Field of Fire

Chapter 32

Feliks Zolner’s mother kissed him between the eyes — the only part of his skin left exposed to the freezing air. He caught the hint of black tea and wild cherry jam on her breath, felt the dab of moisture on the end of her nose. Even at the young age of nine, he knew she’d sacrificed, taking only a glass of tea and a scant spoonful of homemade jam while he ate the last of their stewed sweet cabbage and simple black bread.

She pulled the scarf up immediately after the kiss to cover her full lips, but Feliks could tell she was happy by the frosted outline of a smile on the cloth. Another drop of moisture formed on the tip of her nose, freezing immediately. She brushed it away with the back of her hand out of habit. Tucking his scarf into the collar of his wool coat to be certain his ears weren’t exposed, she patted the rifle in his hands.

“Wait here, lapushka,” she said.

Her presence gave him warmth against the incredible cold, but Feliks thought himself well beyond the age of childish names. They were too poor to have any animals that they could not eventually eat, so he had to fill the niche of family pet. Malvina Zolner assured him that no matter how old her son became, he would always be her lapushka, her “little paw.”

It would be dark soon, but Malvina made sure to place him so the sun was at his back. Orange light filtered through the white birch forest and cast a diffused glow across her wind-bitten face. Ice-blue eyes sparkled, and her button nose, which looked much like his but for her heavy crop of freckles, wrinkled, the way it did when she concentrated hard on a thought.

A hard winter had brought marauding wolves to the birch forest around the village. Malvina said the government in Moscow called them a super-pack, estimating there were more than three hundred animals. The powerful killing machines had slaughtered dozens of reindeer in three days time, gutting many of the horses the villagers kept for milk and meat while the poor animals stood helplessly in the drifted snow. Feliks had been at once horrified and mesmerized to watch how the wolves nipped and tore at their victims’ flesh, ripping away at the hams and belly until the animal lost enough blood it could no longer kick or run.

The shadow of a wolf loomed behind every tree around the village or along the snow-covered road. The blacksmith’s partially devoured body had been discovered in the alley behind his shop, but it was generally agreed that he had died from an over-indulgence of vodka, and the wolves had merely been the beneficiaries of his frozen carcass. No other human deaths had been attributed to this pack, but that would not hold. There were too many children and too many wolves.

Most of the able-bodied men — including Feliks’s father — had gone to fight the war in Afghanistan — leaving only those who were old or crippled — or crazy like Stas and Vladik Pervak to look after the village. The brothers lost nine ponies to the wolf pack and seemed to believe that as they had seen such a great loss, they should be in charge of wolf reprisal. Feliks did not like either of the men, who always drank too much to look after as many ponies as they had. They leered at him when he passed them in town, and often mumbled filthy comments about his mother. Even as a child he knew these men were nasty and vile.

His mother had killed three wolves that morning, shooting a big gray female from a distance of well over two hundred meters as it bounded away. Malvina Zolner was without a doubt the best shot and the finest hunter in the village now that his father was away. She should have been hailed as a hero, but if anyone else thought so, they didn’t mention it to Feliks. They were jealous. That was it. She was beautiful and skilled. Feliks sensed that this combination was too much for some men to accept. Besides, they said, there were too many wolves for three to make a difference — and as the Pervak brothers pointed out, Malvina was only a woman. Instead of thanking her and seeing to it that she received the bounty for killing the wolves, they had insulted her in their drunken rage. Feliks had cried openly, earning contemptuous looks that gripped at his throat like a fist and made it hard for him to breath.

Even now, hours after the drunken taunts, his small face glowed red under the rough wool scarves.

“You must understand, my lapushka,” his mother said, her words short and panting in the bone-numbing cold. “These men are beside themselves with fear.” At seventy degrees below zero, the moisture in her breath froze the instant it left her beautiful mouth, forming ice crystals that tinkled to the ground. The old people called it “the whisper of angels.”

“I know we must kill the wolves, Mama,” Feliks said, jutting his chin to make room for his voice under the heavy scarf. “I do not hate wolves, but I hate those men.”

“Fear often makes men the more dangerous of the two,” Malvina said, patting him on the head. White crystals of frost lined her delicate eyelashes, reminding Feliks of a snow princess he’d seen in a book.

Gathering him in her arms for another moist tea-and-jam kiss, she wrapped a second wool scarf around her son’s neck and picked up her own gun with her gloved hand, leaving him to sit completely still on a thick pile of hay in the loft of their three-sided barn. The crude wooden loft was low, no more than six feet off the ground. It would be accessible even to the weakest of wolves if one wanted to jump up and eat him. But Feliks was not afraid. He had his gun, and he knew his mother would come back for him once it was too dark to shoot.

She always came back.

Feliks squeezed his rifle as he watched his mother trudge past the rough ball of hair that was their milking cow, and toward the shooting hide she’d built in a tall spruce tree two hundred paces away. Her reindeer skin boots left tiny tracks in the snow. Feliks stifled a laugh at the oblong shadow cast by her ratty fox fur hat. It made her look like she had a pumpkin on her shoulders. Her wool coat hung down past her knees, but Feliks could see she was shivering. The coat was much too thin to keep her warm in such bitter cold, and it would only get worse as darkness fell. She had two good scarves, but had given her second to him.

A wolf howled to the west, beyond the house, and was immediately answered by another somewhere in the endless expanse of trees behind Feliks. It was a foreign noise, chilling yet inviting and made Feliks want to join in with the howling. The boy kept his eyes fixed on his mother but imagined the magnificent animals loping silently through the birch forest, making no sound but for their mournful cries — and the crunch of teeth on bone.

Malvina stopped as she approached the homemade ladder at the base of her spruce tree and turned slowly to study the woods to her right. Felix held his breath. She must have seen something in the trees.

Feliks kept completely still, flicking his eyes sideways, following his mother’s gaze without moving his body. Why did she did not raise her gun if it was a wolf? Slowly, fluidly, so as not to draw attention to the loft, Felix brought his knees up. He crossed his ankles so he could rest his elbows on the muscles of his thigh and peer down the iron sights if his rifle. He scanned the woods beyond his mother, controlling his breath the way she’d taught him, keeping the front sight perfectly aligned with the notch in the laddered V at the rear.

Zolner was large for his age, but his mother made certain not to teach him bad habits by giving him a firearm fitted for a grown man. She’d sawed off the butt of her father’s Mosin-Nagant carbine and worked down the stock to fit Feliks’s shoulder and length of pull, carefully rasping down the wooden grip behind the action so his small hand could wrap around it when he placed his finger on the trigger. Malvina’s grandfather had been a student of the famed Soviet hero, Vasily Zayt-sev during the Battle for Stalingrad. He had survived, and taught Malvina how to shoot. She’d handed down this knowledge to Feliks, demonstrating proper breathing and trigger control. The more important aspects of shooting — the cold and calculating instincts that could not be taught — she had passed down to him with her blood.

A wolf howled again, and Felix shifted slightly, beginning to worry since his mother still stood at the bottom of her tree. She turned toward the woods and took a step away from the ladder. A lone man emerged from the forest, his hands raised as if to show he had no weapon. It was a curious thing that a full-grown man would stroll through the wolf-infested woods with no rifle at any time of the day. To do so in late evening was madness.

Feliks recognized the man by his lopsided sable hat and patched greatcoat as Stas, the larger of the Pervak brothers. Stas took a few steps toward Malvina Zolner gesturing wildly, pointing toward the trees. Malvina peered in the forest, rifle in hand. Feliks could not hear it, but he felt certain the man was speaking hateful words, as he’d done earlier in the day. Without thinking, the boy rested the post of his front sight on the man’s ear. His mother should not have to hear such words. Feliks had the power to stop them. The trigger broke cleanly. The rifle bucked in his small hands, but he kept his eye on the target, watching the lopsided fur hat fly off along with a piece of skull. Feliks grinned under his wool scarf, feeling a peculiar warmth he’d never felt before. Stas Pervak would speak no more words, hateful or otherwise.

Half his head gone, the remainder of Pervak’s body stood there for a moment, unaware that it was dead before collapsing into the snow in a heap of filthy rags. Malvina’s head snapped around at the sound of the shot. He waved. Certainly she would be proud of him. He had taken Stas in the head from well over three hundred paces. Malvina began to run toward him, flailing her arms, staggering to keep her footing on the frozen ground.

A moment later Vladik Pervak charged out of the trees another hundred meters beyond the house. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. The lead rope of a wooly pony draped over one arm. He stopped in his tracks when he saw his brother’s body and the spray of frozen carnage around it. The pony dropped its head, nibbling at the snow. Vladik began to scream. At that distance Feliks could not make out the words, but it did not matter. If a Pervak spoke, it was bound to be vile.

Feliks swung the cut-down Mosin-Nagant toward Vladik as he ran toward the body of his dead brother. He took a deep, calming breath estimating the distance at two hundred meters, and led the man like he would a running reindeer. He held a hair higher than he had on Stas, knowing the bullet would drop at least six inches in that distance.

Feliks exhaled slowly, pressing the Mosin-Nagant’s crisp trigger in the moment of respiratory pause at the bottom of his breath, where his body was completely still.

Vladik pitched face-first into the snow seventy-five meters from his dead brother. Feliks had taken both men with clean shots through the head.

Nine-year-old Feliks Zolner looked down the barrel of his rifle, past the terrified face of his mother at the bodies of the two men he’d just killed — and smiled.

Malvina Zolner threw the rickety wooden ladder against the edge of the loft and hauled herself up to where Feliks sat with his rifle. Her chest heaved under the tattered coat. Her breath came in deep, wheezing croaks from sprinting through the sub-zero air. Frozen tears frosted her eyes, forcing her to keep wiping her face with the back of her arm.

“Oh, lapushka,” she wept, “why would you? Why? Why would you shoot those men?”

Feliks pulled the rifle to his chest, hugging it tightly. “You say why, Mama.” He smiled sweetly. “I say why not?”

Feliks Zolner looked out the window of the Cessna 185 and watched heavy snow zip by like gray bullets. His spotter, a squat but powerful man named Kravchuk, who he’d worked with for the last three years, sat in the rear seat beside a former Spetsnaz soldier named Yakibov. It bothered Zolner to have anyone sit behind him, even a man he more or less trusted, but at a height of over two meters, the front seat of the cramped aircraft was the only place he would fit. He was acquainted with Yakibov but didn’t know him well enough to show his back, so he made certain Kravchuk occupied the seat behind him and put the Spetsnaz man behind the pilot.

Zolner was clean-shaven, with flecks of sliver in mouse-colored hair. A perfect crew cut lorded sternly over a brooding forehead and blocky jaw that looked as if it were carved of granite. His smallish, almost button nose looked out of place surrounded by the otherwise severely masculine face. He was a rawboned man, with a thick neck and brutish muscles. Large hands hung from the end of powerful arms. He was built much like his mother’s grandfather so far as he could tell from the only photograph he’d ever seen of the man, standing beside a dead Nazi in the rubble of Stalingrad. Broad in proportion to his height, even now, his shoulders pressed against those of Ilia Davydov, who was not himself a small man. Zolner had known the pilot slightly longer than he’d known Kravchuk. His hands were too soft to be of use for anything but piloting, but he was exact in his actions — and for now, that was enough.

“The lodge is off of our left wing,” Davydov said, bringing the Cessna around in a shallow bank.

“Hopefully they are still here,” Yakibov said, sneering.

Davydov gestured out the windscreen with the flat of his hand. “We are going to be here until the storm passes. The wind in those clouds would turn us on our heads.”

Kravchuk scanned the area below with a pair of powerful Komz binoculars. “There is one airplane at the end of the field.” It was getting dark, but the man’s eyesight was almost as good as Zolner’s. “Two male individuals standing in the river north of the small buildings,” he said. “I believe they are fishing.”

Davydov glanced at Zolner, fighting a buffeting crosswind as he brought the Cessna in line with the gravel airstrip. “We know your target came here,” he said. “But what of the other team?”

“They are professionals,” Zolner said. “If they have not yet reported in then something has happened to them.”

“And what of the others in the lodge?” Kravchuk said.

Zolner took a long breath, exhaling through his mouth with a slight pause at the bottom, the way he did when he was preparing to shoot. Correct breathing was important in all aspects of life and helped to settle his mind.

“Do not worry, my friend,” he said. “I will let you take care of them. Colonel Rostov has been very clear. There can be no witnesses.”

Chapter 33

Something heavy dug into Khaki Beaudine’s ribcage. No matter how much she willed it to move, her right arm refused to obey. Her head twisted unnaturally to one side, nose against a cold, orange blur. Beaudine briefly considered that she might be dead, and if she was dead, the fact that everything around her smelled of wood smoke and gasoline didn’t bode well for her final destination — not that she was surprised. Then she realized she needed to pee. Her toes wiggled, so she was relatively sure she wasn’t completely paralyzed. For one panicked moment she thought she might still be trapped in the airplane, but then she remembered the blizzard. Surely she would have frozen to death had she still been trapped in the plane. The orange blob in front of her nose smelled like a plastic pool toy and brought back distant childhood memories of trips to the lake… before things went crazy with her family. She had a vague recollection of Quinn dragging her through the snow.

A fire popped and crackled outside, casting dancing shadows against the tent wall. Beaudine could feel the reach of its warmth on the top of her head. Beyond the fire, a gossamer curtain of green and purple swept across the sky, ebbing and flowing, brilliant in the surrounding blackness. The mournful howl of a wolf lingered over the lumps and shadows of the snowy ground. It was an incredible sight, beautiful despite the terror of the situation. Beaudine tried to rise, but every muscle and bone rebelled, pressing her back to the rocky ground.

Pain cleared away the fog of sleep, and Beaudine slowly came to realize the weight across her ribs was an elbow. The body connected to that elbow was tucked in beside her, breathing gaspy breaths against her neck. There appeared to a sleeping bag laid out underneath them and some sort of foil space blanket above, but it was Jericho Quinn who provided most of the warmth that enveloped her.

The longer she was awake, the more Beaudine realized how badly she hurt. Her knee was on fire. Her left eye seemed to be glued shut, and she was pretty sure she’d cracked a front tooth. Even the slightest movement of her neck sent excruciating bolts of fire arcing down her spine, but she could move it, so that was something. She knew all too well how to work through pain.

She tried to push herself up on all fours, causing Quinn to draw back his arm and roll away, not exactly in recoil, but like someone who didn’t want to loose an important appendage.

“Sorry.” His voice was deep and came with a phlegmy morning cough. Hearing it brought back memories of the crash and with them, images of Lovita’s death. Babying her neck, Beaudine rolled onto her side so she faced Quinn. Even this small movement brought a stab of pain to her hip, but it was a worthwhile trade in order to get a better look at her surroundings in the orange darkness of the shelter.

Beaudine felt the welcome warmth of the fire reflecting on her face.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “If you were still asleep, how do we still have a fire?”

“Don’t worry,” Quinn said, his exhausted voice muffled against his own arm. “It wasn’t the little people. The storm stopped about an hour ago and I got up to add more wood then.”

Beaudine relaxed a notch. She’d always thought of herself as a wilderness girl, but the woods she knew didn’t come with plane crashes, creepy little goblins, or killers named Worst of the Moon.

It could be noon for all she knew. Dancing flames cast long shadows from the scrub willows onto the gravel bluff overlooking the river. Everything looked cold and sinister and much larger than it actually was. A curtain of black closed in beyond the reach of the fire, but this was Alaska, so darkness accounted for a large chunk of day at this time of the year.

Beaudine used her elbow to nudge a heavy pocket of snow that sagged the tent, sending it sliding down the fabric with a hiss to the drifts along the base. At least six inches had fallen during the night.

Quinn lay on his stomach, one arm trailing by his side, the other up under his face like a pillow against the rocky ground. Healthy black stubble from the day before had grown into a respectable beard overnight. Dark hair pushed up over his ear in lopsided bed head.

Beaudine rubbed her nose with her sleeve and suddenly realized she now wore the same type of black merino wool underwear that Quinn had on. Her life before the crash seemed much too long ago to remember what she’d been wearing, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t black wool. She fought the urge to ask who had dressed her, deciding she’d rather live with the fantasy that she’d changed out of her wet clothes on her own while in some sort of stupor and just couldn’t remember it.

A sudden twinge of pain above her left eye made her reach up and touch her forehead. The flesh was tender, swollen and caked with blood. The pain eased some after a moment, falling back to a sickening ache.

“We’re going to need to take care of that before we do much else,” Quinn said, looking at her wound, chin against his bent arm. “Do all your bones bend in the places they’re supposed to bend?”

“So far,” she said, clearing her throat. “Something’s going on with my wrist. Hope it’s just a sprain. How about you?”

Quinn arched his back, wincing slightly, but keeping it to himself if anything important was damaged.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“This feels like shit.” Beaudine’s fingers explored the crusted mess on her forehead. “How bad is it?”

“You could see out of both eyes last night,” Quinn said. “But you’re going to need stitches before we go anywhere.”

“I don’t want to even think about that,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “My watch must have come off in the crash. What time is it?”

Quinn rolled up on his side. He pulled back the edge of the tent directly over his head so he could look up at the stars. He appeared to find what he was looking for, closed his eyes and counted quietly using his thumb and fingers.

“About five A.M.,” he said at length.

“You can tell by looking at the stars?” Beaudine eyed him hard with her good eye. “Who are you — Daniel Boone?”

Quinn nestled back down in the bag. “I looked at my watch a little bit ago.”

“Sure you did,” Beaudine said. “Jacques told me you were Daniel Boone.” She turned a little, stretching her neck by degrees, and saw the snow-covered lump in the moonlight that she realized was Lovita’s body. “I’m really sorry about your friend.”

