Ian Slater - Darpa Alpha

“Two hundred yards, one TOW on your wave, another on each subsequent wave. Got it, sir.”

With that, the Hummer made a tight U-turn, the still partially frozen reeds crunching underneath like cereal, a rush of the vehicle’s bluish exhaust rising, dissipating, and wafting over the C-arc marines and into the reeds around the tree trunks now twenty feet away from Freeman.

“Let’s all get back behind the Hummer!” shouted Freeman. “Soon as the second TOW hits it, we go in, no matter what. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Freeman’s marines said in unison, determination in their eyes.

Then everything went wrong.

Running back, Freeman saw the Hummer buck, glimpsed one of its TOW’s contrails, then heard the distinctive boom of a T-90’s main gun firing. The Hummer somersaulted, then disintegrated into gobs of fire; simultaneously a head-punching “whoomp!” told Freeman the T-90 had exploded, and he could see it belching flame and vomiting crimson fire into the dark green reeds.

He didn’t pause. “Everyone back to the mound and we’ll dig out that snow. Now! Aussie, go check the Hummer.” Aussie did, by which time the general, Choir, Sal, and Johnny Lee were using their trench tools to dig, scrape, and chuck away the snow. Sweating like gandy dancers on a railroad in high summer, perspiration running down each man’s face, they dug like men possessed.

Aussie came running back from the Hummer. “All dead!” he reported tersely. “Nothing usable.” He began digging. They all heard the ring of metal against an entrenching tool and fell to the ground, except Choir.

“Not a mine!” he assured them. “Just metal on metal.” It was a door handle; another handle became visible a second later.

“No shovels,” Freeman ordered. “Hands only.” He had no idea how close the exit was to the tunnels, only that the map had shown a narrow tubular exit burrowed out of the rock approximately four feet wide and less than a hundred feet long on a thirty-degree gradient which, as he noted to Aussie, was an extraordinarily sharp incline. If they were approaching the tunnel entrance, Freeman didn’t want to give his team’s presence away by making any unnecessary noise. Drawing on all his expertise in things military and nonmilitary, Freeman devised a war plan on the spot. “Aussie, Sal, Johnny, come with me. Choir, I want you to handle the grenades.”

“Right,” responded Choir, already donning his IR goggles and gas mask, his tone confident. After years of working as part of Freeman’s team, and of always thinking one step ahead, he was ready for action.

“Good,” said Freeman who, with Aussie, Sal, and Johnny Lee, began donning his IR goggles and gas mask.

“Choir,” Freeman instructed, “start the proceedings!”

Ninety feet below in a guard station at the foot of the long exit stairway, a guard unit of seven men and three women responsible for the security of the exit end of ABC’s tunnel complex were bored silly. Completely cut off from the action above them and long used to the numbing sameness of production line noises in the three tunnels, there was nothing new to do or discuss, other than the American attack, about which they had been given no news whatsoever. The only thing that mitigated the sheer bone-crushing monotony of guard duty in the three connected tunnels was the substantial tunnelnaya premiya— tunnel bonus. But even the bonus could not keep the guard detail on their feet during the eight-hour shift. And, despite the strict rules against it, a game of Texas Hold ’Em Poker would usually be in progress, as it was now, with the latest production line inspector wandering over now and then between checking the counterfeit American, Korean, and Chinese manufacturers’ serial numbers on the completed Igla and Vanguard MANPADs and the new hypersonic weapons and ammunition being made as a result of ABC’s victory at DARPA ALPHA.

“Did you hear that scraping noise?” one of the card-playing four asked.

“Don’t worry, Andreyovich,” said the number checker, Vladimir. “The exit door must be under a ton of snow. If it is anything, it’s probably one of those stupid deer rooting around for grass. Anyway, in this weather all kinds of crap’s blowing around the lake and the marshes. Plus, last reports from H-block say we can just keep working, no problem. The Americans are getting the shit kicked out of them.”

Andreyovich nodded. “Maybe, but someone had better check. Let’s not risk the bonus. Vladimir, you come up with me.” Andreyovich looked at his cards, the worst hand he’d had in months. “I’m out,” he said, grabbing his AK-47. “Need to stretch my legs anyway.”

“Good man!” said the numbers inspector, a big, bald, jovial man from one of the hamlets near the railhead that were now all but ghost towns, ABC having combed them for maintenance support workers.

Both guards heard several hollow-sounding bumps as Choir tossed two tear gas canisters and yellow SOS smoke grenades onto the grates of the two air-intake shafts. The yellow smoke laced with tear gas descended quickly, spreading throughout the three parallel tunnels, their connecting passages, and the entrance and exit vestibules at either end of the tunnels. The moment the terrorist guards and weapons assemblers at the exit end of the three tunnels saw the thickening malevolent-looking yellow gas pouring down the ninety-foot-long, cement-lined exit shaft, the alarm horn sounded, its deep, strangled “Arggh! Arggh!” drowning out the usual cacophony of the assembly line. The horn’s unrelenting blasts, accompanied by the scream of “Gaz!” filling the subterranean world, turned panic to frenzy, sending the disorganized horde of three hundred terrorist workers rushing away from the exit toward the massive security doors at the tunnels’ entrance, roars of rage erupting from the frantic mob when they found the inner security door locked. The terror of 243 men and 57 women clamoring, screaming for the door to be opened, fed on itself. The duty officer, who only hours before had thought himself incapable of pushing the button that would explode the RDX unless he was blackmailed, now discovered that his fear of the mob made it easier to contemplate putting his fellow terrorists out of their misery.

Up on the surface, the moment the general, Aussie, Sal, Lee, and Choir saw the yellowish green smoke rising up from the out vents, Freeman and his team ran down the stairs of the long, narrow exit tunnel, then split up at the bottom, Freeman taking the first tunnel, Aussie and Sal the second, Johnny Lee and Choir the third, running along a grated metal floor. They could hear the nightmarish cries coming from the mob of trapped terrorists beyond, hammering and yelling hysterically for the entrance doors to be opened, no doubt terrified the tunnel complex was being attacked with chlorine gas or, as their great-great-grandfathers had called it, mustard gas, which the Americans, like the Russians, still had in ample supply. Further exciting the terrorists’ fear was their conviction, shared by the duty officer, who, sitting safely two floors up in one of the H-block’s administrative offices, had caught a glimpse of the intruders, that the tunnel complex would soon be swarming with Americans. And when the duty officer heard Abramov’s insistence that the RDX be blown, any hesitation that he might have had disappeared in the belief that he would be acting humanely, putting such tortured souls out of their misery. After all, as Abramov sharply instructed him, “You wouldn’t treat an animal like that.”

The duty officer pressed the button. The resulting subterranean roar reverberated through the tunnels, the concussion wave almost knocking Freeman’s team off their feet, and, in the middle tunnel, forcing Aussie and Sal to grab one of the MANPAD lathes to steady themselves.