Chapter 75
She looked over her shoulder and saw the source.
Halfway back to the weather station, she spotted what looked like a kicked anthill—dark shapes swarming, gunfire blinking in the darkness.
With the aircraft being the obvious target, bullets were flying over their heads. But not for long, she thought.
Before the Hercules had even slid to a stop, Drake was shouting for everyone to move.
Kasey didn’t have to be told twice. She and Sharpe leapt to their feet, and set out as fast as they could, keeping their heads down.
She saw a crewman, probably the loadmaster, standing at the aircraft’s open side door.
They’d barely gotten up to speed when Kasey sensed a brilliant flash from behind. As she turned to look, she heard a swoosh overhead as something flew past. Then two more flashes appeared in the vicinity of the weather station.
Kasey’s alarm went to dread.
She looked back ahead and saw a projectile, most likely a rocket-propelled grenade, barely miss the LC-130’s nose and denotate in a pile of snow.
A second struck short of the aircraft, exploding on the barren ice.
The third RPG, however, proved devastating.
It struck the LC-130 in the right wing between the two engines.
It penetrated the wing, which had to be filled with thousands of gallons of jet fuel, before the warhead exploded.
From a hundred yards away, the shock wave of the explosion slammed in, a body blow that rocked Kasey from head to toe.
Moments later, an intense wave of heat washed over her face.
A roiling pillar of flames leapt into the sky as fragments of white-hot metal flew outward and went spinning across the ice.
The fuselage collapsed and both wings separated.
A secondary explosion then sent the flaming cockpit hurtling away in pieces. The pilots never had a chance.
The sight left Kasey frozen. Her body seemed to hover for a moment, as if the ice had fallen away beneath her.
It took every ounce of willpower to pry her eyes away from the horrific scene.
There was nothing she could do for the crew.
Their ride home was in ruins. It was a terrible and sudden twist of fortune.
The only thing that mattered now was staying alive.
She, Chen, and the rest of the team were in for the fight of their lives.
Ice chips began erupting more closely. At first the incoming fire had been directed at the landing airplane. Now, as the SEALs began to return fire, more came their way.
Everyone, including Sharpe, was flat on the ice to compensate for the lack of cover.
The only salvation was that their enemy faced the same lack of protection.
Kasey saw small groups of men darting in the distance.
They looked professional, staying low, and using fire and maneuver tactics in an attempt to outflank them on the right.
She saw one of them fall, but his brethren simply ran past him and kept moving.
The SEALs engaged ferociously, their fire tight and disciplined.
Kasey kept her SIG at the ready, but it wasn’t an effective weapon against moving targets at a hundred yards.
She heard a cry from her right and saw Sharpe writhing on the ice. She fast-crawled toward him, and moments later a hail of bullets ripped into the spot where she’d just been. Splinters of ice sprayed in every direction, peppering her outer layers.
“Are you hit?” she asked, pulling up on his right side.
“Yeah, in the leg,” he said through gritted teeth. Kasey checked for a wound. She couldn’t see it directly, but there was a ragged tear in his pants and a dark spot that had to be blood.
She resisted an urge to give aid, knowing that dealing with the threats took priority. The Hercules was burning brilliantly, and somewhere in the back of her mind Kasey recognized this as a disadvantage—she and the others were backlit by the blaze, meaning the enemy would see them more easily.
“Here,” he said, pushing the Winchester across the ice. “You’ll probably do better with this.”
She didn’t argue. A grimacing Sharpe reached into his jacket pocket and handed over the box of cartridges. Kasey had been hauling Sky Fire, and she pushed it toward him. “Keep an eye on this.”
“Roger that.”
She settled into a shooting position and used the scope to search for targets. All of her senses were on overload. She heard the incoming fire zing overhead. Muzzle flashes flickered like a fireworks display. The fires behind her stained the air with a caustic odor.
She spotted a shadowed figure crouching in the distance, took careful aim, and fired.
