“Neither as soon nor as long as I would like,” said Gola, shaking his head. “Were it up to me, I would—”
“You would what?” Hooth said.
Janwari looked to his subordinate. Gola had stopped and now stared, wide-eyed, at the dwindling flame of the Sterno can. “Gola?” Janwari asked. “What is it?”
Gola shook his head, slowly. He put his hand over his stomach.
Cold wind whipped through the tent, causing the cooking flame to gutter. Janwari cursed and reached for the flap of the shelter. “It has come unsealed again, like before. Help me with this before we are turned to icicles.” On his knees in the tent, he maneuvered past Gola.
The chill wind issued from a tiny circular hole in the tent. The hole was at chest level to the kneeling men within.
Janwari’s eyes widened in horror. He looked to Gola. Gola took his hand away from his stomach.
Gola’s palm was covered in blood.
As the other two men watched, crimson spread across the white winter camouflage of Gola’s uniform. He pitched forward into the can of Sterno, spilling the rest of his soup. The entry wound in his back was small, almost unnoticeable.
“Get down!” Janwari screamed.
Hooth was too late. As Janwari flattened himself to the floor of the tent, automatic gunfire pierced the tent from two directions, shredding the fabric, spraying Hooth’s blood across Gola’s corpse. The thick, warm liquid specked Janwari’s face and back and as he waited for the fusillade to subside.
Snow blew through the tattered shelter freely now. Janwari crawled to Hooth’s body and put two fingers against the man’s neck. There was no sign of life. Gola, too, was dead. Janwari crawled to his pack, ripped it open and removed the heavy radio.
There was a bullet hole in its face.
Janwari cursed his poor fortune. Scrambling to drag on his goggles, he threw his face wrap haphazardly around him and took up his Type 56 assault rifle. Then he was plunging outside into the heavy snow, into the driving wind, as another barrage of automatic gunfire raked the shelter behind him. Gola and Hooth were each ripped from boots to skull by the merciless bullets. If they had not been dead already, they surely could not have survived that.
It took Janwari precious seconds to realize he had lost his bearings in the snowstorm. What could he do? He had no means to call for help, no idea who was attacking and no idea from which direction the invaders had come. He saw only the shelter beginning already to blow away in pieces, and the bloody corpses of the two men whom he had counted as friends.
“Damn you!” Janwari screamed into the wind. “Damn you all!”
Only when he brought up his Type 56, felt the cold bite of the metal and wood of the rifle on his skin, did he realize he had forgotten his gloves. Screaming, he brought the rifle to his shoulder anyway, bracing himself on one knee as he sought targets in the snow-swept darkness.
Suddenly the night was bright with harsh, green-white luminescence. The flares that drifted down from the sky now were not those of Janwari’s unit. These were more powerful, clustered for effect. They were meant to reveal, not to signal. They were meant to cast powerful light on what was now a killing field.
Janwari braced himself. He had not noticed the first salvo of flares, not within the circle of light in his shelter, but that had to be why the enemy gunfire had died down. They had fired flares, done their horrible work while the flares came down, then waited to fire another salvo. That meant the killing would resume any moment—
There! The yellow-orange blossoms of muzzle-flashes were unmistakable in the partial darkness. In the wind and the snow he could not hear the blasts. The icy gales of the glacier swallowed the sounds of war, smothering any hope he had of warning the others. He could see the other shelters dotting the camp area. Several of these had been shot apart. The snow around them was dark red with blood. Janwari’s heart leaped into his throat at the sight of it.
Feeling the ache of the cold radiate from the grip of his rifle through his palm and into his wrist, he triggered the Type 56, squeezing one shot at a time from the weapon. He could not see what he was aiming at; he could see only the muzzle-flashes of the enemy guns. He hoped his rounds would have some effect.
To his relief he saw several more blooms of fire from among the bloodied shelters. More of his unit were responding, were returning fire, were fighting for their lives. He took a step forward in snow that was now up to his calves. His legs were so warm he could barely feel them. He did not care.
A hot shell from his Type 56 struck him in the face and snaked down inside his parka. He felt the sting on his neck. In his mind he was counting; soon he would be out of ammunition. When his rifle ran empty he would have only the well-worn Tokarev pistol in the flap holster on his belt. The weapon was buried deep under his parka in attempt to keep it from freezing up completely.
Think, he told himself. What will you do when you run out of ammo? What is your plan?
Janwari forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, plowing his way through the snow like an icebreaker in frozen seas. Slowly, dimly, he became aware of disturbances in the snow around him. Pocks in the snow cover were left as fist-size mounds were churned up all around him.
He was taking fire.
He threw himself into the snow, desperate for something to use as cover, anything behind which to hide. The white expanse felt like razor blades where it touched the exposed skin of his face. He raised his rifle and pulled the trigger back, spraying out the last of his magazine, knowing the gesture was futile.
Through the wind he heard the engine of the Type 88. The tank was moving, however slowly, through the storm. He changed course for it, letting his rifle fall. It was too heavy and he had no ammunition. His Tokarev would have to do.
Numbed fingers found the butt of the pistol. The metal of the weapon, even taken from under his parka, should have made him scream from the cold. He didn’t feel it. His left hand felt like deadweight as he struggled to drag back the slide of the pistol.
He stumbled and fell. When he finally managed to struggle to his feet, he was completely disoriented. Where was the tank? He did not know why he hadn’t thought of it before. The tank had a radio unit he could use. He just needed to get to it. It was possible the tank commander had already used it, but he couldn’t be sure.
The light from the flares above began to die. The flares were descending into the snow, where they were extinguished. In the darkness, he could see more weapons discharges. But now he could not remember in which direction the enemy lay. He pointed his pistol into the screaming winds but didn’t fire it. In the darkness everything was shadows.
One of the shadows moved.
He heard the rumble of the tank’s bogeys, heard the rattle of its poorly maintained engine. Crawling now, he forced himself to stand, plunging forward, staggering, falling.
He collided with the tank.
The armor was slick with ice. He smelled smoke and something worse, something oily and vile. As he tore flesh from his frozen hands scrambling up the side of the war machine, he realized that black smoke was pouring from a crater in its flank. It had been hit with an antiarmor weapon of some kind. He thought the Type 88 was supposed to have reactive explosive plates...but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. He found the hatch and threw it open.
The tank commander was dead. Janwari didn’t climb inside as much as fall to the floor of the chamber within. The commander was the only body there; the rest of his crew had not made it inside. There was a great deal of blood pooled around the dead man. He had been shot, probably more than once, before reaching the relative safety of the machine.
The enemy could fire another antitank missile at any moment. The tank was an obvious target. Janwari thought about taking control of the turret, trying to swing it around to bring the Type 88’s main gun into play. He knew the basic