Читать книгу Triplecross - Don Pendleton - Страница 6

PROLOGUE

Siachen Glacier Region, Pakistan

Hakim Janwari shivered under his winter-camouflage BDUs. He pulled his face wrap tighter, flexing his fingers within his gloves, worried about the frostbite that crept, almost like a disease, from man to man. So many had been affected. He personally knew five men who had lost entire fingers. Janwari lived in constant fear of coming home to his wife less whole than when he had left her.

If he came home at all.

He adjusted his goggles. Already they were encrusted with ice again, making it difficult for him to see. His legs felt leaden as he struggled to raise his boots, to take step after step, to march onward toward a goal he no longer understood on a field of battle he did not care about.

Ahead and to his left, barely visible through the wind-driven snow, a Chinese-built Type 88 main battle tank struggled to move forward. The tanks simply were not built for this terrain. The cold and the driving snow created a deadly, icy paralysis in man and machine alike. The cold was killing both, slowly but surely, here at the top of the world.

The Siachen Glacier region was called the world’s highest battleground for a reason. Pakistan and its hated enemy, India, had fought each other here intermittently for more than three decades. What they were fighting to achieve, Janwari could no longer say. What his government thought it earned by sending men and weapons of war into this frozen hell, Janwari was afraid to ask.

He could feel his legs beginning to grow warm. That was a bad sign. Cold was the only constant here. The illusion of warmth signified his body trying to compensate. It was the first sign that it—that he was succumbing to the dreaded cold. He knew the process well by now.

From within his parka he struggled to remove the rugged GPS unit. The aluminum housing of the electronic box made him wince even through his gloves. It was so cold. Everything was so very cold.

He was forced to scrape another layer of frost from his goggles before he could read the GPS unit. What it would tell him, he already knew very well. He and the men of his unit were just beyond the Line of Control, sometimes called the Berlin Wall of Asia, somewhere between the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges and below Karakoram Pass. They had not yet crossed over into Shaksam Valley.

The Line of Control was the demarcation between territory held by India and territory held by Pakistan in what was once Jammu and Kashmir. This landlocked “princely state” had once boasted a Maharaja, whose pretensions of neutrality had not lasted much longer than the 1947 Indian Independence Act. This was when British India was officially divided into Pakistan and India.

Torn by localized rebellions and plunged into armed conflict, the region had been ripped apart from within by insurgents who favored either India or Pakistan. The legacy of Kashmir was one of violence. Recently, an uneasy ceasefire had been called, and held, for some months. But that was over now.

The coordinates finally resolved. The GPS device was sluggish. It was difficult to acquire a clean line of sight to the satellites overhead through this weather. Janwari supposed he should be grateful he was able to take the reading at all.

He was not. The coordinates were not nearly different enough. They should have covered three times as much ground during the waking hours. They had made very poor distance in this weather. Janwari had begged his superiors by radio to allow the men to camp, to seek the relative warmth of their storm shelters, while waiting out the worst of the current weather. But the higher-ups would not listen. They had told him to carry on, to follow his orders.

He did as he was told.

From the pouch on his waist he took one of the last of his flares. He was not sure what they would do tomorrow, when the last flare was used. Perhaps he would be reduced to firing in the air and hoping his men could hear the shot over the howling wind. At the moment he was too cold to care. He popped the cap on the flare, held the tube away from his body and pulled the release cord to fire the flare. He could not smell the acrid fumes through the snowstorm.

The glowing green star that floated to the ground on a silken parachute was almost beautiful. He watched the flare descend, willing the ache in his shoulders to go away, knowing that if he was not within shelter soon, the cold would take the ache and everything else readily enough. Too readily he understood the siren song of the deathly cold. It sang to a man about the end of pain. It told a man everything would finally be all right. It was the easiest thing to do...simply let go, close your eyes and let the cold take you.

Janwari forced himself to open his eyes wide. No. He would not give in. He would not let the glacier have him. He would not die in these frozen mountains.

To his left, Hooth and Gola began setting up the shelter. Simple as it was, it was harder in the searing cold. Still, they were practiced. Their lives had revolved around this ritual for the past five days, plodding through pointless “patrols” and then setting up the portable shelter every night. Often Janwari helped them, although strictly speaking, they were his subordinates and he was not required to do so. This night he could not bring himself to move from the spot on which he was now rooted. He waited as they erected the shelter, then followed when they beckoned him to enter.

