Hunting Season: A Rhys Adler Thriller

by Alex Carlson

  There was also a hand-held radio. Rhys considered playing with the knobs but didn’t know what signal that might send and to whom.

  And there was a folded entrenching tool.

  “A shovel?”

  “A shovel,” repeated Hernandez. “A shovel can be a sniper’s best friend.” He smiled mischievously.

  “Tell me on the way. Time to move, Marine.”

  They picked up the gear and started moving.

  “Where’s your motorcycle?”

  “That’s another story for the Hofbräuhaus.”

  C

  HAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SCHARKOV WAS HUMILIATED. He had lost half his force, a thoroughly unacceptable casualty rate. He’d return to base, head bowed, receive the rebuke he deserved, and accept the retirement forced upon him. This was the end for Colonel Alexei Scharkov.

  Still, he remained focused. He would complete the mission. Yes, he was humiliated. He’d never join the exclusive club of retired Special Forces officers who gathered from time to time to talk of past battles over bottles of vodka; in fact, those same officers would now talk about him and this day, the horror of it all. But they would have to drink a toast to him: Alexei Scharkov, they’d say, got the job done. The Tereshchenko woman would be dead.

  Of more concern at present wasn’t the casualty rate—they still had plenty force to overwhelm the safe house—but the nature of the casualties. The sniper had gotten into his men’s heads. They were the bravest, fiercest, toughest soldiers any country had ever produced, yet they took each step with trepidation, fearful it would be their last.

  Fear doesn’t win battles.

  It was his charge to lead them. He had no choice but to continue. His men understood that, his men hungered for that. There were no objections, not even tacit, when he ordered them to continue the advance. They moved forward, but they were cautious. They’d pause, systematically glass the area ahead and on the bluffs above with binoculars and rifle scopes, and then move again when they determined it was safe.

  The valley narrowed as it neared its northern terminus, a potentially dangerous situation as it squeezed them closer together, but Stepan and Grigory’s report of the sniper’s location had placed him far from the ridge above them. (Regrettably, Stepan and Grigory no longer responded.)

  RG 405 advanced, slowly but steadily, until they reached the end of the valley. All that was left was a final ascent direct to the CIA safe house. They found a wet, stony nook in the lee of the mountain in which to rest before the final climb. More than a few took off their boots and rubbed their sweaty, aching feet. All ate and drank. And all silently mourned the dead and thought of what a nauseatingly atrocious day it had been.

  Scharkov insisted each man look at the map. He wanted them to see the distance they’d come and the short stretch they had ahead of them. To the north, a single bluff separated them from the Grossglockner. To the southeast, a deep ravine cut into the mountain that they needed to ascend. It slashed the mountain into two parts. It was a blessing: it cut off the sniper from where they would climb. He might be able to shoot across at them, but he would get no closer, and if he made the decision to set up to shoot, then he made the decision that that would be his last stand. He wouldn’t have time to shoot and then go down into the ravine, up the other side, and on to the safe house.

  Scharkov didn’t doubt that the American intended to shoot. It’s what a sniper did.

  So, Scharkov thought, find him and take him out. Here. Now. Only then would they be free to advance at will. He didn’t doubt his men would advance through the firing if asked. They were professional and knew what was expected of them, what the risks were. But doing so did not make tactical sense and the men knew that as well. Asking them to advance up the slope with a sniper out there was comparable to Great War officers ordering their men over the top and into the indiscriminate Gatling guns. A sniper rifle was far more discriminate, but no less deadly and Scharkov didn’t have the numbers to tolerate a higher casualty rate.

  Under the cupped light of a penlight Scharkov studied the topographical 1:50,000 hiking map from the airfield’s office. The trail they had followed continued north, toward Grossglockner, but they wouldn’t be taking it. Their new course, east, would take them up terrain that was marked on the map by tight concentric circles, indicating a steep climb. It wasn’t so steep that they’d need to use their hands, but the going would be slow. That’s where the sniper would want to take them. With his finger Scharkov traced the map back across the ravine to where the shooter would be. He had to be there.

