Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (7 page)

Deckard walked off to the side and crouched down next to a
pile of expended shell casings. Picking up one of the shells with a
gloved hand, Deckard recognized it as a 12.7mm DShK heavy machine gun
cartridge casing. Dropping the brass shell, Deckard clicked his
radio. “Seven, this is six. How are the barracks looking?” he
asked Korgan.

“Mostly empty, but some of the compartments have been
completely ripped apart by heavy machine gun fire, over.”

“12.7mm?”

“Maybe, but I don't see any firing positions.”

Deckard walked around the pile of expended brass. In the snow, it
was easy to find and follow spoor. Taking the hint from Korgan, he
immediately saw tank treads next to the pile of brass. They seemed to
lead off in another direction.

Tanks? But where did they go?

“Barracks secured,” Korgan reported.

“Airfield has been swept as well,” Fedorchenko radioed in.
“No sign of the enemy, over.”

Deckard knew that something was seriously wrong. Someone just
wasted a company’s worth of Russian soldiers with tanks and machine
guns. They didn't just disappear.

Deckard looked down the slope on the opposite end of the
airfield, noticing that the Russian motor pool looked untouched,
unlike the barracks and other vehicles scattered around the island.
Reaching into his chest rig, he pulled out a small three-power
monocular. Lifting up his snow goggles, he cupped his hand around the
monocular and took a closer look at the garages a few hundred meters
away.

The motor pool looked dead; clouds of snow had been blown around the
parking area. Then the doors on the garage suddenly began to open.
Deckard squinted, trying to get a better view of what was inside.
Then he saw it.

Deckard hit the transmit button on his radio.

“We’ve got a problem.”

Chapter 5

“To your three o’clock!” Deckard shouted over the assault
net as he ran, but it was already too late.

Five treaded vehicles burst from behind the slope and rolled onto
the airfield, their turrets scanning in all directions for targets.
Then the slaughter began.
Machine guns mounted on the tanks
opened fire, yellow flashes bursting from the muzzles as
anti-aircraft rounds began tearing into Fedorchenko's platoon.

Deckard hit the ground, hoping to avoid being detected by
the tanks. He was out in the open in the middle of the airfield, just
like Fedorchenko’s men. He watched helplessly as a half dozen of
his men burst into pieces as they tried to run, turning the snow red.
The gray-colored tanks rolled across the airfield.
The
rotating turrets on top had 12.7mm DShK machine guns loaded into
their cradles. Deckard noted two rectangular radar dishes sticking
from the sides of the turrets like ears. There was also a sensor
suite on each gun platform for thermals. Two of the tanks locked on
to Samruk's second platoon over at the barracks and took off on a new
trajectory.

Fedorchenko’s men had beaten an embarrassing and chaotic
retreat, desperate to find some low ground to take cover in. Their
numbers had been thinned out as they crossed the airfield. They were
still in danger of being overrun by the armored vehicles, as the
tanks were not about to be slowed down by Kalashnikov fire.

Deckard panted, his body already covered in sweat from the
brief run. The great irony of the Arctic was overheating inside all
of your cold-weather gear. Fedorchenko’s men were staring down
three tanks, and no matter how badass an infantryman you were, enemy
armor could steamroll right over you in the blink of an eye, reducing
you to a pink, gooey paste.

That was when Deckard had a dumb idea.

He might be able to peel one of the tanks away from Fedorchenko’s
platoon so they would face two instead of three, maybe even giving
them a fighting chance. Getting to his feet, Deckard unloaded on the
closest tank, about a hundred meters away, with his AK-103. His
rounds sparked off the side of the tank, drawing its attention. The
treads on one side of the tank reversed while the other continued
forward, making a sharp right turn toward Deckard as the gun turret
sought him out.

As the tank swerved toward him, Deckard sprinted, but not in the
opposite direction. He ran straight toward it.

Crazy as it sounded, Deckard knew that trying to outrun the tank
was pure suicide across open terrain. His only chance was to charge
it, knowing that the machine gun had limits to its elevation angle.
His hood flew off his head as he ran directly at the tank, sweat
running down his neck. Thick gray smoke suddenly burst all around
Fedorchenko’s position
as his men deployed thermal smoke
grenades. The tank was now facing Deckard, and he was staring right
down the barrel of the Russian anti-aircraft gun.

