Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (26 page)

“Delay them instead, then,” the former Jaeger Corps soldier
concluded.

“Exactly. But we are going to need—”

“Deck.” Kurt waded toward him through the snow. “Fedorchenko
just arrived with the first of his men. The rest are coming up behind
him slowly, with Korgan pushing them up from the rear.”

“Where are our rucks and skis?”

“They have set up some A-frames and pulley systems for hoisting
the gear up, but it is going to take a while.”

“Send the word down to send up six pairs of skis immediately.
The enemy is inbound.”

“What are you going to do?”

“You mean what are
we
going to do?”

Kurt smiled. A good man kept his sense of humor in these
situations. “Even better.”

“We’re going to slow them down.”

Kurt frowned.

“What?”

“Look behind you.”

Deckard turned around and saw four open parachutes descending in
a staggered formation well off in the distance. The parachutists were
descending to the ground in broad daylight, after jumping from a
plane that none of them had seen or heard, most likely at high
altitude.

“Freefall jump,” Kurt said. “Those look like ram air
chutes.”

“Between them and those guys we saw scrambling along the
mountains way off in the distance today, you have to wonder how many
more want to join our party out here.”

Kurt smiled. “Let’s crash it and find out.”

* * *

Deckard sank his whippets into the snow and pushed off.

His peripheral vision immediately disappeared into a blur of
motion as he blasted down the side of the mountain, his skis slipping
right over last night’s fresh snowfall. He kept his eyes fixed on
the small dots moving below him, the enemy moving about in their
overwhites, so far unaware of the mercenaries above them. Maurizio
came up alongside him, the rest of Deckard’s mountaineer team close
behind.

The technique was called
mottis
by the Finnish winter
soldiers who developed a fierce reputation in World War Two for
outmaneuvering Russian forces. Patrolling deep behind enemy lines on
skis, the Finns would encircle and cut off the Russian Red Army,
separating the soldiers from larger elements and cutting off their
logistical lines. By doing this, they would wear the enemy down,
draining their resources and exhausting them until they were killed
or surrendered. Deckard’s men would do the same, cutting off the
scouting team and delaying the main force until Samruk could
effectively mass their forces and launch a successful counterattack.

It was a gamble, but Deckard had spent his entire career
threading impossible needles.

The mountain angles were getting steeper, and boulders
were coming up to meet Deckard faster than he had anticipated.
Maurizio and Deckard veered in opposite directions, narrowly missing
one of the ice-covered crags. Launching off a small ridge, the
mercenary went airborne for several seconds before splashing down in
a cloud of snow. Behind him, Nate and Dag were more or less following
in the trail they were blazing through the snow. Kurt and Jacob were
moving parallel to them, finding their own way down the slope.

Dodging another boulder, Deckard scoured the terrain
ahead, trying to pick up signs of the enemy again. He looked back
down at the ground in front of him as he went off another ledge and
sailed into the air. He came down hard, his knees acting like pistons
to cushion him from the drop. As the slope leveled out, the skiers
began making large, looping switchbacks as they visually identified
the enemy scouts in the distance.

By now the angles were getting even steeper and the ski soldiers
were cutting through the snow until an arctic sandstorm of snow was
flowing all around them. Deckard chanced a glance over his shoulder
to see what looked like a white waterfall behind them. There was no
way the enemy wasn’t going spot them in a few seconds. Now he could
make out the bullpup rifles the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian troops
were carrying. They were only a few hundred meters away.

Letting the whippets hang by their lanyards, Deckard reached for
the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and racked the charging
handle. Ten sets of dark-lens goggles looked up at five skiers
descending down upon them. Deckard lined himself up on an assault
lane with as few obstructions as possible and opened fire. Getting
his iron sights on target while bouncing down the side of the
mountain was impossible, so he simply point-shot at the nearest
target, squeezing off a burst of auto-fire.

