Freedom was four hundred meters away. Twelve hundred feet.
The train slid forward again, jerking so abruptly that a half dozen men shouting and drinking near the edge were shaken right off. That they’d remained so near was a testament to the alcohol content of their vodka. The officer she’d heard screaming earlier was at it again, trying to evacuate them. He came forward and chanced a look down at her, still barking at the troops, his voice burred with anger, his face leonine, gray hair whipping and glistening in the firelight.
“Hang on,” he told her. “We are trying to find a rope. We’ll save you!”
Sure you will. So they can pin a medal on your ass.
Halverson gave him the finger and let go.
SIX
American Missionary Camp
Amazon Rain Forest
Northeastern Ecuador
After slamming into a jagged rock and getting booted around by the raging current, Lex broke the surface and took in a long and desperate breath.
He’d failed to fully anticipate the river’s power, which, for a few seconds, had completely disoriented him, spinning him into a world of dizziness. Despite all the training and his ability to remain calm under fire, he was unnerved, in the clutches of white-water swimmer’s remorse, but it was too late to bitch about it. He owned the decision to jump in, and now he had to live—or die—with it.
His paddling was useless against the flow, the river also much deeper than he’d thought, boots not even touching muddy bottom now. His right shoulder was throbbing from where he’d been hammered against the rock. He spat water and tried to look up, through the heavy mist.
The banks were about ten meters apart here, walled in on both sides by towering trees and palms that cast deep bands of shadows across the water. The rafts of stone and larger boulders forming a broken necklace along the shore were deeply eroded and pummeled by the gurgling waves. It was hard to hear much above the hiss—just his breath and the faint gasps escaping his throat as he kicked again, trying to guide himself through the maze.
Twice Lex thought he spotted Nestes through the spray, rising and falling, his head a mere dot against a mottled, boiling sheet of white.
Lex wondered if his men knew where he was, where Nestes had gone, and his answer came in the form of a dark, humming shadow near his head. The UAV hovered above him a moment more, then whirred off ahead, toward, he assumed, Nestes’s location.
He blinked—
And was underwater.
As suddenly as that.
The river had curved sharply to the right, the current kicking him sideways and then sucking him down like a vacuum toward the rocks below. He kicked harder, pulling himself up, tanking down air for all of two seconds before the entire river seemed to drop away, as though he were being plucked to safety by a giant hand.
And then he looked down, realizing he was dropping off a small waterfall, no more than a few meters high but enough to send his heart racing.
He was an accomplished swimmer—no Navy SEAL to be sure—but he wanted to believe he could hold his own.
The river had other plans.
He plunged to the bottom, boots hitting hard. He exploited the impact to rebound up and reach the foam so he could breathe again—
But he was still underwater, drawn down again. He couldn’t help but panic, cupping his hands and working his way furiously toward the light.
Just as his vision began to narrow, he popped up, shook his head, whirled back, and, panting, took in the falls he’d just descended. His mouth fell open. Between all of the rocks—each one representing a concussion or more serious head wound—and the swirling currents, he was damned lucky to be alive. He paddled hard again, facing forward, the rocks closing in from the shoreline, his palms slapping on more stones to help guide himself around.
The water, when it wasn’t shimmering silver and white, took on a deep gray hue, and there was something foreboding about it, those darker sections where there appeared a breach in the choppy waves. He saw one of those shadowy sections now, forming between what looked like a path of boulders used as stepping-stones, with the central stone missing, either washed away or deliberately removed to prevent anyone from crossing.
Lex’s fears of the dark water were borne out as he slid off a rocky precipice that simply appeared as one of those black holes in the waves.
He cursed aloud as he went airborne for one, two, three seconds before vanishing into the vortex, this time descending at least a meter farther than the last fall, the turbulence all around him now, battering him like a dozen heavyweight boxers with blows to the head, back, and chest.
He came up again, barely managed a breath, chutes of water blasting into his face. What the hell was he doing? His team could keep the drone on Nestes. He needed to get out of this river before he drowned.
But yes, Nestes would be thinking the same thing, and maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have what it took to ride the waves. He’d fight to reach one of the rocks to his right or left, the pools of calmer water like oases lying beside them. He’d wait there until Lex passed, then slip out, back into the jungle—
Where he’d be promptly captured by Lex’s men.
Or would he? Maybe Nestes had jumped in because he had help waiting for him at the other end of the river. This had always been part of his escape plan. He’d spent months hiding in this area, shadowing the missionaries, studying the terrain. He had planned and rehearsed multiple escapes. This was Carlos Nestes we were talking about, graduate of Princeton, a boy who’d risen to command an army with a worldwide reach. You couldn’t give a bastard like that even an inch.
The reminder of Nestes’s cunning had Lex looking back at every tall rock he passed, making sure the man wasn’t hiding there.
All right, Lex played through those assumptions again, wondering how many followers Nestes had left since going underground. How alone was he in the world? He’d lost his brother, and his parents had been killed during a trip to Europe, their plane caught up in an air attack, with a half dozen other civilian transports blown from the sky. He had ice in his veins. There was nothing left to love.
