In the distance, a branch snapped.
The sound echoed across the night’s stillness—then faded.
Tucker froze. Where had the sound come from?
Above, he decided.
Slowly Tucker reached forward, grasped the nearest trunk, and laid himself flat. He scanned uphill, looking for movement. After ten seconds of silence, there came another distinctive sound: a muffled crunch of a footstep in the snow.
He strained as silence followed—then another crunch.
Somewhere above, a person was moving—not casually, but with purpose. Either a hunter or Felice. If so, she was even more dangerous than he’d anticipated. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since he and Kane had leaped from the train. Felice would have had to pinpoint their position, choose her own jumping-off point, then backtrack here at a running pace.
Possible, he realized, but such speed spoke to her skill as a hunter.
But was it her?
He turned his head. Twenty feet below, Kane lay on his belly, half buried in the softer snow. His eyes were fixed on Tucker, waiting for orders.
He signaled with his free hand: move deeper into the trees and hunker down.
On quiet feet, Kane moved off. Within seconds he was lost from sight.
Tucker returned his attention to their visitor. Using his elbows and knees, he burrowed himself into the powdery snowpack until only his eyes were exposed. Two minutes passed. Then five. The footsteps continued moving downhill at a stalking pace: step, pause . . . step, pause. Finally, a shadowy figure appeared from behind a tree, then stopped and crouched down.
The person’s build was slim and athletic in a form-fitting dark jacket, a cut that was too modern, too tactical. Definitely not a local rural hunter. The head turned, and from beneath a dark wool cap, a wisp of blond shone in the stark starlight.
Along with something else.
A rifle barrel poked from behind a shoulder. How had Felice smuggled a sniper rifle onto the train? As he watched, she unslung her weapon and cradled it against her chest.
She was forty feet up the slope and to his right. If she kept to her line, she would pass within feet of his trapped rucksack. Not good. He was now playing cat and mouse with a SIG-trained sniper. The solution was simple if not so easily executed: kill Felice while he still had the element of surprise.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, he reached to his belt and withdrew the stolen P22. He brought it up along his body and extended it toward Felice. He aimed the front sight on her center mass, clicked off the safety, and took up the slack on the trigger.
What happened next Tucker would write off later as a soldier’s intuition.
Still crouched, Felice pushed backward and disappeared behind a tree.
Crap.
He kept his gun steady, waiting for a clear shot, but from the stealthy noise of retreat, Felice was on the move, heading back up the slope, using the trunks to screen herself. After five minutes she was gone, but he could guess her plan. She intended to head deeper into the trees, then back down in a flanking maneuver. She must be gambling that he and Kane hadn’t made it to the river yet, and that they didn’t know she was tracking them. She would set up an ambush down below and wait.
She would be in for a long wait, Tucker decided.
He gave Felice another frigid five minutes’ head start, then pocketed the P22, eased himself sideways out of his burrow, and began crawling toward his rucksack. He reached the tree, grabbed the bag’s strap, and pulled it down to him.
He then went dead still to listen.
Silence.
He donned the rucksack, then aimed his hand toward Kane’s last known position and signaled, trusting the shepherd had followed his training and kept Tucker in view.
Return, he motioned.
He waited, but it did not take long. A hushed footfall sounded above him. He craned his neck and found Kane crouched in the snow a few feet away. Tucker reached up, grabbed a handful of neck fur, and gave his partner a reassuring massage.
“FOLLOW,” he whispered in his partner’s ear.
Together, they began the slow climb upward, back toward the rail line.
11:50 P.M.
It took longer than he’d hoped to reach the top of the slope—only to discover that a towering, windswept drift blocked the way to the tracks, a sheer wall, three times as tall as Tucker. He would have to sidestep his way across the slope and hope to find where he had originally crashed through it so they could cross back to the railway.
