consciousness shortly. Even though Smyslov had declared himself a member of the opposing camp and had pulled that trigger on him, Smith didn't bear a personal grudge. Smyslov was a soldier in the service of his nation, just as Smith was. It was the fortunes of war, and now, likely, it was war. One with no guarantees of victory for either side.
Smith caught up his own rifle and started for the cave mouth.
Valentina was lying prone behind the frozen rubble of the snow wall, using the telescopic sights of the model 70 to scan the glacier.
"Any activity?" Smith dropped beside her and drew back the bolt of the SR-25.
"I haven't seen anything yet," she replied, lifting her face from the rifle scope. "Of course, that may not mean all that much."
Smith took her meaning. As both the ninja of medieval Japan and the Apache warrior of the American Southwest had proved, it was completely possible to be invisible in plain sight. It was just a matter of knowing how to go about it.
"I did find this just outside of the cave mouth, though." Valentina held up a silver cigarette lighter.
"Smyslov's?"
"So I would suspect. Look..." She turned the lighter upside down and squeezed some concealed catch. There was a soft snick of a releasing spring, and a short spike antenna extended from what had looked like the filler cap. "A radio transponder beacon operating on a preset frequency. When the penny dropped with its loud resounding clang, friend Gregori only had to push the button to call down the wolves."
"That's a pretty small transmitter," Smith replied, uncasing his binoculars. "They must be close by. I wonder what's holding them back."
"It could be they're waiting for their Judas goat to give them the final high sign." Valentina pressed the antenna back into the lighter/transponder, then snuggled in behind her rifle sights again. "I wonder why he tried to take us alone as he did. Grandstanding?"
"It's just barely possible he was trying to keep us from getting killed, Val," Smith replied.
"Oh, really? You think?"
"I like to maintain a positive worldview."
From the protection of the shadowed interior the two scanned the approaches to the cave mouth for long, silent minutes. Nothing seemed to move on the ice save for an occasional wisp of snow slithering past in the wind. Then the tracking barrel of the model 70 stopped and steadied like a pointer dog fixing on a game bird.
"Jon." Valentina's voice was casual. "At our two o'clock, about two hundred and fifty yards out, just beside that little uplift."
Smith swung his binoculars onto the called target. It took him a few moments to pick up the low ridge in the glacier surface. There was nothing out there that looked like a man. But there was a small drift built up at the foot of the ridge. There was nothing exceptional about the lump of snow. Nothing outstanding. But there was something subtly wrong just the same. The drift's contours didn't quite match the fractile flow of its surroundings.
"I think there's something there," Smith said finally, "but I can't be sure."
"Neither can I. So let's...just...make sure." There was a piercing whip-crack report as the vicious little.220 round screamed on its way. The "snowdrift" quivered under the impact of the hypervelocity hollowpoint. Then as Smith looked on, a dot of color became apparent on the whiteness. Spreading, it became a stain, the red of the spilling blood darkened by the overcast.
Valentina flipped open the Winchester's bolt, ejecting the spent brass. "Well, now we know."
"Indeed we do." Smith nodded slowly. "Probably one of their fourteen-man Spetsnaz platoons. Anything bigger would have been spotted by our satellites."
"Um-hum." She drew a fresh round from the shell carrier, pressing it into the Winchester's magazine. "I'll wager they'll be out of the Vladivostok garrison, either Mongolian Siberians or Yakut tribesmen under a Russian officer. The Soviets used them to guard the gulags. They're totally adapted to an arctic environment and generally nasty to cross. Arms-wise, I think we can expect AK-74 assault rifles and at least three RPK-74 squad automatic weapons. They'll be in light marching order in this terrain, so I don't think we'll see an RPG grenade launcher."
"But they will have rifle grenades." Smith looked across at her. "I figure you understand where that leaves us."
Valentina lifted an eyebrow. "Very much so. For the moment we've got the range on them. As long as we can keep them out there with the long guns, we're all right. But as