by Jack Carr
* * *
Vasilievich heard the report of the large-caliber weapon reverberate off the canyon walls and saw the muzzle flash just as his sniper’s head snapped back and away from his Chukavin, his body collapsing in an unnatural heap.
Without looking back up at the cliff, Vasilievich pushed himself to his feet and retreated into the darkness.
CHAPTER 77
THE SNOW CRUNCHED BENEATH his feet, his NODs fogging up from the exertion. He stumbled, fell, got back up, and pressed onward. If only he could make it to the lodge. Vasilievich’s frantic radio calls went unanswered. Sergei never used radios; he despised all trappings of the modern world, and the director was on the hunt, focused on his newest acquisition—the American whose sister he’d killed days earlier.
What was that? The distinctive sound of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s revolutionary invention echoed through the forest. It was too far away to be directed at him. Was it possible one of his men had survived the encounter? His contractors carried M4s. Who on the island had an AK? Then he heard it again. And again. Then it hit him. The Americans were putting AK rounds into the dead bodies of his men.
Now Vasilievich knew what it was to be hunted. His force had been defeated by the Americans. He’d become too comfortable with the night vision and lasers, knowing their adversary wouldn’t have the advantage of technology after being hit with the EMP. He’d become overconfident, on home soil with the advantage of surprise and the technical superiority of owning the night.
The Americans had made them pay for their hubris.
He knew they had taken his force’s helmets and night vision, probably their snowshoes and weapons with IR lasers as well.
If only he could get to the relative safety of Aleksandr’s compound, he could contact the Russian military across the bay at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky or Avacha Bay and request reinforcements. With the weapons in the lodge, he, Aleksandr, and Sergei could hold off the invaders until help arrived.
Stopping to catch his breath, Vasilievich nervously scanned the path behind him. He’d be easy to track in the snow, and with early nautical twilight not far off, his pursuers would be able to pick up their pace. He closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened.
There, they were coming. Keep going. Get to the lodge!
* * *
Reece and his team charged through the snow, now outfitted in the snowshoes, helmets, rifles, and NODs of their enemy. Reece had warned them that the IR lasers were probably sighted in point of aim, point of impact at twenty-five yards, so anything past that distance would be dicey.
Devan had his eyes on Edo, who pushed forward on the track of their quarry. Reece took point and had his eyes up and out, looking for threats.
It was clear that the Russian was moving toward the lodge, probably to sound the alarm and warn Aleksandr of the approaching hit team. Reece was intent on him not making it.
Devan threw up his left hand, signaling the patrol to stop. He’d seen Edo change his behavior. They were close.
Not wanting to walk into another ambush, Reece gave the hand and arm signal for the two trail SEALs to punch out to the right. Farkus and Chavez would move out and ahead to flank their target, putting him in an L ambush and sealing his fate.
Reece and Devan waited, quiet and listening for any changes in the environment. Eli took rear security.
They’d give their flanking element a solid five minutes and then it would be time for Edo to go to work.
* * *
They’d caught up quicker than Vasilievich had anticipated. How many were there? The Russian knew he would never make it to the lodge in time. He would have to outthink them.
His plan was a long shot, but one that just might pay off. With a dog on his track he’d double back, circling around and run parallel to them, closing the distance while moving in the opposite direction, essentially doing a large U-turn. The dog’s nose would be on the track. If he could make the move before his pursuers noticed he was veering to his right, he just might have a chance. The tubes on these particular NODs were not the best for peripheral vision. It was like looking through two toilet paper tubes. Everything within those tubes was lit up in hues of green, white, and black. To see right or left, his head had to physically turn in those directions. He hoped that because they were exerting themselves to catch him before he got to the lodge, they would be too focused on making time through the snow rather than on the possibility their prey might be trying to outwit them with such a risky maneuver. By the time they figured out he was not going for the lodge, he’d have the drop on them.
* * *
The two Americans and the lone Russian saw each other at the same time.
Farkus was in the lead. His weapon came up quickly, as he took the safety off, finger to trigger, but not fast enough for the Russian coming directly for him, who dove into his first available cover.
“Contact front!” Farkus yelled to Chavez, who immediately joined him online, both operators melting into the closest trees to evaluate the situation.
“He was doubling back on us,” Farkus said, now in a hushed voice.
“You keep him pinned,” Chavez said. “I’m going to punch right. Let’s finish this guy.”
“Roger,” Farkus confirmed.
“Moving,” Chavez said.
“Move!”
Before he could take a step, a Russian F1 hand grenade landed in the snow just shy of his cover.
* * *
Reece, Devan, and Eli heard the explosion.
“Shit, he was doubling back on us!” Reece exclaimed.
Oldest trick in the book, the former SEAL commander thought. Should have anticipated that!
“Send him!” Reece ordered.
Without a second thought Devan said, “Fass”—German for “bite”—and Edo charged toward the enemy.
* * *
Vasilievich angled his head out from behind the tree. He could see that both Americans were down but still moving. He’d finish them and then sprint toward the lodge. The snowshoes were a bit cumbersome but his remaining pursuers would have the same issue, and they just might proceed more cautiously now that he’d shown them he could exploit his tactical advantages just as well as they could. He was just getting to his feet when it felt like he was hit in the side with a sledgehammer.
