March 8, 11:24 P.M.
Siberia, Russia
Tucker immediately realized all snowdrifts were not alike, especially in Siberia. Having gone through weeks of thawing and freezing, the drift’s face had become armored by several inches of ice.
He hit the frozen surface hip-first, hoping to transition into a roll.
It was not to be.
He crashed through the top of the berm before his momentum flipped his legs up and over his head, sending him into a somersault down the drift’s rear slope. He slammed onto his back and began sliding on his butt down the long, steep surface, his heels stuttering over the ice-encrusted snow. He tried jamming his elbows into the drift, to slow himself, but got no traction. To his right, alarmingly close, rose a lizard-back of boulders.
Above him, he heard a growl. He tipped his head back in time to see Kane’s sleek form come galloping down the slope. The shepherd was there in seconds and clamped his teeth into Tucker’s jacket collar. Once latched on, Kane sat down on his haunches and lifted his head, his strong back muscles straining to take Tucker’s weight.
Ahead and a few feet to the right, a sapling jutted from the snow. On impulse, he swung his left leg out, curled it, and hooked the trunk with his ankle. The momentum whipped him around, dragging Kane along, too, before jerking them both to a sudden stop.
All was quiet.
Tucker lay perfectly still and mentally scanned his body. Nothing seemed broken. He could feel Kane’s weight hanging from his collar.
“Kane? How’re you doing, pal?”
The shepherd replied with a muffled growl that Tucker recognized as roughly, Okay, but now it’s time for you to do something about this.
“Hang on, give me a second . . .”
Tucker lifted his hips, freeing his right leg from under his butt, then extended it and hooked it around the sapling trunk above the other ankle. He set his teeth, flexed his legs, and dragged himself and Kane up the slope until he could reach out and grab the sapling with his left hand. He then reached back with his other arm and snagged Kane’s vest.
The shepherd unclamped his jaws, and with Tucker’s help, Kane scrabbled up the slope, his nails scratching on the ice until he reached the sapling.
Finally, Tucker let his legs uncurl and swung his body around, his feet again facing downhill. He slammed his heels into the ice several times until he had formed adequate footholds, then sprawled back to catch his breath.
Kane gave his hand a lick: relief and reassurance.
Tucker sat up and got his bearings. While plunging headlong down the slope in almost complete darkness, the angle had seemed precipitous. Now he could see the grade was no more than twenty-five degrees.
Could be worse . . .
To their right, fifty feet away, a line of skeletal birches and heavy Siberian pines snaked down the slope. Far below, a dark smudge ran perpendicular to the incline.
A river. But which one? For every charted stream and lake in Siberia, a dozen more were unrecorded and unnamed. Still, rivers meant civilization. Follow one and you’ll inevitably find the other.
But first he had to find his rucksack. All his supplies were inside it.
He looked around, scanning the snow, but saw nothing. It was too dark to make out any fine details. And unimpeded, his rucksack could have rolled all the way down to the river, taking with it everything he needed to survive in this harsh climate.
He had only one hope: to borrow someone’s keener eyes.
Tucker turned to Kane. “SPOT RUCKSACK,” he ordered.
Thankfully, rucksack was one of Kane’s thousand-word vocabulary. When traveling, most of Tucker’s worldly possessions—and survival tools—were contained in that pack.
After twenty seconds, Kane let out a low-key yelp.
Tucker twisted around and followed Kane’s gaze uphill and sideways, toward the tree line. Even with Kane’s guidance, it took Tucker another thirty seconds to spot it. The rucksack had become wedged into the fork of a white-barked birch tree.
He rolled onto his hands and knees, grasped Kane’s vest collar with his left hand, then began sidling toward the tree line, kicking toeholds into the ice as he went. It was slow work, eating up too much time. Halfway there, Tucker realized Kane needed no support. The shepherd’s nails worked as natural pitons.
Working together, they reached the forest of Siberian pines and birches. Under the shelter of the bower, the snow was powdery and soft. Leaving Kane propped against a trunk, he climbed upward and angled toward the tree into which the rucksack was wedged.
In the distance, a branch snapped.
The sound echoed across the night’s stillness—then faded.
Tucker froze. Where had the sound come from?
Above, he decided.
