“Yes!” The man got to his feet, sat his chair upright, and slowly sank onto the seat with his hands over his head.
Cora looked back at her people crowding around.
“Heron, you stay with me. The rest of you take up positions out in the corridor, I don’t want to get trapped in here.”
The radio crackled and a voice squawked from a headset on the floor.
“Put that on a speaker so we all can hear it,” she told the man covered with secondhand blood.
“Yes.” He turned to the console and pulled a switch.
“This is Imperial Eagle One. Do you copy me, Chena Redoubt? Over.”
“Answer him.” She jerked the weapon toward the bloodied man because he sat closest to her. “You close your eyes and put your head down on your hands,” she told the other one.
“We copy, Imperial Eagle One, over.”
“Imperial Eagle Leader failed to get a response from you, so we thought he might be blocked.”
“We did hear a transmission, but it came in all broken up. Over.”
“This is Imperial Eagle Leader, can you hear me now, Chena Redoubt?”
“Loud and clear, Colonel.”
Cora smiled and nodded approvingly. The radioman gave her a tight smile.
“Contact Tetlin Aerodrome immediately. I want close combat support within the hour. Gunships and at least two Yak fighters. Read that back, over.”
The radioman repeated the transmission back to him letter perfect. As he finished speaking, his eyes flashed up and then back to the console.
In that glance Cora saw her control questioned, threatened, perhaps challenged. She shook the weapon hard enough to make the strap slap against blued steel. The man’s eyes turned submissive.
She pointed to the speaker and gave him a wide grin and a thumbs up. Heron pointed his gun at him.
“We’ll send the message immediately, Colonel.”
“I’m going to join the ground force. I’ll be out of contact for a few minutes, over and clear.”
“Acknowledged and out.” The man regarded her with an expression of doubt. “There are other bases monitoring these signals.”
“Don’t count on it,
“What happens when they come back, other than me getting shot for treason, I mean?”
“History is changing today. Do as you’re told and you might live to tell your grandchildren about it.” She handed him a scrap of paper. “Switch to this frequency.”
The knob clicked as it turned. He waited for more instructions. Cora glanced over at the other radioman.
His head was still resting quietly on his hands. No—just one hand lay between head and console.
“You back there!” she snapped. “Get your other hand up where I can see it.”
His head moved and his eyes gleamed like those of a cornered animal. His hand jerked up with a pistol in it.
He fired.
33
Static issued from the radio speaker while the assault team waited, shifting from foot to foot and scratching imaginary itches. A light click sounded and the hum of a carrier wave took over.
“Somebody just switched to our frequency,” James, the radioman, said. He didn’t look up from the dials, knobs, and read-outs in front of him. The small shelter grew quiet as all six occupants stilled and unconsciously held their breath.
The radio hissed impotently.
“Maybe they’ve captured her and she told them the frequency,” Paul whispered, “and they’re trying to hear us.”
“Quiet!” Nathan whispered back.
The speaker clicked and a strained voice carried easily to all of them.
“Cora is… she says to come now, quickly.” Another click and silence filled the carrier wave.
All eyes centered on Nathan. He ignored them and began rubbing his temples. After thirty long seconds he put his hands in his lap and stared at James.
“I’m pretty sure that was Heron. Signal Assault Force Two. Tell them it’s a go.”
James keyed the mike twice and spoke clearly.
“Chena Two, this is Chena One. Go. I repeat. Go.”
Throughout the town of Chena separate squads of the Dena Army went into action. The main gate of Chena Redoubt lost its guards within seconds of the radio message. Weapons appeared and men and women poured into the compound to spread across the parade ground.
As hoped, the majority of the personnel was at this moment going north at speed on a rescue mission. Only a skeleton force remained to garrison the redoubt. Nearly forty fighters streamed silently toward the offices, garages, barracks, and other support buildings when the sergeant of the guard stepped out of his office to make his rounds.
The noise of his weapon burst the bubble of silence. He killed one man and wounded two others before going down under immediate concentrated fire. Gunfire, screams, curses, and explosions filled the stone enclosure.
34
The half-track roared down the snowy road at an impressive forty kilometers per hour. Grisha, watching ahead carefully, bounced on the front seat between the driver and Colonel Yuganin. Behind them five trucks, carrying twenty troopers each, and a sixth truck loaded with reserve ammunition and weapons gamely kept pace. Three tanks followed at top speed, barely keeping up.
Engine noise threatened his hearing. Diesel fumes would have asphyxiated them had the cab sealed properly. Cold air streamed over their feet, producing borderline frostbite. Their bodies shook with the jarring violence of the ride.
The RustyCan wound between ridges in this part of Russian Amerika, and just ahead of them, the ridges came together. The half-track roared into a cut started centuries ago by the Tanana River and widened by Russian engineers forty years before during the World War. Off to the left lay the silent, frozen river and ahead on the right tilted the fifteen-meter rock known to the Dena as the Sentinel.
“I am going to burst if I don’t piss!” Grisha shouted to the colonel.
“So burst.”
They traveled another hundred meters before the officer shouted at the driver.
“Stop as soon as you can. The men will need to limber up before we get to the battle zone.”
The driver obediently downshifted and flicked on his signal lamps. Moments later they stopped and the engine idled down to a mere growl. The colonel slid out and walked back to confer with his officers.
Grisha glanced over at the driver. The man urinated at the side of his half-track, stretched, and broke wind at the same time. At the far end of the column, tankers crawled out of their armored behemoths to join their comrades and relieve themselves in the snow.
Grisha wandered over to the river and looked down the ice-crusted bank.
A dozen weapons pointed at him before whispered word passed as to his identity. He grinned and stepped off the bank, slid down to join the string of pitifully few men and women who comprised this portion of the Dena Army.