This, of course, was mostly speculation. Lex would have to interrogate the man. He replayed Nestes’s last words:
“We’re the Forgotten Army, truly forgotten. The Ganjin has changed. We were once partners. Now we’re only tools.”
What was the Ganjin? Another terrorist organization? Why wasn’t Lex aware of them? And if they were using a group as powerful and sophisticated as the Forgotten Army, then how big were they? And if they were huge—international—then their ability to remain clandestine was staggering, given the scope of the JSF’s intelligence efforts since the war had begun.
The current carried Lex swiftly around another turn and drop, and it was all he could do to keep his head up, maintain his breathing, and fight to keep sight of the water ahead.
Wave after wave slapped into his eyes, and when he wasn’t blinking away water, he was blowing his nose free. The initial fear that had fanned across his shoulders was giving way to a knot in his stomach because as a Marine Corps captain he sure as hell was used to being in control—not being at the mercy of anyone or anything, this damned river notwithstanding.
He flailed against the current now, putting more muscle into his strokes, grimacing, gritting his teeth, and squinting as far downriver as he could.
Cursing the rapids and his reckless decision to give chase for the nth time, Lex heard the voice of his older sister Oksana ordering him to calm down. Discipline is remembering what you want, she’d told him when he used to whine about his homework. Their parents had worked twelve-hour days, his father at the fish market, his mother for a telemarketing firm. Only Oksana was there to help him, to make sure he didn’t forget his Russian and did well in school. She’d even been there for him when bullies had followed him home, tried to jump him, and they??
?d teamed up to scare them all off.
Oksana was the levelheaded one, never raising her voice, never prone to emotional outbursts the way he was. She’d graduated college, attended OCS, and become one of the Army’s most decorated AH-80 Blackfoot attack helicopter pilots. She, like Lex, had chosen a career in the service, but hers had been short-lived.
During the Russian invasion of Poland, she’d been called in to provide Close Air Support for three Ghost units on the ground. According to those Ghosts, she’d saved the lives of more than twelve Special Forces operators and thousands of civilians.
The wreckage of her chopper had been carefully inspected, no body found. Days later, after the area around Warsaw had been secured by European and JSF forces, Splinter Cell agents combing the zone for intelligence had learned that before retreating, Russian forces had taken dozens of prisoners, and Lex knew in his heart of hearts that Oksana was one of them. He’d been searching for her ever since. Fourteen months now.
Searching. Coming up empty time and again—despite all of his resources.
There’d been nothing more frustrating.
He’d located, captured, and turned in all of those high-value targets. Traveled the world over. Found clues others had missed. But the one person whose location still eluded him . . . the one person he needed to rescue more than anyone else . . . was somehow out of his reach. Gone. Agonizingly gone.
His deepest pain.
With her memory now fresh in his mind, he screamed as a wave tossed him against a shoulder of rock, sending him careening off to plunge again, and again, off some stair steps of stone and frothing water leading to yet another gauntlet. He lifted his chin to snatch another breath, when, nearly out of sight, just above a series of white caps, he spotted an arm jutting from the water.
Now, instead of becoming a victim of the river, he joined forces with it, pushing himself up and swimming headfirst into the current, freestyle, trying to gain momentum and close in on Nestes.
If jumping into the river was reckless, then swimming hard with the current was even crazier. The rocks were coming up at Lex’s face so quickly that it was all instinct now, palms guiding him around before he ever thought about using them, feet kicking harder here and there.
The drone zoomed just above the rocks to his right, rotors kicking up four columns of haze, the camera panning to record him and his position. He glanced at it, pointed at Nestes, and mouthed the words: Stay with him!
Borya, who was operating the drone via the remote, got the message, and the UAV pitched forward and took off once more to stay tight on their prey. If Nestes got a good look at the drone, his morale might crumble. Lex realized he was getting desperate now and that wishful thinking sure as shit wouldn’t nab this guy, only Marine Corps tenacity would.
After taking in a long breath, Lex launched back into his freestyle swim, arms firing like pistons, head turning up to steal a quick breath, then back under again.
Between those breaths he noticed the gradual change: the river was widening, the boulders infrequent, the current increasing dramatically. Those calmer pools of water were beginning to vanish. Any chance Nestes had of breaking off to hit the jungle was gone. Even Lex realized with a start that he couldn’t paddle himself near the shoreline. They were both committed to the waves.
The river wove sharply to the left, and several low-hanging branches rushed toward him. Lex reached up, grabbed one, but his hand was torn off the wood. He plunged back into the wave, got spun around, then came up, coughing, water filling his nose. His arm throbbed with pain.
For some reason, Borya had the drone back on him again, disobeying orders, and Lex swore and waved him off—
But the UAV would not leave. It kept bobbing up and down, then swooped in close enough for Lex to grab. What the hell was going on?
The river curved once more, and then it opened up another twenty meters, dappled with long stretches of white caps. A pristine mountain so verdant green that it looked unreal lay dead ahead.
