get down!” Jacob barked over the radio as he threw
himself down on his belly. The mercenaries dove to the ground as a
hovercraft emerged out of the darkness and sped right past the
formation, seemingly unaware of their presence, bouncing by on its
rubber skirt. Deckard reached into his jacket and pulled out a small
Insight SU-232 thermal sight he wore around his neck by a lanyard to
keep it warm against his chest.

He pressed the rubber protector around the lens against his eye,
the thermal sight activated. The black-and-white image showed the
white-hot engine block in the rear of the vehicle. It looked to be a
fairly small hovercraft, maybe a two-seater with a storage
compartment in the back.

“That's it,” Deckard said to himself. “They are
transporting the nuke to a suitable place for an aircraft to land.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Kurt Jager said as he crawled
up alongside Deckard.

“Otter,” Deckard said as he keyed his radio. “Make sure the
snowmobile teams are ready. The enemy has the device loaded in a
hovercraft. We might need an intercept.”

“You got it, boss.”

The Samruk mercenaries waited for another few minutes to
make sure the coast was clear and that another hovercraft hadn't been
offloaded from the enemy vessel, and that others were not following
behind on foot.
Finally, Jacob gave the all-clear as they
moved out in the direction of the hovercraft. Under the moonlit sky,
they had visibility for about 50 meters, but the hovercraft had
quickly outpaced them. Cody provided updates to help guide them in
once it appeared the hovercraft had stopped in a large open patch of
ice.

It took another 20 minutes of walking before they made it
to where the hovercraft sat idle. The men shook out into an assault
line and crawled forward. Unfortunately, they were not lucky enough
to have a pressure ridge to use as cover. They were sitting ducks out
in the open. At least for now, they would have fire superiority. Just
to be sure, they detailed one squad to turn around and pull rear
security to make sure they didn't have any unpleasant surprises
coming up behind them.

The hovercraft sat in the open, waiting.

Sergeant Major Korgan was policing the line as he crawled
from position to position, making sure that everyone knew to hold
fire until the airplane had landed and was within range of effective
fire. Taking out the hovercraft and capturing the device that was
almost certainly on board would be a coup, but taking down the
aircraft would ensure that none of the enemy could be evacuated along
with it, essentially stranding them in the Arctic.

From there, Deckard would be happy to let the U.S. Navy sail
around and blow their ship out of the water at America's leisure
while he and his men took a vacation to Fiji.

The men worked their fingers inside their gloves, trying
to keep them warm. They had on enough cold-weather gear for the time
being, but they would freeze if they were exposed to the elements for
too long. The irony was that they ran the risk of overheating under
their parkas during the movement, but then froze half to death if
they were stationary for too long.

The cold was starting to make Deckard sleepy, a dangerous
situation that could quickly lead to hypothermia if he actually
passed out on the ice. He was grateful when the door on the
hovercraft flew open and one of the passengers jumped out onto the
ice. Deckard looked at him through the thermal sight, noticing an
Israeli bullpup rifle slung over his back. He didn't believe for a
moment that they were up against Israelis, but the state of Israel
had sold those guns all over the world, making them a much more
deniable weapon for black operations.

He realized that this was the first time they had actually gotten
eyes on the enemy. Thus far all they had done was fight robotic proxy
forces. Deckard scrutinized the image in his thermal sight as their
mysterious foe walked around the hovercraft, wondering who he was and
what he was thinking. Was he about to deploy some flares to guide in
the aircraft?

The mercenaries nearly jumped out of their skin when they heard a
massive fissure crack in the ice. A new lead opening under their
position could kill them in seconds. The ice continued cracking, the
sound reverberating across the empty expanse. Then, a few hundred
meters from the hovercraft, Deckard saw something rising up out of
the ice. Huge blocks of ice slipped and fell off the black form
emerging out of the ocean beneath their feet. A black tower pushed
right through the ice floe and rose into the air.

With the tower growing taller and taller, the ice in front of it
and behind it was propelled upwards, cracking down the middle around
the shape beneath it. The ice undulated and flexed outwards like a
wave as the tower sank back down into the water for a few seconds.
Then it was propelled back upwards, smashing against the ice again
and forming a hill on either side of the tower before coming to a
stop.

“Fuck me,” Deckard said, exhaling a white cloud, his breath
freezing in the air.

They were evacuating the nuclear weapon by submarine.

Sheets of ice were pushed off the top of the submarine mast, and
Deckard could make out several forms through his thermal sight moving
around up top. He was trying to zoom in and get a better look when
the batteries froze and the screen blinked out.

