Cold War - Jerome Preisler [114]
They glided on, the curve of the dome rising before them, tendrils of smoke scratching into the white around it.
Then they saw snowmobiles crossing the flat, open span of ground between themselves and the water-treatment plant, a row of machines spreading out to the left and right in bow-wing formation.
The fire-out team’s designated leader, a veteran of Operation Politika named Mark Rice, knew the score the instant he observed their widening pattern of movement.
“Scatter!” he shouted into his mike. “They’re trying to outflank us!”
Nimec had a chance to register the bike coming on fast from his left, darting out of the snow, its rider a blur as he triggered his first rounds, then sharpening in his vision like a wraith assuming form and substance.
The Sturmgewehr rattled out a second volley, and Nimec banked sharply off to elude its fire, leaning hard into the turn—almost too hard. He overbalanced, keeling his snowmobile sideways, but somehow managed to recover an instant before the bike would have leaped out from under him, spilling him from his seat as its handlebars wrenched free of his grasp.
Nimec heard the whine of his pursuer’s engine from behind now, and glanced over his shoulder, wind slapping his masked, goggled face. The rider had stayed at his right rear flank, his sleek helmet visible behind fluttering tapers of whiteness. His throttle was wide open, and smoke spewed from his exhaust into the sheering wind.
Nimec swung evasively again as his pursuer’s gun barrel emitted a third staccato burst, staying looser, trying not to fight the machine.
This time he held it in control. Gliding clear of the gunfire, he saw sugary powder gout upward where the bullets intended for him pecked the ground, felt what he thought might have been flying, splintered chips of ice lash across his coat sleeve.
His eye caught a flash of orange ahead of him—Ron Waylon’s coat—and then glimpsed the streaky white uniform of another apparitional rider hurtling at Waylon, the two of them engaging, maneuvering around each other, dueling in snow-spraying, cat-and-mouse circles.
Several yards to Nimec’s left, the figure of a third attacker had swung toward Mitchell at a full tear. Mitchell launched his bike’s front end off the ground like a motorcyclist pulling a wheelie, one hand on its rubber grip, then started firing VVRS rounds over the top of the rider’s windshield. The rider sprawled from his seat, his helmet visor shattered and bloody.
Nimec raced on straightaway, trying to put some distance between himself and the man at his back. Then he heard a prolonged exchange of fire between Waylon and his opponent stitch rhythmically through the wind. For an interminable moment both were lost from sight, surrounded by a spreading, churning cloud of kicked-up snow.
A shrill scream. Plucked away by the cheating gusts.
The gunfire stopped.
“Waylon, you all right?” Nimec exclaimed into his mouthpiece.
Silence over his radio. The snow cloud drifted milkily in the unsettled air.
“Waylon, do you copy . . . ?”
Nimec was still moving rapidly on his own bike, no more than fifteen seconds having elapsed since the riders launched their attack. He turned back to see the one on his tail accelerate and pull alongside him to the right, staring at him through his tinted visor, the bore of his Steyr rifle practically in Nimec’s face.
His heart knocking, his fingers easy on the bike’s left handlebar grip, Nimec flicked up the baby VVRS with his right hand, leveled it, released a tight spurt of ammunition. Blood boiled from the rider’s chest and he flew from his seat, landing spread-eagled in the snow cover, his bike careening off in a skidding, plowing, crazily weaving run.
Nimec returned his attention to where he’d last seen Waylon just as a white cammo snowmobile