Quinn rubbed the stubble on his face and stared into the night. “Thank you,” he said, his voice still thick, and now with the added heaviness that comes with losing someone very close. “I can’t just leave her out there on the rocks…”

Quinn wriggled forward, waiting to climb to his feet until he was well out of the survival bag so as not to rob Beaudine of the relatively warm bubble of air. She watched him shrug on his heather gray wool shirt and step into the unlaced boots he’d stashed just inside the door of the shelter. He disappeared into the darkness looking completely at ease in his floppy boots, unbuttoned shirt, and long johns.

He wasn’t gone for more than two minutes but Beaudine felt a flood of relief when she heard the crunch of his boots on snow and gravel.

He stooped to look into the opening of the shelter, shining a tiny flashlight into the corner beside his pack. “There’s some akutaq in that white container,” he said. “It’ll warm you up until I get the fire going again.”

Beaudine nestled deeper into the sleeping bag, trying to take advantage of the warm spot Quinn had left. It hurt her face when she turned up her nose, but she did it anyway. “I don’t think this Texas girl’s stomach could handle reindeer lard and sugar.”

“I’m serious,” Quinn said. “I don’t know what Lovita has in the survival kit but I guarantee you it won’t have as much food value as akutaq.”

Beaudine eyed the plastic container like it might bite her.

“Caribou fat?”

“Lovita is… was a traditionalist,” Quinn said. “It’s got a lot of berries too.”

“Look, I’m not trying to…” Beaudine shook her head. “I just, I mean… sugar and lard. ’Nuff said.”

“I get it.” Quinn shrugged, absent any malice. He seemed more interested in kicking snow away from the coals of his fire than schooling her about food prejudices. “Up to you, but we’ll need our strength to go after Volodin.”

Beaudine perked up and poked her head out of the thin foil bag.”

“We’re still going after him?”

“Someone has to,” Quinn said.

“And how are we supposed to do that? We don’t even know which way he went.”

“I didn’t say we were going to catch him,” Quinn said, a gleam in his eye despite the situation. “Seriously, we know he was headed toward Needle Village before the crash. If I’ve got my bearings right, we’re maybe ten miles away once we reach the main river.”

How far are we from the river?”

“A couple of miles, I think,” Quinn said, adding another log to the fire. “Lovita put us down to the south of the river, which is too bad because it’s boggier on this side. The tundra around here isn’t frozen yet. Two miles jumping from tussock to tussock will be like running a marathon. I think we’ll have to follow the streambed all the way down. It’ll be a winding route, but might be the only way without sinking up to our knees.”

He looked completely at home squatting there, poking the flames with a charred piece of willow. Both their jackets had frozen into stiff wads overnight. Quinn propped both on the top of the split boulder. Steam began to rise immediately from the damp wool and fleece.

Quinn stared into the flames, shaking his head. “I’ll make another trip out to the plane and see what else we have in the way of supplies.”

“Back into that water?” Beaudine shivered just thinking about it.

“Afraid I have to,” he said.

“Well, I gotta find me a place to use the little girls’ room,” Beaudine said, stifling a groan as she finally pushed up on all fours still inside the foil bag. Cold air rushed in around her, bringing a shiver that collided with the pain in her hip. She was tempted to retreat, but nature called.

She slipped her feet into the frozen boots Quinn had staged for her inside the shelter opening, just out of reach of the snow. “I don’t suppose we have any—”

Quinn reached in the pocket of his wool shirt and held up a plastic baggie containing a small roll of toilet paper, rescuing her from having to ask for it.

“This stuff is like gold out here,” he said. “Every time we go hunting my dad has what we called “the TP talk”—makes everyone in camp promise to be a folder and not a wadder. ‘Wadders are wasteful,’ he’d say when we were kids and threaten to make us use spruce cones if we ran out.”

Quinn went back to poking at the fire, looking completely serious about toilet-paper etiquette.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Beaudine said, snatching up the toilet paper. She turned to go, but stopped after one step, staring into the shadows. They seemed even darker now. The wolf howled again. It sounded far away, but it was impossible for her to tell in the snow. “I don’t suppose you’d loan a girl a flashlight…”

Quinn had just finished hanging the rest of their wet clothes around the boulder when Agent Beaudine came hustling back into camp.

“I heard something out there,” she said. “It sounded big. You think it might have been that wolf?” The long johns looked like yoga pants, but were made to fit Aunt Abbey, so they hung a little looser in the seat on Beaudine.

“Hmmm,” Quinn mused. “Probably not a wolf.”

“That’s a relief,” Beaudine said.

“More likely a bear,” Quinn said. “We’re camped right on a bear trail. I saw all kinds of tracks last night.”

Beaudine’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t think to tell me this before I wandered off into the forest by myself?”

Quinn chuckled. “Did you want me to come with you?”

She thrust the plastic bag with the toilet paper roll back at him without answering. “I only used four squares, in case you’re a counter.”

Quinn arched his back, introducing his old injuries to the new ones he’d gotten from the crash, before looping the headlamp around his neck and starting for the river.

Beaudine looked up at him from where she warmed her hands by the fire. “Where are you going?”

Quinn sighed. In the bush, the harsh practicality often chased away the niceties of life. “I’m going to keep the ravens from eating my friend.”

Chapter 34

The northern lights cascaded across the sky in dancing curtains of green and purple, incredibly bright now that Quinn had the fire behind him. He crunched the thirty feet down the gravel slope to the water, hardly looking up.

The mangled wreck of the airplane was a silver shadow in the black water. The Aurora and crescent moon reflected off the snowy landscape, giving plenty of light.

A night of snow and heavy rain upriver had caused the little creek to swell and jump its banks, changing the terrain just enough to throw off Quinn’s bearings. It took him a moment to find the white lump of snow that was Lovita’s body, and he was horrified to find that the stream had flooded enough to cover her legs and now lapped at her waist. It was a foolish notion, but Quinn couldn’t help but worry about how cold she must feel in the icy water and moved quickly to drag her body to higher ground.

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” he whispered, gently brushing the snow from her face. Her body was stiff, but she looked like she was asleep. “I’ll get you to your airplane until I can come back and do things right.”

Quinn swallowed hard, patting his young friend on the shoulder as if to comfort her. He looked out at the water that just hours before had come to his knees. Now, it would easily reach his waist.

Shaking the snow off a nearby willow bush, he removed his shirt, and then peeled off his woolies, draping them on the bare branches to stand naked along the bank.

The frigid water pushed the wind from his lungs as surely as if he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. If there was an upside, it was that the cold numbed his feet so the stones didn’t hurt quite as much. His teeth chattered, his muscles ached, but the overwhelming need to find Volodin drove him forward.

It took him five agonizing minutes standing in the rising stream to pry open the wing locker where Lovita kept the survival gear and medical kit. He grabbed the second sleeping bag as well, and his Aunt Abbey’s AR-10 rifle. Frigid water shoved at his hips as a stiff current rolled loose stones under his bare feet, threatening to push him down with every step.

He had little feeling left in his legs by the time he’d carried all the gear back to shore and picked up Lovita’s body for the return trip. She was light, barely a hundred pounds, but cold and circumstance had weakened him to the point of collapse. He fell twice, floundering in the icy water and nearly letting her get away from him. Shivering uncontrollably by the time he reached the door, he could just fit Lovita’s body into the airplane. She was still stiff, so he had to slide her in at an angle on the roof of her airplane, between the inverted seatbacks. His brain fogged with anger and cold, he stood at the door, at a loss for what to do next. His mother would have said some kind of prayer. Instead, Quinn clenched his jaw to silence his chattering teeth and leaned inside the plane on his belly. He put a hand on his friend’s cold forehead and told her good-bye.

It took another full minute to get the door bent back shut and bend the latches into the locked position with a multi-tool he’d carried out for that purpose. It wouldn’t be enough to slow down a hungry bear — but he hoped it would keep her safe from wolves and ravens for a while — and it was the best he could do.

Quinn took a step toward the bank, then turned, overwhelmed with the sudden need to know what had happened to cause the crash. The aircraft had overturned on impact so he had to stoop and use the multi-tool to open the engine compartment, playing the beam of the headlamp around the charred mess. Burned oil made it almost impossible to tell one piece of the engine from any other, but the tool marks were clearly visible. Quinn had worked on enough motorcycles over the years that it didn’t take him long to find the problem.

Khaki Beaudine was up and dressed by the time Quinn walked into camp wearing his long underwear and unlaced boots. He was deathly pale, and she couldn’t tell if he dropped the load of gear because he wanted to put it in front of the tent, or if his shivering arms simply gave out at that particular spot. He shot a wild look at her, but didn’t speak, moving immediately to squat in front of the fire, arms outstretched, as close as physically possible without bursting into flames himself. Clouds of steam escaped the fabric of the black long johns.

He’d been gone the better part of an hour, and Beaudine had spent the time watching Quinn’s shadow moving back and forth in the darkness, and punctuating her worry with the few useful chores she could think to do. She’d nearly collapsed with relief when he finally switched on his headlamp. The tent was still up but she’d stuffed the sleeping bag in its stuff sack along with the folded Mylar bivy blanket. Trails of her boot prints crisscrossed the snow along the gravel bar, disappearing into the darkness where she’d braved wolves and bears and creepy little gnome people to search for firewood. It seemed silly now, but she was inordinately proud of the large pile of deadfall she’d been able to find.

Quinn looked at the wood and gave an approving nod. He opened his mouth wide, going through a series of grimaces to get the blood flowing in his cheeks, wincing as cold and numbness surely gave way to warmth and revitalizing pain.

“Give it to me straight, Jericho Quinn,” Beaudine said. Her Texas accent twanged as strongly as her mama’s when she was nervous. “Just how bad are we screwed?”

“Pretty bad.” Quinn stood, stepping into the pants he’d left warming on the boulder, and then shrugged on the fleece jacket. Warm now, he looked at ease, as to begin going through their meager pile of gear. Beaudine watched as he opened an empty plastic bag and scooped it full of snow before setting it aside. Using the headlamp, he searched through the first-aid pack, taking out a bottle of water and what looked like a small multi-tool, and setting them on top of the rifle drag bag to keep them off the ground. “I’m pretty sure the Russians disabled the Emergency Beacon. But even if anyone is looking for us, they won’t be looking for us here because Lovita had to leave her original flight path to Needle Village in order to find a suitable place to set down.”

Beaudine took a deep breath, letting the reality of their situation sink in. “And we can’t build a signal fire because that would just bring this Worst of the Moon guy right down on top of us.”

She dabbed at the wound on her face with the cuff of her woolies, pulled down over the heel of her hand. She’d managed to get the crusted eye open but she could feel the angry flap of skin on her forehead, just above her left eyebrow. It wept blood constantly, blurring her vision and forcing her to keep wiping it away.

Quinn found what he was looking for and stood, turning to her, firelight flickering off his face.

“I think I’ve stopped shivering long enough to get you stitched up,” Quinn said. “Then we need to pack the rest of our gear and get on the trail.”

“Like John Wayne always said.” Beaudine gave a nervous laugh. “We’re burnin’ daylight.”

“Burning moonlight,” Quinn smiled. “If we’re not on the trail well before the sun comes up, there’s no way we can catch up to Volodin before the Russian hunter gets to him.” He threw more wood on the fire, and then untied the support line to take down the nylon tube tent, which he spread out like a tarp between the fire and the boulder. Positioning the headlamp in the center of his forehead, he stretched a pair of latex gloves from the first-aid kit over oily hands and sat on the second sleeping bag with his back to the boulder. The bag was still inside the vacuum-sealed wrapper and formed a two-by-two-foot compressed square that made for a perfect seat cushion.

“Okay,” he said, waving a gloved hand over the top of the tarp. “That should keep you dry and out of the snow. I need you to lie down here as best you can — on your back, so you’re looking up at me.”

Beaudine froze. “With my head in your lap?”

Quinn nodded. “That’s the idea.”

She moved grudgingly, maneuvering her bruised body so the back of her head rested on Quinn’s thigh. She peered up at him with the eye that wasn’t crusted shut. He smelled like wet wool and wood smoke — smells she’d never found particularly pleasant but were oddly comforting at the moment. He wore the headlamp but hadn’t switched it on yet, and looked down at her smiling, as if it wasn’t weird that he was patting her forehead in the middle of the Alaska wilderness. She knew he was merely assessing her wound, but the flickering firelight and her reclining vantage point made it feel tender, and the circles she ran in didn’t offer that sensation very often.

She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. “You ever sew anyone up before?”

“You’ll make seven,” Quinn said. “If you count myself, and the pig and two goats at field labs during Pararescue training.”

“Two people?” Beaudine said, her good eye flicking open. “You mean to tell me you’ve only stitched up two live people?”

“I’ve practiced on a lot of pig feet,” Quinn said, winking. “Look, stitches are a last resort in the field. We should really wait until we get back, but you’ll need both eyes for the work we have ahead. There’s superglue in the kit, and I’ll use it when I can, but it’s not likely to hold up on the deeper areas.” He held his hands back away from her face as if to get some sort of go-ahead to continue.

Beaudine sighed. “Well, two is two more than I’ve ever done, so I guess you’re the expert.”

“I am,” Quinn said, sounding sure enough of himself to calm her nerves a notch. He held a small syringe over her face so she could see it. “I need to irrigate the wound. Make sure we got all the crud out before I close it. I can probably get by with six or seven stitches above your eye and close this one over your nose with butterfly strips or glue.

“There a mirror in that kit?”

“It’s pretty small.” Quinn rifled through the pack that sat on the tarp beside him until he found a two-by-three Lexan mirror with a signaling pinhole in the middle. “You want to look at it before and after so you can sue me for malpractice?”

Small or not, the mirror did the job. Beaudine flinched when she saw the angry gash that ran in a diagonal red line across the bridge of her nose and up to her scalp. It was a scar she’d live with the rest of her life — and it was eerily familiar.

“Well, hello there, Merline,” she whispered.

Quinn had waited much too long to clean the wound and had to use several canteen cups worth of watered down Betadine and the syringe to work loose all the dirt and debris that had made it inside. He knew it must have been extremely uncomfortable, but Beaudine lay quietly as if she were napping.

“I got a feeling this is where it’s about to get real,” she said when he stopped irrigating. “Aren’t you supposed to give me a bullet or something to bite on?”

Quinn held up the Ziploc bag of snow so Beaudine could see it without moving her head. “You’ll still feel the sutures,” he said, “but the cold should numb the area up a little.”

As gently as he could, he held the baggie to the tender skin over the worst portion of the gash, just above her eyebrow. He took her hand and moved it on top of the bag so she could keep it in place before turning his attention to the small wax-paper envelope that contained the sterile cutting needle and suture material. There should have been a hemostat in the kit, but if Lovita had ever had one, he couldn’t find it. He’d have to make do with the tiny Leatherman Squirt he carried is his pocket virtually every day of the year. Absent a hemostat, the small pliers would serve as a passable needle driver.

Quinn pinched the curved needle with the tip of his Leatherman. Just under an inch in length, it was sharpened to cut rather than merely pierce, and attached to a foot and a half of black monofilament suture line. He moved the bag of snow and turned Beaudine’s head slightly, putting the wound perpendicular to his body to make it easier to work.

Beaudine’s good eye popped open and looked up at him. Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. “I know this is gonna hurt,” she said. “But I’m pretty good when it comes to pain. Pain was a pretty normal thing in our house when I was growing up.”

“Who’s Merline?” he asked to pass the time.

“My mama.” Beaudine’s voice was stretched tight, as if he’d hit a nerve with more than the suture needle. “I was sure Jacques told you.”

“He said you had a rough childhood.”

“Did he tell you my daddy shot my mama in the head when I was eleven?”

“He did not,” Quinn said, needle poised a fraction of an inch from Beaudine’s wound. So that was what the cryptic message was all about.

“Just sew, okay…” Beaudine closed her eyes and fell back limp in his lap. “I guess that pretty much sums up all there is to know about me.”

“I doubt that, Khaki,” he said, driving the blade of the needle into pink skin along the center point at the deepest portion of the wound.

Beaudine’s lips trembled, but she didn’t flinch.

“She forgave him, you know,” Beaudine continued with her life story as if the telling of something so awful might ease the pain of her present situation. “Can you believe that? The son of a bitch shot her in the head, and she forgave him. Bullet went in over her left eye and sorta skirted around under the skin but didn’t go through the skull.” Beaudine gave a little shrug, almost causing Quinn to stick her with the needle where he didn’t intend to. She must have felt him pull back. “Sorry,” she said, looking up through a watery eye. “I’ll be still. Anyhow, Daddy did two and a half years in Angola state pen for attempted murder, but the parole board let him out on accounta Mama bawled her head off at his hearing. Worst part about it — well not the worst part, but a bad part anyhow — me and Jacques, we used to be really close, you know, when we were kids. My mama and his mama are sisters. But after my daddy got out of prison, Jacques’s father wouldn’t let my family come around. And who can blame him?”

Quinn kept sewing, unwilling to step into whatever this was with a question.

“They’re still together, you know, if you can believe it.” Beaudine tried to shake her head at the thought of such a thing and tugged against the needle, causing her to wince in pain. “Sorry,” she said again. “I guess it’s no wonder I’m a bitch…” She suddenly looked up at Quinn, both eyes wide the way he imagined she might have looked as a frightened little girl. “Sorry for vomiting up my past like that. Could you please talk for a while? Mama used to say words to me when things got really bad, it didn’t even matter what the words were, as long as I had something to hang on to during the worst of it.”

