“Oh, God,” Sarah said with a loud exhale, “it’s a radio.”
Ryan eased his way past the last of the trees and made his way to the first chopper in line. Sarah and Marla slowly followed. Jason leaned into the first of the well-equipped helicopters and saw that at first sight all looked normal. The plastic-covered interior was immaculate compared to the sparseness of the Bell Ranger they had been working on the night before. The windows sparkled and the carpeting on the floor smelled of its newness. As Ryan tilted his head, he heard the radio in the front cockpit come to life with a crackle and then a Russian voice come out of the speakers. It became insistent when there was no return answer.
As Ryan braced his feet to enter the Sikorsky, he felt a crunch under his right foot. He stepped away from the opening of the helicopter and looked at what he had stepped on. He looked from the object on the ground to Marla. The anger was etched in his features and his eyes were blazing. He kicked the smashed microphone from the choppers radio toward the spot Sarah and Marla stood.
“I suppose you didn’t destroy the only way we had for calling for help?” Jason asked.
Marla held Ryan’s gaze and gave back some of her own.
“I said before, Mr. Ryan, we will not allow the outside world to destroy what we have here. All of the invaders of the high country are on their own. If they’re good, or bad, it makes no difference—you or the ones you are looking for don’t belong here.”
Sarah didn’t know what to say, she was dumbfounded that Marla would go to those lengths knowing what the Russian assault team had done to the Mounties and to themselves.
“We have friends out there, and now it’s time you let us in on your big secret. Jason, pick one of the helicopters, it’s time we go and find Jack and the others.”
RUSSIAN BASE CAMP
Lynn was watching the men as they lowered the tents and started placing the expensive equipment into their waterproof cases. The soldiers started placing heavy packs onto their backs as they made ready to cross over. The boats were filled and Sagli and Deonovich looked satisfied that their goal was within sight.
The search for the missing man had lasted all of five minutes as Sagli declared that he would eventually show up, and that seemed to satisfy most of the men, especially the Spetsnaz who weren’t too interested in searching for the man at any rate. The others looked surprised that more of an effort wasn’t forthcoming and wondered if the same effort would be in place for them if they disappeared. There were a few grumblings, but Lynn knew the men would never show it to Sagli or to the brute Deonovich and their group of hard nosed commandos.
A Spetsnaz came over to where she was sitting on a large stone. His weapon was slung across his shoulder as his dark eyes peered into her own.
“You are now my responsibly and I have orders to break something on your body once we have crossed the river if there is any troubling from you, are we understandings each other?” he asked in poor English.
“Nyet,” Lynn said as she stood.
The man looked confused for a moment, and then he saw that the woman was toying with him.
“Good, then I will enjoy the tasking of my duty to breaking your arm sever-ling times.”
“Okay, just kidding, pea brain. Shall we go boating?”
The man stepped aside, deciding instantly that he did not like the American and how it would be a pleasure to break her bones.
The last of the larger tents still stood and inside Dmitri Sagli threw the microphone down and it struck the radio operator.
“You mean to tell me they didn’t check in last night and you felt it did not warrant informing me?”
The small operator cowered away from the demented eyes of the ponytailed Russian.
“Did it occur to you that we left those helicopters there to be safe, out of harm’s way in case we had company arrive here in the form of the Canadian federal authorities? And now they do not answer their radios at all—four pilots and not one of them is monitoring their radio? Gregori, this man is no longer needed: Dispose of him, we do not need fools from here on out.”
Deonovich stepped forward and pulled the radio operator from his chair. The other technicians in the room stood.
“You wish to comment on my order?” Sagli asked, eyeing each of the soft-skinned men one at a time. “Very well, let him go. If any of you fail in his duty again, and think that I do not need to be informed of any and every development, small or large, you will remain in this godforsaken place, is that understood?”
Not one man spoke as Deonovich let go of the radio technician.
“Now, get to the boats with that radio and the last of the detection gear, and place them with the rest of the equipment. Once we arrive at the area you have designated, and if we do not find what it is we came for, I will shoot every one of you. Now move, we may have a problem that was totally unforeseen, thanks to you fools.”
Sagli pulled Deonovich aside once out of earshot of the others.
“You are sure the helicopters were hidden and the pilots were given orders not to leave them until they were contacted?”
“I am positive, I gave the orders myself.”
“Then we must assume that whoever dealt you that blow at the camp has initiated further hostilities toward us. They will be coming, I am now positive of that. And the only thing that eases my mind is the fact that they have company with them that will forestall any attack on us. And our friend undoubtedly has what we need with him.”
Fifteen minutes later, the seven Zodiacs, brimming full to capacity with men and equipment, shoved off from the southern shore of the Stikine. The current caught them and took them south for the briefest of moments, but the powerful outboards caught hold and pushed them back to their crossing point.
Lynn watched the men around her. Some seemed calm and anticipatory of what they would find across the river, while others looked around nervously. The day was turning hot, but Lynn got the chills as she watched some of the more veteran soldiers among the Russians. They were the ones that were nervously watching the far shoreline, hands on weapons as they grew near to their destination.
