by Brad Thor
He prayed to God that they had made the right decision.
CHAPTER 63
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MURMANSK OBLAST
Harvath had stood at the door listening, his blanket still wrapped around him, while Christina had curled up on one of the sauna’s benches and fallen asleep.
Standing still went against everything he had ever been taught. All of his training had hammered into him that the key to escaping and evading enemy forces was to keep moving.
Waiting for Jompá and Olá to show was beginning to feel like a mistake. So much so, that part of him wanted to take his chances in the snow, to wake up Christina and run for the Finnish border. The other part of him, though—the rational, sane, experienced part—told him to stay put, take a deep breath, and relax.
He needed to dial his anxiety down, to think of something else that would move him off code red to at least code orange, or maybe even code yellow.
Normally on an operation, he didn’t allow his mind to wander. He had become an expert at compartmentalization, and could remain focused, no matter how badly his mind wanted to wander. But for a few moments, he allowed himself to wonder what he might do once he made it out.
He knew one thing for sure: whatever he did, it wouldn’t involve snow and it definitely wouldn’t involve cold. There was a little hotel he liked in the Florida Keys. He had taken solace there before. Maybe that’s where he would go—warm sand, warm water, and a bottomless bar bill.
He couldn’t go home, at least he couldn’t stay there—not for long. Home was Lara. Her clothes were hanging in the closet, her makeup in the bathroom, her fancy teas all organized in the kitchen.
At some point, he would have to make his peace with what had happened, but not until he had settled the bill. It would happen on his time, and only when he was ready. There was no other way it would work.
Leaving the sound and smell of the ocean, he brought his mind back to the here and now.
As the sauna had no windows, he had felt okay snapping a couple of chem lights and using them to dimly illuminate the tiny space.
He looked at Christina. She had been through a ton. He had been trained for this kind of grueling exhaustion, she hadn’t. It was good to see her sleeping. The more rest she could get, the better. The biggest push was still ahead.
He knew she could handle it, though. She was amazingly resilient. When he had explained all of the risks that faced them, she had smiled and simply said, “Let’s go.”
It wasn’t hard to understand why, but she had explained it to him nonetheless.
There was nothing left for her in Nivsky, nothing left in Russia, except pain. She had made up her mind to go with him the moment she had agreed to help him. He was an answer to a question she didn’t even know she had.
It didn’t matter what lay ahead. All that mattered was that she keep moving forward and put Russia behind her.
She knew all too well how her country operated. Everything good came at a heavy price. It was why so many of its people were so miserable. Nothing good ever really happened to average Russians, there were just shades of “less worse.”
Living abroad had given her a taste of what could be. She just hadn’t had the courage then to stay abroad. And while England wasn’t the United States, she had gotten a taste of Western culture and understood what it meant.
The United States was still a land of opportunity. The only limits there were the ones you placed on yourself. Whatever she wanted to do, she could do it.
In Harvath’s opinion, she had nailed it. In fact, she had nailed it in a way that only someone who didn’t have those advantages and freedoms could. It eased his mind that involving her had been the right thing to do. Somehow, all of this seemed destined to have happened.
That said, they still had much to do before they could consider themselves free.
Looking at his watch, he tried to anticipate how much time remained before Nicholas would be able to see him again via satellite. Several times, he had heard the distant rumble of what sounded like the Wagner helicopter, but it had yet to make it this far out. In a way, that was a victory. And despite its being small, he knew he should celebrate it. So far, so good.
Christina must have had incredible hearing, because at the first, far off barking of the dogs, she stirred and sat up.
“Jompá and Olá?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“It sounds like it,” he replied, picking up the rifle. “We should get ready to move.”
Together, they packed up their gear except for a little bit of food, which they split between them.
They ate quickly and in silence. By the time the dog teams pulled up outside, they were ready to go.
With Christina translating, Harvath showed Jompá and Olá the spot on the map where he wanted them to be taken to.
The men nodded. The lake was known for its fishing and there was another Sámi village not far from there. Two Sámi coming to trade shouldn’t be an unusual sight. All that was left was to load Harvath and Christina onto the sleds.
Pulling back the reindeer hides, the brothers exposed the large slabs of frozen moose meat they had brought with them. They would be uncomfortable to hide beneath, but they would effectively shield them from any thermal imaging.
Harvath’s initial plan had been to purchase from Jompá and Olá two live reindeer that were scheduled for slaughter, have the brothers hollow, or “cape,” them out, and for him and Christina to be transported to the rendezvous inside those.
It would have been a warm, but somewhat disgusting way to travel. The weight, though, the brothers had explained, was too much for the dogs to pull, so they had settled on their current solution.
To help insulate their passengers from the cold, they had brought extra reindeer hides along.
Laying Harvath and Christina down, they helped bundle them up and then lowered the moose meat down over them.