“Okay.” Quinn said, relieved to change the subject. He was sure Beaudine’s family issues would come up again. Beaudine’s problems were far too complicated for a hit-and-run conversation. Old wounds had a way of opening up in times like this, especially if they had festered. On some level it hurt Quinn to see another human being carrying around that sort of pain, but he’d never been much good at providing more than a listening ear — surely one of the many reasons his wife had given him the boot.

They were both quiet for a time while Quinn tried to think of something to say. He used the tip of the Leatherman to throw near perfect surgeon’s knots with surprising dexterity considering how long it had been since he’d sutured a comrade at arms. It took a certain kind of detachment to cause pain to a friend in order to help them. Detachment — now there was something he was good at.

“It looks like Lovita’s plane was sabotaged,” he said at length. “Someone crimped one of the oil lines.”

“Had to be that big Russian bastard who came in last,” Beaudine said. “Glad you clobbered him with the fire poker. I’m surprised her instruments didn’t tell her anything.”

Quinn used a small pair of scissors from the trauma kit to cut the monofilament after he completed each suture. The longer he worked, the more he came to realize this was going to require more stitches than he’d originally hoped. He kept up his pace without mentioning it, thinking it better to finish the most painful part of this gruesome business as quickly as possible.

“Lovita’s a great pilot,” he said. “But the saboteur was tricky. She would have thought we had oil pressure when she did her run-up before takeoff, but with no way to circulate, the engine overheated and eventually blew. We’re lucky we didn’t burst into a ball of flames.”

Firelight reflected off Beaudine’s face, but her eyes remained closed. Quinn of all people knew the tremendous amount of trust it took for someone in her line of work to close her eyes and let a near stranger get near her with a sharp metal object.

She gave a small shake of her head, barely moving at all. He wouldn’t have even noticed it had she not been nestled against his thighs. “Doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why sabotage the plane if they planned to kill us all anyway before we got in it to fly away?”

“Good point,” Quinn said. “But killers can’t afford to have any loose ends. They couldn’t account for every guest. The big guy who hit Lovita was outside taking care of the oil line before he came in and saw what was going on. Half the people in Alaska have some sort of pilot’s license. Say those guests who happened to be out fishing turned out to know how to fly — or even Volodin for all we know. The sabotage would have eventually taken care of them even if they were able to slip by the Russians. Burning the plane would have thrown up a fireball that risked drawing a passing aircraft to the lodge.”

“I guess I can buy that,” Beaudine said.

Quinn’s needle pierced a piece of inflamed skin, and she gave a real flinch for the first time since he’d started the process. A tiny tear formed in the corner of her good eye. “Women cry from tension, you know,” she said, staring at the sky. “Not because we’re weak.”

“So my mother, ex-wife, seven-year-old daughter, and girlfriend tell me,” Quinn said, smiling and thinking of the four women.

“How much longer?”

“We’re not quite half-way there,” he said.

Beaudine took a series of long cleansing breaths, like she was going into labor, and settled in again. “All righty then,” she said. “What say you teach me how you tell the time with the stars like you did.”

“I can do that…” Quinn resumed his stitching as he spoke, using low, even tones. “Big dipper rotates counterclockwise around the North Star like an hour hand on a twenty-four hour clock. Midnight is at that top, with one, two, three, and so on running around the left side of the circle.”

“Counterclockwise.” Beaudine said, eyes closed, as if repeating the line from a bedtime story.

“Right,” Quinn said, snipping the ends of another surgeon’s knot. “You draw a line from the North Star through the two pointer stars on the cup of the dipper. That line points to the correct time on the circle March sixth of every year.”

“Do what?” Beaudine stared at him, seemingly oblivious now to the pain from the cutting needle. “What happens if you want to know what time it is on the other three hundred sixty-four days of the year?”

“Ahh,” Quinn said, tying another knot. “You can do that, too. All it takes is a little math—”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, mister,” Beaudine said. “Khaki’s brain doesn’t respond so well to mathematical things.”

“Funny,” he said. “I’ll bet you do math every day and don’t even think about it.”

“Not this gal, sweetheart,” she said. “Me and math, we got us an understanding. It leaves me alone, and I leave it alone. There’s a reason I went to law school instead of becoming an engineer.”

“No worries then,” Quinn said. He smiled as he snipped the line on the twelfth and what he hoped would be the final suture. “We’re not likely to use too much math on the rest of the trip.”

Quinn returned the needle to the paper envelope and finished off the wound on either end of the stitches with butterfly bandages and superglue. He covered the entire length of the wound with a thick line of antibiotic ointment and then taped on a gauze bandage before patting her gently on the shoulder.

“What?” she whispered, eyes closed, sounding sleepy.

“You can get up,” Quinn said. “We’re all done here.”

“Dammit,” she said, still not moving. “I should have had you teach me the math.”

Quinn looked at his watch, too tired to bother with the stars. “Less than two hours until sunrise,” he said. “Time to start walking if we want to catch Volodin alive.”

Beaudine sat up, running a hand down the front of her jacket to compose herself. “You sure it’s safe to hike out there in the dark with all the wolves and bears and et cetera?”

Quinn knelt by the tarp, cataloging their gear in his mind as he divided it between their two packs.

“I’m not worried about wolves or bears,” he said. “It’s the et cetera that will kill us.”

Chapter 35

The hardy, weather-bitten souls who lived in Siberia were fond of saying that there was no road, only a direction. To Feliks Zolner, there was no direction, only pursuit — whichever way it took him.

He woke well before dawn, having slept the deep and dreamless sleep known only to men who possessed no conscience. Zolner and his men had left only the fool, Igoshin, and the pitiful couple who owned the place alive. They had killed the fishermen and young pilot quickly and without fanfare. Zolner had chosen the largest suite on the top floor. The room the Hendersons reserved for special guests, it boasted a king-size bed with an enormous down comforter and enough feather pillows to smother a horse. His profession made sodden sleeping bags the norm during a chase, when he was fortunate enough to have a bag or sleep.

A hunter at heart, Zolner lived a life of purposeful stoicism. He relished the small, relative comforts of a leaky shelter during a downpour or a warm parka against the teeth of a blizzard. Clean, Egyptian cotton sheets were a seldom-seen luxury, and he was happier that way. In truth, the softness of the lodge ran contrary to Zolner’s nature. A life of ease rendered people lazy, careless, and prone to mistakes. Extravagance made one soft, and to be soft was to be dead. Hardship sharpened the intellect and the body like grit polished a stone. His mother had been the best hunter he’d ever seen, and as far as he knew, she’d never eaten anything richer than wild cherry jam. He was certain the poor woman had never owned more than two pairs of socks at any given time.

Cold gray eyes flicked toward the sound of creaking wood — someone heavy plodding down the hallway in bare feet. It would be Kravchuk, up to take a piss. Zolner had warned him about keeping company with prostitutes. The man’s prostate could no longer last two hours, let alone an entire night. Zolner hated the thought of training a new spotter. Sitting in a sniper hide with someone who had to urinate every other moment was impractical. Zolner eyed the Grach 9mm pistol on the varnished pine night table beside his bed. As if on cue, Kravchuk’s graveled voice carried in from the hall on a series of coughs. A smart man, he did not want to be mistaken for an enemy and shot through the wall.

“It’s just me boss, going to the toilet.”

As large as the bed was, it was almost too short for Zolner. At a brawny six feet eight, his heels came within inches of the footboard.

Zolner threw back the covers and swung long, powerful legs off the bed. He’d showered the night before, putting on a fresh set of wool underwear so he could be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Igoshin had thought to ingratiate himself by telling Zolner all about the dark and dangerous man who’d beaten him up with the fire poker. Quinn, that was his name. According to the babbling Russian, the blond woman traveling with him was FBI, which was curious. In Zolner’s experience, American policemen traveled in packs, and then called in even more reinforcements at the slightest provocation. These two were hunting Dr. Volodin, so FBI or not, that made them a problem.

Foolishly believing that he and Zolner were operating on the same team, Igoshin bragged that he’d sabotaged Quinn’s airplane, swearing through broken lips and a swollen face that it had to have crashed somewhere in the bush not long after takeoff. Zolner had allowed the buffoon to remain alive only because he might remember some significant information during the night. In Zolner’s world one did not ingratiate himself by getting beaten by the enemy. Weakness was to be weeded out, never tolerated. Wolves did not accept excuses from one of their own if it was injured and unable to hunt. Useless members of the pack became a valuable food source and were simply eaten for the good of all.

Zolner planned to question Igoshin once more before he left and then put the useless man out of his misery. He hadn’t decided yet what he would do with the old couple — if they were even still alive. Yakibov, the former Spetsnaz soldier, had made it clear that he considered the woman a spoil of war. Zolner thought his spotter to be a sadistic bastard, but Yakibov appeared to have even Kravchuk beaten in that regard.

Seated on the edge of the soft mattress with both feet on the floor, Zolner rubbed a large hand over the bristles of his salt-and-pepper crew cut, then down across his face, feeling the stubble and the small scar that ran across the bottom of his chin. He had few external scars, and the man who had given him that one had paid dearly for the privilege.

Rolling off the bed to drop facedown to the cool wooden floor, he pushed himself into a plank position. His dear mother had told him when he was very young that her grandfather had done fifty push ups each morning before anything else, even over the long and tortuous months of the Battle for Stalingrad. Zolner had followed in his great-grandfather’s footsteps, finding a routine of morning exercise got his blood moving and made him immediately more alert.

Zolner performed each pushup with the same exactness that he did everything. Afterward, he took himself through a series of stretches, some seated, some standing, always paying particular attention to his breathing. Some would have called what he did yoga.

Kravchuk’s cough in the hallway drew his attention toward the door.

“Boss?”

“What is it?” Zolner said, bending at the waste to touch the flat of his palms to the ground. His thick chest pressed against his thighs.

Kravchuk coughed again, a habit even more problematic than the overactive bladder. “Davydov has the plane ready to go at first light…”

“And?” Zolner said. With Kravchuk, there was always an “and” of late. The man could never get to the point without a lengthy preamble. Zolner expected his pilot to have the plane ready to go the instant he wanted to leave. There was no reason to inform him of that fact.

Kravchuk coughed again. “That guy, Igoshin, he has been begging to talk to you. He says it is important.”

“Of course he does,” Zolner said. Igoshin had surely spent the fevered night mulling over dozens of scenarios where he could trade information for his pitiful life.

Zolner’s hunting boots were waterproof and quiet, making little noise on the polished wood as he trotted down the stairs and into the lodge’s great room fifteen minutes after he’d finished his morning stretches. He carried his rifle loosely in his left hand. It was pleasing to see that Kravchuk had a fire going in the stone hearth, adding a small element of cheer to the otherwise dreary mood in the log interior.

Zolner’s camouflage clothing and freshly shaved face combined with his rigid posture to give him the look of an officer in some elite unit. In truth, he’d never been a part of the actual military, working instead on contract for specific generals and colonels who could get their hands on enough money to meet his price.

Zolner folded out the aluminum legs of the bipod and set the rifle on the long wooden table so the weapon rested upright, protecting the three-thousand-dollar 12-52X56 Valdada scope. Both the rifle and the attached suppressor were covered in a white and gray “Yeti” Kryptek camouflage pattern, perfect for winter stalking.

Kravchuk slid a bowl of cooked oats across the table — as was expected of him first thing in the morning.

Igoshin slumped where Zolner had left him, in a large leather chair beside the fire, panting heavily, a bag of frozen vegetables pressed to the bloody mess that had once been his face. He’d been dozing, or maybe half unconscious considering the extent of his head injuries, but he glanced up at the noise of the bowl sliding on wood and tried to push himself to his feet.

“Please,” Zolner said, “stay where you are.”

Igoshin fell back with a low groan, vegetables to his face.

Henderson, the lodge owner, sat tied to one of his high-backed wooden dining chairs. His wrists were red and torn from struggling against the ropes. His shirt torn, Henderson’s head lolled in a state of near insanity, half teetering between consciousness and complete madness. His eyes were swollen shut from crying. Blood and spittle drooled down his grizzled chin, smearing the pale flesh of his shuddering chest. He’d no doubt heard the incessant screeching from his wife as Yakibov demonstrated the special techniques a disgraced Spetsnaz soldier had at his disposal for the treatment of a female war prize.

Kravchuk must have told Yakibov that Zolner was up, because he dragged the shattered woman in by her hair before Zolner even had time to take a bite of his oats. Zolner nodded to another of the high-backed chairs and Yakibov shoved her into it.

“We’re not complete animals,” Zolner said, wiping a bit of milk from his lips with a paper napkin. “Allow the poor woman to sit by her husband.”

Yakibov grunted, sliding the chair and the women across the room. Zolner wondered if he’d even taken the time to sleep.

Mrs. Henderson’s eyes were open but catatonic, staring a thousands meters into the distance, unfocused. There was nothing left of the fiery spark they’d held when Zolner and his men first arrived. It was unlikely she recognized her own husband or even knew where she was anymore.

Everyone sat in silence as Zolner finished his oats, picking up the bowl to drink the last of the milk. Without warning, he slammed his fist on the table, rattling the bowl and causing Igoshin to nearly jump out of his skin across the room. Mr. Henderson’s eyes opened, but he was too exhausted to flinch. Mrs. Henderson just continued to stare.

“So,” Zolner said. “You wanted to speak with me?” He remained at the table, his back to Igoshin. One hand rested on the cheek piece of his rifle while he flipped up the bolt with the other, inspecting the chamber.

“I had hoped you would send word to Colonel Rostov,” the wounded Russian said. “Inform him I am here so he can send an extraction team to take me home.”

Zolner moved slowly around the table so the rifle was between him and the squirming Russian. “What do you think of my weapon?” he said, looking up at Igoshin with the full force and effect of his gray eyes.

Igoshin opened his mouth as if to speak, but produced only mumbles. When he finally rallied his words they came in nervous stops and starts. “I… it… I… it is exquisite.”

“I think so as well,” Zolner said. He patted the stock as if it were a beloved friend. “She is chambered in 375 CheyTac and built especially for me.” He ran a hand from the muzzle up the fluted barrel toward the action. “Aluminum stock, adjustable for pull and cheek height, she weighs nineteen pounds without the Valdada scope.” He gave a chuckling nod, as if both men shared a secret. “Some people of weak constitution might say that a rifle that pushes a 300 grain bullet at over 3000 feet per second needs to be heavier.” He gave a disdainful flip of his hand as if shaking off a thought he felt was unclean. “But I am a man, and men are not bothered by a small amount of recoil.”

“Of course not,” Igoshin muttered.

Across the great room, standing beside the catatonic Mrs. Henderson, Yakibov smiled.

Zolner released the CheyTac’s box magazine into his hand, then used it to gesture toward Igoshin as he spoke. “Colonel Rostov informed me that one of the men in your team was trained as a sniper. Decorated in battle.”

Igoshin moved the frozen vegetables away from his swollen face. His nose was split across the bridge and hung more off than on. “That was me,” he said, nodding his head emphatically, apparently thinking the two had found some common ground. “The colonel was speaking of me.”

“Well, that is good news,” Zolner said. Kravchuk passed him a plastic container of ammunition and he began to press rounds into the magazine one at a time. Loaded with a projectile of a solid copper nickel alloy, the rounds were huge, each nearly as long as his ring finger. Zolner pushed seven of them into place with a series of resounding clicks. “I consider myself fortunate when I am able to speak with another professional shooter.” Zolner looked up. “May I see your rifle?”

Igoshin hung his head. “I no longer have it,” he whispered.

“I did not quite hear you.” Zolner pressed the loaded magazine back into the rifle, driving it home with a firm smack. The bag of frozen vegetables slipped from Igoshin’s hands with the sudden noise.

“The dark man took it,” Igoshin said.

“Quinn?” Zolner said. “I see. This dark man must have been highly trained in order to shoot two of Colonel Rostov’s men and beat you to death. It takes an especially skilled man to steal the one thing that a professional sniper would never allow himself to lose.”

“He—”

Zolner pounded the table again. “The one thing!” he roared, glaring at Igoshin with dead gray eyes.

“He is—” Igoshin repeated himself.

“You have already told me about him,” Zolner said. He gave a nod to Yakibov and Kravchuk. “In fact you’ve proven yourself quite a talker. I want to know what you told this man about me.”

“I told him nothing,” Igoshin said. “I… I swear it. He is surely dead in any case.”

“People like this Quinn are cockroaches,” Zolner said. “I will assume they infest my life until I feel them crack under the heel of my boot.” He sat at the table and swung the rifle around so it was pointed directly at Igoshin, fifteen feet away. The buffoon began to hyperventilate, casting battered eyes around the room looking for any ally, any route of escape.

“I ask you again, my friend.” Zolner kept his voice low, almost consoling. “What do this dark man and the FBI agent know of me?”

“There was an Eskimo girl with them,” Igoshin said. “She had heard stories about you. She told everyone who listened that you are a ghost, a great hunter who steals her people away when they are out on the ice.”

Zolner smiled as if this pleased him. “These Natives, they fear me, then?”

Igoshin nodded so emphatically it looked as though his head might fly off the end of his neck. The movement must have put him in great pain considering the injuries to his face, but it didn’t stop him. “You scare the shit out of them, sir. They are terrified of your hunting skill.”

“That is good to hear,” Zolner said.

“They have a name for you,” Igoshin said, caught up in the act of pleasing his captor, oblivious to the futility. “They call you Worst of the Moon.”

Zolner’s smile was genuine this time. “Worst of the Moon,” he said, considering each word. “I like that very much.” The smile vanished from his face, and he leaned forward against the rifle’s stock, working the bolt to feed a round into the chamber. The action was butter-smooth and hardly made a sound. He flicked his free hand, motioning his men to drag the Hendersons’ chairs so they were seated directly in front of the table, lined up shoulder to shoulder between the muzzle of the CheyTac and Igoshin’s heaving chest.

