The Survivor

CHAPTER 53

Rapp’s team had abandoned their snowmobiles about a mile back and were now making slow progress through the wilderness on skis. Gaps had formed in the clouds, creating intermittent splashes of stars. Not much light, but with the snow reflecting it, there was enough to proceed without night-vision equipment.

Since this frozen landscape was fundamentally indistinguishable from Charlie Wicker’s backyard, Rapp had put him on point. McGraw was breaking his own trail thirty-five feet left and Coleman was keeping roughly the same interval to Rapp’s right. Just ahead, following unsteadily in Wick’s tracks, was a very unhappy Marcus Dumond.

Despite the young hacker being dressed head-to-toe in white, his outline was clearly visible. When it started to waver, Rapp swore under his breath and accelerated to a near run. Once again, he was too late. Dumond tipped right, overcompensated, and ended up buried in the deep snow. When Rapp pulled alongside, Dumond was thrashing like a drowning man, digging himself in deeper in an attempt to keep his nose and mouth clear.

“Marcus, stop moving!” Rapp said in a harsh whisper. “This stuff’s like quicksand.”

“What am I doing here?” he whined, sounding like he was on the verge of breaking into tears. “I’m freezing and I’m exhausted. Just leave me. Just leave me here to die.”

There had been no choice but to bring Dumond along. Coleman was probably the best computer guy they had on the ops side, and he still hadn’t fully figured out texting.

“Spare me the melodrama, Marcus. Now grab my pole.”

Dumond threw out a mitten-clad hand and after a few tries, Rapp managed to get him back on his skis. “Slow and steady, kid. Okay? If you feel like you’re starting to lose your balance again, stop before it’s too late to get it back. Understand?”

“Mitch, I—”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He gave Dumond a full minute’s lead before starting out again. To his right, he could see Coleman pacing him. Wick and McGraw were out of visual range, but they would have stopped, too, in order to keep the intervals he’d stipulated.

Miraculously, the next ten minutes passed without any more problems. The wind had died down and the snow absorbed sound with startling efficiency. Beyond the hiss of his skis, the only thing audible was the occasional dull whup of snow dropping from overloaded tree branches.

Rapp came to an abrupt halt when the silence was broken by the faint echo of a gunshot. “Marcus, stop!” he said into his throat mike. “Crouch down on your skis and don’t move.”

There was no follow-up shot and all his men checked in safe. After staying motionless for almost a minute, it seemed clear that whoever had fired wasn’t aiming at them.

“Wick. Can you get a bearing?”

“Hard to say with the acoustics but I’m pretty sure it came from the village. It’s dead ahead less than five hundred yards.”

Rapp accelerated, stopping next to Dumond to pull him back into a standing position. “Stay. Just stand here and don’t do anything.”

“What? Alone? Are you crazy?”

“You’ll be fine.”

“What if… What if something happens to you? What if you don’t come back?”

“That’s not going to happen, Marcus.”

“But what if it does?”

Patience wasn’t Rapp’s finest trait and what little he had was starting to fail him. “Then you’re probably going to die.”

He took off, staying in Wicker’s tracks and leaving a speechless Dumond to himself. Coleman was out of sight now, having headed southeast while McGraw went north. After a hard four-minute — effort, Rapp saw Wicker’s track disappear into a dense stand of snow-encapsulated trees. He released his bindings and covered his skis before half-crawling, half-swimming into a depression beneath trees.

He found Wicker lying partially buried with an eye to his rifle scope. The long silencer on the end of his barrel was covered in a silicone sleeve to prevent heat shimmer from interfering with the optics.

They were at the western edge of the village as planned. Its inhabitants — twenty-five or thirty in all — were in the middle of the street in various stages of undress. Most were on their knees being guarded by three armed men in white jumpsuits identical to the ones his team wore. The one exception was a child lying in the snow with half her head missing.

Of more immediate concern was the armed man running north, dragging along with him a man wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Pavel Katdsyn.

“What have we got?” Rapp whispered.

“Pakistanis,” Wicker said. “You can always tell by the mustaches.”

“Four tangos visible from our position,” Rapp said into his throat mike. “Three in the square and one running west with our potential target. Bruno, give me a sitrep.”

“I have eyes on your runners. They’re headed for the building at the end of the road and they’re going to make it before I can get an angle. No other movement. Windows look clear but it seems unlikely that they don’t have anyone up there.”

“Scott?”

“I’m at the entrance to the village. One dead local and one armed tango. Judging by the tracks coming out of a snowcat, I make it six men total.”

That left one tango unaccounted for and it wasn’t hard to guess where he was. To his left, Rapp saw the two men disappear through a door in the building at the far edge of the village. It wouldn’t take Katdsyn long to access those files. Most likely a matter of minutes.

“Scott. Do you have a shot at the man guarding the entrance?”

“One hundred percent.”

“Take it and move into a position to cover the east-facing windows.”

“Give me a minute and a half. Two at the most.”

“Bruno. How long to get into position to cover the west-facing windows?”

“The same.”

“Do it.”

Rapp pointed to the men guarding the civilians in the street. “Can you take the two on the right, Wick?”

“No problem.”

Rapp slid the rifle off his back and lined up on the head of the man to the left. He was scanning the area for anything unusual, no longer having to pay much attention to his prisoners. The intense cold was doing his job for him. A number of the children had slipped into unconsciousness and their parents looked like they were on the verge of doing the same. Another fifteen minutes and they’d all be dead.

Coleman’s voice crackled over his earpiece. “Tango’s down and I’m in position.”

A few seconds passed before McGraw came on. “I’m ready.”

“Okay, then. On three.”

Rapp counted them off and then squeezed the rifle’s trigger. His target’s head exploded along with the head of the man next to him. Rapp immediately dropped the rifle and vaulted the low snowbank. He made it to the street just as the third Pakistani was swinging his rifle into position. Rapp ignored the threat and sprinted up the road. A moment later the puff of Wicker’s silenced rifle sounded and he knew without looking back that there were no tangos left alive behind him.

Rapp retrieved his Glock from beneath his jacket and made it about a hundred yards before a cloud of snow and ice kicked up to his left. As anticipated, the Pakistani assault team had put a man in the upper floor of one of the buildings. Fortunately, the sniper had under-estimated Rapp’s speed and failed to lead him enough. Wicker had turned Rapp on to a pair of Dynafit ski boots that didn’t weigh much more than his running shoes. They allowed him to hold a faster pace on the hard-packed snow than many college sprinters could on a track.

The shooter wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, though.

The sound of shattering glass reached him as he continued to run along the fronts of the buildings. Coleman’s voice came over his earpiece a moment later. “Sniper’s down.”

Rapp slid on his hip, ending up behind a pillar bowing visibly under the weight of an overhang piled with snow. He crawled to the door the two men had disappeared through and found it unlocked. Before entering, he glanced back into the street. It was as if nothing had happened. The locals were still slowly freezing to death, watched over by three armed men in white jumpsuits. The only difference was that now those men were his.

Rapp would have liked to give the order to take at least the children to safety, but it was impossible. The man holding Pavel Katdsyn would be unlikely to miss something that obvious. If he looked out the — window — and he would — Rapp couldn’t afford for him to see anything but exactly what he expected to see.