Deckard dived forward as the DShK opened fire.

* * *

The Russian robotic tank swung toward the two new Samruk
International recruits. It was only their second mission with the
company and they were already being run to ground by robots with
machine guns.

Maurizio and Jacob were quickly separated from the rest of their
platoon as twin tanks suddenly assaulted the barracks and opened fire
on the Samruk International mercenaries. So much for following the
clues and unraveling the mystery of what happened to the base on
Kotelny Island. The answer had became immediately clear to them.

The Italian and Danish mercs did what all the others had
done, the only thing they could do: run and try to find cover. One of
the tanks homed in on them, firing bursts that chewed through the
snow next to them. By zigzagging a few times they had managed to
avoid being cut down in the open snow drifts. The computer targeting
programming the tank used clearly had a hard time leading targets,
but they both knew they only had seconds before the machine gun fire
walked into them.

“This way,” Jacob said, grabbing Maurizio’s sleeve. They
cut a hard left and descended down a snow bank. Both mercenaries
tripped in the knee-deep snow and rolled down the embankment. The men
flopped through the snow, the tank quickly bearing down on them.

Maurizio lay on his back at the bottom, looking up at the ridge
as the automated tank rolled over the edge. The turret swung toward
them. The former Italian counterterrorist operator rolled the stock
of his Kalashnikov into his shoulder, ready to go down in a blaze of
glory. Both mercenaries fired ineffectively at the vehicle.

The turret tried to lock onto its targets as the tank platform it
was attached to began to slide in the snow. The DShK opened fire,
12.7mm rounds spraying right in front of the mercenaries. Then the
tank lurched again and began sliding down the embankment. The
European mercenaries continued to fire, cycling through their
30-round magazines. Their bullets smacked into the tank armor, the
turret, and the machine gun.

Now the robotic tank was sliding down on top of them. Maurizio
struggled to his feet. Grabbing Jacob with both hands, he pulled him
out of the way as the tank rolled over in the snow. It flopped down
just a few feet away, crushing the turret under the tank platform.
The treads spun, but with the vehicle flipped upside down. It was
going nowhere fast.

The Dane and the Italian looked at each other with wide eyes.

“
Che palle
,” Maurizio whispered.

What a ball-breaker.

* * *

Bullets ripped just inches above Deckard and slammed into
the snow-covered runway, stitching a burst across the tarmac that
kicked up ice and debris. Deckard slid forward on his forearms, the
toes of his boots dragging as he attempted to gain purchase on the
ice. He got halfway up, stumbled forward, fell, and the tank was on
top of him. The mercenary lay as flat as possible, tightly gripping
his Kalashnikov.

His ears rang as the tank rumbled over him, the clanking treads
passing on either side.

Seeing daylight again as the tank passed, Deckard sprang to his
feet, ran a few more paces to catch up with the tank as it searched
for new targets, and jumped.

His hand seized a thick rubber cable looping down from an antenna
on the back of the tank. With a sudden jerk, Deckard was lifted off
his feet and dragged behind the tank. With the AK slung over his
shoulder, Deckard reached out and grabbed the cable with both hands.
His gloves had a good grip, but his hands still slipped around inside
them. Knowing he was all out of options, Deckard ignored the pain in
his shoulders, gripped the cable tighter, and climbed hand over hand.

As he gripped the antenna mast and pulled himself on top
of the tank, he saw over his shoulder that Fedorchenko’s employment
of smoke grenades for concealment had worked, confusing the tanks
while Samruk’s Gustav gunners began wreaking havoc.
It
looked like they had already scored a mobility kill against one tank
as it spun in circles on one tread. The other looked permanently
decommissioned.