Fortunately, there was a small, wooden framing system atop which the slabs set, but it didn’t leave a lot of room. Both Harvath and Christina had to turn their heads to the side or tuck their chins into their chests to avoid their noses pressing directly against the meat.
Once everything was set, Jompá and Olá called out to their teams, the dogs started barking, and the sleds lurched forward.
Over thousands of years, the Sámi had built up an amazing tolerance for the cold. Whereas Christina had warned Harvath that there was only so much distance he could travel before succumbing to exposure, Jompá and Olá could far outlast him. The dogs also moved a hell of a lot faster than a man on skis or snowshoes.
While he hated not being able to see what was going on, Harvath tried to relax and enjoy the ride. If everything went according to plan, they’d be across the border and into Finland in a matter of hours.
By the same token, he knew that very seldom did everything go according to plan. In fact, the better things seemed to be progressing, the greater the likelihood that something bad was right around the corner. It was how Murphy worked.
He gripped the rifle a little tighter. In addition to the shotgun lying on his other side, he also had a pistol. Christina had a pistol, too, as well as a rifle.
Doing a quick mental inventory, he tallied up how many frag grenades he had left and then how many rounds of ammunition they had between them.
In the end, he hoped they wouldn’t need any of it, but if they did, he prayed that it would be enough.
CHAPTER 64
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Pavel, the bush pilot, made his money chartering his old plane to anyone capable of paying. Mostly, he flew hunters and fisherman. Occasionally, he got an arctic research team or a group of mining company executives. No matter who the client was, the seats were removable and the cabin could be reconfigured to handle the load.
It was a tight fit, and would be even tighter on the way back with Harvath and the woman, but they had managed to get themselves and all of their gear loaded.
Haney’s concern over the pilot’s drinking remained. Though Aleksi had convinced him to lay off the booze, when he rose to do his preflight check of the aircraft, he didn’t appear to have sobered up much. He probably kept a bottle in his bedroom, the bathroom, or both. In fact, Haney was willing to bet there was one aboard the plane as well.
“Did you remember to pack a parachute?” Staelin joked, as they watched the wobbly pilot walk around the Pilatus, manually testing the flaps and rudder.
“I did,” Barton deadpanned, as he slid past carrying bladders full of fresh water.
Haney chuckled. Sipping on a fresh cup of coffee, he stomped his boots in the snow and tried to warm up. “You ready for this?”
“As ready as I’m going to be,” answered Staelin. “What’s the latest on Harvath?”
“Everything’s on track. NRO is monitoring two dog sleds heading toward the LZ.”
“What about the weather?”
“We’re going to have to move fast,” Haney replied. “The front is already closing in and visibility is dropping.”
Staelin used his chin to gesture toward the pilot. “Can we rely on this guy?”
“Aleksi says yes, but I don’t trust anyone I don’t know. That’s why I’m riding up front with him in the copilot’s seat.”
“Have you ever flown a plane before?”
Haney nodded. “Just haven’t done any takeoffs or landings.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Relax. We’re going to be fine.”
“I’ll relax when we’ve got Harvath and we’re out of Russia,” Staelin replied. “Speaking of which, what do we know about those mercenaries who are after him?”
“As far as we know, they’re still looking. The last report I received was that the helicopter had landed at Alakurtti for refueling and probably a crew change.”
“So we’ve got no idea if they’ve given up or are still in the hunt?”
“They’re still in the hunt. There are men on the ground at and around the village where the other Mi-8 went down.”
“And our rules of engagement still stand?”
Haney nodded. “They still stand. Weapons free.”
“Roger that. When do you want to do the final briefing?”
Looking at his watch, the team leader said, “Let’s gather everybody up and do it now.”
It took several minutes, but once Staelin had pulled the team together, he handed the floor over to Haney. He reviewed the mission parameters, the rules of engagement, and all the latest intelligence. He then opened it up for questions. There were none.
After a comms check, he gave the team the ten-minute warning and grabbed Aleksi to have a final chat with the pilot.
The Finnish soldier would not be coming with them. His government had forbidden it. They had no desire to be part of an act of war on Russian soil, no matter how justified.
Haney didn’t like not having a translator along. Pavel didn’t speak a word of English. Even though they were asking for trouble, it was the hand they had been dealt. They were lucky the Finns had gone along with them this far. As long as the Russian and his plane could fly, they’d take everything else as it came.
Anxious to be gone before sunrise as well, Aleksi bade the team good fortune, clamped into his bindings, and skied back into the forest toward the border.
As he did, the first flakes of snow from the storm began to fall. Haney and his crew were now on their own.
