Winterlong

by Mason Cross

  WINTERLONG

  MASON CROSS

  For Robert Bell and Andrew Morrison

  Good fathers, even better grandfathers

  PROLOGUE

  TYUMEN, SIBERIA

  The American walked into Anatoli’s at five minutes after one in the morning. He paused at the door to cast his eyes around the interior before selecting his usual seat at the far end of the bar.

  He knew the heat from the open fire would be welcome once it worked its way past the numbness in his face. There were no other late-night customers tonight, which suited him fine. The bartender caught his eye and nodded, letting him know he would be over in a minute with his usual. That gave him time to take the top layers off and make himself comfortable.

  He removed the bulky gloves first and then his headgear: a big wool-lined trapper hat with flaps that came down over the ears. He placed the gloves and hat on the bench beside him and then unbuttoned his heavy quilted coat. He heaved the weighty garment off his shoulders and dropped it on the bench. Finally, he removed his sweater and allowed the warmth of the fire to begin working its way into his extremities.

  It wasn’t the cold that got to you, he often thought. Not directly. The cold was manageable, as long as you prepared for it. It was that constant preparation that ground you down: the coping, the managing, the careful building up and removing of layers just to be able to survive and function in this environment at this time of year. The constant mindfulness required merely to exist.

  He had caught a documentary on one of the local channels a couple of nights ago about the Space Race. Naturally, it was told from the Soviet point of view, favoring Gagarin and Tereshkova over Glenn and Armstrong, but some things were universal. He thought he knew a little of what it was like to be a cosmonaut: preparing oneself to be somewhere human beings weren’t meant to be. From the perspective of a late night in early December, it was hard to escape the conclusion that Tyumen should be added to that list.

  The bartender was finally getting around to drawing his beer from the tap when the door creaked open and a gust of freezing wind blew in. He looked over to see two people enter. As far as it was possible to tell from their winter clothing, they were both men, reasonably tall. They wore hats and coats as bulky as his own. Beyond that it was impossible to know anything about them—age, weight, even race—until they revealed themselves.

  The bartender swaggered over to him, ignoring the newcomers. He was a brawny Armenian wearing a quilted checkered shirt that showed tattoos on his neck and creeping out onto the backs of his hands. He looked like a side of beef with a goatee. The bartender placed the beer beside him and the American nodded.

  “Spasibo,” he said in acknowledgment.

  He kept his eyes surreptitiously on the two newcomers. There was nothing outwardly suspicious about them. Probably just local men, finishing a shift at one of the nearby factories. They hadn’t so much as glanced in his direction. But it paid to keep his eyes open anyway. That was why he always took this seat, with its unobstructed view of the door. Mindfulness. Living according to one’s circumstances.

  He took a sip of the beer and grimaced, remembering for the hundredth time how much he missed home. Or anywhere that wasn’t here, for that matter. Tyumen hadn’t been so bad when he had arrived in the summer, when it was relatively warm. The job paid well and the contract was open-ended. It wasn’t a difficult assignment: some close protection, some investigation, the occasional requirement for mild rough stuff. The kind of job he could do in his sleep.

  The two men had almost completed the arduous process of shedding their outdoor wear, and he could see that they were both Caucasian, young, and in good shape. His internal warning system upgraded them a couple of notches. There was no point keeping one’s eyes open, always selecting a seat with a view of the door, if you didn’t evaluate every potential threat. He had a scale that went up to ten, and he mentally assessed everyone he came into contact with on that scale. These two were nothing to cause undue concern, not so far. They had moved up to a three on the scale now. Almost certainly they were nothing more than what they appeared to be. He logged several instances of a three or four on the scale every month.

  He took another drink and looked up at the television screen hanging on the wall. It was tuned to Russia Today. All the news that’s fit to broadcast. All the news Putin wanted broadcast, anyway. They were covering a train crash out in Moscow, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was concentrating on watching the two men out of the corner of his eye. If they had noticed him, they gave no indication. One was watching the TV, the other trying to signal the bartender, who was making a point of keeping them waiting while drying a glass. The American had been here a number of times now, and he noticed the bartender was never so diligent at glass polishing as when there was a customer waiting.

  But then one of the men produced something from his pocket. It was a large silver hip flask. The man moved his hat on the table to conceal his action from the bartender and then placed the hip flask behind it at a very deliberate angle. An angle that would allow him to watch his position in the reflection without ever staring directly at him. An old trick. Or was it just a coincidence?

  Five on the scale.

  He turned away from the television. He fumbled inside his pocket and withdrew his phone. It was a basic old Nokia. Buttons instead of touch screen, no Internet, no built-in GPS. He examined the screen and glanced up at the door, as though awaiting a tardy drinking partner. He allowed his eyes to linger briefly on the two men, neither of whom were looking in his direction. They were dressed like every other male between twenty and sixty he’d seen come into this bar: jeans, work shirt, heavy boots. No ... not quite the same. He risked another glance at the boots. Both of them wore similar footwear, but it was nothing like what the local workers wore. These boots were expensive.

