by Karen Guyler
Luke shot out of the door before Eva moved. Ignoring the pins and needles in her toes and fingers, she charged after him, hurtling past the lynxes, slipping on the slushy snow as she hit the incline down towards the trees. She crashed onto the hard ground. One of the cats shot over to her, keeping the tiniest of distances from the wires on its side, close enough to intimidate her. It pawed the ground, dislodging the snow from a small pile of bones. Eva stared in horror; she’d fallen near its dinner table. The lynx bared its teeth at her in a snarl.
She scrabbled up onto her feet, slipping, sliding, dragging her focus away from the long bones settling on the trees, her goal.
Luke cut across to the middle of the boundary and was on his belly, halfway out to freedom by the time Eva got there. She followed, diving headlong onto the track he’d carved in the snow.
She kicked herself forward. He grabbed the shoulders of her snowsuit and yanked her through as though she were on a sled, pulling her halfway to standing.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“We need to collect those god-awful skis and get back to the car. Hug the boundary, keep low, keep moving, so he can’t get a clear shot at us.”
“Right behind you.”
They’d tramped only halfway to the corner when the walkie-talkie in Luke’s pocket crackled at them.
“Tick tock,” Rubin’s voice taunted. “Your skis are gone, the way back to the road impassable for you, allow me to demonstrate.”
The boom resounded in her chest, made her throw herself on the snow, copying Luke’s quicker reactions. Her ears weren’t ringing, the explosion hadn’t been so close.
“Rats in a maze, get moving, but not that way.” Eva was beginning to hate the sound of Rubin’s voice. “Nor down the other side of my property.”
“He’s mined the safer routes.” Luke’s voice was flat. “Seems we’re going out into the open. Zig zag, try to be unpredictable in where you run—”
“If the snow’s as deep as it looks, we won’t be running anywhere.”
The moonlight, fainter again now, helped them understand how hopeless it was. Untouched by footprint or animal print, the snow glistened at them, taunting, daring, but Eva knew the nightmare it’d be. “If you can, shuffle rather than run. You’ll tire really fast pulling your legs up enough to get out of it.”
“You casting aspersions on my fitness again.” Luke’s attempt at humour was the most valiant thing Eva had ever heard. “Ready?”
Not at all.
“Tick tock.” Eva already wanted Luke to smash the walkie talkie.
“Trees opposite, zigzag,” Luke confirmed, “then we’ll cut back to where we parked. He can’t have mined the whole place.”
It was hard to take that first step, even though it was the safest one, protected by the trees as they were. Out from their cover, Eva pushed herself faster, harder. Move. She shuffled through the snow. It wasn’t the pudersnö, the powder snow, she’d hoped for, but at least it wasn’t as wet as it had been in Rubin’s compound.
She pushed herself forward. The rise had looked low from their starting point but felt like a mountain. Lily was expecting her mum to come home from her boring meeting and she would. It wasn’t like she was standing by an exploding building as her father had been. There was no way she died by being shot in the back by a madman.
“How far do we have to go?” she panted.
“Further.”
“How far?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Over the rise the ground levelled out, no dip downwards to give them coverage. Too far away from them was a line of snowy fir trees. The level of snow undulated off to the left, away from their car, a gentle curve up and down in the landscape, harder going but offering them some sliver of cover. To their right, towards the car, the ground looked flatter; the snow giving the opposite of cover. But then why had Rubin given them white snowsuits? Was he using a weapon that relied on thermal imagery?
The walkie-talkie woke up again. “How’re you getting on?”
Luke left it in his pocket. “I’m done talking to that sick bastard.”
“As you’re so kind as to help me out, I thought you might like to know a little about this weapon, what makes it so special.”
Eva tried to use Rubin’s voice to galvanise her, to pull on her anger at him to give her a burst of energy but the cereal bars they’d eaten in the SUV felt like breakfast last week, her body long used it up trying to stay warm.
