The Black Knight Read online

  Another, small and intermittent contact flickered in and out of view as the glider bounced and careered across the ice.

  ‘There’s a new contact on the monitor,’ he reported to the driver.

  The SEAL looked at his display and frowned.

  ‘Could be an artifact of some kind, a reflection,’ he replied. ‘The data is coming in via a downlink to a military satellite and we often get anomalous reflections appearing and then disappearing. It’s not a perfect system, especially down here with all the cold weather and ice. Don’t worry, the nearest people are hundreds of miles of us!’

  Ethan frowned.

  ‘There are people on the glacier?’

  ‘There’s a Russian research station at Lake Vostok, a subterranean lake more than two miles beneath the ice. The Ruskies drill bore holes down there, looking for life forms different to those we’re familiar with. The station is manned year-round, but we’re not going to be going anywhere near them.’

  Ethan held on grimly as the ice glider seemed to almost fly across the sheer white surface of Antarctica, occasionally hitting rises in the terrain that felt as though they were in a vehicle that had hit a pot hole in the road. Ethan’s arms began to go numb from the vibrations as he held on and hoped that the constant juddering wouldn’t give him the mother of all headaches by the time they reached their destination.

  On the GPS display appeared a second warning screen and this time Ethan spotted a countdown timer appear, showing just two hours and seven minutes.

  ‘That’s the object’, Riggs identified the new display. ‘We’re getting live tracking information from NASA. It’s coming down, whatever the hell it is.’

  ‘We need to get established and ready to pick this thing up,’ Ethan replied.

  The ski gliders thundered across the icy wastes for another bone-jarring two hours, Ethan peering at the empty wilderness around them, bathed in the orange glow of the low sun and slashed with giant crevasses that plunged into chilly blue depths, forcing them to find alternative routes.

  Ethan’s bones and joints were aching by the time the SEAL lieutenant began to slow, and Ethan looked up to the GPS monitor and saw that the flashing icon denoting the position of the signal was almost now in the center of the screen and that they were within five nautical miles of its position. The ski glider’s motion across the ice smoothed as Riggs began bothering to pick less rough routes across the surface of the ice, and Ethan peered up into the blue sky above that was laced with high cirrus clouds glowing like angel’s wings in the permanent sunrise.

  ‘Four miles now,’ the driver said. ‘Firing team, weapons hot, stay sharp.’

  As they travelled, Ethan saw Riggs slide an M-16 rifle out of its slot inside the canopy rail of the glider and allow it to rest across his thighs as with the other hand he flipped up a protective cover over the arming switch of the two cannons built into the glider’s nose. Ethan heard a humming sound begin to emanate from where he guessed a belt-fed drum contained the guns’ ammunition, the drum spinning up ready to fire.

  It was then that he looked up into the sky above and shouted a warning.

  ‘Incoming!’

  Riggs looked up and his voice echoed over the communications channel. ‘Holy crap!’

  Across the vivid, deep blue vault of the heavens a fearsomely bright flare of light rocketed through the atmosphere. A trail of glowing debris followed it as it plunged across the sky, leaving a billowing cloud of smoke behind it that glowed in the low sunlight as it streaked overhead. Ethan saw a faint concave shockwave of vapor ahead of the object enveloped by the bright halo, and a moment later above the sound of the ski glider’s engine he heard a terrific crash as the sonic boom hit the air around them.

  ‘Black Knight is down!’ Riggs yelled.

  Ethan saw the bright object plummet toward the Antarctic and then a brilliant flare of light burst like a second sunrise ahead of them as it hit the ground at tremendous speed. A broad cloud of debris churned up from the impact burst into the air a few miles ahead of them as the object ploughed into the deep ice.

  Ethan looked up at the roiling cloud of debris left behind by Black Knight’s terminal descent, and then saw an aircraft flying high over the Antarctic, the vapor trails from its four engines glowing like golden needles across the chill blue heavens.

  ‘There’s an aircraft up there,’ Ethan said.

  Riggs looked up at the aircraft.

