"In the event that the casualty is anything but life-threatening and savable by extraction, they are not to request evac. If the casualty is immovable, a broken leg for example, they and their partner will remain in place until after the mission and then be extracted if and when. We more or less antic.i.p.ate Keldara being strung across the mountains until we can pull them out."

"Holy c.r.a.p," Kacey breathed.

"That sucks," Tammie said. "I mean, really sucks. I can see the reason, but..."

"So I have no idea how the teams are doing," Nielson said, smiling thinly. "For all I know, they could have been wiped out in an avalanche. We won't know for..." He paused and checked his watch. "For four days and about twenty-one hours."

"Understood, sir," Kacey said. "And I notice most of the Rangers have moved out."

"Third Platoon is tasked with local security," Nielson said. "The other two platoons are up in the hills. I'd like you to coordinate with Captain Guerrin on any air support he might need. Doing at least one training mission with them would be wise to work out any bugs in methods or communication."

"Will do, sir," Kacey replied.

"And if that is all...?"

"Actually, sir, we really came about something else," Tammie said then nudged Kacey.

"Sir, we were looking at our budget..." Kacey said.

"Just say it, captain," Nielson replied with a smile. "I don't need a power point presentation."

"We'd like to do some...customization to our birds," Kacey said, walking over to his desk and sliding a sheet of paper onto it. "I think we can do it just by shuffling a few items in the budget around. We don't have two loadmasters and don't really need them. We used a couple of the Keldara girls, who are budgetable lighter, for the supply drops and that worked fine. At some point the Chief can probably train them in on more complex tasks. So we can shift that portion of the budget around. And the Chief has some a.s.sets for parts that can probably cut our antic.i.p.ated costs there. Even with the mods we should be able to cut some out of the budget."

"I see," Nielson replied, looking at the calculations. "And these mods are...?"

"Well, that's pretty hard to explain," Tammie said, nervously. "Here's a sketch," she added, sliding a new sheet of paper onto the desk.

Nielson regarded it for a second and then grinned.

"Who came up with this?" Nielson asked, still grinning. "You gals or Chief D'Allaird?"

"We were talking about force multipliers," Kacey said. "And I don't know who said it first but we all thought of it at the same time."

"The only thing I can't figure out is why the Kildar didn't first," Nielson said. "Approved. And you might want to add express shipping on it," he added with a grin. "It would be interesting to have it for the next series of missions."

"How will this affect the mission?"

Getting to speak to the President of Russia, even when you have hot intel in your hand, was not easy. It was late in the day and Chechnik had been told he had only ten minutes.

Fortunately, the President was a former spook, so they could cover the ground fairly quickly.

"If Sadim sticks to this time table, it will make extraction very difficult," Chechnik said. "Especially if they do not know about it."

"If they know about it they are likely to cancel the mission entirely," the President said, looking at the report again with cold eyes. "If I understand the timing, this should not affect the basic mission. They should be able to capture the package and destroy it long before this affects them. As long as they are not detected on insertion."

"Correct, Mr. President," Chechnik said, his face closed.

"What is the means?" the president asked. That information was not on the basic doc.u.ment.

"Da.s.sam," Chechnik replied, frowning.

"So the only data that we have is from our highest level source in the Chechen resistance," the President said, slipping the doc.u.ment back into its folder. "There are no intercepts, no lower level confirmation?"

"No, Mr. President. Just this."

"The Keldara can complete the basic mission," the President said, handing back the doc.u.ment. "If they reacted on the basis of this it might reveal the source. They are not to be informed."

Mike paused, looking up at the front of the glacier and frowning.

The storm of the previous day had laid a blanket of snow that while deep wasn't particularly trying. But a night's full movement had brought them to the base of the glacier that was, from his point of view, their major obstacle. Just getting up on it was going to be a pain in the a.s.s. The glacier had plowed out the valley it formed in, ripping away the hard rock walls and even if there had been "easy" ways up before it formed, thousands of years before, they were now gone.

However, he needed to get up onto the d.a.m.ned thing. The best route he'd been able to find crossed the glacier. While that had it's own issues, they were minor compared to the problems every other route presented. The Keldara were fine at walking in mountains, even very steep ones. They weren't, by and large, quite so up on going up vertical faces.

