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:
Flynn nodded. “Yep.”
“Is he coming?”
Flynn shook his head. “Sergeant Takirak’s just fine where he is, Hynes.” Even if he’d felt up to it right now, there wasn’t time for any complicated, morale-busting explanations about Takirak’s real identity as a Russian spy.
“So, those guys?” Hynes nodded at the snow-camouflaged shapes still moving by bounds along the foot of the hill. “Are they who I think they are?”
“They’re definitely Russians,” Flynn confirmed.
“So I can shoot ’em?” Hynes asked hopefully.
Flynn nodded. “But only on my order, PFC.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Hold tight for a few more seconds, okay?”
Hynes nodded enthusiastically. “Copy that, Captain.”
Flynn moved on down the line, quickly making sure that the rest of his troops — Airman Peter Kim, and Army Privates Wade Vucovich, Mike Sims, Floyd Leffert, and Gene Santarelli — were in position and understood the situation. Sims, Leffert, and Santarelli were known in the unit by the collective nickname of the Three Amigos, because they seemed perfectly content to spend most of their waking hours — both on duty and off duty — in one another’s company. Most of that, from what Flynn could tell, was due to a shared passion for video games and the same Swedish heavy metal band. He figured that was as good a basis for camaraderie as any other.
One by one, all five gave him a tight nod or a swift thumbs-up signal. Satisfied, he reversed back down the line and took up a position just to Hynes’s right, prone between two gray boulders. Another quick look down the slope showed that the Spetsnaz commandos were right where he wanted them — directly in front of his men and out in the open. They were a little over two hundred yards away. Carefully, he sighted on one of the Russians, a soldier carrying an AKM equipped with a 40mm grenade launcher. “All Kodiaks,” he said loudly, raising his voice to be heard down the line. “Hit ’em! Now!”
Flynn squeezed off three quick shots. Snow spurted up behind his chosen target as the first two rounds missed, but the third hit the Russian in the side. The enemy soldier went down hard. On his left, Hynes opened up with his M249 light machine gun, firing short bursts down the hill — walking them across the Spetsnaz formation. Two more of them crumpled right away. Blood pooled red on the white snow.
Across the hillside, the other Americans joined in, firing down at the enemy commandos caught in the valley. Flashes lit the night. Another Russian fell. The rest, reacting fast, dove for whatever cover they could find and started shooting back — aiming toward the muzzle flashes.
5.45mm and 7.62mm rounds whip-cracked just over Flynn’s head, smacking into boulders and then ricocheting away with weird, keening wails. Shards and splinters of pulverized rock spun away after them. “Stay low, Kodiaks!” he called. “And pour it into them!”
Sighting through his scope, Flynn found another target, a Russian prone behind a low rise. Only the man’s helmet and rifle were visible. He squeezed the trigger several times. More chunks of snow and ice sprayed up, torn by bullets striking home at nearly three times the speed of sound. The Russian soldier disappeared, either hit or scrambling for new cover.
One of the enemy commandos got a grenade launcher in action. It coughed, hurling a 40mm caseless grenade up the slope.
Craack. The grenade detonated several meters behind the American line with a dazzling flash. Fragments whistled across the hill. “Shit!” one of the Three Amigos said suddenly, sounding surprised. “I’m hit.” From the deep Alabama twang, that was Leffert. His friend Sims reared up to take a look and then took a bullet in the shoulder, falling back with another shocked cry.
“For Christ’s sake, stay down!” Flynn yelled. He glanced to his left, toward the clump of rocks occupied by the two wounded Amigos. “Sims? Leffert? You okay?”
“I’m not hit bad, sir,” Leffert called back. “I can still fight. But Mike’s pretty bad. He’s losing a whole lotta blood and his damn shoulder looks like it’s hanging by a thread.”
Flynn gritted his teeth. Besides being their radio and coms expert, M-Squared had also been tapped to be their unit medic. One more crime to lay at Takirak’s feet, he thought bitterly.
Down in the valley, the Spetsnaz grenadier popped back up, ready to fire again. This time, Hynes was waiting for him. The machine gunner put a three-round burst right into his chest. The Russian fell backward in a red mist of blood and shattered bone.
Flynn fired again at another commando darting uphill to gain a better position. He missed, and the enemy soldier threw himself down into a small depression on the slope, disappearing from sight. His jaw tightened. From the number of bodies now strewn across the valley floor, they’d already inflicted heavy losses on the Spetsnaz force. That wasn’t shocking, since surprise and cover both favored the Americans. But enough Russians had survived the opening fusillade and found cover of their own to turn this into a pitched battle — one whose outcome was still seriously in doubt. Now they were trying to establish a firm base of fire of their own, one that would allow them to keep Flynn and his men pinned down long enough for an assault force to close in and wipe them out in a close-quarters fight.
The M4 went dry. Rapidly, he hit the mag release, let the empty fall out, and slapped in another full magazine. Immediately, he opened fire again. At the same time, he felt as though his mind had split in half, with one part fully occupied by the need to find and kill the enemy… and the other busy weighing different tactical options. Breaking contact and falling back up the hill was a nonstarter. As soon as the Russians got into these rocks, they’d have all the advantages superior numbers and training could provide. And with Leffert and Sims wounded, he didn’t have enough able-bodied troops left to maneuver to the right or left in the hope of taking those Spetsnaz bastards in the flank again.
“Which leaves what, Nick?” Flynn muttered, squeezing off more shots and feeling his M4 thud back repeatedly against his shoulder. “Pray… and hope for luck? Real good plan there, genius.” But then again, he thought grimly, what other options did he really have?
In the narrow, brush-choked gully around the other side of the spur hill, Torvald Pedersen heard the sudden crackle of automatic-weapons fire when Flynn and the others sprang their ambush. The noise only grew in intensity as more and more rifles and machine guns joined the fray. Startled by the explosion of noise where there had been only silence and the hiss of the wind, he sat bolt upright, ignoring the stab of pain from his fractured leg. “Holy shit! You guys hear that? There’s one big, mother-humping battle going on!” He grabbed Rafael Sanchez by the shoulder. “Rafe! We’ve gotta go help the rest of the team.”
The big New Mexican nodded slowly, but then he frowned. “Yeah, but the captain told us to stay put.”
“Maybe we should call in and ask for new orders?” Boyd suggested from the other side. He’d unslung his own M4 and was crouched at the lip of the shallow gully, watching the north. Dozens of split-second flashes brightened the night sky along the crest of the hill above them.
“Can’t,” Sanchez reminded them. “The captain ordered radio silence, remember?”
Pedersen nodded. “Exactly! Which is why we need to use our initiative, just like they trained us to do. Right?” he demanded.
Boyd pulled at his jaw. “Yeah, you’re right.” But then he waved a hand out across the open expanse of snow. “Trouble is, crossing that valley right now looks a lot like suicide to me. If just one bad guy pops up and catches us out there without any cover, we’re fucking toast.”
“That’s why we stick to this streambed,” Pedersen argued. A frozen stream ran along the middle of the shallow, brush-lined depression. It snaked down into the valley and then swung north.