Meanwhile, the hovercraft pilot jumped back inside the craft and
powered it up. Skidding across the ice, the craft powered its way
closer to the submarine, coming to a stop alongside where the sub was
bulging out of the ice floe.

Deckard reached down and keyed his radio again.

“On my mark, give me a mad minute. Unload everything you've got
on them. Only put 7.62 on the hovercraft or we risk covering
ourselves in radioactive material.”

Fedorchenko and Shatayeva radioed back to confirm the
order.

The driver was back outside the hovercraft and opening the
bay doors in the rear. It was going down now. If they got away, the
next thing any of them knew, that nuclear bomb would be creating a
mushroom cloud over New York City or Washington D.C.

Resting his elbows in the snow, Deckard tucked the stock
of his Kalashnikov into the pocket of his shoulder. Looking down the
iron sights, he took aim at the rear of the hovercraft. The creeping
feeling of impending doom snuck up on him once again. Deckard had
seen enough combat to know that he had to act now, not let himself be
paralyzed by the fear of what could be.

Deckard milked the trigger until the stock recoiled back
into his shoulder.

Then the whole world exploded, turning into a game of Star Wars
as red and green tracer fire created a storm downrange from the
mercenaries. Bullets sparked against the hovercraft and the
submarine. Their remaining Carl Gustav and a half dozen RPG rocket
launchers shook the ice as they blasted the submarine. A few shots
went wide, but more than a couple scored direct hits, creating
brilliant yellow flashes that briefly illuminated the ice floe around
them.

Muzzle flashes continued to light up the darkness, looking
like dozens of strobe lights at a dance club as Samruk peppered the
enemy with automatic fire.
Deckard’s radio started blowing
up with a flurry of traffic that he wasn’t able to keep up with
over all of the shooting. Garbled transmissions rang out as squad
leaders attempted to give orders over the cacophony of machine gun
fire.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Deckard yelled.

After a few more sputters of gunfire, the Samruk mercenaries
managed to ratchet it down. They lay in the prone, watching for signs
of life. The submarine mast was now a smoking tower. Getting his
thermals back up for a few seconds after having it under his parka,
Deckard could make out several gaping holes in the submarine where
anti-tank rounds blasted it.

“Six,” Cody said over the radio. You’ve got a lot of
movement back at their ship. It looks like they are prepping a couple
more vehicles.”

“Launch the snowmobiles to intercept.”

“Roger.”

They watched and listened for signs of life in the kill zone, but
nothing moved.

“Assault!”

The mercenaries loaded fresh magazines into their rifles
and new belts into their machine guns before getting to their feet.
They rearranged themselves into a tighter assault line and began
stalking forward across the ice floe. A loud groan could be heard
over the sound of the wind in their ears, the submarine scraping
against the ice as it slowly began sinking.

“Six, this is Frogman,” Rochenoire said over the radio. “We
are en route to intercept the enemy snowmobile team, over.”

“Roger, Deckard confirmed. “We’re counting on you to
cover our six.”

Scanning for targets, none of the Kazakh, American, or European
mercs saw anything moving. They were a couple hundred meters away
from the hovercraft and the submarine, which was still sinking, when
they noticed the ice beneath their feet vibrating.

“Another lead opening in the ice?” Fedorchenko said from
Deckard’s side.

“Could be.”

The ice was now visibly vibrating, bouncing around the
snow on the surface. Several of the mercenaries slipped and had to be
helped back up to their feet. They stumbled along, heading toward the
hovercraft.

Then the ice snapped open, flashing like a bolt of
lightning right in front of their eyes. The chasm opened, the ice
tilting, sending the mercenaries falling to their knees or flat on
their faces. The crack continued to grow, racing up between the
submarine, the hovercraft, and the Samruk troopers.

Deckard’s mouth hung open as the ice tilted backwards,
sending them slipping away from the submarine. They skidded across
the floe, and without any ice axes to help them gain purchase, they
were at nature’s mercy. The mercenaries slid about half the length
of a football field. Deckard’s stomach turned upside down. The
sheet of ice was now pitching forward. An object in motion stays in
motion. They were about to slip right off the side and into the
crack; then, into the dark waters below.

“Brace yourself with something!” he yelled.

Down on his knees, Deckard slid toward the ice valley in front of
them. As the floe tilted down, he could see the churning Arctic
water. No one would be able to pull him out this time. Letting his
AK-103 hang by its sling, Deckard slapped at his chest rig, his hand
closing around the handle of his knife. Yanking the blade from the
Kydex sheath, he twisted to face the ice, then slammed the black
fixed-blade knife into the ice.