The best approach seemed, based on both the satellite photos and his own eyeball, to be the left. But even that was d.a.m.ned near vertical. He'd planned on just tackling the face, about seventy five feet and about a 3 face, maybe a 4. However, thinking about it there was an easier way.

The glacier was flanked on either side by ridges that stretched in a serpentine up to the two nearby summits. They were currently positioned on the shoulder of the left ridge and the ascent on that looked fairly smooth and the worst pitch was maybe 60-70 degrees. They could walk that. Once they were above the glacier they could just rappel down to the surface.

He signaled to the point to head up the ridge and started walking again.

They'd gotten down to "mountain speed", take a step, plant your ice axe, take a slow, deep breath, take another step. It was a slow way to move but the only way when the air got this thin. And the step-breath speed had several added benefits.

High mountains had dozens of ways to kill you.

The first and most obvious was just falling. The team was roped together so that if someone started to slip down on of the faces the rest of the team could stop their slide and recover them. But whole groups had slid off mountains before this. It was one of the things he was worried about with Yosif's team. The step-breath pace meant each member of the team had time to get sure footing before taking the next step.

More subtle was hypoxia. Air pressure fell off fast above ten thousand feet. They weren't in the super high, such as theHimalayas , but the air wasdefinitely thin. At this level mild to extreme hypoxia was a real danger. Hypoxia occurred when the cells of the body exhausted all of their oxygen. Symptoms were headache, extreme exhaustion and nausea. At the extreme convulsions or even death were possible as the body's tissues wrestled oxygen away from the nerve cells, which required one h.e.l.l of a lot of O2. By moving slowly and deliberately it gave the body time to move all the oxygen it could grab around to the spots that needed it. If they moved faster the big muscles of the thigh, the reason that runners had to breath so hard, would start hogging the stuff.

And water was an issue. With the body needing more oxygen, the blood started to produce more red blood cells, thickening it. You had to drink and drinka lot to keep the blood from getting thick as mola.s.ses.

Another danger was sweating. Even as cold as it was, and it wasreally f.u.c.king cold, well below zero Fahrenheit since they were moving at night, if you moved too fast you could break into a sweat. That was just fine under normal conditions. But up here if you sweated at some point you'd slow down and stop being so warm. Then the sweat would freeze onto your body, just like the frozen snot in his nose that tickled like mad and crinkled his nose hairs. If that happened, the only thing for it was for the whole team to stop and get whoever had broken a sweat into cover. They'd have to strip off their wet clothes, put on dry and cool down. If they didn't, when the sweat froze it would suck every bit of heat out of their body, fast. The term for that was "hypothermia." And just like hypoxia, it was deadly. Once the body dropped below a certain temperature it started to shut down.

To keep from sweating, despite the temperatures the team had their jackets partially unzipped and most were only wearing a balaclava over their face and head. Gear-wear ran a knife-edge as thin as they ridge they were walking up. If you wore too many clothes you got too hot and started sweating. By the same token, any exposed flesh was liable to frost-bite.

Keeping an eye out for hypothermia, frostbite and hypoxia was the job of the a.s.sistant team leaders.

Heck, it was everybody's job. When a person became hypothermic or hypoxic their judgment dropped to nil. And frostbite only occurred after a portion of skin had become so numb from cold you couldn't tell it was frostbitten. The only way to tell was to look. And it was hard to look at your own face.

The problem was, what with the exertion, fatigue and general malaise caused by the low O2, everybody was thinking slower and so worn all they could do was concentrate on the next step. Mike found he had to flog his brain to get it to work. It was worse than being awake for a couple of days.

The team paused to rotate the point and he was willing to just stop and breathe for a bit. The guys breaking trail couldn't take the added exertion for long. Mike had set a hard time limit of twenty minutes on trail-breaking and everyone, including him, took turns.

Just climbing up the slopes, carrying one heavy a.s.s ruck, with a quarter the amount of oxygen available in lower areas, was hard enough. But when you also had to stamp down snow on each step it became a nightmare. So they were rotating. Mike found himself only two back from the front as they shifted the safety rope back. The previous point was standing by the side of the trail, carefully balanced on the edge of the knife-ridge, just breathing deep. Mike wasn't sure, what with the helmet, goggles and face mask over the guy's face, but he was pretty sure it was Sawn.

