Cold Kill

by Andrew Warren

  Yuri watched as Zasko and Timur mounted one of the snowmobiles.

  “It is time to finish this,” the commander grunted. “We move out, now!” They sped off down the mountain.

  Yuri took a deep breath, and watched his exhale turn to mist in the cold air. He crawled onto the other vehicle, and followed their trail into the shadowy darkness of the forest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caine shot up in bed. His fingers grasped at thin air, searching for the gun he normally kept in his nightstand.

  There was no gun. There was no nightstand. Just a crooked table, next to the bed. A couple books, with Russian lettering on the spine, lay stacked on the table. His flailing arm knocked a small framed picture off the pile of books.

  Then he remembered.

  The snow, the ice… the men hunting him. Feverish glimpses of the moonlight sparkling off the frost-covered trees. The howling of the dogs as the woman dumped his body on the sled. Charging through the depths of the forest, the cold night air rushing across his face…

  He remembered seeing cabins, like the one he had escaped from. Men sitting around a fire, more sleds, and other vehicles.

  A settlement of some kind.

  He looked around the room. He was lying in bed, inside one of the cabins. The timber walls and plastic windows seemed identical to the previous building. A pool of heat gathered under the covers near his feet. He threw aside the thick blankets, and found a brass pot with holes punched in the lid, sitting near the foot of the bed. He sat up, and lifted the lid off the pot. Several large stones lay inside, radiating warmth.

  Must have been heated by a fire, he thought. Where am I?

  He realized the throbbing pain in his flank had subsided, replaced by a dull ache. His fingers traveled across his skin… he felt the ridge of a scar, and stitches holding the wound closed.

  He picked up the photo he had knocked over. The image was surrounded by a simple wood frame. The color and detail in the print had faded with time, but he made out two Asian women, laughing and embracing in a park somewhere. They looked like they were in their forties, and they wore long, billowing pastel dresses. To Caine, the dresses looked like hanbok, traditional Korean gowns.

  His memory of the woman in the woods was vague and feverish, but he could swear she was one of the women in the picture.

  The door to the cabin opened. Caine tensed, and set the picture back down on the table. It was her, the woman, still wearing her heavy parka. She stepped into the cabin, shut the door behind her, and walked over to the bed. She was carrying a cast iron bowl on a tray, and she set it down on the table next to him.

  “I treat wound. Stiches. Here, eat. Soup, good.”

  She held the bowl out to Caine. A hand-carved wooden spoon was stuck in a mass of black noodles and stewed meat of some kind. The broth was thin and cloudy, and filled with what looked like shredded cabbage. He took the bowl, and spooned the mixture into his mouth. To his surprise, the soup was served cold. The noodles were satisfying, but the meat had a strange, gamey taste.”

  “It’s good,” he said. “What’s this made from?”

  The woman chuckled. “Naeng-myeon. Soup, you eat. Good for you. No egg, no kimchee. Mian-hamnida. Sorry.”

  Caine continued to slurp the liquid into his mouth. Whatever it was, it was food. His body had rested. Now he needed sustenance.

  “You saved my life,” he answered. “I can do without the kimchee. Who are you?”

  The woman gave him the faintest hint of a smile. “My name Bora. Bora Ryu. You American? Your name John? John most popular American name, yes?”

  Caine nodded, and spoke between spoonfuls of the cold broth. “Yes, I’m American, but my name is Tom.”

  The woman chuckled. “Tom. Like Tom Sawyer. Famous book. Good American name.”

  Caine finished eating, and set down the bowl. The woman handed him a steaming cup of liquid. “Tea,” she said.

  He took a small sip. The warm liquid tasted of herbs and honey. It soothed his parched throat as he drank.

  He cradled the cup in his hands, warming his fingers.

  “You’re Korean?” he asked.

  She nodded, and sipped from her own cup of tea. “North Korea.”

  Caine’s mind reeled. What were the odds of running into a North Korean woman in the middle of a Siberian forest?

  “North Korean? How did you get here?”

