30. ATTACK RUN

[MISSION DAY 3, FEBRUARY 18, 2033]

[1100 hours local time]

[Forward Operations Base, Tin City, Alaska]

There was a slight shifting of weight as the engine started and the air cushion filled, lifting the craft off the concrete of the landing pad. Ahead and behind, Wilton could see the rest of the squadron rising up.

They began to move in single file, ice flying from beneath their skirts as they slid easily down the ramp and out across the storm-tossed waters of the bay. The ice-covered tundra slipped quickly past and then the white cliffs of the ice floe emerged out of the curtain of snow and flying ice.

Ahead, Wilton saw Gerrand, the squadron leader, disappear into a gaping crack in the cliff face. The fissure. It seemed barely wide enough for his craft, but Anderson maneuvered the little Spitfire expertly into the same gap.

The walls of ice sliding past them were jagged and rough torn. As if someone had taken this huge sheet of ice and snapped it in two like a cookie. They moved slowly, the sound of the propeller no more than a soft hum behind them.

The fissure was not straight, but zigged and zagged, eventually ending in a sudden right turn into the much wider crevasse. Still they crept along at minimum speed, although Wilton could hardly bear the waiting. They were almost in the heart of the enemy formations; surely someone would see them soon?

“Here we go,” Gerrand said, the first words since they had left the base, the first breaking of radio silence. That no longer mattered.

Water churned in front of them and propellers spat ice particles as the hovercraft squadron powered up to attack speed.

“Arm your weapons,” Anderson said, clicking her tongue. “As soon as we jump, it’s weapons free.”

“Weapons armed.” Wilton confirmed the instruction. His heart was racing; his mouth was dry. From now on, every fraction of a second was life and death.

The Spitfire’s nose came up and it lifted off the water, on the tail of the aircraft in front of it. The wind lashed viciously at them as they rose out of the fissure, flying, for a few meters at least, as the craft cleared the cliff and rocketed across the ice, right between two Bzadian battle tanks that were starting to react to this new threat in their midst. One tank flashed by, then another; then they were through the flanks of the formation and racing across the ice toward row after row of SAM batteries. There were soldiers everywhere, mostly on snowmobiles, and they were quick to react. Bullets were already smashing off the armored glass of the windshield. It was small-arms fire and shouldn’t worry the Spitfire, but Wilton engaged them with the front gun as they spread out with the other hovercraft, racing toward the SAM units.

In the thick of the battle, in the thick of the storm, it was like driving in a heavy fog, with giant battle tanks appearing out of nowhere.

One of the Spitfires turned sharply to avoid a rotorcraft that materialized in front of it, veering right into the path of another Spitfire. There was a ball of flame as the two craft collided.

The SAM batteries looked like the Bzadian tanks, although slightly smaller. There were at least a hundred of them. He ignored them. The sidewinder missiles would not penetrate their thick, spinning hulls. He concentrated on their defenders, the rotorcraft and snowmobiles that buzzed around them in the storm like mosquitoes on a foggy night.

“Target acquired,” the gunnery computer told him, and Wilton pulled the trigger. A sidewinder leaped off the right wing and left a smoky trail in the air as it closed in on a rotorcraft. Another sidewinder from another Spitfire was on the same trail. There was a flash, followed immediately by another as the missiles struck. White lightning occupied the place where the rotorcraft had been. One of the missiles had hit the ammunition store inside the vehicle.

Wilton whooped with excitement. His first hovercraft kill.

“Concentrate!” Anderson said. “There’s plenty more where that came from!”

The gunnery computer found another target but lost it almost immediately, then found a third. Wilton squeezed the trigger a second time and saw the missile miss by a meter and go spinning off into the distance. Another target, another missile, and this time success.

“Rotorcraft, three o’clock,” Anderson said.

“Got it,” Wilton said.

He pinged it with the target acquirer and was rewarded with a steady tone. He fired just as the enemy craft let loose two missiles toward them.

The sidewinder spiraled toward the rotorcraft as their Spitfire leaped into the air, using height to evade the Bzadian missiles that scorched through underneath. The sidewinder streaked into the rotors of the enemy craft and exploded. The craft shimmied in midair, then dropped onto the ice.

