Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (11 page)

The PKM gunner at the head of the Zodiac shifted, the black
barrel of his weapon sweeping across the submarines as he scanned for
signs of the enemy. The subs were in a state of obvious disarray,
some lying on their side, half in the water and half out of it.
Beyond the tangle of rusting metal was a dock and large industrial
crane.

“Six, this is Fapper-1.” Cody’s voice came over the command
net. “I just lost the drone, over.”

“What does that mean?” Deckard hissed in response.

“It had plenty of loiter time left. All of a sudden the engine
went down and it began to go into a spin. Then the video cut out. I
don’t know what went wrong. It could have been a gust of wind,
over.”

“Catch anything on video before it went down?”

“SHIT,” Cody cursed, his Tourette’s acting up again. “No,
nothing.”

Deckard wasn't about to abort the mission just because the drone
went down. They had gotten some good situational awareness from its
surveillance feed before the UAV crashed, at least. Now they had to
get in there and do the grunt work.

Once they were a hundred meters away, Deckard radioed to
Fedorchenko in the other Zodiac.

“Do you see any signs of the enemy ship?”

The Kazakh platoon sergeant turned and looked at him from the
other boat, which was cruising 10 meters off their right flank. His
dark eyes were wide as they drilled into Deckard. He shook his head
in reply.

“Carrickfergus,” Deckard said as he bumped up radio
channels from the assault net to the command net. “This is Six. No
sign of enemy activity. They were never here or we missed them. I’m
taking our element deeper into the AO to look for signs. Maybe there
is something we can use to pick up their trail again.”

“Understood, Six,” Sergeant Major Korgan replied from the
bridge of their ship.

The head of the cove was a tangle of rusted, twisted steel that
looked like it belonged on the set of a Mad Max film set in the ice
age. Deckard directed Fedorchenko to take his boat to the dock while
his team would explore the submarine graveyard. Deckard was already
having a bad feeling that this would be a dry hole.

Still, as they approached the nearest submarine that had been
scuttled along the shore, Deckard looked carefully through the
snowflakes swirling in the wind. He couldn’t get over the feeling
they were being watched, even though Cody’s drone didn’t pick up
any thermal signatures.

The nose of their Zodiac rubbed up against the submarine’s
deck. The PKM gunner immediately jumped off and scrambled up the
hull. Deckard and seven other Samruk International mercenaries
lumbered up in their cold-weather gear and jumped onto the sub. The
coxswain stayed on the boat, making sure they were ready for
extraction.

The mercenaries quickly found a hatch and descended into
the belly of the Soviet-era submarine. Deckard pushed his goggles up
onto his forehead, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. They stepped
carefully, avoiding rusted-out portions of the deck as they walked
through the corridor toward a light in the distance. The submarine
was literally coming apart at the seams, as it had been exposed to
the elements for years on end, including the water freezing and then
melting each year.

Stairways with rust brown railings, leading to nowhere,
made it feel like they were in a haunted house straight out of some
Cold War nightmare. It was evident to Deckard that no one had been
there in a very long time.

At the end of the corridor, the sub was blasted open where
the torpedo tubes were located, the tear in the hull leaving a gap a
few feet from the next submarine. The mercs hopped across the gap one
by one onto the next submarine, this one lying on its side. The wind
cut into their faces again, forcing Deckard and the others to pull
down their goggles and pull up their face masks.

“Six,” the earbud connected to Deckard's radio crackled. “The
dock...clear.”

Fedorchenko’s voice was cutting in and out, his words full of
static.

“Roger.”

Fedorchenko had cleared the docks, but there were about a dozen
abandoned submarines in the cove. He might as well search as many of
them as possible just to be sure. It wasn’t like they had any other
leads. The mercenaries crawled down the hull as it began sloping down
into the sea.

From where he stood, Deckard could see there was another
submarine hull just under the surface of the water, adjacent to the
one they were on. Trudging through an inch of water wasn’t a big
deal in boots. They could use the sub as an underwater bridge to make
their way over to the next section of the submarine graveyard.

