Red Metal

CHAPTER 22

“Merde!” shouted Caporal Konstantine.

Apollo saw the yellow flashes coming from the adjacent peak. The wind played hell with the sound, but he could hear the staccato pops of semiautomatic fire.

Dariel, Apollo, and Konstantine all unslung their rifles, but they had no line of sight on any of the men at the weather station now.

Konstantine had his headset in his ear. “Two Team reports casualties, sir! One man is dead and one wounded.”

Apollo looked over to the narrow catwalk that crossed to the other peak. “Dariel, we’re going down to cross that pipe bridge. We need to engage them on two fronts or they will pin Two Team down in the open. The machine-gun section will lay down some suppressive fire; then you and I will cross together along with Caporal Konstantine.”

Now Apollo turned to the security guard, who was lying on his stomach on the steel decking, covering his head.

“Schneider, how do we get down to that catwalk?”

The sounds of intermittent battle on the next peak over continued as the four raced down metal stairs and then through a small employee access hallway in the observatory. Schneider led them to an oval steel door, unlocked it with a key on a chain, and then pulled.

The door was difficult to open; ice had intruded into the little engineering room that led out onto the catwalk atop the pipe. An immense gale of wind blasted them as they looked out into the snow-driven haze. Apollo led the way out onto the slippery, grated metal surface, which was no wider than half a meter.

A soft whump… whump met their ears as one by one they started to cross the fifty-meter gap. Below them they knew there was an immense drop, but a mini-blizzard of snow raced around them, and they could see no farther than five meters in any direction, including, mercifully, down.

“Hey!” Apollo shouted back to Konstantine. “Make comms with the teams! That sounded like mortars.”

“Right, boss, on it!”

The snow blew past and a moment later they stood in bright sunlight. Dariel moved farther out on the catwalk now.

“Sir, Two Team is taking intermittent mortar fire from the weather station!” said Caporal Konstantine.

“What the fuck is going on around—”

Before Apollo could finish the thought, he jolted to the sound of a high-pitched scream of a bullet striking the metal pipe just below his feet.

“Shit! Back! Back!” He and Dariel turned and headed quickly back in the opposite direction.

Another round ricocheted just above the metal hatch. Apollo dove inside just after Dariel, landing in a heap.

“Caporal Konstantine, get me all teams up on the net. We’re going to coordinate our attack.”

“Got it, sir! Do you want the bird commanders from the 4th on net, too?”

“Yes. They are going to have a play in this offensive as well.”

As the senior man between Two Team and Three Team, Sergent Coronett called in everyone from both teams to fall in on his position.

“Captain Apollo wants us to initiate the action with a ground offensive. We’re going to use the intermittent snow flurries to hide our advance. Once we move, Captain is going to hit these bastards in the flank.

“It’s just like our battle drills — a fix and advance. Basic and textbook, understood?”

“Hey, Sergent Coronett, any idea who these fucks are?” asked one of the more senior corporals.

“Captain says he thinks they’re Russians.”

“What the fuck are Russians doing here?”

“They’ll be dying in about ten minutes.”

Apollo peered through the cracked door that led to the catwalk over the chasm. The catwalk looked like a metal tower on its side — a narrow span that crossed the deep chasm, steel girders wrapped in thick ice. It ended at a door in a metal wall built into the rock, which, presumably, was part of the weather station. He’d seen the four men on a ledge high above it, but now they were out of sight.

He looked for the sniper on the rocky peak, above him but only fifty meters away.

He saw nothing but whipping snow now as another squall blew through.

“Sir,” Schneider said. “The other side of the catwalk. It’s in Österreich… Austria… I have no jurisdiction in Austria. I cannot go with you.”

To Apollo, this was asinine, but he knew Schneider and the other security officers here would keep civilians out of harm’s way, and that gave Apollo the freedom to go do what he needed to do.

“No problem. You just watch our backs. If any of those guys make it over here to Germany, they can be your responsibility.”

“Of course,” the heavyset German replied.

Just then, a rapid succession of 40mm grenades could be heard impacting in the Weather Service building fifty meters across the catwalk and one hundred meters of jagged rock above them.

The attack had begun.

“Here we go,” said Apollo, stepping out from the door and onto the icy grate of the catwalk, resuming his movement over the precipice.

Caporal Konstantine followed close behind with the radio, then Sergent-Chef Dariel.

Apollo made the mistake of looking down below the catwalk and the pipe. The air had cleared of clouds, so he could see a straight drop of about two hundred meters to a rocky cut between the two peaks. He continued to do a forward shuffle with one foot gliding in front of the other, his weapon elevated and pointed at the small oval door on the opposite side and the rocks above it.