  “Valentine,” Scharkov said quietly, “it seems you are the only one left with a long gun. Come and I will show you where this sniper is.”

  SERGEANT VALENTINE PRIMAKOV needed to move around the hummock behind which RG 405 had been resting and crawl about 75 meters to find a position where he could adequately scope the southern side of the ravine. Scharkov was adamant the sniper would be there. In a low-crawl speed of one meter per fifteen seconds, it took him fifteen minutes to cover the distance. Since movement was easily noticed, even in the green field of a night vision scope, the point was to move with excruciating slowness and pause between each repositioning of the arm or leg and then again after all of the limbs had been moved once. It wasn’t perfect, but his antagonist’s conditions weren’t perfect either. Just concentrate on each individual movement, he told himself. Think of nothing else. If he got plugged, nothing else would matter anyway.

  The crawl was gruesome. Crawling, so easy and natural that one learned it before learning to walk, could be excruciating. Primakov didn’t have the luxury of using the ergonomics of his body, the support of his skeletal system in which his weight was divided and supported by his joints. Instead, he stayed low in the tall grass. Head down, shoulders down, ass down. Even his toes were pointed out to keep his heels down. He dragged himself along, through wet grass that soaked him, mud that dirtied him, and rocks that poked, scraped, and cut him. His elbows and knees shrieked in pain.

  The temperature, however, was cool, the one saving grace. The heat of his exertion dissipated into the thin mountain air. Still, he knew the blessing would become a curse: once he settled into a shooting position, the cool would become cold and he’d struggle to prevent his body from shaking. It was difficult to keep a world magnified by 15X steady while shivering.

  Please let this be the last time. Valentine was done pulling the trigger. He wanted to drink tea with his wife, sit together and watch their daughter with dolls and toy horses.

  After the grueling fifteen minutes, he found a natural depression in the ground and nestled into it. To his right, a small boulder lay, having settled into its spot a millennium or two ago. The rock provided a small amount of cover yet allowed a clear view of the southern side of the ravine. He radioed his position and slowly peeled his rifle from his back, laying it carefully next to him. From his jacket’s back pocket he pulled—excruciatingly slowly—his binoculars and brought them to his eyes.

  He twisted the binocs’ dial and brought the slope into focus, holding the glasses steady while he familiarized himself with his new view. The magnification of the landscape had remarkable clarity, even in the green sea of the night vision specs, and he could detect nuances in the ground that all blended together with the naked eye, even in the best of light.

  He divided the magnified field of vision into six sections, three on top and three on the bottom. He studied each section hard for fifteen seconds and then moved to the next. He looked for consistencies, patterns, geometric shapes, anything that suggested order and thus had no place in nature. Above all, he was looking for straight lines. Nothing in the Alps was straight, not the mountains, the streams, the folds of the meadows, not even the trees, which fought the mountain winds; they bent even if they didn’t break. A straight line could only be a rifle. He searched for the sniper rifle, not the sniper, who would bend and contort his body, blend in with the contours of the ground, just as Primakov had done.

>   After dismissing each of the six segments, he shifted his glasses to the right and studied the six segments in his new field of view. It was an exercise in conscientiousness and Primakov scanned methodically and with tremendous care. He studied the folds in the meadows and between the trees in the patches of forest. Primakov could see that the trees at this elevation were shorter, the woods thinner. The tree line couldn’t be much more than 500 meters above.

  The third shift of his glasses revealed nothing, again, and he rose the binocs to a slightly higher elevation, and again saw nothing discernible. Then he began to work backward, to the left. It could be a long—

  Well, that is interesting. Straight lines, a lot of them. He was looking at a hunter’s stand. The Hochsitz was raised on four stilts at the edge of a wooded section of the slope. It was positioned to provide a downslope view and Primakov understood that it undoubtedly provided a clear view of the far end of the meadow, where deer liked to come out of the shadows to warm their backs in the sun. The stand was a weathered, wooden structure, undoubtedly rotted to the point that a hunter risked his neck when he climbed the rickety ladder to get inside.