  The woman sighed. “Government send me here. I work for Russians. Timber, lumber, from forest. I am… I was arrested, in Pyongyang. Government send me away. Send me here.”

  She took another sip of tea, then licked her lips.

  “They make me slave. Me, and others like me.”

  “Other North Koreans?”

  She nodded. “Other men. I only woman. But we all slaves.”

  Of course, Caine thought. The old work gulags, set up by Breshnev and Kim Il Sung in the late sixties.

  At the height of the Cold War, The DPRK sent prisoners to work as cheap labor for the Russians. Then came the fall of communism, and the economic decay in North Korea. Now, ordinary laborers were rounded up and sent to work in the dismal and dangerous Siberian saw mills. The pay was meager, and the North Korean government confiscated most of their wages. Institutionalized slavery was one of the beleaguered nation’s few profitable exports.

  Conditions inside the mills were bleak, and exposure to the outside world was strictly controlled. Still, some of the laborers were desperate to travel to the camps. They saw it as their only chance to escape the iron fist of their decaying home.

  “I thought the workers in those camps weren’t allowed to leave,” Caine said. He watched her reaction as he took another sip of tea. Whoever this woman was, she had dispatched the Russian commando in the woods without a second thought. She had knowledge of traps, and was clearly a skilled hunter.

  His killer instincts slithered though his mind. If she think’s you’re a threat, she could be dangerous.

  Bora stared at the picture next to the bed. Her eyes seemed to lose focus, and her wide brow furrowed. “There was fighting, a riot. Happen years ago. Many men died. Russian guards, and many of my people. Some escaped, to China, or to the cities, the South Korean embassy. I… I and others, we wanted none of that.”

  “You didn’t want to be free?” Caine asked.

  She tilted her head. “We free here. We grow food, we hunt. Build cabins, keep to ourselves. For me, that is free enough. I am old. I know I cannot go home. But I don’t want to go to China, or South Korea, or even America. I stay here. Alone, in the woods. It is good.”

  “But you’re not alone. You said there were others. I saw them, I think.”

  She nodded. “A few. Old men, felt same as me. We stay here, we keep to ourselves.”

  “So that was your cabin I found? Sorry about—”

  She shook her head, cutting him off. “Not mine. Abandoned by Russian trapper. I use it when I go into forest. When I want to be alone.”

  Again, her eyes drifted to the picture.

  Caine thought for a moment. “How long have I been sleeping here?”

  Bora took another sip of tea. “Not long. Few hours. Your body cold. You need rest.”

  There was a knock at the door. Bora set down her cup, and heaved her body out of the chair. The floorboards creaked as she walked towards the door. She swung it open halfway. Caine saw a quick glimpse of two Korean men. They were older than Bora. Their short beards were dotted with flecks of gray, and the skin around their eyes was a mass of wrinkles.

  They spoke in hushed tones. Bora followed them outside, and shut the door behind her.

  Caine slid out of bed. He peered out the plastic window, and saw Bora and the men traipsing toward another cabin. He could hear her shouting, arguing with the others as they crossed the snow. Then they filed into the shack, and the door slammed shut behind her.

  He searched the cabin for his shirt and belongings. If Bora was right, if he had been sleeping for hours, then he could n
ot afford to stay here any longer. The old woman seemed to know her way around the woods. But no matter how careful she had been, it was only a matter of time before Zasko's team picked up their trail.

  And when that happened, Bora and her friends would no longer be alone. The violence that followed in his wake, the curse he had brought upon Naiyana, and everyone else who got close to him… it would follow him here as well.

  Bora and her friends were refugees, survivors of a horrifying ordeal. They were living out their last days here in peace and solitude. But now, they too would be caught in the crossfire.

  He threw on the parka he had taken from Leonid. The GRU shovel was standing by the door, in a puddle of water from the ice that had melted off its blade.

  Caine hefted the weapon, and slid it through his belt.

  Better for everyone if I just leave.