Oddly, though, the river itself was gone beneath the mountain, the image surreal at first, until his brain caught up with his senses.
He stopped breathing and now understood why Borya had kept the drone on him.
Oh my God . . .
Coming close to death was hardly a new experience for Lex.
There’d been that night when he and the boys had blown the Bering Strait Tunnel—the longest railway tunnel in the world, connecting Siberia with Alaska. The bombs had gone off too soon, and they’d almost been crushed by collapsing concrete . . .
There was that power plant in Dukovany that had exploded, right near the Russian fusion core reactor they had been trying to sabotage, and Lex had almost been electrocuted when they’d scaled the lines to rescue three of their comrades . . .
Finally, there’d been that early morning at a Moscow dance club, where he’d caught up with a Chechen terrorist he’d been tracking. The guy had recognized Lex, jumped him in the bathroom, and slashed Lex apart with his knife before Lex finally stopped him. He’d nearly bled out that night . . .
But this? A waterfall?
More than one hundred meters high?
The universe was a cruel bitch.
Borya held the drone at the edge, and Lex had the generous span of three seconds to get into position, imagining he was jumping off the deck of a destroyer in high seas. He held his breath, brought his knees together, tucked his left arm into his chest, and used his right hand to hold his nose.
As the water carried him past the drone, he made the terrible mistake of looking down.
The world was nothing but roaring water haloed in mist. The booming and thundering conveyed such power that he doubted there was a way he could survive. He pictured himself torn to shreds on the rocks below.
But it wasn’t over. Not yet. He shot like a bullet through streams of water clustering around him like fiber-optic cables with the uncanny ability to keep him upright, prevent him from spinning like a lost baton.
And then it grew dark, the mist stealing away the light. He took a breath before the lake came up with a horrific vengeance, swallowing him whole in a millisecond, the water rushing up so powerfully that it wrenched up his arms, hands held high above his head.
Crushed or drowned. Take your pick, he thought. Gritting his teeth against the inevitable, he reached out to his sister, his only regret.
Discipline is remembering what you want.
I want to live!
SEVEN
SinoRus Group Oil Exploration Headquarters
Sakhalin Island
North of Japan
As the Snow Maiden cut loose with her Uzi on the lead guard, the gray-haired man’s chest exploding with rounds, she reached into her waistband and seized the pistol, snapping her neck toward the guards coming in from behind.
She squeezed off three rounds at them before running straight over the lead guard’s body, toward his three comrades, who were still wrestling with their orders to take her alive. They wanted to kill her, probably could have, knew that if she died they’d be executed themselves. She would save them the stress of that decision.
The Uzi vibrated in her grip as she shot all three at point-blank range, leaping over their bodies to slam into the rooftop door and burst outside.
They’d had her completely surrounded, and in their smugness they’d grown complacent—for just a few seconds, every one of them thinking, How in the world can she escape now? She’s done. It’s over. Can someone make more coffee?
Now they choked on their own caffeinated blood.
Black jeans. Black leather boots. A long-sleeved top with plunging neckline. Yes, she was ready for winter weather. Her fleece jacket was back at the conference room. She hadn’t thought about taking it while she was punching Fedorovich in the face and kicking open the door. She stormed along yet another catwalk running across the curved
ceiling, her gaze reaching out to the domes of light produced by the floodlights strung along the refinery’s perimeter. If there was a catwalk up here, there had to be an exterior ladder leading down to the parking lot.
By the time she reached the end of the walkway, she realized she’d gone the wrong way.
Dead end.
And they knew it, too, three guards running straight for her, two bringing up the rear, one limping, the other clutching his arm.
She’d been cornered at the door. She couldn’t believe it was happening again. She was smarter than this. Her thoughts raced. She spun around, gaze probing.
Below were more of those enormous tanks, like alabaster submarines lined up in a dry dock.
Distance to the asphalt: Did it really matter? The drop would kill her, give or take a meter.
She shivered. Noticed her frosty breath. Blinked, tried to focus again.
The tanks. Snow piled across two of them. Maybe enough snow?
The guards were yelling at her, and the first one, a brazen oaf, fired two rounds that ricocheted off the railing just inches from her hand.
“Hey, hold your fire!” she screamed in Russian.
And then she lifted her hands—although she kept a firm grip on her Uzi and pistol.
“Don’t move, you crazy bitch!” the first guard hollered back.
Predictably unpredictable. Hadn’t they figured her out by now?
When they drew within ten meters, she cried, “It’s okay,” then dropped her arms and opened fire—
Causing all four to hit the deck.
And in the next second she abandoned both empty weapons, seized the catwalk’s ice-cold steel railing, climbed to the top, then launched herself into the air.
Eyes wide, heart trip-hammering in her chest, she fell in a broad arc toward one of the snow-covered tanks.
Her mind emptied of all those extraneous thoughts, the ones never shared or exhibited—the voices of her parents, husband, and brothers; the shuddering guilt over taking so many lives; and that hollow ache of distancing herself from everyone.