Zolner put his eye to the scope. The view was extremely blurry, as he knew it would be. At this close range, a blurry reference was sufficient. The bullet would rise as it flew from the barrel so he lifted the butt of his rifle slightly, placing the center of the crosshairs on the fuzzy patch of cloth three inches above Mr. Henderson’s elbow.

Rising from his chair, Zolner stepped back to study his targets, hands together, thumbs to his lips, as an artist might consider a work in progress.

“The question remains,” Zolner said at length. He moved around the table to reposition Mrs. Henderson’s chair so her right shoulder touched her husband’s left arm. If the woman knew what was about to happen, she gave no indication. “How did this Eskimo girl know I was coming? How did she know she should be afraid of me?”

Igoshin appeared to sink into the stuffing of the chair, defeated.

“How long until sunrise?” Zolner said taking his seat back behind the CheyTac.

Kravchuk looked at his watch. “Fifty-one minutes, boss,” he said.

“Very well. I am almost finished here. Inform Davydov I wish to be in the air before sunrise — as soon as it is light enough to see the ground as we fly.”

Zolner peered over the top of the scope at the dejected Igoshin. “I will shoot only once.” His eyes shifted to the Hendersons, his voice a piercing whisper. “Think of it — bone, lung, heart, lung, bone, bone, lung, heart, lung, bone…”

Igoshin pressed his eyes together, beginning to weep.

“It is possible that it will strike a rib or even a spine and stop somewhere along the way.” Zolner settled in with his cheek pressed firmly against the stock. “But you and I both know that is highly unlikely.” At this distance, he didn’t have to worry about his breathing — but he did anyway. Every shot must be perfect. His mother had taught him that.

Chapter 36

Petyr Volodin loved the pop and whir of the thin plastic jump rope as it snapped against tile and sped past his ears. Knees bent, ankles loose, the balls of his feet barely left the floor. He breathed through his nose, keeping his heart rate slow. Sweat rolled down a hairless chest, soaking the waistband of his gray sweatpants.

The clientele at Ortega’s ran the gamut of prospective fighters. Street kids got a break on a locker and lessons for a flat forty bucks a month. Petyr paid half again that just for the locker — but that’s all he needed. It was the steady stream of corporate warrior types who paid the rent. These were the executive fighters — the mortgage brokers, investment bankers, and accountants. They didn’t fight to find a career. Hell, virtually everyone who stepped in the cage got a trophy, win or lose. But there was something about the smell of spit buckets and liniment, the taste of sweat and blood that added some missing element to their mundane lives.

There were plenty of other fight gyms around Manhattan, but the men and women who ventured into Ortega’s in East Harlem seemed to believe that working out in a gritty gym would give them a competitive edge over guys who trained at more glitzy, upscale places.

Petyr liked East Harlem because it was one of the few places left in the world where he could still get a little respect. The guys at Ortega’s had no idea his tattoos were fake. Here, he was a bona fide ex-con from some brutal Russian gulag they’d seen on the Discovery Channel, one of the Thieves, an Eastern Bloc badass, the real deal. This was one of the few places he could still grab a workout with no shirt on and not have to worry about some guy with a spider tattooed on his neck shivving him in the liver.

Petyr often used the time he spent skipping rope to try and sort out difficult problems — like these stupid tats. Damned Nikka and her bright ideas. Mr. Anikin wanted him dead. The guys who showed up to kill him at his apartment had made that obvious. Beating them to death had been self-defense, but who was going to believe that? Now he had a murder rap to figure out piled on top of everything. He made a mental note to give Nikka an extra smack when he saw her again, for talking him into getting the ink. And then there was the shit at Cheekie’s. What was that all about anyway? He couldn’t quite get his head wrapped around the big southern dude and his mean-ass little friend with the battered face. They’d apparently taken over the place from Gug. They acted like cops, but seemed more interested in his father than him — until he’d popped off to the steamy little sweetmeat dancing on the stage. Then they’d gotten all up on him, focusing their self-righteous rage at his behavior. Petyr sped up his rope work, letting the whir and slap console him as he pondered over the situation. Last he checked, Cheekie’s was a titty bar where you were supposed to go to watch naked girls dance. Kicking him in the nuts like that was a bitch move. They’d caught him by surprise, that’s all. Given the chance at a fair fight, he’d mop the ring with either one of those guys. And then their bootylicious girlfriend would be all alone and with no protection from whatever pimp racket they had going. Then Petyr the Wolf would show her what a real man was like.

The throbbing rattle of a speed bag brought Petyr back to reality. Maxim, one of the two Ortega brothers who owned the gym, stood at the front counter. He tried to fix a broken credit-card machine by prying off the back with a screwdriver. Maxim, also known as Maxim the Minimum, was the smaller of the two Ortegas at just under five and a half feet tall. He had a neck like an ox with shoulders to match. It was common knowledge that he was not the smarter of the two brothers. The screwdriver had him baffled so there was not much hope for the credit-card machine.

It didn’t take long for Maxim to lose patience and drive the screwdriver through the card reader, as if trying to stab it through the heart. He threw the whole broken mess under the counter and scrawled a sign on the back of a cardboard protein supplement box that said “CASH ONLY.”

Cash. That was exactly what Petyr needed. He had to get his hands on some money one way or another. Unfortunately, his talent for making money was no better than Maxim Ortega’s handyman skills. The bastards at Cheekie’s had kept him from getting to the emergency stash he kept hidden at Nikka’s place.

All he really knew how to do was fight.

Good fights took time to set up, the ones with decent purses anyway, and Petyr found himself in a bad spot professionally. He’d lost too many bouts to get a shot at moving out of the mid-level ranks without beating one of the big names. And he’d won too many for a big name to want to meet him in the ring. If a ranked fighter beat Petyr, he would not move up in the rankings, but if he lost, he could certainly move down.

That left few options — at least any that let him retain his dignity. Petyr quit skipping with a flourish of rope swings on either side of his body, just in case another fighter happened to be watching. He grabbed a towel off a peg along the wall and replaced it with the jump rope. Wiping the sweat off his face, he caught Maxim’s eye. The brothers ran a little side business that could make him some money if The Wolf didn’t mind sacrificing a little bit of his integrity. He shot a glance at his yellow duffle on the floor below the rope pegs. Integrity. That was a joke. His girlfriend was a junkie stripper, and he juiced regularly on Russian ’roids his chemist father sent him. He didn’t have much integrity to lose — and anyway, integrity was a hell of a lot easier to sell when you needed some cash. He picked up the duffle and carried it with him when he went up front to work out the specifics with Maxim. The stuff his father sent was hard to come by. He had to stretch it out. Make it last.

Where he was going, he’d need all the help he could get.

Chapter 37

It was still dark when Quinn shoved the last of the gear into his drybag and zipped it closed. Beaudine was already packed and had borrowed the toilet paper to head into the brush one last time before they hit the trail.

Quinn’s pack wasn’t particularly large, and he had to tie the sleeping bag on the outside, horseshoe style over the top. Quinn’s old man was known to venture into the woods with nothing more than a hatchet and an attitude.

Garcia had a tendency to surf the web at night to wind down after a stressful day. Such browsing only made Quinn angry so he usually read or studied Chinese or Arabic flashcards. Still, if Ronnie stayed away from political rants, she sometimes found the odd kernel of interest and shared it with him. She’d once shown him a site with the laughable array of what people put in a go-bag, popularly called the SHTF bag because it was supposed to contain the gear vital to survival when the proverbial “Shit Hit The Fan.” Many such bags looked as if they were kits prepared for all-out war — but included few of the necessities for the inevitable lull between battles. Some had a couple of axes, a folding saw, three or four handguns, multiple pocket knives, push daggers, machetes, road flares — all of it useful gear in the right situation. Quinn could hardly judge. He was rarely without two guns and two blades — but a good go-bag had to contain some beans and Band-Aids to go with the bullets. Quinn found himself amazed at how few bags contained toilet paper.

He started any kit with his EDC, his everyday carry. Unless he happened to be swimming, it was a rare moment that found Quinn without at least three things: a knife, a light source, and something to make fire. In this case, he had his Zero Tolerance folding knife, an orange zippo lighter — less tacticool but harder to misplace, the Leatherman Squirt, and a SureFire Titan flashlight. Smaller than his little finger, the light ran on a single AAA battery. The satellite phone was somewhere underwater inside the airplane. Quinn and Beaudine both had cellphones, but they would do them no good until they reached a village, almost all of which had a cellular tower. His custom Kimber 10mm rested in a leather Askins Avenger holster on his strong side, balanced by a spare magazine and the thick piggish blade of his Riot sheath knife. The hot 10mm round gave him similar ballistics to a .41 Magnum, but he was still happy to have his Aunt Abbey’s AR-10. Quinn was certainly not against handguns — having used them to great effect, but if things devolved into chaos in the woods as in an urban environment, a handgun of any kind was merely the weapon used to fight his way to a rifle.

The most basic kit for any bush venture added a headlamp and at least fifty feet of parachute cord. Quinn wore his headlamp now to make sure he didn’t inadvertently leave behind anything important but planned to turn it off once they started to move, preferring to navigate by natural light. Wearing a beacon on your skull was a good way to get turned into a bullet sponge.

Inside his pack, Quinn carried a second flashlight because, as he’d learned from hard experience, Two is one and one is none when it came to critical pieces of gear. The second light was larger and used two of the ubiquitous 123 lithium batteries. A small plastic case contained spares as well as an extra photo battery for the Aimpoint Patrol sight mounted on Aunt Abbey’s rifle.

The cold weather had both Quinn and Beaudine layering in virtually every piece of clothing they had, including Lovita’s pink fleece that he’d dried by the fire and given to Beaudine. Freedom of movement made large parkas impractical, but Quinn felt relatively comfortable with his waterproof Sitka shell layered over a fleece jacket, the wool shirt, and wool long johns. Aunt Abbey had provided Beaudine with much the same system. As with the woolies, everything was a little large, making the FBI agent look as though she was dressed in her big sister’s clothes. She didn’t seem to mind. Warmth beat style every time in the bush.

Both Quinn and his brother had worn Mechanix gloves for years, first when working on their bikes — long before they had fallen into favor with the tactical community. He kept two pair of the lightly insulated gloves in his pack year round.

Quinn carried his personal trauma kit, but augmented it with bandages and some extra QuiKclot gauze from the plane. He gave the high-calorie energy bars from the aircraft to Beaudine, preferring the taste of Lovita’s salmon strips and fatty akutaq to the cookies that tasted like coconut and sawdust.

Gorilla Tape, a hundred feet of 550 cord, Quinn’s Vortex binoculars, and the Russian’s .338 Lapua sniper rifle rounded out their gear. Quinn figured they each carried around twenty-five pounds, not including the long guns — sickeningly light since it was everything they had.

Beaudine came in from the shadowed timberline and crunched across the gravel as Quinn pulled the last tab tight to secure the sleeping bag. She must have gone down the stream and washed away the blood and grime from the crash. Her face was now clean and pinked from the cold water.

She handed him the toilet paper.

“Keep it,” Quinn said, waving away the baggie. “I found another roll in the survival kit.

Beaudine thanked him and shoved the new treasure in her pocket before looking up at him. He flipped up the lens on his headlamp so he didn’t blind her.

“Sorry about getting all weepy before,” she said.

Quinn shrugged. “It happens.”

“Not with me,” Beaudine said. “I was raised under the iron notion that only my pillows should see my tears.”

Quinn kicked snow into the fire, throwing the camp into darkness and sending up a hissing cloud of steam. “You’re like your cousin in at least one respect,” he said, chuckling.

Beaudine’s brow furrowed, lopsided because of her wound. “How’s that?”

“You both get philosophical when you take toilet paper into the woods.” Quinn shouldered his pack and then picked up the rifle.

“I spilled some pretty gnarly details about my family,” she said, falling in to crunch along beside him in the dark. “It doesn’t make you worry about working with me?”

“Makes me worry for the other guys,” Quinn said. “I don’t know, maybe we really do heal stronger in the broken places.”

“Math and Hemingway,” she said. “You must have done well in school. Anyhow, that’s a nice platitude. My grandma used to say stuff like that—‘The good Lord won’t give us a trial we can’t handle.’ Well, the good Lord must think I’m a badass.”

“I know what you mean,” Quinn said, eager to move past the philosophizing. It was easy to see that Beaudine and Thibodaux shared the same blood.

Beaudine stopped when they slid down the gravel to the edge of the swollen stream. She peered into the darkness down the rough animal trail. It was little more than a depression in the snow that ran next to the stream.

“I get a definite vibe that you really like this stuff,” she said. Vapor clouded her face in the chilly blue reflection from the snow.

“Guess I’m just used to it,” Quinn said.

“Well,” Beaudine continued, “remember how I told you that the FBI had the lead on this so I’m the one in charge?”

“I do.” Quinn raised both hands. “Loud and clear.”

“Turns out this wilderness stuff scares the shit outta me,” Beaudine said. “I am officially putting you back in charge.”

“We’re after the same thing,” Quinn said. “Who’s in charge matters a lot less than who’s still alive when it’s over.”

“And that is exactly why you’re in charge,” Beaudine said. She nodded toward the gun slung over his shoulder as they wove their way around snow-covered willows. “Now, tell me about the gun you took from the Russian. I know a sniper rifle when I see it. Can you shoot it well enough to protect us from this Worst of the Moon?”

“I hope so,” Quinn said. “It’s a chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum. Awesome round. My ex-wife was shot with one just like it.”

Beaudine gave a low whistle. “We all got stories, I guess.”

“Yes, we do,” Quinn said. “Anyway, it’ll shoot further than I’m capable of.”

Beaudine stopped in her tracks and looked at him. The stitches he’d given her crawled diagonally from her eyebrow nearly to her hairline like a dozen tiny black spiders. “But you can shoot long range, right? I mean, you have experience with that kind of thing?”

“I can and I do.” Quinn gave her what he hoped was his best calming smile. “But it’s going to involve some math — weaponized math… but it’s still math.”

“Of course there would have to be math,” Beaudine said. She took her frustration out on a scrub willow, knocking off the snow with her fist as she turned to continue down the silver ribbon of trail. “Yet one more reason you should be in charge.”

The sun was just a pink line over the eastern horizon fifty-five minutes later when they broke out of the willows onto a wide gravel flat at the confluence of the creek and the Kobuk River.

Each step had seen them slogging through loose gravel, powering through mucky, boot-sucking tundra, or leaping between the sometimes knee-high hills of grass and relatively dry ground Quinn called tussocks. Beaudine had to concentrate to keep from wheezing.

In the lead, Quinn paused while still in the cover of thick willow and alder scrub, holding up his fist to signal that he wanted to stop. He’d warned her that there would likely be a fish camp at the confluence of the two waterways and that they should stay quiet on approach. He needn’t have worried. Just when she’d found a guy that was worth talking to, she didn’t have the energy to say a word.

Snow sifted down through frozen leaves as Quinn drew back an alder branch so Beaudine had a better view in the direction he was looking. He pointed across the creek with the blade of his hand.

Tattered blue tarps hung on a weathered plywood shack, heavy with snow in the windless gray dawn. Three bare wooden frames, cobbled together from old two-by-fours and sun-bleached spruce poles, stood in front of the main shack on the wide gravel bar. It made her colder just looking at it. “That’s a fish camp?” she said. “I don’t know why, but I was expecting some kind of lodge, or at least a real cabin.”

“Not out here,” Quinn said. “Plywood is sixty bucks a sheet if they can get it. This is actually a pretty nice setup.”

Quinn squatted at the base of the alder, slowly turning his head to scan up and down the far bank. “No smoke,” he said. “There’s a boat pulled up by the shack. It’s covered with snow, but it still bothers me a little.”

“You think it could be Volodin?”

“Could be,” Quinn said, panting in the cold air. He unzipped his pack to retrieve the binoculars.

Beaudine took off her glove and dabbed at the wound on her forehead with the tip of her finger while she caught her breath and gazed across the river. The fish camp, such as it was, was no more than a hundred meters away. A layer of fog hugged the river, and everything above it was covered in frost or snow, making it difficult to pick out much detail in the flat morning light.

“You ever play Kim’s Game?” Quinn’s voice was muffled against his hands as he peered through the binoculars.

“Can’t say as I have,” Beaudine said. This guy was even more of an enigma than she’d been told. He’d hardly said a word of conversation through their entire walk and now he wanted to talk about some game.

Quinn passed her the binoculars, then leaned away slightly to give her a clear view. “Look it over like you would a crime scene for a minute or two.”

Beaudine wiped the moisture away from her eyes and looked through the binoculars, careful not to touch them to her wound. She swept back and forth a couple of times before attempting to hand them back to Quinn. “That was a fun game,” she said. “We’ll have to play it again sometime.”

“Okay.” Quinn gave her a quiet smile, the kind of smile you give a child when you have the upper hand. “Tell me what you saw.”

Beaudine sighed, exasperated. “I don’t know. A ratty old shack with a bunch of ripped tarps for a roof. It looks vacant though. Like you said, no tracks.”

“Did you see the sheet of plastic they’re using for a window?”

“I saw it,” Beaudine said. “It looked exactly like a sheet of plastic.”

“Did you see the frost on it?”

Beaudine raised the binoculars again, taking a better look this time. There it was, a layer of frost—inside the plastic sheeting. She glanced sideways at Quinn, suddenly glad that they were still hidden in the willows. “Frozen vapor from somebody’s breath?”

