“Exactly.” The major smiles grimly at the screen.
“We would need half a day to drill through that much solid ice,” the Eurocorps captain says. “And they will probably hear us and leave. Or ambush from somewhere else.”
“I’m not saying we drill through,” the major says.
“You’d have a hard time getting through twenty meters of ice even with a kinetic strike from orbit,” I say. “It may collapse the ceiling. If we’re lucky.”
“We need to turn that cave into a smoking hole in the ground, and we need to do it quickly and decisively,” the major says. “We lollygag around, they’ll just redeploy. God knows how many more tunnels they’ve prepared down there.”
He turns to the Icelandic captain.
“Captain Haraldsson, I suggest you get on the line with your Eurocorps chain of command and get authorization for us to deploy nukes. I want to shift the nearest nuclear-capable NAC unit in orbit and put a five-kiloton bunker buster on top of that cave as soon as they can get a firing solution.”
The Eurocorps captain looks visibly shocked. “This is Danish territory. I do not think they will let you deploy nuclear weapons on their ground.”
The major shakes his head slowly. “Run the request by them. Tell them they can either send a few battalions of infantry to smoke these things out, or they can give us the green light for a single strike. Send the footage from Lieutenant Grayson’s armor along with your request. And do let them know that if they pick option one, it may take a few days. We just lost a platoon in the span of three seconds. Want to bet how many of your Sirius guys are going to walk out of there in the end? And if the Lankies disperse, God knows where they’ll pop out of the ice again.”
The captain looks from the major to me, then back to the major. Then he shrugs. “I will convey your request,” he finally says, reluctantly. “Stand by.”
He turns and walks out of the back of the mule. When his boots are on the ice, he falls into a brisk trot and heads over to the nearby Eurocorps command vehicles.
“Call our grunts back out of the tunnels,” the major orders. “We get the green light, we’re gonna have to un-ass the AO in a mighty hurry. Have the mules keep the perimeter. And get me regional command. They’ll shit a brick when they get the request. Might as well give them time to find a crapper and get situated.”
I laugh out loud and immediately regret it when a sharp pain lances through my side. I wince and lean forward in my seat. The major looks at me with concern.
“And get a medic over here to look at the lieutenant. He’s coughing up blood.”
The medics take me to the rear, which out on this glacier means a second echelon of armored vehicles that cover the back slope of the frozen river. They take off my armor and have me lie down on a diagnostic stretcher in the back of a medical mule. I prop up my head just enough to keep watching the scene on the glacier out of the open tail hatch of the mule.
“Two broken ribs,” the medic, a burly staff sergeant, pronounces after checking the full-body scanner. “You have a concussion, too, and a bunch of bruises and cuts. We’ll have to send you to Great Lakes to get the ribs fixed. Can’t do it in the field.”
“I’ll go to the med unit at Burlington,” I say. “It’s closer to home.”
“Up to you,” the medic replies. “Won’t take more than a day anyway. We’ll fly you out there once we get a clear Hornet.”
“Don’t bother taking up a whole bird just for one clumsy-ass lieutenant,” I say. “I’ll ride back with the rest of the company when we pack up here.”
“You sure? We may be here a while.”
“I can deal with it, Sergeant.”
“Copy that, sir.” The medical sergeant exchanges a look with his corporal assistant that tells me he thinks I’m a dumbass for not taking the ticket to Great Lakes, where the medical facilities are ten times better than the little medical unit at HDAS Burlington, which is mostly equipped to handle nosebleeds and hangnails.
I let the medics stick dermal patches to my cuts and bruises and try to keep my breaths shallow. While they are busy dressing my minor scrapes, I keep a watch toward the top of the slope, where the frontline row of mules is guarding the perimeter in front of the Lanky tunnel entrance.
Ten or fifteen minutes in, there’s a burst of activity by the tunnel, troops coming up the slope in a rush and climbing into the backs of the waiting mules. One by one, the mules close their rear hatches and head up the slope toward the glacier. From the front of our mule, I hear some garbled comms chatter. Then the intercom crackles to life.
“We are moving to meet the Hornets for exfil,” the driver says. “Hang on in the back.”
The tail ramp closes, and the driver puts the mule into motion before the ramp is closed all the way. Without any visual reference, I can’t tell where we’re going, but we’re definitely moving up the slope fast, the mule’s engine whistling its characteristic high-pitched whining noise at full throttle.
I guess they got their authorization, I think. The thought of a nuke being aimed at the spot of ground I’m currently passing in a lightly armored vehicle should alarm me more than it does. I’ve been in the same grid-square neighborhood with thermonuclear detonations dozens of times, even if those were on newly unpopulated colonies instead of Earth. I try to remember whether the combat use of nukes on the territory of a friendly alliance is a violation of the Svalbard Accords, but then I find that I really don’t give a shit. A dozen Lankies in that sort of fortified setting can take out whatever we can send into the tunnels after them, and we can’t afford to let them get away and regroup, or next time it will be a city instead of an air base, thousands of civvies dead instead of a dozen security troops. If I could launch that nuke myself, I’d do it with a cheer.
We’ve been driving over bumpy terrain for fifteen minutes when the mule comes to a halt, and the tail ramp opens again. The medics make moves to carry me outside on the mobile stretcher but relent when I wave them off and sit up with a grimace. Instead, they prop me up on each side, and we walk down the tail ramp together. Almost immediately, the cold bite of the Greenland air makes me feel like I just stepped into a walk-in freezer.
We’re on the featureless, flat ice of the glacier. Behind us, the mules have all pulled up in a row to unload troops. In front of us, there’s a line of Eurocorps and NAC drop ships, half a dozen of them, with engines running and position lights blinking. The cold air out here smells like exhaust fumes.
“Pick a bird, and grab a seat,” the order comes over the command channel and echoes across the ice from the external speakers of the mules. “Don’t worry about unit composition or nationality. We are all going to the same place.”