Ice War (14 page)

Big Billy grunted something and the others laughed.

“We do not aim for the armour, but for the battery pack,” Nukilik said. “They are vulnerable, and in this place, killing the thermals in a suit is almost as deadly as killing a person.”

Monster thought of Emile and said nothing.

Big Billy spoke in Inupiat to Nukilik then handed him a bundle of cloth. Nukilik seemed surprised. He shrugged then handed the bundle to Monster. It was heavy.

“This belongs to my father,” Nukilik said. “He wants you to take it.”

Monster slowly unwrapped the cloth. Inside was an oilskin, and inside that a deadly black shape. A huge pistol – a hand cannon.

“Smith and Wesson, forty-four magnum,” Nukilik said.

Monster picked it up, feeling the balance.

Nukilik smiled. “You have made a real impression on my father. This is his most precious treasure. He has never even let me borrow it.”

“I will try to make good use of it,” Monster said.

Barnard closed the top hatch delicately, clicking it into place with the gentlest of touches.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“How long have we got to get clear?” Price asked.

“I set the fuse for thirty minutes,” Barnard said. “Twenty-nine minutes on my mark … now.”

Price tapped a button to set a timer on the headup display inside her mask.

The exit hatch opened without warning and the Vaza stuck her head through it. She took in the scene in an instant and dived back down out of sight as Price hit the release for her coil-gun.

“Damn,” Price said.

“Gotta get after her,” The Tsar said, his coil-gun in his hands also. He ran towards the hatch.

“No!” Price said. “She’ll be waiting for you. Go down that hatch, you’re dead.”

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1440 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Bilal stopped at the elevator that was the entrance to the command bunker. Wilton stopped behind him.

Two guards checked his ID card with a handheld scanner, then repeated the same for Wilton, before admitting them. The doors slid open with a slight whoosh, and slid shut behind them as soon as they entered.

When the lift opened on the lower level, another guard checked their IDs again. It was a high security area.

“Try to look older,” was Bilal’s only comment.

After the brightly lit corridors outside, the command centre itself was in virtual darkness, or so it seemed until Wilton’s eyes grew accustomed to the low levels of light, coming mainly from computer screens. Around the walls were an endless series of workstations, all occupied by uniformed officers. The ceiling was high and domed.

In the centre of the room was an oval table, littered with coffee cups and small plates of half-eaten sandwiches.

Wilton looked around the faces, recognising only a few of them. General Harry Whitehead was often seen on the news, commenting on the ups and downs of the war. General Jake Russell was the head of the Bering Strait Defence Force, and therefore Wilton’s commanding officer. The others he could identify by the nameplates in front of each chair. Wilton felt awkward and unsure of himself in such company, but tried not to show it. What was he, a teenager, doing here with all these high-powered commanders? Then again, he decided, he had battled aliens in the tunnels of Uluru and the top of the Wivenhoe Dam. Had any of these guys even seen combat?

“This is Blake,” Bilal said, and Wilton noticed that he deliberately omitted his surname. “He is a Bzadian translator. Fluent in all languages and dialects.”

Several of those at the table greeted him with a nod, and Wilton returned it, feeling extremely uncomfortable under their gaze and repeating over and over to himself.
Uluru. Wivenhoe
.

“We have a whole roomful of people for that,” Russell said. “What’s he doing in here?”

“If we pick up any transmissions from the ice, I want to know what they are saying while they are saying it,” Bilal said. “Not half an hour later after your roomful of experts have debated the meaning of every syllable.”

Russell opened his mouth to argue, then clearly thought the better of it and shook his head. Bilal pointed Wilton to a workstation before taking his own seat.

Wilton logged on to the computer then took his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. He made sure it was switched to silent.

The others at the table waited while Bilal punched up some information on the screen in front of him.

“You all got my report,” Bilal said.

“With no evidence to support it,” Russell said. “There’s no heat showing on the thermals. There’s no sign of movement. And it makes no sense, taking the southern route. There are fissures and ridges. At any moment the floes could break apart.”

“If my asset says there is a division of Bzadian tanks in that icefield, then they are there,” Bilal said. “Or would you rather wait until they were climbing ashore at Alaska before taking any action?”

“That’s not the point,” a woman in naval uniform said. She was Admiral Lynette Hooper, according to her nameplate. Wilton knew the name. She was in charge of the submarine fleet, and therefore most of the cruise missile capability that the allied forces had left. “If we waste a shipload of missiles turning half of the Bering Sea into ice cubes, and we are wrong, then we might as well lay down a red carpet for the Bzadians and say ‘Welcome to Washington’.”

“So we drop a nuke in there,” Russell said. “Heat of the blast melts the ice and anything that doesn’t get destroyed in the initial explosion ends up at the bottom of the Bering Sea.”

“Nuclear weapons are not an option,” Whitehead said. “They never have been.”

“Well, maybe now’s the time to rethink that policy,” Russell said. “If we lose the Bering Strait, we lose the war.”

Wilton looked at him in alarm. Everybody knew that the Pukes had nukes. Apart from their own weapons, they had the nuclear inventory captured from countries like Russia, Britain and North Korea. The nuclear option was suicide.

“We use nukes, the Bzadians will use nukes,” Bilal said, echoing Wilton’s thoughts. “They won’t have to invade America because there won’t be anything to invade.”

“So goes the theory,” Russell said. “So we hold back and hold back. I’d rather hand them a nuclear wasteland than give up the entire planet. But I don’t think it will come to that. They won’t use nukes against our cities, as long as we don’t use them against theirs.”

“You can’t know that,” a woman in civilian clothes said. Her nameplate said “Emily Gonzales”. There was no indication of what her position was.

“Tactical nukes on the battlefield is one thing. Strategic nukes, wiping each other off the planet, that’s a different ball game,” Russell said. “Nobody wins.”