Deckard spoke to the Kazakhs in Russian, instructing them on
which route to take. The PKM gunner went into a prone position behind
what was left of the submarine mast while the rest of them shuffled
down the side to the submarine that was just barely submerged.
Deckard took the lead, slinging his AK and sliding down the edge of
the hull on his ass. For a moment, he fell through the air, then his
boots came down on the top of the sub with a splash.

Waving the other mercenaries after him, Deckard sloshed
through the ice water as he walked along the top of the submarine.
His fear was that the aging submarine would give way under his weight
and he would tumble right through the fuselage and into the cold
water, but even after decades of sitting in the cove, it was probably
unlikely. Submarine hulls had to be extremely strong, made with
hardened steel to withstand the pressures found in the depths of the
ocean.

Looking over his shoulder, Deckard could see that the other
mercenaries were lined up behind him. Their PKM gunner was still up
above on the other submarine, ready to provide suppressive fire if
they made contact with the enemy. Keeping his rifle at the low ready,
Deckard scanned for targets. He could hear the low creaks and snarls
of metal against metal that echoed through the cove as the elements
took their toll on the Soviet subs.

Reaching the far side of the cove, Deckard put an arm out
to grab onto the next submarine. There was a rust-encrusted ladder
rung sticking out from the fuselage. Just as his gloved fingertips
reached out and brushed against the ladder, machine gun fire seemed
to blast all around him. Deckard was suddenly propelled backwards.
One hand tightened around his rifle while the other reached out in
vain to find something to brace himself against.

He flew through the air and came down hard on the top of the
submarine, then continued, somersaulting backwards, and rolled off
the side into the Arctic Ocean. Disoriented, Deckard suddenly
realized why it felt like a giant iron hand was crushing his chest.
He couldn't feel his arms or legs. And he was sinking.

Sinking deeper as everything began to go dark.

* * *

Fedorchenko was stunned as he watched the submarine that
Deckard and his men were crossing swing around without warning and
pop up out of the water. The cigar-shaped black ship didn't look like
any submarine he had ever seen. The ship executed a sharp left turn
that tossed the Samruk mercenaries over the side like rag dolls in a
gale-force wind. Arms and legs went spinning and kicking through the
air before they splashed down in the freezing water.

With its nose now pointed toward the mouth of the cove, the ship
rose even farther out of the water, almost like a hydrofoil, and shot
toward the Carrickfergus. Fedorchenko squeezed his radio’s
push-to-talk button.

“Incoming ship!” he shouted. “Tag it! Tag it!”

The black ship was just a few hundred meters from the
Carrickfergus now, set on a collision course.

“Incoming! Anyone?”

Nothing but static came over the net. That was when Fedorchenko
realized that they were being jammed. That was also when he realized
that green tracer rounds from machine gun fire were zipping right
over his shoulder.

* * *

Nikita’s eyes were like saucers; he was still in disbelief at
what he had just witnessed. His boss and a half dozen of their men
had just been condemned to Davy Jones's Locker as they impacted the
icy water. What he had thought was another partially submerged
decaying submarine was now a sleek, jet-black speed boat racing
straight at the Carrickfergus. It must have been a few hundred feet
in length and looked like a giant spear heading right at them. Up on
the deck, Nikita set down his HK417 rifle and reached for a Mk14
grenade launcher.

Looking like a giant snub-nosed .38 revolver, the Mk14 featured a
cylinder that held six 40mm grenades. He knew he wasn’t going to
sink it with a couple of high-explosive grenades; they probably
wouldn’t even penetrate the hull, but it was what he had. Leaning
over the railing, Nikita fired as fast as he could pull the trigger,
walking his shots across the black ship as it bore down on him.
Muffled explosions popped off across the ship to no visible effect.

The enemy vessel was only a few hundred meters away. He plopped
out the empty HE canisters and dropped in a tracking round. Closing
the cylinder, he looked up as he tucked the stock of the Mk14 into
his shoulder.

Nikita’s stomach fell out from under him. The ship was
about to ram the Carrickfergus and take them all to watery graves at
the bottom of the ocean. Nonetheless, his finger tightened around the
trigger as the ship came in to ram them.

