by Jack Carr
The naval commandos turned the boats so the bows were pointed back out to sea in a well-practiced maneuver. They loaded from the front as the helmsman timed the waves, waiting for everyone to climb aboard, judging his opportunity to race through the breakers.
As they loaded Raife into their extract platform, Reece turned to Jonathan and over the sound of the cascading surf pulled him close: “I’m not coming with you.”
“What the bloody hell?”
“My mission’s not over. You go. Get home to Caroline. Mourn your daughter. Take care of Raife. Also, I need you to talk with Thorn and have him get in touch with Vic Rodriguez at the CIA. It is imperative that he lets the Agency think I made it back with you through official channels. The Russians can’t think I’m still here.”
“Get in the boat, you bloody idiot!” Jonathan shot back.
“The man who killed my father is here, not on Medny, but he’s close. And I know where.”
Overhearing the conversation, Lieutenant O’Malley turned, the angry sea surging around his waist, the other operators looking impatiently at their senior officer.
“Sir, my orders are to bring you back. We can’t have an American captured dead or alive on Russian soil!”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I have a history of doing things like this.”
“You’ll never leave here alive, son.” Jonathan’s demeanor changed as he unslung his FAL and handed it to the former frogman.
“If that’s true, I want you to tell Katie something for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Semper.”
With that, Reece turned and sprinted back up the beach.
CHAPTER 86
Siberia, Russian Far East
Winter
AS WINTER SETTLED UPON the harsh land, a rumor began to swirl among the villages of the Krasnoyarsk Krai. A ghost was moving across the tundra, sometimes taking the shape of the animals that inhabited the wilderness. Some of the stories described him as half man and half beast. Still others were sure one of the brown bears that inhabited the interior had killed a nomadic hunter, merging their souls. The stories were passed along in the way they had since the first peoples had moved into this land, following the herds that gave them sustenance.
The ghost would occasionally steal food and supplies from villages along his path, always a gift left in exchange. No one knew his destination, but it was rumored he was heading west, toward what or whom, was unknown.
Mothers maintained an attentive eye on their children, keeping them closer than usual. Fathers and hunters took an extra minute to pause and study the landscape before closing their doors at night.
Once a village heard a gunshot in the distance. Even specters had to eat.
A native kayak had been found by children playing on the peninsula. It had been dragged into the tree line. Its owner was nowhere to be found. A motorcycle had disappeared in Elita and the phantom had stolen a snowmobile in Tanzybey. When the men of the settlement caught up with it, it was abandoned and empty of gas. An offering of fresh meat was on the seat as payment, tracks of native snowshoes leading off into the snow. The men knew better than to track an apparition, wearing snowshoes or not. That would not end well. It was best not to meddle in the ways of the spirit world.
The wise old men of the villages believed the hunter was caught between this world and the next. He was on a journey and wouldn’t rest until it was done.
Village to village the rumor spread, some leaving offerings to the spirit as he drifted across the land: flour, smoked fish, sugar.
On he went, passing villages and settlements; in his natural element, moving toward his target.
He had never felt so free.
There was only the hunt.
CHAPTER 87
Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia
Six months later
REECE HAD SPENT DAYS watching from his hide-site in the hillside. The animal skins kept him warm and the marmot jerky he’d most recently dried nourished his body. He knew he’d lost weight and muscle mass moving over two thousand kilometers across Siberia, hunting for the man who had killed his father.
Hate kept him warm. Thoughts of Katie, his homeland, his future, were buried.
He had built fires when he was able, slept in snow caves or debris shelters, and kept moving. One step at a time. Always forward.
He used the FAL sparingly. The bow became his primary weapon for the procurement of food; he preferred it that way.
He traveled as the ancient hunter-gathers had moved; nomads following the migrating herds, foraging as they went in a constant struggle to survive. Reece had a different purpose that pushed him forward. A violent nomad, he had a mission: death.
He knew they’d come. The Mi-8 circled and landed on the gravel HLZ just outside the main house. An older man emerged from the helicopter first, the lead from the advance detail running to the chopper door to escort him and his guest to the relative warmth of the dacha.
Then came the little man. At this distance a positive identification was not possible, but Reece was not working within the confines of the law. Reece knew. The small man bundled up against the cold was his prey: the traitor Oliver Grey.
Reece would watch for another day and then make his move.
* * *
“Oliver, why do you keep looking out that window?” Ivan Zharkov asked, looking up from the stove. He preferred to cook for himself when he was at the dacha; it reminded him of his humble beginnings. His children had missed the struggle of the early days and that saddened him. While he had been forged through adversity, his children had grown up with the trappings of wealth, which bread a softness. All except Aleksandr, whose sickness had been his downfall.
“There’s not even a fence out there, Pakhan.”
“That is because Siberia is our fence. Even the native people only infringe on the very edges, superstitious about the event that gave us this beautiful land.”