Edo had been born and bred for this very task. While some dogs longed to chase tennis balls or retrieve ducks, Edo wanted nothing more than to kill terrorists. Though this one didn’t smell or taste the way the ones had on his past trips to the warmer places with the one they called Devan, he knew this was his target. His job was to destroy the man before him, and Edo knew how to do just that.
Reece, Eli, and Devan were within twenty yards when they finally had a clear line of sight to the struggle between man and beast. They saw the Russian make a move to draw something from his waistline. Gun or knife, it didn’t matter. Three lasers found his head, the warriors depressing their triggers in the same instant, each sending deadly projectiles into the brain stem of their target, who dropped straight into the snow.
“Here,” Devan ordered, bringing Edo back to his master as Eli moved to the two downed SEALs.
Chavez was getting up, just a little dazed from the blast.
“You okay, buddy?” Reece asked, looking in his eyes and then doing a once-over of his body to ensure he still had all his fingers and toes.
“I’m good. Snow tamped the majority of the blast but Farkus was closer. I’ll go take care of our plausible deniability,” he said, unslinging the AK from his back and walking toward what was left of the dead Russian.
Eli was stuffing a wound on Farkus’s upper leg with gauze below a tourniquet. Even through his NODs, Reece could tell it was a bad one.
Farkus was conscious and gritting his teeth to stay quiet.
“Farkus, you are going to make it. That shrapnel missed your artery, so it’s not an arterial bleed. You have a bunch of small shards of shrapnel in there. It just hurts like hell. Take t
hese,” Eli said, handing the wounded SEAL a handful of pills. “They will ward off infection and we’ll have you out of here and back to an ER in Alaska before they wear off.”
While Eli practiced medicine, Reece reached into Farkus’s pack and pulled out the small Kifaru Woobie, a twenty-first-century private sector version of the venerable military poncho liner. He extracted it from its small built-in stuff sack and wrapped it around the wounded Frogman. Next he pulled out the Sitka Gear Flash Shelter and wrapped that around the puffy poncho liner.
“This isn’t perfect, but it will keep you from freezing to death out here. We’ll be back. I need everybody for this assault. The lodge is just a klick east.”
Reece thought of Hanna and Raife. Though he hated to do it, he was not going to be able to leave a member of the team behind to tend to Farkus. If they failed, Farkus was a dead man, if not from the Russian military assets that would descend on the island, then from the freezing temperatures of Medny and the infections that were bound to set in as soon as the antibiotics wore off.
“Crush them, sir. Don’t worry about me. I have rear security,” he said, holding up his rifle.
Reece nodded. The other members of the assault force were primed to execute, the familiar look of resolve on their faces.
Before storming on toward the target, Reece looked down at the smallest member of the team, the multipurpose canine who had saved his life yet again.
The dog was chewing on something.
It was a chunk of Captain Karyavin Vasilievich’s triceps.
CHAPTER 78
RAIFE MOVED TOWARD HIGH ground, faster now that the sun was about to break the horizon.
Was Reece really on his way to Russia? Or was that just another one of Zharkov’s sick mind games?
The image of his sister’s dismembered head floating in formaldehyde burned in his mind, the hate keeping him warm. He squeezed himself into a rock outcropping and surveyed the terrain behind him. Weather was coming in off the Bering Sea. That might work to his advantage. He squinted back the way he had come and could just make out the monstrous 6x6 vehicle pushing through the tundra and snow, slowly gaining elevation in the early morning light. A snowmobile with a single skid in front followed a short distance behind. He knew he had been easy to follow. Now it was time to bait a trap of his own. He looked over the snow-strewn cliffs to the jagged rocks that met the sea at their base, and then carefully backtracked out the way he had come.
Aleksandr brought the KAMAZ troop transport to a stop, the tracks in front of him moving toward the very same cliffs where the sister had met her fate. Shaking his head, he grabbed his Ravin crossbow from the seat beside him. Sergei and the dogs would deal with anyone who survived his contractors well before they made it to this elevation. He wanted to test himself on this hunt. He’d only bring the dogs up as a last resort.
What tricks do you have up your sleeve?
Aleksandr swung down from the off-road vehicle’s lowest step and attached his snowshoes, feeling excitement building inside him.
Finally, a worthy adversary!
Aleksandr ran his tongue along his upper lip, his eyes tracing the footsteps through the snow.
Don’t make this easy on me, Rainsford.
He cocked his crossbow and inserted a bolt into the flight groove of his weapon before stepping off into the snow in search of his prey.
CHAPTER 79
WITH FARKUS OUT OF the fight, the assault team now consisted of four seasoned operators and a dog. They would usually hit a compound like this with forty assaulters, air assets, a blocking force, and a QRF on standby. On the plus side, Reece didn’t have some REMF squawking questions in his ear from back at the Tactical Operations Center.
