2. ABOVE THE ICE
[MISSION DAY 1, FEBRUARY 16, 2033]
[1025 hours local time]
[Southwest of Little Diomede Island, Bering Strait]
The cold was startling, even through the armored, thermally heated combat suit. Price knew part of that was the adjustment period, as the thermals sensed the rapid temperature drop and slowly warmed to compensate. Part of it was psychological. Just looking around at this desert of sea ice—feeling the spray of ice particles that clattered against the suit, hearing the low throbbing moan of the arctic wind—was enough to cause an involuntary shiver no matter what the temperature inside the suit.
Price’s leg itched. The new one. Grown for her by human scientists using Bzadian technology. According to Monster, she was part Bzadian now, and no amount of arguing that it was her own cells they had cloned would convince him otherwise.
Or maybe he just liked to tease.
It was not long after dawn. At this time of year, in this part of the world, the sun could not be bothered to make an entrance until well after ten in the morning. It would hover tiredly above the horizon for a paltry eight hours, then sink, as if exhausted, below the ice.
That gave them only a few hours to reach their mission objective. It was too dangerous to move out on the ice floes in the darkness, even with night-vision goggles. And overnight the temperature dropped to even more dangerous lows.
“Comm check,” Price said. She watched the sail of the submarine disappear down the hole in the ice as the five other Angels sounded off, two to six. Two was Sergeant Panyoczki: Monster. She was glad he was here, and not only for his soldiering skills. He was also someone she trusted, absolutely, without question. But more than that. He was someone she cared deeply about. Whatever they faced out here, they would face it together.
It had taken the submarine over four hours to find the lead. A fracture between two floes, where the water had not had time to refreeze and was covered by only a thin crust.
The winter ice in the turbulent Bering Strait has a life and a geography all of its own, due to the constant buffeting of the currents that run through the narrow passage between Russia and Alaska, bringing with them the outflow of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean. Great floes collide with each other, erupting into ridges.
For years the currents had prevented the strait from freezing, but a relatively recent change in the local climate had led to the accumulation of more and more sea ice, “drift ice,” latching on to land-fixed “fast ice” and gradually spreading until a bridge of ice connected the two continents, with the Diomede Islands, Big and Little, at its center.
The submarine had located numerous leads in the ice canopy above, but most were too small, unstable, or in the wrong location. Once the right lead had been found, the submarine had surfaced at speed, using the top of its sail as a battering ram to smash its way through a few inches of ice.
But the submarine was gone now as Price sensed, rather than saw, its gray bulk slip away beneath the ice. On the surface of the water, delicate petals of frost flowers were already starting to form. Pretty, fractal shapes, like miniature white ferns, spreading and branching off, again and again. Within minutes, the water would wear a white coat of frost, and within the hour it would probably be strong enough to walk on.
“Oscar Mike in five mikes,” Price said. “Check your battery levels.”
Batteries could behave strangely in these temperatures, and a dead or low battery meant no thermals, and that meant death in this bitter and frigid world. They each carried a spare battery for that reason, and there were more on the equipment sled.
“Rope up,” Monster said.
The ropes were lightweight nylon cords, thin but immensely strong. They had to be.
“We’re sheltered here,” Price said, clipping her rope on and checking that it was secured properly. “You’d better prepare yourselves for what we’re going to hit once we get out of this lead.”
“I can hardly wait,” the Tsar said. He smiled his confident, charming smile. Another good addition to the team. He had proved that on Operation Magnum. He was still a bit full of himself, but that had diminished as he had gotten to know them better.
PFC Emile Attaya was the next in line in front of Price, and she double-checked the carabiner clips at his end. Emile was a good-looking Lebanese kid who smiled constantly and seemed to burn energy the way other people breathed air. Having Emile around was like having a new puppy in the house, and although it was protocol, nobody, not even the commanders back at Fort Carson, called him by his surname. He was always just “Emile.” Like Monster, English was not his first language. But unlike Monster, he spoke it well, with merely a trace of an accent.
“We should have brought parasails,” Emile said. “We could have used the wind and sailed there.”
“If it was blowing in the right direction,” Wall said. “Which it’s not.”
Spec. Hayden Wall. The other new Angel. He talked constantly and was generally moaning about something. He did it with the broad a and missing r of the native New Englander. His dour moping was a complete contrast from Emile’s infectious enthusiasm and quick smile.
