When the gusts of the storm periodically cleared, they could see each other in their full-body, white environment suits, trudging across the patchy scrub-grass-coated ground. The suits looked like the bastard children of environmental hazmat suits and yetis. With full-plate face masks, and tight, fur-coated hoods, they might have easily been mistaken for small polar bears missing their snouts – polar bears with plastic-coated automatic weaponry. The synthetic fur on the exterior of the suits repelled the sand and snow. Each member of the team also wore a tactical climbing harness that covered chest and pelvis, which could be used for rappelling or climbing, but more often was used for attaching equipment to the body. Underneath the outer suits they wore gel-heated full-body wetsuits to help maintain a comfortable internal body temperature.
Outside the environment suits, the mercury would be hovering around -40 degrees Fahrenheit, without the wind chill. Scrubbing filters could provide exterior air if their self-contained tanks ran out, but they anticipated being on the ground for less than twenty minutes.
The land was barren rock and jutting hardy grasses – until unexpectedly, it wasn’t. The hard ground gave way to treacherous sand dunes, and then just as seamlessly merged back into more crumbly rock and clumps of pale-green vegetation.
“Charming. Like New Hampshire in the spring,” one of them said, breaking the silence on their internal comms.
“Nah,” the burly man in the lead said. “Spring is mud season. It would be like this, but we’d be caked in mud, too.”
The slightest of the group groaned and said, “Golf alpha romeo.” It was shorthand for ‘get a room.’ It was a common thing for the man and woman to bicker while in the field, but the other team members all knew how they really felt about each other.
“Hold up here,” the slim man in the rear said. He squatted, and the others paused in their march without protest, dropping into similar crouches. They all held specially-designed, plastic-coated FN SCAR rifles, capable of withstanding the grit from extreme sandstorms. Even the weapons’ muzzles were covered in a thin layer of plastic that would be ripped away once they opened fire, should it come to that. But they expected it wouldn’t. This mission would be a cakewalk compared to what they normally faced.
The slight man, carrying a simple M-21 sniper rifle, also wrapped in white plastic, approached the thin man who had called a halt. He squatted and brought his weapon up in the direction his leader was looking, straight into the thick maelstrom. “King, you see something?”
The team’s leader, King, stayed motionless for another full minute, before he replied. “No, Knight. Sorry. Just getting used to the complete lack of visibility and exterior sound. We don’t know what’s out here, so everyone stay sharp.” Jack Sigler, callsign: King, stood up and headed out, into the howling storm.
Named for pieces on a chess board, each of the other members – designated Chess Team – stood and followed. The team was formerly with the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – commonly known as Delta. Then, for a time, they had operated as part of a freelance organization, Endgame, stopping threats that politics and time constraints prevented other Delta groups from engaging. Now the Chess Team were fugitives from the US government, but they still fought the good fight across the globe. Each member of the team played a different role, and their callsigns designated those positions.
The burly man in the front of the group, Stan Tremblay, callsign: Rook, was their heavy weapons and ordinance specialist. He had armed the team for this mission with a special weapon that operated like an underwater spear gun, but what it fired were short javelins with radio-controlled explosive rings around the shafts. They could be fired from a distance, arcing into the ground, and then detonated later from a safe distance. In addition to a rifle and a spear gun, he also lugged an M240B machine gun.
Behind Rook in their line-up, as they penetrated the storm, was a woman, callsign: Pawn. Anna Beck had formerly been the team’s security specialist, when they were a part of a larger organization. Now she functioned as a spotter for the team’s one-eyed, Korean-American sniper, Knight. She also held her own in a fight either with her FN SCAR or in hand-to-hand combat.
Shin Dae-jung, callsign: Knight, moved up beside Beck, and kept pace with her. After an injury in Africa had taken his eye, he’d learned several tricks to deal with the loss of depth perception, and he had even briefly used an artificial, computerized implant, but the thing had given him sizzling migraines. While the implant was still there, it was turned off. He was using old-school techniques until the pain-causing kinks were worked out. Pawn was always by his side, to prevent his limited vision from causing him problems. She spotted for him when he was sniping, covered his back during incursions and held his hand in their down time, as his lover and friend.
A few paces behind them, another small figure trudged through the howling snow and ice. At just over 5’6”, Bishop was the second of three women on the six-person team. Asya Machtcenko, a former Russian soldier, and King’s sister, hauled spare drums of ammunition for the M240B Rook carried. The huge weapon was also covered in plastic, although the vents on its barrel assembly were covered with a thinner layer, which could be quickly punctured with a pin, should the shooting need to start. The weapon needed to vent its heat. Bishop and Rook would take turns using it, if there was a need.
“It had to be during a Zud,” she said.
“A what?” Queen, the final member of the team, asked. Zelda Baker was the team’s medic, and also its most deadly hand-to-hand combatant. She stalked through the storm just behind Bishop, carrying yet another FN SCAR rifle, and several more ammunition canisters for the big gun.
Before Bishop could answer, the team’s handler, a man named Lewis Aleman, who communicated remotely with them from a hotel room in Beijing, replied, “She means the winter. It’s a Mongolian term for a particularly bad one. Entire herds of livestock can perish when these Siberian anti-cyclone storms keep temperatures plunging to forty below.” Aleman, callsign: Deep Blue, orchestrated matters from afar, providing whatever satellite intel he could for the team’s missions, although their resources were not what they used to be.
“This gorilla suit is keeping me plenty comfortable,” Rook said.
“Pretty sure she meant the lack of visibility, numbskull,” Queen retorted.
“It’s going to be hard enough to find this terrorist base,” King spoke up, “with them being dug in underground somewhere.”
“Sorry I couldn’t get you better intel, guys,” Deep Blue’s disembodied voice replied. “All we know is the Bright Tomorrow cell is operating out of the area. Military sat coverage didn’t show anything, so they must be concealing heat signatures and working out of a tunnel system or a cave or something.”
“We’ll find them,” King said, determination filling his voice and lending the others hope.
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Rook said. “I think my Aunt Mabel’s half-blind dog could find them.”
The others reached Rook’s position, where he had stopped in his tracks. As they looked up, another hard gust of wind blasted into them from the north, pushing away a wall of grit and white, extending their view to over a hundred yards and revealing what appeared to be a huge castle.
2
“Can you believe this, Blue?”
“I can’t see it, King,” Aleman reminded him. While Aleman was used to having a video feed, on this mission he did not. The others quickly described the structure to him.