It was all physics now. A math game. Forces. Gravity. Impact.
She landed boots first into the snow, then slammed forward, her face crashing through the ice-encrusted top and into the softer powder below.
Her forward momentum took her across the tank, then sliding sideways. She fumbled for anything to stop her fall, but her fingers just dragged against the hard, cold exterior of the tank, and down she went—head first—for another three meters.
Unfortunately, her vantage point above had not allowed her a clear view behind the tanks, and so she had no idea whether she was dive-bombing toward another snowbank or simply the unforgiving asphalt.
One saving grace: Her arms and body created enough friction to slow her descent, so by the time she drifted away from the tank, she wasn’t falling with as much velocity and was able to flip around and hit the snow with a heavy thud that knocked her back, onto her rump.
She lay there, breathing, light beams above steaming in the air, and for just a second she didn’t move, not wanting to know how badly she’d been hurt.
Voices . . . disembodied voices . . . something about capturing her, they spotted her, she was probably dead, send someone out to the tanks.
She was a little girl now, singing for sick people in the hospital, her brothers whispering in her ears that the suburbs in Vladivostok were so polluted that the air was killing everyone—and that all they were doing was making people happy before they died. She saw herself lying in one of those hospital beds, her body riddled with bullet holes.
She shuddered violently—an electric current of realization taking hold.
Somehow, she was sitting up. Somehow, she was on her feet, and everything worked.
As the pinpricks of cold ripped across her skin, she took off running toward the chain-link fence—and beyond it . . . the forest.
Her knees already hurt. She checked her waist. Second pistol still there. Spare Uzi slung across her back, extra magazine for the submachine gun tucked in beside the pistol.
This was her chance, probably her only chance.
As she hit the fence, it came alive with gunfire, and, without looking back, she knew that fire was coming from the guards still up on the catwalk. Two gunmen. The others rushing down to go after her on the ground.
Their shots were wide, warning shots, and they only urged her on to the top. She slung one leg over, then another, and climbed down halfway before jumping the final meter.
She estimated fifty meters to the tree line.
Her body was conspiring against her now, and she wondered how long she could remain upright. The fall had battered her arms and legs, and the deeper breaths stung. A broken rib? Perhaps two?
Gunfire paralleled her steps.
Muttering a curse, she broke into a sprint, eyes fiery against the pain—
And she reached the first stand of trees within a dozen heartbeats.
She couldn’t help it. She had to stop, allow her body some respite. She dropped to the snow, crawled beneath the branches of a tall spruce, then peered out to spy the refinery and a pair of doors to the right of the tanks. Out rushed one, two, three guards. Then two more.
Maybe it was the cold, the lack of sleep, the seemingly helpless situation, but the Snow Maiden glanced down, grimaced, and realized with a shock that she was about to cry.
She had guns. She could do it herself. She’d already vowed not to be captured, to be controlled. The pity party lasted another two breaths before a gear shifted in her mind, and she was back. The fighter.
On her feet now. Sprinting. Keeping tight to the trees, a serpentine path, heading west.
Heading where? No chopper to whisk her away. No speedboat to rush her out to a submarine and deliver her to a safe house at some remote location.
She cursed aloud against the negative thoughts. She’d get to the coast, then lay low. Hide her heat signature, act like her namesake. At night, she’d find shelter, take it by force if she had to. She’d get to the main port, Kholmsk, stow away aboard a cargo ship, and they’d never find her before she reached Vanino, the mainland port across the strait from the island. From there, she could disappear.
Even if they closed the ports, they couldn’t do so indefinitely. Yes, she could hide along the coast until those ports were reopened, and then she could stage her plan to stow away. Her chest warmed over the thought. There was hope.
But damn, she had to stop again, the lungs burning, the legs protesting.
Another spruce, right there, its limbs sagging under the weight of snow.
She was back on her knees, wincing through her breaths, shivering now, her lips growing chapped. For some reason she thought of God and remembered the icons and stained glass of the church in Pokrovsky Park she’d attended as a little girl, the pungent scent of incense, the deacon waving the censer in her face.
