Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (24 page)

“Take it at an echelon?” Jacob asked from behind him.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Dag replied.

Instead of following in Dag’s ski tracks, the lead element
shook out and got parallel with one another. They would travel in
this manner instead of a single file to keep a good pace without
compromising safety. Their safety lines would dangle over the
crevasses as the mercenaries traveled between them. Once they were
situated, Dag motioned forward. At the opposite end of the rope,
Nikita skied with his HK417 rifle slung across his back, barrel
pointed up.

The skiers crossed the crevasse field individually, finding their
own ways forward as they carefully probed and zigzagged their way
between the gaps in the ice. Under his skis, the ice undulated as Dag
wove his way across. Loose snow caught in the wind and blew over the
edge of the crevasse to his left, then began swirling around in
circles inside. Dag would probe and then edge forward, then repeat
the process again and again. At one point, the crevasses became so
wide that the lead four men collapsed back down into a file.

The entire field was only a few hundred meters, but they all
breathed a sigh of relief when they were past it. The opposite end of
the glacier could be clearly seen. Turning, Dag looked up at the
glacier coming down out of the mountains. It was an amazing sight,
and one that very few people got to see since it was tucked away so
far up into the Canadian Arctic.

“Ready?” Jacob interrupted. He was already untying himself
from the harness.

“
Jo
,” he confirmed. “
Takk
.”

“
Selv Tak
,” Jacob replied in his own native language.

The pair worked well together, and had even trained together a
few times in Denmark’s annual counterterrorism exercise called
Night Hawk. When they got together, you could hardly tell the
difference between Denmark’s Jaeger Corps, Sweden’s SOG, Norway’s
FSK, and Germany’s KSK unless you had an ear trained for
Scandinavian languages. In MultiCam fatigues, they all seemed so
similar until you heard them talking.

Dag pulled at his figure-eight knot for a minute before finally
loosening it. He skied back to Jacob as he got himself free and
headed to the end of the rope. The sun was beginning to sink in the
sky, but they still had enough time to clear the glacier. Everything
seemed to be going according the plan, which was what bothered the
two senior alpine soldiers.

Jacob and Dag looked at each other as their radios crackled with
static, someone trying to scream something over the net.

* * *

Deckard hit the ice hard and was immediately pulled toward
the crevasse. Getting the ice axe at the top of his ski pole into the
ice, he laid down on top of it as he was dragged through the snow. Up
ahead, Kurt Jager did the same before reaching back with one hand,
freeing an ice axe and swinging it into the ice, finally arresting
them before they were sucked into the crack.

Taking a deep breath, Deckard looked back and saw Pat with
both of his whippet pole axes stuck in the ice. His legs were
dangling over the edge of the crevasse. With his eyebrows drooped and
an upside-down smile, it was clear that the former Delta Force
operator was less than happy.

Using his incredible upper-body strength, Pat muscled his way
over the lip of the crevasse and dug back into the glacier with his
ice axes. Pat was known for going into beast mode in the gym, not to
mention in combat. Woe was the Samruk trooper who stepped into the
boxing ring with Pat for morning PT, as Pat was also known for
sparring with an entire platoon in a single session, one soldier at a
time.

Attached by the safety line, Sergeant Major Korgan was
dangling somewhere down in the crevasse.

“Korgan,” Pat called. “You alive down there?”

A grumble came as a reply. “Da, I’m alive,” Korgan said,
his voice echoing around in the fissure in the ice. “Just get me
out of here.”

“We’re working on it.”

Deckard worked on setting in the initial anchor. He could
already see the mortar section dropping their rucks and making their
way over to them to assist in the rescue effort. Pushing the handle
of his ice axe into the snow, he attached the handhold of one of his
Prusik knots through a carabiner, then secured it to the ice axe. It
wasn’t a great anchor, but it would take much of the weight off of
the safety line running from him to Kurt Jager, giving the German
some slack, and some time, to set in a more substantial anchor.