Tucker took only a single step away from the tree line and out onto that treacherous, icy expanse—when he felt something shift beneath his boot. In the back of his mind he thought, log, but he had no time to react. The thigh-sized chunk of tree trunk, buried under a few inches of snow and held fast by the thinnest film of ice, broke free and started rolling downhill, taking Tucker and a swath of snow with it.
Avalanche.
Tucker pushed Kane aside, knowing the shepherd would try to latch on to him again. “EVADE!” he hissed.
The order countermanded Kane’s instinct to protect him. The shepherd hesitated only a moment before leaping sideways and back into the shelter of the tree line.
Tucker knew he was in trouble. The sliding mass of snow was bulldozing over him, propelling him faster and faster down the slope. With the rucksack preventing him from rolling over, Tucker paddled his arms and legs, trying to mount the snow wave, to ride its tumult, but it was no use. Doing his best to survive, he drove one elbow into the ground, leaning into it. He spun on his belly until he was aimed headfirst down the slope, still on his belly.
Fifty yards away, the river loomed. The surface was black and motionless. With any luck, it was frozen over. If not, he was doomed.
Tucker’s mind raced.
Where was Kane? Where was Felice?
No doubt she’d heard the miniavalanche—but was he visible within the snowy surge? He got his answer. Ahead and to his right, an orange flare spat in the night, coming from a clump of scrub bushes near the waterline.
A muzzle flash.
If nothing else, his headlong plunge had made Felice miss her first shot. The second would be closer. The third would be dead-on. Tucker reached back, freed the P22 from his pocket with a struggle, and pointed it toward the site of that flash.
He felt a sting at his neck.
Grazed by a bullet.
Ignoring the pain, he squeezed the trigger twice, wild potshots, but maybe enough to discourage the sniper.
Then he hit the river’s berm and launched into the air. His heart lurched into his throat. A heartbeat later, he belly-flopped onto the ice, bounced once, then found himself rolling, flat-spinning across the river’s surface. He slammed into a clump of trees jutting from the ice and came to an abrupt, agonizing stop.
Gasping for air, he rolled onto his side and fought the urge to curl into a painful ball.
He swept his arms across the ice, searching for his pistol. It had been knocked from his cold fingers as he struck the river.
Where—?
Then he spotted it. The P22 lay a few feet away in a tangle of dead branches. He reached toward it.
A chunk of ice exploded at his fingertips, shards stinging his face. The gunshot sounded like the muffled snap of a branch. She was using a noise suppressor.
“Not another inch!” Felice Nilsson called from somewhere to his right.
He craned his neck and spotted her. She was forty feet away, kneeling at the river’s edge, the rifle tucked to her shoulder. At this range, she could put a bullet in his ear.
Instead, she shifted her rifle ever so slightly, from a kill shot to something that would maim and hurt. The moon, reflecting off the ice, cast the scene in stark contrast.
“Tell me where you were scheduled to meet Bukolov,” she demanded.
In answer, Tucker slowly lifted his hand from the ice.
“Careful!” she barked. “I’ll take it off. Don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“I
don’t,” Tucker replied, raising his palm, as if pleading for her to be calm, but instead he pointed one finger at her.
“What are you—?”
Tucker rotated his hand, fingers pointing toward the ice.
“Good-bye, Felice,” he said through chattering teeth.
From out of the forest behind her, Kane burst forth.
A moment ago, Tucker had noted the shepherd’s furtive approach, a mere shift of shadows lit by the reflected moonlight. Kane obeyed Tucker’s signal, a simple one.
Attack.
Kane races across the gap, bunching his haunches at the last moment.
He has followed the trail of the woman, catching her scent in the woods, picking it out of the spoor of deer and rabbit. He recognizes it from the train, remembers the hatred in her voice. Next came the muffled shots of the rifle and the sharper cracks of a pistol.
His other was in danger, threatened.
The last command remained etched behind his eyes.
Evade.
So he kept hidden, following the whiff of gun smoke, the musk of the hot skin, ever down toward the flow of water and creaking ice.