“It’s revolutionary, obviously.”
Before she’d met Rubin, Eva had had a guts full to last beyond a lifetime of a man professing his genius. Charles had a lot to answer for.
“I don’t need to follow you, or locate you from the sound of your voice,” Rubin went on, “it’s much cleverer than that. You can talk back to me. In fact, if you do, I’ll give you another minute on the clock.”
She gestured at Luke for the walkie-talkie.
“You want to engage with him?”
“Not the smallest bit but a minute is a minute. Plus he can maybe tell us something useful for Sadie if I flatter him enough.”
“On the off chance he might then be too busy to remember to shoot us?” Luke handed her the device.
Eva dredged up a smile from somewhere. “I hate an unanswered question.” She pressed the transmit button. “Me talking to you depends on whether you have something to say that I want to hear.” She waited so long for his response she thought she hadn’t pressed the right button.
Then Rubin laughed. “What do you know about lynxes?”
“That they shouldn’t be kept as pets.” She snapped back.
“And?”
“I defer to you as an expert.”
“They’re beautiful creatures. This weapon, I call the Lynx Assassin, is an homage, if you will. It’s the same, streamlined, well-camouflaged, powerful, a lean killing machine, unable to be called off once it’s set in motion.”
“Ask him how far it can shoot.” Luke puffed.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” he said when she did. “How far away are you?”
“About two hundred metres.” Eva wildly underestimated where they were, pushing herself harder, trying not to puff out her increased exertion when she spoke.
“You’re nowhere far enough away yet. How far are you going?” He asked it as though they were on a treasure hunt he wanted them to win. Eva’s thighs were burning, her shins ached viciously, the raw air scraped at her throat, her airway. Another shuffle, another.
“How far?” she rapped to Luke.
“Longest sniper shot on record’s just over 3,500 metres.”
Eva mis-stepped, her ankle almost twisting over itself, but her boot held it where it should be. “Three and a half kilometres?” she hissed.
“On record, set in 2017, Rubin’s clearly got further.”
She stumbled on. They had to get four kilometres away from Rubin’s property to be safe. Four kilometres in the snow. She didn’t know she had that in her.
“Satisfy my curiosity,” Rubin asked, “how far?”
Eva gripped the walkie-talkie but didn’t reply.
“I’d guess four kilometres,” he answered for her. “In that snow, that’s quite a feat. Pity you won’t be safe then.”
18
“He’s bluffing, isn’t he?” Eva looked at their tracks in the snow. Diagonally out from the tree-line their jagged zigzag cut to their right and then at an almost 90° angle, pitifully less than one kilometre in distance, let alone four. Rubin could shoot on the diagonal, making it all simpler, pulling them closer.
She’d answered her own question.
A tiny copse straight ahead but looking too far away, the flat ground back to their car, or the slight depressions in the land in the opposite direction. Not much of a choice.
She charged over to one of the undulations in the snow, sliding into it, lying against its gentle rise like she had in a wet and muddy ditch in England when she’d onl
y been at risk from a paintball bruise and the words “You failed”.
Luke slid down next to her. “It’s not deep enough.”
“It’s not, but we only need to be out of his sightline. Bullets only curve in movies.”
“He’s too much in control in this scenario. We can lie here getting wetter and colder while he’s in his warm house deciding when to shoot us. Always better to be a moving target than a sitting duck.”
The siren lure of hypothermia and a gentle sleep to death was strong.
“That’s an interesting move.” The walkie-talkie spoke to them.
Was he tracking them or watching?
“It’s not distance.” Rubin taunted.
Eva keyed the transmit button. “Go on then, impress me.”
“I’m tracking you, or rather my tech is. And you’re both providing a powerful signal.”
“Thermal?”
“That’s unimaginative, so last century.”
What else? “The signal from the walkie-talkie?”
“Not even warm. Excuse the pun. And lying on the snow isn’t going to change the outcome.”