Oliver had known about what the world termed the Tunguska Event and had heard Zharkov tell of his connection to the area many times. The old man was fascinated with it.
“The indigenous Evenks and Yakuts believe a deity sent a fireball as a warning. It was one they heeded. It destroyed two thousand square kilometers, Oliver. Those that didn’t initially believe were convinced afterward when the sky glowed for days.”
“Did they ever figure out what it was?” asked Oliver, knowing there had been numerous theories and speculation over the years.
“There was no crater. Some think it was a meteor that disintegrated before impact, the soft ground devouring its remains, absorbing its power. Others say it was an underground volcano. It may have been a comet, its ice becoming part of the land. I’ve even heard that it could have been a small black hole colliding with earth. No one really knows. Over a hundred and ten years later it remains the largest recorded impact event in recorded history and nobody knows what it was. Regardless, we are in the epicenter of that event. Everything for eight hundred miles in every direction was destroyed except for right here. Those trees are all that are left,” he said gesturing out the large windows before him. “Like the Genbaku Dome at the epicenter of the Hiroshima bomb the Americans dropped on Japan, those trees are all that remain. We too shall remain, Oliver. With the changing tides of geopolitics, the bravta will remain.”
“I think you should still have additional security measures in place, Pakhan. If James Reece comes, our guards won’t stop him.”
“Oliver, how many times must we discuss this? Our source in the United States confirms that James Reece is in Maryland. I have people watching the airports, train stations, shipyards. All ports of entry have his facial recognition data in their systems. He won’t set foot inside Mother Russia without us knowing. He did take care of a rather nasty problem for me. Aleksandr is no longer a threat, planning to push the old lion out of the pride. My other children are enjoying their spoiled lives as the progenies of a Russian oligarch. There is nothing but tundra and wild
animals in every direction.”
“James Reece is not going to let me go, Pakhan.”
Oliver diverted his attention back out the windows that overlooked the helipad. Lights from the generators illuminated all sides of the compound. Beyond that was darkness.
Stirring the borscht on the stovetop, Zharkov continued: “Do you know what would have happened had that impact event occurred just four hours later?”
Oliver turned back to his new mentor, his brain searching for an answer.
“Think about it, Oliver. The rotation of the earth would have centered the hit on my very home city of St. Petersburg. In 1908, the capital of the Empire would have been destroyed. I would have never existed. In all likelihood there would have been no Soviet Union. The German army would not have had an eastern front to contend with and would have been able to put all efforts into defeating the Allies in the West. No Cold War. It would be a different world.”
As one of the most powerful men in Russia, Zharkov drew strength from what he considered a sacred place. Oliver was not so sure. He would have much rather been at one of the more opulent dachas on the Black Sea, where the other oligarchs chose to invest their considerable wealth, and where Zharkov’s broods enjoyed the fruits of their father’s labor. But Oliver was not in a position to dictate the schedule to the head of the Brotherhood.
The pleasant smell of the red beetroot soup calmed him. He turned his eyes outward from the epicenter of what had been a fifteen-megaton explosion, out from the heart of bratva power, toward the blackness, wondering what was beyond it.
* * *
Reece had counted nine total: the three in the advance team who had been dropped off two days prior and the three that arrived with Zharkov and Grey. That plus the pilot made nine.
Reece didn’t factor in the odds of one man against nine. He’d faced worse. He only knew he was going to kill them all.
* * *
The explosion threw Oliver to the floor. In a panic he looked to his benefactor, who gripped the stove with a wild excitement in his eyes.
Had the gods returned to Krasnoyarsk Krai?
Two men from Zharkov’s security element immediately entered the room. Ensuring their principal was alive, they took positions away from the windows, holding their AKMs at the two entrances to the room with the senior man shouting into his radio. They wouldn’t dare push the leader of the bratva to the ground, though they all knew that is where he should be.
“Pakhan,” the man who had just been on his radio said as he moved to the side of his boss, “there’s been an explosion at the front of the dacha. It destroyed the truck and killed Grigori, Misha, and Viktor.”
Nikolay Khristenko had been GRU before being lured into the world of organized crime. He had been to the dacha many times with Zharkov and though he did not believe in the superstitions surrounding the area, it had always made him feel uneasy.
“What was it?”
“We don’t know, Pakhan, but we need to move you to a more secure location.”
“Da,” the elder mafioso said, and nodded, though Nikolay suspected he would rather stay and find out if the fireball from the heavens really did come from a supernatural source.
“Pakhan, we have to leave,” a terrified Oliver pleaded as he scampered toward the relative safety of the stove.
Zharkov looked at the former CIA man and to his head of security. He then decided their fate.