Eli had maneuvered to the back of the building to catch any “squirters” who might head for the hills during the assault. As the most valuable member of the team with medical skills rivaling any ER doctor, keeping him out of the initial entry was the smart call.
Reece noted the surprising lack of security as they approached the entrance under cover of darkness. Was it possible the intel was correct and the security element they’d eliminated were the only ones on the island? The ten dead contractors would fit with the numbers from the Agency target package. Still, Reece had grown skeptical of all intel that was not generated at the tactical level.
They stacked on the door and Chavez took point, finger on the trigger, off safe, with Devan and Edo just behind him. Reece took rear security, giving him the best situational awareness. Had this been a sanctioned mission with the support apparatus that accompanies a Special Mission Unit operation, Edo would have had a small camera attached to his harness allowing Devan to see what was going on inside without committing assaulters. In this case, they didn’t know how many people were in the target building and they needed to get to Hanna and Raife before the alert went out that might get them killed. This was an in-extremis hostage rescue operation. Unlike a capture/kill, they would bypass potential threats to get to the hostages. A dog in this situation could end up being a liability but with only four operators they needed Edo to lead them directly to the hostages.
Reece squeezed the back of Devan’s left leg, indicating it was time to put Edo to work. Devan reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a small Ziploc bag. Opening it up he removed a piece of a dirty T-shirt belonging to Raife he’d asked Anaika for before they’d left Montana. He would have preferred to have one of Hanna’s, but this was the best they could do.
Putting the scent-infused clothing to Edo’s nose, Devan whispered in German, “Revere,” and opened the door.
The entry was not even locked, once again raising the hair on the back of Reece’s neck. Could this be an ambush? Too late for that. They were committed.
Edo broke the threshold, Chavez entering immediately left, weapon up ready to work. Devan went right, taking his corner and sweeping his rifle back just past the center of the room. Chavez was doing the same. Reece was right behind them, moving left to Chavez’s side and taking the center of the room first.
Clear.
They didn’t need to speak. Motions and instincts instilled from hundreds of raids and thousands of training exercises made the flow of clearing rooms second nature.
Moving.
Follow the dog.
They moved past the foyer into the great room that was part dining area and part trophy room. Light was beginning to crack the horizon, but the NODs were still the most effective way to penetrate the darkness. The remnants of a fire smoldered in an imposing stone fireplace.
Edo tore through the game room. He’d alerted. Raife was close.
The assaulters followed Edo across the room, their movements smooth, natural; man-hunters in their natural environment.
Focused on the door at the far corner of the room, Reece subconsciously noted the animals that adorned the walls. He shot past a tiger rug in front of the fireplace, moving between a South American jaguar looking down from its perch across from a snow leopard on the opposite wall doing the same. A full-body polar bear guarded the doorway through which Edo led the team. A walrus was mounted just across from the majestic white artic beast.
Does this guy hunt anything that’s not endangered? Reece thought. What an asshole.
They followed Edo through the door and into a narrow stone staircase leading into darkness.
Reece gave the squeeze and the foursome started to descend, Chavez leading the way, Edo right behind. Reece was last in line, keeping his rifle pointed up toward the door behind them.
The stairs terminated in a locked steel door. Edo had clearly alerted on it and Reece prayed that Hanna was with her brother on the other side.
Reece gave Chavez the signal to breach. Ordinarily they would explosively breach it from the top of the stairs, using the thick walls as protection from the overpressure. In this case, breaching charges were conspicuously missing from the load-out. Chavez slung his weapon and reached behind him for the hooligan tool. Studying the inward-
opening door, he cursed to himself, wishing he’d brought along the sledge, but when a small band of operators invade a country from thirty-five thousand feet, you can only bring so much.
Reece, Edo, and Devan backed up a couple of steps to give Chavez room. Whoever was on the other side would know well in advance that they were coming. In a hostage scenario, that was the last thing you wanted. They were giving up the advantage of surprise. Once the door was ajar, they’d double down on violence of action.
Chavez inserted the “hoolie” into the jam and, using its claw, started to pry. The door was solid. The rock wall into which it was built was not. Identifying the weakness, Chavez attacked the area where the locking mechanism met the wall. The stone began to crumble. After a minute, the entrance began to give way. Chavez seized the opportunity and turned the tool around, slamming the duckbill, designed to ram, into the lock again and again. The noise reverberated up the stairway, steel meeting steel, Chavez grunting with exertion as he gave the effort everything he had.
One final swing, and the door flew open on its hinges. Chavez flattened himself against the wall, making room for Devan, Reece, and Edo to make entry. Devan went left and Reece hooked around to the right, clearing his corner and sweeping back past the center of the room.
Silence.
“Clear, right,” Reece whispered.
“Clear, left,” Devan confirmed.
“Wait, what the…?” Reece said aloud. “Belay that.”
Edo had sprinted to the end of the room and was barking at the wall. Only it wasn’t. What had at first appeared to be a wall under the alien illumination of the NODs was, in fact, a series of bars, and not just bars: prison cells.
The three operators read the room as a professor of literature would a classic novel. They pushed down the left wall, covering the cells with their weapons, sweeping back and forth across the uncleared area.