He reached inside the jacket pocket and felt nothing. The gun! Where was the damn gun? Matthews was frantic as he checked his other pockets, while looking for his weapon, but it was no use.
It was gone.
Then, he understood what had happened. It must have tumbled out of his jacket pocket and into the snow when he slid down the tree and onto his ass.
He let out a soft moan that was drowned out by the wind. Even if he retraced his steps by following his prints in the snow, it would be useless. He had walked past countless trees while tracking down the scent of the wood smoke.
He’d never find that particular tree again, not even if his life depended upon it.
With a sigh, he let it go. It didn’t matter. There was probably just the old woman to deal with. What was important is that he’d found shelter and food.
He was safe.
Matthews used his right hand to pound on the door and felt agony. But, that was good he reasoned. It meant the hand still had some feeling in it.
In his mind’s eye, Matthews looked ahead. He imagined himself sitting beside a comfy fire, wrapped inside a blanket, and eating a delicious meal of roast chicken, perhaps with a glass of whisky, or more likely, vodka.
His daydream ended when the knocking was answered by barking.
So, the old woman had a pet to keep her company. That was nice, Matthews thought, and he liked dogs. Matthews had expected the old woman to shush the animal, or to move it away from the door so that they could talk.
He did not expect her to simply open the door and let the beast out, which is what happened. The dog hit Matthews in the chest as it snarled at him. It was a German Shepherd mix of some sort, weighed over sixty pounds, and was filled with fury. Matthews almost fell over, but kept his balance as he screamed in fright.
The old lady was smiling, but she had no teeth left in her mouth. She was also holding an ancient shotgun. Before opening the door, she had tossed on a fur coat that was made from the pelts of rabbits, with a matching cap on her head. She cackled away as Matthews struggled with the dog.
Terrified and panicked, Matthews spoke in his native English instead of Russian, as he begged the woman to call the dog off.
The cackling ceased.
Although Matthews had no way of knowing it, the old woman despised Westerners.
Her father had been an espionage agent in the Cold War world of the 1950’s. He left for an assignment one day and never returned.
By speaking English, Matthews had risen from the level of an annoying intrusion, to become a despised enemy.
The shotgun was raised, and if Matthews hadn’t slipped and fallen backwards, the blast from the gun would have blown his head off.
One of the pellets had hit the dog on its hind quarters.
The hound yelped and scurried away from Matthews, as if it thought he was the source of its pain.
The beast went back inside the house as the old witch fed a fresh shell into her gun.
Matthews reached out, grabbed a log from the pile, and hurled it at the old woman. The log smacked her on the chin, but she held on to the shotgun. Matthews threw another log, then, another.
The last log struck the woman between the eyes and the shotgun went off right before she dropped it. The blast tore a hole in the overhanging roof of the porch, as the old woman wobbled back inside the house.
Matthews made it to his feet and grabbed up the shotgun, then, he stepped inside the door. The old woman stumbled around a dusty sofa with blood streaming down her face from a cut.
The mad crone looked like she was about to pass out, and when she did lose consciousness, she fell backwards into the fireplace.
Matthews was rushing over to pull her out when she sprang up from the logs. She had used a hand to support herself, and the odor of the burnt flesh was sickening, while her scream was frightening.
Other than the hand, the flames had yet to touch her, but the rabbit fur coat was on fire. The old woman was screaming incoherently as she shed the coat. It landed near a wall and set the curtains on fire.
Terror cleared the old woman’s mind, and she rushed through a doorway that led to the kitchen.
Matthews was horrified by the turn of events. He had been freezing, and now was in danger of burning to death. When the old lady returned, she was holding a bucket full of water, which she tossed onto the curtains.
However, the sofa had caught fire as well, along with the rug and a pile of newspapers. As the old woman rushed back into the kitchen for more water, embers from the burning newspapers spread throughout the room.
Matthews backed out of the house when he saw that fighting the blaze would be useless. The embers had ignited countless small fires and the home was filling with smoke.
There was a tree stump nearby. Matthews cleared off the snow and sat down. He had an old blanket he had found peeking out of the snow covering the porch swing. He wrapped the filthy wool cloth around himself and sat there, stunned by the turn of events.
The dog rocketed out of the house, moving fast, and disappeared amidst the trees.
The blaze grew, but the old woman never came out, and Matthews never heard her scream.
Black smoke billowed upwards into a white sky. After an hour, the blaze was down to a few glowing cinders, as the snow helped to douse the fire, while keeping it from spreading.
Matthews sat there and watched it burn, as he enjoyed the warmth. The warmth had been accompanied by a sickening odor, but he tried not to think about that.
The old woman must have been insane to sic the dog on him for no reason, and then, to try and shoot him without cause.
Insane, just stark raving mad.
Matthews wandered off into the storm again with the threadbare blanket covering him. If he could find one house, maybe he could find another.
Whenever he thought about the roast chicken, he cried.
22
Storm’s End
When dawn arrived in Siberia, the snow was still falling, but the sun was breaking through the clouds as well.