The burst went low, kicking up splashes of snow, but kept the
enemy in react mode, preventing them from opening fire first.
Maurizio and Nate opened fire next, the staccato bursts of fire
echoing down the side of the slope. One of the enemy troops was spun
around as he caught at least one bullet in the side, his bullpup
dropping into the snow.

Deckard pivoted, his skis churning up a wall of snow that seemed
to cut into his skin even through all of his cold-weather gear.
He
came to a stop just behind a rock poking up from the snow and took a
knee. Crossing his whippets to make an X shape, he rested his AK on
them and used the poles as a platform to shoot from. He got his iron
sights lined up on one of the moving enemy less than a hundred meters
away. He put a controlled pair downrange, the AK bucking into his
shoulder but rewarding him as his target dropped in a spray that
turned the white snow a bright shade of crimson.

Now his visibility was becoming obstructed. When he fired
his rifle, the hot propellant gases in his ammunition interacted with
water vapor that quickly froze in the sub-zero temperature of the
air, creating a fog around him that interfered with his line of
sight.

As the others were maneuvering to their own fighting positions,
the cloud of snow came in from behind and whispered around the
mercenaries. Several cracks announced return fire from downhill, but
none of it effective. Deckard cracked off a shot at one of the enemy
but missed again. Crouched over and trying to find something to use
as cover, Deckard was losing the enemy in the background as their
overwhites blended in.
Giving one a good lead, Deckard made
some bold corrections, chopping through the air with 7.62x39mm in
front of where he last saw his target. Finally, he saw a figure flop
over and heard him screaming between gunshots as the men to his left
and right began raining down the fire.

Several rounds buried themselves in the snow in front of Deckard,
forcing him to go prone as more gunfire cut through the space he had
occupied a second before. To his flank, Nate’s AK was also kicking
up a fog of frozen water vapor. Despite the difficulty in shooting
through the vapor fog created by their weapons, the Samruk men had
the terrain advantage. One by one, the enemy fell.

Watching his friends quickly cut down, one of the enemy turned
downhill and disappeared down a ridge on the slope. Deckard let his
rifle hang, grabbed the handles on his whippets to pull himself to
his feet, and quickly charged after him.

“Deckard, hold on!” Kurt yelled.

But it was too late. He left the others to catch up, unwilling to
let one of the scouts get away. Deckard avoided the bloody corpses
and weapons strewn across the kill zone, skiing through red snow and
dropping down the mountain. He could see the back of the survivor who
was digging in with his poles, desperately trying to escape. Angling
his skis straight downhill, Deckard used his whippets to dig into the
snow, pushing himself even faster as gravity sucked him downward. He
was quickly catching up with his target. Meanwhile, his teammates
tried to catch up with him.

The terrain bounced underneath his skis as the world
flashed by, his focus on the back of the fleeing skier. For several
seconds, everything else disappeared. As he closed the distance,
Deckard didn’t dare reach for his AK and risk losing control. He
held his right-side whippet in his fist and jabbed it forward into
the back of the skier’s head as he approached. The enemy tumbled
forward in a big ball of fuck, the man’s skis, rifle, and gloves
flinging into the air as he somersaulted down the mountain.

Deckard slid sideways, his skis parallel with the slope
until he skidded to a halt. Reaching for his rifle, he skied over to
where the squirter lay in the snow. Both of his legs were twisted in
impossible, unnatural angles. With the barrel of his weapon pointed
under the injured man’s chin, Deckard dropped a knee down on the
seemingly lifeless body and tore away his goggles and face mask. His
eyes stared up at the sky. He was Caucasian, Deckard pegging him for
one of the Russians. Slowly, his eyes rolled toward Deckard.

His lips moved, whispering, “Kill me.”

Deckard pushed his own goggles up and rested them on his
forehead as the rest of his team skied to his position and surrounded
the sole survivor of the scouting party.

“Who are you?” Deckard asked as he pulled down his own face
mask.

The Russian closed his eyes, seemingly at peace.

“I can’t feel anything past my neck,” he said in accented
English. “My neck is broken. I'm paralyzed. Grant me this one wish.
I am a soldier, like you.”