Slowly Tucker reached forward, grasped the nearest trunk, and laid himself flat. He scanned uphill, looking for movement. After ten seconds of silence, there came another distinctive sound: a muffled crunch of a footstep in the snow.
He strained as silence followed—then another crunch.
Somewhere above, a person was moving—not casually, but with purpose. Either a hunter or Felice. If so, she was even more dangerous than he’d anticipated. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since he and Kane had leaped from the train. Felice would have had to pinpoint their position, choose her own jumping-off point, then backtrack here at a running pace.
Possible, he realized, but such speed spoke to her skill as a hunter.
But was it her?
He turned his head. Twenty feet below, Kane lay on his belly, half buried in the softer snow. His eyes were fixed on Tucker, waiting for orders.
He signaled with his free hand: move deeper into the trees and hunker down.
On quiet feet, Kane moved off. Within seconds he was lost from sight.
Tucker returned his attention to their visitor. Using his elbows and knees, he burrowed himself into the powdery snowpack until only his eyes were exposed. Two minutes passed. Then five. The footsteps continued moving downhill at a stalking pace: step, pause . . . step, pause. Finally, a shadowy figure appeared from behind a tree, then stopped and crouched down.
The person’s build was slim and athletic in a form-fitting dark jacket, a cut that was too modern, too tactical. Definitely not a local rural hunter. The head turned, and from beneath a dark wool cap, a wisp of blond shone in the stark starlight.
Along with something else.
A rifle barrel poked from behind a shoulder. How had Felice smuggled a sniper rifle onto the train? As he watched, she unslung her weapon and cradled it against her chest.
She was forty feet up the slope and to his right. If she kept to her line, she would pass within feet of his trapped rucksack. Not good. He was now playing cat and mouse with a SIG-trained sniper. The solution was simple if not so easily executed: kill Felice while he still had the element of surprise.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, he reached to his belt and withdrew the stolen P22. He brought it up along his body and extended it toward Felice. He aimed the front sight on her center mass, clicked off the safety, and took up the slack on the trigger.
What happened next Tucker would write off later as a soldier’s intuition.
Still crouched, Felice pushed backward and disappeared behind a tree.
Crap.
He kept his gun steady, waiting for a clear shot, but from the stealthy noise of retreat, Felice was on the move, heading back up the slope, using the trunks to screen herself. After five minutes she was gone, but he could guess her plan. She intended to head deeper into the trees, then back down in a flanking maneuver. She must be gambling that he and Kane hadn’t made it to the river yet, and that they didn’t know she was tracking them. She would set up an ambush down below and wait.
She would be in for a long wait, Tucker decided.
He gave Felice another frigid five minutes’ head start, then pocketed the P22, eased himself sideways out of his burrow, and began crawling toward his rucksack. He reached the tree, grabbed the bag’s strap, and pulled it down to him.
He then went dead still to listen.
Silence.
He donned the rucksack, then aimed his hand toward Kane’s last known position and signaled, trusting the shepherd had followed his training and kept Tucker in view.
Return, he motioned.
He waited, but it did not take long. A hushed footfall sounded above him. He craned his neck and found Kane crouched in the snow a few feet away. Tucker reached up, grabbed a handful of neck fur, and gave his partner a reassuring massage.
“FOLLOW,” he whispered in his partner’s ear.
Together, they began the slow climb upward, back toward the rail line.
11:50 P.M.
It took longer than he’d hoped to reach the top of the slope—only to discover that a towering, windswept drift blocked the way to the tracks, a sheer wall, three times as tall as Tucker. He would have to sidestep his way across the slope and hope to find where he had originally crashed through it so they could cross back to the railway.
Tucker took only a single step away from the tree line and out onto that treacherous, icy expanse—when he felt something shift beneath his boot. In the back of his mind he thought, log, but he had no time to react. The thigh-sized chunk of tree trunk, buried under a few inches of snow and held fast by the thinnest film of ice, broke free and started rolling downhill, taking Tucker and a swath of snow with it.
Avalanche.
Tucker pushed Kane aside, knowing the shepherd would try to latch on to him again. “EVADE!” he hissed.
The order countermanded Kane’s instinct to protect him. The shepherd hesitated only a moment before leaping sideways and back into the shelter of the tree line.
