Coercion
Page 13
The dormant reflexes developed during Alex’s relentless training had kicked in the moment he “hit the wind” jumping out the back of the doomed plane. Uncle Sam’s finest had honed his predatory habits and sharpened his survival senses. Now that he was back in the wild, Alex let the animal in him take control. Never mind the pitiful knife, Alex mused, he was a weapon. Then his inner voice retorted, Yeah, but Yarik is practically an army.
Alex knew he had two opposing forces to contend with: the Siberian predator behind him and the Siberian winter before him. In addition to the extreme cold, he knew that death’s two other daughters, wet and hungry, would soon be knocking on his door if he did not take the appropriate measures to fend them off. His was a grim scenario, but it was also invigorating in a primitive kind of way.
In the back of his mind, Alex knew that Peitho might render all his past investigative actions and future survival efforts pointless. If Yarik still had his number, then escape would require more than simply running away.
In the back of his heart, Alex maintained hope that Yarik had not passed along his number to anyone not on the plane, and that as a result, his number was now up in smoke. After all, Yarik did not know that the airplane would explode, so it was likely he had left both the number and the transmitter onboard the doomed craft. Unfortunately, Alex could not count on that hope. His acting assumption had to be that Yarik had the code but not the means to transmit it. If that were the case, then Alex would be safe until Yarik reached civilization. And that meant that while Yarik was trying to prevent Alex from escaping, Alex had to prevent Yarik from doing the same.
The hunted was also the hunter, but only Alex knew that. He was comfortable with the assumption that a man with Yarik’s personality would never consider the option that he, too, might be prey. It was Alex’s only advantage, and he intended to leverage it.
Alex had not been able to take in much geography during his descent—there had been a few other things on his mind at the time—but he knew that the airplane had taken off from Irkutsk. He also knew that he needed to head east from Irkutsk to get to that crescent-shaped lake near Academic City and the headquarters of the enemy. The airplane had also been heading east and Alex guessed that was its destination since HQ would be the natural choice of location for an interrogation. He wished he had paid attention to that as he jumped. Of course in the end the precise trajectory didn’t really matter. Siberian distances were so great that a couple dozen miles this way or that were insignificant. What mattered now was that he had a meaningful bearing. He looked down at his compass-watch, and smiled.
Alex set a pace he knew he could keep up all day and then put his body on autopilot. The natural impulse was to sprint full-out for a few miles, to put some quick distance between himself and Yarik, but he couldn’t afford to get winded or sweaty. Fortunately he had a head start. Yippee.
Alex spent the first ten minutes going northwest so as not to give the giant a straight azimuth on him from the landing site. Then, as soon as he reached a place where the combination of wind and rocky terrain camouflaged his footprints, he turned east. He hoped this would work, but knew it probably would not. Alex had the distinct impression that Yarik was at home in the elements. Alex would act accordingly.
With autopilot on and senses alert, Alex diverted his mind to strategy. The first thing he needed was an inventory. He started with the most important thing, his own body. He was not injured. He was hungry but not ravenous. He had no food, but knew from experience that he could last a couple exertive days without it.
Keeping warm was the next challenge. In addition to pocketing Andrey’s documents and money, he had salvaged his coat and gloves. He would wear the second coat while sleeping and would be saved by a second pair of gloves when his own inevitably got wet.
Alex had also saved his parachute, bundling it back up as quickly as possible and securing it in the pack. The silk would provide both a blanket and a tent, and the parachute cord would have myriad uses if his stay in the wild became a protracted one.
In the hardware department, Andrey’s pocketknife had large and small blades, screwdrivers, a can opener, a file, a saw, an awl, scissors, a toothpick, and tweezers: very nice. He was especially happy to have the toothpick; caribou tended to get stuck between his teeth.
The last little bit of paraphernalia Alex had was his watch. The face of the titanium IWC Porsche Design compass-watch flipped up to reveal a compass below, complete with luminescent markings. Given the low cloud cover and the limited daylight hours Siberia enjoyed in late November, his favorite possession would save him both nerves and guesswork.
The good thing about running was that it kept him warm. The bad thing was that he couldn’t go on forever. Of course, the same applied to Yarik. Alex wanted to take comfort in the fact that Yarik was considerably older than him, but after seeing Andrey fight, he hesitated to give Russian warriors discounts based on age.
Occasional flurries drifted down from the steel-gray sky as he ran, foreshadowing pleasures to come. Those that hit his eyes conspired to freeze his lids together when he blinked. Those that hit his face absorbed precious heat. Some melted and rolled down his neck to saturate the top of his T-shirt. Once he stopped running and cooled off, Alex would enjoy a collar of ice. Just keep running . . .
That enchanting thought reminded Alex of how important it was for him to keep mentally preoccupied, now and throughout his wilderness trek. He would be lost if he began to focus on fright, exhaustion, or the various aches and pains that were about to beset his body. Fortunately, he did have a lot to think about.