  ‘The only thing that’s going to be allowed to over fly this area is a military aircraft, and we haven’t been informed of any support for this mission yet.’

  Moments later, through the billowing debris cloud emerged the shapes of parachutes with vehicles descending slowly toward the ice fields before them, and other fast moving specks plummeting toward the surface.

  Riggs keyed his microphone and called out to the entire formation.

  ‘We’ve got company!’

  ***

  XVI

  ‘They’re coming down ahead of us!’

  Ethan saw the specks plummeting toward the ground before them, and then suddenly black parachutes billowed into life as the freefalling soldiers pulled their ‘chutes and slowed dramatically.

  Ethan recognized the tell-tail method of a HALO jump – High Altitude, Low Opening, the preferred insertion method of Special Forces soldiers into enemy territory, usually at night under the cover of darkness. Too small to be detected by radar, and dressed all in black, the soldiers would normally be invisible to their enemy as they descended.

  ‘That looks like half an army,’ Riggs uttered in dismay from the front of the cockpit. ‘I count at least a hundred.’

  Ethan nodded, scanning the beautiful skies now marred with dozens of billowing parachutes.

  ‘They’re trying to cut us off short of the target and get there first,’ he replied.

  They saw a few of the parachutes plummet to the ground in flames, and Riggs’ features twisted into a grim smile.

  ‘Looks like a few of them got torched by Black Knight on the way down, but they still have almost seven times the number of men we can field,’ Riggs pointed out. ‘We’re going to have to get creative here.’

  ‘I’ve got vehicles deploying!’

  The call came in over the radio from one of the other SEALS, and Ethan craned his head up higher into the sky to see the larger, black objects still descending through the dawn sky, each suspended from three large parachutes.

  ‘Damn,’ Riggs cursed. ‘Who the hell are these people? How did they even know we were here?’

  Ethan did not have the time to give Riggs an extensive debrief of the history of Majestic Twelve, and he was pretty sure that revealing the Director of the FBI to be one of their number and the likely reason for the enemy force’s well equipped arrival would be a step too far in exposing state secrets.

  ‘They’re part of something known as Majestic Twelve,’ he replied. ‘They have a lot of money and a lot of connections. We’ve been working with the DIA to dismantle their organization for some time.’

  ‘Not with much luck by the looks of it,’ Riggs uttered in reply, and then keyed his microphone to speak to the rest of the team. ‘We need to get past them before their vehicles land and they can direct heavy fire! Push through at maximum speed!’

  Ethan gripped the canopy rails of the glider and hoped that Riggs and his men could get them through in one piece.

  *

  General Veer hauled down on his guidelines as the icy terrain of the glacier loomed before him, glowing orange in the low sunlight as he swept in like a dark bird of prey and lifted his boots. Veer hit the ice running and swiftly slid to a halt and hauled his parachute in as his men thumped to the ground all around him.

  ‘Attack positions!’ he bellowed as he pulled his M-16 rifle from over his shoulder and dashed toward a low ridge of ice.

  The gliders were still almost a mile away, spiraling vortexes of ice crystals billowing out from behind their propellers like jet exhausts as they raced t
oward Veer’s men. The soldiers were still thumping down onto the ice sheets and hauling in their parachutes, deploying in large numbers and spreading out as Veer glanced over his shoulder.

  The C-130 Hercules transport had deployed them a few miles to the south of the signal’s source, giving them the chance to cut the DIA team off before they could reach it. He looked up and saw their ATV vehicles floating down on larger parachutes, drifting with the light winds toward the north.

  ‘Get to the vehicles!’ Veer roared, pointing at a small group of his men deploying toward the onrushing gliders. ‘Get them here and those big guns deployed!’

  The group of a dozen or so men shifted course and began running to intercept the vehicles as they descended, and Veer sprinted to a low ridge line with his men and threw himself down into a prone position as he flicked the safety catch of the rifle off and took aim down the rifle’s sights.

  The ski gliders rocketing toward them immediately began splitting up, aiming for opposite ends of General Veer’s line of men. Veer smiled grimly as he called out new orders.

