by EndWar
Grimacing, he reached down and removed the thing from between rocks, then worked his way back to the lake and returned to the shore.
Borya cocked a brow at Lex’s find. Slava nodded and grinned. Vlad smirked and rolled his eyes.
Lex placed the arm on the rocks, then shook his head. “I’m disappointed. Higher really wanted this guy alive.”
“Come on, boss, we all wanted him dead,” said Slava.
“I was being sarcastic,” said Lex.
“Oh.” Slava lifted the arm and shoved it toward Vlad. “Are you hungry?”
“Guys, settle down. We need to get this thing on ice, get it shipped off to the lab, and confirm it’s him.”
“Oh, it’s him,” said Borya. “See the scar on the forearm?” Borya traced the three-centimeter line running just above the wrist. “It matches Nestes’s description.”
“That’s a pretty small scar to wind up in his dossier,” said Vlad. “Doesn’t mean much.”
“Or maybe it does,” said Lex, using his fingers to probe around the scar. “There’s something in there beneath the skin. Microchip. Something.”
“Let’s cut it out,” said Slava.
Lex shook his head. “Evidence for the lab.”
“He’s tagged?” asked Borya.
“Damn right he is,” said Lex.
Borya frowned. “I don’t get it. He’s actual, he’s the commander. You only tag your underlings.”
“I know, but I got the impression he was no longer in charge. He mentioned a name. The Ganjin. You guys ever hear of it?”
They shook their heads.
“Me neither. And that’s what scares me.”
“What was that word you used?” Slava asked.
“I said scared. But I get the point. We’re Marines, never scared. But think about it. We’ve been at this game a long time. We’ve got intel assets all over the world—NSA, CIA, Third Echelon’s Splinter Cells. We know all the players, even the new guys on the block. They haven’t been able to hide from us—”
“Until now,” said Vlad.
Lex bared his teeth, then motioned for the radio. He thumbed the mike and took a long, exhausted breath. “Mother Hawk, this is Green Raider Actual. We have the Tango—or at least a piece of the Tango. Need time now to locate the rest of his body.”
“Roger that, Actual. QRF still inbound, over.”
“Mother Hawk, abort QRF for now. Repeat: Abort QRF. Return on my signal.” Lex glanced down at the arm. “Borya, get me a poncho to wrap this thing up. Slava, Vlad? Get back on the rocks. Find me the rest of him.”
His men nodded and hustled off.
While Borya dug out the poncho, Lex regarded the tree line, imagining a one-armed man spying them from behind the broadest trunk. No. No way. Impossible.
Borya handed him the poncho and said, “I’m glad it’s finally over.”
“Over? Are you kidding?”
Borya sighed. “I guess you’re right, boss. Apparently—after chasing this bastard all over the planet—we’re just getting started . . .”
TEN
Forest on Sakhalin Island
North of Japan
Most Spetsnaz troops were strong proponents of edged weapons for clandestine operations. The average troop carried on his person several knives: a knife-bayonet for his submachine gun; a combat knife; an all-purpose “survival” knife; and an all-purpose clasp knife, hidden knife, or fling knife. A few of the more creative ones kept small neck knives sheathed and hanging from pieces of paracord tucked just under their uniforms.
However, the blades that concerned the Snow Maiden most were the combat knives, and right now she had an overpowering desire to have one clutched in her grip.
The Katran-3 was the most popular among Spetsnaz operators, having a top blade for sawing wood or metal and a bilateral guard and steel tang. The handle was usually covered in leather or any number of Russian military polymers. Troops most commonly carried them on their right side, at either the hip or waist.
The troop standing not a meter from where the Snow Maiden lay hidden in the depression beneath the tree carried his Katran-3 at the hip.
His eyes told the story and even offered a spoiler of the ending: He was going to die.
He’d realized only at the last second that he’d just been relieved of his knife and that a woman was on him. His rifle was tugged from his grip while the knife sank deeply into his neck, just above his clavicle. She caught him as he fell back to the snow, fumbling for his pistol, which she also removed.
While he lay there, convulsing, gurgling up his own blood, she searched him, found his secondary blade (a small survival knife), then took it and his assault rifle, a newly designed Izhmash AN-99. She abandoned the Uzi and dragged him to the depression, where she tucked him into the snow, out of sight. He was still bleeding, his breath shallow, eyes pleading.
With the new rifle slung over her shoulder and a knife in each of her bloody hands, she took off running.
That one was for her husband, Nikolai. The next would be for her brothers. Now she was the hunter.
She kept on, heading west, the moonlight in her face now. After sprinting for about thirty meters, she ducked around the next tree and dropped to her knees. She closed her eyes, pictured the two drop zones where the Spetsnaz had fast-roped in, noted her own position, then predicted how they would fan out to try to envelop her. She needed to penetrate their forward line, then double back to pick them off one at a time.
The plan was sound.
The plan did not, however, account for dogs, at least three German shepherds trained at the new Central Military School on the outskirts of Moscow. She’d known one of their trainers, had brought him in for a case she’d been working on years ago, the murder of a lieutenant colonel by one of his own men over a drug deal that had gone bad. Nasty business.
