Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (32 page)

“Two dog sleds inbound.”

“Dog sleds?” Deckard asked with a frown. “What the hell?”

“See for yourself.”

Deckard grabbed the sniper’s HK417 and looked through the
scope.

“I’ll be damned.”

Sure enough, two sleds were on their way, each pulled by 11 dogs.
The Danes rode on the back of their sleds, their supplies stowed in
the front under canvas.

“Who the hell are these guys?”

“Tampa said something about a Danish military patrol that would
rendezvous with us,” Aghassi answered. “This must be them.”

Five minutes later, the two sleds came to a halt in front of the
trio, the dogs knee-deep in snow and clearly excited by the strangers
they’d encountered. The Danes threw back their hoods and shook
hands with the newcomers.

“I’m David, the patrol leader,” the bigger of the two
announced. “This is Evan, my apprentice.”

“Hello,” Evan said with a smile. He was a little older
than the patrol leader and had graying hair peeking out from under
his wool cap.

“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” Aghassi said. “We
didn’t know what to expect.”

“You’re in luck,” David replied. “We don't usually patrol
out in this region.”

“So who are you guys, exactly?” Deckard asked.

“Sirius Patrol,” Evan said proudly.

“What do you guys patrol?” Deckard said, looking around the
barren landscape.

“All of Greenland. We have to keep a security presence out
here. Our unit has been at it for over sixty years.”

“And how long have you two been out here?”

“You’re the first people we’ve seen in four months.”

“Holy hell!”

“Yes, so this distraction is quite welcome. We were instructed
to be of assistance in any way we can.”

“Right now we just need to get these two guys about six klicks
south,” Deckard said, motioning to Aghassi and Nikita, “to
reconnoiter the mine.”

“Ah, rare earth minerals, yeah? The ASX mine,” David said
knowingly. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Apparently the mine has been out of radio contact, and we have
some intelligence leading us to believe that there is a bad actor in
your area of operations.”

“Bad actor?” Evan questioned. “Like whom?”

“Canadians?” David said with a laugh.

“I only wish. If that were the case, we could settle this over
Canadian bacon. We’ve been trailing a group—a sort of
syndicate—of Iranians, Russians, and Chinese paramilitary types.”

The two Sirius Patrol members looked at each other, trying to
figure out if Deckard was being serious or not.

“Listen, maybe it is nothing, but it is the only lead we have.
This is an issue of grave national security concern to both our
governments.”

“Well, that explains why they rushed us out here.”

Aghassi pulled out his map and pointed to the mine. Before he
could even open his mouth, David spoke up.

“No problem. We can get you there within the hour.”

“Good. I’ll get the men ready to deploy,” Deckard said.
“Once you’ve got something, call it in. Especially if you can get
eyes on the device we are looking for.”

“Device?” David asked.

Deckard turned back toward the raft. “You can tell them,
Aghassi. Sounds like you have a little road trip ahead of you.”

* * *

Aghassi and Nikita rode on top of the sleds, watching the
dogs race forward in the harnesses, shuttling them to the mine. David
had been explaining Sirius Patrol to him on the way, which turned out
to be a Danish special operations unit on par with the Jaeger Corps
and the Frogman Corps. Established in 1950, Sirius Patrol was named
after the brightest star in the Canis Major constellation. They
patrolled the tundra, waters, and mountains of Greenland by dog sled,
boat, and on skis, keeping a persistent presence on the ground for
the Danish military. Fewer than a dozen Sirius Patrol members were
present on Greenland at any given time.

“We spend a long time in training,” David said, raising his
voice to be heard over the wind created by their forward travel. “We
have to go to Norway for winter warfare training, learn about weather
patterns, survival techniques, radio communications, and everything
else. They say that a Sirius man can do everything but give birth!”

“I don't doubt it,” Aghassi replied. “Up here you have no
one to rely on but yourself.”

“We patrol in two-man teams, but yes, we’re alone up here.”

“That’s a hard life.”