  ‘Switch to fragmentation grenades! Hit the ice in front of them!’

  His men responded instantly, switching their rifles to the underslung 203 grenade launchers beneath the rifle barrels and taking aim. General Veer heard a series of soft thumps as one by one grenades arced out across the ice, invisible to the onrushing gliders.

  *

  Ethan gripped the canopy rail as he saw the line of MJ-12 soldiers spread out across the ice.

  ‘They’re spreading too wide!’ Ethan snapped at Riggs. ‘Open fire on them!’

  Riggs’s reply came back from the front cockpit, angry and intense.

  ‘Stand by!’

  Ethan watched as the formation of ski gliders split up, Hannah’s glider rocketing away to the east with four more, others splitting to the west as they broke up and attempted to pass by the troops amassing before them.

  Ethan was about to say something when he spotted a tiny black speck appear on the ice sheet to their left.

  ‘Grenade, ten o’clock!’

  Riggs responded instantly, jerking the controls to the right. The glider snapped right as Ethan flinched his head away from the sudden explosion of ice and metal fragments as the grenade detonated some twenty feet away on the ice.

  The glider shuddered as the icy debris clattered against its hull and canopy, tilting over with the shockwave as the blast hit it. Ethan’s head slammed left and right as the vehicle skittered out of control across the ice at sixty miles per hour and Riggs almost lost control. The SEAL struggled with the glider for a moment and then its skis dug into the ice once more as they continued east.

  Ethan saw another blast send a fountain of ice up into the air, the grenade narrowly missing a glider as it frantically fought for control. A third blast slammed into the ice sheet to their left and Ethan heard a cry of panic as the nearest glider was showered with debris and its engine billowed a cloud of oily black smoke.

  The ski glider careered to its right and slammed into another, both vehicles spinning into the air and crashing down onto the glacier in a cloud of ice and smashed metal as they tumbled to a halt in flames.

  ‘Return fire wherever you can!’ Riggs ordered his team.

  Ethan heard the ski glider’s guns clatter as Riggs opened up on the soldiers on the low ridge ahead, the ice no defense against the glider’s cannons. Ethan almost cheered in delight as he saw the bullets rip into the ridge and the soldiers there hurl themselves away from the gunfire that smashed across the icy terrain.

  Ethan looked to his right and saw the gliders sweeping far away, their positions betrayed by the plumes of ice crystals glowing in their wake. Two more grenades thumped down alongside the glider and exploded as Riggs desperately turned away from them.

  The blasts hammered the glider’s hull as a hail of automatic fire swept the ice sheet around them. Ethan hurled himself down into the cockpit as bullets screamed by, two of them punching holes in the glider’s carbon fibre hull.

  ‘They’re going to annihilate us!’ Hannah shouted from her cockpit, her glider some two hundred yards away from Ethan’s.

  ‘Stand by!’ Riggs yelled again. ‘Do not deploy until the last moment!’

  ‘Deploy what?!’ Ethan asked.

  Riggs did not reply as they rocketed toward the MJ-12 soldiers, Riggs firing controlled bursts as he kicked the glider’s rudder left and right, sweeping the ridge line with gunfire. Tiny black figures jumped clear and Ethan felt sure that he saw several of them cut down as other gliders opened fire alongside Riggs’s machine.

  Fresh grenade blasts ripped through the formation and Ethan saw another glider hit directly, the enemy’s aim getting better as the gliders closed in. The grenade detonated just ahead of the glider in a blossoming ball of flame, and the shockwave from the blast lifted the glider’s nose too high. The vehicle shot into the air as it turned over and slammed back down onto the ice, the cockpit crushed as the engine burst into flame, a sparkling trail of ice crystals behind it stained with black smoke and flames.

  ‘Whatever you’ve got planned, I’d do it now!’ Ethan snapped.

  Ethan cursed as more bullets flew by past the glider’s canopy and then he heard Riggs’ cry over the intercom.

  ‘Deploy, now!’

  Ethan saw Riggs pull hard on a lever in the cockpit, and suddenly his heart leaped into his throat and his stomach plunged inside him as he heard an explosive detonation from somewhere directly over his head.

