Coercion

by Tigner, Tim

  If I were in Alex’s place, Yarik thought, I would sneak up on the cabin and dispatch the occupant. Then I would sit there sated and warm behind a curtain with one of the dead hermit’s rifles, watching for me to walk out of the clearing.

  Yarik had been shot nine times in the course of his career. None of them had been bad. In fact, aside from the inconvenience he had not minded them much at all. There was something romantic about the whole experience. But here, Yarik could not allow that to happen. The stakes were too high.

  He surveyed the surrounding area thoroughly before beginning a slow circle around the house. He did not see any movement through the back windows, and he could not get a good look in through the front windows without exposing himself. Nor could he wait around watching for movement. If Alex was not there, he was gaining time. It was maddening.

  Yarik found a large oak that had a view of the front door and concealed himself behind the trunk. He was about eighty meters out and set the Stetchkin’s sight accordingly. Keeping the tree trunk between himself and the cabin, he removed his coat and draped it over the forked end of a fallen branch. Then he pushed it up to shoulder height and swayed it back and forth so the movement would catch attention—peek-a-boo for professionals—before propping it up there with a full shoulder and arm exposed. He listened, and he waited. Nothing. If Alex was watching, he was not taking the bait. It was time to up the ante.

  Yarik stood up and put his coat back on. Still concealed by the tree trunk, he fired a single shot through the upstairs window where he guessed Alex would be perched, and then switched the Stetchkin back to fully automatic. Ten seconds later he heard the front door open. Yarik stole a quick peek at the front porch. Alex had come out, and he was holding a rifle. So much for Vasily’s wish to keep him alive and unblemished. Now that Alex had a rifle, Yarik would have to aim for the legs and then unload the clip on full auto. It would take less than two seconds for the Stetchkin to launch the nineteen remaining rounds.

  Okay, here we go. Yarik spun around, brought his clenched fists to rest on a supporting branch, took quick but careful aim, and … it wasn’t Alex. The man was Alex’s height, and he was wearing the same military camouflage jacket as Alex, but the nose was too big and the face was too old.

  Yarik dropped his pistol to his side and walked out of the woods.

  “Good afternoon,” Yarik said.

  “Afternoon…?”

  “Are you alone?” Yarik asked, closing in quickly.

  “Who’s askin’?” The man still had his rifle at port arms, but he looked ready to draw and Yarik knew that anyone living out here would certainly be an expert with his weapon.

  “General Yarik, KGB. I am chasing an escaped prisoner. Have you seen anybody lately?”

  “Didn’t see him, but he was here not more than twenty minutes ago.” The hermit had the slow-speak of country folk.

  “Damn. How do you know he was here?”

  “I put some fish out to smoke over the fireplace and then went out to check my traps. When I got back them fish was gone.”

  “Did he take anything else?”

  “That’s what I was checking when I heard the shot. I thought you were him but I don’t smell the fish on you so I know it wasn’t.”

  Yarik ignored the implied insult. “You mind if I get some food while you finish looking?”

  The man did not look pleased with the request, which was understandable since Alex had just robbed him of his catch, but he nodded and motioned toward the door.

  It was a nice place. The main room was reminiscent of a hunting lodge, full of leather, fur and hardwood furnishings. Yes, Yarik thought, he had a lot in common with this guy. The man brought Yarik a pitcher of water, half a spit-roasted hare and some strips of dried venison. Then he went back to his investigation. Yarik tucked into the food like, well, like a man who had not eaten for twenty-four hours. The food was gone a couple of minutes later when his host returned.

  “As best as I can tell he took a blanket, a canteen, a reel of fishing line and some hooks—don’t know how he plans to use those without an ice-drill, he didn’t get one of those—a hand-axe, some old snow shoes, and a couple cigarette lighters.”

  “No guns missing?”

  “Nope. I keep those locked up and he didn’t get in. I got the impression he was in a mighty hurry, which was a smart thing ‘cause I’d a shot him if I’d a caught him.”

  “How close is the nearest town?”