  The American didn’t bother adding another notch to the scale. He simply placed a five-hundred-ruble banknote on the table next to his unfinished beer and got up, pulling his coat on. He left the sweater on the bench and grabbed his gloves and hat, striding toward the door. He heard a voice from behind him as his hand grasped the handle.

  “Tovarish.”

  It was one of the two men. He ignored it.

  “Wrap up warm,” the same speaker called in Russian. “It’s cold out there.”

  He ignored the call, noting as he did that the speaker’s accent was almost perfect. Almost.

  The subarctic chill hit him like a tangible thing the moment he stepped into the night, ravaging the exposed skin on his hands and face.

  The Jeep was parked twenty yards away, on the opposite side of the street. He hustled diagonally across to it and reached into the pocket of his coat for the keys, barely able to hold on to them in the cold. He managed to activate the remote lock and risked a glance back at the bar as his hand found the door handle.

  The two men were at the doorway. They had taken the time to dress up again properly, so they hadn’t been in a hurry, but there was no mistaking it now. They were interested in him.

  He opened the door of the Jeep and got in. He sighed with relief when the engine thrummed to life as he turned the key in the ignition. With the temperature dropping below minus twenty, it was touch and go whether the vehicle would start. It had already let him down a couple of times. Thankfully, tonight wasn’t one of those times.

  He turned on the wipers, grateful that the layer of frost on the windshield hadn’t had time to harden. He pulled out onto the road and drove away as fast as he dared in the snow, stealing glances in the rearview mirror as the bar and the two men receded from view.

  He kept on the main road for about a mile and then took a right onto a side street. The apartment wasn’t far, but he didn’t want to go there
until he could be sure he hadn’t been followed. He couldn’t risk leading them to Nika.

  And who exactly were they? If he was very lucky, they were merely gangsters. Foot soldiers for a rival of his current employer, looking to eliminate one part of his defensive capability. If he was unlucky ...

  He glanced back in the mirror and saw headlights gaining on him. They had a distinctive angular shape, like flattened triangles.

  The problem with losing a tail in this town was the way Tyumen was divided by its two rivers and the Trans-Siberian Railway, creating isolated zones and severely limiting the options for movement by road. He spun the wheel and took an immediate left, followed by a sharp right down an alleyway so narrow that it barely accommodated the wing mirrors. He pulled back out onto the next street and crossed the bridge over the Tura, bringing him onto the main E22 route that led west and would take him clear of the city. His eyes flashed back and forth from the road to the mirror as he accelerated.

  A car emerged from the alley behind him. Same triangular headlights, like the unblinking eyes of a dragon.

  Shit.

  This wasn’t local gangsters; it was them.

  A realization hit him in the pit of his stomach. They could easily have slapped a tracker on his Jeep while he was in the bar. That would explain why they’d been so unhurried. Hell, they could have been tailing him all day, or longer.

  It had been five years. Why now?

  There was no way he could head back to the apartment. Not now, not in this vehicle. And yet he had to. Because in the apartment, behind a false wall, was the only thing in the world that could protect him from what was coming.

  Or perhaps that wasn’t true. If they were coming for him now, after all this time, perhaps nothing could save him.

  The buildings on either side became lower and more spread out as he approached the city limits. He couldn’t lead them back to Nika. He hoped they didn’t know about her already. His only chance was to try to lose them in the frozen wilderness outside the city and then somehow double back and disappear. But disappear where? Tyumen already felt like the ends of the earth—if they could find him here ...

  Anyway, he thought, returning to the immediate danger, it wouldn’t be enough just to lose them.

  He reached his free hand out and opened the glove box, withdrawing a Smith & Wesson Governor compact revolver, wrapped in two layers of cloth. It was loaded with six .45-caliber ACP rounds. He shook the gun free from the cloth and placed it on the passenger seat.

  He nudged the pedal down a little more as he passed the gas station that was the last outpost of the western edge of Tyumen. The E22 highway opened up. Frozen, snow-blanketed fields surrounded him on either side. The city already seemed a long way behind him. There were small dwellings and the abandoned sites of former Soviet collective farms dotted here and there, including one that he knew of that was just off the road about four miles outside town. On some level, he supposed he’d borne the place in mind for a situation just like this one. It was like the cold, he thought. There was never a time when you weren’t planning around it, even subconsciously.

  The other car’s headlights followed about half a mile behind him on the straight road, not quite matching his speed. They didn’t have to. They had all the time in the world.

  There was a dip in the road ahead. He cast a brief glance down at the matt black frame of the revolver on the passenger seat and risked speeding up a little more ahead of the dip.

  The lights in the mirror winked out as he hit the down-slope, and he saw the turnoff for the farm fifty yards ahead on the right. He wasn’t planning on losing them. Even if they weren’t tracking the Jeep, it would be obvious he had turned off the road, and where. But he didn’t have to lose them. He just had to buy himself a little time.

