Backlash: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  His mind was moving as fast as, if not faster than, his skis. There were a lot of unanswered questions, vital equations, he was trying to solve.

  First and foremost, How many men were on that helicopter? Had the full two dozen been sent, or had some been left behind to continue searching for him in Nivsky? If Harvath had to wager, he’d be willing to bet that they had left some behind. That still didn’t fully answer his question, though.

  His next question was, What was his objective? Obviously, it was making his escape. But what was that going to look like? There was no way to know until the opportunity revealed itself.

  He couldn’t outrun their helicopter. And if they had brought snowmobiles along, which they probably had, he couldn’t outrun those either.

  That meant that he was either going to have to convince them that he was no longer running, or make it so they couldn’t chase him.

  At the very least, he’d do enough damage to force them to fall back, regroup, and be very nervous about coming after him.

  They would, of course, come after him, but if they did so with trepidation, he would have secured the upper hand.

  Injecting fear into the hearts of battle-hardened special forces soldiers, Russians or otherwise, was no easy feat. It was quite a tall order, but one that—if he was lucky—he might just be able to pull off.

  For that to happen, though, a lot had to take place between now and his eventual escape. And all of it had to go right. One single screwup on his part would mean either death or capture, which he was certain were pretty much the same thing.

  Arriving back in Adjágas, the first thing he did was to ditch the pine bough. He followed that up by hiding his skiing equipment in a crawl space beneath one of the cabins.

  Now, his only liability was his boots. They left very distinct prints. But as he had done when trying to disguise his ski tracks, all he could do was hope that in the chaos of the moment, with loads of adrenaline pumping through them, that none of the mercenaries noticed.

  Hope, though, wasn’t a plan. In fact, he needed to do everything he could to make sure his tracks would not stick out.

  Staying away from fresh snow, he trod only where the villagers themselves had walked, altering how he placed his feet so as not to leave a full print.

  The boots were rigid. They not only hurt his feet, they also slowed him down. Nevertheless, it was worth it. He hadn’t come this far to leave a trail that would lead right to him. The element of surprise, right now, was the only thing he had going for him.

  Arriving at Jompá’s cabin, he peered into one of the windows. Sini was nowhere to be seen. Coming back around, he tried the door and, as he had expected in such a small village, it was unlocked.

  Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him, removed the flashlight from his pocket, and set it on the floor so as not to draw attention from anyone outside.

  Unshouldering his rucksack, he pulled out the box of shotgun shells he had taken from the trapper’s cabin and made a tough decision—how many could he part with? He settled on half.

  Giving up ammo, especially when you didn’t know how many of the enemy you were facing, normally wasn’t the best idea. But in this case, the rounds could end up acting as a force multiplier.

  After retrieving a glass jar he had seen earlier in the kitchen, he took out his knife and began opening the shells, making sure all of the powder went inside and that all of his buckshot was accounted for.

  It took him several more minutes to complete his improvised explosive device, but when it was done, he felt confident that it was more than up to the task. The only problem remaining was where to place it.

  He lacked the materials necessary to create a fuse with a delay. If he set it up at the front door, it would go off the minute someone set foot inside and only affect the first person through. To be worth it, it had to kill, or at the very least injure, as many of the Wagner mercenaries as possible. He decided to set it up farther inside and use the bed as bait.

  Christina had been right about playing up his injuries. The more blood and bandages they saw, the more their confidence grew that he was weak and unable to put up a decent fight. If he was lucky, a booby-trap would be one of the last things they’d be thinking about.

  All of Sini’s supplies were still scattered about. After setting up the bed to make it look as if someone was sleeping in it, he placed other items nearby so that to anyone entering, it would appear that he was in even worse shape.

  By the time they got close enough to realize that the bed was empty, it would be too late. They would have already hit the trip wire.

  At least that was the plan. He had constructed several IEDs in his day that had worked, as well as several that hadn’t. It seemed that the more he needed them, the greater the odds were that they would fail. He hoped that tonight, that wouldn’t be the case.

  After doing one last sweep to make sure everything was perfect, he backed out of the cabin and closed the door. Far in the distance, he could hear snowmobiles.

  All of a sudden, he got another idea. Slinging the rucksack and his shotgun, he ran off toward the trail Sini had pointed to earlier, the one that led to Friddja.

  And as he ran, he said a silent prayer that not only were the snowmobiles taking that route, but that he could get to the right spot before they did.

  CHAPTER 51

  * * *

  * * *

  Harvath ran as fast as he could up the trail. He didn’t care if he was leaving footprints in the snow or not. All that mattered was speed.

  As he ran, he kept his eyes peeled for the ideal place to set his trap. Finally, he found it.

  The two trees were thick enough and were positioned perfectly on either side of the trail.

  Rummaging through his rucksack, he pulled out the second spool of wire he had taken from the trapper. It was a heavier gauge than he had just used to set the trip wire for his IED. Because of the amount of force it was going to have to withstand, it needed to be.