  But there was no way the sniper would risk setting up inside: it was the one spot on the mountainside that would attract attention, just as it had attracted Primakov’s.

  He moved on to the next segment and continued his hunt before he realized that one of the straight lines among the lines of the stand had bothered him. It was, if possible, even straighter than the others. He returned his gaze to the stand and dialed in the focus even more.

  Yes, it was difficult to see because it was pointing in his general direction, shortening its linearity. Could it be a gun barrel? The muzzle looked too fat for a sniper rifle, but that, of course, depended on the suppressor attached to the end. He looked for movement even though he knew that any good sniper developed an uncanny stillness.

  Why would he set up there—if he was even there? It made no sense.

  But then it did. The man had no ghillie suit and perhaps his clothes contrasted with the ground, even in the shadows of the trees. He might feel unacceptably exposed.

  Primakov studied the position hard, looking for additional clues. It didn’t take long. Out the back of the stand extended what might be a leg. It made sense. Hunting stands are small and no man could lie prone in one without sticking out the back. Sure enough, the shape of a boot could be discerned, recognizable because it was not entirely dissimilar to the boots that Primakov wore.

  Satisfied that he had found him, Primakov radioed the position and told Scharkov what he wanted. Scharkov acknowledged, thought over the request, and gave him a green light.

  Primakov slowly pulled his rifle into position and prepared to shoot.

  MANNY HAD CLIMBED into the Hochsitz after dropping what seemed like a war’s worth of equipment at the foot of the ladder. As he climbed up, the lowest rung of the ladder had snapped in two under his weight—causing him to hit his face idiotically on the top rung—and he subsequently had to take a giant initial step just to climb into the thing.

  He was alone. He and Rhys had separated again, even though it wasn’t so clear whether it had worked out so well the first time. They were both still alive, at least, and perhaps that boded well. They came up with a plan, the first part of which was unpleasant, and then they split up, with Rhys going more or less straight up to the safe house and Manny trying to draw the Russians away or at least to delay them. It wasn’t much of a plan, because once a small part of it went wrong the whole thing would go to shit. And quite possibly a small part had already gone wrong. From what he saw, the Russians were closer to the hut than he and Rhys had assumed they would be. He hoped Rhys was moving fast.

  “Don’t get yourself killed this time,” Rhys had said before heading up to the hut. He still disbelieved that Manny hadn’t been blown to bits in the cave. “I promised I’d get you home to your Olga.”

  “Be sure to get off this mountain yourself,” answered Manny. “It’s the only way we’ll get Lucinda to buy you another motorcycle.”

  Rhys had then disappeared up the slope and Manny walked along its side toward the ravine as he looked for an adequate place to set up.

  This part is gonna be fun, he thought.

  His face had lit up when he saw the Hochsitz. The site was better than he had hoped for: it attracted attention while revealing little. He considered the shooting position. The space was small, just big enough to accommodate two heavily clad hunters sitting with scrunched legs on a low wooden bench nailed into the floor. Those hunters would shoot from the knee, with the rifle supported by the opening facing the meadow. But the deer they’d be shooting would be closer, maybe a hundred yards away. As a sniper planning a much longer shot, he’d prefer a prone position, lying on the floor. So he kicked out the lowest two boards from the front of the stand, got low, and arranged the rifle so that the barrel could extend through the gap. Still, the floorspace wasn’t near long enough and shooting in that position would require extending the legs out the ladder opening. Not ideal, but he’d make it work.

  He looked out over the valley to the peaks on the other side. The air was crisp and cool, the clouds all but blown away. It was quiet. The quiet before the storm, he knew.

  Okay, he thought, just this last thing to do.