  “Depends on what you mean by town.”

  “The nearest telephone?”

  “Over in Krasnoe, which is about twenty kilometers southeast of here.”

  “How far are we from Novosibirsk?”

  “A hundred and seventy kilometers.”

  “Also southeast, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t happen to have a two-way radio, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “What would you do if there was an emergency?”

  “I’d use Vanya’s two-way. He lives about three kilometers to the north.”

  “I didn’t see a road or any kind of vehicle outside. How would you get there? How do you get here?”

  The double question seemed to have confused the hermit. “An old service buddy flies me in and out on his sea-plane. I spend January through April with my daughter in Novosibirsk. The rest of the time I’m here.”

  Yarik borrowed a pen and paper and wrote a quick note to the regional KGB chief. In it, he ordered a roadblock to be set up on the highway from Krasnoe to Novosibirsk, and any other roads along that vector. He included a description of the American Alexander Ferris posing as the Russian Alexander Potapov. He wanted to send a message to Vasily as well, letting him know that somebody was on to the Knyaz and giving him Alex’s Peitho code as a precautionary measure, but there was no way to do that discretely so it was out of the question. To this day, the Knyaz’s power depended on keeping the relationship between its members secret.

  “Okay, listen. I have got to continue chasing after the prisoner, so I am heading toward Krasnoe. You have another task to perform for your country. Read through this and make sure you understand it.”

  The man took his time reading the note while Yarik paced. At last he looked up.

  “You are to take this to Vanya’s and call it in on this frequency.” He circled the number. “Use my name and they will be most cooperative.”

  “But there’s a storm coming in. It’s going to get down to fifty below, colder in the wind.”

  “Well then you better get moving. Take along a bottle and plan to spend the night. And lest you think of turning back before you make that call, you remember that I know where you live.” The man paled. Yarik put on a mean look to reinforce it. “Now, I need a pair of snowshoes, a sleeping bag, and some more of that venison.”

  Chapter 41

  Siberian Outback, Russia

  The first gust of the storm front swept in like a big broom from the sky, nearly knocking Alex off his snowshoed feet. This was what Siberia was known for. Alex reckoned that prior to the front, the temperature had been a balmy twenty below. This plunged it another fifteen to twenty degrees, and the wind gave it teeth. He turned to face the darkening sky. “I was wondering when you’d get here!”

  Alex shifted his gaze from the heavens to his watch. It was two thirty in the afternoon, and dark as dusk. He promised himself to keep going for another hour before holing up. He was still feeling good from the smoked fish and his legs were holding. Shortly thereafter, however, it became clear that he would not last an hour; twenty minutes would be a stretch. His eyelids were freezing together every time he blinked, and the storm had cut his visibility to near zero. Nonetheless, Alex knew it might be more dangerous to stop. Yarik could be ten meters behind him now and he wouldn’t know it. Fear was a great motivator, but it could also be blinding.

  Alex had not caught sight of the giant since he had spotted the descending parachute, meaning he had no objective way of knowing that Yari
k was still on his tail, but he sensed it. He had been coddling the hope that Yarik had fallen hard on the trap he had spent valuable time preparing. Then an hour earlier, before the wind kicked in, a shot had rung out from the direction of the cottage and killed that hope. So much for getting lucky. Of course, there was a chance that the hermit was just hunting, or even that he had killed Yarik, mistaking him for the man who stole his supplies. But Alex was far more inclined to believe that if someone was shooting, it would be Yarik. Furthermore, there had only been one shot, and it would take more than that to kill the hulk.

  Alex put the maddening range of possibilities aside and continued to press on. He briefly considered trying to set another trap—in the storm it was getting difficult to see your own feet, much less spot a snare—but then he realized that it would be redundant. The weather was a trap, and both he and Yarik were already in it.