“But worth it,” the Sirius Patrol leader said. “I’ve been
out here for eight months and I feel like it has changed my life
forever. By the way, what is this device you guys are looking for?”

Aghassi hesitated a moment. The 11 dogs pulled the sled forward
with almost fanatical devotion as they cruised through the arctic
desolation.

“
Veenstre
!” David suddenly shouted to the dog team.
Following his order, they began to veer to the left.

“Well, have you ever heard of the Aharonov-Bohm effect?”

“No.”

“What about tectonic weapons?”

“Tectonic as in earthquakes?”

“Someone stole some kind of experimental super weapon from an
underground Russian laboratory, and now we have to get it back.”

“Very funny.”

“I don’t blame you for being skeptical. I wouldn’t believe
it either if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”

David was quiet for a moment. “You think this thing is in the
ASX mine?”

“Not sure, but there are some weird indicators that the enemy
is transmitting something from there, so we need to check it out.”

“No worries. We’ll get you close in and unobserved.”

An hour later, a small ridge came into view that David pointed
out as being the rare earth minerals mine. Then he directed the dogs
down a shallow embankment to make sure they stayed out of the line of
sight of the mine, lest they be detected. The dogs scrambled along
without hesitation as the Sirius Patrol circled around the mine.

“
Hoole
!” the Danes called out, halting the dogs.

Aghassi and Nikita jumped off the sleds and began preparing their
gear, pulling their skis from where they were tied down.

“This is as close as we can get without potentially being
spotted,” Evan said. “It is flat for about six or seven hundred
meters up to the mine. I’m not sure how you plan on getting there
over open ground if they have sentries on watch.”

“We planned for this,” Nikita announced. “We will make it.”

“And we are just supposed to wait here?” David asked.

“I would love to take a few extra guns with us,” Aghassi
said. “You do have guns, right?”

David reached under the canvas covering of his sled and yanked
free an M-10 rifle, basically the same as the Canadian C8.

“Give me your radio freq. We might need you guys if things go
sideways. I really would like to take you, but it just isn’t
possible. You’ll understand in a minute.”

The mercenaries began stringing their skis together and then
extended a series of stiff wires, which were then covered over with
white cloth.

David just laughed. “I have a friend who is a Swedish sniper.
He taught me that same technique.”

“Does it work?” Aghassi asked in all seriousness.

“You’ve never tried before? You can’t be serious.”

“Well, it looked like it might work when we were training in
Russia,” Nikita said with a shrug.

* * *

Greenland

Jiahao pushed the two Persians out of the way and kicked
open the door. It blasted inwards and slammed against the side wall
with a metallic clang. The Assassin's Mace operative stepped inside,
looked around the barren tunnel, and then waved the other Oculus
members inside.

They filed in and spread out inside the tunnel, preparing
the search the complex.

“There should be a six-man crew. I want them alive; we may need
them to run some of the systems in here.”

“Understood,” one of the Iranian commandos replied.

Jiahao took off deeper into the tunnel, trailed by a dozen men.
The others began hauling in the tectonic device on its sled.

“Find the geothermal power plant and get it connected,” the
Chinese commander ordered. “I want it energized and ready to fire
as soon as possible.”

“I’ll oversee the installation myself,” Shun volunteered.

“Come to me when it is done,” Jiahao said.

Walking deeper into the tunnel, he smiled as he heard the Danish
workers screaming when his gunmen confronted them, their cries
echoing down the dark walls.

* * *

Infiltrating across the flat, open tundra seemed
impossible at first glance, but Nikita had been perfecting the
technique. Tying his skis together, the sniper lay on his belly,
using the skis as a sled to slide across the snow. In front of the
skis he had jury-rigged a wire mesh that had a piece of white fabric
pulled tightly across it. Although it would never stop a bullet, it
blended in perfectly with the snow, creating a camouflage screen
between him and the suspected enemy position. Using the toes of his
boots and hands to scoot forward, he pushed himself toward the mine.

