Blacklist Aftermath

8

Less than three minutes later, they were crouched low behind two fir trees nearest the hogbacks. They each had a fragmentation grenade in their strong hands, pistols in their weak. Training, equipment, and terrain were all force multipliers, and Fisher had recognized that. Briggs, a student of military history, had agreed and reminded Fisher of the ancient battle between the Greeks and the Persians at the pass of Thermopylae. A mere 7,000 Greeks held off between 100,000 and 300,000 men for seven days in one of the most remarkable battles ever fought.

“Here they come,” whispered Briggs.

Like their comrades to the east, these troops had formed three squads, six men in each, with two squads hustling through the forest toward the pass. The third was holding back in overwatch positions along the outcroppings above the pass.

“Sam, I’ve just deployed the CS canisters,” reported Charlie. “Probably took out at least six or seven of them, but the wind’s picking up again. Looks like the rest are converging on the crash site, at least for now.”

“Roger that. Do a sweep over the tree line surrounding the jet. Double-check for bodies.”

“No problem.”

“Sam, it’s Grim. One of you needs to move ahead, pop smoke, and do some combat control for the chopper. GPS coordinates are a little off, and the pilot’s having a hard time seeing the LZ. It’s real tight down there.”

“We’ll get on it,” answered Fisher.

“Uh, and yeah, uh, excuse me, you’ve got twelve hostiles inbound with another six overhead,” she said.

“I know, Grim.”

“Why aren’t you moving?”

“You’ll see.”

The first squad of Spetsnaz ventured tentatively onto the cliff, the point man hunkered down and waving his assault rifle toward the shadows ahead. His comrades followed, their spacing well practiced, their fingers at the ready to cut loose volleys of superheated lead.

All six were passing through the hogback now, and then came the second squad, one by one. The mountainside grew so quiet that Fisher thought he could hear every piece of ice crunching under their boots. Even the wind seemed to be holding back, waiting for something to happen.

Fisher zoomed in with his trifocals. The Spetsnaz wore dark green camouflage uniforms with balaclavas tugged down over their faces. Frost was forming on the areas around their mouths. He got a better look at their weapons now, flicking his glance between them and his OPSAT, which ID’d the rifles as Kalashnikov AK-12s, the latest derivative of the Soviet/Russian AK-47 series with a curious lower number than 47. The 12 referred to the year the rifle went into production. What a shame. These were excellent new toys in the hands of men relying upon conventional tactics. They might be hard-core, as Charlie had mentioned, but they needed a hell of a lot more creativity if they were going to capture or kill Fisher and Briggs.

Zooming back out, Fisher noted that the point man was only a few meters away from what he and Briggs had dubbed the “rock of no return”—a small stone about the size of a volleyball they’d placed along the ledge as a landmark.

He glanced over at the young man hunkered down at his side. Briggs’s eyes were covered by his trifocals, and Fisher let his gaze drift down to Briggs’s gloved hand. Was he trembling? Was his pulse bounding? Could Fisher trust him enough to react and carry out the plan as discussed? There’d been a moment during the Blacklist operation where Sadiq had been clutching Fisher and it’d been up to Briggs to take the shot, end it right there, but the kid just couldn’t do it. Fisher had, in effect, fired him after that. They’d come to terms with the incident, and while Fisher forgave, he never forgot.

Briggs must’ve felt the heat of Fisher’s gaze, and he glanced over and nodded.

The point man lifted his hand, halting the squad.

“Shit,” Briggs whispered.

Fisher leaned toward Briggs. “Take it easy.”

A few of the troops craned their heads at the sound of the Black Hawk’s rotors approaching from the west.

The point man shouted in Russian, “Double-time!”

And they took off running—

Right into Fisher’s trap.