"Sweat?" he asked as he pa.s.sed the previous trail breaker. He checked to see there was no exposed flesh but as far as he could see Sawn was covered from head to toe.

"Good," Sawn said, gasping. "Tired. f.u.c.king tired. No sweat."

"Good...man," Mike gasped back, taking another step. Even conversation was impossible.

Three more days.

Pavel slid the piton hammer into place and triggered it, slamming one of the spikes into the rock wall.

Pavel had never taken rock climbing training. He had only recently begun, through the internet connections the Kildar had installed, to realize there were others like him in the world. For among the Keldara Pavel had always been considered strange; he liked to climb.

The Keldara would sometimes, when grazing was bad, run their sheep, goats and cattle into the high valleys. And while sheep were stupid, goats were canny. They frequently did notwant to come back to the corrals at night. And goats could climb. My, could they climb.

Since Pavel was very young, he had followed the herds into the mountains. And since he was a child it was often Pavel who went searching for the recalcitrant goats. Because anywhere a goat could go, and more, Pavel could, and would, go. With a grin on his face. The higher, the stranger, the more brutal the face, the more he enjoyed himself.

Currently he was in heaven. The Kildar had carefully pointed out the "difficult" portions of the mountain crossing to him, the places where it would be necessary to climb. And the device in his thigh pocket said that this face would be about fifty meters. Because of the angle of the shot, nearly vertical, it was hard to judge how difficult the climb would be. But the Kildar, although an excellent fighter, was clearly not an imagery a.n.a.lyst.

It was more like a hundred and fifty, much of it about a grade five if he was capable of judging. It was night, the clouds finally cleared off and the wind howling. It was probably forty below zero in Celsius.

And he was splayed across a rock wall, one finger stuck in a crack, his boots barely scrabbling to two more points and slamming in a piton with the biggest grin in the world on his mask-covered face.

This was the f.u.c.king s.h.i.t as the Master Chief would say.

He clipped a carabiner to the piton, ran his safety line through it and looked for the next set of hold points. Frankly, directly up there weren't any. But he'd seen aneasy ledge off to the side.

He let go of all three points, holding himself only on the piton and swung sideways. For a moment he was suspended in the air, flying free as a bird. Then one hand slammed into the crack in the rock, the "easy" ledge that was a bare jutting of rock, and thumb and finger clamped to it like a limpet.

For a moment he hung, suspended, then the other hand came up, sliding a pair of fingers into the crack and clamping them in a knuckle hold. There wasn't anywhere to put his feet, but he could see another hold just a half meter or so up. He'd have to leave the fingers in the crack and lift himself on those to get to it.

This wasa.s.suredly the s.h.i.t.

"How long we gonna be doin' this s.h.i.t?" Serris asked.

They'd been out on the mountains for only a day and already he was ready to head back to the barracks. First of all, there wasn't a thing moving except them. You got a feel for an area pretty quick and all the animals they'd run across had that "undisturbed" feel. They'd sat on one trail in ambush positions all day and half the night and seen d.i.c.k all.

Then there was the terrain. The area reminded him ofAfghanistan except for the, often thick, underbrush and the trees. The vegetation was more like around Dahlonega, the Rangers' primary mountain training area. But the slopes were onef.u.c.k of a lot higher; Dahlonega was in the Appalachians not the f.u.c.king Alps. And they seemed steeper. They'd been slithering upwards towards the treeline for the last day, except for the ambush position, and they could quit any time as far as Ma Serris' little boy was concerned.

This was just stupid.

"Til we're done," Staff Sergeant Jordan Lawhon said. "Time to do one of our 'deception operations'."

The Ranger squad had stopped on the east slope of a ridge, looking out over a small valley that had a trail running down the far side. Just to their north and west the valley funneled to a pa.s.s through the mountains, the source of the trail. The deciduous trees and choking underbrush of the lower slopes had given way to firs, mostly wide s.p.a.ced. A careful visual check hadn't spotted anyone in view, though, so it seemed like a good place to do a "notional" ambush.

"This is such s.h.i.t," Lane replied, flopping down and leaning back on a tree. He opened up the breach on his Squad Automatic Weapon and pouted. "I'm gonna foul the s.h.i.t out of this, you know that? I'm gonna have to break it right the f.u.c.k down, clean it andthen maybe I can load live rounds again."