Aghassi had a similar rig and was doing the same 10 meters
off of his right flank. All they had to go off of was a picture he
had pulled off of Google Earth back at the fiber optic station and a
few stories that Evan and David had heard about the ASX mine, as
neither of them had actually been there. The private sector had to
provide their own internal security, so the men of Sirius Patrol were
not going to hang around like mall cops.

“See anything yet?” Aghassi whispered over his radio to the
Kazakh sniper.

“Da,” he replied. Having cut a small hole in the white
fabric, he was able to scout up ahead with his scope and, if need be,
take a shot. “Five or six small buildings. It looks like there is a
cable car system that runs up into the mines in the cliffs above.”

As they scooted their way closer, Aghassi pulled out his
binoculars and looked through a small slit he had cut in his own
sniper blind. A cluster of squat one-story buildings formed near the
base of a sheer cliff that rose about 900 feet up.
The dark
rocks looked as if they had been pushed from the earth’s crust in
primordial times, left standing as a memorial to a time before man.

“I’ve got someone,” Nikita’s voice whispered in Aghassi’s
earpiece.

This operation was starting to feel a lot like a previous recce
mission they had done at a Mexican drug lord’s villa.

“Two, no three,” the sniper corrected himself. “Looks like
a perimeter patrol. I don’t see any communications platform or
satellite dish though.”

What did the NSA pick up, then? They had told him that it was a
high-frequency system, and HF was usually very hard to track.

“We should hear generators as well,” Aghassi said.
“Otherwise, what is powering their commo system?”

“You want me to take these guys out?” Nikita asked eagerly.

Just as the transmission finished, Aghassi spotted another two
Oculus men with Tavor assault rifles come out from one of the
buildings.

“Hold your fire. We don’t know how many there are and we are
sitting ducks if they figure out where we are shooting from.”

“No firefight? Then what’s the plan?”

Aghassi looked up at the rectangular-shaped holes carved
into the side of the cliff hundreds of feet above the ground. Perhaps
it was just intuition speaking at this point, but they didn’t have
much else to go on.

“Same as always. You’re on overwatch while I do something
really stupid.”

Chapter 31

Aghassi shifted his trajectory toward the shed that ran the cable
cars up the side of the mountain, slowly kicking and pulling himself
across the snow like a turtle. It was none too comforting to know
that if he was spotted, there was only a thin piece of white cloth
between him and a half dozen Tavor assault rifles.

Nikita radioed him several times, instructing him to
remain still until a sentry passed and was no longer looking in his
direction. Then he would continue forward, stealing a glance through
the slit in the cloth to make sure he was still on azimuth to his
intended destination.
After half an hour, he arrived behind
the shed and covered his skis and camo blind with snow. Inside, he
could hear the gentle whirl of the cable being pulled along steel
wheels.

“Let me know when I’m clear,” Aghassi radioed to the
sniper.

“Give it a minute. One of them is having a smoke about fifty
meters from you.”

“Any sign of the miners?”

“No, none.”

Aghassi took a breath, knowing that he was about to take a huge
gamble. Without any sign of a communications system outside, it was
likely they had energized something else to turn it into an active
antenna.

“OK,” Nikita transmitted. “You’re clear.”

Aghassi broke from cover and snaked around the corner of the
shed, into the wheelhouse, the cable running above his head as he
disappeared into the shadows inside. When Oculus took over the
compound, they had clearly not bothered to mess with the control
panel and shut the cable cars down. Large rectangular boxes were
running up and down from the mountain on a perpetual loop. Most
likely they were loaded with rare earth minerals that were now going
for a merry-go-round ride since the miners had been killed or were
tied up somewhere.

He watched pensively as one of the mineral boxes came down the
cable from the mine toward him. Positioning himself on the opposite
side of the giant iron wheel that turned the cable, he waited for it
to approach. The metal box cranked down into the shed and flared
outward from the bottom slightly as it went around the wheel. Aghassi
pounced on it like a cat, his hands clawing for purchase as he was
nearly thrown onto the concrete floor. Luckily, he found a metal rod
sticking out of the back end of the box that the miners would use to
position it when emptying minerals onto the nearby conveyer belt.