“Or bobsleds,” Emile said. “We could have had dogs and they could have pulled us along.”
“Somebody find his off button,” Barnard said, but she smiled as she said it. Even cynical, sarcastic Barnard was not immune to Emile’s puppy dog charm.
Price took an ice ax from the equipment sled and slipped the loop over her wrist. The others followed suit. Watching each of them as they did so, she thought about the faith they were putting in her as leader of the mission. She hoped it wasn’t misplaced.
She shouldn’t even be here. With a new leg and the intense trauma, both physical and psychological, from the disastrous Operation Magnum, she could have turned the mission down and nobody would have blamed her. But she had said yes and told anyone who asked that it was because she didn’t feel her fight was finished, that she didn’t want to let down her comrades, that she felt she had something to offer. She had a thousand reasons.
But the truth was that six months lying in a hospital bed plus another six months of rehab had bored her senseless. Fort Carson had bored her with its regimented mealtimes and mindless routines. She needed the buzz, the thrill, the coil-gun jumping in her arms, adrenaline coursing through her body. Sometimes it seemed she only felt alive when she was in imminent danger of death. But she couldn’t tell that to anyone. Not even Monster. If the counselors back at Carson heard her say that, they would never let her out of their sight.
Someday the war would be over, one way or another, and she would have to deal with it. But that day was a long way off, and by then she might not even be alive to worry about it.
“Weapons check,” she said. She checked her own, hitting the release that would spring the coil-gun over her shoulder and into her arms.
“Okay, Angels,” she said. “Listen up. You are probably wondering what we are doing here.”
“Yeah, bro,” Wall said. “I am wondering why I am freezing my ass off in the middle of nowhere when there are warm bunks and hot pizza back at base.” He seemed to be having a problem with his weapon release.
“Don’t worry about it, Wall,” the Tsar said, moving over to give him a hand. “It’s just typical ACOG. They send us out on these missions but everything is so top secret that we don’t know whether we’re wiping our butts or blowing our noses until we see the color of the tissue.”
“And I don’t care how warm the bunks are at Fort Carson,” Barnard said. “I’d rather be out here doing something than sitting around doing nothing.”
She wasn’t the only one, Price thought.
“Okay,” Price said. “This is a straightfo
rward reconnaissance mission. We are to avoid contact. In any case, ACOG tells us there’s no enemy activity within fifty klicks.”
“Except for a million Pukes lined up on Russia’s Chukchi shore, waiting to have a go at us,” Wall muttered.
“That’s the point, Wall,” Barnard said. “They’re fifty klicks away. They’re not here.”
The Tsar stepped back so Wall could test his gun again. It released with no problem, jumping straight into his hands. He tried it three more times to be sure.
“Little Diomede Island is packed with so many sensors that they can hear a snowflake freeze,” Price said. “And those sensors tell us that the Pukes are still sitting on their backsides over in Russia. All we have to do is stroll over to the island, get eyes on the control station, observe, and report.”
“Report on what?” the Tsar asked.
“There are two operators on that station,” Price said. “Specialist Gabrielle Bowden and Specialist Nikolas Able. We need to know that they’re both okay and that everything is as it should be.”
“Maybe we should have just phoned and asked them,” Wall said.
Price ignored him. “Once ACOG are satisfied that everything is aboveboard, we get the hell out, as quickly as we can.”
“And if we run into any real Pukes?” Wall asked.
“Then we’ll waste them all,” Emile said. “Bring it on.”
“He’s kinda cute,” Barnard said. “Reminds me of Wilton.”
Wilton had been one of the original members of the team. He had fought with them at Uluru and on Operation Magnum. She hadn’t liked him much. Not at the start. But he had a way of growing on people, and she missed him.
“Emile, our orders are to avoid engagement,” Price said. “Don’t go all Chuck Norris on me.”
“Gonna be a walk in the park,” the Tsar said.
“Some park,” Wall said. “Where’s the grass, the lake, and the pigeons?”
“I think this place is awesome!” Emile said, gesturing around at the translucent blue and white walls of the lead.
Price wasn’t sure what was worse, Wall’s constant griping or Emile’s manic energy.
“All right, Angels. We are Oscar Mike,” Price said.
“Checking your ropes, my dudes, and maintain each two-meter separations,” Monster said.
Price hid a smile. For two years now she had worked with Monster. His Bzadian was flawless, but he still couldn’t speak English worth a damn.
