The door opened quickly, and Tomboy’s red-topped head peeked around the corner. “Good afternoon, Admiral,” she said formally. “I was in TFCC, and I heard about the helo.” She let the unspoken question hang in the air.
Inwardly, Tombstone groaned. The last thing he needed on top of the tactical situation and Pamela Drake’s surreptitious arrival on his ship was Tomboy’s questioning.
“You have a problem with that, Commander Flynn?” he asked coldly, immediately regretting the words. He saw Tomboy’s face settle into an icy mask, not unlike the one he saw every morning in the mirror when shaving.
She drew herself up, seeming to add a few inches to her height. “None at all, Admiral,” she responded in the same tone. “I just wanted to make sure you were properly briefed. With your permission-” she finished, drawing back as though ready to leave.
“Tomboy! Get in here,” Tombstone said roughly. She stopped in mid-stride. “Yes, Admiral?” she said.
“We have communications with this helicopter, right? Did you hear what they said?”
She regarded him gravely, a bland, professional look in her eyes. “Yes, Admiral, I did in fact hear the entire transmission. Would the admiral care for me to repeat it to him?”
Something in the back of Tombstone’s mind started insisting that this was a very, very, very bad idea. “Yes,” Tombstone said, ignoring it. “What is the nature of their problem?”
“Icing, Admiral. And there are specific requests for your assistance,” she added thoughtfully, staring at a spot somewhere behind his head. “In fact, the actual request was, ‘Ask Stoney if I can put this bird down on his precious boat,’” Tomboy said, her voice level. “The speaker identified herself as Miss Pamela Drake.”
“Aircraft,” Sikes snapped into the radio. “Everybody freeze.” The phrase struck him as oddly absurd in this environment, but it was a fact that movement would draw the aircraft’s attention faster than anything else. As long as they stood still, clad in their white arctic gear against a solid white background, there was a good chance they wouldn’t be observed.
The lookout and the other patrol team rogered up, and Sikes watched the man in front of him hunker down on the ice. Sikes elected to remain standing, one hand reflexively going to the trigger of his weapon.
The deep-throated growl of a large aircraft was now clearly audible. Sikes schooled himself to keep his face down, not daring to risk exposing his tanned face to any observer overhead. He heard a change in the doppler effect, indicating the aircraft was turning, and waited. If the aircraft decided to orbit overhead, he was going to have to think of something fast. Under these conditions, remaining still could be deadly.
Three minutes later, he heard the sound of the engine shift downward, indicating that the aircraft had turned away from them. He let out a gasp of air, unaware that he’d been holding his breath. He gave it thirty seconds, then risked an upward glance.
The ass end of the Soviet transport aircraft disappeared over the line of the mountains. But far more worrisome was what it left in its wake. A cluster of parachutes was already visible in the overcast, and more were streaming out of the aircraft. He made the mental calculations swiftly. The nearest one would be only fifty yards away from them. Remaining where they were had become completely unacceptable. He raised the radio to his lips. “Move out.”
Rogov wedged one heavily gloved hand into a crack in the ice and leaned forward against the belaying line. Perched near the top of a cliff, hidden from below by the jagged spikes, his position was somewhat precarious. The wind gusted harder at this altitude, and the surface of the ice was smooth, offering few footholds. Without the rappelling team, they could not have made it up to this site.
Yet, for all the difficulty in reaching it, it was perfect. He had a clear field of vision of the area below, including the prospective weapons station. Abandoning the ice cave as soon as they heard the boat approach, the Spetsnaz and Rogov had quickly availed themselves of their prearranged routes to the peaks. From their vantage points they saw the boat approach, do a careful survey of the western end of the island, and then moor to the far end. While the two teams had been difficult to see against the landscape, the night vision goggles made the job easier.
Rogov glanced up at the sky again, his heart swelling with pride. Arrayed against the overcast, all forty chutes had opened perfectly, and the men they carried were now drifting down to the ground. As their altitude decreased, their rate of descent began to seem impossibly fast. From this angle, it seemed inevitable that at least half of them would suffer broken legs or ankles upon landing.
Yet he’d watched them execute this similar maneuver many times before, always without casualties, and always precisely on time and on target.
He shifted his gaze back down to the Americans. At the first sound of the transport aircraft, they’d ceased all movement, making them a bit more difficult to spot, but he could still ascertain their location. He wondered what they were thinking, staring up at the parachutes. He saw one man look up, a break in patrol routine, flashing his tanned face against the white background and now easily visible. No matter, he thought. The men descending from the heavens had their ways of dealing with Americans. Oh, yes, indeed they did.
Sikes saw the first man touch down fifty yards away from him. He tightened his hand on his weapon and brought it up slowly, careful to make no sudden movements that might startle the other man into firing. He watched as the unidentified parachuter snapped his quick-release harness, the wind quickly catching the gusting folds of the parachute and blowing it away. In the same motion, the man brought the weapon he’d been carrying at port arms up, aiming it at Sikes.
For a few moments, it was a Mexican standoff, each of them drawing down on the other with their weapons. Then, as ten more parachuters alighted behind them, the first man fired.
Sikes hit the deck the second he saw the man tighten his finger around the trigger, some instinct warning him he was in mortal danger. He brought his own weapon up and squeezed off a shot. He saw the first parachuter leap backward as though shoved in the middle of his chest with a heavy hand, and a bright red stain blossomed on his chest. Gunfire exploded around him, the rounds, every fifth one a tracer, exploding the ice into shards around him. The ricochets sang wildly with a distinctive high-pitched squeal as rounds left the ice at acute angles. He saw the SEAL beside him drop to the ground, falling face forward into the rough ice and blowing snow. The swirling particles partially hid the body.
Sikes returned fire, stopping only when the other side did. The odds were impossible, yet he’d be damned if he’d give up without a fight. As the gunfire from the other side ceased, he dropped to one knee, still holding his weapon at the ready. Not taking his eyes off the parachuters, he rolled his teammate over onto his back. He groaned.
Half of the man’s face was missing, the bloody, seeping mass that had been its lower right quadrant already freezing in the arctic air. He’d taken another round in the gut, and on its way out, the round had evidently hit bone and ricocheted out the side of the man’s body, blowing a massive, gaping wound in his right side. Irrelevantly, he noted the layers of clothing now exposed by the wound, layer upon layer carefully designed and donned to allow survival in this environment. For some reason, that struck him as particularly poignant.
He turned back toward the parachuters, rage fueling his movements. While he’d examined his friend, they’d moved imperceptibly closer, and he was now ringed by silent white shapes carrying arctic-prepped weapons. He snarled, hating to bow to the inevitable. A SEAL fought, and fought always, but there was nothing in their code of conduct that demanded suicide. For a brief moment, he wondered if he could somehow provoke them into firing and shooting each other, since their fields of fire were not limited by their formation, but decided against it. Slowly, he stood. He faced the man closest to him, and dropped his weapon to the ground.