“Breath and maybe a propane heater,” Quinn said. “There’s definitely someone in there.”

Chapter 38

Quinn squatted in the shadows, going over the various routes of approach in his head while Beaudine continued to scan with the binoculars.

“Why did you bring up that… what did you call it? Kim’s Game?” she asked.

“It’s from my favorite Kipling book,” Quinn said. “Kim, the boy, is training to be a spy in British India. He plays a game where he looks at a tray full of stones of different size and color for a given amount of time. His teacher covers the tray, and Kim has to recite what he saw. Snipers use the same kind of game for observation training. Makes you pay attention to detail.”

“I’ve played that before,” Beaudine said. “You mean to tell me we played sniper games at my friend’s bridal shower?”

“Pretty much,” Quinn said. “My daughter and I play it all the time — when I’m around anyway.”

“The things you learn sitting in the woods spying on a fish camp,” Beaudine said, still looking through the binoculars. “Someone… or a few someones are in that camp. What’s your plan?”

Quinn gazed to the east. Morning light filtered through the trees, casting long shadows across the windblown snow. “First, we hurry and get across before who ever it is wakes up and shoots us.”

“I’m with you there,” Beaudine said. “I don’t think my face could take another hit.”

Quinn led the way back a hundred meters upstream from the camp, keeping to the alders and willow scrub until he found a spot where the water spread out to a width of about thirty meters. Crossing here would put them in the open for much longer, leaving them naked and vulnerable to any would-be attackers, but wide water had a chance to slow down, often making it relatively shallow. Even at this wide spot, the swollen stream reached their knees. Quinn pushed his way through the current, dragging his feet and slowing just enough so that he didn’t loose his footing on the slick melon-sized rocks that rolled along the streambed with a periodic audible clatter. He walked upstream from Beaudine, shuffling his numb feet in the freezing water and doing his best to block the current so she wouldn’t fall.

The main shack sat in a clearing on a low bluff overlooking an open gravel bar as long as a football field and half as wide. Scoured clean every spring by great slabs of river ice during breakup, the gravel was barren of all but a few tiny scrub willows that had to start over again every year.

Quinn sloshed out of the freezing water, moving up the bluff where a dark pocket of stunted spruce trees offered some semblance of concealment if not actual cover. Water squished from his boots with every step. Dry socks would eventually become a necessity, no matter the rush. He’d suffered from the agony of trench foot once before on a hunting trip with his brother, Bo, and once was plenty for a lifetime. Ever immortal in their own minds, the brothers had tried to tough out cold and wet boots for two full days on Kodiak Island. The week of red and swollen feet that followed was enough to make them both firm believers in the value of dry socks. As his old man said, “It did zero good to hurry if you were worthless when you got there.”

Snow dampened their approach on the gravel, but Quinn and Beaudine moved quickly once they left the trees, going straight to the hollow-core door without stopping. Rifle over his shoulder, Quinn held the Kimber at high ready as he booted the flimsy thing and button hooked to his left around the threshold, just inside the twelve-by-twelve-foot room. Beaudine followed him inside immediately, hooking right as per their prearranged plan. She held the AR-10 high, moving in a slight crouch, elbows tucked like a professional shooter.

An Inupiaq boy in his mid-teens lay in his sleeping bag on a rough wooden frame across the room. He sat straight up and faced the door at the thud of boots on plywood. His sleepy eyes went wide and both hands flew up to shield his face.

Quinn lowered his pistol once he saw the other two bunk frames were vacant.

“Who are you guys?” the boy said, his voice remarkably calm for being woken up at gunpoint.

“FBI,” Beaudine said, lowering the AR-10.

A smile spread over the boy’s face. “No crap? You guys are really FBI?”

“We’re after a fugitive,” Beaudine said. “Thought he might be here.”

“That was friggin’ awesome,” the boy said. “You busted in here like a friggin’ HALO game.” He suddenly noticed Beaudine’s wounds and gave her a somber nod. “Your fugitive do that to you?”

“Plane crash,” Quinn said, wanting to speed things along. He started to tell the boy about Lovita but decided it better to wait. “My name’s Jericho. Do you happen to have a cell phone?”

“Only works when I’m in sight of the village.” His face brightened into a smile. “They just built a new tower out here last year.” He swung his feet onto the floor. He wore dingy gray cotton socks that had once been white, green nylon basketball shorts, and a stained T-shirt of the same color. At least a dozen dark purple hickeys encircled his neck, just above the collar of his T-shirt. He rubbed his eyes, then extended a hand toward Quinn. “I’m Brian. Brian Ticket.”

Quinn gave him a fist bump. “I know some Tickets. Any relation to Lawrence?”

Brian coughed, still waking up. He scrunched up his nose and wrinkled his brow, the Inupiaq equivalent of shaking his head “no.” “Those are the upriver Ticketts. Upriver Ticketts have two Ts. Us downriver Tickets have one T.”

Beaudine’s face screwed into a grimace. “What’s with all the love bites, Brian Ticket with one T? Somebody try to suck your face off?”

Brian looked at the floor without answering.

“It’s a thing they do in the village,” Quinn said, grinning at Brian Ticket. “I’m betting you had an away basketball game last week, didn’t you?”

“Shungnak.” Brian nodded. “My girlfriend don’t trust them upriver girls. She wanted to let ’em know I was already taken.”

“Well, she did a good job of it.” Beaudine gave a low whistle, shaking her head at the hickey damage. “You’re lucky she didn’t decapitate you.”

Beaudine used the .308 to gesture toward a stack of small cardboard boxes that were on a small wooden table, the only other furniture in the room. Quinn counted five. They were flat, about two inches thick and each about six-by-six-inches square.

Beaudine let the rifle fall against the single point sling, parking it so it hung just in front of her handgun. She picked up one of the boxes to study it. “Why in the everlovin’ hell would anyone need a bunch of wax toilet rings out here where they don’t even have toilets?”

“To patch the boat,” Brian said. “There’s a big hole in the side. Usually works great but my genius brother-in-law hit a rock and broke the shear pin on the motor yesterday. He and my nephew loaded up our other boat with the caribou we caught and went back to Needle to get a spare sheer pin. I got stuck here guarding his old piece of junk boat.

Beaudine’s hands shook as she set the box back on the table with the other four. The after-effects of the cold-water crossing were catching up to her fast.

“Okay, Brian,” Quinn said, holstering his Kimber. “My friend and I are going to hurry and get into some dry socks, and then we’re going to need to borrow your boat.” He shrugged off his pack and dropped it on the plywood floor between his feet. Sitting on the low bed, he stripped off his soaked boots to put on his last dry pair of wool socks.

Brian leaned back against the plywood wall on his bunk. “I told you guys, the boat’s broke. We have to wait for my brother-in-law to bring back some welding rod to use for a shear pin.”

Quinn wiped as much moisture out of the boots as he could with a dry bandana from his pack. “When is your brother-in-law coming back?” he asked without looking up.

“He had to cut up three caribou last night. And, he’s been away from my sister for a few days, so I’m sure he’s sleeping in a little with her this morning…” He winked. “I joke…”

“This is serious, Brian,” Beaudine said. She leaned back with one foot stretched out in front of her, struggling to pull the dry sock over her shriveled wet foot. “This guy we’re after is a very bad man. We’re going to have to try and fix your boat.”

Quinn held up his hand, motioning for her to stop talking as he peeked out the window. The roar of a low-flying aircraft grew louder as it flew directly overhead. He watched through a gap in the tarp as it flew by slowly

“I counted three heads,” Quinn said, throwing the pack over his shoulders. “They’re following the river.”

“Who’s following the river?” Brian said.

The sound of the engine seemed to hang there for a moment, before fading slowly into the distance.

Beaudine brightened, shooting a hopeful glance at Quinn. “Do you think someone’s looking for us? Your Aunt Abbey, maybe?”

“Not likely,” Quinn said, peeking out of the grime-covered plastic to make certain no one was using the same tactics he had used to sneak up on the shack. He turned back to Beaudine. “The storm would have kept any planes trying to get out to the lodge grounded through last night. And absent a visit to the lodge, it’s too soon for anyone to even know we’re missing.”

“So it’s Worst of the Moon?” Beaudine dropped her head as if being murdered from a distance was a forgone conclusion.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Brain threw aside his sleeping bag and shot to his feet. “Did you just say Worst of the Moon? He’s coming here?”

Quinn raised both eyebrows, the silent affirmative in Inupiaq culture. “That’s exactly what she said.”

Brian rubbed his face with both hands, looking as if he might throw up. “Holy shit… sorry, FBI lady. I mean holy crap, holy, holy, holiest of all craps. If Worst of the Moon is a real person…”

“You’ve heard of him then?” Beaudine said.

Brian collapsed backward to sit on the edge of the bunk again. He drew his sleeping bag around him like a security blanket and shook his head slowly, mouth hanging open. “The Elders tell us kids these stories, you know, like Long Nails, the creepy old hag who gallops around on all fours eating kids who go into the beach grass. You can hear her toenails clicking on the earth when she comes after you. I figured the stories were just to keep us from wandering off and getting hurt.”

“Like the fairytales about the little leprechaun people.”

“Enukin?” Brian looked up, deadpan. “No, enukin are real. My dad’s seen ’em lots of times. So’s my mom.”

Beaudine rolled her eyes and glanced at Quinn. “You think they saw our tracks when they flew over?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Quinn said. “Caribou hunters are leaving tracks all up and down the river.” He started for the door, nodding to the pile of boxes on the table. “Brian, grab one of those wax rings and lets go see about fixing your boat. We’ve got to get to Needle ASAP.”

Melting snow dripped from the tarp roof, splattering into a rapidly forming moat of black mud around the heated shack. Just as Brian had said, the battered aluminum boat had suffered a gash in the hull just below the waterline. Quinn estimated it to be about eight inches long and nearly an inch wide. Smears of flaking yellow wax around the damage gave evidence that it was an old wound and plumbing material had been used several times in the past. The battered shaft of a motor that had been removed from the transom now lay under the boat, semi-protected from the weather. Quinn grabbed the badly nicked prop and dragged the motor out in the slushy snow with both hands.

He spun the prop and glanced up at Brian with a narrow eye. “Your brother-in-law do all this?”

“My sister’s husband is a great hunter.” The boy gave a toothy grin. “He just ain’t such a good boat driver.”

“Thirty horse Nissan,” Beaudine said. “Tough motor.”

“I know Worst of the Moon is breathin’ down our necks,” Brian said, “but I’m telling you it’s useless until my brother in law gets back from Needle. We looked all over the place for something to use as a shear pin.”

The shear pin was a piece of soft metal rod about an inch long that was soft enough to give way when the propeller struck a fixed object, preventing damage to more expensive parts of the motor. Without it, the propeller spun freely, providing no power to push the boat forward.

Quinn looked up river toward Needle, thinking, then turned to Beaudine. “You mind helping Brian push some of that wax into the hole, and I’ll take a look at the motor.”

“How about you patch the boat while I take a look?” Beaudine said. She took off her parka shell and spread it over a stump before setting the AR-10 on top to keep it out of the snow. “I’m not tryin’ to take over again. It’s just that the only good times I ever had with my daddy were when we were working on small engines. Sometimes, for a minute or two, I could even pretend he wasn’t a murderous bastard.”

Brian looked down at his feet, good manners overshadowing his youthful curiosity.

Quinn took the wax ring. “Be my guest,” he said.

Beaudine knelt in the snow beside the motor, using her multi-tool to remove the pin and nut that held the battered propeller in place. “Shear pin’s toast all right.”

“Told you.” Brian shrugged.

“But I can fix it,” Beaudine said, leaning over to grab her rifle. “Just so happens the brass end of a rifle cleaning rod makes a perfect shear pin if I use my Leatherman to cut it down to size.”

“And my aunt keeps a small cleaning kit in the butt of her rifle.” Quinn gave a nod of genuine admiration. He hoped he would have come up with such a fix.

Chapter 39

Quinn and Brian Ticket dragged the aluminum skiff down to the riverbank before attaching the hundred-pound motor. Beaudine provided over-watch with the AR-10. There was little in the way of gear so it didn’t take them long to load the boat. Brian disappeared into the shack for a moment, then came slipping down the muddy bank wearing his pack. His rubber boots made perfect tracks in the snow as he approached the skiff.

“Needle’s only four miles up river,” the boy said. “But it still takes us about twenty minutes to get there.”

Quinn attached the fuel line that connected the six-gallon plastic tank to the motor. “You’re not coming,” he said. “It’s safer for you here.”

“Screw that news.” Brian set his jaw in fierce defiance but softened immediately when he met Quinn’s gaze. “You don’t understand about Worst of the Moon. He’s a giant. There’s only fourteen families in Needle, and most of the men are out hunting. I gotta go back and help you.” Brian stared across the Kobuk, his eyes unfocused. “A lot of people go missing out here. Could be the land that takes ’em, or maybe it’s Worst of the Moon. Some elders say he’s the spirit of a dead hunter, come back to punish our people for abandoning the old ways.”

Quinn shoved the stern of the boat into deeper water so he didn’t break another shear pin on the gravel. He banged on the aluminum gunnel with the flat of his hand. “Get in the boat, Khaki.”

Beaudine threw a leg over the side, still looking at Brian with a narrow eye. “Punish you how?”

“He hunts us,” Brian said. “Like wolves. The elders say Worst of the Moon hunts on the ice or open tundra the best. You never see him coming until he’s shot you in the head.”

“How do they know he likes the tundra the best?” Beaudine asked.

Brian shrugged. “That’s where the people go missing, I guess.”

“Hang on,” Beaudine said. “If all the victims are still missing, or never hear the bullet that kills them, how do you know he’s a giant?”

Quinn pumped the rubber bulb on the line to deliver fuel to the motor. He could feel Volodin pulling farther away with every moment they weren’t on the river.

“Homer John from down at Noorvik seen him once.” Brian squatted on the sandy bank and used his finger to draw a map of the area in the dirt, like some Native women using a bone knife to illustrate stories in the sand. “Noorvik’s clear down here, closer to Kotzebue. Homer was out on his snow machine last year lookin’ for musk ox when he rode up on this big guy camping in the middle of nowhere. There was another man with him, but Homer said it was clear the giant guy was the boss. Homer said he had gray eyes — colder than he’d ever seen — and a tiny nose that made his face look flat. He just sat by his stove with a giant rifle in his lap and watched Homer John ride by.”

“This Homer John guy,” Quinn said. “He’s pretty sure it was Worst of the Moon?”

Brian shook his head at Quinn. “You tell me. How’d a guy like that get out there? Where’d he come from? He didn’t come through none of the villages. Like my dad says, strangers just don’t show up in the middle of the tundra. They got to travel through somewhere.”

“True,” Quinn said.

“Anyhow,” Brian said. “He let Homer John live for some reason, but two more hunters went missin’ fifteen miles from that spot the very next day.”

“Did anyone report it?” Beaudine asked.

“My dad says there ain’t enough troopers in Alaska to take care of an area this big,” Brian said, looking like he might cry. “Now come on and let me in. It’s my boat, ya know.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, giving the starter rope a yank. Smoke poured from the motor as it coughed once, then died. He pulled the rope again and it roared to life. He flipped the lever in reverse and backed out, letting the current of the Kobuk pull the boat downriver, stern first. He shouted so the bewildered Brian could hear him above the burbling chop of the engine. “We’ll look in on your family.” Throwing the transmission forward, he moved into deeper water before twisting the throttle to coax the little boat upriver toward Needle.

Beaudine clutched the gunnel with one hand while, leaning back to look at Quinn. “You promised to look after his family?”

“We’ll kill the people that pose the danger,” Quinn said, watching water seep in around the wax. “It’s the same thing. But first we have to make it there.”

Four miles was a long way to go for a boat patched with a toilet ring.

Chapter 40

The paunchy Inupiaq man clutched a cigarette between his teeth and threw Kaija’s plastic case on a metal rack at the rear of a green four-wheeler. He stacked the duffle bags on top before working to untangle a set of bright orange ratchet straps. Slightly shorter than Volodin, the man had a barrel chest and powerful hands. He wore a pair of nylon chest waders and a wool shirt. Shaggy black hair stuck out from beneath a yellow Caterpillar hat cocked back on his head as he worked. His name was Ray Stubbins, and Volodin estimated him to be in his late thirties.

The chemist folded bony arms across his chest and stomped his feet back and forth, trying to keep from shivering in the bright morning chill. Needle was set up in a long handled T, with the Stubbins’ house located at the terminus of the northernmost short end. The sun was up high enough to begin to melt last night’s snow from the hulks of three old snow machines rusting in front of the wind-beaten wooden home. Two little kids giggled and squealed a few feet away. Dressed in rubber boots, fleece jackets, and wool hats, they used a broken four-wheeler with no tires as a jungle gym. Neither looked old enough to attend the school at the other end of the T. Steam rose from the vent pipes of similar houses nearby, disappearing into the crisp morning air.

“We’ll take you as far as Ambler on the Hondas,” he said.

One of the few adult males left in the village, Stubbins had been carrying gear up from his boat when Volodin and Kaija had arrived. Kaija had wisely pointed out that they were sitting ducks when confined to the river. An overland route would make them less likely to be found — if they could find someone to sell them a four-wheeler. Stubbins was in no mood to sell his only mode of land transportation right in the middle of hunting season, but he and his brother had agreed to shuttle them for the sum of three hundred American dollars. It was a quarter of the cash Volodin had on hand, but all the money in the world would do them no good if Rustov’s men caught them. Like most people in rural Alaska, Stubbins called all ATVs Hondas no matter the brand. This one happened to be a Polaris. “It’s about a five-hour ride. Pretty bumpy, too.”