She closed her eyes. I assume you’ve forsaken me. I’m just looking for more time. Maybe time to repent, who knows. Maybe there’s a reason I’m still alive, if you’d like to share it . . .
After a bitter grin that split her chapped lips, causing one of them to bleed, she got back on her feet, heading higher into the foothills that led all the way to the coast.
She ascended for about two minutes, trudging through patches of snow and over ice-slick rocks, pulling herself up through the trees, fighting at times against the incline, her breath coming in short bursts.
The strain was good, though. It emptied her mind, kept her on the task, her senses growing more attuned to the forest. Squirrels scampered across limbs creaking in the breeze. Here and there the wind picked up, coming in a low baritone as though through a cave.
She came over a small rise and stopped. Listened.
A faint thrumming. Then gone.
Shaking her head, she forged on. But there it was again. And again.
Louder now. Helicopters. A pair. Those engines and rotors were familiar. What had they done? Called in the Spetsnaz? Turned her over to the wolves?
Through the treetops she saw them now:
MIL Mi-24D Hinds or letayushchiy tanks, the “flying tank.” Big Russian attack helicopters. Room for eight troops aboard each.
A blinding searchlight panned across the forest, cutting a path not two meters from her position, the rotor wash whipping snow into her face.
Those troops would be on the ground any minute now.
Holding back a scream, the Snow Maiden charged off, picturing the heat of thermal cameras washing across her back, the pilots baring their teeth over the red blip moving across their imagers.
Coming up the next rise she slipped and fell, gasped, wanted to break down. No. Fight. She glanced up at the brilliant mantle of stars, the temperature dropping, the rational side of her brain ordering her to surrender.
What were her odds now?
Then again, they never were good. The day she’d left the GRU and gone underground was the day the clock started ticking. Had she really run out of time? No, damn it. No.
She pulled herself back up, brushing the snow from her Uzi, then craned her head toward the choppers hovering behind her, the trees thrashing, the troops fast-roping down into the forest.
If she couldn’t draw on hope for motivation, she’d turn now to anger, as she always had, as she’d taught herself over the years. This was no longer an escape. This was an act of revenge against the country that had taken everything from her, and these men were the instruments of that evil.
At the top of the hill she widened her eyes, gaze probing 180 degrees through the forest. A little depression beneath a fallen tree lay five meters ahead; she sprinted for it, tucked herself tightly inside, Uzi held at the ready.
Her breath came through shivers. The commands were faint, but she heard them.
They were coming for her.
* * *
Back inside the SinoRus Group conferen
ce room from where the Snow Maiden had just escaped, Dr. Merpati “Patti” Sukarnoputri lifted a cup of tea to her lips. Her hand was trembling. The tea had gone cold.
Her colleague Igany Fedorovich, whose eye was swollen, had just spoken on the radio to one of their security team members. The Snow Maiden had escaped into the forest, but the Spetsnaz forces he’d called earlier were already on the scene. They would have her in custody in no time. Patti had argued against calling them in, but Fedorovich had decided on the spot that the Snow Maiden was no longer useful and now a dangerous liability if they couldn’t control her.
The American, Major Alice Dennison, with her short, stylish haircut and hauntingly big eyes, was sitting across the table and muttering something to Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, the graying and distinguished former GRU officer she’d rescued from American custody under the guise of a prisoner transfer. Since both were now missing, the Americans would be hunting them. No matter. Dennison and her top secret security clearance had already set into motion a plan against the Joint Strike Force military.
For his part, Doletskaya had been captured in Russia, brought to the United States, and become an informant for the JSF. Dennison had rescued him for the Ganjin, who now intended to use him for their intel.
Fedorovich was still holding his pistol on General Sergei Izotov, director of the GRU and a man the Snow Maiden had abducted in Moscow, although President Kapalkin now believed he was taking a leave of absence for personal reasons.
