clear field of vision of the area below, including the prospective weapons
station. Abandoning the ice cave as soon as they heard the boat approach,
the Spetsnaz and Rogov had quickly availed themselves of their prearranged
routes to the peaks. From their vantage points they saw the boat approach,
do a careful survey of the western end of the island, and then moor to the
far end. While the two teams had been difficult to see against the
landscape, the night vision goggles made the job easier.
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