Battlefield 4: Countdown to War Read online

  He didn’t want to think about Garrison’s son, though.

  With each minute the snow thickened and the wheels lost even more grip. He slowed to below twenty, which was still too fast. The track met the border on the slope of a mountainside. The jeep protested furiously at the gradient. The clutch was shot, but he managed to force the shift out of second gear and back into first. He was following the contour of the hill but the negative camber on a right-hand curve tugged the vehicle sideways. He applied more gas but the wheels just spun. Then the revs climbed and for a time it looked as if they would make it. Kovic squinted ahead, focused with all his will as he replayed his memory of the map and sat-photos, how the track narrowed as it rounded a sharp hairpin, and where some landslip had spilt over the surface. He kept the gas steady as the jeep bucked over the uneven surface, but the gradient defeated the transmission until a sudden metallic crack under their feet told him the drive shaft had snapped. He stood on the brakes but the wheels were already locked. They were sliding backwards, the engine released from its burden revving to a scream.

  ‘I can’t hold it. Bail!’

  They jumped out, Kovic pulling Olsen and Price holding Faulkner before the jeep disappeared over the edge of the track and turned on its side, displaying its broken prop shaft like a dangling limb. The engine was still idling but the vehicle was clinically dead.

  ‘Okay. We walk from here.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘A mile.’

  A mile on the flat in this was twenty minutes minimum, uphill twenty-five. Carrying a wounded man each . . .

  Kovic hauled Olsen on to his back, while Price hooked Faulkner’s good arm over his strong shoulders and half carried, half walked him. Faulkner was the biggest but Olsen felt like a steer, his weight seeming to double every few yards. Kovic dug deep into what resources he had left, forcing his mind to separate itself from the fatigue. The cold had slowed the seepage out of Olsen’s thigh but he was getting paler. Kovic felt the cold biting deep, freezing his face, gluing the hairs in his nostrils together. In Afghanistan during the winter of 2008 he’d come upon an oddly shaped mound in the snow. Curious, he’d dug into it and found an entire family huddled together in a last desperate search for warmth. Their corpses were fused together, frozen solid; they had become their own memorial.

  ‘Hey, see that?’

  Price, who was a few yards ahead, stopped and pointed into the gloom.

  ‘Fence.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Faulkner. ‘We’re almost there.’

  Kovic fired a distress flare which the snow clouds swallowed whole. The wind coming round the hill sharpened and drove into them, slowing their progress further. Kovic started to count his steps, just for something to focus on other than the cold. With each step he imagined another dish on the menu at Mancun’s, promising himself double everything if he ever got out of this. Out here in the bleak white nothingness, brash, brittle Shanghai seemed like heaven on earth.

  The checkpoint was deserted, but the giant mesh gate was unlocked. Something had gone right, though somewhere inside him he had hoped fancifully for a Chinese welcoming party. He climbed up the watchtower and found the phone in its all-weather metal box. There was no dial, no buttons: just lift and wait for an answer. Hopefully someone in the border HQ would pick up. He looked down at Price, his arms around Faulkner and Olsen, trying to shelter them from the punishing wind that was itself now a weapon, whipping them unrelentingly.

  The phone line crackled. The voice sounded as if it was on the other side of the world. Kovic tried to speak. The frozen air ripped at his windpipe. The sweat from heaving Olsen had frozen on to his face like a glaze. He sank to his knees, his muscles going into shutdown, his memory too. What in the hell was the Mandarin word for help? He searched the recesses of his brain, feeling his consciousness receding as the cold claimed him. Finally, after what seemed a lifetime, it came. He tried to move his lips but they would hardly obey him.

  ‘Yu-cheng . . . Help.’

  He dropped the phone and lurched towards the steps. His only hope was to get back to the men, to share their dwindling warmth before it was too late for them all. He found a footing, lost it, tried another, and then fell the ten or so feet on to the snow that had drifted round the base of the watchtower. He landed softly, completely encased in the fresh snow. He had done it, got them back over the border. Now exhaustion overwhelmed him. Maybe he would stay here forever, just let go. Yes, why not? Didn’t he say he would die in China?

