“Good thinking. Both of you try to get some sleep, I’ll keep watch.” Heron peered through the firing port for a moment before wandering back out into the fading afternoon. He found a tree to lean against and let his mind roam.
At first he had felt skeptical about the council’s choice of Grisha as leader of the Southern Defensive Force. But after hearing about his military experience, he was unable to name another who fit the job better. And he sure as hell didn’t want it.
Late winter dusk crowded in around the trees and Heron surveyed the perimeter. As he peered off to his left, movement caught in the right corner of his eye. He whipped his head back in time to see a large figure stop in its rushing advance and aim a weapon at him.
Heron threw himself to the ground as three slugs smashed into the tree behind him. He jerked his U.S.A.- issue machine gun up and put two long bursts into the attacker. The man spun with the impact of the bullets and dropped silently in the snow.
As an afterthought, Heron tapped his radio once and said, “Wolf One.” How could the Russian have gotten past all the others? He moved quickly toward the command bunker. “Riley! Wally!” he shouted. “They’ve infiltrated!” He slipped coming around the end of the bunker and his feet went out from under him.
Bullets whizzed over his head at normal chest height. Heron instinctively sprayed a long burst at the muzzle flashes from the far end of the dim bunker before he stopped sliding. Two men jerked and fell in perfect unison.
The conviction they were his own people shot horror through him.
My God, why did they shoot at me?
He scrambled to his feet only to trip over something else. He peered down into the dead face of Wally Sticks. The feeling of horror grew exponentially as he realized the truth. All of his people were dead.
He hurried over to the closest figure and jerked open the heavy, white parka. The man wore a Russian field uniform. His collar flash featured a stylized leaping wolf. The Czar’s elite, crack army ranger force was called the Wolf Pack.
The Russians had sent wolves after wolves. And the Russian wolves were better at their jobs. Heron stared wildly about.
The gunfire would bring others. Just to make sure he didn’t harm his own people, he tapped the send key on his radio three times, said, “Wolf One, I’m gonna blow it.” Then he reached down to the base of the log wall and grabbed the detonator hidden there.
Through the firing port he saw a scatter of figures rushing toward him. All wore white parkas.
He screamed, “Eat this, dog soldiers!” and violently twisted the rotary switch to the left.
Nearly two hundred meters of the RustyCan highway erupted in a sheet of fire. The bridge over the Chena blew into flaming splinters. The blast flattened trees and tossed the Russian rangers like rag dolls. The shock wave blew the bunker wall inward—burying Heron under bludgeoning logs.
He knew his chest was crushed and inkiness began to surround him. He wondered if he had died for nothing before the darkness rolled over him and he submitted.
The blast rattled Chena. Rubble shifted and the flash from the southeast silhouetted the gaping walls. Leaning against the back wall of the command post, Wing felt shock and surprise. She sat her cup of tea down.
“Already?” she muttered to herself.
Grisha burst through the door and went to the radio being monitored by the War Council delegate from Nulato.
“Did you hear anything before the blast, Eleanor?” Grisha asked.
“Wolf One keyed his transmitter once, then about a half-minute later three more times—then it went off. That’s all, Grisha.”
Grisha stared hard at the walls. “Heron had the bunker. No report from the scouts. No other warning of imminent action, just the blast,” he muttered.
Wing moved over and stood at his side. “Do you want to send a couple scouts out?”
“No. We’ve already lost too many people,” Grisha said. “But I want everyone at their battle stations, now.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Wing said and turned to go.
“Wing,” Grisha said.
She turned back to face him, conscious of others in the chilly stone room watching them. New lines etched his face and anxiety filled his eyes.
“Colonel?”
“I want you to, please, be careful out there.” For a long moment he was the old Grisha again and his dark eyes gleamed with affection.
“Of course,” she said slowly, her eyes locked on his. “You be careful, too.”
“Right, let’s get our people ready.” He was the colonel again: remote, hard, and driven.
Wing felt something move inside her and, with an almost audible click, she realized she was in love with Grisha. The thought frightened her—she didn’t want to condemn him to death.
They haunted her, those men she had loved and lost. The Russians had killed every one of them. That was why the Russians had to be defeated before she could respond to Grisha the way she wished.
She recognized what she saw in his eyes when he looked at her, but she couldn’t acknowledge it yet—it wasn’t safe.
“Smolst,” she snapped, “let’s get ’em in their places.”
55
Colonel Konstine Kronov sat stolidly next to his driver as they inched along the snow-covered Russia-Canada Highway. The last time he had been in Alaska was as a junior officer back in the ’60s. His star had risen dramatically since then and he expected his troops to make short work of this rebellion.
Two days ago the Czar had personally given him command of all Imperial forces in Russian Amerika until this revolt ended. The rebels would hang, Kronov decided, as an object lesson for Mother Russia’s other ethnic peoples. General rank waited at the end of this expedition, he felt sure.
He tried not to think about how few troops he had under his command, and how quickly he and his staff of four had thrown together this bare-bones response. What little intelligence he had about the rebels pointed to a small force, inexpertly commanded, and poorly trained. His response counted heavily on that intelligence. More troops were en route, but vast distances were involved.
“Captain Kashan to Colonel Kronov,” the radio crackled.
Kronov picked up the microphone. “Report.”
“Colonel, all of the Wolf Pack are dead. The road has been destroyed for nearly two hundred meters, including the bridge. There is no sign of the rebels.”
“Thank you, Captain. We’ll just have to drive on the taiga and ford the creek. Kronov clear.”
He frowned. The Wolf Pack must have been ineptly led. How could a mob of savages and Creoles eliminate the best Imperial Army troops in Alaska?
Those people were usually predictable.
The three tanks and two trucks in front of his command car detoured off the roadbed and crept between the shattered road surface and the dark stand of spruce and birch. The colonel stared at the wrecked road and wondered where the rebels had obtained the explosives. He’d forgotten how desolate Russian Amerika could be.
The command car bumped along behind the trucks. Behind the car rumbled a half dozen armored personnel carriers and a half dozen tanks. Reducing what was left of Chena Redoubt would be child’s play with this much firepower.
It had been but a few weeks since the Imperial Air Corps had blasted the redoubt. High Command told him