Kurt buried a picket into the snow and then hammered it in
with his ice axe. The free-running end of the safety line was then
secured to the picket by tying it in a figure-eight knot and clipping
it into another carabiner that went through a hole in the picket.
With the mortar section arriving, Ivan and his men crept forward,
first assisting Pat in untying from the safety line and getting free
from the crevasse. Kurt and Deckard then untied, and the three used a
new line to tie into.

Traveling across the glacier in such a large element was
painstaking and cumbersome to say the least, but one positive aspect
was that there were a lot of warm bodies around to assist in the
rescue. Normally, it would be just two or three people.

“Hey,” Pat shouted down to Korgan. “We’re going to send a
rope down so you can tie off your ruck, skis, and weapon. We’ll
pull them up.”

“What about me!” his voice echoed up in reply.

“You’re next, but this will make it a bit easier.”

They dangled another climbing rope down the gap. It began getting
tugged around.

“Need more rope!” Korgan’s accented English shouted back to
them.

The mortar section gave him some more slack. A long string of
curses in Russian followed from inside the crevasse, but finally, the
mortar men hauled up Korgan’s gear. Meanwhile, Deckard lay on his
belly and slid the shaft of an ice axe under the safety line that
Korgan was hanging from to prevent it from becoming entrenched in the
snow. The Samruk commander remained in place to manage the rope from
the edge while the mortar section lined up around the safety line to
begin hauling. With eight men, they had more than enough personnel
for a quick recovery that would not involve a Prusik climb or
complicated pulley system.

“Heave!” Kurt ordered.

Playing tug of war with gravity, the mortar men hauled
Korgan toward the surface by hand. Deckard was still on his stomach,
making sure the rope stayed over the shaft of the ice axe. Finally,
Deckard could see Korgan emerging from the shadows below. He looked
up, his eyes wide but alert. Once he was close to the top, Deckard,
Kurt, and Pat grabbed him and pulled him to safety.

Korgan immediately jumped to his feet and began tugging on his
rope harness. He’d been suspended in mid-air by the harness, and it
had been biting into his thighs while putting his ballbag in an
uncomfortable situation. The sergeant major was visibly relieved when
his nuts were once again hanging free.

Deckard laid on his back for a moment, taking a rest. They
were all saturated in sweat under their parkas at this point.

Just then, the glacier groaned, another crevasse opening
somewhere.

“Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” Deckard cursed. “Let’s get
the fuck out of here.”

* * *

After the crevasse rescue, Samruk International made it
across the glacier without further incident, which was a good thing
because it was nearly dusk. They could only pray that the enemy was
having as difficult a time negotiating the terrain as they were.
Climbing off the glacier and into the foothills of a mountain,
several musk oxen scattered and disappeared into the tundra.

Leading the mercenaries uphill into a draw, Jacob found a
suitable place for a patrol base where they could lay up for the
night. He would leave the men to dig out their shelters and see what
kind of progress he could make on the next leg of their journey. If
the glacier was difficult to traverse, he was not looking forward to
what came next.

The Danish commando had to crane his neck all the way back to see
the top of the mountain in front of them. Tactically, it made sense
to scale the mountain, secure the high ground, cut the enemy off
while they were channelized in a valley, and assault down on top of
them. Realistically, a mixed alpine climb, which included climbing
frozen waterfalls, rocks, snow, and ice, would make their rope
installation and movement over the mountain one of the most
challenging tasks of his career.

Mentally reviewing historical precedents, he could only think of
one in recent military history: the 1999 Kargil conflict between
India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Overnight, Indian military
mountaineers did a similar rope installation, and then moved Indian
soldiers up to the high ground, surprising Pakistani troop positions
by attacking from a completely unexpected place. It was a bold
maneuver, but it worked.

Dag gathered together the winter warfare experts in the
unit. Nate, Maurizio, and Jacob came over while they discussed their
game plan for the rope installation. They would be working all night
to have it ready by morning. Looking up the mountain, they pulled out
topographical maps and talked through their angle of attack,
rejecting some ideas and going with others as they tried to plot the
easiest route up the slopes.

Hearing the crunch of snow, they looked over to see
Deckard stomping his way over with his rucksack. He had traded out
his skis for his assault snowshoes.