  Alex wrapped both his pilfered blanket and the parachute around himself and trudged on. It became clear after a few steps that this system was not going to work. With his hands thus occupied, he could not run and check his compass at the same time. That was unacceptable. Now that the weather had cut his visibility to an arm’s length, he had to check the compass constantly. So he cut a slot in the middle of the blanket and donned it like a poncho. Then he cut eye holes in the center of the parachute and a slit to breathe through and draped it over his head. He secured the new ensemble at the waist with parachute cord. Alex finished the transformation off by laughing at himself and that gave him strength: he was now a ghost in a snowstorm.

  The new outfit worked for a while, but he found that because of the wind he was having to stop and retie it every quarter mile or so, exposing his freezing fingers and further slowing his pace. And despite the layering, somehow the demonic wind managed to find its way through here and there, licking at him like an icy flame and burning his flesh. The outfit was awkward too. He was wearing a T-shirt, a shirt, two winter coats, a blanket, a fur hat and a parachute. He worried that any moment Yarik would bump into him and he would be as helpless to fight back as a kitten in a sack. Still, he pressed on.

  After half an hour, Alex realized that Yarik was no longer the most immediate threat to his life. Despite being dressed like the Michelin man, the cold was killing him as surely as any bullet could. There was no way he could live through the night exposed this way. He simply had to find shelter.

  Alex struggled on and on, investigating every dark shadow in hopes of finding a grove of tightly packed trees or a rock formation that would shelter him from the wind. There was little around. Although ice and snow caked his face and choked his view, he was painfully aware that his labored steps were leaving Yarik a trail as plain as a furrow in a field. It was no longer a game of hide and seek. It was an endurance test. Who would collapse first?

  After trudging for a while across a particularly barren stretch of landscape, Alex realized he was out on a frozen lake. Perfect. If the lake were more than a mile across he would not live to see the other side. He would freeze to death mid-stride. Then when the spring thaw came the ice would melt and his body would be interred with the fishes. Vingança. No, no, nothing that romantic would happen, he rambled on, distracting himself from the pain with his ghastly tales. Wolves would feast on his carcass long before the fish got him. Mother Nature was exerting her presence and her power, and she seemed determined to put him in his place. The man who had once been Alex Ferris, International Private Investigator, was now just so much red meat, a protein link in the great food chain.

  With that joyous thought, he felt the gradient change, bumped into a low hanging branch, and fell backwards into the snow. He had made it across the lake! And, wait a minute, it wasn’t a branch, it was a railing covered in snow! Alex was standing in front of a cabin, a cabin more glorious than the Taj Mahal.

  He followed the railing until it ended and then he climbed two steps up onto the porch. He tried the front door without knocking and found it locked. He wanted to ram it with his shoulder, but there was a big bear spike set in the middle to prevent exactly that move.

  Alex looked for a pregnable window, but found them all small and shuttered. As panic began to close in, he shed the ghost suit, retrieved the hermit’s hand axe, and began working at the aged oak surrounding the door’s lock with vicious blows of wild desperation. The axe was old but the blade was sharp and he made steady progress. Still, given that the door was made to withstand a bear attack, the job was maddeningly slow.

  After about fifty whacks, the wood around the latch looked sufficiently splintered. Alex tried kicking the door. It gave a little. He took a couple steps back and aimed a lunging sidekick just below the spike. The wood screamed in protest and then surrendered, sending Alex crashing into the cabin and onto the hardwood floor. He was saved!

  The wind came in with him, disturbing the thick layer of dust like a tomb raider’s brush. Stale air had never tasted so sweet.

  By the time Alex managed to regain his feet there was already a mat of snow on the floor. It had rolled in after him like winter’s hungry tongue. Alex had to expend some effort to push the door closed against the blustering fury, but he managed, grateful the latch still found something to cling to. “Feast on the giant if you’re so hungry!”

  Frozen and exhausted, he collapsed right there onto an inviting bearskin rug. For the brief moment he remained conscious, Alex felt himself melting, draining, soaking into the warmth of the fur, and he was happy.

  It seemed only seconds later that the door crashed open in the wind. Was he dreaming? No, the icy gale was very real. It took a strength of will far greater than that required by the earliest Monday morning alarm for Alex to roll over and get up to close it.