Tucker knew he was in trouble. The sliding mass of snow was bulldozing over him, propelling him faster and faster down the slope. With the rucksack preventing him from rolling over, Tucker paddled his arms and legs, trying to mount the snow wave, to ride its tumult, but it was no use. Doing his best to survive, he drove one elbow into the ground, leaning into it. He spun on his belly until he was aimed headfirst down the slope, still on his belly.
Fifty yards away, the river loomed. The surface was black and motionless. With any luck, it was frozen over. If not, he was doomed.
Tucker’s mind raced.
Where was Kane? Where was Felice?
No doubt she’d heard the miniavalanche—but was he visible within the snowy surge? He got his answer. Ahead and to his right, an orange flare spat in the night, coming from a clump of scrub bushes near the waterline.
A muzzle flash.
If nothing else, his headlong plunge had made Felice miss her first shot. The second would be closer. The third would be dead-on. Tucker reached back, freed the P22 from his pocket with a struggle, and pointed it toward the site of that flash.
He felt a sting at his neck.
Grazed by a bullet.
Ignoring the pain, he squeezed the trigger twice, wild potshots, but maybe enough to discourage the sniper.
Then he hit the river’s berm and launched into the air. His heart lurched into his throat. A heartbeat later, he belly-flopped onto the ice, bounced once, then found himself rolling, flat-spinning across the river’s surface. He slammed into a clump of trees jutting from the ice and came to an abrupt, agonizing stop.
Gasping for air, he rolled onto his side and fought the urge to curl into a painful ball.
He swept his arms across the ice, searching for his pistol. It had been knocked from his cold fingers as he struck the river.
Where—?
Then he spotted it. The P22 lay a few feet away in a tangle of dead branches. He reached toward it.
A chunk of ice exploded at his fingertips, shards stinging his face. The gunshot sounded like the muffled snap of a branch. She was using a noise suppressor.
“Not another inch!” Felice Nilsson called from somewhere to his right.
He craned his neck and spotted her. She was forty feet away, kneeling at the river’s edge, the rifle tucked to her shoulder. At this range, she could put a bullet in his ear.
Instead, she shifted her rifle ever so slightly, from a kill shot to something that would maim and hurt. The moon, reflecting off the ice, cast the scene in stark contrast.
“Tell me where you were scheduled to meet Bukolov,” she demanded.
In answer, Tucker slowly lifted his hand from the ice.
“Careful!” she barked. “I’ll take it off. Don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“I don’t,” Tucker replied, raising his palm, as if pleading for her to be calm, but instead he pointed one finger at her.
“What are you—?”
Tucker rotated his hand, fingers pointing toward the ice.
“Good-bye, Felice,” he said through chattering teeth.
From out of the forest behind her, Kane burst forth.
A moment ago, Tucker had noted the shepherd’s furtive approach, a mere shift of shadows lit by the reflected moonlight. Kane obeyed Tucker’s signal, a simple one.
Attack.
Kane races across the gap, bunching his haunches at the last moment.
He has followed the trail of the woman, catching her scent in the woods, picking it out of the spoor of deer and rabbit. He recognizes it from the train, remembers the hatred in her voice. Next came the muffled shots of the rifle and the sharper cracks of a pistol.
His other was in danger, threatened.
The last command remained etched behind his eyes.
Evade.
So he kept hidden, following the whiff of gun smoke, the musk of the hot skin, ever down toward the flow of water and creaking ice.
There, beyond the woman, he sees his partner out on the ice. He holds back a whine of concern, wanting to call out.
Then movement.
A hand raised.
A command given.
He obeys that now.
The woman turns, fear bursting from her skin. As she swings, her gun barrel dips slightly.
He sees and explodes with his hind end, springing high.
As Tucker watched, Kane slammed into Felice like a linebacker, his jaws clamping on to her arm before the pair hit the ice. Felice screamed and thrashed, but she held tight to the rifle’s stock.
A sniper to the end, Tucker thought. Lose your rifle, lose your life.
He shoved up, ready to help his partner—only to hear a sharp crack erupt beneath him. A rift snaked outward from his body and headed toward Kane and Felice. Dark, icy water gushed through the fault line.
“Felice, stop struggling!” Tucker called. “Lie still!”