Once inside, Hooth switched on the LED lantern. It was feeble, both from cold and because the batteries were not fully charged. The lantern was solar with a crank backup. Later, after they ate, they would draw lots to see who cranked it this evening. There was never enough time, before sleep beckoned, to charge the lantern fully.

Gratefully, Janwari took off his pack and let it fall to the floor of the shelter. From his shoulder he took the Type 56 Kalashnikov-pattern assault rifle and placed it next to the pack. Many Pakistani troops were issued the excellent Heckler & Koch G-3 battle rifle. There weren’t enough to go around, particularly here. He and his men were forced to make do with the Chinese-produced AK clone. Most of these, like Janwari’s, were wrapped in strips of white adhesive-backed cloth tape. The tape on Janwari’s weapon was dirty and worn.

As Janwari took out his bedroll and began to spread it across his third of the shelter, Gola was already lighting a can of Sterno. The three men huddled around the wisp of flame, spreading their parkas to catch the scant heat. Gola began working on a can of soup with his pocketknife, sawing away at the top of the can. If Janwari counted correctly, this was the last of the smuggled cans Gola had crammed into his pack before they’d left their base camp near Rawalpindi.

“‘The land is so barren,’” Hooth said.

“‘The passes so high,’” Gola continued.

“‘Only best friends and worse enemies come by,’” Janwari recited, finishing the traditional quote about the inhospitable land in which they found themselves. Gola smiled as he shifted the can of soup atop the Sterno can. The heat had to be burning his fingers, at this point, but he did not seem to mind. It was also possible he could not feel his digits. Janwari made a mental note to check Gola for frostbite.

“It is not much of a ceasefire,” Hooth said. “Walking in circles in the cold.”

“You have said the same thing every night for five days,” Gola said. He stirred the soup with the blade of his pocketknife. “I believe we all know your opinion on the subject by now.”

“It is better than fighting,” Janwari said. “But not much.”

“And you have said the same, as well,” Gola accused.

“Shall I complain that the soup has been the same for five days?” Janwari asked. He allowed himself a smile as he pried his frosted goggles from his stiff, frozen head wrap.

“We should all be grateful,” Hooth said. “I suppose. But this marching to nothing...”

“Crawling to nothing,” Gola corrected.

Snow pelted the shelter. They would be forced to unfold their shovels and dig out of the snow in the morning.

“Yes,” Hooth said. “Crawling to nothing.” He looked to Janwari. “When will the patrol be released? When can we return to base?”

“I cannot get anyone at Command to acknowledge my requests,” Janwari said. “Always it is the same. ‘Return to your scheduled patrol route. Follow your orders. Stop asking questions.’”

“They say this?” Hooth asked.

“They imply this,” Janwari said. “One learns to read what is meant and not what is said.”

“It is ready,” Gola said. “The soup is as warm as I can make it.” As cold as it was here, that meant simply tepid by normal standards. But Janwari’s mouth watered at the thought of a meal that was not rock-hard, frozen protein bars or the unappealing rations issued by his military. From his pack he took his canteen cup. Gola and Hooth were already prepared with their own.

Outside the shelter the howling winds were growing even stronger. The fabric of the little tent was whipped to and fro. Hooth shook a fist at the walls, then rubbed his hands together.

Gola poured the soup expertly. He divided the amber liquid among their cups. Janwari gulped his, knowing that in only minutes the soup would lose what little warmth it contained. Gola sipped his more deliberately, while Hooth followed Janwari’s example.

“I am thinking of a place,” Gola said.

“No, not this again,” Janwari replied. He put a hand to his ear. “Did you hear that?”

“I will play,” Hooth said. To Janwari, he said, “The storm is very bad. The worst yet. We will be beaten half to death with balls of ice before this is over.” Turning back to Gola, he spread his hands as if describing a scene. “Is it a warm place, Gola, full of beautiful women in indecent bathing suits? A place where they bring you tropical drinks with umbrellas in them?”

“Yes,” Gola said. He frowned. “You should not have guessed it so quickly.”

“Why not?” Hooth asked. “You think of the same place every time. As do we all, I think.”

“Someplace warm,” Gola said wistfully.

“Someplace full of pretty girls,” Hooth reminded him.