  What’s the last thing you want to think of before you die? They tell you to fix on something special and precious, someone you love. He saw her coming towards him. There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up. Louise’s face, looking down on him, shaking her head, her hair floating. She was laughing and holding out her hand. Come on, come to bed. Come on . . .

  He was woken by what sounded like a couple of dull thuds, possibly thickly booted feet jumping down from a vehicle, he imagined. He heard the sound again. He opened his eyes but everything was dark, even darker than before. There was something in front of his face. He blinked and felt wetness. He was buried in the snow. How long had he been lying there? He blinked the snow away until with one eye he had a view of part of the scene in front of him.

  The huddle that had been Olsen, Price and Faulkner was gone. There was an SUV. Help had come. Two silhouetted men were loading something into the back of the vehicle. He thought he could feel the heat coming off it – warmth, comfort, safety. He struggled to move, found he couldn’t. He saw a third man standing over a heap on the ground, an arm raised.

  There were two more thuds, accompanied by tiny flashes. Then the two men from the SUV joined the gunman. One took off his glove and reached for a cigarette packet, his hand bright white against the rest of the darkness, three marks like arrows jutting from the cuff . They stood over the body for a minute, smoking and talking, wisps of smoke and condensation floating away from them. Eventually two of them bent down and lifted the corpse by an arm and a leg, as if it was a fresh kill from a hunt, and dragged it to the SUV. It was Olsen.

  Kovic closed his eye. Didn’t move again.

  3

  USS Valkyrie, South China Sea

  Commander Garrison looked over his glasses at the young radioman.

  ‘Let me stop you right there, son.’

  He knew the kid meant well, but right now he looked like he wished the deck would swallow him up. Bale took a couple of breaths to try and steady his nerves. He knew the Commander had an obsession with plain English, he’d heard him chew out an intelligence officer for talking about ‘delivering information-centric capabilities’. He glanced at Lieutenant Duncan, but she was concentrating very hard on something on the tip of her boot. Garrison felt sorry for the kid and tried to throw him a lifeline.

  ‘Just imagine you’re explaining it to your—’

  No, that would sound sexist. He had to watch that these days. He glanced at Duncan, a tiny smile just visible on her lips, then his gaze drifted to the first purple of sunrise off to the east.

  Bale pressed on.

  ‘Sir, it’s just there’s this algorithm stack and for the last three hours it’s – our reflex monitors—’ Bale’s sentence faltered to a stop, like his engine just ran out of gas. Garrison failed to stifle a chuckle.

  ‘Bale, when were you born?’

  ‘In 1991. Sir.’

  ‘You know where I was in ’91? Right here on this ship, in the midst of the first Gulf War. Now when we’re at war we have to tell it like it is. No bullshit, no jargon.’

  Bale wished to Jesus he’d kept quiet. He shouldn’t even have been scanning north at this time. But the signal, if it was a signal, was like none he had seen before. He had shown it to Ransome when he came on duty, who’d dismissed it as random noise. But Bale was sure there was something to it. It was much too sharp, plus there was the way it pulsed. He had stepped out of the control room straight into the path of Garrison on his daybreak walkabout and, well, he
couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Give it one more try.’

  Bale took a deep breath.

  ‘Take it slowly.’

  ‘There’s a communication stream emanating from a point on the Chinese land mass.’

  Garrison nodded. The sunrise was turning the glassy sea a spectacular pink.

  ‘Okay, I’m getting that. Keep going.’

  ‘It started at 0410 and lasted thirty seconds. There was another at 0550 from about half a degree south. They were bounced to a receiver fifteen hundred miles away into the Chinese interior.’

  ‘Okay, I’m receiving that. Any decrypt yet?’

