They moved lightly, almost fluidly, in offensive formation, two men ten yards ahead on either flank, and two men covering their rear. Every fifty yards, they stopped, dropped to the ground, or took whatever available cover presented itself, while Cleary studied the terrain and checked with the Marines and the SEAL teams.
"Tin Man, report."
"Sweep is clear. Approaching within three hundred yards of target."
"Scarecrow? Have you encountered anything?"
"If I wasn't sure, I'd say the place is abandoned," answered Jacobs.
Cleary did not reply. He rose from his crouched position as Sharpsburg moved his Lion team forward.
On the face of it, the facility seemed like a bleak and austere layout. Cleary saw nothing special about it, but then trepidation began to mount. The compound appeared totally deserted. No workers showed themselves. No vehicles moved. It was too quiet. The entire inner compound was cloaked in a cold, eerie silence.
Karl Wolf stared at an array of monitors in the headquarters of his security guards on a floor below the main control center. He watched with bemused interest as Cleary and his assault teams made their way through the roads of the complex.
"You'll have no problem preventing them from interrupting our launch time?" he asked Hugo, who was standing next to him.
"None," Hugo assured him. "We have contemplated and drilled for such an intrusion many times. Our fortifications are in place, the barricades raised, and our armored Sno-cats awaiting my orders to move into battle."
Karl nodded in satisfaction. "You have done well. Still, these are the elite of the American fighting forces."
"Not to worry, brother. My men are just as well trained as the Americans. We heavily outnumber them and have the advantage of fighting on our ground. The element of surprise is in our favor, not theirs. They do not suspect that they are walking into a trap. And we can travel through the facility's underground utility tunnels, emerge inside buildings, and attack their flanks and rear before they realize what is happening."
"Your overall strategy?" Karl asked.
"To gradually siphon them into a pocket in front of the control center, where we can destroy them at our leisure."
"Our ancestors who fought so many heroic battles against the Allies during the war would be proud of you."
Obviously pleased by his brother's compliment, Hugo clicked his heels and made a stiff bow. "I am honored to serve the Fourth Empire." Then he looked up and gazed at the monitors, studying the progress of the American fighting teams. "I must go now, brother, and direct our defenses."
"How long do you estimate it will take your men to crush the attackers?"
"Thirty minutes, certainly no more."
"That doesn't leave you and your men much time to reach and board the aircraft. Do not delay, Hugo. I have no wish to leave you and your brave men behind."
"And lose our dream of becoming the founding fathers of a brave new world?" Hugo said spiritedly. "I don't think so."
Karl motioned toward the digital clock mounted between the monitors. "Twenty-five minutes from now, we shall set the ice shelf detaching systems on automatic. Then everyone in the control center will leave through the underground tunnel that leads to the worker's main dormitory safely beyond the battlefield. From there, we'll take electric vehicles to the aircraft hangar."
"We shall not fail," said Hugo, with iron resolve.
"Then good luck to you," said Karl. He solemnly shook Hugo's hand, before turning and stepping into the elevator that would take him to the control room above.
Cleary and the Lion team were only a hundred and fifty yards from the entrance of the control center when Garnet's voice came over his intercom. "Wizard, this is Tin Man. There's something wrong here…"
In that instant, Cleary spotted the barricade blocking the road in front of the control center, saw the dark muzzles of guns propped on its crest. He opened his mouth to shout, but it was too late. A deafening volley laid down by the security guards exploded in front of the Delta Force from every direction. The blasts from two hundred guns swamped and reverberated off the walls of the buildings, cutting the icy air with a deafening roar.
Garnet and his Marines were caught in the open and exposed, but they laid down a covering fire and took whatever cover they could find along the buildings. Despite the ruthless fusillade, they continued advancing toward the power station, until Garnet recognized an ice barricade that was nearly impossible to distinguish against the white background until he was less than a hundred yards away. His men began a counterfire, firing their Eradicator rifles' fragmentation missiles at the security guards behind the barricades.
In front of the control center, at almost the same moment, Cleary found himself facing the same type of ice wall and blistering fire that Garnet was experiencing. Vulnerable to the heavy fire, the lead man on the left flank of the Delta Force caught bullets in a knee and thigh and he went down. Moving flat on his stomach, Sharpsburg grabbed the wounded man by his boots and pulled him around the corner of the building.
Cleary ducked below a stairway leading into a small storehouse. Shards of ice rained down on his shoulders as a stream of shells burst into the icicles hanging from the roof above him. Then a shot struck his body armor square-on above his heart, sending him staggering backward, alive but with a pain in his chest as if someone were pounding it with a sledgehammer. Sergeant Carlos Mendoza, who was the best shot of the team, lined up the crosshairs through the scope of his Eradicator on the Wolf security guard who'd shot Cleary and squeezed the trigger. A black figure jerked up from the crest of the barricade before falling back and disappearing. The sergeant then selected his next target and fired away.
More bullets slammed into the roof above Cleary, scattering ice slivers in a hundred different directions. He saw too late that Wolf's security force was prepared and waiting for them. The fortifications had been designed and constructed for just such an attack. He painfully discovered that the lack of proper intelligence was killing them. He also began to perceive that his attacking force was badly outnumbered by the defenders.
Cleary cursed himself for relying on untested information. He cursed the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, who'd estimated the Wolf security force at no more than twenty to twenty-five men. He cursed his lack of intuition, and in the heat of the moment he cursed himself for making the biggest mistake in his military life. He had badly underestimated his enemy.
"Tin Man!" he shouted into his microphone. "Report your situation!"
"I count sixty or more hostiles blocking the road in front of us," Garnet's voice replied in a monotone, as steady as if he were describing cows in a pasture. "We are under heavy fire."
"Can you force the issue and secure the power plant?"
"We are unable to advance due to extremely accurate fire. These are not your garden-variety security people we're facing. They know what they're doing. Can you send a team to relieve the pressure, Wizard? If we could band together in a flanking movement, I think we can take the barricade."
"Negative, Tin Man," replied Cleary. He well knew that the Recons were the elite of the Marine Corps. If they couldn't advance, nobody could. "We're also halted by heavy fire from at least eighty hostiles and cannot send support. I repeat, I cannot spare men to support you. Extricate as best you can and link up with Lion."