She balled her hands into fists, told herself that the odds were much better this time. There’d been just one automatic signal to the network at the time of her ejection. She had the drone for evasion and escape. In her left hip pocket was an Iridium satellite phone that allowed her a direct link to Neptune Command. Plus, she had a standard secondary beacon she could activate if she were desperate. Yes, that link might eventually be traced, but she had it nonetheless.
She ran through these facts to lift her spirits. Still, the booming of those Interceptors’ engines could not be ignored. She’d been shot down in Ossetia, in Russian Federation territory. The situation was as simple—and as potentially deadly—as that.
Halverson removed the drone from its box, and, after tugging off one of her gloves with her teeth, she typed in an activation code on a touchpad located on the MUV’s back, between the rear wheels.
While she waited for it to boot up, she unzipped her left breast pocket and removed a tablet computer no larger than her palm. 3-D maps with street views of the entire region were stored there, and she could read them without having to access the network and maintain security. These were backed up by hardcopy maps stored in another of her pockets in the event the enemy hit the area with a localized EMP wave. She prayed that wouldn’t happen because an electromagnetic pulse wave would also bring down the drone.
Her flight path was already stored on the tablet, and she followed it to the bridge, scrolling and zooming with her thumb and index finger until she estimated her current position, about thirty kilometers southwest of Vladikavkaz, the capital city of North Ossetia. Relief warmed her. Nothing but mountainous terrain between her current position and the city. Plenty of cover. She could forge a path adjacent to the two-lane mountain road to the east, using it to get her bearings while remaining hidden in the forest. If the situation got hot, she could even hijack a civilian car, should one come her way. At the same time, though, the Russians could use the highway themselves to swiftly bring in more troops to aid in the ground search. The what-ifs could continue all night. Her mind was set. Plan A was good to go.
She considered a secondary route as she zoomed out to show a wider view of the terrain. Plans B and C began to form, her finger tracing routes through some of the passes but all taking her back to the city. Okay, that was it.
She’d be on the move in less than sixty seconds. Getting swiftly away from her drop zone was important, emphasized during the SERE training she’d received at Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State, back when she’d been just a “nugget.” After her escape from the Russians in Canada, she’d been asked to speak to several classes about her ordeal. Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) weren’t just words she’d told those nuggets while imploring them to listen carefully and learn as much as they could. They were a difficult bunch to reach, though, self-assured warriors who’d never been shot down and would, of course, live forever.
“So how did you do it?” one pilot asked. “I mean, how did you stay calm and not give up?”
She wanted to tell him that the voice of Jake Boyd, her former wingman, had kept her alive—even though he’d been killed by the Russians. Instead, she answered, “You challenge yourself to embrace the pain. No matter how much they throw at you, you know you can take it. The worse it gets, the more you like it. Sounds insane, but it works. You glare at the enemy and yell, ‘Is that all you got, bitch?’”
Now she took a deep breath. Time to see if she could practice what she’d preached.
The Russians would assume she was heading north because any route south would lead to the higher elevations and certain death from any number of causes: exposure, dehydration, even wild animal attack. She had only enough food (energy bars) and water (two eight-ounce canteens) for about two days. So yes, the cities lay to the north, and she had no choice but to head in that direction; however, the Russians might also assume that she would not choose the capital but one of the smaller towns like Mayramadag, Fiagdon, or Dzuarikau, with its natural gas pipeline. She’d attempt to sneak into a less populated area. That made sense—
Which was why she programmed the drone to head off toward the northwest, with its evasion parameters limited to those grids and those small towns to draw any ground teams as far away from her as it could. The drone would take the logical escape path, while she would head into the most highly populated area.
Next, she tugged free the satellite phone, hit the power button, and waited. Green light. Good signal. She placed the call to the Sixth Fleet tactical air commander on board the USS George H. W. Bush. “Neptune Command, this is Siren. I’m on the ground, approximately thirty kilometers southwest of Vladikavkaz. As of now, I’m unaware of any ground troops in this area. Moving northeast toward the city, following the mountain road.”
“Good to hear your voice, Siren. GPS position marked. We’ll get eyes in the sky on you ASAP. No go on the QRF right now. That airspace is hot. We’ll get you out, but we’ll have to find another way. We’re working on it.”
“Roger that. Initiating EE protocol, calling every two hours. Appreciate any intel you might have on enemy forces in the area.”
“Will do. Godspeed, Siren.”
She shut off the satellite phone. JSF encryption notwithstanding, the Russians would pinpoint the signal to her current location. Time to move. She gave the drone an affectionate pat on the back, then picked it up, activated the program, and sent it on its way. After a series of beeps, the drone hummed and rolled forward between the next pair of trees.
Halverson rose, tugged on her glove, drew her pistol, and started up the hill, moving about ten meters, then looking back at her footprints in the snow. She swore. There wasn’t time to double back, try to clear the prints, then create a false trail that might lead her pursuers in circles. One of the most ingenious things she’d seen during SERE training was an instructor wearing a pair of stilts whose bottoms imitated deer hooves. Average soldiers would dismiss the tracks, even if the deer’s gait was not mimicked exactly. Only experienced trackers would scrutinize the gait and realize the deception. She could use a pair of those right now.