“And you’re prepared to risk nuclear annihilation on your analysis of the way an alien race thinks?” Whitehead said.

Wilton’s heart was beating fast and his pulse racing. He was sitting in a room with ACOG commanders who were calmly discussing the end of the world. The destruction of planet Earth, with nothing but a smouldering radioactive mess to show for it.

“Look, they are invading us because they think they can,” Russell said. “We have to show them they can’t. That if they try to cross the strait, we will nuke it. That if it comes down to losing the Americas, yes, we are prepared to risk nuclear annihilation.”

“That’s a pretty big bluff,” Gonzales said.

“Not really,” Russell said. “They know we have thousands of nukes too. All aimed at their major cities. If they retaliate, we retaliate too, and it’s Armageddon.”

“So you’re prepared to destroy the world?” Bilal asked.

“Rather than hand it over, yes,” Russell said.

“Not going to happen,” Whitehead said. “The risks are too great. We will stop them in the strait and we will do it without nukes.”

Russell started to object, but Whitehead shut him up with a gesture of his hand. “The discussion is over, Russell.”

“The oversight committee would never approve it anyway,” Gonzales said. “The no nukes policy has been debated over and over. The answer is always going to be no.”

Russell, who had been standing to emphasise his point, sat back down. He glanced over at Wilton, his cheeks red with anger. Although it was not directed at him, Wilton quickly looked away. Thank God for sane heads!

“So is this invasion for real?” Whitehead asked.

“You’ve seen the evidence,” Bilal said, and punched a button that brought up the photos on the main screen. The low shadows were clearly visible.

“Just who or what is this asset of yours?” Gonzales asked.

Wilton held his breath. What would Bilal say? The Angel mission was top secret. But more than that, if there could be Bzadian moles anywhere, then there could be one in this room. If the Bzadians found out that the Angels were active again, their lives would be in even greater danger.

“That information is ‘need to know’,” Bilal said.

“In this case, in order to evaluate the information, I think we do need to know,” General Whitehead said.

“All that I am prepared to say is that I trust the source,” Bilal said.

“We can’t ignore this,” General Whitehead said. “Put a squadron of drones in the air, armed with hellfires. Hooper, I want your subs at battle stations. We’ll skim those drones just above the ice, where the Pukes can’t see them, and pop them up in the air right over the target. If there are any Pukes there and they see a bunch of armed aircraft appear above them, it should provoke some kind of reaction.”

“And if the Pukes are smarter than that?” Bilal asked. “What if they just sit tight, try to bluff it out?”

“If we don’t see any sign of movement, we’ll chuck a couple of hellfires at them regardless,” Whitehead said. “See if they sit there and take it while we’re scratching their asses for them.”

There are Angels down there!
Wilton wanted to cry out. But he couldn’t.

“The moment the Bzadians detect our drones, they’re going to launch air cover from Chukchi,” an air force general said. He was Indian and his name plate identified him as Kamaljeet Hundal. “Type Ones, Twos, whatever they got.”

“What’s our time window?” Whitehead asked.

“We have a squadron of Taranis UAVs at Tin City Airbase,” Hundal said. “Flight time is about twenty minutes. We can take off low and skim the ice out to the target area. The stealth technology in the Taranis is very advanced. The Bzadian radar wouldn’t even know they’re there until they climb to attack altitude. Their flight time is only about eight minutes, but on top of that is scramble and take-off time. From the time they detect our drones, to the first Bzadian jets reaching the target area, we’d have about fifteen minutes.”

“Hooper?” Whitehead asked.

“I can have steel on target inside ten,” the admiral said. “As long as we have clear air. Once that storm hits, the Tomahawks are off the table. We’d lose half of them en route.”

“Why is that?” Gonzales asked.

“Terrain sensing,” Hooper said. “The guidance system on the Tomahawk uses terrain maps for accurate positioning. In white-out conditions they are blind.”

“Weather?” Whitehead asked.

“It’s moving through now,” a weather officer said. A weather map filled the main screen. “The storm front will start to move over the Diomede Islands in less than an hour, and will drift over the target area after that. We only have an hour or so of clear air.”

“Then let’s roll,” Whitehead said. “Hooper, bring your subs up to missile depth. Hundal, I want those drones ready to launch as soon as possible.”

“If they can scramble their jets faster than we think,” Hundal said, “they’ll knock our Tomahawks out of the sky. Ever since Uluru they’re upped the anti-missile capability of the Type Ones.”

“What do you suggest?” Whitehead asked.

“As soon as the drones start their attack climb, we launch F-35s from Buck Creek. Come in from the north. That’ll draw the Bzadian fast movers away from the Tomahawks,” Hundal said.

“All of this is going to be a waste of time if it turns out that there’s nothing there,” Russell said.

“Better safe than sorry,” Bilal said.

Wilton stared at his phone, praying for it to ring.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1110 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[BERING STRAIT, SOUTH-WEST OF LITTLE DIOMEDE ISLAND]

The parka was doubled. Two parkas, one inside the other. The inner one was lined with fur, and the outer one had fur on the outside. The hood offered ample protection and warmth to his head. Monster wound a scarf around his face to protect it, although Nukilik and the other Inupiat didn’t seem to need to.

They lay on the ridgeline, well concealed by broken blocks of ice, and waited.

The wind was starting to gust, kicking at loose snow on the ground. Overhead, it was impenetrably overcast and in the distance dark, heavy thunderheads were chewing up the sky.

There was still no sign of an attack from ACOG. Had the message even got through? Monster had to assume so and that an attack was imminent. For now, every minute they held off was a blessing. One thing was certain. If ACOG were going to attack, it would be before the weather closed in again. Time was running out rapidly.