  He patted the pocket of the parka, confirming the satphone and battery were still held within. Then he stalked towards the door, prepared to venture out in the bone-chilling cold once again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Zasko lay prone on the snow, invisible within the drifts of white powder that surrounded him.

  He squinted through the twin lenses of his binoculars, and watched as a pair of men ambled through the trees. One of the men broke off, and entered a small cabin, built from fallen larch trees. A whisper of gray smoke drifted from the chimney that poked above the dwelling’s roof.

  Several other cabins nestled in the forest below. They all appeared to be handmade.

  Zasko heard a soft crunching in the snow. Timur crawled next to him. The commander lowered the binoculars, and glanced over at his tracker.

  “Have a look,” he said in a low voice, handing the binoculars to his comrade.

  Timur was silent as he peered down at the settlement hidden in the woods.

  “What do you think?” Zasko asked.

  “Five, maybe seven men. Could be Mongolian? The cabins look handmade. Judging from the condition of the wood, I’d say they’ve been here for some time… at least two years.”

  The commander stroked his goatee. “All this time, all these hunts. Yet I’ve never seen this place.”

  Timur lowered the binoculars. His dark, squinting eyes were unreadable, but his mouth dipped in a grimace. “No man ever made it this far before.”

  Zasko nodded. “True. But our target’s lucky streak is about to end. Come.”

  They crawled backwards, moving away from the hill that looked over the cluster of cabins. Zasko stood up, and dusted snow from his winter gear. He and Timur walked over to Yuri, who was cleaning his weapons on a plastic tarp. The younger man looked up with his good eye.

  “What did you find?”

  “Our prey is down there. He has taken refuge in a small camp, a settlement of some kind.”

  Yuri examined the barrel of his pistol, then snapped the slide closed. “Settlement? What kind of settlement.”

  “Who knows? Escaped prisoners, refugees perhaps. It does not matter. They are no match for us.”

  “That’s what you said about the target. Before he cut our team in half.”

  Before Zasko could reply, an electronic chirp sounded from the pack on the snowmobile. Zasko turned to Timur. The GPS unit on his belt began beeping.

  “The satphone,” Timur said. “He’s activated it.”

  Zasko stalked over to his pack and pulled out the phone. He looked at the display.

  “Timur, get a fix on his position,” Zasko snapped. He held the phone to his ear. “Zdravstvuyte. Hello, Mr. Caine.”

  “Piotr Zasko. The Iron Wolf.” Caine’s voice crackled over the line.

  “Only a few men know my real name,” Zasko answered. “Have we crossed paths before?”

  “Doha, Qatar. 2004. You were working with the GRU.”

  “Ah, yes. Preventing the spread of radical Islam. The work was quite... messy. I remember it well.”

  “I remember lots of bodies. Lots of missing pieces.”

  Zasko made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Early days, my friend. I was not yet the hunter I am today, I acted… impulsively. Took whatever trophy caught my fancy. An ear, a finger, teeth… trinkets of flesh and bone.”

  “And now?”

  Zasko turned away from his men, and paced a few steps across the snow. “Now, Mr. Caine? Now I hunt for the same reason all creatures on this earth hunt: to feast on my prey. To devour all a man has to give, and grow stronger from the taking. The heart, my friend. A man’s power, his very soul, lives in the heart.”

  Static filled the line. For a moment there was silence. Then Caine chuckled.

  “You’re a piece of work, Zasko. But you’re going to have to try harder if you want to take a bite out of me.”

  There was a click, and the line went dead.

  Zasko cursed, and marched back towards Timur. “Do you have a fix on his position?”

  The tracker nodded. “He’s not in the cabins. The reading is a few kilometers west of here. Satphone went dead again, but we can look for tracks.”

  Yuri stood up, and slid his pistol into its holster. “So his name is Caine? This Caine took out three of us while he was alone. Now he may have help from these so-called refugees.”

  Zasko shot Yuri a smoldering look, but a moment later nodded in agreement. “You are correct. Perhaps I have underestimated this prey of ours.”

  Zasko straddled his snowmobile, and began dialing a number on the satphone.

