The Fate Of Nations: F.I.R.E. Team Alpha: Book One (23 page)

              Glancing at the altimeter on his wristband he saw that he was below ten thousand feet and set several valves on his breathing gear to adjust to the change in altitude. Once they hit the water they would need to breathe a different mix of gasses. He could feel the atmosphere begin to thicken as he descended. The scent of salty, ocean air became perceptible even the through his respirator. The ocean’s surface would become visible only in the last few seconds before impact.

              “Deploy chutes,” Carter ordered, when the team had descended to two-thousand feet; pulling sharply on the handle on his own chest harness. The parachute filled with air and he was snapped sharply upward. He heard the rest of the team confirm that their own chutes had opened properly. He knew that there would be no further radio communications until they landed in the ocean. After they hit the water there would be a two hour swim to shore and then a forced march to their link up with the Belgium underground.

              As soon as he saw the surface below him he detached his parachute and plunged unimpeded into the water. He knew that the synthetic material from which the chute made would dissolve in the ocean water. A small floatation device deployed as he hit the water and penetrated twelve feet below the surface; carrying him back to the surface. Even in calm seas it was not an easy matter for the team to locate one another amid the ocean swells but, after a few minutes of searching, the team was bobbing together; arms linked in a circle. Carter assured himself that no one had been injured in the drop and then broke the circle to float on his back. He removed the swim board from its pouch on his torso and held it skyward. McNamara mirrored Carters action with his own swim board.

              The night sky was as clear as predicted. Using a camera incorporated into the back of the swim board, Carter took a snapshot of the stars above the team. The swim board’s computer compensated for the motion caused by the ocean’s waves and compared the stars position with its pre-programmed astronomical data and the information that had been downloaded from the Black Arrow’s navigation system; fixing the teams location with a fair degree of accuracy. Finding McNamara among the waves again, he saw the Canadian give him a thumbs up sign; confirming that he too had gotten an adequate navigational fix. After confirming that the two readings correlated with each other, they rejoined the circle. The team then attached tether lines to one another to prevent the group from being separated in the darkness once they submerged.

              Carter turned himself to the team. “OK, get into formation and submerge. Everyone keep radio silence unless the world is about to end.” He waited until the team had formed behind him; McNamara, with his swim board at the formations rear, and then deflated his floatation device. Minutes later, the team was again enveloped by darkness ninety feet under the ocean’s surface.

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              There was no sense of time as they swam; and no sense of distance. Carter looked at the compass and clock on the swim board to assure himself that progress was being made. Without them, and the other instruments on the board it would seem that he and his team were suspended in time. Even in the summer the water of the North Sea was uncomfortably cold on a long, deep nighttime swim. The encompassing blackness hid any visual clues that might indicate movement or passing time. The team was using closed circuit diving gear that recycled the air they were breathing. This meant that not even bubbles from their exhaled breath broke the silence and gloom. The only tactile reassurance of progress came from constant struggle of his muscles against the outgoing tide.

              When the water finally started to shallow the team ascended very slowly; allowing their bodies to adjust to the change in pressure. Ascending too quickly would mean painful death from decompression sickness. A diver had to fight the urge to ascend too quickly after a long swim the cold darkness. Of all the qualities necessary for a special operator, Carter thought, disciplined patients may be the most vital.

              Finally, his head broke the surface. Still a half a kilometer from shore only a few lights could be seen along the coast. Consulting the swim board, Carter saw that the team had emerged slightly more than a kilometer north of their planned landfall. The team gathered to float around him. “We’re about a click north of where we’re supposed to be,” he said.

              “Not too bad, all things considered,” McNamara said.

              “No, it’s not,” Carter agreed. “We’ll go ashore here and move south on foot. Brains, swim ahead and find us a clear place to go ashore. We’ll give you a ten minute head start.”

              “On it, Boss,” Sains said, before submerging again.

              Minutes later the team approached a small area of beach with the remnants of what appeared to be a small dock once used for pleasure craft. Its wood was rotted and much of it had collapsed into the sea. Sains crouched on the beach near the ruin, using an infra-red beacon to guide the team to his location. Carter located the beacon through his multi-optic goggles and led the team toward it.

              Once on the beach the team removed the swim-fins from their feet as Sains briefed Carter on his scouting mission. “I didn’t see any signs of enemy patrols or other recent activity. There’s an old boat shack on the other side of the dock. That should be a good place for us to gear-up and pull ourselves together,” Sains reported,

              “OK, show us the way,” Carter replied.

              Once inside the small shed the team removed their dive gear and stacked it one corner of the shed. They then checked each other for any ill effects from the parachute drop or the long swim. “Gadget, brake out the vanishing cream,” Carter ordered, pointing at the stacked SCUBA equipment.

              Burgett removed a plastic, tea-pot sized canister and sprayed the contents on the piled gear. The vanishing ‘cream’ was more of a pale, gray mist. The mist was comprised of hundreds of thousands of incredibly small robots, each the size of a single atom. Known as nanites, they immediately began breaking down the assembled gear on a molecular level; dissolving it into a large pool of shimmering liquid in a matter of minutes. Ten minutes later the liquid ceased to shimmer, indicating that the nanites had self destructed as they were designed to.

              Carter nodded his approval. “O.K., check weapons, and I want everyone to drink a can of coffee. That was a long, cold swim and I want us to get our core temperatures up.”

              Carter took an eight-ounce plastic container of coffee and pressed his thumb firmly into a small bulge at its base; breaking the barrier separating two chemicals contained in separate compartments below the coffee itself. Once mixed, the chemicals created enough heat to warm the coffee to an agreeable temperature. Carter set the can aside to allow the beverage to warm while he checked his weapons and saw that the other operators had done likewise.