A huge alpine blast of freezing wind almost blew the trio off the narrow and slick catwalk. It was accompanied by more blinding snow whipping against their faces, sweeping almost vertically past them. Their visibility closed in to less than ten meters and they shuffled even more slowly.

A rifle round ripped the air past the three exposed men. Clearly the Russian sniper hidden somewhere in the rocks could not see them in the near-whiteout conditions, but he was also smart enough to know the opposition force would use the snow and the attack as an opportunity to move closer. He knew that even a few blind shots across the bridge would make things more difficult for Apollo and his men.

Another round slammed into the side of the catwalk, knocking chunks of ice off just ahead of Apollo’s position.

Apollo forced himself onward, moving faster now, almost to the point of recklessness. He didn’t want to fall, but he really didn’t want to catch a round to his head and then fall.

And then the wind receded, taking the violent but useful whiteout conditions along with it. Apollo moved faster still, and he hoped the two men behind him had the good sense to do the same. He slipped and skidded over the icy grate catwalk even faster now, the wall of the building only meters away.

Another rifle shot, this one behind the captain and just in front of Dariel. Apollo began running on the narrow catwalk now, because he couldn’t imagine his luck lasting much longer.

Suddenly Apollo heard gunfire behind him. He was confused by it at first but quickly realized it was Schneider, who was firing his pistol toward the opposite peak. There was zero chance he would kill a sniper well hidden in the rocks fifty meters distant and far above him with a handgun, but Apollo appreciated the suppressive fire nonetheless.

He skidded the last few feet to the oval door, which was surrounded by a small metal wall built into the rock face. Apollo hoped the opposing room was no different from the side they’d come out from and they wouldn’t be lost in a maze of ladder wells and antechambers as they made their way to the top.

Another rifle shot boomed, and he glanced behind him to check on Dariel and Konstantine. Thankfully the other two men were right there with him, weapons up and dividing their watchful gaze between the oval door and the top of the weather station wall, which was clearly visible.

Konstantine said, “Sir, it’s Caporal Garron on the net. He says that sniper just put his head over the wall to shoot down on us, but he nailed him. Bastard is down.”

Apollo just nodded, put the key in the door lock, and turned the latch.

He found himself in a narrow stairwell, and after a short trek up two flights of stairs they entered a small room full of equipment. Spread over the floor were small gas stoves, sleeping bags, winter clothing, military equipment, and lots of empty 7.62mm ammunition boxes. All of this was spilling out of some heavy civilian Peak 99 backpacks.

Lying in one corner was a man in a black Russian uniform, blood pooled beneath his body and running in small rivulets, mixing with melted snow, and forming a little pink stream toward the drain in the floor.

Apollo realized the Russian team had been operating on Zugspitze undercover, but knowing the Geneva Convention codes as well as Apollo, they had hastily taken off the Wetterdienst overalls and heavy coats once they began to fight. Besides the possibility of being captured out of uniform, which was still a hanging offense, the dishonor of fighting out of their nation’s uniform, especially one they had expended many years of sweat and tears to earn, was too much for any warrior to bear.

“Fucking Spetsnaz!” said Apollo. “I know the uniform: the patch with the parachute and inverted dagger. These are Group B personnel. The Russian version of us. Small-unit operators who go in deep. They are using this room as shelter and ammo storage and first aid. This guy must’ve been killed in the first exchange of fire with One Team.”

Apollo added, “Officer’s shoulder boards. This guy was a major. Something big is going down.”

The whump whump of helicopter rotor blades came out of the wind. Apollo said, “Fourth Escadrille helos, right on time.”

Now a tremendous hail of gunfire rang against the metal Wetterdienst building.

The door flew open and a man still in a German weather service overcoat crashed through, a rifle in his hands. He’d obviously been fleeing the gunfire from the helicopters, and was stunned to see the three men in alpine military uniforms standing across the room. He made to swing his weapon up at the threat, but Apollo shot the man twice in the face with his HK UMP45. The silencer muffled the shots, and with the bullet storm firing from the two helos above the building, there was no way anyone could hear them. Apollo knew One and Three would be using the helos’ fire to close the final hundred meters to the weather station.

Apollo turned to Konstantine. “Call all teams — tell them we’ve made it inside. We’re going to hit the Russians from behind.”

After the transmission was sent and acknowledged, the captain led the three-man team out of the building. He dared to look around the corner and saw the helicopter’s guns shredding the thick stone-and-brick bulwark at the front of the weather station’s perimeter.