  “What are you doing?” Yuri asked.

  Zasko glanced up at him as the phone began to ring. “I am calling in a favor. After all, every hunting party needs its dogs.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The roar of the snowmobile was a distant buzz, faint and indistinct beneath the wind and the crackling ice in the swaying branches. Caine’s ears picked up the sound. He listened for a moment…

  It was growing louder. Closer.

  Damn, he thought. Zasko must’ve been closer than I thought.

  He sprinted as fast as he could, charging toward the densest grouping of trees he could find. The noise grew louder. They had almost reached his position.

  Taking cover behind a thick tree trunk, he flipped down the hood of his stolen parka and took aim with his AK-74. The rifle’s magazine was half empty, and the man he had taken it from, Leonid, only had one spare on him.

  He swept the rifle left and right, peering over the sights through the snow-draped trees. The wind was growing stronger, and tiny ice crystals filled the air with a blue-white haze.

  He wasn’t sure how far he’d traveled since sneaking out of Bora’s cabin. He had listened at the door, heard the men argue with the woman outside. He didn’t speak much Korean, but he didn’t need to… he could hear the fear and concern in their voices. He was an outsider, and she had brought him into their sanctuary.

  As always, death followed on his heels. For himself, and now everyone in the camp.

  They were right to be afraid.

  He had gathered his things and snuck out of the cabin, leaving before Bora returned. He knew Zasko would have tracked his position after the satphone call. With any luck, they would ignore the camp and continue in their pursuit of him. Once they picked up his trail, the hunters would not stop to investigate a few refugees. At least, not until he was dead.

  He had hoped he would have more time, could cover more distance, before the men caught up to him. According to his map, he was still far from the train tracks. But somehow, they were here. This would be his last stand.

  The snowmobile burst through a snowbank. Caine tracked the vehicle with the rifle as it charged though the trees. A lone, dark figure sat on the roaring vehicle. A thick, fur-clad arm reached up and waved at him as she skidded to a stop.

  The rider was Bora Ryu.

  Caine lowered the rifle. “What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted.

  Bora dismounted, and shuffled towards him in the snow. Her hunting rifle was slung over her back, and she was bundled in
her thick fur parka and scarves.

  “Men in village scared. They want you to leave.”

  “They’re right. I told you, more men coming. They want to kill me, and they will hurt—”

  Bora grunted, and silenced him with a wave of her large arm. “O, ib damul-eo, be quiet. I always know this day will come. We will have to fight again. We hide long enough.”

  Caine shouldered his rifle. “No, Bora. These men, they’re too dangerous. They’re not prison guards, or fur trappers. They’re soldiers. Assassins. They’ll kill you without a second thought.”

  Bora shrugged. “If I die, I die. If these men kill you, they come for us next. Time for hiding is over.”

  Caine said nothing. He could not deny the truth of her words.

  Suddenly, Bora looked up at the sky. She hurried over to Caine, and pulled him to the ground, rolling them both under a mound of snow.

  “Hey, what the—”

  “Shhhh!” She hissed, covering her lips with a finger.

  A second later he heard it. The thumping of a helicopter, swooping low overhead. The vehicle roared above them. Then the sound grew faint as it flew into the distance.

  After a few minutes of silence, Bora nodded. They stood up. Caine brushed the cold snow off his hair and skin.

  “A helicopter out here can only mean one thing,” he said.

  Bora stared up at the sky, as if she could still see the distant aircraft on the horizon. “More men.”

  “Yeah, more men. You still think hiding is a bad idea?”

  “Why these men after you?” she asked.

  “They tried to hurt someone… someone I cared about. So I hurt them first. Now, they want revenge.”

  “Who they hurt? Girlfriend, wife?”

  He shook his head. “A friend. Someone important to me. That’s all that matters.”

  Bora’s eyes became wide and unfocused. She stared across the snow, a blinding white plain stretching into the misty horizon. “I had friend back home,” she said, her voice a throaty whisper. “Someone I care for. Someone important.”