Lynn half turned and saw Sagli watching her. Although she hadn’t heard about them not being able to contact their transport at the fishing camp, she knew for a fact that something had changed, and it wasn’t to their benefit, and most assuredly wasn’t to hers.
The first of the large Zodiacs pulled onto the rocky shore, and as Lynn watched technicians and soldiers start unloading their equipment, she knew they may be crossing into a place they shouldn’t be going. It was just a feeling, but like her brother Jack, she was in tune to what those feelings held, and that you should always acknowledge them, for the good, or for the bad.
Jack was leading the group of six men through the woods. Collins and Everett had instructed the rest on how to use the natural elements around them to camouflage their faces and bodies after the loss of their field equipment in the Grumman. Mud was utilized heavily and if it wasn’t for the appearance of Charlie Ellenshaw, the whole process would have been mundane and miserable. As it was, Mendenhall and Everett could hardly hide their smiles behind their hands. To cover most of the professor’s white hair, Jack had encrusted it with twigs and grass, and that conglomeration was held in place by handfuls of drying mud. Everett thought that the colonel had applied everything a tad too liberally.
Farbeaux followed close behind and Punchy was told to follow the Frenchman. Then came Charlie, stumbling every few steps through the tangled undergrowth, and finally Will and Carl. They had been on foot for the past three hours.
Collins suddenly stopped and held up his right hand with spread fingers, then he quickly gestured to the right and then to the left. As Punchy and Charlie stayed in line, Farbeaux went to the left, and as Will quickly turned to cover the rear, Everett went right. As Henri and Everett covered their flanks, only Alexander and Charlie were left to watch Collins as he became perfectly still and watched the area immediately to their front.
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Jack heard what sounded like talking and knew they were close to where the Russians could be. The plateau had risen in their view since they started making their way north on foot and Charlie had confirmed it was remarkably like his memory said it would be. The main landmark described in the Lattimer entry in the journal indicated that they had arrived.
As he listened, the voices ceased and boat motors started. Jack, running bent over at the waist, moved silently through the woods, easily stepping over and around the tangle-foot that would trip up most men with the practiced art of stepping, and then sliding the foot back and inch or two in case the toe of his boot had hooked on an obstacle. Collins moved until he could see the river through the trees. He saw the last Zodiac shove off from the south shore of the Stikine. His eyes clearly saw the other six boats as they fought the swift current and angled toward the far shore. He held his ground and waited. Then he saw what he was looking for when the third boat touched the far rocky shore. A large Russian manhandled Lynn out of the rubber boat and shoved her toward a group of men standing and looking into the woods. Lynn shrugged the man’s hand from her and moved forward.
Jack closed his eyes for only a moment to give into the relief he felt upon seeing his sister. He took a breath and then removed the filthy ball cap the old woman had given him.
“That’s her, huh?”
Collins turned and saw Charlie Ellenshaw kneeling behind him looking across the river. Jack angrily looked back at Punchy, who in turn looked at him and shrugged his shoulders, as if saying he tried to stop him.
“Doc, from now on, you don’t move unless you’re told to do so, is that clear?” Jack whispered.
“Oh, uh, yes, I just . . .”
“Don’t worry about it, Doc. Get back with Punchy; we’re going back into the woods about two hundred yards and wait until well after dark before we cross.”
“Oh, we’re going to swim the river?”
“You can swim, can’t you?” Collins asked, worried about what the professor’s answer was going to be.
“Oh, yes, I was on my high school—”
“Fine, Doc, that’s fine. Now come on, we better rest up.”
“But if my memory serves, there is a spot just to the left of their camp that is shallow, and even has a sandbar at its midpoint.”
“Good, we need to hear things like that, Doc. Now go back with Mr. Alexander.”
Jack watched Charlie go and then turned back and watched the men standing next to his baby sister. He hated to see her in the position she was in, but for now there was nothing he could do about it. Even after they crossed, he knew they were outgunned twenty to one. He replaced the baseball cap and then used his hand signals to order the others to fall back. As he did, he was thinking about why the Russians were keeping her alive and now it would be an eternity until Jack could cross the river and get his sister back from these men who murdered as easily as asking for a cup of coffee.
RUSSIAN BASE CAMP
NORTH OF THE STIKINE
The magnetometers started maxing out as soon as they were uncased and turned on. The technicians buzzed with excitement as they pointed northeast and held steady.
“From the signal strength, Mr. Sagli, I would say what we seek is but one mile that way,” the small Russian tech said as he held his hands cupped around the LED-lighted gauge to stop the glare of the setting sun.
Sagli smiled and then looked at Deonovich. He then turned and looked at the small plateau rising ahead of them. He knew that the readings would place their goal at the base of the small climb or at its summit. In either case, it was going to be theirs.
“Now, the other detectors. What is their reading?”
Another of the field technicians walked up, almost anxious to deliver the news his employer wanted the most.
“The M-224 detectors are picking up elevated levels, far more than can be accounted for naturally. We suspect that it is near the other denser metals we are detecting.”