  Half way to the door, he stopped in his tracks. Something was there. The light was dim and at first he didn’t understand what he was looking at. It was like a giant frozen breakfast sausage lying there defrosting on the floor before the door. Was he hallucinating? He had been having visions of sausages for the last forty-eight hours, but those had been cooked and served with waffles. This one began to roll.

  Alex found himself hypnotized, his starved mind slow to engage. He watched with abstracted non-comprehension as Yarik struggled to extract himself from the sausage casing. Apparently, he had cut arm, eye, and leg holes in a brown sleeping bag and then zipped it up around himself.

  As their eyes met, Alex saw that Yarik, too, was surprised. The eye-to-eye contact carried the force of a cattle prod, giving each the electric adrenaline surge necessary to tap into reserves neither knew he possessed. Siberia still wanted her sacrifice.

  Chapter 42

  Siberian Outback, Russia

  Time slowed for Alex as Yarik sloughed off his sleeping bag to rise like a demon from the mire. It was disorienting. It seemed he could feel the individual chambers of his heart contracting—bu-bum, ba-bump, bu-bum, ba-bump. Were they to be his last? Don’t think that way. Find a weapon.

  Alex scanned the room and spotted the hand axe on the floor to his left, lying where he had dropped it when bursting through the door. He spun down, snatched it up and continued spinning around, wielding the axe in a wide clockwise arc, a helicopter with one blade. He whipped his head around faster than his body so his eyes could fix on an appropriate target—a head, hand, or throat—and saw Yarik bringing his hand cannon to bear. Alex adjusted the arc, and a split second later the hand axe and the Stetchkin flew out the door and into the snow along with Yarik’s forefinger.

  Yarik seemed unfazed by his loss, and dove at Alex like a gorilla gone ape. Alex dodged with a diving roll and jumped back to his feet with a couple yards between them. So much for the opening salvos.

  The two veteran combatants faced each other. Like a boxer against a wrestler, Alex knew he couldn’t let his opponent get hold of him or it would all be over. He backed away to gain some time to think and saw the giant’s hand go back down to his side. Another gun? Alex’s heart wavered, but whatever it was that Yarik had reached fo
r was not there. His hand came back empty. Death was demanding a fair fight. Fair?

  As the two men circled each other like contenders in a ring, Alex got his first real look around the cabin that had saved their lives. Would this wooden box be his coffin, or Yarik’s? Keeping his eyes on his foe, Alex used his peripheral vision to survey the room for areas of tactical advantage and improvised weapons. The pickings were as slim as Alex felt, but he saw a homemade end table that might work. It had four heavy wooden legs. Batter up.

  As he lunged for the table, Yarik jumped atop a dusty couch and reached for the enormous moose rack hanging above it on the wall. The antlers were joined together without the head in the middle—probably because the nearest taxidermist shop was a thousand kilometers away. While Yarik worked to pull the rack off the wall, Alex inverted the end table and pried off two of the legs. Now he had a pair of clubs. With them, he had to fend off Yarik’s six-foot spiked pugil stick. It occurred to Alex that he could make a lot of money selling the next few minutes to pay-per-view.

  Yarik jumped down off the couch to land squarely on both feet with a mighty thump. His weapon was an awkward one, but very deadly. The beast’s rack also provided Yarik with a formidable shield. Alex’s weapons were far less deadly, but they left him more quick and nimble, accenting his only natural advantage. He had to concoct a strategy to leverage that advantage, and quickly.

  With a devilish grin on his face Yarik began backing Alex into a corner, swinging the rack before him left to right to left like a prickly pendulum. He was the grim reaper with a twenty-pronged scythe. Alex was just grim.

  Alex watched as if in third-person, mesmerized by the approaching kaleidoscope of death. Yarik was getting a feel for the new weapon in his hands, and he began to swing it faster and faster until the wind whistled and the points disappeared from view. He moved a small step closer with each deadly swing, swoosh step, swoosh step, swoosh step, obviously savoring the climax of their whirlwind romance. Speak now, or forever rest in peace.