Rogov glanced up at the sky again, his heart swelling with pride. Arrayed against the overcast, all forty chutes had opened perfectly, and the men they carried were now drifting down to the ground. As their altitude decreased, their rate of descent began to seem impossibly fast. From this angle, it seemed inevitable that at least half of them would suffer broken legs or ankles upon landing.
Yet he’d watched them execute this similar maneuver many times before, always without casualties, and always precisely on time and on target.
He shifted his gaze back down to the Americans. At the first sound of the transport aircraft, they’d ceased all movement, making them a bit more difficult to spot, but he could still ascertain their location. He wondered what they were thinking, staring up at the parachutes. He saw one man look up, a break in patrol routine, flashing his tanned face against the white background and now easily visible. No matter, he thought. The men descending from the heavens had their ways of dealing with Americans. Oh, yes, indeed they did.
Sikes saw the first man touch down fifty yards away from him. He tightened his hand on his weapon and brought it up slowly, careful to make no sudden movements that might startle the other man into firing. He watched as the unidentified parachuter snapped his quick-release harness, the wind quickly catching the gusting folds of the parachute and blowing it away. In the same motion, the man brought the weapon he’d been carrying at port arms up, aiming it at Sikes.
For a few moments, it was a Mexican standoff, each of them drawing down on the other with their weapons. Then, as ten more parachuters alighted behind them, the first man fired.
Sikes hit the deck the second he saw the man tighten his finger around the trigger, some instinct warning him he was in mortal danger. He brought his own weapon up and squeezed off a shot. He saw the first parachuter leap backward as though shoved in the middle of his chest with a heavy hand, and a bright red stain blossomed on his chest. Gunfire exploded around him, the rounds, every fifth one a tracer, exploding the ice into shards around him. The ricochets sang wildly with a distinctive high-pitched squeal as rounds left the ice at acute angles. He saw the SEAL beside him drop to the ground, falling face forward into the rough ice and blowing snow. The swirling particles partially hid the body.
Sikes returned fire, stopping only when the other side did. The odds were impossible, yet he’d be damned if he’d give up without a fight. As the gunfire from the other side ceased, he dropped to one knee, still holding his weapon at the ready. Not taking his eyes off the parachuters, he rolled his teammate over onto his back. He groaned.
Half of the man’s face was missing, the bloody, seeping mass that had been its lower right quadrant already freezing in the arctic air. He’d taken another round in the gut, and on its way out, the round had evidently hit bone and ricocheted out the side of the man’s body, blowing a massive, gaping wound in his right side. Irrelevantly, he noted the layers of clothing now exposed by the wound, layer upon layer carefully designed and donned to allow survival in this environment. For some reason, that struck him as particularly poignant.
He turned back toward the parachuters, rage fueling his movements. While he’d examined his friend, they’d moved imperceptibly closer, and he was now ringed by silent white shapes carrying arctic-prepped weapons. He snarled, hating to bow to the inevitable. A SEAL fought, and fought always, but there was nothing in their code of conduct that demanded suicide. For a brief moment, he wondered if he could somehow provoke them into firing and shooting each other, since their fields of fire were not limited by their formation, but decided against it. Slowly, he stood. He faced the man closest to him, and dropped his weapon to the ground.
In the distance, he could see the two members of the other team moving now, heading back toward the boat. Somehow, they’d managed to avoid the attention of the parachuters.
While the lead man fixed his gun on Sikes, he heard another man bark out rough commands. The group of parachuters quickly shed their gear and assembled themselves into five-man teams, looking very much like American SEALs in the way they moved and held themselves. He felt the chill bite deeper, wondering if these were the famous Spetsnaz he’d heard of so many times before but encountered only once.
He saw the men deploy in a standard search pattern. Off in the distance, his teammates were just reaching the boat. He heard a man cry out, and saw several start to run toward the boat, struggling to make headway against the wind in their heavy winter garments. The lead pair of parachuters stopped and raised their weapons. Gunfire cracked out again, oddly muted by the wind.
He saw his men reach the boat and leap into it, one step behind the lookout, who was already gunning the engine. The boat backed out, gaining speed at an incredible rate. As soon as it was clear of the land, it heeled sharply and pointed, bow out, to sea, quickly accelerating to its maximum speed of eighty knots. He breathed a sigh of relief and glanced down at his teammate. One dead, one captured, three alive. At least, if the boat could evade gunfire, the report would make it back to the carrier. As he stared at the grim face of the man approaching him, he realized that that was more than he could expect to do.
White Wolf stared at the action below, motionless, not even flinching at the harsh, chattering whine of the automatic weapon fire. Born and bred to this land, familiar with every nuance of its territory, he was truly invisible to the Spetsnaz infesting his terrain. He made a small motion to his grandson, who approached and put his ear close to the old man’s mouth.
“See the mistakes they make?” the elder said quietly, his voice barely a whisper. “The positioning, the noise — they know nothing of this land.”
The younger man swallowed nervously. “We are so close,” he said in the same barely audible tones. “Your safety is important.”
The old man made a small movement with his mouth. “If I cannot evade these men, then it is time for me to die,” he said. “These things — you see how difficult it will be for the Americans when they come. These intruders are already scattered about our land, and dislodging them without killing the man they’ve taken will be impossible.”
“Better them than us,” the younger man said harshly. “And what exactly have they given us? Taken our land, given diseases to our people — why should we help the Americans?”
The old man gazed at him levelly, his eyes cold and proud. “My word.”
The younger man sighed. “Yes, yes, there is that.” He glanced back down at the land below, moving his head slowly so as to be undetectable. “What can we do? So many of them.”
“And so inexperienced,” the older man murmured. “They have many lessons left to learn — and this one will not be pleasant.”
CHAPTER 9
“A fucking invasion,” Bird Dog breathed. “Oh, deep holy shit, Gator.”
“Don’t get happy with the weapons yet,” Gator said tightly. “Mother’s having a fit on the other end. A MiG they know what to do with. Same thing with a Bear. But an amphibious landing — or an airborne one — is a little outside of our marching orders. The admiral’s on the circuit, yelling that if we so much as twitch wrong we could start an international incident.”
“Like the Russians haven’t?” Bird Dog asked. “Putting paratroopers on American soil seems to be a hell of an unneighborly thing to do. Not to mention shooting at our P3 aircraft.”
The Tomcat was circling at seven thousand feet, monitoring the progress of the paratroopers down to the ice. They blended quickly with the landscape, and were invisible after they landed to the aircraft above.
“Hell, I wish we had some Rockeyes,” Bird Dog said, referring to the ground munitions missile that carried a payload of tiny bomblets that exploded on the ground. They were the weapons of choice for use against enemy troops.
“You think you’re gonna get permission to drop bombs on U.S. soil?” Gator demanded. “Think, man, think! For once in your life, just consider the consequences.”
“We drop bombs on American soil at the range,” Bird Dog argued. “What, you want us to sit up here and watch these bastards invade?”
