The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (40 page)

“We’ve arrived at our destination, Commander,” Jones continued happily. “I thought you might be interested in witnessing the final stage of our journey.”

“Where are we?”

“Steaming beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. Almost to its northern rip. Vertical sonar is looking for a light spot we can pierce through with our sail.”

“And then what?”

“We surface.” Jones came closer. “And then you and I will have a little trip ahead of us.”

Not if I can stop you, you bastard
, Mac almost said, but he focused instead on containing his own rage. He wondered if he could kill Jones with his bare hands here and now. He’d been trained to do so often and well, and even though his skills in this regard weren’t battle tested, he felt certain he could do it. What stopped him from trying was the realization that a dozen men would be upon him before he could land a single blow.

“Thin ice above, sir,” reported the sonar man.

“Ahead slow,” Jones ordered.

“Ahead slow,” a voice came back.

“Drifting speed. Hold us steady.”

“Aye, Captain. Steady as she goes.”

“Thin ice, sir,” came the sonar’s voice again.

“Thickness?”

“Seventy-five feet. Fifty … Thirty … “

“All stop!”

“All stop.”

“Take us up.”

“Coming up, sir. One thousand meters … Five hundred … Two-fifty … One hundred …”

Seconds later the
Rhode Island
rocked slightly as its sail impacted against the layer of ice above. She seemed to be stuck in her tracks for a brief moment before a slight grinding sound came and she began to surge quickly upward.

“We’re through, sir.”

Jones allowed himself a smile. “The door’s open, people.”

He gazed at Mac as if expecting praise for a job well done. What he got was a stare as cold as the sea above.

“That takes care of the shelf,” the commander snapped. “But if that mass I notice on radar is a storm, there’s no way you’ll be going anywhere else.”

“You’ll see,” was all Jones replied.

The beauty of Danielle’s plan lay in its simplicity. There wasn’t time to erect anything elaborate, and even if there had been, she had to keep in mind that these were engineers she was dealing with, not soldiers. She had explained her proposals for three separate lines of defense to Farraday and the former Corps of Engineers soldier in him rose to the challenge. Now, four hours later, they were outside supervising the work and surveying what had already been completed.

At the start, Farraday had hailed his people over the PA system. “Now hear this,” he announced. “Don storm gear and assemble in the briefing room in twenty minutes. We’ve got ourselves more than just a blizzard to fight off today.”

When they had assembled as ordered, he told them an enemy force was coming to overrun the installation. Murmurs passed through the crowd, but no one bothered interrupting for questions, though several noticed the stranger seated just behind him. It was up to them to save themselves, he continued, and it could be done so long as everyone pulled their share. The personnel were broken into teams and sent to various stations, where the work commenced almost instantly. Now, four hours later, they were still at it, though into the home stretch. The raging storm and fifteen-below-zero temperatures forced them to work in shifts which rotated with the sounding of a horn every twenty minutes. This had the added effect of keeping the workers fresh and constantly renewed in their resolve and enthusiasm. They couldn’t see a foot in front of themselves in the storm, but everyone could see the fear on the face of the fellow closest to him, even through the woolen ski masks that were part of the storm gear.

Farraday was the only one to stay out for virtually the entire duration, permitting himself only ten minutes inside per hour and that only to warm and oil his wheelchair fittings so he could move it about as needed.

“Dead legs come in handy for something,” he told Danielle. “Heart doesn’t have to work as hard getting blood down there. It can focus its energies instead on keeping the rest of me warm.”

For her part, Danielle could only stay out until the dizziness started to overcome her every twenty-five minutes or so. Each trip outside brought numbing pains to her chest and a light-headed feeling, and only her sense of urgency gave her the strength to avoid collapsing. Venturing back out into the storm with the four-hour mark just past, she had trouble finding Farraday. She pulled herself along the tow line that had been erected all over the complex at the start to make sure the workers had something to fall back on if their bearings deserted them. People had been known to freeze to death ten yards from a door in this kind of storm.