The tank cut a turn underneath him, nearly throwing Deckard off
as he hugged the antenna mast. From the sensor array, he knew
immediately what he was looking at. It was not a manned battle tank,
but rather a deadly remote-controlled one. It was an unmanned
vehicle, receiving signal commands from the antenna he clung to. The
Russians called such a tank a Mobile Robotic Complex, and this
particular model was nicknamed the Wolf-2. Good for protecting Arctic
infrastructure since robots never got cold the way soldiers did.

Since it was a robot, Deckard knew he didn’t have to actually
destroy the tank. All he needed to do was make it blind and deaf by
disabling its sensor array. Robots were a lot easier to game than
human beings since they operate within such strict programmed
parameters, much the same way he easily got underneath the attack
angle allowed by the mechanics of the machine gun turret. A human
operator would have known better.

The tank was circling around, scanning for more targets. Deckard
climbed across the top of the vehicle as it sped across the runway,
moving toward the radar dishes mounted on the turret. Reaching for
his chest rig, he began freeing a hand grenade when the Wolf-2's
radar locked onto a target.
The entire gun turret swung around
to fire.

Deckard hardly saw the DShK barrel coming as it slammed
into his chest. Picked up off his feet, his legs dangled in the air
off the side of the tank as the barrel began spitting fire.

* * *

Nikita threw himself through the doorway as automatic
gunfire ripped the walls down around him. Between bursts, he could
hear the
clank-clank-clank
of the tank treads, then another
burst of anti-aircraft rounds that poked holes about as big around as
his thumb through the walls of the barracks.

First, Fedorchenko’s platoon got hit out on the airfield, and
then a minute later, Sergeant Shatayeva’s platoon began getting
pounded at the abandoned barracks. The soldier housing complex was
made up of adjoining compartmentalized containers that had been
elevated on stilts to keep them above the snow and ice. The barracks
had already been torn apart when they got there, the gory remains of
frozen Russian soldiers decorating what was left of their living
quarters.

Now the entire complex was being turned into a giant gerbil maze
filled with Samruk mercenaries trying to find concealment as the
tank’s radar-guided machine gun sought them out from below. Nikita
cursed himself as he came up on a knee. He poked his head out,
thinking that his camouflage uniform would keep him from being
spotted.

It was called chromacamo. Extremely expensive and only available
in limited numbers, chromacamo was a type of ‘smart’ camouflage
that changed color to match the the soldier’s environment. Nikita
had first experimented with it during a mission to Mexico, but now
the entire sniper and recce section made use of it.

Camouflage worked great at keeping the sniper concealed
from drug traffickers, terrorists, and enemy soldiers, but this was a
different ball game. The thermal and radar system on the automated
hunter/killer tank below skipped right past the optical illusion
created by camouflage. It was designed to deceive the human eye, not
a robotic one.

The radar or thermals on the mobile robotic platform must have
picked up on something, because another long burst of autofire began
tearing through what was left of the facade holding up the roof.
Nikita rolled left with his HK417 rifle in his hands as more holes
were punched through the floor. The entire barracks was
disintegrating right out from under him.

Climbing through a ragged hole in the far wall, Nikita
escaped out the back. A narrow catwalk led him to a metal ladder.
Slinging his rifle, he began to scale it up to the roof. The tank was
on a warpath, and running away would just earn him a bullet in the
back. Up on the roof, he caught a gust of arctic wind to the face,
snowflakes whisking over his goggles. Then he caught sight of a dozen
other mercenaries up on the rooftops of the adjacent buildings. They
were all lying low without adequate weapons to address the problem
below.

One of the American mercenaries was on the radio, hissing into
the mic to the mortar section that had been getting set up near where
the Carrickfergus made its landing. Not that calling in a fire
mission was even possible. They were just meters away from the tank
below and mortars rounds would rain down right on top of them.

Nikita crept to the edge of the roof and risked a glance down.
The tank was still clanking between the barracks buildings. It locked
on to something for a second and let off a couple of rounds. They
could always wait around for the tank’s magazine to empty as it lit
up suspected targets, but who knew how many friendlies would be
killed in the process?

With 7.62mm rifles, they might be able to take out the thermal
and radar targeting sensors if they focused enough coordinated fire
on them. But from their vantage point, he had a better idea.