“Harker!” he shouted, still moving.
“Yeah?” the warrant officer replied.
“Get Chase up here with the radio.”
When the commo man caught up with him, Turcotte paused. “Get the SATCOM ready. I’m going to transmit in the clear to warn…” he began, then paused. He could hear the thump of helicopter blades.
A searchlight flashed on, lighting up Turcotte and the soldiers, overloading their night-vision goggles and blanking them out.
Overlaid on top of the blade sounds came the chatter of a heavy-caliber machine gun fired from the helicopter. Turcotte ripped off his night-vision goggles and grabbed Nabinger, covering the professor with his body. The rounds ripped by, tearing into Chase and throwing the commo man against the mountainside. The body tumbled down toward the skirmish line. Turcotte knelt and raised his weapon and fired, joined by the others.
The searchlight shattered and the chopper banked hard right and flew away to a safer distance.
“Status!” Turcotte yelled.
Harker’s voice came from his right. “Chase and Brooks are dead and the radio’s destroyed.”
“I’ve got a man wounded,” Kostanov answered.
“Let’s go!” Turcotte ordered.
“No,” Kostanov said, scrambling across to come to his side. “My man can’t move. All of us will never make it without someone slowing them.” He pointed down at the gaggle of lights that were now coming straight toward their position, less than four hundred yards away and steadily climbing. “I will give you cover. You go with your men. We will make our stand here.” Kostanov held up a hand covered in blood as Turcotte started to say something. “This is more important than our lives.”
Turcotte reached out and grasped the hand, then he let go. “Come on,” he ordered the four surviving Special Forces men and Professor Nabinger.
Kostanov went back to his men. He checked the stomach wound on the one man, pressing the bandage down tighter to try and stop the flow of blood.
“Fire some rounds, Dmitri,” he ordered the other. “Let the pigs know we are here.”
Dmitri put the stock of his weapon to his shoulder and fired a long, sustained burst, emptying his magazine in the direction of the Chinese soldiers, causing confusion and consternation in their lines, gaining a few seconds for Turcotte and his men and also focusing the direction of the attack toward the Russians.
Bullets cracked by overhead as the Chinese fired back. The flashlights went out and Kostanov could well imagine the soldiers crawling their way up the hillside toward his position.
Kostanov reached into his combat vest and pulled out all his magazines, stacking them next to him. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a battered blue beret. It had been issued to him over twenty-five years ago when he’d first joined the Soviet Airborne. Much had changed since then for both his country and himself, but Kostanov wanted the Chinese to know who had made this stand.
Dmitri noted Kostanov putting the beret on. “For Mother Russia,” he said. “For Mother Earth,” Kostanov corrected as he put his weapon to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
Turcotte could hear the firing. It spurred him to move even quicker, to not waste the valiant sacrifice made by the Russians. After five minutes the furious sound of the firefight behind them faded to a few scattered shots, then silence.
Turcotte checked his compass. They had made it around the tomb. Due north beckoned down-slope. Turcotte started sliding down the slope, knowing the PZ was only four kilometers away.
CHAPTER 28
Kelly Reynolds looked at the computer printouts in frustration. She could make as much sense of them as the UNAOC decryption experts, which was to say she could make no sense of the garbled letters and numbers transmitted in one continuous stream.
The Guardian I computer under Easter Island was bursting information to the incoming Talon fleet almost nonstop, and in turn getting messages from the ships transmitted back to it. Kelly had to assume, as UNAOC did, that Aspasia was updating his information base. After all, Kelly reasoned, a lot had happened on Earth since Aspasia had gone into his self-imposed exile on Mars. Five thousand years of human history would require such extensive communications to get caught up on.
There had been no further messages from Aspasia to UNAOC, other than to acknowledge the landing site in Central Park. The clock was now under thirty-six hours to live contact, as the media had dubbed the moment Aspasia’s ship was scheduled to land.
Kelly hoped her friends would be back from China in time to see the landing and the beginning of a bold new chapter in the history of the human race.
Three more kilometers, Turcotte knew, and they’d be at the pickup zone. The going downhill was much easier. The terrain had also become less steep. Looking to the east Turcotte could see the first hint of dawn on the horizon, a light smudge in the amplified imaging of the night-vision goggles. Looking back to the north, he could see movement. The PLA had gotten smarter and wasn’t running around with flashlights on anymore, but he could hear the distant rumble of vehicles and voices. The chopper was still hanging back, several kilometers to the east.
As the elevation dropped, the vegetation grew thicker, which provided them with more cover.
“How you doing, Professor?” Turcotte asked.
“I’ll make it,” Nabinger said. “How much farther?”
“Under three klicks.”
“Keep going.”
Harker whispered out of the dark, “Hold up.” The warrant officer grabbed Turcotte’s arm. “We got trouble.”
Turcotte could see that Harker was holding a bulky scope in his hands, looking through it in their direction of travel. “What do you see?” Turcotte knew the thermal site could penetrate the vegetation and highlight the heat of living creatures and working machinery.
“We’ve got a picket line about six hundred meters ahead at the base of hill,” Harker said. “They’re holding still, just waiting. Looks like there’s a large stream down there, and the Chinese are along the northern bank. The line coming up the hill behind us must have been the hammer to drive us; they’re the anvil up ahead.”
Turcotte checked his watch. They had less than two hours before the choppers showed up. There was no time to go in any other direction, plus there would most likely be Chinese forces waiting whichever way they went.
“Suggestion?” Turcotte asked.
“We’re going to have to split,” Harker said. “I’ll take DeCamp with me. We’ll have the sniper’s rifles with the thermals.” He pointed over his left shoulder to a ridgeline coming off the mountain tomb. “We’ll go up there and start firing. That should cause some confusion as they react. There should be a hole for you to get across the stream, through their lines, and get to the PZ.”
“And what about you?” Nabinger asked.
“Once you get on the choppers, send one to pick us up,” Harker answered.
Turcotte knew the odds of Harker and DeCamp still being alive by that time were slim, but he didn’t have time to stand and discuss it. He also knew Harker was aware of the dire reality of the situation.
“All right,” Turcotte said. “How long do you need?”
“Give me fifteen minutes to get in position. You’ll hear us when we start shooting.”
“Let’s go,” Turcotte said. He grasped Harker’s hand briefly, feeling the dried blood that had come off Kostanov’s hand grit between their flesh.