There, beyond the woman, he sees his partner out on the ice. He holds back a whine of concern, wanting to call out.
Then movement.
A hand raised.
A command given.
He obeys that now.
The woman turns, fear bursting from her skin. As she swings, her gun barrel dips slightly.
He sees and explodes with his hind end, springing high.
As Tucker watched, Kane slammed into Felice like a linebacker, his jaws clamping on to her arm before the pair hit the ice. Felice screamed and thrashed, but she held tight to the rifle’s stock.
A sniper to the end, Tucker thought. Lose your rifle, lose your life.
He shoved up, ready to help his partner—only to hear a sharp crack erupt beneath him. A rift snaked outward from his body and headed toward Kane and Felice. Dark, icy water gushed through the fault line.
“Felice, stop struggling!” Tucker called. “Lie still!”
Panicked, deaf to his warning, she continued to struggle, her left hand still clenched around the rifle stock.
He forced himself to his knees, then his feet. The ice shifted beneath him, dipping sideways. He leaped forward, balancing on the teetering slabs as the river broke under him. He hopscotched toward Kane and Felice.
The crack reached them, then spider-webbed outward, enveloping them. With a whoosh, the ice opened up. The pair dropped headlong into the water.
With his heart thundering in his ears, Tucker stumbled forward. Fifteen feet from the hole, he threw himself into a slide, on his belly, his arms extended, trying to distinguish between the two shapes thrashing in the icy water. He saw a pale white hand slapping at the ice, spotted Kane’s head surge from the water, his snout pointed at the sky.
The shepherd gasped, coughing.
Sliding parallel to the hole, Tucker grabbed Kane’s vest collar and jerked hard, plucking the wet dog from the water.
From the corner of his eye, Tucker saw Felice’s rifle jut out of the water; the barrel swung toward them.
Even now, she hadn’t given up the fight.
She slapped at the ice with a bloody arm, while trying to bring her rifle to bear with the other hand.
Tucker rolled onto his side and kicked off with his heel, spinning on his hip. He snapped out with his other leg and struck the rifle, sending it skittering across the ice and into the snow along the opposite bank.
With a final, spasmodic flailing, Felice’s arm vanished underwater, her body pulled down by the current, and she disappeared from view.
Together, Tucker and Kane crawled to the bank, but both kept watch on the shattered hole. He half expected Felice to reappear. Only after two minutes did he feel confident enough to state, “I think she’s gone.”
Still, he kept a vigil at the bank, probing his neck wound. The gouge was narrow but deep. Beside him, Kane did a full body shake, casting out a shower of icy water, his tail wagging off the last few drops.
Tucker checked over his partner for injuries. For his efforts, he earned a warm lick to his cold cheek, his dog’s message easy to read: Glad we’re still alive.
“I know, pal, me too,” he muttered.
He shrugged off his rucksack, unzipped the side pocket, and dug out his first-aid kit. Working from feel alone, he squeezed a thick stripe of surgical glue into the wound and pinched the edges together, clenching his teeth against the sting.
Once finished, a shiver shook through him. Kane’s haunches also quaked against the cold. In this weather, the effects of cold water were amplified. Hypothermia couldn’t be far off.
“Let’s go,” he said, ready to set off, but not before completing one last duty.
Moving fifty yards downriver, he found a patch of thicker ice that easily bore his weight, allowing him to cross to the opposite bank. He walked back upstream and retrieved Felice’s rifle. He examined his prize. It was the Swedish Army’s standard sniper rifle: a PSG-90—variant D. After a quick inspection for damage and followed by a few quick twists and turns, he had the weapon broken down into its four component parts, none of which was longer than eighteen inches.
“Now to get warm.”
He and Kane found a cluster of trees and made a temporary camp. An abandoned bird’s nest and some scraps of birch bark served as perfect kindling. Within a few minutes, he had a fire blazing.
He stripped off Kane’s vest and hung it over the fire to dry.