The gun bucked, and with her naked eye she saw the shape tumble back.
The man started crawling to one side. Kasey lined up a follow-on shot, fired, and the figure went still.
She was searching for the next target when she felt a sudden slap on her ankle.
She turned to see Drake crouching. “How’s his wound?” the SEAL said, nodding toward Sharpe.
“I’ll be fine,” Sharpe replied.
“Okay, good. Think you can move?”
“Move where?”
“We’re sitting ducks out here. We need to pull back toward the wreckage.”
Kasey shot a glance at the flaming debris, and his logic became clear.
The debris field was a hazard, with uncontrolled fires and minor secondary explosions.
On top of that, if they tried to reach it, they would be highlighting themselves to an ever greater degree against the light of the flames.
But the wreckage also had one huge advantage: It was the only solid cover within miles.
If they could reach it and take up protected positions, it could shift the odds in their favor.
But first they would have to cross a hundred yards of open ground.
“Sounds good,” she said. “I’ll help Sharpe.”
“Okay, you ready?”
Kasey took the rifle in one hand. Realizing Sharpe might not be able to carry Sky Fire, she grabbed the sling they’d attached and hauled it over her left shoulder. Then she helped him to his feet. “Are you sure you can do this?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Stay as low as you can.” She then shouted over the din, “Ready!”
Drake rolled to a prone position and began firing fast-paced sighted rounds. “Go, go, go!”
They hobbled away as quickly as they could, Kasey supporting Sharpe on the side of his bad leg.
Together they staggered like a pair of drunks in a three-legged race, but the erratic movement was actually a positive—it would make it difficult for anyone trying to sight on them.
To her right she saw Williams and Raine running low with Chen on the stretcher.
Drake and Juri picked up their rate of fire, doing their best to provide suppression.
She saw Williams stagger and drop to the ground, the end of the stretcher he was carrying falling to the ice.
But he popped right back up and began moving again.
The SEALs were wearing body armor, and it had just proved to be a lifesaver.
As she closed in on the wreckage, the scene of devastation separated into individual plots of debris.
Kasey discerned dozens of sections of various sizes and shapes, some of them burning intensely.
She tried to pick out solid cover—ideally a spot on the perimeter to her left—that would provide a good firing position from which to repel the oncoming force.
A large portion of a wing lay upside down, but it was burning with threatening intensity.
A pair of wheels lay entangled with a bent ski assembly.
Kasey saw Williams and Raine head for that with Chen.
She kept looking. Dispersing for varied angles of fire would provide the best defense.
Then she spotted an ideal hide. One of the big turboprop engines lay on the ground, its propeller blades bent and mangled but still attached.
The engine was smoldering but not on fire, and she reckoned there was no denser mass of metal to be had.
It had also come to rest in a good position to cover their right flank.
The stench of burning jet fuel tore at her lungs.
Smoke swept past in acrid waves. She steered Sharpe toward the engine as bullets pinged into the wreckage behind them.
They literally fell behind the engine, Sharpe grunting as he hit the ice awkwardly on his injured leg.
Kasey made sure he was in cover, then brought the Winchester up and immediately began searching for targets.
She spotted two men approaching from the right.
She settled her sight squarely on one of them and fired.
He dropped like a felled tree and his partner dropped to his belly.
Kasey was increasingly comfortable with the rifle. Her motions became smoother, which made her faster as she searched, sighted, and fired. It was as if her brain had been rewired, the situation drawing out a tactical fluidity she never knew she possessed.
Drake and Juri were now beelining toward the wreckage, Williams and Raine laying down cover fire.
Kasey, pausing to reload, did her best to add to their effort, but the Winchester’s bolt action was a limitation.
It struck her that the enemy force had looked bigger at first. They had to be whittling them down.
Ever so slowly, the odds were turning in their favor.
Kasey had just managed two hits in three shots when an explosion rocked the darkness.