  ‘That’s just the thing, sir. There’s no way into it. It’s like plain white noise. No contours.’

  ‘And the receiver?’

  ‘None that’s on our data. It could be it’s just come on stream, but it doesn’t show up as anywhere near any known military or intelligence facility.’

  ‘Can you – capture it?’

  Garrison wasn’t sure what you did with stuff like that, so he went for a familiar word.

  ‘That’s the other thing, sir. It won’t. It has no – it’s like a vapour trail. It just melts away.’

  ‘Nice analogy, Bale. Write it up and we’ll get our intelligence people on to it.’

  Garrison squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t want to squash the kid’s initiative, after all that was just what . . . Shit. His thought stopped in its tracks as another jumped into focus.

  ‘Where in China did you say?’

  ‘On the border with North Korea – a mountainous region with—’

  Garrison was on his feet.

  ‘Get me the exact coordinates – now.’

  4

  Garrison moved swiftly through the ship, men stepping out of his path, saluting as he went. He nodded to each of them, because that was his custom, but right now they were almost invisible to him. He’d told Olsen to signal the minute they were clear. It was gone 0700 which meant Olsen was late, and there was nothing from Cutler. A satellite had picked up a suspected aviation fire close to their sector on the border. He needed answers.

  ‘It’s all ready for you, Commander. Langley’s China desk online and waiting and the Pentagon are listening in.’ Duncan held the door for him.

  ‘Thanks, Lieutenant. Afraid you’ll have to step out for this.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  Whatever he was about to hear he wanted to digest it alone first.

  He closed and locked the door. The room smelled stagnant. A month had passed since anyone had used it. Duncan had put out a pitcher of water and a glass and had fresh coff ee sent up. Too bad he had to do this without her in the room. He always behaved better when she was around. But he needed the others to level with him and they might clam up if they saw her alongside him. He patted his tunic and helped himself to something stronger from Jack’s silver flask. He typed in his personal code and hit Enter. Two screens sprang to life.

  ‘Sir, good day.’ It was Krantz on the China desk at Langley. ‘And we have Colonel Benskin at the Pentagon with us at this time.’

  ‘Hey, Roland.’

  ‘Hi, Brad.’

  It was all over their faces, thought Garrison. Krantz’s eyebrows were raised as high as they could go, desperately seeking upsides. Benskin looked more grizzled than ever, a desk warrior carrying twenty more pounds since they’d last spoken.

  Garrison sat and faced the screens.

  ‘Okay, gentlemen: give it to me.’

  Krantz launched in. ‘So here’s what we have so far, sir. We have ground reports China-side of a downed aircraft within the assigned corridor, plus thermo images confirming likely aviation fire smoke coming up through heavy cloud.’

  He looked at Benskin.

  ‘Doesn’t look good, Roland.’

  ‘That’s it from the Pentagon? “It doesn’t look good”?’

  The Colonel nodded gravely. How many times had they been here before? He’d lost count. He turned to Krantz. ‘Where’s Cutler in all this? It’s his show.’

  ‘He’s on it, sir. He’s talking to Beijing right now.’ Krantz picked up his cell. ‘Hold one minute, sir, I might have more for you.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about Beijing. I want my men back.’

  God, how he hated covert action. The men loved it, loved the mystery, the bending or even breaking of the rules, the relief from the boredom that inevitably infected them on routine manoeuvres. Marines were built for action; inaction was the next worst thing to death. But covert was invariably problematic. Command chains were confused by the interaction of diff erent agencies, and conflicting agendas. Langley was the worst. Too many last-minute missions, planned on the run. Throw men at a problem and deny everything when it turns to shit. Garrison felt his cool ebbing away. This stuff didn’t get any easier. In fact it was getting harder. That was why they retired men younger than him. He tried to get the words out at a sensible volume.

  Krantz squirmed in his seat.

  ‘You understand the sensitivities, sir?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fucking sensitive, that’s what I understand.’

  Benskin raised a hand.