Alex spent the first couple of hours actively recalling his survival training: how to keep warm, what to do for food, when to rest and when to run. Then he focused on evasion, on rolling his feet to avoid leaving tracks and keeping his profile off the horizon. It came back more quickly and clearly than he would have anticipated. Perhaps it was the frosty, pine-scented air. Perhaps it was the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound giant on his tail. It didn’t really matter why those neurons were firing, as long as he had their wisdom at his disposal.
Once he had finished dredging the depths of his survival-training memory, Alex began putting together a wish list. He would have to pilfer from cabins quickly as he came across them, if he were lucky enough to come across any at all. Alex wasn’t feeling particularly lucky at the moment.
First on the list of necessities was food, followed closely by a sleeping bag or blankets, matches, a canteen, a map, and any camping, cooking, hunting, or ice fishing tools he could lay his hands on. A gun was probably too much to hope for, but hey . . . Of course he couldn’t risk being seen, but if he were fortunate enough to come across a cabin, he also couldn’t risk waiting around for just the right moment. He would have to be bold while relying on stealth and speed, thus the preprepared list. Yarik would also be drawn to a cabin like steel to a magnet. Perhaps Alex could use that force against him.
Alex tried to focus on the positive. He knew how to survive and how to evade, and he had the advantage of speed: tracking takes time. Unfortunately, this line of thought just led him back to the same, sore, inescapable issue: physical escape was not going to be enough. He was going to have to take the giant out. To do that Alex had to keep the giant on his trail until he found some means of gaining a tactical advantage. He would have to orchestrate their encounter so that the time and place worked in his favor.
As time went on and no helicopters appeared in search of him, Alex got more comfortable with the assumption that Yarik could not communicate with the outside world. Thank goodness for small miracles.
Day turned to dusk, and dusk threatened dark, and still Alex’s legs pumped on. He checked his watch at the moment the sun blinked out behind the mountains. It was just after five o’clock. He kept going for another ninety minutes in order to make it to the top of the ridge he was climbing. Alex figured he had covered about thirty miles over the last ten
hours. For a man on foot in this terrain and weather, it was an impressive feat. Compared to the map of Siberia, it was nothing.
Alex ducked under an enormous spruce tree’s canopy of boughs, removed his pack, and sat down to drink his water. Andrey had kept his documents in a plastic bag. Alex had taken the documents out and routinely filled the bag with ice throughout the day, drinking it as it melted in the heat of his exhaust. He filled it one more time while he was still hot from trekking.
Alex forced himself to get back up before his muscles went on holiday and began to climb the Siberian spruce. The grueling trek had sapped his legs, so he used his arms to do most of the lifting. Fortunately the wind had died toward dusk, so the sways were not extreme. It was a strange feeling, climbing up into boundless darkness in a place like this. The stars shone as bright and low as he had ever seen thanks to the cold, clean air. Alex found the climb to be physically exhausting but psychologically refreshing, the former being unavoidable and the latter being something every endurance soldier knew to be crucial.
Once he was as high as he could safely go, Alex stopped, allowed his eyes to adjust, and soaked up the view. It was beautiful, but he found that the combination of his physical condition with the swaying of the tree and the serenity of the scene was lulling him to sleep like a siren song, so he refocused on the task at hand.
He began a methodical three-hundred-sixty-degree scan of his surroundings, from the foreground to the horizon. He was looking for three things: movement, light, and smoke. He saw . . . nothing. Then he spent a full five minutes scouring the route he had taken to get there. Again, nothing. Amen. He descended feeling like the only man left on Earth, and almost wished it were so.
Alex had planned to make his way down the ridge to spend the night in a less exposed, less visible location, but he could not bring himself to move any farther. It was time to bivouac.
He selected two adjacent boughs from the mighty tree’s lowest ring and stripped them of their little branches. Then he tied the ends of the boughs together with parachute cord so they formed an ellipse about eight feet in length. Next, Alex used thick, fallen branches to prop up the distal end at the spot where the boughs were tied, making the makeshift bedrails more or less parallel with the ground. Finally he finished the bed by looping the parachute very loosely around the boughs twice and then tying it off to create what amounted to a layered tube that flanked the wind. It had been quick, and it would be comfortable. Rest was one of the few weapons he had. Alex intended to make sure it was fully loaded.
Chapter 34
SIBERIAN OUTBACK, RUSSIA
Yarik awoke at three a.m. in the fork of a tree, stiff, sore, and smiling. He was on the hunt. Given the excitement, he was confident that his three-hour nap would suffice to power this pursuit to closure.
The tree’s trunk had shielded him from the wind, and its height had protected him from the wolves, but as he sat there stretching out the kinks, he was not sure it was worth it. He pushed his chin up and to the left with the palm of his hand until his neck cracked, then repeated the exercise on the right. Better than a cup of coffee. With a quick roll of the shoulders, he dropped to the ground like a gladiator entering the ring.
Alex had stayed ahead throughout the previous day, expertly camouflaging his trail as he went. Yarik had been able to follow easily enough, but Alex’s unusual ability to maintain a constant speed hour after hour had kept a steady gap between them. His quarry’s endurance had also changed the chase from child’s play to man’s sport—Yarik’s favorite sport.
