Her knee hurt like a bitch now. The limp came and went and she fought against it, gritting her teeth in agony.
And then came the dreaded waves of gunfire stitching along the pipes, the walls, the asphalt, not a meter from her boots. She’d come so far. She was almost there. She couldn’t quit now—
But her body had had enough. She’d endured more physical pain and suffering in the last few days than she’d probably had during her entire career. The jumps, the falls, the ice, the shackles, the physical and mental horrors . . .
How could she go on when she felt like this? How could she reach deeper?
She needed to embrace the pain, even welcome it. Only through her suffering would she manage to escape. How much could she suffer?
Just a little more.
She told her body to suck it up. Run harder. Faster. She shifted closer to the pipes attached to the tunnel on her right side, gaining what little cover she could. Another round bit into a cable at her shoulder. She swore aloud and broke from the limp into a full-on sprint.
Embrace the pain.
The knee grew wobbly. She wouldn’t stop.
There’d be no light at the end of this tunnel. Good. She and the darkness got along just fine.
THIRTY-THREE
Spetsnaz Headquarters
Fort Levski
Bulgaria
Lex and Slava recalled the drones from each level as they ascended. Once they reached the command-and-control center, just below the motor pool, Lex couldn’t help himself. He only needed a minute. He just had to take it, otherwise he might regret this for the rest of his life.
He ordered Slava to wait outside the main door.
“What’s up, boss?”
“I’ll be right back.” He took off running, turned down a short hallway, pushed past the open door, and reached a series of intel stations lining the bowed wall, each one painted in the multicolored glimmer of holographic and standard displays, all of the computers locked out as expected, screen savers and standby messages flashing.
Lex dropped into the nearest chair and tugged free the wafer-thin card from his breast pocket. He touched a small metal square on the card’s corner, and a tiny green light switched on.
He took a deep breath and waited.
This was the deal he’d cut with General Mitchell. “You want to send me into hell, then you let me tap into the devil’s database while I’m there. You get me the most sophisticated wireless hacking system on the planet, and you get me into those files. All I need is a name and a location. The rest is yours.”
The computer and holographic screens all around Lex blossomed to life. It was an electronic carnival with enough displays scrolling and flickering to make Lex dizzy. The green light on the card flashed. Download in progress. Those intel nerds and their associates at the NSA had made it easy for an ape like Lex.
A touch screen to Lex’s right flashed, and suddenly it was there:
Her dossier. In Cyrillic.
Captain Oksana Alexandrov.
Pictures, full military record.
While the download continued, Lex scrolled via the motion sensor through the record and found another link:
FEDERATION DETENTION CAMP IO6, IRKUTSK OBLAST.
He made a tapping motion in the air, scrolled through another list, found it: current prisoner-of-war roll. He clicked, held his breath, scrolled again.
Her name was near the top of the list, right beneath a man whose current status read DECEASED. Hers read POW.
Fourteen months of searching was over. He’d located his sister at a POW camp in Siberia, one he’d never heard of before, one he was certain the JSF did not know existed because he’d already searched all of the known ones. He couldn’t hold back the tears, and at the sound of Slava’s approach, he shot up, tried to compose himself, and screamed, “Sergeant, I told you to watch that door!”
But the man wearing the gas mask and pointing the assault rifle at Lex wasn’t Slava—
He was a Spetsnaz captain, according to the triangular four-star insignia on his uniform, and in broken English he said, “Your friend is dead.”
* * *
The Snow Maiden was on the brink of total collapse when she spotted the twin silhouettes of the open blast doors. A group of about twenty or so troops, along with the medical personnel and administrative and support staff (probably thirty in all) were being loaded into a pair of Ural-4320 6×6 trucks like the one that had delivered her here. The trucks had been backed up into the entrance, which was now being devoured by a thick haze pouring in from the darkness outside. By the time she blinked again, she could no longer see either truck—but they were there, and that gave her hope.
She stole a look back at the four guards who’d been following her down the tunnel. They’d stopped firing but were still on her heels, vanishing themselves into the dust as she neared the exit. She came through the clouds and found herself between both trucks, someone shouting from behind for her to get inside.
“Okay, no problem,” she answered, racing around the front of the vehicle to the driver’s-side door, which she ripped open as the man at the wheel looked at her.
She tapped the insignia on her shoulder: lieutenant colonel. “Get out!”
As the driver rushed from his seat and hopped down, the guards following her from the motor pool started hollering, and the troops loading people into the back of the truck broke off and came around to stop her.
Too late for them. She threw the truck in gear and floored it, gears grinding as she shifted and turned hard, her body thrown against the door as she barreled onto the mountain road.
The truck’s headlights shone thickly through the dust, and she could barely see much more. To her right, flashes like heat lightning shone across the valley. An amorphous cloud of dust backlit by fires far below and by more of those bluish-white explosions suggested something huge had struck the fort, bunker-buster bombs or even a kinetic strike. The windows were open, and she began to hear the thumping of choppers and the higher-pitched roaring of jet engines.
