half a mile short of the station when they saw the gleaming red bulk of the Halo lifting from behind the antenna knoll. The big machine swung parallel to the ridge, climbing under full power. Instinctively, Smith and the others went facedown flat on the snow, camo-merging into their background. The aircraft thundered almost directly overhead, heading for the central peaks and the saddleback between.
"Damn it!" Smith raged, scrambling to his feet and staring after the departing helicopter. "I'd hoped splitting them up would keep them pinned! They're bailing out on their own men!"
Randi shook her head, coming up onto her knees. "They don't give a damn, Jon. They're criminals, not soldiers. They well and truly don't give a damn."
"What do we do now, Colonel?" Smyslov asked.
"We fall back to Plan B."
"What is Plan B?"
"That depends on what's left at the station. Let's go!"
Mikhail Vlahovitch fumbled the little Belgian-made pocket grenade out of his parka, feeling the bullets hitting on the far side of the ice slab he crouched behind. Pulling the pin, he let the safety lever flick free, counted two, and pitched overhand. He waited for the flat crack of the grenade detonation, then lunged out from behind the slab, rolling across the frozen beach to get the angle on the men who had been firing on him.
Vlahovitch came up onto his knees, saw a wounded Spetsnaz trooper kneeling beside a second downed man, and leveled the Agram, emptying the submachine gun in a single prolonged figure-eight burst that engulfed both the wounded and the dying.
As the bolt clicked open on an empty chamber, Vlahovitch was caught by the silence. His had been the last gun firing. The only sounds remaining were the creak and whine of the pack ice and the hiss of his own breath. Staggering, he got to his feet, drawing a fresh clip out of his belt pouches.
The Russians had come out of nowhere while Vlahovitch and his men had been distracted by their search for the woman. The Spetsnaz had apparently been taken as much by surprise by the presence of the arms smugglers as the reverse. It had been an unexpected-meeting engagement, inevitably the most chaotic and savage of battles.
"Lazlo," he yelled, ejecting the empty and forcing the reload into the Agram's magazine well. "Lazlo!...Vrasek!...Prishkin! To me!"
No one answered. Blood streaked the ice. The scattering of bodies lay unmoving. Their men and his.
"Lazlo!...Prishkin!"
He turned in place slowly, looking around. It was a wipeout. A mutual massacre. He was the only one left of either side.
"Lazlo?"
Then he heard the distant, rhythmic thudding of rotors. It was the Halo. He couldn't see it from the base of the point, but he could follow the sound of its flight. It was heading up to the glacier. Kretek was going after the anthrax, and Vlahovitch knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt that he wouldn't be coming back.
And Vlahovitch finally acknowledged something else that he had known down deep in his belly for a long time: that Anton Kretek would eventually betray and abandon him like this.
"Kretek, you bastard!" He almost burst his throat with the scream.
"He's not a very nice man really." The voice was conversational, feminine, and coming from directly behind him.
Vlahovitch spun to find the woman standing some twenty feet away. She hadn't been there a few moments before, but she was there now, her materialization as silent as the arrival of a stalking cat. She wore the red ski pants worn by the blonde they had captured the day before, and the green sweatshirt she had stolen from the body of Kretek's nephew, the overlong sleeves rolled up. But this wasn't the brown-eyed American blonde. The thrown-back hood of the shirt revealed high-pinned raven black hair and chill gray eyes, and the accent to her words was vaguely British. She stood relaxed with her arms held loosely crossed over her stomach.
"But then, you really aren't a very nice man, either," she went on. And then she smiled.
A strange, uncontrollable horror welled up within Vlahovitch. There was no justification for it. He was a man cradling a loaded machine gun, and she an unarmed woman. Yet he was stricken with the fear a condemned prisoner feels when he hears the approaching footfalls of his hangman. He brought up the Agram, trying to draw back the SMG's bolt, his terror making him fumble.
The first thrown knife sank into his right shoulder, paralyzing his arm. The second struck in the center of his chest,