Panicked, deaf to his warning, she continued to struggle, her left hand still clenched around the rifle stock.
He forced himself to his knees, then his feet. The ice shifted beneath him, dipping sideways. He leaped forward, balancing on the teetering slabs as the river broke under him. He hopscotched toward Kane and Felice.
The crack reached them, then spider-webbed outward, enveloping them. With a whoosh, the ice opened up. The pair dropped headlong into the water.
With his heart thundering in his ears, Tucker stumbled forward. Fifteen feet from the hole, he threw himself into a slide, on his belly, his arms extended, trying to distinguish between the two shapes thrashing in the icy water. He saw a pale white hand slapping at the ice, spotted Kane’s head surge from the water, his snout pointed at the sky.
The shepherd gasped, coughing.
Sliding parallel to the hole, Tucker grabbed Kane’s vest collar and jerked hard, plucking the wet dog from the water.
From the corner of his eye, Tucker saw Felice’s rifle jut out of the water; the barrel swung toward them.
Even now, she hadn’t given up the fight.
She slapped at the ice with a bloody arm, while trying to bring her rifle to bear with the other hand.
Tucker rolled onto his side and kicked off with his heel, spinning on his hip. He snapped out with his other leg and struck the rifle, sending it skittering across the ice and into the snow along the opposite bank.
With a final, spasmodic flailing, Felice’s arm vanished underwater, her body pulled down by the current, and she disappeared from view.
Together, Tucker and Kane crawled to the bank, but both kept watch on the shattered hole. He half expected Felice to reappear. Only after two minutes did he feel confident enough to state, “I think she’s gone.”
Still, he kept a vigil at the bank, probing his neck wound. The gouge was narrow but deep. Beside him, Kane did a full body shake, casting out a shower of icy water, his tail wagging off the last few drops.
Tucker checked over his partner for injuries. For his efforts, he earned a warm lick to his cold cheek, his dog’s message easy to read: Glad we’re still alive.
“I know, pal, me too,” he muttered.
He shrugged off his rucksack, unzipped the side pocket, and dug out his first-aid kit. Working from feel alone, he squeezed a thick stripe of surgical glue into the wound and pinched the edges together, clenching his teeth against the sting.
Once finished, a shiver shook through him. Kane’s haunches also quaked against the cold. In this weather, the effects of cold water were amplified. Hypothermia couldn’t be far off.
“Let’s go,” he said, ready to set off, but not before completing one last duty.
Moving fifty yards downriver, he found a patch of thicker ice that easily bore his weight, allowing him to cross to the opposite bank. He walked back upstream and retrieved Felice’s rifle. He examined his prize. It was the Swedish Army’s standard sniper rifle: a PSG-90—variant D. After a quick inspection for damage and followed by a few quick twists and turns, he had the weapon broken down into its four component parts, none of which was longer than eighteen inches.
“Now to get warm.”
He and Kane found a cluster of trees and made a temporary camp. An abandoned bird’s nest and some scraps of birch bark served as perfect kindling. Within a few minutes, he had a fire blazing.
He stripped off Kane’s vest and hung it over the fire to dry.
With no prompting, the shepherd stretched out beside the flames and gave a contented hmmph.
Settled and warm, Tucker did a quick check of his GPS unit, pinpointing their location. “Time to find out how big of a mess we’re in,” he mumbled.
According to the map, they were within easy walking distance of two villages: Borshchovka and Byankino. It was tempting to head for one of them, but he decided against it. Felice was clever. She surely had given her partners—or whoever hired her—a situation report after jumping from the train. If so, the two nearby villages would be the first places any search party would visit.
Of the hundreds of axioms that the army had drummed into his head, one matched this situation perfectly: Avoid being where your enemy expects you to be.
So he extended his search on the map. Ten miles to the northeast was the small town of Nerchinsk. There, he could regroup and decide how best to reach Perm and his contact.
He stared at the dog, at the crisp stars.
It would be easy to abandon this mission.
But blood had been spilled.
He pictured the dead porter’s ashen face, remembering his smile, his joy while petting Kane. The memory, the responsibility, reminded him of another adage, burned into every ranger’s mind: Take the initiative, and get the mission done.
He intended to do just that.