“She’ll get away, you know,” Izotov blurted out. “She’ll kill them all and escape.”
“I don’t think so,” Fedorovich answered. “And now that my security team isn’t tied up, we’ll escort you out for your surgery, General.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dennison said, pulling away from Colonel Doletskaya. “We’ll take care of him.”
The shot rang out so loudly that Patti dropped the teacup onto the floor, where it shattered.
Fedorovich was already slumping in his chair with a bullet hole in his forehead.
Izotov bolted to his feet, his chair slamming into the wall behind him.
Patti could only sit there, in shock, as Major Alice Dennison now turned her pistol on Doletskaya and shot him point-blank in the heart.
“Why?” he cried as he clutched his chest, then collapsed to the floor.
“Major, what are you doing? Where did you get that pistol? What’s going on . . . oh my God!” Patti could barely form another sentence as her gaze lifted to the wall behind Fedorovich, now dripping with blood. She glanced to Doletskaya, lying prone, eyes vacant now. Her breath escaped.
“I’m sorry, Patti. You and Igany are the last of the Committee of Five. The old Ganjin is dead now. We are a very different organization than the one you created so long ago. We are independent. No single nation can control us.”
Patti’s thoughts raced and collided until a question finally struck. “If you’re not working for us, then who?”
Dennison tugged free a smartphone from her pocket and thumbed a few keys, nodding something to herself. She smiled eerily at Patti, then turned toward the door as it swung open. In stepped a figure, his face cast in shadow until he took Dennison’s side.
Patti’s breath all but vanished. “No. Not you.”
“You’re surprised?” he asked. “You knew this was coming, Mum. You knew this a long time ago. You’ve been living in denial—just like the rest of them.”
His face, his name, his position, the audacity of what he was doing utterly overwhelmed her. She could barely think, barely open her mouth to speak before—
Dennison raised her pistol. “I’m sorry,” the American said, as though apologizing for the tea being cold. “It’s for the best.”
The gunshot slammed Patti back into her chair. She looked down, saw the blood, clutched the wound, then faced Dennison, who still wore that absent grin.
Pain radiated in Patti’s chest, accompanied by the terrible thought of deceit, the realization that all she had tried to build in her life, both as a member of the Ganjin and as a physician and deputy director-general of the World Health Organization, would be poisoned by him. She was out of the chair, on the floor now, trying to breathe, her lungs filling with blood, the fluorescent lights buzzing, Izotov being dragged screaming from the room . . . and then . . .
Just her. And the light growing dimmer, the air vanishing, her limbs turning cold, numb.
But a hot flash of anger ripped through her spine.
No, she could not exact revenge on him. Her time was over. But the Snow Maiden . . .
Patti tried to smile. The Snow Maiden would return. She would tear them apart like an animal.
Clinging to that thought, Patti resigned herself to the darkness.
EIGHT
Caucasus Mountains
Near North Ossetia, Russia
Major Stephanie Halverson had let go of the cable and was plunging away from the Russian officer. She had just issued him a middle-fingered salute.
Now she grinned as he returned the gesture, his face growing small and eclipsed by shadows.
In the next breath her reserve chute snapped open, the cold wind wrenching hard on her harness. She sighed. Good deployment. She reached up, seized the risers, and guided the parachute in a slow turn.
Within a few seconds she was floating away from the burning bridge and maglev train, still tottering over its shattered deck. She glided toward the gorge, the wreckage of her plane blazing in a red-orange slash mark of flames and pennon of black smoke to the east. Beyond, the long walls of dark stone were like monuments of coal lying in the distance. A pang of guilt struck as she thought about the plane, the mission, the countless hours they’d put into the project . . . and then she stiffened in fury as she thought about what could have gone wrong.
She was still lost in that thought when the gunfire came in. From the bridge. The troops still swarming around the train, spilling vodka on each other. Drunken shots by a company or two obviously on their way for a little R&R. This was one show they’d never forget.