* * *
Reece had waited until he had as many of Zharkov’s security personnel in the kill zone as possible before detonating the explosives. He’d emplaced the MON-50 devices two weeks earlier after watching the empty dacha for three days to ensure it was unoccupied. Reece had taken a foreign weapons course years ago and was familiar with the antipersonnel device developed in the former Soviet Union and exported around the world. Its green body was easy to camouflage in the tundra turned soft by the melting snow. It had been set for use against him and his team on Medny Island, where Reece had collected it before beginning his journey westward into the interior. It worked precisely as designed, destroying the Laplander vehicle parked out front and ripping half of Zharkov’s security detail to shreds.
* * *
If one was not going to walk, there was only one way out of Krasnoyarski Krai, and its rotors were already beginning to turn.
“Idti! Idti!” Go! Go! Nikolay shouted as the turbines of the Mi-8 spooled up, ushering his boss and his underling toward their extraction platform.
The youngest man on the detail knelt by the helo, weapon pointed out into the unknown.
* * *
Reece knew he had to work quickly. The FAL was not equipped with a suppressor, which meant that its muzzle flash would be visible to the security detail.
Prioritize the threats.
The fore end of the stock was nestled securely on the leather satchel he had carried first through Kamchatka and across the Sea of Okhotsk and then on to the mainland, and then by foot across Siberia. The fire from the still-burning Laplander off-road truck he’d destroyed moments earlier provided just enough illumination for him to use his iron sights. Covered in the mossy green tundra that had once absorbed the most powerful impact event in modern history, his position was located outside the ring of the light. Fire had once provided safety to those who stood within its sphere, warding off tigers, leopards, and bears. Now that light from the burning vehicle was the death knell for those it illuminated.
Six targets. Only five bullets remained.
As the group of four men arrived at the helicopter door, Reece’s finger depressed the trigger.
His first bullet caught a man kneeling by the helo directly between the nose and mouth, showering the rear security in brain particles. Before his AKM could answer, two 7.62x51 rounds from Reece’s rifle took him in the upper chest just above his body armor and sent him crashing into the front of the helo and onto the cold ground.
Seeing men falling around his helicopter, the pilot yanked up on the collective and increased pitch even before his passengers had boarded the aircraft.
Nikolay shouted over the chaos, beckoning the pilot to return the bird to the ground. He’d be executed later for his insolence and cowardice.
Nikolay then watched in horror as the pilot’s body contorted violently, the helo just eight feet off the ground.
* * *
Reece’s last two rounds had entered under the pilot’s right arm, tearing through his body before exiting through the glass on the opposite side of the helicopter. The pilot lurched forward against the stick as a bloody froth erupted from his mouth and nostrils, inadvertently pushing down on the collective and sending the chopper in a violent left spin. The rotors tore up the gravel walkway, the sounds of metal thrashing against the earth permeating the taiga before the giant bird cartwheeled into the dacha.
Nikolay pushed his principal to the ground as the machine collided with the wood structure. He knelt and let loose with a fully automatic burst from the Russian rifle he knew so well.
* * *
Reece waited in the prone position, his rifle now a useless piece of metal without the ammunition to sustain it. He watched the Russian take Zharkov to the ground and fire in the general direction of where he perceived the threat to be. As he brought the AKM into his workspace to change magazines, Reece stood, drew the ancient weapon that had been his constant companion since leaving Medny Island, and sent an arrow into the left eye socket of Zharkov’s head of security.
* * *
Oliver Grey gawked in horror at the wooden shaft protruding from Nikolay’s head, visible in the dancing light that escaped from the burning helicopter and vehicle. Imagining a similar fate for himself, he turned to run, tripping and falling to the rocks.
“Stop, Oliver,” his benefactor commanded, himself rising to his feet and brushing himself off. “Let us meet our tormentor face-to-face, shall we?”
Was this man mad? He couldn’t believe this was a supernatural deity, could he? Those were gunshots, f
or Christ’s sake. And the object sticking out of Nikolay’s face was an arrow!
Oliver’s attention shifted from the arrow to the darkness outside the ring of fire as one of the shadows began to shift.
* * *
James Reece took a step forward. He’d been covered by the peat moss of the tundra for close to three days, the skins he’d stolen from native villages and others he’d tanned with the brains of animals he’d killed en route, creating an insulated makeshift burrow. His muscles were stiff from the patient act of lying in wait for his prey. He left the FAL where it was. Out of ammunition, now just a vestige of his odyssey, a link to his past. He slipped the tomahawk from its sheath on his belt and felt its weight in his hand. It felt right. Slinging his bow into the skin sheath on his back, he walked into the light.
* * *
Oliver did as he was told and pushed himself to his feet, looking from Ivan to the shape-shifting shadow that emerged from the wilderness. At first Oliver wondered if perhaps Zharkov’s conjecture was not as far off as it had first seemed. Perhaps deities really did roam the tundra guarding it from intruders?
What emerged looked half human, half beast and it wasn’t until the flickering flame caught the creature just right that Oliver saw it was a man. He was covered in animal skins as if he’d taken on their very essence. When the light caught his eyes, Oliver recognized the look of resolve. His executioner had arrived.