“My wife would be jealous,” Janwari noted. “And she is already beautiful. I wish only to get home to her. I do not begrudge either of you your dancing girls and your beaches.”

“They are not dancing girls,” Gola corrected. “Merely women in very tiny bathing suits. If they dance, it is simply an added benefit.”

“Have you leave coming?” Hooth asked. “I have some.”

A surge of storm wind made the shelter vibrate around them.

“Neither as soon nor as long as I would like,” said Gola, shaking his head. “Were it up to me, I would—”

“You would what?” Hooth said.

Janwari looked to his subordinate. Gola had stopped and now stared, wide-eyed, at the dwindling flame of the Sterno can. “Gola?” Janwari asked. “What is it?”

Gola shook his head, slowly. He put his hand over his stomach.

Cold wind whipped through the tent, causing the cooking flame to gutter. Janwari cursed and reached for the flap of the shelter. “It has come unsealed again, like before. Help me with this before we are turned to icicles.” On his knees in the tent, he maneuvered past Gola.

The chill wind issued from a tiny circular hole in the tent. The hole was at chest level to the kneeling men within.

Janwari’s eyes widened in horror. He looked to Gola. Gola took his hand away from his stomach.

Gola’s palm was covered in blood.

As the other two men watched, crimson spread across the white winter camouflage of Gola’s uniform. He pitched forward into the can of Sterno, spilling the rest of his soup. The entry wound in his back was small, almost unnoticeable.

“Get down!” Janwari screamed.

Hooth was too late. As Janwari flattened himself to the floor of the tent, automatic gunfire pierced the tent from two directions, shredding the fabric, spraying Hooth’s blood across Gola’s corpse. The thick, warm liquid specked Janwari’s face and back and as he waited for the fusillade to subside.

Snow blew through the tattered shelter freely now. Janwari crawled to Hooth’s body and put two fingers against the man’s neck. There was no sign of life. Gola, too, was dead. Janwari crawled to his pack, ripped it open and removed the heavy radio.

There was a bullet hole in its face.

Janwari cursed his poor fortune. Scrambling to drag on his goggles, he threw his face wrap haphazardly around him and took up his Type 56 assault rifle. Then he was plunging outside into the heavy snow, into the driving wind, as another barrage of automatic gunfire raked the shelter behind him. Gola and Hooth were each ripped from boots to skull by the merciless bullets. If they had not been dead already, they surely could not have survived that.

It took Janwari precious seconds to realize he had lost his bearings in the snowstorm. What could he do? He had no means to call for help, no idea who was attacking and no idea from which direction the invaders had come. He saw only the shelter beginning already to blow away in pieces, and the bloody corpses of the two men whom he had counted as friends.

“Damn you!” Janwari screamed into the wind. “Damn you all!”

Only when he brought up his Type 56, felt the cold bite of the metal and wood of the rifle on his skin, did he realize he had forgotten his gloves. Screaming, he brought the rifle to his shoulder anyway, bracing himself on one knee as he sought targets in the snow-swept darkness.

Suddenly the night was bright with harsh, green-white luminescence. The flares that drifted down from the sky now were not those of Janwari’s unit. These were more powerful, clustered for effect. They were meant to reveal, not to signal. They were meant to cast powerful light on what was now a killing field.

Janwari braced himself. He had not noticed the first salvo of flares, not within the circle of light in his shelter, but that had to be why the enemy gunfire had died down. They had fired flares, done their horrible work while the flares came down, then waited to fire another salvo. That meant the killing would resume any moment—

There! The yellow-orange blossoms of muzzle-flashes were unmistakable in the partial darkness. In the wind and the snow he could not hear the blasts. The icy gales of the glacier swallowed the sounds of war, smothering any hope he had of warning the others. He could see the other shelters dotting the camp area. Several of these had been shot apart. The snow around them was dark red with blood. Janwari’s heart leaped into his throat at the sight of it.

Feeling the ache of the cold radiate from the grip of his rifle through his palm and into his wrist, he triggered the Type 56, squeezing one shot at a time from the weapon. He could not see what he was aiming at; he could see only the muzzle-flashes of the enemy guns. He hoped his rounds would have some effect.

To his relief he saw several more blooms of fire from among the bloodied shelters. More of his unit were responding, were returning fire, were fighting for their lives. He took a step forward in snow that was now up to his calves. His legs were so warm he could barely feel them. He did not care.