“What’s the plan?” he asked, slightly out of breath.

“It is a mixed climb,” Jacob said. “No getting around it.”

“We are going to have to use methods from alpine climbing, ice
climbing, and rock climbing to get over this,” Nate added.

“Do we have the gear you need to do that?”

Dag looked skyward.

“Ja,” he replied after a long moment of thinking. “I
believe so, but we may run out of equipment at some point. We’re
going to have to make compromises with safety, especially because we
will have to install two lines if we want to get both platoons up
without waiting until next Christmas.”

“I’ll bring Kurt as well, since he has mountaineering
experience. You’ll need all the hands you can get. Korgan will be
in charge down here, getting the patrol base together. We’ll wake
the boys up before dawn and get them moving.”

“Wait,” Nate said. “You want to come with us?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Have you ever done anything like this before?”

Deckard pointed up to the summit of the mountain. “You see
that?” He then pointed back at the human anthill of Samruk
mercenaries digging into the snow. “You see them?”

“Yeah,” Nate replied.

“No one has ever done anything like this before.”

Chapter 23

Nikita flung his tri-fold shovel into the snow and
unzipped his jacket. He was overheating now, but as the sun sank
behind the mountains, he knew that would be changing shortly. It
added some extra motivation to the troops to get their defenses and
sleeping areas dug out. Korgan was marching around with a notebook in
hand, pointing to where machine gun positions were to be dug and
indicating the general arrangement of the trenches.

The mercenaries had crawled into a draw between two spurs
coming off the mountain where they would prepare their overnight
patrol base. The recon and mountaineering team had already departed,
and the Kazakh did not envy how their night would be going. They were
crazy to even attempt the climb in the darkness as far as he was
concerned.

The patrol base was shaped like an extended crow’s foot,
with trenches being dug out in three directions and gun positions dug
at each end to establish triangular, mutually supporting sectors of
fire. The platoon CP, or control point, would be centrally located,
as would the mortar pit. Putting their backs into it, and using the
occasional ice axe, they cut through the snow and ice, carving out
the trenches. Next, the men broke up into their individual squads to
begin hollowing out shelters by tunneling under the snow from the
trenches. Others worked to improve the gun positions, making sure
that the gunners would have a good 18 inches of snow as a barrier to
stop enemy rounds.

Meanwhile, Korgan assigned men to begin melting down water
and refilling empty canteens and Camelbak bladders. Fedorchenko
assigned two men to dig out the latrine and then began supervising
the construction of individual shelters. The mercenaries lined their
rucksacks and skis up outside the entrance to their shelter, squad by
squad. Weapons were wrapped in a poncho and left even closer to the
entrance so they could be quickly retrieved. Keeping their guns
inside the warm shelters and then bringing them back out into the
Arctic cold would result in “sweating,” causing weapons
malfunctions. During the night, each squad would light a small fire
inside their shelter to stay warm.

The patrol base was nearly done being constructed by the
time the sun finally set. Korgan was working his men into the ground,
knowing their task would be a hell of a lot harder at night. Nikita
and the other three snipers crouched down and entered their shelter
at last. They dug out their bunks in the side of the snow shelter to
keep them above the floor. Otherwise, they risked carbon monoxide
poisoning.

Brian, the American and former Ranger, and Aslan carried out the
remaining snow in their ponchos. Finally, the four men sat around a
small gas-burning MSR stove drinking water and eating MREs. The four
snipers were already dozing when someone yelled inside their shelter.
Their heads bobbed up and down like a slinky going end over end down
a flight of stairs as they woke up.

“Guard duty!”

* * *

When the sun went down, the temperature dropped rapidly. The
six-man mountaineering team pulled their hoods down tight against
their heads and did their best to keep moving, more of an attempt to
stay warm than anything. Nate trudged through the knee-deep snow as
the incline got steeper and steeper. Wearing assault snowshoes, he
was running a line up through the snow for the main body to use in
the morning. Using his ice axe as a cane, he pulled and pushed his
way forward. Behind Nate, Kurt dug small pickets into the snow and
then attached the rope Nate was running into the pickets with
carabiners.