Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [58]
“The yetis took a right here, LT,” Sanchez reported. “The tracks are filling in—mainly from the blowing, I think—but I’ll be able to follow for a while yet.”
“Might as well keep moving, then,” the officer replied. “Unless you want to stay here and soak up some rays for a while.”
“Nah. I’ve never been much for the beach life,” the veteran scout replied drolly. “Thanks anyway, sir.”
He was up and moving again, and the rest of the Team continued to follow. The valley was a winding course, a deep trench in the rock with steep cliffs on both sides. Not surprisingly, the track of the retreating ambushers led right along the bottom. In many places now it was drifted over, but enough stretches remained apparent for the keen-eyed scouts to be certain they were still on the trail.
The SEALS pressed forward for several hours. Jackson alternated Ruiz and Teal, then Dobson and Robinson, through the point duties. Since the first man in line had to push through snowdrifts that were often waist-deep and occasionally higher than even the G-Man’s head, it was fatiguing duty. By changing the position every twenty minutes, the lieutenant did the best he could to keep his Team fresh.
At the same time, Jackson kept a watchful eye on the sky. The pale disk of Arcton—the star that passed for a sun in that bleak environment—was hard to place against the raging, stormy backdrop, but he became aware after a few hours that it was getting darker. Abruptly, over the course of just a few minutes, it seemed that the moon rotated away from the starlight, and night fell with dramatic suddenness.
Each suit was equipped with a headlamp capable of both high- and low-intensity beams as well as an IR “night-vision” beam, but Jackson was reluctant to have the men light up. He knew that it was easier to spot the source of a light from the darkness than to find any potential threat with a sweeping, inexact searchlight. So the men continued through the almost impenetrable darkness, using their IR scanners periodically, mostly just pressing ahead by pure force of will.
They no longer could see the proof of the yetis’ trail before them, but the steep walls of the valley—it was virtually a canyon—seemed to promise that they only could have continued forward. At the very least, the SEALS suspected, if they had sought shelter somewhere along the trail, their hideout would have to have some kind of heat signature that would show up on the frequent IR scans each man was making.
Barely conscious of his own weariness, Jackson knew that fatigue was as dangerous to his Team as were the hostile conditions. Finally, he used the lowest setting on his comlink to order a halt. He posted four of his fire teams as pickets, each twenty meters out from the makeshift bivouac, while the other seven SEALS, including the CO, and five sailors used their hands and their long-bladed knives to excavate a deep snow cave along the base of the valley wall.
Consulting his wrist computer, into which he had downloaded all the data about this moon that the sensors aboard the Pegasus had been able to amass, Jackson estimated that the dark period would last some fourteen hours, of which two already had passed. He decided that eight hours would not be excessive for a rest halt and set up a rotation—four men on watch while the others slept—that allowed each SEALS to get six hours of much-needed recuperative sleep. The sailors, exhausted and demoralized by the extreme conditions, for which they had not been trained, and the loss of one of their own, were encouraged to get as much sleep as possible.
Because the moon’s atmosphere contained a significant amount of oxygen, the men did not need to breathe bottled air. They had energy bars to stave off starvation and water within the life support systems of their suits. Nevertheless, they