Then it was gone.

The black ship dropped down under the water, chunks of ice
sloshing into the space the ship had just occupied. With the crash of
waves, the ship surfaced on the other side of the Carrickfergus. The
wake created by the surfacing ship rocked him as he stood on the
deck, forcing Nikita to grab onto a railing to support himself.

Taking off at high speed, the demon ship disappeared as quickly
as it had revealed itself.

* * *

Fedorchenko watched in horror as the coxswain below tried
to navigate the waters between the submarines and rescue his drowning
teammates, only to see him driven away by machine gun fire. They
traced geysers of water back and forth in front of the Zodiac, the
guns trying to triangulate in on him. The coxswain was forced to veer
away and take cover behind one of the submarines.

Meanwhile, the Kazakh mercenary sergeant had taken a knee
behind the old crane as staccato bursts from the machine guns filled
the air. The shots were coming from behind the docks. The mercenary
sergeant cursed. The enemy had left a stay-behind force to ambush
their pursuers.

Then, an automatic grenade launcher started firing. White
flashes ripped across the dock as the grenades exploded around
Fedorchenko’s position.

“One o’clock, fifty meters,” someone yelled above the
gunfire.

Finally, one of the mercs had announced the enemy position. It
sounded like Nate, the former MARSOC Marine who they had just hired.
Fedorchenko peeked out from behind the crane and his head was nearly
taken off as the machine gunner vectored in on him instantly. Sure
enough, not 50 meters away, he could see the muzzle flashes coming
from inside an old fishing shack or storage shed. A frontal assault
would be suicide.

“Nate, lay down a base of fire!”

The former Marine quickly got their element’s PKM gunner on
target, walking a 7.62mm autofire onto the abandoned structure.

“Flank left. Follow me!” Fedorchenko dashed from behind cover
and leapt off the dock as more tracer fire sought him out. He hit the
ground, stumbled, and quickly regained his footing. The Kazakh found
himself in the middle of dozens of bright red 55-gallon drums. They
were brand new, easily standing out by comparison to everything else
in the cove, which was old and decrepit. Their intelligence estimate
seemed to be correct; the enemy had set up a fuel depot in the cove.

With the other mercenaries following his lead, Fedorchenko stayed
low and flanked around the machine gun position. Nate and his gunner
were going cyclic in the meantime, drawing the enemy’s fire.
Hopefully they were drawing enough fire to distract the gunners from
the twin Zodiacs out on the water behind them. Submerged in the
Arctic water, the Samruk men had seconds rather than minutes before
they froze to death.

Crawling up behind a pile of rotting railroad ties, the
mercenaries formed up. Now within hand grenade range, one of the
Kazakhs primed a frag and chucked it through the door. Once the
grenade cooked off and detonated, a secondary explosion also blew the
aluminum roof off the building. With the booby trap blown, the
mercenaries ran toward the structure and through the open door. The
smell of sulfate stung their nostrils as they entered and cleared the
room.

Two PKM machine guns and one AGS-30 grenade launcher lay
on their sides, knocked over by the grenade blast. There wasn’t a
person in sight. The three weapons systems had been mounted on tall
tripods and oriented out the windows. Fedorchenko bent down to
examine the odd configuration in which the crew-served weapons had
been set up. On top of each was mounted a green metal square that was
about one foot by two feet in size. Wires ran from the square to a
control unit for each gun, as well as a battery pack. The charging
mechanisms on the weapons were controlled by an automated solenoid.

They were normal Russian infantry weapons that had been fitted
with a radar tracking and targeting system. Once again, the enemy had
left drones behind to ambush their pursuers. They had also jammed
their commo, further disrupting their normal standard operating
procedures.

The bad guys got the drop on the mercenaries with superior
technology.

Fedorchenko snarled. More than any of that, they had simply been
outfoxed, outflanked, and out-planned by an opposing force that
absolutely had their shit together.

He turned and ran out of the building as the Zodiacs circled the
cove, looking for survivors.