After twelve hours of skiing, with a two-hour nap sandwiched between, Paul was exhausted. As they’d traveled, they’d seen more blinking red lights. Three times, they had hit the ice and lain motionless. One time, Red Cloud claimed to hear a chopper’s whomp. Paul had closed his eyes to help him concentrate, but all he’d heard was the steady moan of the arctic wind. Now it was different. Now they heard a plane revving its engines.
“There,” Paul said, panting.
They both hit the ice again. The revving grew louder, but still they saw nothing in the dark Arctic night. After several minutes of this, Paul leaned onto his side, halfway opening his parka.
They had to be careful as they traveled. They had to make sure they didn’t sweat too much. If they did sweat, they had to air themselves out so the moisture didn’t freeze on their bodies and chill them. Paul had learned this winter rule in northern Quebec. It was even truer out here.
Now in the darkness they saw the outline of a cargo plane as it lifted over a pressure ridge and climbed into the polar night. The engines roared, and the plane passed to their right. In time, the sound and plane dwindled, allowing them to hear the hidden camp.
They climbed to their feet and skied to the pressure ridge. It was about twenty feet tall. Paul unhooked his boots from the bindings and laid his skis at the bottom of the ridge. He waited for Red Cloud, then the two of them climbed the icy chunks. Soon, Paul eased to the top, peering over.
“Are you seeing this?” Paul whispered.
“Hovertanks, caterpillars, planes and supplies—what is going on?” asked Red Cloud.
Paul unlimbered his assault rifle, propping it on the ice. He put his eye to the lens and began to study the camp. There were lights strung up and headlamps from various vehicles. He also spied large piles of crates, big tents, a hovercraft park—ah. He noticed a long runway with blinking yellow lights on either side. Small bulldozers pushed snow and ice around it, making ice-walls.
“How did the Chinese get here?” Paul asked.
Like Paul, Red Cloud used the scope of his assault rifle to study the dark camp. “My guess is some of them drove across the ice from Siberia. The others were flown in.”
Paul swore softly, and he began to nod. “Maybe it makes sense then their taking out our oil rig. Their line of advance must have taken them near the platform. They killed everyone there because they didn’t want anyone to know what they’re doing.”
“How could they hide this from American and Canadian radar?” asked Red Cloud, “to say nothing about the airlines.”
“Are you kidding? What airlines?”
“Most international flights from Europe to America use the north polar route. It’s shorter going over the top than around. But even that is beside the point. Recon satellites could pinpoint these vehicles through infrared signature. And there are early warning radar stations in Alaska and Canada. Could the Chinese have attacked those stations to blind the North Americans?”
“What if the international flights have stopped?” asked Paul.
“That still leaves the recon satellites.”
“What if the Chinese knocked down the satellites?” Paul asked. “I’ve read about that. Each country’s ABM lasers routinely destroy spy satellites flying over their heartlands. Why not knock them all down? And the radar stations—maybe the Chinese are using highly advanced EW.”
“Electronic warfare?” asked Red Cloud.
“Since taking Taiwan, invading the two Koreas and allying with Japan,” Paul said, “Chinese EW has leapt way ahead of American battlefield tech.”
“Radar is different,” Red Cloud said.
“Remember the stealth fighters we used to deploy?”
Red Cloud grunted.
“Maybe the planes we’ve seen do something like those stealth fighters.”
“I suppose it is possible,” Red Cloud said. “But why would China attack America?”
“Don’t know.”
“I do not either. I can’t believe such an attack is likely.”
Paul laughed grimly. “I wouldn’t have thought it likely until White Tiger Commandos killed everyone at Platform P-53. Something has hit the fan, that’s for sure. Now here’s a Chinese base, what, two hundred miles from the Alaskan coast?”
“The White Tigers destroyed an oil rig,” Red Cloud said thoughtfully, “and oil is the only international commodity northern Alaska possesses. Maybe this is a gathering force meant to destroy the Alaskan oilfields.”
“Yeah. That would be my guess, too. The Chinese want to cripple the American economy. I wonder why they want to do that, however.”
“It is always about power,” Red Cloud said, “which means money, which means one man stealing from another.”
“That’s a pretty grim view, Chief. Sorry. Delete the last word. I meant to say Red Cloud.”
Red Cloud looked solemnly at Paul. “We survived the slaughter at Platform P-53. We are brothers of the warpath.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you seen enough?”
“Meaning what?”
“We must hurry to Dead Horse and warn the Americans.”
Paul chewed his lower lip. He was thinking about his promise to Murphy. “I don’t know. Two hundred miles on skis will take us at least ten more days. In ten days, all the Alaskan oilfields might be burning. We have to do something before that.”
“Two men cannot attack the base.”
“Actually,” Paul said. “Two men can easily attack the base. It’s doing anything useful that’s doubtful.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That we get a radio out of there,” Paul said. “If Dead Horse is two hundred miles away, we could contact them.”
“No one in Dead Horse would believe us.”
“Let’s cross that bridge when the time comes,” Paul said. “For now, I want a radio.”
“And how do we get this radio? Do we ski in and ask them?”
“No. We crawl there and steal one.”
“Do you truly think this is possible?”
Paul recalled some of the things he’d done in Quebec. “Yeah, I do. Are you game?”
Red Cloud turned away and stared up at the Aurora Borealis. Soon, he nodded. “After what they did at the oil rig, I want to make the Chinese pay.”
“That’s the spirit,” Paul said, who had half-hoped Red Cloud would try to talk him out of this. He wanted to keep his promise to Murphy, but he also wanted to make it home to Mikey and Cheri. Could he do both? Well, he sure as heck was going to find out.
After studying the enemy camp for over an hour, Paul Kavanagh and Red Cloud crawled across the pack ice like seals. They’d left the toboggan behind, along with the backpacks, skis and assault rifles. Each had a knife. Red Cloud had a long Algonquin blade, a crude-looking thing that was similar to a Bowie Knife. Paul had a Gerber combat knife, a nasty thing with high-grade steel and matte-black paint.
Paul had explained it like this: “If we have to use our assault rifles, we’re dead men.”
“That is true,” Red Cloud said. “But if we are dead men, let us take some of them down to death with us.”
“Forget that. If you want to act like a ninja you have to arm like one.”
“We have our grenades: two fragmentation and one phosphorous.”
“I’ll take the phosphorous grenade,” Paul said. “You concentrate on your knife. Sneak into the camp, kill only as a last resort and sneak back out with our radio. We’ll let the air force do the killing.”
“What air force?”
“If it comes to that,” Paul said, “the American Air Force.”