Apollo counted six men in their black Spetsnaz uniforms spread out under the bulwark, keeping low as they received fire from the French onslaught. There were three others crumpled against the wall, clearly either dead or wounded.

The volume of fire from the Dragoons overmatched the Russians, and now they were just hunkering down, trying to figure out how to get back into the fight.

Apollo turned back to the men and gave them a series of hand and arm signals: Six enemy, around the corner. On my mark we move into position, with each man to take down two enemy.

Nods from Konstantine and Dariel told him they understood. On cue, all three rounded the wall and opened fire.

Apollo took the high side in a standing firing position while Caporal Konstantine fired from one knee just below his boss’s elbows. The Russians swung their silenced VSS rifles on the three Frenchmen. Apollo dropped two with bursts from his HK at five meters. Sergent Dariel didn’t let off the trigger, just held it down and raked from his left to his right, eating up the two Russians standing adjacent to each other. It wasn’t the controlled-fire discipline they had always practiced, but at this range it was damn effective.

Konstantine’s two men slammed against the bulwark; the young caporal had shot both men in the face before they managed to return fire.

The three Frenchmen ducked back behind the wall to take stock. The gunfire from the teams on the slopes and the helo door gunners continued outside.

Apollo grabbed Konstantine by the shoulder. “Tell them to cease fire! They can advance, but do it carefully. There could still be others up in the rocks outside.”

In minutes the rest of Apollo’s squadron of Dragoons had assaulted up to the stone wall and were yelling to Apollo for permission to ascend the last few feet. Apollo chanced it and stuck his head back around his wall. One of the Russians crawled slowly along the floor, leaving a bloody trail behind him, but the rest lay still.

“You are all clear. On to the objective!” Apollo yelled as he and the others stepped out now, weapons up and at the ready, trained on the Russians lying by the wall and the one crawling slowly away. The smell and sight of warm blood oozing out of the Spetsnaz men bore ghastly witness to the firefight.

Konstantine found a satellite radio, but it had been destroyed. Likely the Russians had been given orders to smash all their sensitive equipment if they became compromised.

Apollo climbed a ladder and looked up at the top of the weather station. Positioned high on the mast there was another laser device, identical to the one on the mast at the observatory. He found it interesting that this device had been left intact when all the other equipment had been destroyed.

“Caporal Konstantine, I want you and whomever you need to get onto that tower and dismantle that Russian laser. I don’t know what the hell it is, but I don’t like it. Then send a team over to the other one on the German side of the peak and dismantle it. Take the long way around—nobody goes back on that damn catwalk!”

“Yes, sir.”

Apollo turned to the wounded Russian lying on the cold concrete. One of the Dragoon medics was evaluating his condition. “How bad?” Apollo asked.

“He’ll survive.”

The French captain smiled. “Well, then, let’s see if this Russkie has enough juice left in him to talk. Grab Konstantine — his mom is Ukrainian; he speaks a little.”

Apollo went back inside to the Russian major’s body. He opened the man’s coat and looked through his blood-caked uniform under the Wetterdienst overalls. A wallet, some keys, and some papers. Apollo looked at one, a hand-drawn diagram. The words were all in Cyrillic, and they looked like notes in Russian. With it was a small acetate map overlay.

Konstantine arrived, his eyes wild with the adrenaline of combat. “Hey, boss, that was insane. You heard about Pierre? Took a round through the forehead.”

“I heard. I need you to translate while I interrogate the prisoner. But first look at this.”

Apollo handed him the acetate overlay and the notes. The young man looked over them as wisps of steam rose from his sweat-soaked uniform.

“The overlay, what do the markings mean?” Apollo asked.

“Just letters, sir. Letters and dots. Looks like it would fit maybe a one-to-one-hundred-thousand-scale map.”

“I had the same impression, but without the original map or some datum markers, it’d be impossible to find out any locations on it.”

“Yes, sir, but this word on the far left next to the dot is Russian for ‘mine.’ Like ‘my position,’ maybe? If that’s true, and we have the scale right, all these points to the east just might show where other teams of Russians are operating.”

Apollo grabbed his own map of the same scale and put it on the table next to the cryptic Russian one.

“I think you’re onto something.” Apollo lined the last dot in the string of other Cyrillic-lettered dots on the Russian acetate map overlay.

“Look, men, if the last dot corresponded with the Russian position here at Zugspitze, then the next one over is at this spot.” Apollo pointed to a location in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, on the Czechian-German border.

He looked to Dariel. “Tell the men to load up. Ensure the wounded are successfully evac’d, and then we go to Czechia.”

Around him, the high German Alps drew their cloak once more over the ancient peaks, the living, and the dead in a heavy, raging shroud of snow and wind.