Ice War (24 page)

“Yes, sir. I understand that, sir,” Russell said. “I was just answering the lady’s question.”

“General Russell,” Gonzales asked. “A direct question. Do you think we can keep them out without deploying a nuclear weapon?”

Russell shook his head. “No, ma’am, I do not. We can slow them down. Hold them up at the Northern Ridge and stop them temporarily at the minefield. But apart from that we have about as much chance of stopping this invasion as a tree has of holding back an avalanche.”

Wilton was barely listening. His attention was focused on his computer screen. He had found a ghost.

The ghost was a woman. Lieutenant Colonel Francine Bartholomew. A high-ranking officer in the Bering Strait Defence Force. Her plane had gone down in a storm. She had died on December 3. Yet somehow Lieutenant Bartholomew had accessed her computer in the Pentagon on December 15, precisely twelve days later. Not bad for a dead chick, Wilton thought.

The first access time on the fifteenth was at 9.43 am. Her office was in E-ring, third level. There was a mountain of security footage but it was all neatly catalogued by date and searchable.

Wilton searched the security video files for that day and waited while the system brought the recording to his screen.

There was light traffic in the corridor that morning, but all of it bypassed the dead woman’s office. Wilton scrolled forwards through the video, looking for anyone opening the office door.

He reached 9.43 and stopped. Whoever it was, was already in the office by that time. He scrolled back, stopping at 8.30 am and played from there. At that time a uniformed officer walked casually to the door of Bartholomew’s office and swiped a key card, entering with a quick glance around.

The man wore a naval uniform, complete with cap, and kept his face low, so it was not visible to the security cameras.

There was no way to identify him.

Wilton scrolled forwards again, waiting to see when the officer came out of the door. That happened at 10.10 am.

Again, the officer kept his head down, but just for a moment he glanced up at the security camera, an involuntary reflex. Wilton rewound to that spot and went forwards, frame by frame, until he found the clearest shot.

His mouth dropped.

He took screenshots showing the time and date, and saved them with the details of the assignments and the information about Bartholomew’s death.

Scarcely believing what he was seeing, he logged into the TDA system to see what duties had been assigned that day at that time.

There was a long list, but Bartholomew’s name stood out like a beacon. He clicked on it and brought up the details of her assignments.

There was only one.

It was not Able.

It was for a Special Forces operative named Clordon. Wilton brought up Clordon’s details, but did not recognise the photo. There was nothing distinctive or memorable about him and although Wilton had an odd feeling he had seen the man before, but he could not place him.

There seemed to be no correlation with the Fezerkers, or with Little Diomede.

But there had to be. What was he missing?

He looked at the screenshot again. There was no doubt. The face on the camera was that of General Jake Russell, supreme commander of the Bering Strait Defence Force.

Wilton looked up as an aide arrived at the central table, carrying a radio. He handed it to General Russell who took it, listened, then handed it back.

“You’ll excuse me for a brief moment,” he said. “We may have a lead on the Fezerker on Little Diomede. I need to talk to one of my investigators.”

Wilton looked back at the screen. Had he got this all wrong? Was Russell hunting the Fezerkers too? Was the mysterious Mr Clordon the investigator he mentioned?

The phone on his desk buzzed and the screen lit up. He snatched at it.

“Wilton.” It was Price’s voice.

“Yeah, how are you guys doing?” he asked.

“We’re good. We may have a way to stick a rod in the spokes of the Puke invasion,” she said.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Wilton said. “One of the guys here keeps muttering about dropping a nuke. I’d get out of there if I was you.”

“Talk them out of it, Wilton,” she said. “Really bad idea. Let ACOG know what we are doing. It may influence their thinking.”

“Okay, shoot,” Wilton said, and listened carefully as she explained it.

When she rang off he typed it up as a message and sent it to Bilal, who read it and glanced at Wilton with his lips pursed.

Would Bilal even let the others know? The Angels had been ordered to leave. What would the top dogs think when they found out that the Angels were planning to disobey that order?

Ryan Chisnall rang again while he was thinking.

“You somewhere private?” Chisnall asked.

Wilton looked around at the room full of people. “Not really,” he said.

“Call me back as soon as you are,” Chisnall said.

The elevator was on the far side of the room, which meant skirting around the oval desk in the centre. Wilton felt that all their eyes were on him as he made his way towards the door, although he didn’t look up to make sure.

The security guard pressed the elevator call button for him and Wilton waited patiently. There were no lights at the top of this elevator to let you know whether it was going up or down, or what floor it was on.

He could tell from the whirring noises inside the doors when it stopped though, and when it started again he knew it was descending.

He stared straight ahead at the doors as he waited, not making eye contact with the security guard.

There was no sound as the elevator stopped. No ding. The noise of the motors stopped and the doors slid quickly open.

Wilton stepped inside and pressed the button.

The doors closed and the elevator lurched slightly as it began to move.

And then hell came to the Pentagon.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage
.

– Lao Tzu

The explosive compound was Bzadian and very powerful. Although the amount was small, it was enough to kill everybody in the room. Had it been a normal room.

But the command bunker had been designed to withstand a direct missile strike. The moment the bomb’s chemical reaction began, the room reacted with its own defences.

The air pressure was deliberately kept as low as possible. The high domed ceiling, although it looked solid, was a thin metal, little more than tinfoil. Beyond it was a large chamber filled with nothing. Not even air. A vacuum. A sudden pressure change in the bunker, such as that caused by an explosion, would tear the ceiling from its mountings, sucking most of the air from the bunker up into the vacuum chamber.