She cut the wheel, avoiding the cliff by less than a meter, and then, from the corner of her eye, she caught movement.
A brave troop had scaled his way across the side of the truck and wanted to gain entrance to the passenger side of the cab. He clutched the door with one hand and tried to raise his pistol with the other.
The Snow Maiden sighed over his futile effort and summarily shot him. He fell away.
Her gaze flicked back to the road, and she drew her head back in surprise. A much larger UAV than the ones she’d encountered inside now hovered over the truck’s hood, scanning her once again then flying off behind the truck.
All right, they’d taken a very good look at her, whoever they were. She jammed her boot harder onto the accelerator as the truck jostled over two potholes that tossed her violently into the steering wheel.
As the road leveled out, the dust cleared enough to expose a hairpin turn festooned by low-hanging limbs. If she didn’t slow down, she’d roll the truck. She saw how dense the forest was on either side of the turn, how the slopes weren’t too steep and unfurled into the valley. This was as good a place as any.
She put the pedal to the metal and waited until the last possible second.
Three, two, one . . . she shoved open the door and threw herself out, crashing into a pile of snow on the side of the road and tumbling through it as the truck lumbered on, leaving the road and careening down the hill, sideswiping trees with sharp cracks before disappearing.
The Snow Maiden rose, and the din overhead had her staring up through a pocket in the dust. A V-25 Goshawk tilt-rotor troop transport used by the Joint Strike Force streaked by, trailing a pair of smaller HH-60H Seahawk helicopters whose door gunners were opening up on targets well ahead and out of view, the streams of brass casings tumbling like chaff through the canopy.
She h
ad her answer: The Americans were here, and this was their attack. All she needed to do was reach them and defect, just like she’d planned back on Sakhalin Island. They’d keep her alive. She was valuable to them. Kapalkin only wanted his revenge.
Then again, she was in Bulgaria. She could try to make a run for it. Whom did she know here? Were there any contacts left she could trust? The price on her head was very high, indeed. Greed trumped friendship. Even if she found a contact and escaped, she’d be back to running. From everyone.
No, she couldn’t do this anymore. She’d go to them. She would, as her father had instructed, do the right thing, warn them about Dennison and Izotov. Help them. The enemies of the motherland would become her friends.
She bit her lip and pulled herself up out of the snow, and at the sound of the second truck coming down the road, she started through the twisted limbs sparkling in the truck’s headlights, pausing a moment to observe the truck, whose driver rolled right past her—
Leaving three Spetsnaz troops in his wake, the men having been standing on the tailgate only to hop off. One pointed in her direction, and all three came running toward her.
The Snow Maiden ripped off the gas mask and took a quick breath. The air reeked of jet fuel and fires, but it was still breathable, despite all the dust. It was good to be out of that damned thing.
She eased back deeper into the underbrush, finding a crevice between two thick roots, where she got down on all fours and waited for the troops to get closer.
Only then did she notice it was snowing, the cold hiss permeating the forest and working into her bones, calming her as the troops trudged down on their heels, clicking on flashlights, the beams cutting at sharp angles against the warren of bark and pinecones and snow.
A twig snapped beneath one man’s boot.
The others shushed him.
The Snow Maiden took a deep breath, calculating each man’s position before she rose from the roots and fired three shots, one after the other, and it was as though the troops were magnetized and there was no way she could miss them. Her senses were raw now, fully exposed, everything heightened despite the lack of sleep and extreme duress.
She was running as they fell like scarecrows behind her, running in the direction of those American helicopters. They would land and drop off troops. She could only hope they were taking prisoners.
* * *
Lex rose slowly from the computer station and raised his palms. He glanced at both the data card and his rifle lying beside it. The card had not finished its download, and he’d promised the general he’d return with it.
“American spies who dress like us, talk like us. I bet you were born in Russia, huh? You fucking traitor,” said the captain, shoving his rifle at Lex as though wanting to open fire but restrained by orders.
If this son of a bitch had killed Slava, then why hadn’t Lex heard the fight or been warned over the team channel by his teammate? And sure as shit, Slava would not have given up without a fight. Not him.
“You’re lying, asshole.”
“You want to come with me and see for yourself?”
Lex gave the captain a once-over, noting the size and shape of the pistol strapped to the man’s right thigh. It had a yellow stripe on its handle, IDing it as a Less Than Lethal sidearm that fired darts.
“You’re going to take me prisoner and be a hero tonight, is that it?” Lex asked. “And you’re going to do this while the fort burns outside?”
“We’ll stay here until reinforcements arrive. They’re already on their way. I’m taking you down to a cell.” The Spetsnaz captain shifted over to Lex, trying to get in close enough so he could snatch the data card from the desk.
Over the captain’s shoulder, at the far end of the hall, came Slava, limping forward. His gas mask was gone and two darts jutted from the side of his neck. He was clutching his waist, where he must’ve been shot or stabbed, and one boot left a blood trail across the floor.
Yes, he’d been left for dead, but the Spetsnaz captain had not removed the reserve pistol Slava kept tucked in the ankle holster of his left leg. The captain’s search had been too hasty, and Slava fought his way closer, raising his arm, the pistol clutched in his gloved hand.