She had warned them the wind would get worse when they got higher, but even she wasn’t prepared for it. A furious gust hit them as they emerged from the shelter of the lead, threatening to throw them back where they came from. They crouched, on all fours, heads into the wind, and dug their axes deeply into the ice.
“Booyah, my first real mission,” Emile squawked on the comm.
“No, it’s not,” Price said. “We’re not officially here. The Angels have been stood down, remember? This mission doesn’t exist.”
“At least we get real bullets,” the Tsar said. “Not like Magnum when they would only give us puffer rounds.”
“Puffers would do no good here,” Barnard said.
She was right. The compacted powder of puffer rounds exploded into a cloud when it hit body armor. The target breathed it in and was unconscious within seconds. But puffers were useless against an enemy wearing full face masks—a necessity in this frigid air.
“Move ’em out, Angels,” Price called after the worst of the squall subsided.
The Tsar was on point. He stood and began to move, leaning almost horizontally into the wind. Price kept an eye on Wall and Emile. They were unknowns. They had the best scores of all the trainee Angels, but that meant nothing when you got into the field.
Wall in particular had only one year of training, but his skill with a rifle would rival that of the legendary Blake Wilton. Even so, Wall was only on the mission because two more experienced Angels had been injured in training and one had mysteriously disappeared from Fort Carson.
Price’s leg itched again, left side, just below the knee.
Some of the ridges and hummocks they climbed, some they avoided. The flat areas in the center of floes were the easiest, but they were also where the wind was the strongest.
Already, Price was starting to wonder if the two missing Seal teams had simply fallen through gaps in the ice. That would explain the screams and the sudden loss of radio contact. But it wouldn’t explain Legrand, the station commander who had died in mysterious circumstances.
“We could walk past a Puke patrol in this weather and never even see them,” the Tsar said.
“We’re not likely to run into any Pukes here,” Barnard said. “We’re south of the islands. The direct route between Russia and Alaska is to the north. This route would be much longer and the ice here is too rough for tanks.”
“Why?” the Tsar asked.
“There’s more movement in the ice floes,” Barnard said. “Because it’s warmer here than up north.”
“Yeah, bro, this is real toasty,” Wall said.
“Anything else to complain about, Wall?” Barnard asked. “Don’t hold back; let’s get it all out there.”
“Well, now that you mention it,” Wall said, “I can’t understand why they’re making us walk. Haven’t they heard of snowmobiles?”
“Or how about a chauffeur-driven limousine?” Barnard said. “Take you right up to the front door and lay out the red carpet for you.”
“I was just saying,” Wall said, “this is the thirties, not the sixteenth century.”
“Snowmobiles make noise and heat,” the Tsar said. “You want to advertise that we are coming?”
“Why not?” Wall asked. “The LT said there are no Pukes for fifty klicks.”
“Wall,” Monster said.
“Yeah?”
“Keep mouth shut,” Monster said.
“Amen to that,” the Tsar said.
They passed an upside-down V made from two giant slabs of ice, both oddly straight and rectangular. Not long after that, a narrow track dropped into a deep gulley—a huge scar between two floes that had iced over and was gradually healing. Here the going was much easier, as the walls protected them from the wind and the flying snow. A hundred meters later, they emerged onto a flat sheet of ice where the going was smooth, although the wind was cruel.
It was some time after that when Price realized that the ground beneath her feet was vibrating. At first she thought it was the wind or the judder of the equipment sled over the rough ice, but it quickly became clear that the ice itself was moving. The vibrations rapidly progressed to a shaking that made it difficult to walk; then a sudden sideways lurch in the seemingly solid ice beneath their feet threw them to the ground.
Price started to get up, but Monster called, “Wait.”
There was another jerk and another. For a few minutes the ice went crazy, shaking like an earthquake.
As harsh as it had been, at least the Australian desert stayed steady under your feet, Price thought, embedding her ax into the ice and gripping it tightly. On Operation Magnum they had been on T-boards or motorbikes most of the way. On this mission it seemed the enemy would be the least of their problems.
“What’s going on?” the Tsar asked.
“Ice quake,” Barnard said. “It’s not a glacier we’re on; it’s a sea. A bunch of ice floes all bumping and scraping against each other.”
“That nothing,” Monster said. “Will get much worse.”