  While he would have loved to have been equipped to kill multiple birds with one stone, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. The trail was too narrow for the mercenaries to be riding in anything other than single file.

  Harvath only had enough wire for two traps. The best he could hope to do was to take out the men piloting the first and second snowmobiles. After that, he’d be reliant on his shotgun.

  He worked quickly, guesstimating where precisely to set the first wire, and then making sure it was as secure as humanly possible. Clipping the wire, he ran about five meters farther down the trail, where he set the second trap. This one was even more difficult.

  Based on what Christina had seen while picking up his dinner in Nivsky, he knew the mercenaries would be wearing night vision goggles. That meant he would have to camouflage himself. He couldn’t arm the second trap, though, until the first snowmobiler had raced past, and even then, he had to remain hidden. He needed a spring, something he could activate from his hiding place without revealing his presence.

  He found exactly what he needed in the shape of a younger, more pliable tree, which even in the deep arctic cold he was able to bend. He tied it down using a piece of cord and an adjacent tree trunk.

  With his wires set, he stashed his rucksack and then dug a place in the snow, which he covered with several pine branches. Holding his knife in one hand and the shotgun in the other, he made ready. He could hear the snowmobiles. They were close, almost there.

  He was about to lose his only advantage—the element of surprise. Once the first rider hit the first trap, the mercenaries would know they were under attack. The tricky part for him would be timing the leap from his hiding spot. Fortunately, he had a halfway decent view of the trail and would be able to make that call on the fly.

  Straining his ears, he tried to discern how many snowmobiles were approaching. It was an impossible task. All he could tell was that it sounded like more than one. He had no way of knowing how many men he was about to face.

>   Lying there in the snow, he would have given a decade’s worth of paychecks for a few claymores or a box of hand grenades. There was precious little cover available beyond tree trunks. If this turned into an all-out gunfight, he was going to be in trouble.

  He had to win it before they could get in it. That meant he had to be fast as hell and on the money with each shot.

  Reminding himself of the old maxim for coming out on top in a gunfight, he repeated, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

  The snowmobiles were hauling ass. He could hear the whine of their engines as they raced toward him. That was a good sign—the faster, the better.

  They were seconds away now. Ten. Maybe twenty.

  Extending his knife out from under the cover of his hide site, he let it hover just above the taut cord that would spring the second trap. His heart was pounding and he took several deep breaths in order to help it calm down.

  When the first snowmobile came blazing past, he slashed the cord. The young tree did exactly what it was supposed to do, pulling the wire wrapped around a much sturdier tree taut. What Harvath hadn’t been expecting, though, was that the second rider would be following so closely behind the first.

  There was a loud twang as the snowmobiler hit the wire, which was hung across the trail like a clothesline at chest height, and he was instantly decapitated.

  His sled went sailing into the woods, hitting several trees before landing mangled and upside down.

  The lead rider must have noticed something had happened—maybe, out of the corner of his eye, he had seen the beam of his colleague’s headlight as it bounced off into the forest—because just as his machine drew even with the other trap, he turned and looked behind him.

  Either Harvath had set it too low, or this guy was too tall, because instead of having his head sliced clean off, the wire cut off his arm and sliced into his torso.

  He was thrown clear of the snowmobile, which managed to stay on the trail until it glided to a stop.

  Harvath looked and listened, but there were no other snowmobiles. Leaping from his hide, he ran from the woods and up to the trail to the mercenary who lay bleeding out in the snow.

  He could have shot the man from where he was, but he was unsure how far the sound would carry and how close the rest of them were. Instead, he slung his shotgun and closed in on him with his knife.

  Even before he drew even with the man, he knew there was no saving him. Not even a tourniquet would have made a difference. In addition to losing his arm and slicing open his chest, the wire must have snapped up as he was thrown from the snowmobile and cut into his neck, severing a major artery. He was spurting blood like an out-of-control sprinkler.

  Harvath made sure to not get too close and kept one eye on the man’s hands. The mercenary, though, didn’t attempt to reach for his weapon.

  Under the glow from the night vision goggles, Harvath watched as the life left the man’s eyes. There was no need to plunge his knife into him. The job had already been done. Harvath’s challenge now was to figure out what to do next.

  He didn’t bother to wait for the good idea fairy to strike. Instead he raced back to retrieve his rucksack and stripped the two dead mercenaries of anything of value to his survival. In that category, there was a ton.

  He helped himself not only to their weapons, but also to their ammo-packed chest rigs, four fragmentation grenades, the decapitated man’s winter coveralls, which, because of how his body had landed, had only minimal bloodstains, and best of all, one of their helmets rigged with night vision goggles.

  In almost any other situation, he would have booby-trapped the bodies with the frag grenades. He was afraid, though, that one the villagers might come along and get hurt. So leaving the dead soldiers where they were, he gathered up the rest of his equipment and ran down the trail to the remaining snowmobile.