The dogs were barking and picking up her scent.
A wave of panic struck low in her gut and flooded up to choke off her breath. She quickened her pace, thought she heard the footfalls rushing up behind her, heard the bark.
She turned, coming face-to-face with the dog as it leapt into the air.
He went for her neck. She went for the dog’s, driving both blades home before the shepherd could sink its teeth into her flesh. They both fell back, into the snow. The animal released a strangled cry as she rolled over, ripped out the blades, and scrambled back to her feet.
She felt worse about killing the dog than any man, the guilt much more palpable. Poor thing. She left it there, shaking and whimpering.
Ten, maybe twelve trees later, as a wave of nausea was coming on, the other two dogs were behind her, barking, gaining.
She swore. The dogs had already sounded the alarm and given up her location. She could try to kill them silently, but while she was on one, the other would tear her to shreds.
She dropped the survival knife, stuck the combat knife into the nearest tree, then turned back and leveled the assault rifle on the clearing behind her.
I’m sorry.
Wishing she could close her eyes, she fired—
Just two rounds, each finding a dog’s head, both dropping hard and fast to the snow, tremors ripping through their paws. Bile found the back of her throat as she fetched the combat knife, shoved the rifle around on its sling, and broke once more into a sprint.
Keep moving.
The choppers, once hovering on the periphery, now closed in, searchlights panning across the canopy ahead like the probes of some alien ships, the harsh light causing her to squint.
Next came the wind-whipped snow flushing through the forest as the Hinds descended, and the Snow Maiden searched in vain for another avenue around the lights.
At the next tree, she took a hard left, stumbling over exposed roots, caught herself, then kept on, observing how the slope rose much more ste
eply to her left—
And there up near the top was an outcropping whose higher left side would make for an excellent sniper’s perch—or at the very least provide temporary cover.
“Daddy, why do people have to die?”
She groaned away the voice in her head and dug in deep, prying herself up the slope, some of the lower branches serving as levers to drive her forward.
Those pilots hadn’t seen her take this turn, and maybe their thermal imagers weren’t picking her up as well because her own body temperature had dropped a little and the dogs were still giving off heat. She couldn’t be sure about that. All she knew was they’d turned off, but the shouts of troops converging on the clearing where she’d killed the two dogs were louder.
Highly motivated by those sounds, she set her teeth and dipped into her reserves, reaching the outcropping with her last breath, every sinew blown in her quads, her hamstrings on fire. She crawled onto the broad, icy rock, some ten meters long, four meters wide, shifting on her elbows toward a lip like the gunwale on an attack boat.
She settled down, watching as two troops appeared in the distance, one pointing to her tracks, the other slashing across the snow with his flashlight.
They turned and started up the hill.
What she wouldn’t give for a silenced rifle right now.
She lined up the first shot, had the flashlight bearer’s head centered in her reticle.
Crack. He jerked back, the flashlight airborne, his arms waving spasmodically before he hit the ice.
The second one dove to the snow, landing exactly where she’d anticipated he would.
Her second round rendered him inert before he could raise his rifle.
She might as well have launched a flare. The shouts came not a breath later.
Closer now.
Getting shakily to her feet, she hesitated, looked over the path, then stepped gingerly across the rock, its surface reflecting moonlight like glass. She inched toward a section where she could reach a branch and haul herself back onto the slope.
Her boot had just left the stone when she heard him.
Coming through the trees, making little effort to conceal his advance.
She shoved herself behind the nearest trunk and realized, oh my God, he was right there, just on the other side, his breath wafting around the branches.
Stiffening, she took in the longest breath she could and held it.
“I know you’re right there,” he said softly. “Let’s make this very easy. The whole mountain is surrounded. Turn yourself in to me right now, and I promise you won’t be hurt.”
She rolled the combat knife around in her palm.
“I’m going to come around the tree now. Put your hands in the air.”
Instead, she came around the tree, driving her blade up beneath his chin and up into his head, the gun torn from his grip even as she drove her knee into his groin: three moves at once, three points of attack she’d practiced and executed so many times that she dreamed about them, arms and legs working on muscle memory—no conscious effort—death blows delivered quietly, efficiently, perfunctorily.
He had quite an ego, this one. He’d managed to get close to her, only to relish in that triumph and decide he could capture her alive. That he’d approached so carelessly was his first mistake. That he’d tried to negotiate a deal was his second. That he’d announced his intentions to come around the tree confirmed that he’d forgotten his training and succumbed to the adrenaline rush of the moment. She set him on the ground, stabbed him once more in the heart, then got to work, rifling through his pockets and small pack, digging out everything she needed.
Her hands were shaking so badly she almost didn’t finish. It was the cold. Not nerves. Just the cold.
Within a minute it was all set and she was out of there, the flames small at first but beginning to rise.
