The veteran made a motion as though hoisting something onto his shoulder. White Wolf looked puzzled for a moment, then comprehension dawned. He scanned the skies overhead and was relieved to note that there were no aircraft there.
The younger man moved closer. “Stingers,” he said, automatically turning the s’s into a th sound with the reflexive caution of a foot soldier who knows how far sibilants carry in still air. “Very deadly against helicopters, easy to use.”
White Wolf shrugged. If they’d been arriving airborne, he might have been concerned. But the small assault force with him had come across the ocean in craft built in keeping with their native traditions. Slow, but silent and virtually undetectable by modern technology, the boats were lightweight and easily transportable. They were already tucked in among the spires on the eastern side of the island, invisible unless a patrol happened to stumble right on top of them. And given the patrol patterns he’d seen, that wasn’t likely. The two sets of guards remained on the flat western side of the island.
“They are ready?” White Wolf asked, gesturing to the men behind him.
“Yes.” The veteran eyed him uncertainly. “As ready as we can be. You understand, I’m not certain what weapons they have here. There is a chance-“
White Wolf cut him off with a sharp gesture. “It is decided. We will not second-guess ourselves.”
Morning Eagle sighed. Moving back away from the escarpment, he talked briefly with the men following them. They were broken into two teams of eight men each, and carried pistols and shotguns. Their strength, mused White Wolf, regarding the groups, would have to be in their ability to move undetected across the land. No mainlander — and that included Russians — could match that. Weapons were fine, but it was getting close enough to use them that was the real problem.
The young veteran returned to his side. “I still think you should stay here,” he said, continuing an argument from the night before. “it will be dangerous.”
That was exactly the wrong argument to make. White Wolf drew himself tall, feeling the old vertebrae creak and complain with the effort. “I gave my word,” he said quietly. He held his hands out before him, spread them open. “Do you think I have a choice?”
His grandson sighed. “I suppose not. But for God’s sake, don’t take any chances.”
White Wolf glanced at the seven other men clustering around him. Most of them were at least twenty years his junior, a few even younger, one almost as old. All in all, good men, made strong by the forces of nature they contended with daily.
He jerked to the north with his head, and set off across the rough terrain without waiting to see if they followed.
“I’d say hell would freeze over before they decide what to do, but that would be a bad choice of words in this case,” Bird Dog said.
Gator sighed. “You think every problem can be solved with five-hundred-pound bombs?”
“No, of course not. Sometimes you want to use your two-thousand-pounder,” Bird Dog snapped. “But there’s not a damned air contact within five hundred miles of this place, according to E-2. And as close as Jefferson is to this island, we could be pulling Alert, sitting on the deck waiting for them to show up, instead of stuck in some miserable orbit overhead.”
“What if the E-2 doesn’t hold it until it’s too late?”
“Like that will happen,” Bird Dog snorted.
“Okay, how about this?” Gator asked, tired of the argument. “We drop down to five thousand feet, take a quick visual on the island. Then we come back up and do what CAG wants for a change. That make you happy?”
Bird Dog nodded, knowing his backseater could see the gesture. “I’d feel more like I knew what was going on if I could at least take a look at the island occasionally. But with our cloud layer, it’s gonna be more like three thousand feet instead of five thousand. You up for that?”
“Just don’t run me into a cliff, Bird Dog. That’s all I ask this trip.”
Cover was scant as White Wolf led his men down to the base of the cliffs. Twenty feet from the main cliff base, it degenerated into little more than a series of rocky protuberances from the ice, boulders barely waist-high. He crept forward as far as he dared, then dropped to the ground and waited. Behind him, he heard his men moving into position.
Hours of observation had revealed the fact that the northern patrol was a relatively predictable, if otherwise diligent, watch-stander. His approach to maintaining security consisted of walking east and west along the northern half of the island, occasionally glancing around, and making regular radio reports. It took him approximately thirty minutes to reach the end of the island, surveil the sea, and then commence the return trip. As his back was turned while he was heading west, White Wolf took advantage of his relatively infrequent observances to move the men into position.
The veteran would have the harder time of it, he thought, feeling the cold start to creep into his belly. The southern intruder patrol had appeared to be far more unpredictable, varying the times at which he started his rounds, and occasionally stopping to carefully surveil all 360 degrees around him. Twice in the last five hours he hadn’t even continued on to the end of the island, but had instead unexpectedly doubled back on his path. For the veteran, that meant a shorter time period to get his men in position.
There was one constant in both men’s routines, however. At some point during their circuit of their area, each one moved back to within assault range. With a little luck, White Wolf’s man and the southern patrol would be near the rocks at the same time, another consistency in their patrol patterns they had not yet puzzled out. The two group leaders had agreed that the veteran would determine the time for the attack, based on when his more predictable prey was within range. At the first sign of difficulties on the southern area, White Wolf would order his men to attack.
He looked back over his shoulder and motioned the two men behind him to move forward. In addition to their shotguns, each one carried a bow and arrow, a relic of times long past. But despite modern technology, most of the men maintained at least some proficiency in the old way of the hunt, just in case. Who knew when the shipments of weaponry and ammunition from the mainland would suddenly cease, throwing the Inuit tribes back into their own way of life? Without the old knowledge, the ways of the hunt and the stalk, the secrets of silent killing, they could not have survived.
Their quarry was now reaching the westernmost point in his patrol area, and would shortly begin the return trip to the rocks. White Wolf saw the men flex their arms, keeping the muscles loose and the blood flowing. They had already drawn three arrows each out of their quiver and placed them in the snow alongside. No point in moving while the man was close and risk alerting him.
Just before the patrol turned back to the west, White Wolf risked a glance up over the rocks. He scanned the southern edge of the cliffs carefully, searching for any sign of the other group. He almost smiled. Wherever they were, it was beyond the ability of his old eyes to find them. How much more difficult for the Russians it would be.
“Watch for icing,” Gator warned as the Tomcat passed through seven thousand feet. “When you hit that cloud bank, you’re going to pick up some moisture on the wings.”