  The glider’s engine wailed and the vehicle’s nose soared into the air as Ethan held on grimly, convinced that they had taken a direct hit under the nose. The ski glider rocketed up from the ice sheet into the frigid air and Riggs turned violently to the right as Ethan braced himself for the crash.

  To his amazement the ski glider remained airborne as a shadow passed over the cockpit, and Ethan looked up to see a parachute billowing above them, attached to the glider with high-tensile cables.

  ‘Damn it Riggs,’ Ethan snapped, ‘you could have said something!?’

  ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Riggs asked grimly as the glider climbed away.

  The gunshots faded as Ethan looked around and saw eight of the ski gliders now airborne with them, the remaining four reduced to smoldering black specks on the ice sheet below that trailed long pillars of smoke away to the south.

  ‘We’re four down with eight left,’ Ethan reported. ‘And they’ve got a hundred men behind them.’

  Riggs turned the glider through the air as he lowered the nose.

  ‘Time to even the odds,’ he growled back.

  ***

  XVII

  ‘They’re airborne!’

  General Veer heard the cry go up as he sheltered behind an icy outcrop from the ice glider’s gunfire blasting the ridge line. He peered around the edge of the outcrop as the gunfire ceased and saw the gliders soaring into the air on explosively deployed chutes, turning the gliders into armed paragliders.

  ‘Get to the vehicles!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t let them get ahead of us! Shoot them down!’

  The soldiers broke away from the ridge as the paragliders climbed out of rifle range, the sunlight glowing through their gracefully arced parachutes as they eclipsed the sun, their shadows racing over Veer’s position. He looked out to the south and saw four smoking piles of wreckage burning on the ice fields.

  ‘Ten men to the south!’ he roared. ‘Get out there on the ice and take any prisoners you can find alive!’

  Veer whirled as several of his men split away and began sprinting toward the debris field, their rifles held before them. He ran across the ice, his boots gripping the surface easily as the metal studs dug in and looked up to see the paragliders passing overhead, their engines humming distantly as they continued to climb. The leading machine suddenly tilted its nose down and Veer bellowed a warning.

  ‘Incoming!’

  The glider’s nose lit up as two small-calibre machine guns blasted the ice
sheet, the bullets pursuing Veer’s men as they sprinted for their own vehicles. Veer ducked down and threw himself toward the glider, making it harder for the pilot to nose down and track him at such low altitude, and the bullet streams passed by him as he hit the unforgiving ice.

  Veer turned and saw several of his men hit by the hail of gunfire that hammered into them from above with dull thumps, their bodies tumbling awkwardly down as the glider ceased fire and raced by overhead. Four more followed it, their bullets slicing into Veer’s troops before they pulled up again into a zoom climb away from the ridge.

  Veer took aim with his rifle and fired half a dozen shots at the receding gliders, but saw no impacts as he scrambled to his feet.

  Veer cursed as he ran, saw ahead his men hurrying to where the All Terrain Vehicles they had brought with them had landed. They were hauling off the parachutes that were draped across the vehicles, all ten of which were specially adapted for cold weather environments: fitted with enclosed cockpits and armed with an M2HB fifty calibre machine gun, they were slower than the ski gliders but infinitely more durable.

  ‘Get those guns into play, now!’ Veer shrieked as he reached the vehicles, the soldiers scrambling to start their engines.

  He looked up and saw the gliders sailing high overhead, each travelling at perhaps forty knots. Veer jumped onto the back of the nearest ATV and grabbed at the machine gun, pulling the locking pins out as he turned the weapon and aimed it up into the frigid blue sky at the nearest of the gliders and squeezed the trigger.

  The deafening clatter of the machine gun split the air as it began spitting used shell casings out onto the pristine ice.

  *

  ‘Jesus!’

  Ethan heard Riggs shout in alarm as beside them a stream of gunfire ripped through the formation. Ethan looked left as a sharp crack caught his attention and one of the glider’s engines spilled a plume of black smoke and began to descend rapidly toward the ice below.