Ian Slater - Darpa Alpha

“C’mon, Kegg,” Aussie hissed. “Fire the fucking thing!”

The marine was using a tree at the edge of the woods to steady the weapon. It had been only twenty, thirty seconds at the most since Lieutenant Chester had summoned Kegg, but the BTR was picking up speed across the frozen marsh where shoulder-high stalks of ice-sheathed grass were starting to bend as the rain deiced them.

Suddenly the Russian behemoth foundered, its slanting chin breaking through the plate-thick ice. It was only a momentary pause, however, and the amphibian, its exhaust and bilge jet spouting up high at the rear, continued crashing forward in the marsh, deep enough now that the BTR was afloat, looking to Kegg like a mechanical hippopotamus moving inexorably toward the marines.

Young Kegg, having snapped the Javelin’s launch unit to the disposable launch tube and steadying the fire-and-forget fifty-pound weapon assembly against an aged Mongolian oak tree, looked through the four-power scope, centered the hulking BTR in the green and black of his infrared world, and fired. The kick motor flared, with minimal backblast for Kegg, then the one-two punch of the missile hit the BTR, the Javelin’s initial charge blasting down through the topmost layers of the BTR’s roof, the second, shaped charge piercing the armor proper. The BTR was now a crematorium. The vehicle stopped, its wake of dark, chocolate-colored diesel and exhaust-blown reeds pushing forward over it like a flood. Freeman saw the rear door open and heard the feral screams of rage and terror as two, perhaps three, Russian soldiers — it was difficult to tell how many in the fiery swirl of bodies and debris — came splashing out. One man was afire, trying futilely to swim toward the splintered and icy edge of the marsh, when the BTR’s munitions blew, making it look as if a cyclonic fire had hit.

Melissa Thomas felt her heart pounding in her chest, half in fear, half in — God help her! — empathy for the enemy as marine rifle fire ended the swimmer’s misery.

“Hold fire!” It was Freeman bellowing above the other nearby sounds of battle. “Follow me!” The general, breaking cover, Eddie Mervyn at his side, was running hard toward the lake but skirting its icy perimeter as Sal, Choir, Aussie, Johnny Lee, and the forty-man platoon followed.

“Good shooting, marine!” Chester told Kegg, and, seeing how shaken the boy was by what he’d done, knowing that there were eight, possibly nine, men cooked alive inside the BTR, added, “DARPA ALPHA, Kegg! Good shooting, marine! ”

Kegg had difficulty hearing the lieutenant because of the noise off on their left flank where, he guessed, Colonel Tibbet’s HQ section must be engaging the Russians. And what the hell, wondered Kegg, was the general up to, running pell-mell, leading the first two squads of Chester’s four-squad platoon?

Kegg started in fright as Freeman’s team, closer to the lake with Chester’s first two squads, opened up on a five-ton Russian truck that came roaring through the steamy vapor, packed with helmeted troops and heading straight for the drowning BTR. An officer on the running board was shouting and waving his AK-47 at Freeman’s team and the lead marines. But neither the officer nor his troops in the back of the truck had seen Chester’s other two squads now emerging from the tall grass by the wood, the truck coming under such an enfilade of fire from these marines’ M-16s, SAWs, and H K submachine guns and Chester’s burst of six rounds in half a second, that it had no hope. Out of control, the vehicle started sliding at speed toward Freeman and his team, striking a hard clump of stunted and wind-knotted reeds by the lake’s edge with such force that it flipped and rolled. Bloodied bodies were strewn across the ice, weapons, mostly AK-47s, slithering, some of them sliding so far that they disappeared into the rain-freckled water of the marsh where the BTR was sinking, the tip of its whip aerial just visible, which told the ever-observant Freeman that the lake here was about ten feet deep.

Several of the Russians, still able to function, scrambled frantically on the ice, trying to retrieve their weapons, but Freeman’s team and Chester’s first squad of ten marines gave ABC’s troops little chance of recovery. Only one man from the truck survived the marines’ storm of depleted uranium. The ice seemed to come alive as frozen chips, some red with blood, flew into the air.

Then, suddenly, a head popped to the surface, followed by a pair of thrashing arms; a BTR crewman had survived. Though gasping frantically for air and dog-paddling furiously, the Russian plunged his right hand back into the water and came up firing his 9 mm pistol at Aussie, who dealt with the interruption with a burst from his H K. “Silly prick!”

“Look after these two,” ordered Freeman, indicating a forlorn and soaking-wet duo. One of them, rescued by Freeman, who had extended his unloaded AK-74 to the floundering man, was the only survivor of the BTR, the other, though slightly wounded, was the only trooper from the truck who had not been killed in the short but furious exchange. While Aussie, whose right calf had been nicked by one of the truck-borne soldiers, was having it attended to by the corpsman, it took Johnny Lee, the team’s interpreter, only five minutes, with the help of a grim-looking Eddie Mervyn, to conclude that neither of the two prisoners knew anything about the H-complex other than that they had been summoned for perimeter defense as part of some reciprocal arrangement between ABC’s H-block commanders.

What worried Freeman was that most of the dead soldiers were wearing blue-striped T-shirts beneath their sandy green battle jackets. Naval infantry. Together with Spetsnaz, SpecOps, and airborne infantry, these naval troops were the best the Russians had, and Freeman knew that despite the massive drawdown of military assets following Putin’s ascendancy to Boris Yeltsin’s throne amid the ruble’s nosedive, the naval infantry remained an elite fighting force.

“He keeps saying,” said Johnny Lee, pointing to one of the two prisoners, a thin, wiry type who had a bad burn on his left arm and was cradling it with his right, “that he and his comrade are POWs, says they’re—” Lee had to shout against the rattle of small-arms fire and the ear-ringing explosions of nearby battle. “—entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention.”

“Geneva what ?” opined Aussie, smarting under the corpsman’s alcohol swab. “Tell ’im I haven’t seen that film.”

“No joking, Aussie,” Lee replied. “He’s claiming they’re regular troops called to secure the ABC perimeter, and as such—”

“And as such,” cut in Aussie, “they’re aiding and abetting fucking terrorists. If they’re regular troops, they shouldn’t fucking be here. Even Moscow’s declared ABC persona non grata. Right, General?”

“Correct,” said Freeman, adding quietly to Aussie, “at least for twenty-four hours.” The general then turned to Lee. “If I thought they knew anything more than the route out from ABC, Johnny, I’d shoot ’em if they didn’t cooperate.”

Chester, having managed to make radio contact with Tibbet’s HQ group so that close-in hand signals in the near-zero visibility were no longer needed, ordered nine of his ten four-man teams to spread out.

“Captain,” Freeman called to Chester, “I’d like my team to concentrate on finding entry. Those truck tracks should be visible for a while. I’ll call you the moment we get in.”

“You betcha,” acknowledged the marine lieutenant. “Stay well.”

“I’ll try,” said Freeman, turning over the two prisoners to Chester. Then he addressed his six team members. “Okay, guys. Everyone marine ID’d?”

They were, with small, infrared diamond shapes on the fronts and backs of their helmets and camouflage battle jackets.