“Couple of snowmos on our tail!” Wilton yelled. Two snowmobiles were right behind them, trying to line up shots as Anderson jigged the Spitfire around, in between Bzadian tanks.

“Take a deep breath,” Anderson said. “Stay calm. Drop a couple of mines. I’ll reverse flick at the same time.”

She straightened to give Wilton a good line. He punched out two landmines, and as he did so, Anderson cut the power to the propeller and spun the hovercraft 180 degrees, sliding backward over the ice at seventy kilometers per hour.

The first snowmobile ran straight over one of the landmines, which leaped off the ice, magnetically attracted to the hull of the machine. There was an explosion and the snowmobile erupted in flames. The second machine swerved around the first and kept on coming, until Wilton took off its right tread with the machine gun. It flipped violently and smashed into a mound of ice.

“Nice shootin’,” Anderson said, spinning them back around and gunning the engine just in time to avoid a collision with a SAM battery.

“Nice drivin’,” Wilton said.

[MISSION DAY 3, FEBRUARY 18, 2033]

[1550 hours local time]

[ACOG Emergency Operations Center, Raven Rock Mountain Complex, Pennsylvania]

The operations table at Raven Rock was shaped like an elongated doughnut. In the center, in the hole of the doughnut, a small group of uniformed personnel sat at computer workstations, running the communications for the command center.

Russell was the only person at the table without bandages. He was the only person lucky enough to have been out of the bunker when the bomb exploded.

The rest of them sported a variety of dressings, some starting to stain red with blood. Watson had a broken arm and looked shaken. Hooper’s head was wrapped so thoroughly she could have auditioned for a role in The Mummy. Hundal’s hands were heavily bandaged, and even now one of his arms was being attended to by a medic.

Bilal and Whitehead were missing.

No one, apart from Russell, had escaped unscathed, despite the elaborate and sophisticated defenses of the Pentagon bunker.

“It’s not rocket science,” Russell said. “We blow the mines; that will force them to bring up the bridgers. We wait until the bridgers are in place, then drop in a tactical nuke.”

“The oversight committee will never allow it,” Gonzales said.

“The oversight committee has no say in the matter,” Russell said. “Since the bombing of the Pentagon, we are in a state of martial law. Government powers have been suspended. With Whitehead incapacitated, I am the senior ACOG commander, and right now what I say goes.”

“You’ll still have to answer to the committee after the fact,” Gonzales said. “When martial law ends.”

“That’s fine with me,” Russell said. “They can complain about it afterward and hold an inquiry and run around in circles with all their usual red tape. But we are losing the fight for our lives and we are not stopping for a rubber stamp from a bunch of old women who are too afraid to do what needs to be done to win this war.”

“You’ll use artillery?” Hundal asked. “I doubt my planes could get near.”

“Yes, they are already in place,” Russell said. “We drop the nuke five klicks offshore with a blast radius of four klicks. That takes out ninety percent of their attacking force. They’ll think twice before trying to cross the Bering Strait again.”

“But they won’t think twice about using a tactical nuke on the battlefield,” Hooper said.

“Hooper, are you with me, or should I have you removed from this room?” Russell asked.

“I will obey your orders,” Hooper said. “But I want it on the record that I disagree.”

“Done,” Russell said. “What’s our wind situation?”

“Westerly, about ten knots,” Watson said.

“Excellent,” Russell said. “That will blow any fallout toward the Bzadians on Chukchi. But get our ground forces into MOPP suits just in case.”

“What about the locals?” Gonzales asked. “The Inupiat.”

“What Inupiat?” Russell asked. “We relocated all of them years ago. If some of them want to break the law and go into a military zone without permission, they deserve whatever they get.”

—

“Check your six!” Anderson shouted, and Wilton scanned the rear screen to see a rotorcraft hard on their tail.

Anderson jigged the hovercraft left and right, in a way that the rotorcraft could not match, preventing its guns from locking on.

“Landmine?” Wilton asked.

“You can try,” Anderson replied. “You might get lucky.”

The Spitfire circled around a battle tank, then straightened out. The moment Wilton was sure the rotorcraft was right behind them, he dropped a mine. In the rear screen, he saw it land, but the rotorcraft lifted up, well over it.