She found the commander at last beyond the camp line at the outer perimeter, where the finishing touches were being put on the first line of defense.

“We do have those six Marines,” she had told him at the outset, “and it would be foolish not to utilize their skills. Question is how to get close enough to the enemy to make a difference with their guns in this storm.”

“We could camouflage them.”

“You mean dress them up in white?”

“So to speak.”

What he had meant, Danielle saw now, was a series of layered mounds which were being finished off so smoothly as to seem a part of the natural landscape. The white-clad Marines would take cover behind them and poke their rifles through a slot carved in the snow-ice blocks for them. The only thing that might alert the nearing enemy to their precise location would be the orange bursts that came with each shot fired. But if they were lucky the storm would hide enough of that.

As soon as the opposing forces scrambled for cover following the initial barrages, the Marines would pull back to the complex to serve as an additional line of defense if the next two failed to finish the job.

“What do you think?” Farraday asked her, having to yell to make his voice carry over the biting wind.

“Looks great. Can’t be sure until I see the men in position, though.”

She could tell that beneath his mask the commander was smiling. “They’re already in position, miss.”

Danielle smiled back at him through hers.

Together they moved back to the second line of defense. The snow had caked up on Farraday’s wheels, and Danielle went about the task of pushing him, quickly out of breath but stubbornly shoving on.

“We’ve got to make use of those loaders,” she had told him hours before, stunned by the size of them. Three were absolutely monstrous; perhaps a ton of snow and ice could be carried or pushed by their shovels. Chains were wrapped around their specially constructed tires to provide traction.

Again Farraday’s engineering background supplied the answer. The problem here, too, was one of camouflage, of making sure the enemy didn’t know the loaders were there until it was too late, even though the fact that they were in for a fight had been made known to them by the Marines. Snow mounds big enough to conceal the loaders would stick out too much and might impede their rush. The solution he came up with was to drape snow-encrusted tarpaulins over the huge machines, with their shovel assemblies dangling straight overhead. That way, as soon as the shovels were lowered, the tarps would be swept away. From there the drivers could use the loaders to attack the invaders by overrunning them. Even at their relatively low speed, it was certain they could outpace men weighted down and slowed by huge, heavy boots in the storm.

Still, Farraday wasn’t satisfied. The cabs were too open, the volunteer drivers too vulnerable to bullets. The answer was to weld steel plating over every part of the glassed-in cabin except for a six-inch slot that ran the entire length of the windshield to allow for adequate vision. That task had only just been completed, and now work had commenced on encasing the tarpaulin coverings with an even layer of snow and ice.

Satisfied, Farraday asked Danielle to wheel him on to the last and most complicated line of defense. Huge insulated pipes had been laid from the main pumping station into an area roughly a hundred fifty feet in front of the central building and the same distance from the resting place of the loaders. Fifty of the outpost’s personnel had rotated the chores of digging a foot down into the snow and packing what lay beneath that layer into ice. Their progress was slowed by fresh showers of snow and crystal poured into their neatly cleared areas by the storm. Yet their perseverance paid off, and they were now finishing up the first stage of the job by leveling out the pit with acetylene torches.

With the trench finished to his satisfaction, Farraday supervised the placement of the insulated pipes linked up to the pumps inside the foot-deep trench and then ordered the spigots opened. Seconds later, thick black crude oil began rushing into the freshly dug ice pit. It coagulated like clotting blood and slowed for a time, but not many minutes later the entire pit was full to the brim and they were ready to implement the next phase. Men bearing hoses filled with heated water to prevent even the insulated rubber from freezing began casting a heavy, even spray over the oil the thickness of which held it on top long enough to freeze into a sheet of ice an inch thick. The storm helped them here by blanketing fresh snow atop the man-made fire trap. Outpost 10 personnel went to work next with shovels and smaller dozers to deepen the snow so that the fire pit would take on the same proportions and look just like the rest of the grounds, even from up close.

“Incredible,” was all Danielle could say for this ploy that made up their final line of defense. “I saw the oil being poured and I still can’t pinpoint where it is.”