Ray’s brother, Frank, nodded at that, but said nothing, preferring to smoke his hand-rolled cigarette while he secured the load on the back of his four-wheeler. He wore a pair of gray sweats tucked into black high-topped rubber boots. An unzipped fleece revealed a red T-shirt stretched tight over a belly even larger than his brother’s.

“And we only have to pay you for the one way?” Volodin said. He was becoming more unsettled by the moment, as if he might fly away in a gust of wind.

“The price covers gas but you’re just payin’ for one way. We’ll hunt our way home.” He slid a lever-action rifle into the fleece-lined plastic boot bolted vertically to the front of the ATV.

“We can reach big city from Ambler?” Kaija said in broken English.

Stubbins tied a plastic jug containing an extra five gallons of fuel to the back of his ATV. “There’s a milk run flight that will take you from there to Fairbanks. You should call and get a seat now though.”

“I lost ID. We have problem with security in Ambler?” Kaija asked, seeming worried, but sounding far from guilty of smuggling deadly nerve gas.

Stubbins scoffed. “There ain’t no security out here. I’ve flown from Fairbanks to Anchorage on some of the smaller planes without them checking ID. Takes longer to get there, but they’re more worried about weight and balance than who you are.”

Kaija nodded, the faintest of smiles perking the corners of her mouth.

Finished packing, Ray lit another cigarette and turned to his brother. “You about ready to go?”

Frank Stubbins cocked his head to one side. “You hear that?”

“We expecting a flight in this morning?” Ray said. He took a long drag on his cigarette and gave a disgusted shake of his head, blowing smoke into the cool air. “Why do all the visitors have to come when the caribou are passing through?”

The roar of an approaching aircraft sent a sickening shiver of panic through Volodin’s belly. The smile vanished from Kiaja’s lips.

Ray looked at Volodin and shrugged. “No skin off my back if you want to hop on that plane,” he said. “They’d probably take you to Ambler if they got seats. Be a lot quicker.”

“No,” Volodin said, abruptly enough to bring a narrow look from Ray Stebbins. “What I mean is, we would much rather travel overland—”

The plane came in low, clearing the housetops of Needle village by no more than a hundred feet, tilting the wings back and forth. They were clearly looking for something.

“What the hell?” Frank Stubbins yelled. “Shithead’s gonna pay for flyin’ that low over the village. I’m gonna kick his ass whenever he lands. What’s he thinkin’?”

Ray Stubbins sloshed through the mud and snow between the houses after his brother, keeping a wary eye on the airplane as it headed toward the gravel runway at the edge of town.

Volodin looked at his daughter, trying to make sense of all the noise. Kaija winked at him, giving a quick nod toward Ray’s ATV. The key was in the ignition.

“What?” He looked at his daughter in dismay. “You mean steal it? We cannot steal from these people. They were going to help us.”

Kaija moved to the ATV, her long leg poised over the seat. She shot a worried glance over her shoulder toward the airstrip. “It is the FSB, father,” she whispered. “They are after you. We must leave at once.”

Chapter 41

August Bowen entered the gym first, peeling right to allow both Thibodaux and Garcia to fan out behind him. Petyr Volodin was just dumb enough there was a chance he’d be inside, and the big Cajun had vowed to give him a little “layin’ on of hands” when next they met.

Thibodaux paused when they were inside and took a deep and audible breath through his nose. “You smell that?” he said, grinning.

“What?” Garcia scoffed. “Old jockstraps and horse liniment?”

“No,” Thibodaux said. “That’s the smell of pain, cheri. And I miss the hell out of it.”

Two muscular Hispanic men stood at a computer screen behind the front counter. Oddly, a large screwdriver stuck up from a broken credit card machine beside the men. Bowen recognized them from a large banner behind the counter as the Ortega brothers, the owners of the gym. Both men wore sweatpants and loose tank tops to display their impressive muscles. They were not the large mirror muscles like those found on a body builder. This was a fight gym, and the broad shoulders and thick necks of the two men at the counter said they practiced what they preached.

“… I’m tellin’ you, bro,” the shorter of the two Ortegas said, chewing on the end of a plastic coffee stirring stick. His name was Maxim according to the wall banner. “Luis is gonna kill it at the shock put this year.”

“It’s shot put, dude,” Raul, the taller of the two brothers said. “You’re sayin’ it wrong.”

Maxim shook his head. “No, it ain’t,” he said. “And you’re a dumbass. I said it that way all my life—shock put.” He over-enunciated the k and t of each word, puffing out his chest as if he could prove himself right with bluster.

“You’re the dumbass.” Raul laughed out loud. His eyes shifted toward Bowen, amused. “I’m pretty sure it’s shot put.”

Thibodaux stepped up to the counter. “Do you know what you call the big metal ball they toss around in the event you’re talkin’ about?”

Maxim shrugged.

“The shot,” Thibodaux chuckled. “Not sure if that helps.”

“What the hell you want?” Maxim glared.

Raul stood beside his brother, glaring. Shot or shock, it was clear they were united when it came to outsiders.

“We’re looking for a guy named Petyr Volodin,” Bowen said.

Garcia moved to the end of the counter taking a quick peek behind it. They’d decided before they came in that she’d be the one to look for hidden weapons.

Maxim folded his arms across his broad chest. “Never heard of him.”

“Really,” Bowen said. “Is that the way you want to go, genius? Because that looks like his picture on the wall with his arm around your shoulder.”

The muscles in Maxim’s jaw tightened. “Are you cops?”

“They are,” Thibodaux said. “I’m just their pet ass kicker.” He snapped his fingers. “Tempus fugit, boys. Times a wastin’. When’s the last time you saw Petyr the Wolf?”

“Forget it,” Maxim sneered. “The gym-client relationship is sacrosaint. You know what I’m sayin’”

Raul threw up his hands. “The word is sacrosanct, you stupid…” He looked at Bowen. “Look, we don’t talk to cops about our friends.”

“Yeah,” Maxim said. “There ain’t no law that says we have to.” His eyes played up and down Garcia. “You come back later without your pimps, chica. I’d be happy to talk to you.”

Bowen reached across the counter and slapped the plastic stir stick out of Maxim’s mouth. He squared off for a fight, but Garcia pushed him back.

“I really wish you tough guys would let me stomp my own cockroaches.” She glared at Bowen. “Would you slap someone who insulted Thibodaux?”

“He can take care of himself,” Bowen said, glaring at Maxim Ortega.

“Well guess what, mijo,” Garcia said. “So can I.”

She spun quickly, ripping the screwdriver out of the credit card machine and shoving it into a surprised Maxim’s groin, denting, but not quite piercing the fabric of his sweatpants. A string of Spanish curses Bowen couldn’t understand flew from her lips.

“You just insinuated that I’m some kind of whore,” Garcia said in English, jiggling the tip of the screwdriver to make her point. “Is that what you meant to do?”

Maxim shook his head. Raul raised his hands. Bowen turned outbound, keeping an eye on the other fighters at the gym just in case any of them carried a sense of misguided loyalty. No one even looked up.

“No… no, I didn’t… mean that at all,” Maxim said. “You know… you guys can’t be doin’ shit like this if you’re cops.”

“Well ain’t you a bona fide rocket surgeon,” Thibodaux said. “We’re not your average cops.”

“But they are cops?” Maxim nodded, as though he’d won some debate. “And you’re a cop? Right.”

“Don’t you worry about what we are.” Thibodaux cocked his head so he could look directly at Maxim Ortega with his good eye. “You ought to be concentrating on what you are, and from where I’m standin’ that’s a guy with his cajones balanced on a flathead. Amazing what kind of damage a screwdriver can do in the hands of an angry woman…”

“About Petyr,” Garcia said. “Where would we find him?”

“I got him set up in a fight.” Maxim’s eyes flicked back and forth, searching for some kind of ally. No one else in the gym seemed to know or care that a beautiful Cuban woman was a fraction of an inch from emasculating one of the owners.

“A fight?” Bowen said over his shoulder. “Here?”

“It’s not that kind of fight,” Raul said. “Petyr needs some quick cash so we obliged him, that’s all. The fight’s unsanctioned, so it can’t be at a regular gym. Gotta be underground. We got an agreement with a guy in Chinatown.”

“Who’s he fighting?” Thibodaux asked.

“It’s a mismatch,” Raul said. “More of a spectacle, which means a bigger purse. More money for Petyr.”

“And coincidentally more money for you,” Thibodaux said, turning his good eye so it looked directly at Raul. “I ask you again, who’s he fightin’?”

“That’s still up in the air,” Maxim groaned. “I thought I had a guy but he chickened out when he found out it was against The Wolf.”

“I’ll fight him then.“ Thibodaux laughed. “That would sure enough be a mismatch.”

Raul shook his head. “No way,” he said. “You’re taller, and from the looks of you, you got better moves, but no one wants to see a mismatch that don’t look like a mismatch.” He nodded toward Bowen. “How about him. His face looks like he’s used to getting beat on.”

“That’s a good idea,” Maxim whispered. He looked at Garcia, brown eyes pleading. “Come on, chica,” he said. “What say you take the screwdriver away from little Maximus and we talk some business? I’ll forgive you for comin’ in here and throwin’ around your weight, and you forgive me for bein’ rude.”

Garcia stabbed the screwdriver back through the credit card machine.

“Damn!” Maxim said, nearly collapsing against the counter. “That. That right there is why I ain’t married.”

“Boxing or grappling?” Bowen said, turning around to face them now they were talking business.

“It’s whatever you want it to be, man,” Maxim said. “You box?”

“A little,” Bowen said. He saw no reason to bring up the fact that he was an Army boxing champion.

“Okay,” Maxim grinned, the color flowing back into his cheeks. “We got ourselves a mismatch and you got yourselves Petyr the Wolf. I’ll draw you a map of where to meet up tonight. It’s kind of… complicated.”

Chapter 42

“Bank to the right!” Feliks Zolner snapped as Davydov brought the Cessna buzzing over Needle Village, just meters above the corroded-metal rooftops. They were close enough that Zolner could see the fresh caribou hides that hung, bloody, flesh-side up on banisters and clotheslines. Stubby-legged village dogs looked skyward, barking and howling in protest at the noise.

Yakibov grunted from the rear seat, his face pressed to the window. “I only see a couple of men,” he mused. “It is mostly women coming out of the houses to look at us.”

“The men will be out hunting at this time of year,” Zolner said.

“Ahhh,” the former Spetsnaz commando said. “That is a fortunate development—”

Zolner glanced over his shoulder. “I was under the impression you have a wife and daughter,” he said.

“What can I say?” Yakibov shrugged. “I enjoy the benefits of travel—”

“There they are, boss,” Kravchuk said from directly behind Zolner. “This side of the plane, eleven o’clock.”

“Come around for another pass,” Zolner said, his voice calm as he pressed his forehead against the window. His eyes focused on his quarry, who now rode an ATV toward the edge of town at a right angle to the airport. From five hundred feet up, the surrounding tundra looked basically flat, but Zolner knew there would be dips and rolls to the terrain — places to hide. “Never mind,” he snapped at Davydov, pointing the blade of his hand toward the gravel airstrip off the nose of the airplane. “Get me on the ground, immediately!” His eyes back on the fleeing ATV, he spoke to Kravchuk. “Pass me the rifle when we land.”

Zolner did not have to look to know that his spotter was busy sliding the CheyTac from its padded case, inserting the loaded magazine and removing the lens covers on the scope. Zolner would simply need to put a round in the chamber, acquire his target, and calculate a firing solution.

The ground was not yet frozen, so the ATV was basically confined to a packed trail leading away from the village. For a brief moment, as Davydov brought the Cessna out of his downwind approach, the ATV and the airplane were moving in the same direction. Zolner looked at the airspeed, did a quick calculation and decided the ATV was doing no more than fifteen miles an hour — a mile every four minutes.

The Cessna’s wheels squawked on the gravel runway two minutes from the time the ATV had left the last of the village road.

“Stop here!” Zolner shouted, reaching back for his rifle with one hand as he flipped the latch with the other. He shoved the door open with his hip. As large a man as he was, Zolner sprang out of his cramped seat backward, the moment the plane came to a stop. He threw the big rifle to his shoulder and put the crosshairs of his scope on Doctor Volodin’s back.

“Twelve hundred meters, boss,” Kravchuk said, looking through a laser rangefinder. “And moving away. Now twelve ten…” He stood beside the airplane, just behind Zolner’s left elbow.

“Perfect,” Zolner said, counting the clicks as he rotated the top turret of his scope.

“Wind is steady at—”

The roar of approaching ATV engines drowned out Kravchuk’s words. Zolner considered firing anyway, but at over three quarters of a mile, if he shot without the correct firing solution, he might as well be pointing at the moon.

Yakibov opened fire with his Kalashnikov, taking care of the two men coming up on ATVs. A series of thwacks pinged off the metal fuselage of the airplane, followed later by the report of a rifle. The people of Needle clearly knew they were not friendly visitors.

Zolner cursed as he watched Volodin grow smaller in his scope. Instead of firing, he spun toward the sound of the oncoming gunfire.

Davydov had his pistol out and took cover behind the rear tires of the airplane. Fuel began to drip from bullet holes in the wing.

“Where are they?” Zolner said, spotting a man with a rifle as soon as the words had left his lips. He brought the scope up to his eye and set the crosshairs over the man’s chest.

“Six hundred fifty-one meters,” Kravchuk said, seeming to read Zolner’s mind about the target that needed to be ranged. “He has some kind of hunting rifle.”

“Ah,” Zolner said, holding off with the marked hash marks in his scope rather than taking the time to readjust the turret for elevation. “Six hundred fifty meters may as well be point blank…”

The Native man continued to shoot. Bullets pinged all around Zolner and his men, but so far had only hit the airplane.

Zolner took a deep breath, thinking of the name the Native people called him — Worst of the Moon. He exhaled slowly, steadily, locking bone and tendon, letting the crosshairs of the scope settle perfectly still on the man’s chest as he reached the quiet respiratory pause at the bottom of his breath.

The trigger broke with a crisp, three-pound snap, sending 350 grains of copper and nickel alloy screaming downrange at 3200 feet per second.

The Native man pitched forward an instant later, surely dead before he even knew he’d been shot.

“Worst of the Moon, indeed,” Zolner whispered.

Another shot ricocheted off the gravel at their feet — this one from a second shooter who seemed intent to go for more than the airplane.

“Ten o’clock, boss,” Kravchuk said. “Hiding behind that wrecked fire truck. Four six one meters.” Another bullet hit a rock at Kravchuk’s feet and ricocheted away with a zinging whir. Kravchuk didn’t move.

“Fools,” Zolner said over his shoulder as he swung the rifle toward the new threat.

“Wind is gusting north now at fifteen…”

Zolner shot the second man in the neck. “Four hundred meters,” he spat in disdain. “These idiots make it too easy.” He spun back to reacquire Volodin in his scope, but the ATV had vanished, melting into the tundra.

Chapter 43

Quinn let off the throttle immediately when he heard the shots, slowing the boat so he could hear above the burbling grind of the motor. Another band of Arctic weather rolled in from the north, but they were pointed almost directly east and a low morning sun dazzled the surface of water in front of them. With little haze in the clear air and a sun that bounced in a great arc just above the horizon, eye protection was a necessity this time of year. Quinn and Beaudine had been separated from their sunglasses during the crash and now spent a good deal of time squinting.

Quinn had to use his free hand to shade his eyes so he could see Beaudine, who crouched at the bow holding a plastic bucket. Constant vibration from the choppy river caused the wax patch to flake and separate from the aluminum. Water dripped from her elbows as she tried to stay ahead of the incoming deluge with a plastic margarine container that had been tied to the gunnel for just such a purpose.

“You hear that,” Quinn said. He turned his head, birdlike, straining to hear over the idling motor. The frothy wake of brown water that spread in a giant V behind the boat caught back up to them as they slowed, sloshing and slapping against the stern. The current, slow as it was on the snaking river, caught the bow and began to turn it, shoving them back the way they’d come.

Quinn rolled on the throttle again, pointing the boat upriver again as the shots faded away. He’d counted nine. Two of them, spaced by a period of about seven seconds, were much louder than the others, and hung for some time like a loud wind in the chilly air.

Quinn gradually added more throttle, coaxing the little boat forward. It plowed the water grudgingly now, never quite getting up on step.

“Caribou hunters?” Beaudine gave a quick nod.

“Could be,” Quinn said. “But the odds are against it.“

“How far out do you think?”

Quinn willed the little boat to go faster, but three inches of water pooled at his boots. Even with the throttle open as far as it would go, the boat moved forward at a grinding wallow, agonizingly slow.

“I just realized this is a damn good metaphor for my life.” Beaudine looked up from her bailing and shook her head at their progress. “Seems like I’ve been fighting against the current in a leaky boat since I was a kid.”

Quinn nodded. “She’s leaky,” he said, “but she gets the job done. According to Brian Ticket there are three big sandbars between the fish camp and Needle.” He pointed with his chin toward a long, boat-eating spit of brown that lay off the left bank like a sleeping river monster. “That’s number three, if I counted correctly. That puts us less than a mile out of Needle.”

Quinn cheated the boat right in a wide, slogging turn. Riverbanks that fell abruptly away generally provided much deeper water than the more gradual slopes, which could run just inches under the surface for several meters, waiting to catch a boat driver unaware. The last thing he needed was to run aground on hidden sand when they were nearly there.

Quinn breathed a little easier when they made it around the bar.

“Want me to spell you on the bucket?” he asked. “You can drive the boat.”