“Okay, everybody, just relax. Stay where you are,” Price said. “We’ll be Oscar Mike again as soon as we are sure this has settled down.”
The flat plain took them to a ridge that stretched as far as they could see in either direction. Two ice floes had rammed into each other here and the compressed ice had pushed up. It was not a smooth shape, but a rough jumble of ice pieces. There was no alternative but to climb it.
The equipment sled was going to be the biggest problem. It would have to be carried. That meant unroping.
Monster took one end by himself. Price and the Tsar were about to take one runner each at the front end when Wall stepped in front. “I’ll take it, bro,” he said.
Price stepped back, grateful for Wall and the Tsar to be doing the carrying. The rehab had been intense, but she still didn’t feel as strong as before. Monster said it was just confidence, and maybe he was right, but either way she was happy not to put her new leg and her rehabbed muscles to such an arduous test.
Wall was surprisingly strong. Not bulky like Monster, but a sinewy strength. He trudged steadily up over the hummock. He didn’t appear to notice or mind the lashing of the wind.
Behind them, Monster, carrying the entire back end by himself, seemed happy enough, and somehow they got the sled to the top. They stopped there briefly before beginning the climb down the other side, resting the sled often as they found their footing.
At the base of the ridge, they set off again across smooth, clear ice that was like glass beneath their feet. A brief lull in the storm revealed two dark shapes in the distance, one huge, the other glowing with artificial light.
The glowing one was their destination. Little Diomede. Ice-covered and climbing up out of the sea of white that surrounded it, it was the peak of some underwater mountain. It dominated the area, along with its larger brother, Big Diomede.
There was something majestic, riveting, about these snow-covered, jagged rocky peaks.
The wind came back up and with it great flurries of snow and ice. The islands disappeared as if they were no more than a mirage. The conditions were approaching whiteout, and Price knew they would have to stop soon. It would be too dangerous to continue, a fact that became very obvious when the Tsar stumbled, yelling, his arms windmilling. Monster must have known immediately what was happening and yanked on the rope. Price was jerked backward and sat down on her backside, hard. So did Wall in front of her, and it rippled up the line to the Tsar.
When Price went forward to see, the Tsar was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of a crevasse.
It was wide, at least four meters across. If Monster hadn’t reacted quickly, then the Tsar might have gone straight in, pulling the rest of them after him. The mission could be over in a second, and no one would ever know their fate. Maybe the mystery of the missing Seals really was as simple as that.
At the bottom of the crevasse, nearly two meters down, was a dark river of ocean. The crevasse was new, probably formed in the recent ice quake.
“Okay, Monster,” Price said. “How do we get across?”
Monster had served alongside their last lieutenant, Ryan Chisnall, in the Great Ice War of 2028. He was the only Angel with arctic experience.
“Can we use the ladders?” the Tsar asked.
“Is too wide for ladder,” Monster said. “Would not be stable enough. Not in such winds.”
“So what, then?” Price asked.
“If we had snowmobiles, we could try to jump it,” Emile said.
“And if we had a magic wand, we could make it disappear,” Barnard said. “But we don’t have that either.”
“And if the Bzadians hadn’t invaded, I’d be chatting up girls in the school cafeteria right now,” Wall said. “Instead of freezing my nuts off here with you Rambo wannabes.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” Price said. “We’ll split up. Monster, Barnard, and Wall go half a klick north. The rest of us will go half a klick south. Constant radio contact. If we lose contact, return to this point. There’ll be a way around or across.”
She was right. Price and her team had gone barely twenty meters when Monster’s voice came on the comm.
“Angel One, this is Angel Two. How copy?”
“Solid copy, Angel Two,” Price said. “What have you got?”
“Bridge,” Monster said.
It was a bridge of ice. Part of the wall on their side had sheared off, creating a sloping ramp across to the other side.
Monster went first, easing himself over the side of the crevasse.
He stood on the base of the bridge and jumped up and down a couple of times, testing it.
“Is good,” he said, with a thumbs-up at Price.
“If it can take his weight, it’ll hold anybody’s,” Barnard said.
Monster dropped to his hands and knees and crawled out onto the shaft of ice. Still it seemed solid, the broken ice welded at either end by the cold.
“Oscar Kilo,” he said, then moved away from the edge, using his ax to anchor himself in case any of the others slipped.
They got the sled across by lowering it on ropes to the bridge, where Monster simply hauled it up to the other side.
