Arctic Storm Rising
- Автор: Браун Дейл
- Серия: Nick Flynn #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 9780063015050
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Arctic Storm Rising». Краткое содержание книги:
Clambering to his feet, Flynn turned through a complete circle to get his bearings. As best he could judge, he’d come down about two-thirds of the way across the valley. He strapped on a pair of snowshoes and set off back to the north, plowing determinedly through foot-deep snow toward where he judged their equipment pallet should have come down. Since the pallet held their only motorized vehicles and additional supplies, he’d told his team that would be their rally point. Gusts of wind whipped up glittering waves of snow and ice crystals that stung every exposed bit of skin on his face. Hurriedly, he pulled up his face mask, ducked his head down, and kept moving.
He found the pallet about 250 yards away, lying canted over at a forty-five-degree angle under its collapsed parachutes. Drifting down out of the sky, it had smacked straight into a little clump of dwarf willow trees with disastrous results. Both snow machines had broken loose on impact. Slammed against tree trunks with tremendous force, they were little more than crumpled masses of metal and fractured fiberglass. One of the two towed sleds was probably salvageable. The other was a complete wreck, with both its runners torn off and twisted out of recognition. Bags and boxes of medical and other supplies were strewn across the snow, most of them ripped open.
“Well, shit,” Flynn muttered with feeling, staring at the mess. The emergency search-and-rescue effort he’d been ordered to mount had just been knocked back to a nineteenth-century technological level. He was now entirely dependent on men on foot using snowshoes and cross-country skis to traverse difficult terrain.
Over the next several minutes, in ones and twos, more of his men straggled in, bowed down under the weight of their own weapons and gear. They all stopped dead when they saw the shattered pallet and its wrecked cargo. Growled profanity blistered the freezing air, most of it directed at the “goddamn Air Force” for “managing to score a bull’s-eye on the one fucking clump of trees in a couple hundred fucking miles.”
“Now what?” Hynes asked bluntly. “Sir.”
Flynn forced himself to smile back at the square-shouldered, Army enlisted man. Boosting morale with stupid jokes and determined optimism was one of the most important tasks for any military officer, even when everyone knew it was total bullshit. “Now we all hoof it, PFC. Just like in the good old days. You joined the infantry first, didn’t you? Trekking through the wilderness on your own two feet ought to be right up your alley.”
“Yeah, cheer up, Cole,” one of the others said with a crooked smile of his own. “Sure, it’s fricking cold out. And it’s dark. And we’re all gonna have to drag our sorry asses through the snow for miles and miles—”
“I’m waiting for the ‘but’ here, Boyd,” Hynes said darkly.
“Well, I mean, how much worse could it get?” the other man finished.
“A lot worse,” another soldier said suddenly, looking off to the south.
Flynn turned and saw a little party trudging slowly toward them out of the darkness. Wade Vucovich was staggering along under the weight not only of his own equipment, but also that of Sanchez and Torvald Pedersen. The big New Mexican had Pedersen slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. In a rush, everyone moved to join them.
With a grunt, Sanchez stopped and kneeled down. Then, gently, he rolled the dark-haired sniper off his shoulder and set him carefully on the snow.
“What happened?” Flynn asked, squatting next to Pedersen.
“Screwed up my landing, sir,” the marksman said blearily. “I think I busted my leg.”
Sanchez nodded. “Me and Wade here splinted it and gave him some painkillers, but Tor can’t walk on that broken leg, so I had to carry him.” He saw the astonished look on Flynn’s face and said quickly, “It wasn’t that far, Captain. Not more than a half a mile.”
Flynn stared at him blankly. A half a mile. Through snow and ice in below-freezing temperatures. Damn, he thought with sudden pride, these men were good. And to think he’d first seen these guys as the Grimy Ten, a bunch of no-hopers foisted on him by other officers who were smart enough to get rid of them. He felt a moment’s regret that Airman Mitchell had been the one man who’d folded up in the crunch. Despite M-Squared’s occasional goofball tendencies, he’d seemed to be shaping up well.
“You’re not going to leave me here, are you, sir?” Pedersen asked suddenly, sounding worried.
“Oh hell no,” Flynn assured him, as a way to solve this problem abruptly unfolded inside his mind. It was just a question of applying their very limited but very real resources to the task in hand. “You can ride on the one sled that mostly survived the drop. We’ll fix it up and rig a couple of rope harnesses so we can take turns pulling you, like sled dogs.”
Behind him, he heard Hynes mutter, “Geez, M-Squared on the run, all our snow machines wrecked, and now a busted leg to top it off. Crap, the sarge is going to be really, really pissed off.”
Flynn raised his head in sudden concern. He looked around the circle of faces. Everyone else except Takirak had already arrived at the rally point. So where was the veteran NCO? Lying out there somewhere in the dark, injured himself or maybe dead? He scrambled back to his feet, ready to order out a search party to go look.
At that moment, Takirak came gliding into view, moving across the snow on snowshoes with easy, practiced strides. Despite the fact that he had the PRC-162 manpack radio slung over one shoulder, and his own rucksack and M4 carbine on the other, he looked surprisingly fresh.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” he told Flynn apologetically. “The wind carried me a ways farther than I hoped.”
“Glad you could finally join us, Sergeant,” Flynn replied with a slight smile to take away some of the sting of his words. Quickly, he outlined their current situation.
Takirak nodded stoically. “Well, it could be worse, I suppose,” he allowed.
Flynn saw Hynes roll his eyes dramatically and stifled a laugh. “I guess so, Andy.” He nodded to the radio the sergeant carried. “But if that thing’s still working, we need to report in.”
While the rest of the unit moved off to gather up any surviving supplies and work on the damaged sled, he and Takirak squatted down on the snow around the radio. Working efficiently, the sergeant unfolded the unit’s satellite communications antenna, angled it toward the horizon, and plugged in a battery pack.
As soon as he was done, Flynn flipped the power switches to on. They didn’t have any time to waste. The PRC-162’s batteries were rated to minus twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, but prolonged exposure to extreme low temperatures would reduce their effectiveness. He picked up the handset. “Kodiak Six to Jaybird One. Kodiak Six to Jaybird One. Come in, Jaybird.”
A squeal of static was the only answer.
With a frown, Takirak adjusted the antenna position. Above the Arctic Circle, it was often difficult to link with communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The extremely low angle required meant signals had to cross more atmosphere, with all the resulting distortion and loss of power. Plus, these high latitudes also adversely affected the refraction of radio signals. The Russians had far fewer communications problems in the Arctic, thanks to their own constellation of satellites in special polar orbits.
“Kodiak Six to Jaybird One,” Flynn tried again.
This time, a static-laden voice replied. “Jaybird One copies, Kodiak Six.” They’d reached Alaskan Command, six hundred miles south at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Swiftly and concisely, Flynn outlined their current status and location.
“Understood, Kodiak. Suggest you proceed to Site Alpha—” More high-pitched static squealed across their weak connection.