Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

Without a trace of fear registering in his voice or on his face, the commander faced his XO.

“What are the launch orders?”

Commander Ryan punched the coordinates into the computer and watched as the screen generated a map showing the projected missile trajectory on the display. The target was 2,000 miles away. At a maximum cruising speed of 500 miles per hour, the single nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missile would destroy its target in 4 hours, vaporizing everything within the warheads blast zone.

It was Commander Ryan’s job to be prepared to launch his nuclear and conventional Tomahawks. That, he understood. He was always prepared to execute a properly formatted and authenticated Strike Order. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he wasn’t prepared for this particular target.

Ryan stared at the screen, his mind spinning its wheels trying to gain traction and make sense of what he was seeing on the display.

“Sir? What is it? What’s the target?” the XO asked.

Commander Ryan shook his head slowly. “Nowhere. That’s the problem. They want us to launch a nuclear warhead on a target that’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere.”

Wave after wave of automatic gunfire raked the concrete at their heels as they ran the length of the dock. As far as plans went it was a bad one. Jack wondered if it even deserved to be called a plan.

Run like hell. Don’t get shot. Try to find cover.

He’d worked with less well thought out plans before. And survived.

Both men dove onto their bellies and rolled into a channel that seemed to have served as some kind of drainage in the past.

“What’s the next stage in your big plan, Hoss?” Sam grunted over the hail of enemy fire.

“We’re kind of winging it. We need to get a better idea of the layout of this place…”

He was drowned out by another spray of bullets kicking up concrete dust 6 inches from their heads.

“From what I’ve seen so far,” he continued over the sound of magazines being ejected and fresh clips being slammed home, “I’m thinking this place wasn’t built as a Nazi holiday resort. It’s just a one big concrete bunker. No accommodation. No facilities. There’s nothing here but U-Boat pens and enough concrete to stop a nuclear blast.”

“Yeah, even by German standards, this place is mighty ‘functional’. Not a creature comfort anywhere,” agreed Sam.

Lifting his head enough to see the perimeter, Jack noted that they were surrounded by the troops wearing the same white snow uniforms they’d seen surrounding the U-Boat. At least they only had to deal with one opposing force. That was the good news.

The bad news was that he counted at least ten on one side and figured there’d be as many again on the other side of the cavern. They stayed just out of range of the floodlights so they didn’t present a target but close enough to do some deadly accurate shooting. But not accurate enough. Neither Jack nor Sam had taken a hit. Yet.

Floodlights. Maybe…

Jack started to piece together a plan.

“Bluey, I’ll lay down cover fire. I want you to make a run back to the sub and pull the plug on those floodlights.”

“But then we won’t be able to see shit,” Sam protested.

Jack tapped the night vision goggles on the crown of his head and smiled.

Sam looked Jack up and down and around either side. “Where’s mine?” he asked with a hurt look on his face.

Jack shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry. They were an impulse buy. I couldn’t help myself.”

“You’re not much of a team player, are you?”

“Never said I was, Bluey.”

Keeping his voice low to prevent his words echoing throughout the cavernous chamber, Jack explained his idea to Sam with whispers and urgent hand gestures. Hoping he’d been understood, Jack rolled over and fired short, controlled bursts from his weapon to give Sam a chance to make it back to the Barracuda. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled, no longer caring if he was overheard and turned to urge Sam on.

Sam was already gone. For such a large man, he could be quite agile when the situation called for it and being used as live fire target practice was one of those situations. Sam ran like his life depended on it and reaching the edge of the Barracuda’s dock, threw himself over the gap between the concrete landing and the subs hull.

Bullets pinged off the sub and chased him across the deck to the sail where he found a blind spot from the shooters. It was too small for him, but he’d take it. He continued the agreed countdown in his head. Jack’s life depended on him being able to get the timing right. And if Jack’s life depended on it, then so did everyone else’s.

As he counted silently to himself he followed the length of electrical cable from the lights and traced it to its power source. The thick cable looped its way up the sail and over the top. There was no way he’d make it up the sail without taking a bullet. Or three. He’d have to unplug it at the other end, which meant covering the open deck between the cover of the sail and the light array.

Still he maintained the count in his head. Time was running short. It was now or never.

Launching himself in to the open, he had faith that Jack would see him and try to cover him as he dove for the power cable. He heard Coulson’s return fire. The man had his back.

Sparks flew in every direction as the deck came alive with automatic rounds hitting the steel. Still he powered on, keeping low and zig zagging to avoid becoming an easy target for the unseen shooters in the shadows.

With a final turn of speed, he reached the light assembly, grabbed the power cable and yanked it with all his might.

The entire bunker was instantly plunged into darkness.

Still Sam continued to count, his lips moving silently as he did so.

Jack’s lips weren’t moving. His mental clock kept time like a metronome. Tick tock… tick tock . Without even thinking about it, he knew how many seconds had elapsed and how long before Sam would trigger the next part of the plan. Jack pulled the night vision goggles over his eyes and powered them up.

Smoothly and quietly, he swapped out his near empty magazine for a fresh thirty round mag and flicked the fire mode selector from automatic to semi-automatic, allowing him one shot per trigger pull.

All around, he could see the others slipping their night vision into place. He knew they could see him, but for the moment that didn’t matter. All he had to do was commit the locations of the other shooters to memory, which he did before lowering himself back down into the drain channel. Jack slowly pushed the night vision rig up on top of his head again and closed his eyes for a moment.

Three.

Two.

One.

He stood, in full view of the entire contingent of armed soldiers and presented himself as a perfect target. They thought he couldn’t see them. They were wrong.

The lights blazed to full brightness as Sam, right on cue, plugged the power back on and lit them up.

Screams of agony erupted from all around the cavern. The shooters were being painfully blinded by the powerful floodlights that were magnified a thousand times by their night vision equipment. They tore the goggles from their head, but it was too late to do them any good. The effect would only last a short while, but that’s all the time Jack needed.

One by one Jack started to pick them off. Not in a Hollywood movie style blaze of gunfire that would have emptied his clip in seconds.