A hot shell from his Type 56 struck him in the face and snaked down inside his parka. He felt the sting on his neck. In his mind he was counting; soon he would be out of ammunition. When his rifle ran empty he would have only the well-worn Tokarev pistol in the flap holster on his belt. The weapon was buried deep under his parka in attempt to keep it from freezing up completely.

Think, he told himself. What will you do when you run out of ammo? What is your plan?

Janwari forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, plowing his way through the snow like an icebreaker in frozen seas. Slowly, dimly, he became aware of disturbances in the snow around him. Pocks in the snow cover were left as fist-size mounds were churned up all around him.

He was taking fire.

He threw himself into the snow, desperate for something to use as cover, anything behind which to hide. The white expanse felt like razor blades where it touched the exposed skin of his face. He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger back, spraying out the last of his magazine, knowing the gesture was futile.

Through the wind he heard the engine of the Type 88. The tank was moving, however slowly, through the storm. He changed course for it, letting his rifle fall. It was too heavy and he had no ammunition. His Tokarev would have to do.

Numbed fingers found the butt of the pistol. The metal of the weapon, even taken from under his parka, should have made him scream from the cold. He didn’t feel it. His left hand felt like deadweight as he struggled to drag back the slide of the pistol.

He stumbled and fell. When he finally managed to struggle to his feet, he was completely disoriented. Where was the tank? He did not know why he hadn’t thought of it before. The tank had a radio unit he could use. He just needed to get to it. It was possible the tank commander had already used it, but he couldn’t be sure.

The light from the flares above began to die. The flares were descending into the snow, where they were extinguished. In the darkness, he could see more weapons discharges. But now he could not remember in which direction the enemy lay. He pointed his pistol into the screaming winds but didn’t fire it. In the darkness everything was shadows.

One of the shadows moved.

He heard the rumble of the tank’s bogeys, heard the rattle of its poorly maintained engine. Crawling now, he forced himself to stand, plunging forward, staggering, falling.

He collided with the tank.

The armor was slick with ice. He smelled smoke and something worse, something oily and vile. As he tore flesh from his frozen hands scrambling up the side of the war machine, he realized that black smoke was pouring from a crater in its flank. It had been hit with an antiarmor weapon of some kind. He thought the Type 88 was supposed to have reactive explosive plates...but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He found the hatch and threw it open.

The tank commander was dead. Janwari didn’t climb inside as much as fall to the floor of the chamber within. The commander was the only body there; the rest of his crew had not made it inside. There was a great deal of blood pooled around the dead man. He had been shot, probably more than once, before reaching the relative safety of the machine.

The enemy could fire another antitank missile at any moment. The tank was an obvious target. Janwari thought about taking control of the turret, trying to swing it around to bring the Type 88’s main gun into play. He knew the basic procedure. Every man in the unit did.

Fighting was not as important as alerting the rest of the military to what was taking place here. He reached for the radio, which was intact and, as far as he could tell, powered and ready.

His hand struck the console.

Janwari looked down at his arms. Only then did he realize that he couldn’t feel his hands, couldn’t feel his fingers. He tried to grip the console and could not. He kept striking it instead, his hand a block of frozen, swollen meat that would not obey his mind’s commands. No! He had waited too long in the cold without gloves. He could not manage the dexterity required to switch on the radio.

The hatch above him opened again.

Janwari looked up. The circle of sky above was once more illuminated in the harsh green glow of the enemy’s flares. He could see faces above him, could see the uniforms his enemy wore. They looked down at him, dispassionate, almost bored.

They wore the uniform of the Indian army.

Janwari wanted to raise his Tokarev and fire at them, but his pistol was gone. His hand was a frozen, useless claw. He screamed at the soldiers staring at him.

One of the Indian men dropped a grenade inside the tank and threw the hatch closed.

The grenade rolled across the deck near Janwari’s feet. He tried to grab it, tried to scoop it up, thought of carrying it back to the hatch, forcing the hatch open and throwing the deadly bomb back toward the Indians.

But of course he could not. His hands wouldn’t work. He had just long enough to wonder how long the fuse on the grenade might last.

He had time to think the words, I don’t want to die. Not like this.

And then he was finally warm, for just a moment, before he was nothing ever again.