“I’m not done with you,” he cried.
The captain swung around—
And at the same time Lex dove for his rifle while the two men opened fire.
By the time Lex got his hands on the Izhmash, both Slava and the captain were falling back toward the floor, the captain still squeezing his trigger and driving rounds into the ceiling panels, Slava emptying the rest of his magazine before he landed on his back.
Screaming with rage, Lex opened up on the captain, riddling his chest and head with at least a dozen rounds before ceasing fire.
Panting, he charged across the hall, dropping to his knees before Slava.
The bear of a man, the secret weapon on Lex’s team, lay there, bleeding from his neck and thighs, his chest saved from the more serious rounds by his Kevlar plates, but he was still bleeding terribly, gasping, eyelids fluttering.
“My fault,” he said, coughing and spitting up blood.
Lex could barely face him. “Not yours.” He fumbled through his medical kit, producing the QuikClot bandages, the scissors. He cut open the uniform around the gunshot wounds and slapped the 4×4s home, but they were already darkening with blood.
He looked back to the desk, then at Slava.
What had he done? An imaginary fist clamped around his heart. He stopped breathing.
Slava cleared his throat. “Let’s go, boss.”
“Okay, hang on.” Shuddering, he went back for the data card, tucking it into his hip pocket. He hated his decision to pause here, hated the card, hated what he’d done to his teammate.
You don’t leave your buddy—
But the temptation to find Oksana had been too great.
He sprinted back to his friend, took a deep breath, steeled himself, then lifted Slava in a fireman’s carry. With burning eyes and a mouth hanging open in fury, he carried his fellow Marine into the stairwell and all the way up to the motor pool level, his quads firing on pure adrenaline as he mounted each step, the effort herculean, but he deserved the pain, deserved every second of it. This was punishment for putting his friend and teammate in danger, and he deserved much more.
Just inside the door leading outside, Lex lowered Slava to the floor and checked the man for a pulse. Very weak but still there.
Out of breath and dizzy, he keyed his mike. “Borya, this is Actual. You read me, over?”
“Just barely, Actual.”
“I’m in the motor pool stairwell. Slava’s been hit. I need evac. Send down Vlad. Tell him to commandeer one of those carts and get his ass to my location.”
“Roger that. I’ll send him now.”
“You spot our package?”
“Negative. But, sir, the ID came in on an officer we picked up on the R & D level, then we got her up again driving one of the trucks out of the tunnel. You’re not gonna believe this. It’s the Snow Maiden.”
“Say again?”
“I’m saying that Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov, the Snow Maiden, was inside. She was wearing someone else’s uniform, but she was definitely there—and I bet she was the prisoner we saw being transferred.”
Lex took a few seconds as the news sank in. Every Special Forces operator worth his salt not only knew who the Snow Maiden was but had studied every classified and declassified doc the JSF had on her. She was for many the ultimate prize, the Osama bin Laden of their decade.
And she was here?
His mouth finally worked. “Borya, tell me you’ve locked on to her.”
“Negative, we lost her when the drone had to scan the rest of the passengers in the back of the truck. Best I can tell, though, she sent the truck off the road and got out of the
re on foot.”
“Okay. And hey, one more thing: Tell Vlad to contact me when he’s close. I’ll put up smoke.”
“Sir, it’s me, sir,” said Vlad. “On the channel now. Roping down to your location. ETA two minutes.”
“Gotcha. Hurry up.”
“Trust me, boss, I’m moving!”
“Good. Actual, out.”
Lex leaned back on the wall and tried to clear his head.
Ragland wasn’t the prisoner here. She never had been. The Snow Maiden was.
That was it. The Snow Maiden, a traitor to the motherland, had finally been captured, but the Russians had not announced it. They’d brought her here for interrogation.
And someone else wanted her busted out. Her allies? If so, had they known about the attack?
Or had they helped orchestrate it?
Were they the ones responsible for feeding false intel to the JSF? Because this sure as hell had been false intel.
Lex’s eyes widened, and his pulse rose with the desire to contact General Mitchell. The JSF attack had provided the means and opportunity for the Snow Maiden to escape. Lex, his men, and the rest of the JSF forces were only pawns in something else. Meanwhile, Dr. Helena Ragland might still be out there, somewhere.
Lex crouched beside Slava and checked the man’s pulse again. Weak. Very weak. The sergeant was unconscious now, and while waiting for Vlad, Lex rolled the man on his side to inspect that wound. The bandages were soaked.
He couldn’t bear the moment any longer. He stood and got to work, removing his web gear, setting it down beside the door. He had six L12-7 heat-seeking grenades, as did Slava. Lex armed all twelve, set them down in neat rows at his feet, then lined up all four of the smoke grenades.
He slowly opened the door and chanced a look into the motor pool, where the Cockroaches had just finished breaching the rock pile wall, and two of them rumbled on through and into the tunnel.
“Hey, Vlad, this is Actual. You got vehicles heading your way. Just stay close to the wall and ignore them.”