The monitoring post had gone down easily; a quick flash of laser light from the designator, a single artillery shell from one of the ships, and the concealed sensor tower had been reduced to scrap. Probability said it had not yet identified them...but then again probability was frequently wrong. Vincent felt himself tensing as the armored convoy neared its destination. Ahead, the storm front rose, an angry gray wall. The veil behind which Wonka waited. Suddenly, there was the loud shriek of rocket exhaust, and a column of fire erupted from the nose of the lead tank. "RPG!" Men threw themselves to the ground as another cloud of smoke blossomed from the top of the adjacent ridge, and another deadly projectile skimmed over the snow toward its target. The damaged Chieftain main battle tank sluggishly attempted to reverse out of the way, avoiding a direct hit; a gigantic plume of snow erupted just off the vehicle's front left quarter, and water droplets from the flash-melted ice rained down over the soldiers. By now, rifle fire cracked from everywhere as every mercenary in the front half of the column attempted to find and eliminate the rocket gunner's position. Snow kicked up everywhere around the source of the missiles...and then Vincent reached down into the cupola of his APC and brought up a Kalashnikov sniper rifle. He was about to make his first kill...in the battle he had been awaiting his whole life. He brought the scope to his eye and trained it in on the enemy position, quickly identifying the two Oompa-Loompa missile crew. One gunner, one spotter. They were well camouflaged in full white, running along the top of the ridge...Vincent squeezed the trigger, and the first Loompa fell from a clean headshot. Quickly cycling the rifle's bolt, he again raised it...to see the second Loompa raising the launcher. "A little game of quick-draw," Vincent thought, "only I'm faster." Another loud crack, and the second Wonka soldier tumbled, involuntarily discharging the rocket launcher as he fell. The missile shrieked off into the sky, soaring over the column and detonating against the face of the opposite ridge. "Two for me," Vincent said aloud. He clicked on his radio, contacting Langford in the lead tank. "What is your status?"
"Some damage, nothing too serious. I'm still combat-worthy."
"Roger that. Let's keep moving."
"My Fuhrer, perimeter teams have reported an armored convoy moving in our direction, at least fifty vehicles. There can be no doubt..."
"Chadworth." Willy finished the sentence for him. Willy's eyes met those of his commanders. "All right, my plan is simple. All available forces are to go kill the enemy. Simple and easy, right?"
Willy watched from the operations center with pride. He had never before seen such a mobilization of his forces. He had also never heard so many alerts going off at once, which was due in part to the fact that he had gone to the main operations panel and switched on every warning siren he could find. It was innocent curiosity, really; he had never seen what would happen if someone threw all the switches at once. Klaxons blared, strobe lights flashed, Oompa-loompas ran in every direction as his army geared up for combat. It was inspiring really, though...
"With all respect, my Fuhrer, can I turn off the radiation warning? It's started a mass panic in engineering."
"Oh, all right, then," Willy said with a huff, "I've just never had the chance to turn it on before." He made his way through operations to the tactical ops center; a huge amphitheater-like room lined by dozens of Loompa-manned control stations. The entire far wall was one huge tactical screen showing multiple feeds from ground and air surveillance, creating a single panoramic map of the area. On the far left side of the screen, Chadworth's armor units were just coming into view. "Here we go," Wonka said.
The column entered the storm at last. Clear sunlight gave way to swirling drifts of snow and a pale white sky. The wind whipped at the vehicles, but Vincent knew this was nothing compared to the gales that had blown through this area a few days before. This was gentle enough to allow helicopters to land, albeit with difficulty; thirty hours previously, any aircraft stupid or unlucky enough to be caught in the hurricane-force winds would most certainly be destroyed.
Slogging along at the head of the column, Tyson Borz pulled his parka a bit tighter against the bite of the wind-driven snow. Next to him, Meyer was, as usual, complaining. "Damn it, I can't see a thing in this!"
"You couldn't see a thing if it were 80 degrees and the sun was shining," Borz replied. "The day you actually manage to hit something without sprayin' ten thousand rounds, I'll sell my house and become a Catholic nun."
"Yeah, well apparently I can't be any worse than you, 'cause we both got picked for this, so shut your..." Meyer's words stopped short with a sort of gagging cough, and Borz looked over to see a crimson stain spreading from the neck of Meyer's parka. He may not have liked the man, but even still...another round kicked up snow next to Borz's boot, and a third struck the unfortunate Meyer again, killing him with a shot through the head. Cursing, Borz keyed his radio. "CONTACT! WE HAVE CONTACT!" Raising his Steyr AUG, he blindly opened fire in the general direction of the shots, his fire being redoubled as the other troops opened up as well.
"This is it!" Vincent said into his radio. "All units, break and attack!"
The convoy instantly split, not wanting to give Wonka's forces an easy target. The lead tank turned and headed up the hill to the left, its main cannon opening up with a thunderous roar. The crest of the rise disappeared in a blast of ice, and several white-clad corpses flew. Seizing his weapons, Vincent threw himself down from the top of his personnel carrier and ran forward on foot, the silent white-clad figures of his men behind him. Automatic fire rang out on all sides as the mercenaries approached the top of the gentle slope just ahead; muzzle flashes lit up the top of the rise, and several rounds kicked up the snow under Vincent's running feet. Throwing himself to the side, he raised the Kalashnikov and cycled three quick shots...three dead Loompas fell in the snow, blood gushing. Throwing himself up the slope, Vincent reached the top of the rise to find...it was exactly as he had hoped. The rise fell off sharply, a slope of hard-packed snow and ice descending down into a wide but deep crevasse that held what could only be Wonka's factory. There was not terribly much to be seen above ground level, but Vincent could tell that the huge pinnacles which towered from the floor of the icy canyon were not natural formations. Certainly not with steam pouring from their tips...ahead and below lay a huge force of enemies; not just regular Loompa infantry but also power-armored heavy soldiers, aerial drones, and Wonka's own special variant of tank, large vehicles floating over the snow on a series of powerful blower fans, which churned up miniature snowstorms beneath their hulls.