Bullets peppered the propeller behind them.

“It’s stuck on our tail!” Wilton yelled.

“Don’t worry about it,” Anderson said. “They can’t turn as fast as we can. Get ready to drop another landmine, on my go.”

“Landmine ready,” Wilton said.

Anderson spun the hovercraft around in a wide slide, heading right for another battle tank, which tried to engage them with its machine guns. But they were too close and too fast. She veered away at the last moment and whipped the craft in a tight circle around it.

The rotorcraft followed, but Anderson was right: its rotor system, although agile in the air, was clumsy so close to the ground.

Anderson circled the tank twice and said, “On my mark, ready…”

They spun around the tank one more time, emerging right on the tail of the rotorcraft, which veered off and tried to build up speed. But the Spitfire was on a collision course with it.

“What are you doing?” Wilton cried out.

“Ready…,” Anderson said. She hauled back on the controls and the machine lifted, soaring into the air over the top of the rotorcraft. “Now!”

Wilton punched out the mine and heard the explosion as it fell into the blades of the rotorcraft. He yelled with excitement.

“Okay, we’re out of here,” Anderson said.

“We were just getting started,” Wilton said.

“We’ve been pulled out,” Anderson said. “Everybody is being pulled back, effective immediately.”

“Why?” Wilton asked.

“They didn’t say,” Anderson said. “But it’s not hard to work out.”

—

“Guys, we have a problem,” the Tsar said. “ACOG has ordered all units back to a perimeter of no closer than five kilometers.”

They were a hundred meters behind the Bzadian lines and closing fast, a long row of rounded hulls ahead of them, blurred by the driving ice and snow.

“Pulled them out? Why?” Wall asked.

“Oh my God, they’re going to nuke the place,” Barnard said.

“So what’s wrong with that?” the Tsar asked. “That’ll stop them.”

“The Pukes have nukes too,” Price said.

“So?” Wall asked.

“It’s called escalation,” Barnard said. “We use a nuke, even just a tactical one, and they respond with a tactical nuke of their own. So we use a bigger one. Next thing you know there’s missiles raining down out of the skies and the only winners will be the cockroaches.”

“Better that than handing the whole world over to the Pukes,” the Tsar said.

“Why do you say that?” Price asked.

“They’re going to kill us all anyway,” the Tsar said. “Let’s go down fighting.”

“And leave planet that will be toxic for hundreds of thousands of years,” Monster said.

“They’re not going to kill us all,” Wall said. “They need us. They’re trying to take over, not destroy us.”

“Did they teach you that at Uluru?” the Tsar asked.

“As it happens, yeah,” Wall said.

“I bet they told you a lot of things,” Price said.

“They wiped out everyone in Indonesia,” the Tsar said.

“I know,” Wall said. “To show the rest of the world what would happen if they did not cooperate. Since then they have subjugated but not exterminated the countries they have overrun.”

“You sure you’re on our side?” the Tsar asked.

“Don’t be a moron,” Wall said. “I’m just saying that it’s better to be alive than dead.”

“It’s better to be dead than a slave,” the Tsar said.

“Why?” Barnard asked. “How is that an improvement?”

“At least if you are alive, you have the chance to fight back,” Wall said.

“But once we start down the path of nuclear weapons, there is no turning back,” Barnard said.

“So what do we do, LT?” the Tsar said.

“This changes everything,” Price said. “We agreed to have a go. To do what we can. But we didn’t agree to this. We didn’t sign up for nukes.”

There was silence.

“I don’t think it changes anything,” Monster said. “We stop bridgers, or die trying. We die by gun or nuke, no matter, we still dead.”

“I’m with the big guy,” the Tsar said.

“If we stop the bridgers, they won’t need the nukes,” Barnard said. “It still comes down to us. I’m in.”

They all looked at Wall.

“Are you guys mad?” he asked.

The Tsar shrugged. The rest stared.

“You are mad,” he said. “But it’s my kind of mad. Balls and all. I’m in.”

“We’d better hurry,” Monster said. Then he did something that was very un-Monster-like. He moved to Price and put his arms around her, hugging her, not minding the stares of the others.

“We do the right thing,” Monster whispered in her ear. “But I don’t think we coming home from this one.”