"Quit the b.i.t.c.hing," Lawhon said, frowning. "We're all gonna have to clean our pieces. Which is why only Alpha and Bravo team are gonna fire. Charlie's gonna stay hot."

Squads were broken down into two "fire teams". Each of the fire teams was led by a sergeant or corporal and had five men, the team leader, a SAW gunner, a grenadier and two riflemen. At least on paper. Rarely was a TOE, table of organization and equipment, filled.

"Fine," Lane sighed, pulling out his blank adapter and a case of blank ammo. "Let's get this over with.

We gotta run and shout or what?"

"I think we just shoot the s.h.i.t," the squad leader said. "Maybe do some shouting."

"This is f.u.c.king nuts," Serris said, readying his weapon. "Say when."

"Everybody ready?" Lawhon asked. "Charlie, donot fire."

"Got it," Corporal John Pitzel, the Charlie team leader, replied. "Team, check fire." Since the team was sprawled out on the ground in the traditional "rucksack flop", that was unlikely.

"Okay, Alpha and Bravo, open fire," Lawhon said and pointed his blank-adapter covered muzzle in the general direction of uphill before pulling the trigger.

The blank-adapter was required because without the back-pressure from the round that normally traveled down the barrel, the weapon would only fire one time and the receiver wouldn't cycle the next round into the breach. With the usually red blank adapter screwed into the barrel the weapon would cycle normally even firing the blank ammunition.

The other problem with blank ammunition was that it was dirty as h.e.l.l. The propellant was a less refined material than the usual propellant in live rounds and coated the weapon in carbon that was difficult to remove. You could fire thousands of rounds through an M4 before it fouled. You might get a couple of hundred blanks out before the d.a.m.ned thing jammed solid.

Despite those facts the Rangers had as much fun as they could.

"ARRRRHHH!" Lane screamed, triggering expert five round bursts from his SAW despite having the barrel cover laid over his right knee. "TAKE THAT YOU DIRTY RAGHEADS!"

"EAT s.h.i.t AND DIE, ISLAMIC MOTHERf.u.c.kERS!" Serris replied.

"YOUR MOTHER WAS A Wh.o.r.e AND YOUR FATHER A PIG!" Lane screamed, not to be outdone.

"I WAVE THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!!!" Serris added then looked up. "SARGE! WE'RE TAKING FIRE!"

"CHECK FIRE!" Lawhon screamed, diving to the ground. He had been firing properly, weapon tucked into his shoulder, leaning into the non-existent recoil and aiming. In this case at a tree over by the trail, but training was training. Now he dove to the ground and looked up. Sure enough, the branches overhead were being cut by fire. "Where the f.u.c.k isthat coming from?" The rounds werebig . Maybe a fifty caliber. And now that the firing had stopped, he could hear the weapon firing, the dull thud-thud-thud of a heavy machine-gun.

"Not in sight," Pitzel replied. "Sounds like it's coming from over the ridge."

"Serris, check it out," Lawhon said, instantly.

"Can I at least put live rounds in?" Serris asked, sarcastically. He already had the blank adapter unscrewed and was seating a mag of hot.

"Just get your a.s.s up there," Lawhon replied.

"There you are, you f.u.c.ker," Serris hissed. He'd pulled a ghillie cloak over his head and pulled up his balaclava to reduce the shine on his face then slid up the ridge to the crest. The top was a knife-edge and by laying belly down, half behind one of the firs, he had a pretty good view of the far side. The valley they'd been in hooked around to the west and up at the head of it, right at the opening of the pa.s.s, there was a bunker. It was hard to spot, whoever built it had camouflaged the h.e.l.l out of the d.a.m.ned thing, but Serris had spent enough time in the Stans to get pretty good at spotting s.h.i.t like that. One of the reasons Lawhon sent him up. He also had "sniper eyes", the ability to pick out something from the background that others missed.

The bunker, though, was d.a.m.ned near two klicks away. They must have been firing at the sound. For that matter, thinking about the approach, the squad had never been in view of the guys, probably Chechens, in the bunker. The stupid f.u.c.kers had given their position away fornothing .

"Bunker up in the pa.s.s," he hissed over his shoulder to Lane. "Can't see anything in it. Probably a 12.7."

"Got it," Lane replied. "Here comes the Sarge."