With no prompting, the shepherd stretched out beside the flames and gave a contented hmmph.
Settled and warm, Tucker did a quick check of his GPS unit, pinpointing their location. “Time to find out how big of a mess we’re in,” he mumbled.
According to the map, they were within easy walking distance of two villages: Borshchovka and Byankino. It was tempting to head for one of them, but he decided against it. Felice was clever. She surely had given her partners—or whoever hired her—a situation report after jumping from the train. If so, the two nearby villages would be the first places any search party would visit.
Of the hundreds of axioms that the army had drummed into his head, one matched this situation perfectly: Avoid being where your enemy expects you to be.
So he extended his search on the map. Ten miles to the northeast was the small town of Nerchinsk. There, he could regroup and decide how best to reach Perm and his contact.
He stared at the dog, at the crisp stars.
It would be easy to abandon this mission.
But blood had been spilled.
He pictured the dead porter’s ashen face, remembering his smile, his joy while petting Kane. The memory, the responsibility, reminded him of another adage, burned into every ranger’s mind: Take the initiative, and get the mission done.
He intended to do just that.
9
March 9, 5:44 P.M.
Nerchinsk, Siberia
Their day hike to Nerchinsk quickly became a slog.
Around them, the landscape slowly changed from highland forest into a series of low, snow-blanketed hills, one stacked upon another, before dropping into a valley east of the town of Nerchinsk.
For the first five miles, he and Kane found themselves wading through thigh-high snow punctuated by snowdrifts twice as tall as Tucker. By early afternoon, they found themselves walking into a strong wind that found its bone-chilling way into every nook and cranny of Tucker’s parka. For his part, Kane was in heaven, plowing through the powdery snow, occasionally popping to the surface, his eyes bright and tongue lolling.
Only twice did they see any signs of life. The first was a hunter, spotted in the distance, walking along a tree line. The second was a rusted fifties-era armored personnel carrier loaded down with dozens of laughing children. The rumble of the diesel engine reached them from a narrow road headed toward Nerchinsk.
Finally, eight hours after they set out and
with only a few hours of daylight left, they crested a hill and the first signs of civilization came into view: a gold-domed, white-walled Russian orthodox church surrounded by a dilapidated split-rail fence that marked off a small graveyard. Many of the church’s windows were boarded over, and the eaves drooped in several spots.
Tucker found a safe position behind a nearby boulder and pulled out his binoculars. A few hundred yards east of the church spread a collection of saltbox-style homes, painted in a variety of pastel blues, yellows, and reds. The town of Nerchinsk appeared quiet, with only a handful of pedestrians in view, along with a couple of boxy economy cars that puttered down the icy streets spewing clouds of exhaust.
He panned his binoculars beyond the town’s outskirts, taking in the lay of the land. To the northwest, he spotted what looked to be a dilapidated airfield.
No, he realized on closer inspection.
Not airfield, but air base.
Several of the base’s buildings and hangars bore the red-star roundel of the Russian Air Force. Had it been abandoned? Focusing on the hangars, he was pleased to see the doors were clear of snowdrifts. Someone was maintaining the place, which in turn raised his hope that there might be operational aircraft.
He returned his attention to the small town, searching for either a motel or a general store. He glimpsed a soldier in an olive-drab greatcoat standing on a corner, smoking. This was no old veteran, but someone on active duty. His uniform was tidy and clean, his cap settled squarely on his head. The man finished his cigarette, tossed away the butt, then turned and headed down a side street.
“Where’d you come from?” Tucker muttered.
He kept scanning, following what he hoped was the man’s path—then spotted a second anomaly. The main rotor hub of a helicopter jutted above one of the buildings at the edge of town. The chopper was big, tall enough to dwarf the building that shielded it. From the hub’s mottled gray paint, it had to be military.
He didn’t know what such a presence here implied, but either way, he and Kane needed to find shelter. They were both cold, tired, and with nightfall coming, the temperatures would soon plummet below zero.
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