Then she understood. The sound travelled across the silent landscape ahead of it, the angry buzzing of a drone.
“We need to get in those trees.” She pushed herself up, scrambled out of the dip, which now felt like it was two miles deep, heading east towards the thin copse, Luke right beside her.
Eva keyed the walkie-talkie. “Nothing cutting-edge about that, just your over-inflated sense of ego. Teenagers in America have been fixing guns to drones for years. Even in the UK they’ve been messing around with laser pointers on them to disrupt airports. I thought you’d have known about that given that you’re all about fighting the climate emergency.”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. There’s no weapon attached to that drone, it’s a rather grandiose transmitter. Is that enough of a clue?”
Eva’s legs were shaking, her breath shuddered out. A clammy wave of sickness slowed her. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“I’ll give you a fighting chance, I’m nothing if not fair. What do you know about RFID chips?”
That’s what he was using? The drone shot up into the sky and she lost its lights amongst the stars the clouds had peeled back to reveal. The buzzing grated at her.
She pushed herself harder still.
Rubin’s voice came from Eva’s pocket again. “Those trees aren’t enough though.”
She wasn’t pandering to his ego anymore. Apparently he didn’t need her to.
“You should see the weapons I have coming online next,” he crowed. “Taking my inspiration from nature has been the making of my business. The Lynx Assassin is laser-like in its focus, just like the lynx. Yellowstone, that one is quite something. I nearly called it Mars. I still might because it’s more fitting on every level. I’m at the leaving the Solar System level of spaceflight while my, and I use the word loosely, competitors haven’t yet left planet Earth.”
The copse loomed, but as she approached it her ramming heart dropped. Just a couple of trees thick, not the wood they needed. Rubin was right, not nearly enough cover.
Eva began unzipping her snowsuit before she reached its meagre shelter. “Take your snow suit off. That’s how he’s tracking us, it’s literally a target on our backs.”
“If you wanted me undressed, I wish you’d told me when we were somewhere warmer.”
Eva threw herself into the trees. Her mind screamed at her to hurry, even as her body rebelled at the painful cold. She undid the ankle zips and pulled the snowsuit off over her boots. “Hurry up.”
She threw hers on to the ground, laid it out as though she was still wearing it, making sure it was more under the pitiful cover than not.
“He’s using RFID tags must be in the suits. They only work over a short distance so the drone must be reading them and he’s relaying the signal from the drone to wherever he is. There has to be a camera on it, don’t let it see you take it off.”
Luke was shovelling his suit into the snowdrift.
“That won’t help, cold doesn’t drop the signal.”
“Let’s get away from here.”
Eva grabbed his arm. “We don’t know what distance is safe, our best chance is to stay right beside it.”
“But we can get further away through these trees.”
“No, trust me. I know about this stuff, Lily had to do a science project and she did one on RFID tags to spite Charles. He wanted to do something more difficult, bask in reflected glory.” She had to stop doing that, stop running him down at every opportunity because it was going to slip out to Lily one day. The past should stay there, it couldn’t fix the present. Except Lily could. After the project she’d made Eva buy a protective wallet to keep all her credit cards safe and, even her own bus pass went in one, just in case. But Eva and Luke had no metal on them they could use to confuse the signals.
Eva laid his snowsuit beside hers then stood close to him.
“Do I have anything on my face?” He looked down at her, still slightly out of breath after the snow shuffling run. She pointed at her cheek.
Luke leant closer. “What’m I looking for?”
Eva shivered. “I’m not sure.”
He tilted her chin up towards him. “Can’t really say, we need more light. Why, what’re you thinking?”
“He touched us both on the face, then how carefully did he take his gloves off? No reason to do either unless he was priming us with the tags.”
She ran her hand over Luke’s chin, her fingertips didn’t pick up any foreign objects but depending how small they were, they could have been caught up in his stubble. She did the same to her face but couldn’t feel anything.
