The Sniper and the Wolf

55

Dokka Umarov’s nephew Lom had been in command of the ambush, and Lom was furious with his men for having allowed the Russian and the American to escape. He drove them hard through the rugged forest, giving orders on the move for them to keep an even dispersal and not to let the enemy slip through their line. Their Spetsnaz ally Kovalenko was supposed to be out there somewhere blocking the avenue of retreat, but Lom took little comfort in this. The ambush had been deployed perfectly, yet it had failed, and the responsibility for that failure lay on his head. He’d sent a runner to Umarov’s camp for more men, but his uncle would not arrive in time. The only way for Lom to reclaim some modicum of his honor would be to catch and kill his prey before they either blundered into Kovalenko’s path or escaped altogether.

Lom and his force had so far covered almost three hundred meters, and there was still no sign of their quarry. They were not likely to have fled north because the forest ended where the high country began, and there would be little or no cover above the tree line, where the going would be far more treacherous. Retreat to the south was even less likely because of the way the terrain dropped off into a steep canyon from which there would be almost no escape.

“Keep your eyes open!” he hissed. “They cannot be far now.”

A grenade exploded forty meters to the north, and there was a wicked exchange of rifle fire.

“Move!” Lom shouted. “They’re trying to break through our line!” The last thing he needed was for the enemy to break into his rear and wind up making contact with his uncle’s force. That would be too shameful to endure.

His men up the line were shouting back and forth, confused over the enemy’s location, unable to see much by the faint light of the moon.

Another grenade exploded as Lom arrived on the scene, and this time body parts flew through the air. There was a second savage exchange of machine-gun fire, and an errant round snapped through Lom’s upper arm, grazing the bone. He gnashed his teeth against the pain, vaulting a fallen tree and screaming for his men to fill the gap where the grenade had blown a hole in their line.

A dark figure slammed into him from his blindside, moving fast, and sent him sprawling face-first into a boulder, mashing his nose and breaking his front teeth off at the gum line. He was lifting himself up when a second figure stomped on his head and leapt over the boulder, leaving him too dazed to rise again.

He was unsure of how much time had passed when one of his men sat him up against the rock and poured water onto his face.

“What! Where are they?” he said with a lisp.

“They got through,” the man said. “I’ve sent another runner to link up with Dokka. Our man knows the forest, and he should get there ahead of them.”

A hooded figure in a ghillie suit appeared like an apparition, throwing back the hood to reveal his face in the moonlight. “Who’s responsible for this unholy mess?”

Lom instantly recognized him as Sasha Kovalenko. “I am,” he croaked.

Kovalenko glanced around, hearing the moans of the casualties all around them. “Two wounded men just went through your line like shit through a goose! You’ll be lucky if your uncle doesn’t string you up by the balls.” He jerked the rifle from Lom’s hands and gave it back to the other man, saying to him, “Round up the men who are still whole and form on me. We’re moving out in two minutes.”

The man left to do as he’d been told, and Kovalenko turned back to Lom, asking disgustedly, “Can you still fight, little girl, or do you plan on spending the rest of your miserable life sucking cock with that pretty new mouth of yours?”

Lom was so ashamed and infuriated that his eyes filled with tears. “I can fight.” he said, lisping grotesquely.

“We’ll see.” Kovalenko shoved him aside. “Find a rifle and try to keep up.”

Two hundred yards east, Gil and Dragunov stopped to lick their wounds beneath an overhang.

“It won’t take them long to regroup,” Dragunov said, sweat streaming down his head from the pain in his testicles. He held a penlight as Gil unbuttoned his trousers to get a look at his groin wound.

“We hit ’em pretty fuckin’ hard,” Gil said, using his knife to cut away Dragunov’s blood-soaked underwear. “It looks like you’re in luck here, partner. The scrotum’s torn open but your balls are still in there. These thigh wounds are superficial.”

Gil wiped his bloody hands on Dragunov’s pants and sat back to begin shrugging out of his harness and body armor. “I don’t know if I got that lucky.”

Dragunov buttoned his trousers and helped Gil shed his gear. The American had a number of small holes in his abdomen where Kovalenko’s 5.45 mm rounds had defeated his armor, but the rounds had fragmented, and it looked like the fragments had embedded themselves in Gil’s abdominal muscles — painful but not life threatening.

“That was Kovalenko who hit us back there,” he said. “It was a setup from the beginning.”

“Aye,” Dragunov said. “And he’ll be coming. We’re not dead because he didn’t expect us to come running at him like that, but we have to be very careful now. There is a reason he’s called the Wolf.”

“Maybe we should stay put, lay for him here.”

Dragunov shook his head. “If it was only him, I’d agree, but this is Umarov’s territory. More men will be coming soon. Our only chance is to keep moving east.”

“Deeper into Umarov’s territory?”

“Kovalenko and the others are blocking the west. The north and south are impassable. That leaves the east.”

“Shitty and shittier,” Gil muttered. “Look, we should hold here. Let Kovalenko and the others pass us by, then get back on a westerly heading.”

“The others may pass us by — but he won’t!”

“You’re sure of that?”

Dragunov picked up Gil’s helmet and gave it to him. “We’re not in Sicily now. This forest is his home. He grew up in these mountains, and he’ll know what we’re up to. I’ve fought on his side too many times not to know his instincts, but listen: it will be daylight soon, and three thousand meters east of here is a valley where we can draw him into the open — catch him in a cross fire. If we’re both manning a rifle, one of us should live long enough to get off a shot.”

Gil looked at him while putting on his helmet. “And you don’t think he’ll figure out what we’re up to?”

Dragunov chuckled. “Of course he’ll figure it out, but a fox driven before the hounds has only so many options — and running toward the hounds is never one of them.”

Gil felt a spasm in his gut, wincing as he lowered the NVGs over his eyes. “I can’t argue with good Russian logic.”