“I’m good,” Beaudine said, turning to look at him while she bailed. She’d shoved her wool hat into her jacket pocket to keep from overheating, and a gentle wind now tousled her frosted hair. Quinn made it a habit to keep an eye on her sutures, checking for any sign of infection. It wasn’t hard. Sweat and consistent exertion on the water made it impossible to keep the gauze bandage in place. Beaudine had tried at first, but eventually ripped the thing off and threw it in the river.

So far the stitches were holding — which, considering how much Beaudine’s face twisted into a frown or grimace, was very near a miracle. Blood matted her bangs to her forehead, and her left eye seemed to be frozen in a sort of permanent squint. “Cyclops psyops,” she called it, reckoning she’d get the mental upper hand against any opponent that had to look at her. Thibodaux had been right when he’d said his cousin was crazy, but the longer Quinn was around her, the more he saw it as a good kind of crazy. No one had ever accused him of being particularly sane.

“We should be there in less than five,” he said. “But I’m guessing we’ve got over twenty gallons of water. That extra hundred and sixty pounds is slowing us way down.”

“Thought I warned you about that whole math thing.” Beaudine glared at him, throwing water over the side with rapid scoops from the plastic tub. “‘Join the FBI,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said…”

Quinn smiled. A sense of humor could be an extremely valuable asset in a battle plan.

“Seriously,” she said. “How do you want to do this if they’re already shooting at each other?”

“I won’t be sure until we get there,” Quinn said. He’d favored strategy over tactics for as long as he could remember, preferring to work amid the big picture and let the little things flow. Explaining such a mindset so it made sense was nearly impossible, which, Quinn supposed, was why he found himself at ease working with only a handful of people, people who operated under the same philosophy and moved through life the same way. “Movements like this have to be fluid. According to Brian, the school is downriver a couple of hundred meters at the other end of the village from the airstrip. We’ll park the boat there and come in as quietly as we can.”

Beaudine dropped the plastic tub to the floor of the boat, trading it for the AR-10 and looping the sling around her neck. Rifle up, she took a seat at the bow, scanning the banks ahead and no doubt getting her mind wrapped around what was about to happen next. The Kobuk swept back northward, funneling them into the line of winter weather but making it easier to see without the sun directly in front of them. Above, the clouds rolled in, pushed by winds aloft, but the sudden appearance of millions of drifting snowflakes brought foreboding to the river.

“This looks so peaceful,” Beaudine said, opening her hand to catch the flakes. “Like a church.”

The clouds began to drop snow in earnest, large popcorn flakes. Ahead, on a low hill less than a half a mile up river, the roofline of Needle school came in and out of view. Quinn let off the throttle, slowing the boat and bringing the engine noise down to a quiet burble, barely staying ahead of the current.

“Khaki,” he said, wanting her full attention.

She glanced over her shoulder. Snowflakes covered her head and shoulders like feather down. There was something in her eyes he couldn’t quite make out. Not fear. This girl was fearless. It was a look of resignation. Quinn supposed it had been there all along. Life had simply been moving too fast for him to see it.

“This is going to be different than any raid you’ve ever been on,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“I do,” she said.

“I counted at least three in the plane when it overflew us at the fish camp,” he said. “But we don’t know how many there are or where they’ll be.”

Beaudine gave a somber nod.

Quinn continued. “I may have to do some things you’d normally arrest me for.”

A slow smile spread across her face. “I got your back, hon,” she said. “Us Texas girls can be bitches. But we’re bitches you want on your side in a fight.”

Quinn’s head snapped up at the flat crack of two rapid gunshots. Beaudine brought the rifle up toward the sound. Quinn began to count again. He passed the two-second mark before the double thumps of two successive reports reached his ears.

“Over six hundred meters away,” he said, scanning the bank up river through the myriad of flakes.

“Crack thump,” Beaudine hissed, obviously recognizing the distinctive sound of rounds coming downrange. “Are they shooting at us?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said. “The bullets sounded like they were going parallel to the river, up by the school. Our general direction, but if they knew we were here we’d probably not be having this conversation.”

The thunderous thump of another shot echoed through the still air, this one much louder and absent the preceding supersonic crack. Quinn knew it was just his imagination, but the abruptness of it seemed to shake loose more snow from above.

“Bigger gun,” Beaudine said.

“Yep.” Quinn kept the boat mid-river, taking it well past where he wanted to land before angling toward the bank and killing the engine.

Beaudine held the AR at low ready, glancing over her shoulder at Quinn. There was no sound but for the slap of water against the side of the boat. “This would be peaceful if I didn’t know they were out there.” Huge flakes fell around her in the gray silence of the river, clinging to her jacket. “I can’t help but feel like we’re trapped inside some big ol’ creepy snow globe with a bunch of killers.”

“You could look at it that way.” Quinn angled the skiff toward the steep gravel bank, well below the school. “But those killers are also trapped in here with us.”

Chapter 44

“Do not waste your shots,” Zolner said. Yakibov had seen the woman running toward the school first. She’d had a mobile phone to her ear, and the fool had thought to take her out with two snap shots from his Kalashnikov. He’d missed with both, but Zolner had taken care of her.

“There is not enough time to shoot everyone with a phone.” He let the reticle of his Valdada scope settle over the gray metal box, centering the laddered crosshairs over the thick electrical cables where they exited the housing. “Think strategically, my friend.”

The cell tower was a pitifully easy shot at a scant two hundred meters from where he stood. His shot cut the power line that fed the cellphone tower with a shower of sparks. The second would destroy the backup battery, rendering the tower nothing more than a hundred-and-fifty foot piece of useless sculpture.

Davydov cleared his throat after Zolner lowered the CheyTac — a signal that he wanted to speak but did not want to disturb his boss. The pilot had, no doubt, heard stories about what became of people who spoke while he was shooting.

Zolner breathed in the smoke that drifted up from the open bolt, savoring it like a drug. “What is it?”

“The plane,” Davydov said. “I can patch the fuel tanks but one of the bullets damaged the horizontal stabilizer. That will take me some time to fix.”

“Unfortunately,” Zolner said, “time is something I do not have.” He ordered Kravchuk to retrieve his pack from the airplane then began to walk briskly toward the ATV belonging to a man Yakibov had killed at the far end of the runway. Kravchuk and the others’ boots crunched in the gravel as they trotted along behind him, rifles up, watching for more gunmen as they came nearer to the village.

Zolner was cognizant of the danger, but didn’t let it worry him. In his experience people ran from the sound of gunfire, not toward it. He was careful and cunning, but he was also realistic and resigned himself to the sure knowledge that he would never hear the bullet that eventually killed him.

“These people are foolishly innocent,” he said as he walked. “They have taken our only clear path of escape.”

“How shall we deal with this, boss?” Kravchuk asked when they’d reached the nearest ATV. It was a red Honda, newer and still idling. The body of its former owner sagged to the side, one arm draped across a rifle that was wedged against the handlebars. A think trickle of blood ran down the other arm where it hung, fingers dragging against the snow.

“Check the other machine for fuel,” Zolner said, once Yakibov had pulled the dead rider to the ground and he could look at the gauges. “This is almost full but I must have some to spare.”

“We will go after them on the machines?” Kravchuk said.

“No,” Zolner said. “I will travel much faster alone.”

Davydov ran back from the other machine with a red plastic fuel tank. It was flat, held four gallons of extra gas, and fit perfectly on the rear rack of the Honda.

Zolner took a sling from his pack and attached it to his rifle. The CheyTac was big and heavy, not the sort of rifle that was carried with a sling, but this was a unique circumstance. He replaced the covers over his scope and threw the sling over a broad shoulder so the barrel was pointed upward.

“It is imperative that no one in this village be allowed to call out for help,” he said. “Their mobile phones will be of no use, but they are certain to have VHF radios with which they can communicate with passing aircraft.”

“It will be impossible to locate every radio in the village,” Davydov said.

Zolner cinched his pack down tight over the top of the plastic fuel canister, then glanced up at the pilot. “I only counted fourteen homes when we flew over this little shithole. Might I suggest it would be easier to deal with the handful of people here than to find all the radios.”

Each of the three men gave him a curt nod. If any of them were upset about being left behind, they had enough sense not to show it.

“Very well,” Zolner said, swinging a long leg over the four-wheeler. “But do not waste time. The men will be straggling back in from their hunts at any moment.”

“We’ll come for you once I repair the plane,” Davydov said.

“Fine,” Zolner said. “But the loose ends in the village are the priority. Help the others with that first. My gut tells me these agents of the FBI Ishogin told us about might still show up. Make certain they do not pose a problem for me.”

The men turned to go without another word, each, no doubt, going over the possibilities of being left alone in the middle of nowhere with a captive group of women and children. Zolner gunned the engine on the ATV, taking a shallow ditch off the gravel road and onto the rutted trail down which Volodin and the girl had escaped. He came upon their tracks half a minute later. They were clean and clear, crossing patches of melting snow and depressed berry bushes, easy to follow.

Zolner glanced back over his shoulder at his three men as they walked toward the village. Yakibov had a peculiar bounce in his gate as if he were on his way to a carnival.

It was rare for Zolner to find himself disturbed by another man’s behaviors — but he thought of the smile that had spread over Yakibov’s face and wondered idly as he rode what kind of woman would marry, and have children with, such a beast. Women knew, even if they did not admit it to themselves, what sort of men they married. It was impossible to look into Yakibov’s eyes and see him for anything other than what he was. The former Spetsnaz soldier was surely a sadistic killer and he made no apology for that fact — at least not when he was in the field. It was difficult to think of such a man cheering on his son at a football game. Most people walked through life staring down at their shoes, but someone, anyone who looked at the man’s eyes, was sure to notice the blackness there.

Zolner did not see himself as sadistic. He killed, and he killed often, but death was merely the end result. The joy came from the pursuit, the science of the shot, the competition between the shooter and target, between predator and prey. He rarely gave any more thought to the actual death at the other end of his shot than he had given the bell at the top of the rope he’d had to climb in secondary school. No one cared that you had rung a bell. It was the trip up the rope that mattered.

Chapter 45

The crack of gunfire sent a quiet calm settling over Kaija Merculief. Up to now, all her battles had been fought from behind a computer or at the counter of a post office. She knew what she was doing was important. Her mother had assured her of that. But the fact that someone was actually shooting at her cemented the fact. This was real. Someone thought what she was doing was important enough to try to stop her. The idea of it only strengthened her resolve.

She’d considered pushing her father off the ATV and leaving him alone on the tundra by the time she’d made it five miles out of the village. The man was a millstone around her neck, and she would have gone through with it but for the fact that it would not do any good. Rostov’s men would certainly kill the muddleheaded chemist for her, but nothing would stop them until they had retrieved the New Archangel. Kaija and her mother had not put up with years of Kostya Volodin’s foul breath and awkward embraces to lose the prize at the last moment.

Rostov and his cronies at the Kremlin were weak. Oh, some of them had vision. A very few understood the path necessary to bring about a Novorossiya. Kaija’s mother had known. Her mother had taught her the truth of a New Russia, a Russia free from the tyranny and oppression of the capitalist West with its embargos and sanctions. A New Russia where the Orthodox Church and its people would be pure from the money-lending zhid. Kostya Volodin was a bumbling fool, but his creation would be an enormous step toward real progress.

Kaija had already sent two shipments to the United States. Her mother’s friends from the Black Hundreds had contacts with fishing boats that went to St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. At that point it was a simple matter to mail the two chemicals, in separate packaging, to the village of Ambler where Kaija’s friend Polina had carried them down to the lower forty-eight for delivery to other Black Hundreds contacts already in the United States. It might have been easier to mail them directly, but the contacts in the States had an aversion to post offices, feeling they were death traps crawling with federal agents. The events in Dallas and Los Angeles had proven the pipeline worked.

It could have gone on forever, had Kaija’s imbecile father not thrown everything away in a fit of humanity and drawn the attention of the authorities to his work with the white bellies of ten thousand dead fish. If Kaija’s mother had been alive, she would have stabbed the old fool to death in his sleep.

Kostya Volodin may have been a brilliant chemist, but he was a tool of a weak state machine — and too much of an idiot to see that Maria Merculief had rejoined him with their daughter after years of separation only to gain access to his work.

Kaija’s mother had taught her well. The parental love of a man for his long-lost daughter blinded him more than his feelings for his estranged love. Had Maria come back to him alone, he would have accepted her with open arms, but his rational, scientist’s mind would have been skeptical of her motives. But Kaija’s return chased away the last shred of doubt. To see his daughter again under any circumstance clouded the idiot’s judgment. He would see things as he wanted them to be, rather than the way they actually were.

Reality, Maria Merculief had explained, had no place in a father’s notion of his little girl. And Kaija planned to leverage that weakness until she had no more use for the man — a time that was rapidly approaching. For now, he provided a handy human shield in the event one of Colonel Rostov’s goons got close enough to shoot at her back.

Volodin gripped the metal rack beside his padded seat with one hand and held the wool hat down on his head with the other. Kaija could hear his pitiful grunts and ooofs as she took the ATV up the rutted trail as fast as it would go. The knobby balloon tires crackled on the wet ground, cushioning some of the bounce, but throwing up an enormous amount of mud.

He shouted over the whine of the engine. “Are you sure you know where we are going?”

“No,” Kaija said, not really caring if he heard her or not. She would never, ever forgive him for slapping her for simply stating the truth. She had studied a map on the wall of the hangar where they’d slept in Nome, and knew Ambler lay somewhere ahead of them, but had no idea how far. That too was her father’s fault. When she thought on it, there was a lot for which she would never forgive the man. But that only made it easier to do what she would eventually have to do.

Kaija was no martyr. She was young, with hopes and dreams of seeing the New Russia herself, but her father had given her no option but to flee with the remaining New Archangel. Once they reached Ambler and Polina had taken the chemicals to where they could do the most damage to the United States, Kaija could give herself up to Rostov’s men and blame the entire sordid mess on her father. He was certainly too far gone in the head to deny it. Even now, he probably believed the whole thing was his idea.

She pressed on the throttle with her thumb, taking the ATV up a low hill, chancing a quick look over her shoulder as they reached the top. Behind them, the endless tundra stretched for miles. So far so good, but one small problem nagged at her stomach. Polina had no idea she was on her way.

Chapter 46

Ilia Davydov walked a half step behind the other two Russians, eyes flitting back and forth among the weathered houses. Surely every home in this remote place had several guns. So the men were out hunting. Did it not occur to these fools that the Native women might also know how to shoot? Davydov had always considered himself head and shoulders above these cretins in brains. The way they walked so boldly into such a danger only proved him right.

All three men stopped in their tracks as the figure of an elderly woman emerged from among the houses and walked toward them amid the falling snow. Her navy blue parka was trimmed in the rich brown fur of rosomakha—wolverine. Armed with nothing but her righteous indignation, the old woman hobbled on elderly legs, shaking her fist at the approaching men. She spoke in a guttural Native tongue that sounded as if she was talking around a mouthful of spit.

Davydov couldn’t understand her words but her meaning was clear. They were to leave her village immediately.

She made it to within ten feet of the men before Kravchuk began to laugh derisively and shot her in the belly with his rifle.

Doubling over in pain, the woman dropped to her knees. Yakibov began to laugh as well and shot her in the arm. They were toying with her.

The poor woman’s face convulsed and twitched, and it was obvious she was in tremendous pain, but she said nothing, glaring instead at the men.

Kravchuk gave a heartless chuckle. “Let us see how brave you are when—”

Davydov shot the woman in the head with his pistol, ending her suffering but bringing a sneer from Kravchuk and Yakibov.

“Your heart is much too soft, my friend,” Kravchuk said. “I consider it my duty to toughen you up.”

Yakibov pointed his Kalashnikov toward the village with one hand, where small groups of women and children ran toward the school. “The old woman was stalling us,” he said. “Kravchuk, you go ahead and secure any communications at the school. Davydov and I will clear the remaining houses, then we will join you there. If people are not already fleeing toward the haven of the school, they are still sleeping. This should go quickly.” The former Spetsnaz man nudged Davydov and grinned. “Maybe we can toughen you up with a little fun and games while on the way.”

Chapter 47

Quinn knelt among the thick willows beside Beaudine, peering through the dead leaves and falling snow at the old fuel shack that stood between them and the main dirt street of Needle. The village was laid out in a lopsided T with the long road stretching approximately a half mile between the small airstrip and the school. The top of the T, which was now to Quinn’s left, ran up from the river in front of the blue metal school, continuing on to what looked like the dump a few hundred meters out of town. It was difficult to tell from his vantage point but Quinn guessed there to be no more than ten weathered wood-sided homes along the main street and another four or five on the shorter street beyond the school. Green hides hung over two-by-four wooden banisters in front of nearly every house. Here and there, partially butchered caribou quarters hung on wooden frames, now covered with snow.

Trails of fresh footprints led toward the school.

Quinn took a slow breath, scanning.

“We should have landed further upriver,” he whispered. “The tracks would have given us an idea of how many we’re dealing with.”

“Or they would have heard the boat and killed us before we hit the beach,” Beaudine said.

“There is that,” Quinn said. He nodded toward the school as two more women hurried up and banged on the front door. A young man with a red beard and glasses waved them in quickly before shutting the door again.

“Looks like everyone’s moving to shelter,” Beaudine said. “That’s good.”

“The school is the center of—” Quinn stopped mid-sentence and held up a hand to silence Beaudine, tipping his head slightly toward the back of the houses on the other side of the fuel shacks. A Native girl, who looked to be in her mid-teens, dragged a small preschool-age boy through the snow toward the school. The girl crept slowly, skirting junked snow machines and sagging meat racks. Obviously terrified, she checked back over her shoulder every few seconds.