CHAPTER 65
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ALAKURTTI AIR BASE
With the Wagner disaster, as well as President Peshkov breathing down his neck for proof of life on Harvath, General Minayev hadn’t gotten any sleep, which only served to make him more disagreeable than usual. When the Mi-8 flared and touched down, he was already outside, waiting impatiently on the tarmac.
As soon as Teplov’s second in command, a man named Garin, hopped out, Minayev grabbed him and dragged him to the operations center at the back of the restricted hangar.
Once there, he cleared everyone else out and then began shouting. “What the fuck happened? Thirteen dead. Thirteen! Including Teplov! And he took down a Russian Air Force helicopter! One fucking man did all of this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he’s scalping people? Scalping? What is he, a fucking maniac?”
“Apparently.”
Minayev waited for him to expound, to provide a little additional insight based on what he had seen, but the man didn’t offer anything further.
“Damn it!” the General shouted. “Fucking damn it!”
Garin knew Minayev’s reputation for biting the heads off his subordinates. It was better to give the shortest answer possible and not to step out on a rhetorical limb. Speak when spoken to, and always keep your opinion to yourself around him, even when he asked for it.
“Where is Harvath now?” the General asked. “Right this very second.”
“We don’t know.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have enough information at this time to answer your question.”
“Damn it, Garin! Don’t play games with me. Where the fuck do you think he is? Answer me. That’s an order.”
At this point, the Wagner mercenary had no choice but to obey. “He’s either dead or on his way to the border with Finland.”
Minayev wanted to put a bullet in him. “That’s the dumbest fucking answer I have ever heard. Did you come up with that on your own?”
“Sir, let me explain.”
“This had better be good.”
“Harvath stole one of our snowmobiles. We believe that is how he was able to get away from the village before we could get there.
“We found tracks near the helicopter crash. It looks like he parked the snowmobile and came in on foot. After shooting and scalping Colonel Teplov, he hiked back to the snowmobile with two other people. We think it was Dr. Volkova from Nivsky and the husband of the healer she was supposed to meet in Friddja.”
“He only has a snowmobile, but you have had a helicopter. So where the fuck is he?”
“The reason we think he may be dead is that we followed a set of fresh tracks to a lake southwest of the village. There was a hole in the ice—one big enough that the snowmobile could have fallen through—and we could see some sort of light under the water.”
“So he fell through? Are you positive?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then why is there light coming from the bottom of that fucking lake?” Minayev demanded.
Garin remained composed, hoping his calm might prove contagious. “It could be intentional. Meant as a diversion. Maybe he wants us to think he fell through. Until we get a cold-water dive team out there, we can’t be sure.”
“I will requisition one.”
“Thank you.”
The General then locked his eyes on him. “And if it is a diversion?”
“Then we need to be focusing all of our attention on the border,” said Garin. “That’s where I believe he will be going.”
“The border is over thirteen hundred kilometers long. Just where exactly are we supposed to fucking look?”
“Not where, sir,” the mercenary replied. “But rather, for what.”
“Okay,” Minayev responded. “For what are we looking? And before you answer, understand that I’m out of fucking patience. This had better be informed. Very informed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Garin, confident that his information was just that. “We have been interrogating the villagers. Apparently, two brothers were returning from a hunt when they found Harvath unconscious in the snow. They brought him back to one of their cabins—the one that ended up being booby-trapped. And while the owner stayed with Harvath, the other brother went and collected the healer woman from Friddja, the next village over.”
This was good information indeed. The General removed a cigarette and lit it. “And what did the two brothers have to say ab
out all of this?”
“Nothing. We can’t find them. They’re gone.”
“What do you mean they’re gone?” he stated, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“When we went to question them, they had already left.”
“Meaning they just walked into the woods and vanished? Or maybe they fell into your fucking ice hole and are down there swimming around with Harvath, the snowmobile, and all the fish.”
Garin ignored his sarcasm. “According to the villagers, whenever the brothers have a successful hunt, they keep some of the meat and the rest they go and trade.”
“Go and trade where?”
“With any number of other Sámi villages.”
Minayev took another puff of his cigarette as he tried to recall how many indigenous villages there were in the Oblast. There were more than a few. Nevertheless, he couldn’t figure out how this information was useful, and was just about to say so, when Garin continued.
“While we may not know where they’re traveling,” he said, “we know how. This is where the what comes in. The two brothers are using dog teams. As soon as we can get the helicopter refueled and get a new crew assigned, that will be the focus of our search. They may be helping Harvath.”
The General smiled. This he could work with. The Kremlin would be pleased. “New crew or old crew, as soon as that helicopter is refueled, you’re lifting off. Is that clear?”
“But General Minayev, the—”
“Is that clear?” he barked.
“Yes, sir,” said Garin.
“Good. Now get the fuck out of here. And don’t come back without Harvath—even if you have to chase him into fucking Finland.”
CHAPTER 66
