The heartbeats of the four Delta operators remained steady and strong, each waiting to be given the signal that would trigger the taking of two lives. Not that either man's death would weigh heavily on any of their consciences. These men were murderers and terrorists and the team's whole purpose for being here was to kill every last one of them. But the plan had been to catch them all inside the facility while they hid from the elements, and blow them to bits, not to engage them in an unnecessary firefight. Under normal circumstances a Tomahawk cruise missile strike would do the trick, but being on Russian soil, a missile attack would be interpreted as an act of war. Better to hit them from the ground and keep things off the radar… literally. By the time the Russians discovered the site, it would be nothing more than frozen ashes.
"Hold on," Deep Blue said. "You're clear."
None of the four heard the engine rev up or leave, but if Deep Blue said they were clear, they were clear. All four looked up just in time to see the closest man slump to the ground, a gurgle escaping his slit throat, which loosed gouts of blood onto the snow. Behind him stood a white wraith, staring at them through two thin slits.
"Miss me?"
"King, how in the hell did you get here?" Rook said as he stood.
Jack Sigler, call sign "King," cleaned his faithful seven-inch KA-BAR knife in the snow. Behind him, the second man was leaning on the snowmobile, a slow trickle of blood still draining from his neck. "Been here for five minutes. Wanted to see if you guys talked about me behind my back."
"Bullshit," Rook said, dusting the snow from his white, second-generation FN SCAR-L assault rifle with attached 40mm grenade launcher. Out of the five, he was most in love with his weapons, which also included two .50 caliber Magnum Desert Eagle handguns, one strapped to each hip beneath his snow gear. They were as children to him — very deadly children.
"Motion at the target site," Deep Blue said. "Looks like you've been made."
King lifted the head of the man who had died upon the snowmobile; his blood had already frozen in a pool around the vehicle. He opened the man's jacket revealing his slit throat and a throat mike. "Damnit. I'm getting really tired of these third-world jerks getting their hands on this kind of technology."
"It's the damn private sector," Rook said. "Highest bidder gets the tech. They don't give a rip who gets killed as a result. If they don't pull the trigger, innocent blood isn't on their hands."
King reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device with a touchpad and small screen. "Won't be any innocent blood spilled today." He began punching buttons as he spoke. "How many outside the complex?"
"None yet," Deep Blue said, "but you've got a Sno-Cat with five, maybe six unfriendlies on their way out."
"Copy that," King said as he finished pushing buttons. Behind him, the island transformed into a volcano as a plume of fire and smoke mushroomed into the air, accentuated by a resounding boom. A shock wave kicked up a wash of snow that momentarily obscured their vision. When the snow cleared, a smoldering island lay in the wake of the blast, with several secondary explosions from fuel supplies still erupting across the land. But at the center of it all, charging straight for them, was a white, t ank-treaded Sno-Cat. One man leaned from the window, taking aim with an AK-47, while two men on top brought their own AKs to bear. All three began firing.
The team dove to the snow, knowing they would disappear from view. "I've got this," Knight said, as he crawled up behind the snowmobile, using the vehicle and its lone, dead occupant as cover. He unslung his PSG-1 semiautomatic sniper rifle and took aim at the Sno-Cat. He knew the vehicle wasn't meant for a firefight, so it most likely didn't have bulletproof glass. Looking through the sight he found the driver's head. He could see the man shouting at the others.
Knight slowly squeezed the trigger and a single round burst from the weapon, its retort echoing across the open expanse and drowning out the popping AK-47s. He watched through the scope as the windshield held its own, denting inward slightly where the round struck. Bulletproof glass. Damn.
Knight took aim again, preparing to unleash a semiautomatic barrage of sniper rounds. The Sno-Cat was moving and jostling on the ice, which made the shot even more difficult, but few people on the planet were his equal with a sniper rifle. He held his breath and squeezed off fifteen rounds in rapid succession. The windshield became awash with white pockmarks, but the one in the middle grew wide as eight of the fifteen rounds found their mark, striking the same place as the first round and punching a hole in the bulletproof glass. Three rounds in all made it through the window, but only the first made contact. There wasn't a head left for the second two to strike.
Even without the driver, the Sno-Cat continued toward them. More than that, without the driver, the Sno-Cat wouldn't stop once it reached them. AK-47 fire continued to pepper the snow around the group, but as is so often the case with terror groups, they had atrocious aim and little self-control.
Rook looked down the sight of his assault rifle. "I have to do everything I s'pose. Bend over, ladies, here it comes." A dull pop signified the launching of a grenade. The two men on top saw it coming and leaped from the roof of the Cat. The others took the grenade's full force as it ripped through the Cat and turned their bodies into little more than Campbell's Chunky Soup.
The two survivors clambered to their feet, clutching their AK-47s, and beat a hasty retreat back toward the island's rocky shoreline in search of cover.
"My turn," Queen said.
As the two men made a beeline for the smoldering complex, they fired aimlessly over their shoulders, peppering the ice behind them and posing no real threat to the team.
Queen heaved the dead man off the snowmobile. A sheet of frozen blood lifted away with his body and shattered when he fell to the ice. She took his seat and said, "You'd think with a big secret training facility, these guys would be better shots."
"Blowing yourself up doesn't take much aim," King said.
She revved the snowmobile's engine. "Right." The snowmobile burst forward. She brought it around in a wide turn, building speed, and then was off like a bullet, streaking toward the fleeing men.
"Hey, King," Knight said, holding up a white Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun.
King sighed. It was Queen's weapon. And he knew she hadn't forgotten it. The woman was the smallest member of the team, but like the savage wolverine — a terrier-sized weasel capable of taking down a moose — what she lacked in size she made up for in ferocity and brute strength. It wasn't always easy to see past her feminine face, but the woman was built like a powerhouse, so much so that no one on the team dared arm-wrestle her. It wasn't certain she'd win, but if she did, the loser would be cursed by a lifetime of taunting from the others.
Queen closed in on her targets. The men, now out of ammo, simply ran for their lives. If the men had conserved their ammo, she would be dead, but the men had as little sense as they did time to live. Queen was upon them.
The man closest to her — the one she intended to kill first — tripped and fell into a heap on the ice. He ruined her plan, but then she was always open to improvisation. She opened the throttle and plowed over the man just as he picked up his head. The front of the snowmobile struck the man's head with a sickening crunch. It was sloppier than she liked things to be, but she couldn't argue with its effectiveness. She returned her focus to the other man, whose frantic run carried him quickly across the ice.
Queen stood on the seat of the snowmobile as she prepared to attack. The man looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide with fear and confusion. It was obvious he'd expected to be gunned down. Upon seeing her charging toward him, no gun in sight, he stopped and stood his ground.