A pressure wave needs a medium, like water or air, and without either, the energy of the bomb was quickly dissipated.

The same switch triggered airbags built into each of the chairs at the oval table, instantly cocooning the occupants in a Kevlar balloon.

The table itself was a partial shield for those on the far side of it.

As the bomb blast was sucked up into the vacuum chamber above, the lack of air suffocated any fire, and in the few seconds while the occupants of the chamber gasped for breath, a network of nozzles opened up from hidden locations in the walls, filling the room with a fine mist of water and extinguishing any remaining flames.

Only then did the automatic systems allow air back into the room.

But as instantaneous and as clever as the bomb-proofing systems were, they were not designed to cope with such a powerful explosive detonating inside the room.

Several of the Kevlar cocoons were torn to shreds by the blast, which ripped in and around the chairs.

Adjutants and aides, seated at workstations around the circumference of the room fared worst, slammed into the walls or their own computer workstations by the shockwave.

The searing heat, in the seconds before it was stifled by the vacuum and smothered by the watery mist, did even more damage.

Seven people were killed in the Pentagon bunker in that moment and two more died on the way to hospital. A dozen were severely injured.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1930 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTRE, THE PENTAGON, VIRGINIA]

Wilton opened his eyes and looked around, trying to work out where he was and what he was doing there.

He was in an elevator, or at least the remains of one. It was jammed in the elevator shaft, halfway up the doors. The doors were open. That was his first impression. A second glance revealed that they weren’t open in the usual way, sliding to each side. They were buckled inwards, melded with the metal of the elevator cage itself.

The handrails above him were twisted and warped. The wooden panelling was splintered and smashed.

He cautiously checked his body for injuries, unsure what had happened. Had the elevator malfunctioned somehow?

That wouldn’t explain the damage though.

He found no broken bones, and he seemed to be breathing, although the air was thin and smoky. When he put his hands to his face they came away bloody, but it was just cuts, he thought. His skull felt intact.

The floor of the elevator was twisted, corrugated metal with scraps of burnt carpet clinging to it. He crawled towards the narrow gap where the elevator doors had burst inwards.

Wilton slid down from the cage to a scene of terror and panic. People were on the floor moaning, screaming, or not moving at all.

Giant balloons had sprouted around the oval table. Some people were already running around, tending to the injured.

Small fires were burning around the room, but a soft mist of water drifted over them and the fires were dying.

Somewhere in the distance, an alarm was blaring.

At his feet a woman crawled towards him, her eyes pleading, blood pouring from a deep cut on her arm, which appeared to be broken.

Wilton took one more look around, then breathed deeply and went to work.

[MISSION DAY 2, FEBRUARY 17, 2033. 1540 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[LITTLE DIOMEDE ISLAND, BERING STRAIT]

“Any sign of Big Billy or Able?” Price asked.

The Tsar shook his head. He was seated at the control panel, monitoring the video feeds from the cameras that surrounded the building. The video cameras were all but useless in the storm, but the infra-red would show either of the men as a heat signature.

“Nothing,” The Tsar said.

Somewhere out there a deadly game of cat and mouse was being played.

“What would you do, if you were Able?” Price asked.

“Well, he can’t stay out there forever,” The Tsar said. “Not in these conditions. With the wind chill factor it’s well below freezing, and it’ll be dark in a couple of hours.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for,” Price said.

“Maybe,” The Tsar agreed.

“Can Able get into the building?” Price asked, suddenly worried that he might be inside already, hiding, waiting for a chance to strike.

“I doubt it,” The Tsar said. “There are only two entrances: the main door and the tunnel that leads to the hangar. Bowden locked them both down as soon as we got inside. Besides, all the main areas have movement sensors.” He pointed to glowing dots on a screen. “That’s Bowden, she went to the armoury a few moments ago. Those three are Monster, Wall and Barnard, out in the hangar.”

Wall and Barnard had gone to help Monster transfer the de-icing tank from the pick-up truck to the hovercraft.

“He’s not inside,” The Tsar said.

The dot that was Bowden reached the control room and as it did, the door opened. Bowden backed in, her arms full of grenades, claymore mines, even packs of C4.

“Nice,” Price said.

Barnard had asked for explosives. She’d be happy with this lot, Price thought.

“What do you use the C4 for?” Price asked.

“Clearing ice mainly,” Bowden said.

She helped Bowden lug the cache of explosives through to the hovercraft hangar. The two buildings were joined by an underground tunnel, with concrete walls and metal staircases at each end.

The hangar itself was a simple metal-framed structure with plasticised sides.

Inside the hangar were three vehicles, the largest of which was the hovercraft. It was armoured, the heavy Kevlar plates fixed at odd ‘stealth’ angles to deflect radar. At the back was a large fan which provided propulsion. It was painted white with a variegated grey pattern for camouflage.

Monster was operating a forklift tractor. He was delicately manoeuvring the forks under a large plastic tank on the back of a pick-up truck with triangular snow treads. Barnard and Wall were up on the tray of the truck with spanners and wrenches.

“How is it going?” Price asked.

“It’s a big job,” Barnard said. “And once we have this shifted, we still need to rig the nozzle system.”

That lay on the ground behind the hovercraft. A wide spray wand with multiple nozzles spread evenly along its length. Long plastic tubes were coiled up on the ground beside it.