Sagli felt his knees bend, wanting to fold in on themselves as he heard the greatly anticipated news indicating that their partner had been right all along and they now had the justification for leaving behind albeit a dangerous world, but a rich and fulfilling one. The item they wanted was near, and they would have it in the next few hours.
Deonovich started organizing ten of his best men to start the trek into the bush, he felt they had wasted enough time in setting up a camp that they might never have used if they had gone straight to setting up Sagli’s expensive equipment.
“Gregori, we must hold our place here. Our discovery has waited a very long time, so it can wait a while longer; we have instructions we must follow.”
Deonovich stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to face his partner. The anger was clearly shown on his features. “It is right there; we can retrieve it and still be following orders. He can examine our find at his leisure.”
“That is not following instructions, my friend, because there is a reason for waiting. Someone is coming who can verify our find; until that man arrives, she is not to be touched.”
Deonovich turned away from Sagli and saw one of the pinpoints of his continuing ire—Lynn. He raised a hand and slapped her onto the ground and was about to bring his tree trunk of a leg back to kick her, when suddenly Lynn had had enough. She kicked out with her own booted foot and struck the large Russian directly to the side of the knee. Deonovich grunted in pain and went to his back, immediately reaching for his throbbing leg. Lynn pounced as if she were part cat, landing on his chest, and then brought up a stick she had found on the ground and took it straight to the side of the Russian’s throat.
Sagli watched from a distance and a smile stretched across his face. He saw the men Deonovich had been organizing to go into the tree line start forward to take the angry American off their boss, but he held up a hand, indicating he wanted to see how this played out.
Lynn placed pressure on the small stick and held it in place just over the pulsing throb of the Russians jugular vein. She pressed even harder when he made a move to try and dislodge her. With black hair hanging in her face, and her cheekbone throbbing where she had been struck, Lynn Simpson was at a point where she didn’t care what the outcome would be, but knew she would make sure this bastard never touched her again.
“That is the last time you’ll take out your inadequacies on me. If you ever raise a hand or one of those fucking hooves to me again, I swear to God the last thing you will ever see is me punching a hole in your throat.” For emphasis, Lynn pressed the dull point of the stick into the thin layers of skin at Deonovich’s throat until she had a nice flow of blood.
“Someone kill this goddamn bitch!” Deonovich hissed as he froze under the onslaught of the smaller woman and her stick.
Without removing the pressure she was exerting on the stick, and without moving her face from the angry eyes of Deonovich, Lynn flicked her own green eyes over to where the smiling Sagli still held his commandos at bay with a raised hand. Sagli just tilted his head, as if he were awaiting Lynn’s decision.
Lynn angrily poked the stick one more time and at the same moment removed her small amount of weight from Deonovich. The man grabbed for his neck and rose as if shot from a cannon. He started reaching for his holstered weapon.
“No. That will not do, old friend. Too noisy and far too premature. We still need her.”
Deonovich still went as far as to pull the weapon. Lynn braced for the bullet that was surely coming her way, still holding the stick as if it were a magic talisman that would ward off the giant ogre. As Deonovich turned and started to raise the weapon, the sound hit them with a force of a hundred loudspeakers.
Sagli turned, forgetting all about the humorous confrontation he was witnessing. The other men bent low as if they had been ambushed for real, other than just audibly assaulted.
The roar of an animal reverberated against the tree line as far away as the southern shore of the river. The sound bounced back and sounded as if the en
tire camp was surrounded by a herd of whatever it was that made that horrendous sound. The animal cry was unlike any of the men from Russia had ever heard before. Some of the Spetsnaz hailed from the cold and hearty region of the Urals and it seemed to affect these men the most. Unable to think clearly with the continuing echo of the cry coming from the plateau to the north, the technicians, although armed with handguns, backed away from where they had been setting up tripods with motorized metal detectors on them. They watched the bright sunlit woods ahead of them, but still backed away nonetheless.
“What in God’s name is that?” Sagli asked as he turned away from the trees. His eyes fell on Lynn, who was just standing there stiff, just watching the sun-dappled tress before them, her antagonist Deonovich no longer a concern. The small stick she used as a weapon slowly slid from her fingers. The look in her eyes told Sagli she had been taken as far off guard by the roar as they had been.
The men had gone silent with every set of eyes turned toward the tree line. Deonovich forgot all about the assault on his neck and used hand gestures to get his commando team to move. He gestured right and left and then used both hands to point straight ahead, the blood still dripping from his fingers. The Spetsnaz immediately broke into two-man teams and entered the woods at a trot. Deonovich clearly understood at that moment the reason for restraint before entering an area that they basically knew nothing about.
Sagli broke the spell by walking over and taking the American woman by the arm and pushing her toward her small tent.
“From here on out, you are to remain inside. You have now become far more important than you would ever believe.”
Lynn was shoved ahead of the Russian and she decided that she had no desire to be outside with the sun falling lower and lower in the sky.
Sagli turned to Deonovich.
“I should have let that woman cut your throat. You are never to question my authority again or threaten the American. You could allow this whole operation to fail if you continue your unthinking ways. It will not be tolerated by me, or by our partner, I assure you. Is that clearly understood?”
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 31