The old fuel shack was located nearer the school on the long leg of the T. A newer fuel shack — two pumps surrounded by a tall chain-link fence — had been built fifty feet upriver, likely to meet some safety code about standoff distance from the school. Quinn waited for the girl to look behind her and motioned for Beaudine to follow him, breaking out of the alders just below the new fuel shack.

Believing any threat was coming from the airport, the girl focused her attention backward and didn’t see Quinn until he’d already come up behind her. He clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her back into the alders as gently as he could. Beaudine followed with the child.

Quinn was surprised how strong the girl was. She kicked and jerked and screamed into his open hand, almost spinning out of his grasp several times. It took everything he had to keep her arms pinned to her sides without hurting her.

“We’re friends!” he hissed, his lips next to her ear. “Here to help.”

It took a moment for the message to sink in, and the girl snapped her head back, narrowly missing Quinn’s nose with what would have been a devastating head butt.

“I’m Jericho,” he said when she calmed down. The little boy fell into his sister’s arms and clung to her, his brown eyes wide with fright at being dragged into the bushes. He stared at the scar on Beaudine’s face, and Quinn realized he probably didn’t look much better. “This is my friend Khaki,” he whispered. “We’re police, chasing those bad men out there.”

The little boy nodded, giving Quinn a wary eye. “Like the Troopers?”

Quinn raised his eyebrows. Village kids often had no other contact with law enforcement beyond the Alaska State Troopers. “Yes,” he said. “Like Troopers.”

“I’m Hazel,” the girl said. “This is my little brother, Herman.”

“Your family okay?” Quinn asked.

“My mom works at the school,” Hazel said, eyes welling with tears. “I saw those men shoot Ms. Bernadette… They shot her and just laughed…”

“How many are there?” Beaudine asked.

“Three,” Hazel said. “They’re big and scary. All of ’em have beards.”

“Only three?” Quinn said. That was odd. According to the Russian at the lodge, Zolner was clean-shaven like a soldier.

The girl suddenly froze, eyes flicking toward the bushes. Quinn heard the wheezing grunt of someone shuffling through the snow. He turned slowly to see a lone man with a thick salt-and-pepper beard trotting behind the houses. Eyes focused toward the school, the man moved to an outbuilding behind the house nearest the abandoned fuel shack and stopped. Made of unpainted plywood and blue tarps, the six-by-six shed was not quite five feet tall. A rusted stovepipe and pile of split wood outside the door said it was a sweathouse.

The man scanned the houses in front of him, and then turned to face the side of the sweathouse. He let his Kalashnikov fall against the sling and pushed it behind his hip while he unzipped his pants.

“He’s stopping to take a leak,” Beaudine said, raising the AR-10. “Is that one of the men?”

Hazel nodded.

Quinn put a hand on top of the rifle barrel and shook his head. “We can’t afford to let the others hear the shot.”

He slipped the pack off his shoulders and stowed it with the Lapua in the willows to retrieve later. That left him with only what he had in his pockets and his war belt of the Kimber pistol, two extra magazines, and the Riot — a stubby but razor sharp sheath knife — allowing him to move quickly and, more important, silently.

“Hazel,” he said. “You and your brother keep an eye on the river and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”

He drew the Riot and crouched, glancing toward the airstrip to make sure his target was alone before looking back at Beaudine, directly into her eyes. “This is one of those times I warned you about.

She gave a doubtful frown. “You’re going to fight him with a knife?”

Quinn shook his head. “This won’t be a fight.”

The silent killing of an unsuspecting enemy was conniving, cold blooded, and barbaric. Even when accomplished for a good cause, it felt an awful lot like murder. An otherwise moral man needed some kind of disconnect to kill another human being. Famed Border Patrol gunfighter Bill Jordan called it manufactured contempt. The memory of Lovita’s death was still raw in Quinn’s gut, making the total annihilation of any of the people involved an end game he was happy to work toward. Justice was just another name for societal vengeance, and Quinn had long before come to grips with being the instrument of it.

Shooting someone from even a short distance away offered a certain protective layer that cushioned and blunted the barbarity of the act. Sneaking up silently behind someone to snuff out their life with a blade was far different from pitched battle where emotions and rage boiled into the fight.

Quinn was a hard man, accustomed to violent action, but the inevitable sounds and sensations of a life seeping away put an indelible mark on anyone’s mind and soul.

Snow covered the ground and filled the air, dampening the sound of Quinn’s approach. His target was out of shape and breathing hard from trotting in from the airstrip. Quinn doubted he could hear anything above the sound of his own wheezing — and perhaps the spatter of his urine as it hit the side of the plywood sweathouse.

Quinn’s training in both Air Force Special Operations and OSI had been excellent in all manner of fighting discipline and art, but courses in killing enemy sentries were non-existent. The only time it was even touched on, in some pre-deployment training, the preferred method was a suppressed 9mm carbine with subsonic ammunition. Emiko Miyagi, the enigmatic Japanese woman, had been deliberate and diverse in her teaching, demonstrating several relatively quiet, if extremely bloody, methods with blade and garrote. Many Internet experts revel in the philosophical niceties of the various arts of killing, but Emiko had actually done it, many times — and it brought a certain detachment to her eyes.

Quinn moved up behind the man without hesitating, knowing when he got within fifteen feet that he was too close to turn back. He snaked his left arm over the unsuspecting man’s shoulder and clasped his hand over his mouth, stifling a scream before it could escape. At the same time, he drove the thick tanto blade of the Riot into the right side of the man’s bull neck, just below the chin, sharp edge facing forward. Pulling back with his left hand, and pushing forward with his right, the razor-sharp Riot cut neatly through windpipe, jugular, and carotid in one quick and sickening motion.

The man’s hands flew to his throat. A great swath of blood sprayed the plywood, but with his face pressed tight against his target’s shoulder, Quinn heard instead of saw it. He felt no pity for the man he killed, but a great deal of pity for mankind in general that such a person ever existed at all.

In the movies, the enemy usually died instantly, but in reality, movement and noise could go on for some time. Quinn held the Russian for a full fifteen seconds until he ceased to struggle, then lowered the lifeless body to the snow. Unwilling to leave a rifle unattended, he stooped to pick up the dead man’s Kalashnikov when a deafening boom caused him to duck for cover. Something hit the plywood sweathouse with a rattling splatter. Quinn jumped sideways as a searing pain stitched his thigh.

There was no mistaking the feeling. He knew he’d been shot without even looking down.

Chapter 48

The secure telephone connection between Providenya and Moscow was spotty at best, and Rostov could not tell from General Zhestakova’s voice if he was still upset or if he’d grown ambivalent about the gas attacks on the United States. His sister was married to the Director of the FSB — the modern successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB. Salina Zhestakova was smart, but not a particularly handsome woman. Many supposed that the union required the general to pay a large sum of money in order to make the marriage go through and unite GRU and FSB as if they were powerful clans or allied nations instead of two security and intelligence components under the umbrella of the same government. It was not uncommon for Zhestakova to borrow talented FSB agents from his brother-in-law for particular missions in which he did not want the GRU directly involved — or loan GRU operatives to FSB for their more sensitive head shooting.

Rostov drummed his fingers against the desk blotter, trying to calm his nerves at having to speak with the famously impatient head of his organization. “The Black Hundreds would appear to want the same thing we do,” he said.

“My mistress wants me to take her to my dacha on the Black Sea,” Zhestakova said. “I would very much like the same thing, but I do not blather about that fact to my wife. The problem with these new Black Hundreds is that they do not know when to keep their mouths shut. They are idealistic with patriotic goals of a Mother Russia that cannot exist if we engage in a mutually destructive war with the United States. Would it be a terrible thing for the Americans to spend their resources tracking an unknown Islamic terrorist cell? Of course not, but we have seen what they do if they even have an inkling some nation is in possession of weapons of mass destruction.”

“Yes, General,” Rostov said, “but Russia is no insignificant desert nation.”

“We are not,” Zhestakova said. “But if we are honest with ourselves, we are merely a ‘near peer,’ not an equal. I am not saying we are weak. A smart dog can defeat a much larger wolf if he will but remember that he is a dog. Fighting jaw to jaw would destroy us. The Black Hundreds will kill hundreds, even thousands — some might even be willing to martyr themselves for the cause of a Novorossiya. The remaining zealots will bluster and rant — and then run back to you and me for protection.”

“I understand, sir.” It was pointless to say anything else when the general was on a tirade.

“Do you?” Zhestakova said. “Do you really? Because I am under the impression that you and Captain Lodygin have taken this for a game.”

“I assure you, General,” Rostov said. “I do—”

“You may not.” Zhestakova cut him off. “But it is clear that Lodygin does, and Lodygin falls under your command. If he is brash, it is because you allow him to be so.”

“Yes, General,” Rostov said. There was nothing more that he could say.

“I have a sense about him, you know,” Zhestakova said. “He seems to me to be a damaged man.”

“I assure you, General, he is capable.” Rostov couldn’t quite work up the will to endorse the captain any more than that. The truth was, Lodygin was broken. But he was loyal to a fault when it came to Rostov, and that alone meant something where jealousy and backstabbing were standard operating procedure.

“Perhaps,” Zhestakova said. “But I would not put him in charge of my pigs, not to mention a program with the importance of Novo Archangelsk. How is he getting this information? Who is telling him Black Hundreds are behind the theft?”

“A school friend of Dr. Volodin’s daughter.”

“Are your men making progress in retrieving Dr. Volodin?”

“I was informed this morning that they are about to make contact. It is my belief that they already have, considering the time.”

“Your belief?” The sound of Zhestakova’s fist against his desk was clearly audible over the phone. “Do not your men have a method to communicate? It seems to me that if they were to avert a nuclear war with America they might give you a call immediately.”

“Of course, General,” Rostov said. “I have sent my best men. They are close. I am certain of it.”

There was a long silence on the line. Rostov thought for a moment that the general had simply hung up, but he’d just been conferring with someone else in his office. Rostov wondered who it might be, and went through a mental list of all the people in the Kremlin who hated him.

“This situation necessitates extreme caution,” Zhestakova said. “The President has further questions that need to be answered before certain decisions can be made.”

“Very well,” Rostov said, feeling numb. When the ranking general in the GRU summoned you to the Kremlin, there was nothing else to do but comply. “I will arrange a flight to Moscow first thing in the morning.”

“Do not bother,” Zhestakova said. “There is someone en route to you.”

“Do I know this person you are sending?” Rostov said, digging — hopefully not his own grave.

“No,” Zhestakova said, “I am quite sure you two have never met.”

“Tonight?” Rostov said.

“At any moment,” Zhestakova said. “It would be best if you were waiting at the airstrip when my jet arrives.” He ended the call without another word.

Rostov felt a cold wind blow across his neck — as if the Fates had just cut short the threads of his life.

Chapter 49

Quinn rolled and came up with his pistol in time to see Hazel run from the willows waving her hands and shouting. An elderly Native woman stood around the corner two houses away, pointing a pump shotgun at Quinn. She eyed Quinn warily but lowered the shotgun when Hazel explained that he was friendly.

Any element of surprise evaporated with the shot. The other two Russians would come out to investigate in no time.

Quinn waved Beaudine out of the bushes, shouting for her to bring the Lapua as he retrieved the dead Russian’s AK. He plugged his left ear and fired a string of three rounds, one-handed, into the snowbank in front of him. Beaudine ran up behind him. She started to talk but he held up his hand and reached for the radio on the dead man’s belt. Predictably, another voice broke squelch to check on him.

“Vsyo Kharasho?” a deep Russian voice said. It sounded like a demand.

Quinn held the radio ready to speak, looking at Beaudine for a translation.

“He’s asking if you’re all good.”

“How do I answer?”

“Da, narmalna,” she said. Yes, normal.

Quinn repeated the phrase back, holding the small radio nearly a foot away from his mouth to add some distortion to his voice.

“OK,” the other Russian said, laughing as he said something else. Quinn could hear the cries of a woman each time the mike was keyed.

“He wants to know if you had to stop to take a piss,” Beaudine said.

Quinn clicked the talk button a couple of times, showing that he’d received and understood but didn’t care to answer back.

The Russian spoke again and Beaudine translated. “He says they’re about to finish up and will be along in a few minutes.” She shook her head, obviously having heard the woman’s sobbing on the other end of the radio.

Quinn wanted to check the wound in his thigh but there was no time. The Native woman had been fifty yards away and thankfully hadn’t been using a rifle. Quinn estimated at least a dozen pellets of birdshot had caught him from just above the knee to the point of his hip. It was extremely painful but not debilitating.

“Sorry,” the woman said, walking up with her shotgun. “I thought you was one of them.” She eyed the carnage around the dead man and turned away to throw up in the snow.

“Understandable,” Quinn said, grimacing as he took the Lapua from Beaudine. “We’re going to have to do something to draw them out quickly,” he said, “before they ‘finish up’ and kill someone else.”

“Agreed,” Beaudine said.

Quinn explained his plan, then gritted his teeth at the new pain in his leg and moved quickly to the front of the house nearest the school. He backed up far enough from the house that he had a view — and a clear line of fire — down both the main street toward the airstrip and the river side of the houses. Then he stretched out belly-down in the snow behind the rifle. Settling in with the gun, he flipped up the scope covers, then motioned for Beaudine to fire the dead Russian’s Kalashnikov into the ground. As planned, he gave it a three count, and then keyed the radio several times. Demands for a situation report barked from the other end. He said nothing.

As much as he hated to expose Hazel to any more violence, he wanted to avoid a repeat of the woman shooting him with the shotgun. He put the girl beside him with the binoculars so she could differentiate the Russians from any village men who happened to walk in front of his crosshairs.

Two men exited a house at the far end of the street just seconds after Beaudine began to frantically key the radio mike. Both carried their long guns up and ready to engage. Quinn had already estimated the distance to be three hundred meters. He rested the crosshairs over the man on the left and squeezed off a round. The shot went low, hitting him just below the knee. The gun fell from the wounded man’s hand and he tipped sideways, unable to stand on the shattered leg. Quinn adjusted quickly, bumping the Lapua sideways so the second man appeared in his scope. He adjusted his aim, holding the crosshairs just over the top of the second Russian’s head. The round impacted center mass, dropping him where he stood.

“I am glad you killed him,” Hazel said, still looking through the binoculars. “I loved Miss Bernadette. That man shot her and just laughed…”

“Are you sure there were only three?” Beaudine said, coming up beside them at a crouch with the AK.

Hazel nodded. “There was another guy, but he took off on stolen Honda.”

“Take your brother to the school,” Quinn said, wincing at his wound as he got to his feet. “Tell the others we’re here and not to shoot at us.”

“I live right there,” the woman with the shotgun said, nodding two houses down. “I’ll go put it out over the CB.”

Ten minutes later Quinn and Beaudine stood around the wounded Russian with a dozen very angry members of Needle Village. Ms. Bernadette and the Stubbins brothers all had relatives and dear friends among the crowd. Quinn had put a makeshift tourniquet around the Russian’s leg and leaned him against the wooden steps of the house where he and the other Russian had only recently been terrorizing a young mother and her infant daughter. The woman was shaken but defiant and now stood over the terrified Russian with a hatchet that she looked ready to put to good use.

It took no interrogation for the man to tell them his name was Ilia Davydov, the pilot. He told Quinn what he already knew, that a man named Feliks Zolner, sometimes called Worst of the Moon, had been charged to capture or kill a scientist named Volodin. Between sobs and panting breaths, Davydov answered every question posed to him, describing what Zolner looked like, the type and caliber of rifle he carried, and even the kind of food he preferred — simple Russian tea and jam. He had no idea who had hired Zolner or how he planned to get out of Alaska now that the plane was damaged.

“He is a quiet man,” Davydov said, panting. “He hires us to assist him, but we are never told the entire story. That is his alone to know.” He looked at Quinn with pleading eyes. “Please,” he gasped. “I have only just begun working for him.”

“You killed my friend,” Hazel said. She’d ignored Quinn’s directive to go wait at the school and now stood with the adults, mostly women and a couple of elderly men, who had gathered in front of the house.

Davydov shook his head. “The others,” he stammered. “They shot her for sport, to wound her. I did not want to see her suffer so I ended her pain.” He glanced at Beaudine, then quickly back to Quinn. “You must believe me, I try to be merciful. To kill her quickly.”

Beaudine scoffed. “If you really wanted to show some mercy you could have put a bullet in the two bastards that shot her in the first place.”

Quinn shouldered his pack and picked up the Lapua.

“What are you going to do with me?” Davydov whimpered. “You can’t leave me here.”

“What?” Beaudine said. “I’m sure they’ll show you just as much mercy as you showed their friend.”

Brian Ticket’s brother-in-law, Ruben, had been out hunting ptarmigan when the Russians landed and made it back into town in time to see the crowd gather around Davydov. It had been his house the two Russians had first terrorized, and his wife — Brian’s sister — now stood with the hatchet in her hand. Quinn filled him in about their meeting with Brian at the fish camp and explained the immediate need to follow Zolner and Volodin on the ATV trail toward Ambler.

“I got a better idea,” the man said, clutching his wife and child like they might float away. “We’ll take my boat. My uncle has a camp four miles upriver. We stashed a Honda out there two days ago. Keys are in it and it’s full of gas. I was gonna go hunting, but if you can catch Worst of the Moon… Anyhow, there’s an old trail going northeast behind the cabin. It cuts into the ATV road that comes out of here. You’ll save a hell of a lot of time because the river bends back up that way before cutting southeast again toward Ambler. If we go now, you might even get ahead of ’em.”