Yarik took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air and set off over the moonlit landscape in a rapid trot. Given his druthers, he’d string this match out for a week, but he could not allow that to happen. He had to catch Alex before they reached a city and Alex vanished into the masses. He could still kill Alex using Peitho in the city, but he needed to interrogate him first.
Karpov’s orders were to take Alex alive and leave him unblemished. The general had not explained his intentions, but he did not have to. Yarik knew that everything Karpov did was calculated. He did not make strategic errors. For this reason, Karpov was the only man to whom Yarik ever truly deferred. Yarik found that he actually liked to please Karpov. Pity about the unblemished requirement, though. Still, there were many ways to inflict pain and suffering without leaving marks.
Yarik stopped running for a moment to inspect the ground more carefully and drink some water. Sniffing the air, he could tell that it was going to be getting even colder. If Alex didn’t find clothing or reach shelter, he would be a meatsicle within forty-eight hours. Technically frozen was unblemished, but . . .
Yarik worried that there might not be any shelter to find. There were only about three million people in rural Siberia, a territory roughly the size of the continental United States. Everyone lived in the cities. Alex was headed toward Novosibirsk, which was the largest and closest and the obvious destination. It housed a US consulate, a major airport, and a million places to hide.
Knowledge of the destination removed risk and made the pursuit that much faster. Even if he lost Alex’s trail, he could proceed with confidence, knowing he would pick it up again once the mountainous terrain narrowed the breadth of navigable options. But Yarik didn’t expect to lose Alex. After a day of pursuit, he now understood his quarry’s technique well enough to anticipate.
By waking at three a.m., Yarik expected to catch Alex in his sleep. That would make it easy to comply with Karpov’s request. He suspected that Alex would have been too afraid to stop last night and would have run until he dropped. If that were in fact the case, it would be his first mistake but a fatal error.
The moon had risen while he had slept, augmenting Yarik’s advantage. He found it easier to follow a fresh trail in bright moonlight than broad daylight because the moon highlighted the subtle reflections that result when someone dislodges a pebble or puts the pressure of a footfall on a dusting of snow.
To his credit, Alex had confounded Yarik’s tracking by sporadically changing his heading five or ten degrees this way or that without impacting what was proving to be a relatively straight and efficient course. Alex’s overall strategy seemed to be one of speed, probably because he had chosen a destination that was easy to guess. Instinct told Yarik that Alex would change course radically once they neared Novosibirsk in an attempt to both throw him off and to intersect one of the approaching tangential motorways. It was a good strategy, but it would be at least a day before he could deploy it. Alex would not last that long.
Forty minutes after starting out that morning, Yarik came to the tree on the ridge where Alex had slept and cursed the darkness. Was it possible that Alex was not afraid? When would he stop underestimating this man?
He quickly inspected the campsite before continuing. There was no sign that Alex had eaten. Yarik would have been surprised if there were, but it was reassuring to be certain that they were on the same diet.
As Yarik resumed the trail, his thoughts shifted back to the man who had freed Alex. Who was he and how much did he know about the Knyaz? Yarik was very concerned by the implications of the Knyaz being blindsided that way. For decades, they had led an invisible existence. For that to change now was unthinkable. The timing was just too critical. The bulge slapping against his left thigh reminded Yarik that he would get his answer soon enough; he had a helping hand.
Yarik cracked his neck. He shouldn’t overreact. While this incident might indicate a major strategic complication, it could just as easily be nothing at all. They had kept the lid on it for a decade now. Karpov had everything brilliantly camouflaged in plain sight under the cloak of the KGB. No Russian was going to poke around there. Of course, one corner of the Knyaz operation lay beyond their circle of secrecy and control: the United States. Once again, Victor’s territory appeared to be the most likely cause of their security breach. He would certainly have words with the boy the next time they met.
Of course Alex’s desperation became Yarik’s necessity. Predator had to keep up with prey. Yarik wasn’t just keeping up any more; he was gaining. He had halved the distance between them. Alex was now less than thirty minutes ahead.
Bounding down the snowy mountainside, Yarik felt the freedom and exhilaration of the slalom skier. Perhaps biathlete was more appropriate. He would likely be shooting once he stopped. Raising his nose to the wind, he could almost smell his quarry. He certainly sensed the American. It would not be long now.
With that thought crossing his mind, the groove he was descending took a jagged turn, and Yarik caught sight of the valley below. It was a long, narrow valley, no doubt carved in eras past by a raging river. Only a meandering stream remained. He could just make out its frozen, silvery face through the dusting of windblown snow. He could also make out something else, something bobbing along a willowy thicket parallel to the bank. It was Alex.
Chapter 35
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
Every eye in the restaurant was on them as Karpov pulled out Anna’s chair. He was famous and powerful, and she was unknown but beautiful. That was enough to turn heads in New York or Paris, to say nothing of the middle of Siberia.
His future was on the line tonight, but he was far from his top form, and that coincidence had him cursing the gods. Just an hour before leaving for this all-important date, his personal aide Major Maximov had shown up at his apartment to deliver devastating news: The plane bringing Yarik back from Irkutsk had exploded in flight. Cause unknown.