  C

  HAPTER THIRTY

  RHYS MARCHED STEADILY up the east side of the mountain. He headed north with the intention of going over the hump of the mountain and coming down the other side, approaching the back of the safe house on the descent. It was a long way around, but he’d be well clear of the Russians. Manny’s presence near them would slow them down.

  He was alone—utterly alone—and for the moment that pleased him. He didn’t worry about getting shot. At some point he’d ditch the trail and hoof it over the crown of the mountain, but for now he just followed it blindly, without giving it much thought. His pockets were stuffed with a ton of shit and he carried the new AK-9 in his hand. He wanted to dump the burdensome jacket, but it contained the tools of his survival. Besides, it had cost him a fortune.

  The tree line of the northern sides of mountains in the Alps was lower than that of the southern sides because the mountain’s own shadow limited sunlight to but a few hours per day, even during the long summer days. As he trudged along, the surroundings became rockier, more barren, devoid of vegetation. The path itself, probably centuries old, was hard-packed dirt, and the sound of his hiking boots on the path was soothing, almost therapeutic. The rhythm enabled him to think, something the constant adrenaline had prevented for most of the day.

  He was tired, physically exhausted and mentally drained. Someone had poured cement in his legs and the more he thought about it, the slower he went. He made a deliberate effort to quicken his pace, with the hope that doing so would boost his thoughts, which more than anything confused him. His thoughts, inarticulate and disjointed, never smooth enough to actually build ideas, hinted that despite the fear, anger, anguish, and exhaustion, this had been one of those days for which he lived.

  How he had come to be the man he was? He always had a sense of independence, self-reliance, and a desire to be on his own. As a kid, he had a few friends, but he didn’t really need them. The woods and mountains were as much fun alone as they were with others. He couldn’t suppress a smile when he remembered that as a kid he was always playing war, with some toy gun or maybe just a stick or branch. The Soviets—the enemy of every film he had seen—were invading northern New Hampshire and he was forced to defend his home. That was something. He was always defending his home, not his country. He never had felt particularly patriotic, maybe because the Greatest Generation patriotism didn’t really kick in until after the Cold War ended. The America of his childhood was still processing Vietnam and no one waved the flag over that.

  He had no idea why he was now doing what he was doing. It still wasn’t patriotism. He wasn’t serving his country. And he was so far removed from Dixville Notch t
hat he couldn’t be defending his home. No, it was personal. Lucinda, Colin, and a family were in that hut up there and it would be a damn shame for any of them to get hurt.

  It was also right versus wrong. He hadn’t a clue about the politics involved and didn’t give two shits about Ukraine’s future, but he knew the Russians were playing games with the country in some nineteenth-century Realpolitik that would return to them Great Power status after two decades of relative weakness. But you don’t do this. You don’t send a Spetsnaz unit to wipe out a family in the Austrian Alps.

  And, although he never articulated the thought, the smile on his face told him that today had been fun. The mountains were higher, the consequences more grave, and the pain real, not make believe. But he was still trying to save Dixville Notch from the evil Russians.

  Rhys couldn’t figure out Manny’s motivation. Hernandez was patriotic, full of duty and honor and love of country. But that wasn’t it. Rhys didn’t understand it, but Rhys had never been a Marine, never even considered joining the military. Just wasn’t on his radar. But Manny was determined to get up this mountain, and it wasn’t just patriotism that motivated him. Rhys didn’t get it at all. It might just get him killed and if it did then all of this would have been for nought.

  At that moment in his thoughts, he noticed that the stars had come out, illuminating the barren space around him. His eyes had adjusted and he was able to make out folds in neighboring mountains and slight contrasts in the bluish hue cast on the forests and meadows below. The—

  The sound wasn’t loud enough to scare him, but it came earlier than they had anticipated.

  Again, the sonic boom of a high caliber bullet cracking the sound barrier, then rolling into echoes that bounced off the mountainsides. Almost immediately, he heard the lighter snapping of automatic fire, lots of it. Rhys turned his head toward the sounds and saw brief spurts of light. Tracers. Must be half a dozen men emptying their clips.