“Are you GRU? Alfa?”

“Zaslon.”

Deckard took a breath. He knew the unit but had never
crossed paths with them as far as he was aware. They were a shadowy
paramilitary unit that operated under the FSB. Back when he worked
for the CIA, Deckard had heard rumors that Zaslon had been deployed
to Iraq during the final days of the Saddam regime, where they had
gathered documents, weaponry, perhaps even equipment used in the
construction of weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S.
invasion. Material that had originated in Russia. This was the type
of incriminating evidence the Kremlin did not want Americans
discovering in Iraq when they invaded.

“Zaslon,” Deckard repeated.

“That is who I was,” the Russian said, his breaths
becoming fast and shallow. “Not who I am now.” The Russian
paused. “Will you let me die honorably?”

“If that’s your wish, yes.”

“We are called Oculus.”

“Russians working alongside the Iranians and Chinese?”

“Yes, the product of American imperialism around the globe.
Desperate partners who would otherwise hate each other.”

“And they say America is a force for global stability,”
Deckard said, looking away and wondering how long it would be before
the other 90 Oculus members would catch up with them. “Here we are
helping you guys make friends.”

“Congratulations,” the Russian groaned.

“Who is the ground force commander for this operation? Who is
in charge?”

“The commander from my old unit, but he is being relieved in
the field. For incompetence.”

“Relieved by whom?”

“Someone the Chinese are sending to rendezvous with us.”

“Is that who parachuted into the valley this morning?”

“We saw them, but I don’t think so. I don't know who that
was.”

Deckard thought about the other group he saw up on the ridgeline.

“In minutes, the rest of my team will arrive at this position.
Keep your promise and kill me.”

Getting back up on his feet, Deckard shouldered his AK and kept
his promise.

* * *

Shatayeva and Fedorchenko maneuvered their platoons
through the snow, closing on the enemy force as they in turn closed
on Deckard and his advanced party. They skied carefully, each of them
top heavy with all of the kit they carried on their backs, but morale
was through the roof. Every one of them was excited to have finally
fought through the cold and unforgiving terrain to close with and
destroy the enemy.

Sergeant Shatayeva got his men up on a rocky embankment
halfway down the side of the mountain. PKM machine gunners quickly
kicked off their skis and got down in their firing positions. Below
them, Oculus looked like little army ants crossing through the snow,
making way toward the firefight they had heard when their scouts were
taken out.

With the enemy a good 400 meters out, Shatayeva initiated the
ambush with his Kalashnikov. The sound of his shot was instantly
drowned out as three PKMs sent a spray of tracer fire downhill. The
enemy turned to the sound of the guns and lit up the Samruk position,
not wasting any time. But now they were fixed in position, and
Fedorchenko’s platoon was skiing downhill in a flanking maneuver
that would also get between Oculus and Deckard’s element,
effectively shielding the mountaineering team from being overrun.

The base of fire on the rocky outcropping was quickly engulfed in
a cloud of frozen vapor, faster and with more volume than any of them
had really expected. Several machine gunners and their assistant
gunners attempted to shift left or right to new positions, but to
little avail. They simply kept the fire on to keep the enemy’s
heads down and prevent them from having freedom of maneuver or
gaining the initiative.

Keeping the tracer fire skipping into where they had last seen
the enemy, Shatayeva watched 1st Platoon continue downhill, trying to
keep a shallow spur between them and the enemy to cover their
advance. It was a textbook fire-and-maneuver concept, and no one was
more surprised than the Samruk mercenaries that it was working so
well in austere conditions.

Shaking out into an assault line, Fedorchenko’s platoon began
cross-country skiing toward the enemy position. As they got closer to
the 90-plus enemy soldiers they expected, Shatayeva called a
ceasefire. His machine guns fell silent, using the pause in the
action to load fresh belts of ammunition.

The occasional gunshot cracked from below, but it was far from
the firefight they’d been expecting. With the enemy concealed by
the vapor cloud, the Kazakhs could only imagine what their teammates
would find in the kill zone.