              “This may not be real coffee, but it does warm the bones,” McNamara commented a few minutes later as he drained the last drop from his canister. He pulled the charging handle on his sub-machine gun and let it slam forward with a sharp, metallic click. “I think we’re good to go, Boss.”

              Carter looked to the rest of the team and made sure they were ready to move. “O.K., we have to haul ass, but be alert. Avoid enemy contact if at all possible. If we have to engage keep it quiet and make sure we kill every enemy trooper; no one gets away. Get your forty-fives ready, loaded them with armor pierces, and put on your suppressors,” Carter ordered.

              The team complied; each readying conventional .45 caliber handguns and attaching sound and flash suppressors to the weapons' muzzles. Unlike weapons specifically designed for paranormals, which were too powerful to be effectively suppressed, the sound of the .45s discharging could be reduced to the volume of a low human cough. They could be used without calling unwanted attention from nearby enemy forces.

              “Move out”, Carter ordered; “Section-wedge formation. Brains, you get out front; one hundred meters.”

              The next few hours passed in silence; the team communicating only with hand signals. Avoiding roads and paths in favor of more rural, less traveled terrain; Carter kept the pace at a fast walk. As paranormals, he and his troops could have run for the two hours or more it would take them to join Renner and his resistance fighters but, in this situation, such haste could prove disastrous. Stumbling into an unwanted encounter with enemy forces due to a lack of patience could compromise the entire mission and the invasion that depended upon it. If they did make premature enemy contact, he wanted time to avoid an engagement or, failing that, to engage the enemy on his terms so that he could ensure that none of them survived to report his team's presence.

              The war and WCA occupation had emptied the countryside of population. Those citizens that had not been pressed into military service had been forcibly relocated to major cities, imprisoned, or confined in work camps. Nature had begun to reclaim the land. The roads, with the exception of those used for transporting essential supplies and military patrols, were overgrown with weeds and thickets. Abandoned houses were commonplace as the team continued their trek. Whole villages sat idle and decaying. There was sense of foreboding that Carter had only experienced when he was deep in a land where many people had been enslaved. The land seemed to reflect the suffering of the people who dwelled there.

              An hour into the march, as the team was moving through a forested area, Sains used hand signals to bring the group to a halt. Carter moved forward to meet him as the team dispersed to find concealment.

              “There are three enemy deserters heading right for us; about five minutes out. There is a platoon-sized patrol right behind them. The patrol has formed a skirmish line; ten meter spread, to search for the deserters. I’ve scanned the patrol leader, there are other patrols one click apart; one to the east and one to the west,” Sains whispered.

              “Is there any chance we can hide and let them pass; or go around them?” Carter asked.

              Sains shook his head. “No way; there are too many of them and their alert because their on a man-hunt. One of them is bound to notice us, and we’d run into the other patrols if we try going around.”

              “Shit,” Carter said. “O.K., we let the deserters pass and then take the patrol.” He looked at Williams. “Take your section and flank them to the east, the rest of us will work from the west. Remember; edged weapons and suppressed .45s only. This has to be done quickly; and above all, silently. Let’s go to work.”

              In minutes the three deserting soldiers passed as the Alpha operators as the concealed themselves in the underbrush. Fearful of a capture, they were enduring a multitude of cuts and bruises as the nearly sprinted through forest. The patrol, unsure of their quarry’s position, moved more slowly; hoping either to either to find the deserter’s hiding place, or drive them into the path of other searching patrols. Team Alpha let the patrol come with five meters of their positions. Striking in unison, they covered that five meters in what was, literally, a blink of an eye. The WCA soldiers began dying in the space between breaths; having no time to realize they were under attack before the first of them was already dead.

              Carter singled out an enemy soldier at the westernmost end the skirmish line. Using a micron-sharp, double-edged fighting knife in his left hand and his sound-suppressed .45 caliber pistol in his right, he came from the enemy’s left; covering the space between them in a fraction of a second. He impaled the trooper through both sides of his neck and pushed the blade out through the front of his neck; severing the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and the trachea in a single motion. The trooper fell; a scream still trying to gurgle its way out of the gash in his ruined throat.

              To his right a second enemy trooper tried to defend his comrade and attempted to bring rifle to his shoulder. The rifle had moved less than an inch before Carter launched his foot into the soldier’s jaw; striking him under chin. The soldier’s teeth shattered into tiny fragments as they were slammed together by Carter’s kick. The soldier’s head was propelled backward with such force that his neck snapped with a pronounced cracking sound.

              Carter shot two more troopers just under their noses before the body of the second trooper had fallen. The.45 caliber rounds tore through their faces and obliterated their brainstems; killing them before they could raise their weapons.

              Nearby, Burgett ran toward his targets; bursting from the shadows with his pistol raised. Still running, he shot four soldiers in their heads. He was less than a foot away from his fourth target when his bullet blasted the soldier’s head from his body forming a spray of bone and blood.

              Roth had switched her sidearm to its burst mode. She fired a three shot burst from behind a dying tree. The last of the three bullets left her pistol’s muzzle before she felt the recoil from the first. Her enhanced reflexes and perception guided each bullet into the heads of three enemy troopers.

              Like Burgett, Defontain charged her targets; firing while moving; literally becoming a blur to the soldiers she was engaging. Each of her three targets received two tungsten coated, armor piercing bullets in his heart. The last of her targets died before the body of the first had hit the ground.