Hunter Killer by George Wallace

Author:George Wallace [Wallace, George & Keith, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Jason Hall laboriously worked his way upward, using brute strength to pull his body up the sheer rock face. The heavy equipment he carried threatened to drag him down, and it was a long, long fall back down the steep slope. Even in the frigid Arctic night, sweat washed into his eyes and soaked his shirt inside his white parka as he fought to reach the ledge he was climbing for. It was still just a couple of meters farther up. He got a good grip on a crevice and glanced back down. Tony Martinelli was just below him, working over the rocks. Hall knew if he slipped now, he would take his team member down with him.

“Just a little more, M. Almost there. I can see the ledge.”

“Gee, thanks. You said that a half hour ago and I’m still looking at your ass.”

It had taken longer than they had estimated to make their way around the sprawling submarine base and up to this perch, high on the headlands. It was midnight, four hours since they had left the little temporary command post and the rest of the team. The light wind below was gusting up here. The thick cloud cover scudded high overhead, doing its best to erase the starlight.

Hall pulled himself up to the narrow rock shelf and lay there, gasping for air. Minutes later, Martinelli rolled over the edge and joined him.

“Damn, that was more work than I expected,” Martinelli grunted. “Next time you get a yen to take a midnight stroll, why don’t you invite Cantrell or somebody else besides me?”

Hall smiled. “Yeah, he could use the exercise, but you’d better do your bitchin’ to the chief or the skipper, not me. They’re the ones pulled your name out of the hat. Now let’s get to work.”

Hall pulled the miniature satcom transceiver from his pack and set it up. He pointed the tiny parabolic antenna at a communications satellite twenty-three thousand miles overhead, in a geosynchronous polar orbit. As he worked, he thought how different his life was now. It had not been that long ago that he was a linebacker at the University of Alabama, playing his last game in the Sugar Bowl. Now here he was, on top of some Russian mountain, wrestling highly technical gear into place so he could relay back intel that might help avert a nuclear catastrophe.

Meanwhile, Martinelli unpacked the low-light sniper scope and set it at the edge of the shelf. He aimed it down at where he suspected the open mouth of the cavernous covered dock would be. He looked through the lens and saw the shimmering, green-glowing image of the huge building. He whistled low. “Wow! Have you ever seen anything so big? That thing must cover the better part of fifty acres under one roof.”

Hall scooted over beside Martinelli. The night was so dark they wouldn’t have been able to see across the water without the help of the sniper scope. “Intel says they can hide a whole squadron of Typhoons in there,” he whispered.

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