Bottom line: She needed to put distance between herself and this location, and if she could find some stretches devoid of snow, the hard ground would do better to conceal her passage.
She quickened her pace, the gradient increasing, her breath turning ragged and her quads buckling.
A mere ten minutes later, she realized that thirty kilometers of this might kill her. With a curse, she let her thoughts drift away from the terrible exertion to something lighter, the thought that maybe McAllen would drop in out of nowhere like he had back in Canada.
Staff Sergeant Raymond McAllen was a Force Recon Team Leader, call sign “Outlaw One,” and he and his men had plucked her from a frozen lake as she’d been about to drown while fleeing from the Spetsnaz on her tail.
Since then, they’d had a tumultuous relationship—stealing what time they could to have ridiculously good sex but failing to ever talk, really talk about themselves, who they were, what they wanted. She couldn’t surrender to him because she knew—hell, they both knew—that they were only together to ease the pain. He’d joked that maybe if the war ended and they both were discharged, they could finally become a real couple instead of dropping in on each other unexpectedly to spend long, lazy weekends at hotels. He was about to transfer from Force Recon to the SRT Group, aka Marine Raiders, and was excited about that the last time they’d spoken.
She shuddered with the desire to call him now and tell him she was all right. She hadn’t been able to discuss the mission, but he knew she was overseas and flying, and every time she did that, he pleaded with her to send word. If he pulled enough strings and pried enough, he might learn that she’d been shot down, and she didn’t want to put him through that. So . . . she would stay alive and prove to that silly jarhead that she was just as tough as him. He’d say he already
knew that, but deep down, she knew he had his doubts.
“Always look at the path just ahead. Never look back. Never look at how high you must climb,” her father had once told her. “Stay focused. Stay on track.”
However, temptation got the best of her, and she gaped at the endless labyrinth of trees and long spines of rock jutting from the ridges. Was it getting colder? The wind whistled now through the branches. Her nose was running.
What was that? She stopped. Listened. Her pulse leapt forward. Distant pops and booms, the Interceptors still up there, somewhere. Next came a tiny voice, almost imperceptible, up on the bridge. Then . . . her breath. So thick in the air. Lips dry. She looked at the pistol and nodded.
Something warmed the back of her neck. A sense. A premonition. A sound?
She spun back, her gaze reaching into the pockets of darkness collecting around the trunks and a path snaking off toward and morphing into the trees. She lifted the pistol, braced it with both gloved hands. Her breath grew more shallow until finally, she stopped breathing altogether. Every sense reached forward, a prickling sensation in her shoulders now.
Three more seconds passed.
Then she sighed. Cursed.
The paranoia might do her in before the mountains did.
She took a step—
Just as a man’s raspy voice came from behind, the words in Russian but she understood them:
“Don’t move . . . otherwise I’ll shoot you.”
Halverson closed her eyes.
And her heart sank.
NINE
American Missionary Camp
Amazon Rain Forest
Northeastern Ecuador
Lex was trapped at the bottom of the falls, pounded ceaselessly by millions of gallons of water. He had no sense of up or down, and he clawed uselessly for anything to latch on to, a rock, something that he could use to find his way up—wherever that was. Flashes of light appeared through all the turbulence, and he literally screamed for his life as he fought toward those flashes . . .
With the abruptness of a switch being thrown, the water grew calm. Sunbeams flickered across the surface, just a few meters above. He kicked hard. Reached the light.
Shocker: He wasn’t dead.
The first breath stung. The second was better; the third had him thinking, I might walk away from this.
Blinking hard, he finally caught sight of the falls and gasped.
Curtains of white water were forever closing around a glimmering rock face. The branches were like balconies hanging low on both sides to form an amphitheater in the middle of the jungle. It was beautiful and deadly and heart-stopping . . . and all he could do was curse in awe.
That he’d survived was pure fate and had little to do with his training. Well, yes, he could hold his breath for a while, but he could have easily been thrown onto those piles of rocks forming concentric rings at the waterfall’s base.
He began to laugh, still dumbfounded. Apparently, his karma was still good, fate was not exactly an enemy, and the universe had tossed an old jarhead a bone.
After a few seconds, his thoughts turned back to the mission, to Nestes. He scanned the lake, just a broad pool ringed in by more stones and washing out toward calmer waters ahead. No bodies breaking the surface, nothing washed up on the shore.
He paddled toward the nearest rock, just as the drone came thrumming overhead. After a quick glance at the UAV, he kept on, back to his freestyle until he could stand.
Backhanding water out of his eyes, Lex trudged toward the shoreline, his boots like blocks of concrete, his arms sore and feeling torn from the sockets, then glued back. He reached a long, flat boulder and took a seat to catch his breath. He glanced up, shielding his face with a palm, then let his eyes follow the zigzagging pattern of trees along the shore, in search of a body. Nothing. Where was that bastard? Had he, too, survived the fall and escaped? Bastard!