By the time she reached the top of the slope, the ammo she’d removed from the troop’s magazine and spread across his chest was beginning to cook off, shots ringing out wildly, sounding as though she were in a gunfight with several men. The racket and the flames would, she hoped, draw both the troops and the choppers back to the hill—
While she slipped over the top and began a hair-raising descent, leaning back toward the snow at her shoulders, the incline feeling like forty-five degrees, the trees like bumpers in some weird antique pinball machine.
Into the nightmare she slid.
The canopy grew so dense that it fully eclipsed the moonlight, and for a few moments she could barely see the trees rushing up until a pair neared her so quickly that she barely had time to shift aside, tripped and flew through the air, landing face-first in the snow.
She dragged herself up, cheeks stinging, hands feeling as though they’d crack off. She forced herself to go on, staggering down the hillside, trying to slow her steps.
Legs burning, she reached the bottom where during the summer months a small creek wove a lazy S-pattern through the ravine, the creek now frozen solid, the boulders crowned by snow rising like vertebrae along its shoreline.
This was a crossroads of sorts. The creek ran north-south between the mountains, and she could follow along the banks for a hundred meters or more (either north or south), then make a break back to the west.
She squinted north toward the trees, then south, both paths wandering into blurry silhouettes that promised neither capture nor escape.
Which way?
Her pursuers would, of course, predict she’d simply forded the creek and hustled straight up the next slope—so maybe this was it, a moment to truly lose them. That is, until they brought the choppers back around.
Swearing off her indecision, she headed south, following the bank, stretches of smaller stones and gravel crunching under her boots, the surface less slippery and allowing her to pick up the pace.
Her nose was running again, the tip so cold that her eyes began to tear. Still running, she cupped a hand over her face and breathed hard, the effort and the temperature stealing away her focus again, transporting her to that winter day when she’d been eight and waiting outside her school for her father. She’d sat there on the curb for nearly two hours . . . no gloves, the winter coat too small on her, the hat and scarf forgotten at home that morning.
The car had broken down, and when her father finally arrived, he was so sorry that he’d cried. He’d asked her how she’d stayed warm. She’d pulled the coat over her head, and remaining that way, in the itchy darkness, she’d told herself stories.
Her favorite was the tale of the Snow Maiden.
She stopped and shuddered herself back to the moment. Turning her head, she frowned. The whomping of the helicopters sounded different. One had broken off and cut across the forest and was behind her now, the searchlight tracing along the creek until it suddenly panned over her, moved off, then returned, as though plugging into her back.
Spotted.
In a maneuver she deemed entirely reckless, the pilot pitched forward and descended until his main rotor was skimming the treetops, shaving off a few.
“You on the ground! Remain where you are! We have this perimeter closed off! You cannot escape!” came a voice from the Hind’s loudspeaker.
The Snow Maiden turned and stared directly into their blinding light, lifted her assault rifle, and opened fire, rounds glancing off the fuselage and bulletproof canopy—
The pilot pitched left and pulled off, the spotlight gone, the troops shouting from the top of the mountain now.
Time to break. She sprinted from the creek, staggering up the next slope, the snow nearly reaching her calves.
She fell. Slid back down. Screamed. Got up. Ascended again.
The second part of her escape plan had just taken hold in the back of her mind. She would slip across to the mainland, vanish—
And then defect to the United States.
That’s right. She had valuable intel for the Americans. They needed to know about the Ganjin, about Major Alice Dennison’s involvement, and about how General Izotov would soon be operating for them. The Americans would be her new friends. They would offer her immunity, a new home, a new life . . .
But that new dream was quickly vanishing as behind her, at least six Spetsnaz came charging across the bank. She reached the nearest tree, got behind it, leveled her rifle—
“Don’t,” came a voice from behind, not a meter away.
Slowly, she glanced over her shoulder at the troop staring at her, wide-eyed.
He pressed his rifle into her head.
Even as she considered several counterattacks, the other six troops were at the foot of the slope, rifles trained on her, the Hind arcing around to bring its searchlight to bear.
The snow turned to glistening white diamonds, the Spetsnaz tilting their helmeted heads against the rotor wash.
With a gasp, she let the rifle fall into the sling and lifted her palms. She shook violently now.
“That’s a good girl,” cried the troop behind her. “I want you to know how proud I am to capture the world’s most wanted terrorist.” He stepped around to face her. “Yes . . . we know exactly who you are.”
ELEVEN
Caucasus Mountains
Near North Ossetia, Russia
The irony did not go unnoticed by Major Stephanie Halverson. She’d flown into Russian airspace to test a new radar system. The system had failed. She’d been shot out of the sky, ejected, hung from a maglev train teetering off a shattered bridge, and parachuted down from there to safety, and she had, after all of that, still survived to tell the tale—
Only to be captured now by some local yokel pointing a hunting rifle at her?
The universe had a twisted sense of humor.
She sighed. The man holding her at bay was in his thirties, with a thick beard, black woolen cap pulled down over his ears, and heavy Soviet-era parka buttoned tightly at his neck. His jeans were tucked into his calf-high boots, and one side of his face shone in the moonlight, all ruddy cheeks and curls snaking around his neck. He was a full head taller than Halverson, perhaps twice as wide, but he was probably wearing several layers.
