He felt himself buffeted by the slipstream as he fought to maintain a crouched position, legs pulled up beneath him and locked there with his arms. It was the kind of poise you’d adopt to bomb your mates in a swimming pool. By trial and error it had also proved to be the best kind of body stance for what was coming.
Jaeger had just the briefest of instants to wonder what madness had possessed him to jump when his feet hit the snowdrift. The impact was surprisingly soft and silent, and moments later sixty-five kilos of Will Jaeger had ploughed deep into the spongy white mass, disappearing completely from view.
He lay on his back in a foetal position and gazed at the heavens above him. It felt like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon: he could see the shape his falling body had cut through the snow’s surface, etched against the stars and the moon.
Jumping into snowdrifts: only the Brits could have dreamt up such an insane means to deploy into hostile territory. Yet tonight, for Jaeger at least, it seemed to have worked just fine. He’d made a near perfect landing in soft snow and was unhurt.
The boffins had assured him that on this flat, open, windswept plateau on the northern scarp of the mountains, the drifts would likely be a good eighteen feet thick.
Jaeger figured he’d sunk ten feet into this one.
The challenge now was to get out again.
52
Jaeger took a few seconds to calm his heartbeat, his breath pooling in the human-shaped snow hole like some ghostly mist. It was so cold he could feel his breath freezing in his nostrils.
Above the echoing silence, he could hear the droning of the Antonov as it did an about-turn. Moments later, its ghostly form flashed past overhead. Had Jaeger imagined it, or had the pilot given them a momentary wing wobble to salute their insertion? No doubt about it, the crew of the Antonov had been a class act.
Now to extricate himself from this snowy embrace. No time to delay, he reminded himself: the fate of the world was hanging in the balance here. Failure wasn’t an option, the price of screwing up an unthinkable one. They needed to get moving.
He tore off his overmitts, placing his bergen beneath him to form a solid platform, and clambered to his feet. He pulled a length of paracord from his pocket and tied one end onto the pack’s top strap. Then he tied the other end around his waist and groped for the sky. He was just tall enough for his fingertips to emerge above the surface.
He used his mitts to pat down the snow. He kept doing so until he figured he’d built up a firm enough platform. Then, using his hands to pull himself upwards and his boots to kick holes into the wall of snow, he wormed his way up and out, emerging like a caterpillar on his belly. That done, he turned and dragged his bergen out by its leash.
He took a moment to survey the scene.
Utterly breathtaking.
The snowfields rolled away on all sides like some gently undulating frozen sea. There wasn’t so much as the blink of a light or any other sign of human habitation. Jaeger felt alone on the roof of the world.
On one side the range of peaks reared into the heavens, ice-bound and severe. He was thankful they didn’t have to cross those. The Antonov had flown around them, saving the team the trouble. From their landing spot, it should be all downhill to the target.
Just then he heard a sudden sharp, pinging crack, which echoed across the snow. A glacier was on the move, ancient ice breaking under impossible pressure.
He glanced around, searching for the others.
No sign of them anywhere.
Likewise, the pulk and the drop containers had disappeared from view. On balance, he figured his team had a greater chance of extricating themselves from the snow’s clutches than did the sled or the heavy para-tubes. There was no telling how deep those had penetrated, though finding them should be fairly straightforward. He figured he’d jumped around three seconds after they’d been shoved out. At the speed the Antonov had been flying, they should be no more than fifty feet away.
He retraced the aircraft’s path, moving due south. It was easy enough to do so: by turning to face the Nyenchen Tanglha Mountains, which rose before him like a giant frozen wall, he was by default heading south.
The first hole he found was made by the pulk. Lighter than the containers, it had drifted further, being thrown forward by the Antonov’s momentum. It had dropped rear first, upending itself in the snow. After a few seconds’ tugging back and forth, Jaeger freed and righted it. Now to find the drop containers and load up the heavier cargo.
As he searched, he heard a figure struggling through the snow. It was Raff. The big Maori was a good twenty kilos heavier than Jaeger, and as a result with each footstep he sank further into the soft drifts.
Raff had been less than enamoured with Jaeger’s proposed insertion technique. He’d grown up on New Zealand’s North Island, which had a warmer climate than its southern neighbour. With its pristine white beaches, parts of it were semi-tropical. As a result, Raff hated snow, ice and everything associated with the cold.
‘How you doing?’ Jaeger asked.
‘I’m alive,’ Raff growled. ‘Nothing broken.’ He glanced around at the frozen moonscape. ‘Still freezing my bollocks off, though.’
Jaeger had just found the first para-tube. Laden with ninety kilos of kit, it had sunk deep. He nodded at the hole. ‘This’ll warm you up, mate. Get digging!’
Raff grunted and set his massive shoulders to the task. Soon he and Jaeger had dragged the first of the tubes out of the snowdrift’s icy embrace.
To one side, Narov and Alonzo were likewise getting busy freeing the other tube. All four of them seemed to have made the jump pretty much in one piece.
Four: it was the magic number of UKSF patrols, the smallest unit you would regularly deploy in. In SAS parlance, four was a fire team. Four fire teams made up a troop of sixteen. Four troops made up a squadron of sixty-odd SAS blades – ‘blades’ being the term for the fighting men of the Regiment.
As four-person teams went, this was about as good as it got, Jaeger reflected. The fire team to die for. And right now, they had the fate of the world resting on their shoulders.
They started emptying the para-tubes, making five piles of kit: one, the largest, to be loaded onto the pulk and four of equal size to be packed into their bergens. Once the pulk was loaded, they zipped closed the waterproof cover and unfastened the tow straps.
Raff eyed the heavy sled, which was now piled with some hundred kilos of kit. ‘I’m good to go. I’ll set the pace. At least it’ll get me bloody warm.’
The para-tubes had held four sets of skis. Raff took one, unclipped the toe binding and slid the front of his boot in, hearing the reassuring snap as it clicked home. They were langlauf – cross-country – skis, and only the toe would be held firm. That left you free to lift your heel as you thrust forward, powering ahead.
Skis on, Raff grabbed the pulk’s harness – like a rucksack’s shoulder strap and hip belt, but without the pack attached – and strapped himself in. He fastened the D-ring clips to the harness, then grabbed his ski poles, slipping the straps around his wrists.
He glanced at Jaeger and nodded.
Jaeger fought to suppress a smile. Where Raff’s braids were poking out from under his thermal ski hat, he could see they were icing up, like the frozen tentacles of some bizarre ice beast. Surely the world’s coolest hairstyle, he reflected, but not right here and now!
‘Okay, thirty minutes’ march, then rest,’ he announced. ‘Pulk changeover time.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’ve got six hours’ skiing ahead of us, and it’s eight until first light. We’re at serious altitude, unacclimatised and with much less O2 than we’re used to. Take it easy. No rush. Conserve yourselves for what’s ahead.’