Behind him, the jungle grew alive with the hoots and hollers of monkeys. Lex shifted around as Borya, Vlad, and Slava came out of the jungle near the base of the waterfall and picked their way toward him.
Staff Sergeant Borya had just turned thirty and was the oldest of the three. With hair the color of gunpowder and a cherubic face that would turn a deep crimson after he’d had his third beer, he was well liked among all Marine Raiders because he was a tactician and numbers man. Situational awareness was his middle name.
Vlad was the staff sergeant from Buryatia, a semiautonomous republic located within Russia’s borders directly north of Mongolia. His narrow eyes and skin suggested he was more Chinese or Mongol than Russian. Like Lex, he’d been born in the United States, Alaska to be precise. He’d been raised in Fairbanks and left to join the Marines at the tender age of eighteen. His Russian was the best on the team, and he could mimic several different dialects. He also took great pleasure in rattling the team’s bones with his predictions of doom and gloom on every mission.
Slava, well, what could Lex say? Every Marine Corps Raider team needed a secret weapon, and Lex had certainly found his. Slava looked like an old Soviet weight lifter who ate bowls of broken glass for breakfast and washed them down with a half gallon of gasoline. He had a reputation for being overly aggressive and politically incorrect around anyone ranked higher than captain. He was, admittedly, difficult to navigate around during conversations, but having him on the team was like bringing a nuclear bomb to a knife fight. Lex always felt certain that if it came down to it, Slava would be the last man standing, long after the rest of them had perished.
“Any sign of him?” Borya called as he neared Lex, unfazed by what had just happened.
Before Lex could answer, Vlad was all over the question: “Nestes is long gone—and, boss, you nearly bought it chasing this scumbag. What the hell, man? Aren’t we getting tired of this? Is the guy really worth it?”
“Shut up,” cried Slava, turning a menacing stare on Vlad. “When I find him, I’ll break him in half, and I will feed you the pieces!”
Lex sighed. They were at it again—comrades in arms and at each other’s throats. Lex got wearily to his feet. “Gentlemen, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m alive.” He pointed at the harrowing waterfall. “I survived that shit. And thanks, yeah, I’m okay.”
Slava threw up a hand. “You survived because you are a Marine.”
Lex grinned. “No doubt.” He faced Borya. “You kept the drone on him as he went over the falls?”
“Absolutely. But he just vanished. Never saw him come out in the lake like you did.”
“Then he’s still here,” said Lex. “I want this shoreline searched. All of it. Try thermals. Let’s move out.”
“Boss, I’ll get the drone up near the rocks, where we can’t go,” said Borya.
Lex nodded. “Do it. And hey, I lost my earpiece. Let me have the radio.”
Borya tugged free the team radio from his hip pocket, tossed it to Lex, then moved off, his eyes riveted to the drone’s remote, now balanced in his hands.
Lex cleared his throat. “Mother Hawk, this is Green Raider Actual, over.”
“Actual, this is Mother Hawk, go ahead.”
“We’ve tracked the Tango to this location. It’s a huge waterfall. Searching for him now. Have the QRF ready to go. May need to boogie soon, over.”
“Roger that, Actual. QRF is already Oscar Mike, ETA five minutes your location.”
“Roger that, Mother Hawk. Hold ’em back till I call. Actual, out.”
As Lex turned back toward the falls, Borya was already waving him over and pointing to his remote. The drone hovered over the rocks below the falls, drifting just a meter or two away from disaster and fighting to remain aloft in the mist. Lex hustled over and arrived breathlessly at Borya’s side. He squinted at the remote’s screen as Borya zoomed in with the drone’s camera, the image blurry and then coming into focus:
A hand jutted out between two rocks.
Lex glanced away from the remote to the drone, noted the location, then returned the radio to Borya. “Keep eyes on me.”
“Watch your step, boss.”
Holding his breath, Lex dove into the lake, swimming hard toward the falls. He reached the edge of the rocks, then hauled himself up, balancing perilously atop the largest stone. The rocks were slick, and he had about three meters to go to reach the hand. Tensing and extending his arms for balance, he set off, slipping twice before slapping his palms on the rock just above the fingers.
He’d expected to find Nestes’s body or perhaps the unconscious man lying behind the boulders, but his discovery was decidedly more grisly—
Nestes’s arm had been torn off at the elbow and the appendage had landed here, the blood drained, the skin waterlogged and swollen, its once healthy pink color faded to a bluish gray. Lex could only imagine what had happened to the rest of the man’s body. He must have landed amid a group of jagged, semisubmerged rocks and been killed outright, his torso and appendages shredded by the force of the horrendous current and boulders.
Lex reached down toward the arm.
A finger twitched.
Shit! He almost fell back off the rocks.
Regaining his balance, Lex took a moment to compose himself, looking away from the arm and probing the rocks for more of the man’s body, but the billowing mist camouflaged most of the immediate area.