  ‘Roland, everyone’s on it. We think the weather was against them, unscheduled snow.’

  ‘That pilot can fly through molasses. You’re gonna have to do better than that.’

  Krantz was scratching around for something he could use to put Garrison on hold.

  ‘Sir, the White House has been briefed. There’s a blackout on this one until they come back to us.’

  Garrison killed the screens, then sat staring at nothing. He felt the ship moving under him. He knew there would be no point trying to find someone to blame. Blame achieved nothing. But this time he would get answers. He would get every detail. He felt for a cigarette, then remembered he’d given up – again. He would have words with Cutler as well. And now that other name had come back to haunt him – one he would have been glad never to have heard again in his life.

  That name was Kovic.

  5

  Chinese–North Korean Border

  Kovic stayed in the snowdrift until a dirty grey dawn gradually spread over the hills. He had either fallen asleep or lost consciousness and become rigid with cold, proof that you could succumb to rigor mortis without actually being dead. The drift provided some insulation from wind chill, but the heat of his body melted the layer of snow immediately around him, keeping him soaked through. He was desperately thirsty, but knew better than to try to eat the snow. He allowed himself one swig from his hip flask, then emptied it out and refilled it with snow, which he’d allowed to melt first with his body warmth.

  He had heard the SUV pull away. He had strained to listen to any of what the executioners said to each other, but the wind made that impossible. Although their faces were uncovered it was too dark to make out any features. The only detail he had absorbed was a mark on the hand of one who had pulled off his glove to extract a cigarette from a packet. A scar or maybe part of a tattoo – three lines with what looked like arrowheads poking out from his sleeve. The casualness of their movements, some laughter even, and the manner in which they had moved the corpses, like it was just another day’s work. Who were these men? There was nothing military about them. His phone was gone so he had no GPS, no compass, but there was no question he had made it across the border. The SUV had definitely moved off to the west. He was on the Chinese side.

  He pushed more of the snow away and started the tortuous process of trying to move. The sky was brightening, the snow clouds gone. Visibility was growing by the minute. Further down the mountainside there was less snow and he could see the track that led from the border post snaking away west. Still he waited, watching and listening, to be sure that he was alone. He didn’t feel like trying the phone in the watchtower again. Was his call what had brought the men in the SUV?

  He had to fight the impulse to stay put and let exhaustion take over. Limb by limb he tried to straighten up, and then attempt
to stand. Just take your time, he told himself.

  His progress down the track was pathetically slow, but he made it to the point where it met a wider road. He realised he had forgotten about the cold – which was a sign of his senses shutting down. This wasn’t going to work. He dropped to his knees. And then he heard it, not four hundred feet away, coming from the east. If the SUV guys were coming back, there was nothing he could do.

  Only when it was close could he make it out, an ancient pickup. The driver slowed so he could stare at the unexpected presence, but wasn’t intending to stop. Kovic, anticipating that, stepped right out in to his path. The driver swerved and slowed, not quite to a stop. He wasn’t taking any chances with the strange figure on the road. Kovic reached out and grabbed the bar that held the door mirror and got a foot on what was left of a running board. He had some sympathy for the driver, avoiding a blood and mud caked figure with a smashed face and a lăowài – a foreigner. He immediately stood on the gas, but Kovic had a fifty-yuan note ready to thrust against the window, which assuaged the driver’s fear. He wound down the window, letting some precious heat escape. Kovic would have given much more: his watch – a kidney – just for half an hour in the wondrously warm truck cab. He didn’t even mind the fact it smelt strongly of goat.

  The pickup came to a halt.

  ‘Good morning. Thank you for stopping. I need a ride to town.’

  Kovic tried to smile. His face wouldn’t work, but at least his Mandarin did. The driver reached for the note and gestured for him to get in. The relief! Kovic quickly improvised a story about getting lost on a hike and falling down a ravine. It was the sort of mad thing that a Westerner might do in these remote hills.