Fortunately it was clear to the men laying the specially sealed fusing from the fire pit back inside the complex. The fusing was unique in that the flame it carried would burn on the inside rather than the outside, where it could be too easily extinguished by storm, wind, or cold. It was standard issue in cold weather regions where construction was going on.

Danielle and Farraday gazed about them. The work was nearly finished. They had barely allowed themselves a small smile of satisfaction when a call came for Farraday on his walkie-talkie from a spotter placed atop a snow mound a quarter mile from the outpost.

“This is Farraday. I read you, son.”

“I see them, sir. Fifty, maybe more, coming fast.”

“Coming fast? How?”

“Snowmobiles, sir.”

“Say again.”

“Snowmobiles.”

Farraday gazed at Danielle to make sure she had heard.

Chapter 34

“THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNUAL MACY’S
Thanksgiving Day Parade is coming to you live and in stereo from New York City… .
”

Kimberlain was close enough to a television monitor poised near the starting line to hear a woman’s opening narration as a trio of red-jacketed Macy’s personnel led by Bill Burns started down Central Park West before a banner that read
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
carried by a quartet of handlers also responsible for a balloon bearing the store logo. The first of thirteen marching bands fell in immediately behind, and the parade was officially underway to a chorus of whistles and drumbeats.

“
And now, let’s go uptown to your host—
”

Before the narrator could finish the name of the teenage heartthrob serving as uptown host, shrieks and ear-piercing screams rang out and, barely out of camera range, the Ferryman instinctively drew his gun. He reholstered it, embarrassed, when he realized the noise was due to a host of teenage girls screaming their adulation at a curly-haired teenage boy who had appeared among them. Kimberlain moved away from the throng when the boy started speaking and gazed about him again.

The logistics were indeed incredible—a work of art in themselves. He watched as the next band in line readied itself on West 77th Street, held in place so the first of the major floats could move in ahead of it. Not far down the other side of 77th, Woody Woodpecker grew impatient as he waited to become the lead balloon in this year’s parade. It was minutes past nine
A.M.
on a bright, sunny Thanksgiving. Temperatures were already stretching into the fifties and by the finish at noon could be expected to have risen another ten degrees. Much of the crowd was clothed in simple spring-weight windbreakers, prepared to shed them at a moment’s notice.

The lead band was playing a brassy rendition of “That’s Entertainment” as it strode down Central Park West with military precision, flanked on all sides by drum majorettes.

“Come in, Jared,” called Cathy Nu on the walkie-talkie clipped to Kimberlain’s belt.

He backed up further from the crowd and raised it to his lips. “Read you.”

“I’m at Columbus Circle. Sounds from here like things are underway.”

“You got that right. Everyone in place?”

“Seems like we’ve got as many security personnel as spectators, but it’s probably just wishful thinking on my part.”

“For sure.”

His mind drifted back to the six
A.M.
final briefing at a midtown Manhattan police precinct packed solid with leaders of the individual SWAT and surveillance teams. A captain named Donahue laid out the specifics: there was reason to believe the safety of the parade was in jeopardy, and the presence of explosives was feared. Since the entire area of the route had been swept and found clean, those behind the attack were believed to be planning their appearance for after the event’s start. Donahue was vague because he had little to offer that was specific. Then he signaled for the lights to be turned off, and he switched on an overhead projector. The route of the parade had been mapped out in different colors to denote grids, ten in all, which grew progressively smaller in size to be more adequately covered as they drew closer to the Herald Square finish line. The result was that seventy-five percent of the security force would cover the route from Columbus Circle on down, with fully sixty percent of the total in the last ten blocks.

“Let’s take it back now to my co-host at Herald Square,” the curly-haired teenage heartthrob was saying.

Kimberlain gazed up and saw a sleek pair of New York City police helicopters buzzing the skies. Farther off in the distance the Coast Guard choppers made a steady sweep of the larger perimeter, working their radar diligently.