  He secured the gear as best he could and was preparing to take off when he heard a sound that shook him to his core.

  The helicopter was coming.

  CHAPTER 52

  * * *

  * * *

  It was make or break time. When that helicopter landed, he had no idea how many men would be pouring out of it or how they’d be equipped. Would they be on foot? On skis? Or all on snowmobiles? There was no way of knowing.

  What he felt certain about, though, was that they had located Sini’s house in Friddja. That meant either Christina had described it to them, or more than likely, they had brought her along to make the identification in person.

  Once they had found Sini’s, they had probably found her husband, which was why they were inbound to Adjágas.

  And just as he suspected that Christina had been dragged along, the Wagner mercenaries had probably brought Sini’s husband as well. His job would be to help them identify Jompá’s cabin.

  What the mercenaries planned to do with their hostages was anyone’s guess. Harvath knew they were not going to let Christina go—not after she had aided his escape. This left him with a serious problem.

  Either they were going to hand her over to the GRU, who at best would throw her in prison, and at worst would execute her, or the mercenaries would rape and then beat her to death, leaving her body for the wolves. None of those were acceptable outcomes in his book.

  She had helped him and he needed to help her. He just prayed to God that she was on that helicopter. He didn’t want to have to go back to Nivsky to find her.

  Based on the possibility of hostages being among the mercenaries, his mindset flipped from ambush to rescue. That didn’t mean, though, that he couldn’t kill every last Wagner soldier on that helo, it just meant he had to make sure no harm came to Christina and, if he was present, Sini’s husband.

  If he knew exactly where the helicopter would land, he might have been able to find concealment nearby and, using the night vision goggles, catch a glimpse of who, and how many, got off. But as it stood, he had no clue.

  All he knew was that they would search Jompá’s cabin first. That’s where they expected to find him. With the bird coming in fast, he kicked it into high gear.

  He hid the snowmobile and his rucksack at the edge of the village, covering them with broken pine boughs. Then, he strapped on as much gear as he could carry, shouldered all the guns, and rushed toward the cabin.

  He knew where he was going to end up, but before he got there, he needed to establish several alternative positions—places where he could predeploy weapons and ammunition.

  Moving through the shadows behind the cabins, he picked his spots carefully. He wanted to be able to quickly access the gear, but also to remain hidden. And, if he found himself in a running gun battle, he wanted at least some cover.

  With everything set, he moved to his final position.

  Each cabin in Adjágas was different, but most of them were built with crawl spaces underneath—similar to the one where he had hidden his skis.

  One of them was rather dilapidated, but had an excellent view of Jompá’s. Even better, it was uninhabited.

  Clearing some of the snow away, he was able to dig a hole wide enough to allow him to squeeze underneath. It was only then that he realized how structurally unsound the cabin was.

  The floor above had rotted through in places and it sat on beams atop short, stacked stone pillars. He had the sense that just bumping one could bring the entire cabin crashing down on him.

  The space was so small, he had to balance the AK-15 rifle on his forearms and belly crawl to get into position. Had he been even the slightest bit claustrophobic, it would have been impossible.

  At the far end of the crawl space, he set his rifle aside and pushed away enough of the snow to be able to see Jompá’s. The range was perfect and there was nothing obstructing his view. The only drawback was going to be his muzzle flash. As soon as he started firing, it was going to be obvious where it was coming from.

  Backing up, deeper into the crawl space, and firing from there was out of the question. As he backed up, his
line of sight became impaired and he couldn’t fully see the target. He was going to have to risk shooting from where he was and follow the three Bs: be fast, be accurate, and be the hell out of there.

  He hoped there’d be enough chaos that he could get in all the shots he needed. But he knew better than to think like that. Murphy, of the eponymous law, always found a way to screw things up.

  For his own good, he needed to resist becoming greedy. Staying one second too long in that crawl space could mean death. If at all possible, he had to be on the way out before they even began shooting back at him. It wouldn’t be easy, but he didn’t get to choose the circumstances. He only got to choose how he was going to react to them.

  Outside, he could hear the thump, thump, thump of the helicopter’s blades as it arrived and hovered somewhere overhead. The rotor wash sent snow and ice flying in all directions as it illuminated its powerful searchlight and lit up Jompá’s cabin. Even at his distance, the light was practically blinding for Harvath.

  Shielding his eyes, he was able to watch as ropes were dropped and a team of six operators in total rappelled down.

  This wasn’t what he had planned for. He had expected them to set down someplace and come in on foot. Fuck, he thought to himself. Now what?

  There was only one thing he could do—what he was trained to do: adapt and overcome.

  Though he hated to do it, he backed up, turned around, and scrambled back in the direction from which he had entered the crawl space.

  He didn’t need to see them to know there were snipers onboard providing overwatch for the operators. The moment he started firing, they’d be putting rounds all over him. The deadly difference, though, was that they’d be shooting from above, through a rotting floor, rather than trying to skip rounds off the ground and maybe hit a target hidden in a crawl space.