She grasped up a handful of snow, rubbed it on her cheek. It was so cold it felt like it was burning. “Water confuses them, in case, it could help, wipe your chin where he touched you.”
“And there I was thinking he liked me.” Luke copied her, scrubbing at his chin. “Is it a bad thing it doesn’t feel cold?”
“It’s not good. There’s one other thing we can do. Too many tags get the readers confused. We have to hope he hasn’t been able to get past the inherent disadvantages of using them. That’s why the drone, he can’t pick up the signal from more than a couple of kilometres away.”
“What I said about presenting a moving target still holds. Staying here is insanity.”
“Exactly, he won’t be expecting us to do it.”
“Don’t like it.” Luke hesitated. “We should be running.”
“Where?” Eva challenged him. “We can’t outrun a drone, you know how fast those things can fly. Its camera will tell him we’re not wearing those snowsuits. You heard Rubin, he has other more deadly weapons. What if he tries one of those on us that don’t need the chips to target?”
Luke looked through the trees away from Rubin’s house, where Eva had already discounted. More the same through there, snowy fields divided by tree banks. Deep snow to navigate and they were both exhausted.
“How do we do this?”
“Not easily, I need a box to stand on. Let’s try you sitting and me kneeling.”
Luke gave her a sideways look but got down on the ground. Eva knelt beside him, too tall. Shuffling onto her bum, she leant in against him.
“Put your chin on my cheek,” but the leaning forward made her back ache. “Do you mind if I sit on your lap?”
“Go for it.”
“Only my bum’s now wet, so you’ll get it from both sides.”
“The things I have to do for my country.”
Eva wriggled up onto his lap, stretching her legs out on either side of him. “If you put your chin on my cheek, I hope this’ll confuse the signals for those we didn’t wipe off. As a bonus, we won’t die of hypothermia quite so quickly.”
“I knew you knew Norway.” Luke’s chin tickled her face as he spoke.
“I’ve gone right off it. Next mission better be somewhere in
the Caribbean.” Her joke was hollow, but Eva would trade being thrown out of SIS for getting home alive.
They waited. She focused on the warmth of Luke’s body on her front, pretending her back wasn’t freezing.
“Not that this isn’t a great way to spend a night but any idea how long?” He asked after a while.
“It’s all guesswork, I could be completely wrong about all this.”
“Just wanted to get up close and personal, I get that a lot.”
Eva laughed, an edge of hysteria to it.
“It’s going to be okay.” He added, squeezing her closer to him.
Unless Rubin didn’t make his move soon, then the cold would take them and he wouldn’t have to.
19
Time stopped. Eva and Luke waited.
Waited.
“You okay there?” He murmured, his chin warm against her cheek.
“I’m good, though maybe need to apologise to Mrs Fox, sitting on you like this.”
Eva felt Luke’s chuckle deep in his belly. “You’re good, there’s no Mrs Fox.”
“A Miss hoping to be?”
“Not currently. And the whole freezing wet nether regions isn’t the turn on you’d think.”
“Nether regions?” Despite everything, Eva almost laughed.
“Plus the real possibility we’re about to be shot kind of hijacks the mind.” He shifted her to the left a touch. “Throwing you in right at the deep end of your first mission, pretty impressive mentoring I’d say.”
“How am I doing?”
“I’ll let you know, when we get out of here.”
Waited.
Eva shivered. Was her hunch wrong? Over Luke’s shoulder, filtered into tiny specks through the tree branches, the green and purple of the Northern lights was fading up from black. Somewhere beneath their flimsy shelter and Rubin’s house, the drone’s mad insistence raced back towards them. Was this it?
Luke tensed against her.
Should they have sat further away from the snow suits? Trying to stay hidden from the drone’s camera’s probing lens, the ribboned camouflage from overhead wasn’t wide enough for much of a distance. Should they have run as Luke wanted? Too late now.