  He slowed for the turn, feeling the heavy tires slide a little as he swung out into the road. They held. There was a clutch of barns and darkened farm buildings ahead. He knew this from memory rather than sight. The dark structures registered as a minor irregularity, slightly disturbing the alignment of the sky against the horizon. He pulled to a stop beside one of the buildings and got out, leaving the engine running and the lights on. He slammed the door and sprinted around the back of the barn. Immediately, he remembered he had left his hat and gloves in the Jeep. It didn’t matter. The gloves were too bulky to fit through the trigger guard or to fire accurately, and besides, he wouldn’t get the chance to freeze to death. Either he would be back in the Jeep with the heater on full soon, or he would be beyond worrying about the cold. He heard the shift of gears as the other vehicle took the turn off the main road in a leisurely fashion and began the approach.

  He edged around the far side of the barn so he could lay eyes on the approach road, keeping low. He wondered if these buildings were as deserted as they looked, and decided they probably were, given that there had been no sign of life when he drove up. This side of the barn was exposed to the full force of the wind, and the temperature, which he had thought couldn’t get any colder, dropped still further. Had to be twenty-five below. His hands and face were already completely numb. He would have to trust the joints in his fingers to do what his brain told them, even though he couldn’t feel them move. At least he had the coat.

  Finally, the pursuers appeared, pulling to a smooth stop a short distance behind the Jeep. They were driving a silver Mitsubishi Outlander. A little too new and shiny to fit in, just like the boots. He hoped they would think he was still in the vehicle, but he knew they’d be careful. The two men from the bar got out of the Mitsubishi, guns drawn. In the glare of the headlights, he saw they were wearing lightweight winter tactical gloves. He only wished he’d been as prepared.

  They stayed close to their vehicle for a second, playing it by the book, checking the area. For these brief few moments, he had them at a disadvantage. They knew he was around somewhere, of course, but they didn’t know if he was in the Jeep or concealed in or around one of the farm buildings. He had picked this spot because there were several potential hiding places. Three or four places he could be, but only two of them to check those places.

  The pair looked identical in their winter gear. The one who had gotten out of the driver’s side nodded at his partner, an unspoken signal. He began to approach the Jeep, gun extended, while the other one covered the surrounding buildings in smooth alternating motions. Mixing it up, not spending more than a couple of seconds in any direction.

  Time to take the chance.

  He stepped out of cover just as the second man was turning away. He raised the revolver and fired, intending to put him down with a head shot. The gun kicked back. In the cold he barely felt it. The man went down, but it didn’t look like he’d hit the head, maybe just clipped the man’s shoulder.

  No time to confirm, he swung around just as the other one was spinning around from his approach to the Jeep, ducking down to one knee as he did so. He was ready for this, had the muzzle aimed low as he pulled the trigger twice more. A good hit this time, two .45-caliber slugs in the center mass. The guy went down.

  He started to turn back to the first one he’d dropped, but he was too late.

  He registered the muzzle flash from the direction of the sprawled figure before he felt the bullet. No pain, just a sharp impact in his lower right side. He followed through on the action, squeezing the trigger again and again, putting his last three bullets in the guy on the ground.

  He dropped the revolver and unbuttoned the midsection of his coat, his fingers too numb to do the job properly. He reached a hand inside and felt the tear in his clothing and the wound itself. He didn’t need to see it to know it was bad. The volume of blood coursing over his fingers told him that. He put pressure on the hole with his left hand and started to move back toward the Jeep, wondering if he could survive the drive to the hospital.

  And then his problems really began.

  From a distance away, he heard the familiar noise of another engine slowing to take the turn. He looked bac
k toward the highway and saw the lights of two more vehicles turning onto the access road. Distinctive triangular headlights.

  He pressed down on the wound and began to run as fast as he could into the open fields. He wasn’t thinking anymore. He just knew that he could not wait and fight, unarmed and wounded. He might just have time to get away, to circle back around to the main road while they were searching for him. Perhaps he would get lucky and a car would stop for him before he froze to death.

  The snow was powdery beneath his feet and impeded his already stumbling steps. He wondered if he was leaving a trail of blood, but he was too weak to check. If he paused to look behind him, he might never be able to start moving again. His breathing became more labored, the freezing air savaging his lungs as he forced more of it into them. The pulse thudded in his head. He knew his heart was beating faster, which was bad news for blood loss. But if he could just keep going, perhaps he could make it.

  Then he heard the dogs.

  Frenzied barking, the rapid patter of paws on snow. He turned around as the two black Dobermans closed in on him fast. The biggest one leaped first, bringing him down easily. Jaws closed around his left wrist, joined a second later by another set around his ankle. Again, he felt no real pain, just pressure.

  He lost track of time then, lying on the snow, staring up at the black sky, listening to the guttural snarls of the dogs. It could have been a few seconds or ten minutes later that he heard the voice. The words were in English this time.

  “You had a good run. But it’s over now.”

  The source of the voice appeared above him. Like his predecessors, he wore a coat and thin tactical gloves. He also wore glasses. It wasn’t a face he recognized, but that meant nothing. He knew exactly who the man was and why he was here.

  He heard a whistle and a clicking noise as the dogs’ handler spoke to them and they released their grip. He didn’t make any move. He had used up the last of his reserves.