Inside one of the ruined buildings where Tanner had salvaged wood, a figure stirred. It was a man. He was covered by snow and his face was blackened from frostbite, while a scarlet wound was visible across his scalp.
Nikolai rose from the snow and looked around at a world turned white. There was madness in his eyes, eyes that sat above a ruined nose and lips that had lost circulation during the night. Inside his boots were dead toes and the fingers of his left hand were a bluish-black.
Something caught Nikolai’s attention. He watched as a puff of smoke wafted into the air in the near distance.
The smoke was coming from Tanner’s quinzee.
“I found him. I found Tanner,” Nikolai said, but the words pushed out past his dead lips were unintelligible.
His right hand still had some feeling in it. It was gripped around his Serbu shotgun and had been covered by his body during the night. His body’s core temperature was at a precariously low level, but Nikolai was beyond feeling the cold. In his madness, he had but one desire.
Kill Tanner!
Although his left hand had no feeling, the arm worked. Nikolai bent down, shoved his arm under his companion and pulled her up from beneath the snow. It was Liliya, long since dead and with half her head gone.
“Liliya, I’ll show you that I’m better than Fedor. Dozens of men have tried to kill Tanner, but I’ll be the one to do it.”
Again, his words were strange sounds pushed through dead flesh.
Nikolai hobbled through the thigh deep snow while dragging Liliya’s body along, and looking like something from a demon’s daydream.
As he neared the hole where the smoke was drifting out, Nikolai, with great care, lowered Liliya’s corpse against a tree.
“Wait here where it’s safe and I’ll be right back.”
Nikolai shuffled through the deep snow and saw that there was an opening at the front of the igloo-like structure. As he moved closer, he thought he
heard the faint sound of voices. One of the voices sounded young. Some part of his brain recalled that Tanner had been traveling with a woman and child, but Nikolai was too far gone to care.
Unable to grip the shotgun with more than one hand, Nikolai simply rested the weapon’s short barrel against the top of the quinzee and watched as it sank into white powder. The rifle met resistance when it touched the packed snow that comprised the shelter’s roof, and Nikolai squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
The trigger on the gun was coated with ice. Nikolai pulled harder, grunted, and was rewarded by the first of three blasts.
When Polina screamed in terror after the sound of the first shot, Nikolai cried out in pleasure as he continued to fire.
“I got him, Liliya! Honey, I killed him.”
Nikolai staggered back to Liliya’s dead form and plopped down beside it in the snow.
“I killed him, Liliya. I killed Tanner. I killed Tanner… and I love you.”
Tanner left the quinzee by leaping out and clearing the entrance by ten feet. He had been careful not to land on his injured arm, but the impact with the snow caused it to throb anyway.
No one fired at him, and there was no one to fire at, as he had expected.
As he told Sara and Polina the day before, they would build their shelter with defense in mind. They did so, and built a decoy shelter.
Tanner and Polina constructed two quinzees on either side of the natural mound Tanner had chosen as a windbreak.
The real quinzee was hollowed out enough to fit them, while the other only had a shallow depression dug out of it.
Above the cavity where the fire burned, a channel was made within the top layer of the two structures, which connected them. But, only the false quinzee had a hole in its roof to vent the smoke.
Anyone approaching from the old ruins would have seen the smoke, the false opening, and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Nikolai had certainly fallen for the ruse. His first blast had frightened Polina, who’d screamed, and given Tanner time to grab a weapon.
Tanner found Nikolai where he last settled, next to the corpse of Liliya.
Nikolai was dead as well, having died seconds earlier.
Even in death the madness in Nikolai’s eyes was noticeable. Tanner left them there and returned to the quinzee to relay what and who he’d found.
“He fell for our trick,” Polina said.
Tanner thought back on the little interaction he’d had with Nikolai. Liliya had clearly been with Fedor, and yet, Nikolai had referred to her as his wife, and he could not let her go even after she’d died.
“He fell very hard,” Tanner said.
They headed back towards the city later than they’d planned to, but the bright sun warmed them, while the clear sky was a beautiful sight. Despite the thirty inches of fresh snow they were forced to slog through, and Tanner and Sara’s injuries, they were all in good spirits.
Sara was riding atop a crude sled made from wood taken from the old structures. She had a rifle in her hands and kept watch for movement while Tanner pulled the sled and Polina struggled along beside him.
Polina wasn’t a short girl, but at times, the snowdrifts reached above her waist. Tanner suggested to her that she walk in his wake, but she wanted to stay at his side. That lasted only a short while, then, aware that she was wearing herself out unnecessarily, Polina began following behind Sara’s sled.
It was Tanner that spotted him first, then Sara.
They were grateful that Polina had been looking the other way, where a dog, a German shepherd mix, was bounding through the snow, with a freshly caught rabbit in his jaws.
It was Dan Matthews. He was sitting beneath a tree and was huddled inside an old blanket to keep warm.
The effort had failed.
He was dead.
Matthews’ open eyes saw nothing and he was covered with a thin glaze of ice.
The sight pleased Tanner.
It saved him the trouble of having to kill the bastard himself.