Price, now last in the team, eased over the edge of the crevasse and found her footing at the base of the bridge. Her new leg began to twinge and spasm. It did that sometimes, for no good reason. As if she didn’t have enough problems to deal with. She stretched it out, which seemed to help, and began to crawl across.
The next spasm made her body shake, but she realized with horror that this was not her new leg playing games. A massive vibration in the ice had made the whole ice bridge tremble.
“Here we go again,” Barnard said.
“Hurry!” Monster shouted.
Price was halfway across when the ice began to shake uncontrollably. She buried her ax in the bridge to stop herself from slipping sideways, then wrenched it out again as she felt the rope around her waist tighten.
She slid forward as the rest of the Angels hauled on the rope. Ice was splintering and cracking all around her as the great ice floes moved. Price screamed as the bridge dropped away, the shaft of ice shattered by the unimaginable pressure from either side.
She fell into the crevasse, landing on the rubble of the ice bridge. For a moment the rubble floated on the surface of the water; then the crushed pieces of ice gave way. But before she could fall through, the rope snapped tight, slamming her into the icy wall of the crevasse. She grabbed the rope with both hands and jammed her knees up against her chest to keep her feet out of the water. The impact swung her around, away from the wall. The far wall, which had been four or more meters away, was now less than half that distance and closing rapidly.
“Get me out of here!” she screamed, but already she was rising, sliding up the smooth ice of the crevasse wall.
“Get your feet up! Get your feet up!” Wall yelled as she made it to the top.
Price spun her hips around, lifting her feet up out of the crevasse just as there was a massive rumble and a crunch of ice from behind her.
The world shook with the thunderclap of a thousand explosions.
She rolled over and saw that the crevasse was gone. The ice sheets had rammed together and only a long crack in the ice remained of what had been an impassable chasm a few seconds earlier.
“We should have waited,” the Tsar said. “We would have been able to just step across.”
“That wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun,” Emile said.
The others all laughed, and Price laughed with them. But Emile was right.
She bit her lip to stop herself from whooping with exhilaration.
“There it is,” the Tsar said.
It had taken them an hour to travel less than a hundred meters over rugged and broken ice, but it had brought them to a wide, flat area. Spirits were good. Their progress was slow but steady, and as the lights of Little Diomede came into view again, Price felt a surge of confidence. It didn’t look that far, and with the flatter ice ahead of them, they should make good time. The ice here was strange, like nothing they had seen before. Some odd quirk of the weather and the geology of the ice had created a series of rounded hillocks, giant ice pimples stretching in every direction as far as they could see.
“Do people actually live on that rock?” Emile asked, staring at the vague light in the distance.
“Somebody’s gotta do it,” the Tsar said.
“It’s, like, in the middle of nowhere,” Emile said. “What do they do for fun?”
“Scan for Pukes and play Scrabble,” Barnard said. “And I’m joking about the Scrabble.”
“I’d be bored out of my mind in three minutes,” Emile said.
“No surprises there,” the Tsar said.
“Has it occurred to anyone that we look like Pukes?” Wall asked. “I mean, am I the only one thinking this through? Little Diomede is full of sensitive scanners. Their whole mission is to watch out for enemy forces in the vicinity and yet we’re expecting to march right up to it?”
“As I said, our mission is to observe and report,” Price said. “Their equipment can pick up vehicles and equipment from klicks away, but it won’t pick up foot mobiles in these conditions unless they’re really close. We’ll keep well out of range.”
“And if we don’t see anything suspicious?” Wall asked.
“In that case I may go in myself and check it out from the inside,” Price said.
“Using your invisibility cloak,” Wall said.
“Something like that,” Price said.
“They don’t call her the Phantom for nothing,” the Tsar said.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Wall said.
“Monster has seen it, and Monster still doesn’t believe it,” Monster said. “She like ghost.”
“For the record, Wall, you need to watch your attitude,” Barnard said.
“My attitude is doing just fine, bro,” Wall said. “Thanks for asking.”
“I’ll remember that if I ever have to pull you out of a crevasse,” Barnard said.
“What if they do see her?” Wall asked. “What are they going to think about a Puke creeping around?”
“If I get caught, my orders are to get them to contact ACOG, who will verify my identity,” Price said.
“And if they shoot first and ask questions later?” Wall asked.
“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be risky,” Price said.
“If you want a safe job, try Burger King,” Barnard said.
