The First Billion

11

Ghosts in a frozen mist, they ran.

Twelve men. Bold apparitions clad in white, doggedly advancing to the same silent cadence, their breath erupting in violent, staccato bursts. Forward. Ever forward. Against the wind. Against the snow. Against themselves.

The cold seeped through their boots, clamping their toes and nipping at their heels with teeth as hungry as a bear trap’s. The snow was deep here—two feet, at least—a soupy, devilish mixture of slush and dirt and the spores from the unyielding tundra. And this one week from midsummer’s eve. A frantic wind howled around them, clawing at their eyes, scratching their cheeks, slyly slipping beneath the folds of their anoraks and burrowing through their sweaters, their fatigues, and their thermals, biting their skin like ice on fire.

The men’s legs were strong, their muscles hard and conditioned, exquisitely calibered pistons willing to carry them over hill and dale hour after hour. Their arms swung by their sides, the dry, rhythmic chafing of the snowsuits sounding like sandpaper scraping velvet. Each man carried a pack, and in that pack a jumble of rocks and stones weighing twenty-five kilograms—fifty-five pounds. They leaned forward as one, their well-toned shoulders and tensed abdomens working in concert to distribute the load. Soon the packs would be filled with a different cargo—timers, fuses, detcord, and plastique, sophisticated devices as far evolved from stones as men were from apes.

The wind died. The icy curtain fell, and for a minute or two the men were permitted a view of the bleached panorama around them. It was a bleak vista, white hills rolling away to the east and west, an endless plain advancing before them. The sky hovered low and gray, a sweeping expanse of nothingness. It was a pale, barren land with no sign of animals, vegetation, or human habitation. Man did not belong here, so far north; his existence counted for nothing. As punishment for their intrusion, the wind picked up so abruptly as to slap the men across the face. They were not welcome here.

Still they ran. Invaders of the Arctic Circle. Five kilometers remained to the halfway point, then back again to base by a different, more difficult route. Another twenty kilometers over uneven, climbing terrain. It was their last training run, a brutal, delirious culmination of four months’ preparation. Four months without leave, without a single day’s rest, without alcohol, tobacco, or women. Physical conditioning was placed at a premium, but there were mental exercises as well: endless hours mastering English, in particular the American roughneck’s slang. Courses in engineering, physics, and the mathematics of high explosives. And, of course, the endless repetition of their tactical objectives. Practicing over and over until every step was memorized and every permutation analyzed, countered, and defeated.

They had been chosen from the best. In other times and other places, similar men had made up the elite forces that had carried names like La Légion Étrangère, the SAS, and the Delta Force. More familiar to them was the Spetsnaz, their own country’s vaunted Black Berets.

They were called, simply, Team 7. If the name did not carry the same mystique as those of their illustrious antecedents, it was for good reason: Team 7 did not exist. No record could be found anywhere in the administrative logs of the army, navy, or air force testifying to their founding. No roster listed their names, their ranks, the units from which they had been seconded. When they completed the operation, they would disband and flee to the four corners of the globe, sworn never to speak with one another again.

They were all munitions specialists, five drawn from artillery, four from infantry, and three from underwater demolitions. Explosives were their game, and there were no soldiers anywhere who could better their adeptness with plastique, C-4, or gelignite. They had blown bridges in Kunduz and waterworks in Grozny. They had mined highways in the Sudan and mosques in Eritrea.

It was not, however, their skill under fire that recommended them, but the artist’s care with which they practiced their craft. Deft fingers shaped the soft, explosive putty as a sculptor handled his clay, and with the same eye for effect. They could blow out a lock and leave the door standing or bring down a ten-story building with a single charge.

Their target lay thousands of miles away, across the roof of the world. The mission would require speed and stealth, but mostly care and concentration. With the smallest of charges, they would wreak the greatest of damage. Nature would have its revenge on man. And man would fall to his knees in apology. Never again, he would promise. Never again.

The shadows moved into the distance, their steps slower, but still confident, a faint humming now dancing from their lips. It was a song they knew well: the anthem of their birthplace. And as their fatigue grew, they hummed louder. They would rebuild their country. They would make it strong once again. Formidable. A force.

A strong wind lashed across the landscape and they were gone, faded to obscurity inside the umbrella of grit and rain and sleet.

Ghosts who had never been.

Soldiers who never were.

A team that did not exist.