23
A Case Of Mistaken Identity
Valentina and two men were at the lake where Pavel had called from the day before.
When Pavel failed to make contact again, Valentina became worried and decided to go look for him. She knew there was a pit in the area that had acted as a prison for the girl, Polina, and she sent one of the men to look for it. After finding the pit, the man, Ruslan, told her what he’d found, which was nothing.
“The pit is empty?” Valentina asked.
“There is a tent down there,” Ruslan said. “And a toilet inside the tent that sits over a hole.”
“And no sign of Pavel?”
“No, Valentina, I am sorry. But, this is Pavel we’re discussing. He must be all right.”
“We need to find him. He will have answers.”
Ruslan looked at the other man, who was named Bogdan, and saw that Bogdan was thinking the same thing he was.
They had been roused out of bed before dawn and fought their way through the final remnants of the snowstorm. They were revolutionaries, yes, but Bogdan made his living as a plumber while Ruslan was a mortician’s assistant.
They were tired, hungry, and if the truth be known, scared. Pavel was the muscle of their group. If he had been bested, what chance did they have?
“Valentina,” Bogdan said. “Maybe we should go back to the city and wait to hear from Pavel.”
“No, we go on and we find him. What if he’s injured? We’ll start along the ridge. Pavel said he was looking down on the group from there.”
“Yes, Valentina,” Bogdan said, then he sent a shrug toward Ruslan. Soon, they were back on their snowmobiles and headed along the ridge.
A short time later, Sasha’s young niece, Brenda, had found the bodies of the wolves and the snow-covered tips of the planes sticking out of the ice, by following in the trail left behind by Valentina.
Before leaving to search that morning, Sasha had been advised that there were more people missing, including two local businessmen, Gleb and Aleksandr Dumonovsky.
“We found the planes,” Sasha said. “But I don’t know why the ice would have cracked like that.”
They were keeping back, as the ice near the planes sloped downward towards the large hole in the ice.
There were no bodies left to view. A bear had dragged one away, while the rest had slid into the hole over time, as the aperture dipped lower from the weight of the fresh snow.
“How many men did they say were on those planes?” Durand asked.
“About two dozen, and there’s a woman missing too.”
The walkie-talkie in Sasha’s pocket went off. It was Brenda. She had discovered something else on shore.
A few minutes later, Durand was staring down into the pit, which had been left uncovered.
Sasha looked at him.
“What the hell is going on, Jacques? It looks like somebody was living down there.”
“Or perhaps held captive,” Durand said.
Durand climbed down the rope ladder and looked around. He found the remnants of an MRE, and several shoeprints atop the mattress. Some were small, and appeared to belong to a girl.
When he stepped on the metal object, he thought it was a rock. However, after picking it up with a gloved hand and wiping it off, he saw that it was a brass ring. No, not a ring, but more like a tie clip that one might use to keep a bandana tied together.
It had an insignia on it that Durand didn’t recognize, but Sasha did.
“That belonged to a Girl Scout. I used to have one something like that.”
“A Girl Scout? I wasn’t aware they were in Russia.”
“Oh yeah, and it was a lot of fun too.”
Durand wrapped the ring in a tissue and stuck it in his pocket.
“Will the search planes be out today?” he asked Sasha.
“Yeah, once they clear the runways, but a group of four hikers went missing west of here, all college kids. They
’ll be a priority.”
Durand pointed out at the lake.
“Sara and Tanner were here. I can feel it, and that scene on the lake could be Tanner’s handiwork.”
“The men in those planes weren’t the best citizens. Except for the Dumonovsky brothers, the pilots, and the woman, the rest were all bikers.”
“I want to keep heading back north from this direction.”
“We will, but let the dogs rest a bit. I’m so glad Brenda has that snowmobile. She’s breaking a nice trail for us to follow in.”
Durand tramped through the snow to look out at the lake again. Brenda was there and sitting atop her snowmobile.
“Those planes will never fly again,” Brenda said.
“Neither will the pilots,” Durand said.
“What’s that, Jacques?”
“Nothing, I was just thinking out loud.”
The whine of two snowmobiles came from their right and soon the machines were visible. The men riding on them were big, young, and tough-looking, but their wool hats and goggles prevented Durand from getting a good look at their faces.
The men drove past slowly while studying Brenda and Durand. When they stopped some distance away and spoke to each other, Durand wondered what they were doing.
“That was odd,” Brenda said. “And look, they’re coming back.”
Durand had been a cop for most of his life and had developed certain instincts concerning danger. He had a gun on his hip, and he yanked up the layers of clothing he was wearing so the weapon would be easier to grab.
“Brenda, why don’t you go see if Sasha is ready to leave.”
“Don’t worry, Jacques. She’ll ride over when she’s ready.”
Durand had wanted Brenda away from the men, but it was too late for that anyway. They pulled up to the shore, one on either side of Durand.
The thicker of the two spoke to Durand in Russian, but with a middle-eastern accent.
“Are you, Pavel? And is this the package?”
As the man asked that last question, he was looking at Brenda.
White Hell (A Tanner Novel Book 17) Page 12