Chapter 17
Arctic
Crack, crack. Crack, crack.
Bullets zinged out in tight groupings, the vast majority striking center mass on their targets.
Chips of ice and snow exploded into the air.
The men kept low as they ran, then fell prone to provide supporting fire.
Fighting on drift ice was as naked as it got.
No trees, no terrain, no chance of digging in. Absolutely nowhere to hide.
The unit was advancing smoothly, a clockwork flow of fire and maneuver. Only when the commander looked over his shoulder and spotted a new threat—a heavy-coated figure approaching from six o’clock—did he break off the assault.
“Cease fire, cease fire!” he said over the tactical frequency on their radios.
The order was complied with immediately and a stark hush ensued. “Make the range cold, repeat cold,” he announced. “We’ve got company.”
Lieutenant Peter Drake’s team, dressed in full winter camo, secured their weapons and began heading downrange to retrieve their targets.
They were probably already arguing about scores.
Drake safed his own SCAR-H rifle, stood, and crunched across fifty yards of ice to meet the interloper.
Drake moved effortlessly across the slick surface.
He was slightly on the tall side, and he pulled back the hood of his winter camo jacket to reveal an emphatically out-of-regulation mane of brown hair and a scruffy beard.
Halfway across the divide he encountered Commander Trent Hansen.
Hansen was the commanding officer of the USS Cheyenne.
Tall and angular, with intense blue eyes, he looked the part of a sub commander.
The Los Angeles–class fast-attack submarine sat stoically in the distance, its sail and hull encircled by cinder-block-sized chunks of ice.
The Cheyenne was the last boat of her type built, a 688i version with a hardened sail and forward-mounted dive planes for penetrating ice.
Drake knew the Cheyenne intimately. He was a former platoon commander in SEAL Team 5, and presently served as an instructor at the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Detachment.
With the strategic importance of the Arctic increasing every year, submarine-based polar operations had become an emphasis item of the U.S.
Military’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC for short.
The cold-weather schoolhouse was based in Kodiak, Alaska, but with a gap between classes, Drake had jumped at a chance to bring one of his fellow instructors to join two of their Finnish special forces counterparts on a fourteen-day joint training exercise aboard the Cheyenne.
They were slated to practice methods of submarine infil and exfil, and test new weapons and support gear in extreme cold.
By comparing their services’ respective protocols and tactics, training on both sides of the Atlantic could be refined and improved.
The Finns were among the most knowledgeable cold-weather operators on the planet.
They’d confounded the Wehrmacht in World War II, and their reputation as fierce and innovative winter warriors had helped keep the Russians at bay ever since.
Drake owed it to his SEAL students to take every chance to expand his skill set for teaching their unique brand of warcraft.
“Change of plans,” the captain said as soon as they converged. “We’re pulling up stakes and heading north.”
“Are you serious?” Drake said, as he shook his head in annoyance. They had been on the Cheyenne for a week now, and bad weather and logistical snafus had preempted much of their planned training.
“Why north?” he queried.
The captain only shrugged.
“Objective?”
“No word on that yet.”
“This isn’t gonna help our training syllabus.”
“Look, I don’t know where we’re headed or what we’re gonna do when we get there. But this doesn’t smell like training to me.”
“An op? All the way up here?”
“I know, it defies logic. The only conflicts I’ve seen in these parts involve orcas hunting big fat seals.” He paused for a smile. “Whatever the reason, the Cheyenne is being repositioned.”
Drake gave the captain an appraising look. “Or maybe we’re getting repositioned.”
“Not sure how that would work with the two Finns in your little squad, but we’ll find out soon enough. Get your gear back on board and button up. We’re under way in thirty minutes.”
“Aye, aye.”
As Hansen headed back toward the sub, Drake looked out to the horizon.
The skies were clear, and in the April twilight he saw drift ice as far as the curvature of the earth allowed.
The weather was supposed to hold steady for another twelve hours, but a storm was bearing down like a locomotive.
That was another reason they were trying to get some training in now.
He turned and walked toward his team. All three stood waiting for him, no doubt wondering what was up.
“New orders,” Drake said. “We’re loading back up, getting underway, and heading north. Skipper thinks it’s an op of some kind.”
“An op?” remarked Captain Raine. The senior member of the visiting Finnish contingent, blond and fair-skinned, spoke excellent English but had a heavy accent. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said PO2 Marcus Williams, Drake’s fellow instructor from the Kodiak schoolhouse.
“On a boat like this, that probably means we’ll be skulking around five hundred feet below the ice chasing a Russki boomer for the next week.
” Williams was a tall, extreme workout fanatic, but in his full winter gear, he looked more Michelin Man than MMA.
Drake intervened. “That’s a distinct possibility, Marcus. But there’s not much we can do about it. Let’s hit it, boys. Everything back on board.”
“Brass?” Williams asked.
Drake looked out and saw hundreds of casings. Having come out hot, they had melted halfway into the ice. “Time over tidiness. Leave ’em where they lay.”
“Leave evidence that we have been here?” said Juri, the second Finn. He was small and lean, and like most elite snipers, meticulous about leaving behind traces.
Drake laughed. “Like there are some other crazy-ass operators roaming around these parts? Biggest threat for us on this cruise is going to be overdosing on Navy coffee.”