The deeper roar of Interceptor engines sounded now, and her heart raced. She needed to get on the ground before those pilots could strafe her.
They wouldn’t miss.
She tugged on the risers again, guiding herself more slowly past the twisted girders and sedan-sized chunks of concrete strewn across the talus and scree below, aiming for the serrated line of trees to the north.
The sparks she noted below were rounds ricocheting off the rocks and dirt, tiny eyes flashing, and at least two bullets punched into her chute in muffled pops that did little to compromise its integrity.
A screeching like enormous steel talons on a chalkboard resounded above, echoed off the mountains, and by the time she craned her neck to look back, they were already in the air—the maglev train’s first two cars, still attached to each other but broken off from the rest of the train. They soared as if in slow motion, at first nose-diving toward the rock, then beginning to pitch forward into a slow roll.
Three, two, one, they crashed into the gorge, every window shattering in concert, small explosions popping like fireworks from within the cars as dust, shattered pieces of the undercarriage, and rocks hurled into the air.
She faced forward. Holy shit.
One hundred meters now. The trees scrolling up fast, the wind from the north slowing her even more.
Damn it, she was coming up on the forest much too fast. She yanked hard on the risers, aborting her descent for a moment to wheel around—
Just as one of the Interceptors sliced out of the darkness like a glistening scimitar, guns blazing, parallel lines of glowing red fire lit by tracer rounds cutting a few meters to her left before she finished the circle and plunged faster now, running alongside the trees, every gnarled branch promising a broken arm or leg.
She was cursing the pilot now, the chu
te, the delay, the wind until she held her breath and her boots hit the ground. Suddenly, it was a tug-of-war, a gust now dragging her forward. She broke into a run while simultaneously releasing the chute and charging straight for the nearest cluster of trees near the bottom of a ridge.
Before the Interceptor’s pilot could bring his aircraft around for another pass, Halverson was in the forest, helmet off, and out of sight, the air stinging her lungs, the rich, mossy scent enough to make her sneeze. She stole a quick glance up. Chestnut-leaf oaks soared thirty meters, the canopy so dense that the pilots would have to rely on thermals to locate her now.
However, the troops up on the bridge had watched her land, no doubt, so there wasn’t much time.
Equipment check. She reached around and felt her back, just above where her reserve chute had been stored. Good. The gear pack Ragland had insisted she carry was still there; it contained a small first-aid/survival kit and one exceedingly useful evasion device in the event that, well, in the event of this.
She reached around and tore free the pack from its Velcro straps, dropped it in front of her, and then, at the sound of more Interceptors rumbling overhead, she remembered to check her pistol. Yes, the M9 was still there. She tugged it free from its hip holster, made sure she had a round chambered, then returned the Beretta to its holster.
With hands beginning to shake—if only a little—she slipped out the survival kit stored in a narrow plastic box. She unzipped one of the pockets located just below the left knee on her pressure suit and slid the kit inside. Then she tugged free a second package slightly smaller than a shoe box. She forced back a pair of spring-loaded locks to release the lid.
“All right, baby, it’s up to you,” she whispered.
Inside, tucked into a bed of gray foam, was a BQ9-5 micro unmanned vehicle (MUV). The drone resembled a miniature version of a Mars rover, with instrument platform, folding antennae, and bulky wheels. Designed to assist downed pilots behind enemy lines, the MUV would both issue a heat signature that mimicked a human’s in composition and shape and transmit the standard rescue beacon while traversing enemy terrain at a marching speed of four to six kilometers per hour. The MUV was a doppelgänger that could demoralize an enemy because when they realized they’d been chasing around a drone, they often abandoned their search efforts. Halverson wished she’d had one back in Canada, when she’d been blown from the sky, when the Russians had stalked her relentlessly, but those were the days when they’d operated on prewar budgets and pilots were a dime a dozen. Since then, with the JSF suffering so many losses, every trained fighter jock was an even more valuable asset. MUVs were one answer to keeping downed pilots alive.