Wall snorted and turned away, muttering under his breath. Price couldn’t hear what he said and couldn’t be bothered finding out.
“What happens if the station really is attacked by Pukes?” Emile asked. “Do they just sit there and wait to get blown to pieces? Seriously, if they want to invade, first thing the Pukes are gonna do is pound the guacamole out of that place, right?”
“Any sign of trouble and the operators bug out,” Barnard said.
“How?” Emile asked.
“Hovercraft,” Barnard said. “They also have an airstrip, but you couldn’t rely on that this time of year, in case of a blizzard. Like this one.”
“Enough idle chitchat, Angels,” Price said. “It’s time to check in with HQ.”
“We’ll have to get out of the wind,” the Tsar said. “The satellite dish needs to be steady.”
“There’s no shelter here,” Barnard said. “These hills are too rounded.”
“Then we’ll make our own shelter,” Price said. “Monster?”
Monster took a snow shovel from the sled and dug quickly into the leeside of the nearest hillock. He scooped out a shallow cave, dumping snow on either side as additional protection from the wind.
“Strange,” Barnard said.
“What?” Price asked.
“This hill is made of snow,” Barnard said. “Not ice.”
“What does that mean?” Price asked. It must have meant something or Barnard wouldn’t have said it. Barnard was the exception to the rule that you didn’t have to be smart to be an intelligence officer. She was the smartest person Price knew. It was her idea to create the tsunami that destroyed the Wivenhoe Dam on Operation Magnum, and whatever your opinion on the outcome of that, it was very smart thinking.
“It doesn’t snow much here,” Barnard said.
“So where’d all this snow come from?”
“I don’t know,” Barnard said. “And how did it get dumped in this big pile?”
“Anything on the scope?” Price asked, suddenly concerned and unsure why.
“Nothing,” the Tsar said. “But the feed is so poor that we could be standing next to a Bzadian battle tank and not even see it on the scope.”
The handheld scopes depended on a feed from all-seeing satellite eyes high above them. But in these conditions those eyes were almost blind.
As soon as the snow cave was big enough for all of them, Monster strapped the shovel back onto the sled. In the concave shape he had created, the wind’s absence was a welcome relief.
“Emile, you take guard,” Price said.
The Tsar handed the scope to Emile, who studied the screen carefully. Retrieving the satellite radio unit from the equipment sled, the Tsar opened the cover of the radio and pressed a few buttons. A small dish emerged, unfolded, and automatically oriented itself to the right point in the sky. He checked a few things, then activated the set and plugged it into his comm unit, switching it so they all could hear.
“Heaven, this is Angel One. How copy?” Price asked.
The voice came back almost immediately. “Solid copy, Angel One. This is Heaven.”
“Heaven, we are in position at designated OP: grid reference, Charlie November, four, three, five, niner, three, one, over.”
“Good work, Angel One. What is your visibility rating? Over.”
“Tango two at best,” Price said.
There was a short silence; then the voice on the other end said, “How you doing, Price?”
“Good, Wilton,” Price said with a grin. “How ’bout you?”
“I’m fine,” Wilton said, his voice thin and crisp through the radio. “How’s the arctic?”
“Arctic? This is the subarctic,” Price said. “The arctic circle is eighty klicks thataway.”
“I’m glad they didn’t send us to the arctic,” Wall said. “It’d be cold and miserable there.”
“I wish I was there with you,” Wilton said.
“No, you don’t,” Barnard said.
“Ignore her. It’s much nicer than you’d think,” Price said.
“Nice?” Wilton asked.
“Sun’s out, the water is cool, we’re all in our swimsuits, drinking ice-cold beers around the pool,” Price said, wiping rime from her face mask and stretching her new leg to stop it from cramping up.
“Now I know you’re lying,” Wilton said. “You ain’t old enough to drink beer.”
That brought laughter from the team.
“We have eyes on the island,” Price said.
“Any sign of enemy activity?” Wilton asked.
“Negative on that,” Price said.
“Confirming no sign of enemy activity,” Wilton said, reverting to formal radio procedures. “Next check-in at thirteen-thirty mission time.”
“See you then,” Price said.
The Tsar unplugged and packed up the transmitter.
“Okay, Angels, we are Oscar Mike,” Price said.
“LT!” Emile said.
“Azoh!” the Tsar said.
Price spun around. The mission had barely begun. And it was already over.