slim. He might make an even more formidable adversary than his friend who waited one floor below, nourished but cold and, more important, inspired. His sister’s head in a formaldehyde jar to keep him company all night should have given him all the incentive needed to make this Aleksandr’s most challenging and pleasurable adventure to date.
It was time to hunt.
CHAPTER 73
Medny Island, Russia
EVERYONE ELSE ON THE team felt like they were back in the dark ages. Everyone but Reece. He was in his element. He’d grown up in the mountains with his father, who passed along the importance of map and compass work, terrain association, taking bearings, and triangulation. Their GPS devices, lasers, and NODs might be down, but that didn’t mean that these warriors were out of the fight. They reconsolidated at the link-up point. Reece was the last to arrive, the others having managed to land in the same general vicinity.
Being most familiar with the routes and objective, Reece took dual point with Devan and Edo. The Belgian Malinois was off leash and alert, back doing what he’d been trained for. Much like the men he accompanied, Edo had been out of the fight too long and was ready for action. Eli and Farkus followed, with Chavez taking rear security. The lack of NODs meant they had to patrol closer together than they were accustomed to; they all knew the threat of being too close if a rocket, mortar, or IED hit.
They hadn’t jumped snowshoes. Intel suggested the snow covering was light, but reality on the ground was different than it looked from satellites a hundred miles up. Even enveloped by darkness, over the snow-covered ground, the team moved with purpose toward their objective.
Their plan was to hit the lodge, grab Hanna and Raife, make it to extract, and kill anyone who got in their way.
Reece knew it was a bit harebrained; if he were still a SEAL there was no way he would green-light five assaulters and a dog hitting a lodge on an island off the coast of Siberia. He also knew that if the situation were reversed, Raife would move heaven and earth to get him out.
They were committed. They were going in.
Devan froze. He raised his left hand in a fist at head level.
He gave Edo the command to halt. “Blif,” he hissed in Dutch, following it with an immediate “here.”
Edo returned to Devan’s left side, going prone on the snow, waiting for the next command.
Devan had noticed the dog’s body language change. It was something only those in tune with their partner would sense; his ears moved forward, his gait became more aggressive, and his tail changed its rhythmic wag ever so slightly. His next move would have been to “finish,” or find the IED. Edo had not forgotten the ways of war. Neither had Devan. He did not want his dog to “finish,” which meant sitting right at the IED; certain death.
The team sank to their knees.
“Explosives ahead,” Devan said under his breath.
“Are you sure?” Reece asked, already knowing the answer.
“Positive. Edo alerted on it. Lucky we were coming in from downwind or we might have walked right past it.”
“How far?”
“Hard to tell exactly, but in these conditions? Fifty to a hundred yards.”
Edo’s head snapped up again, ears erect, body stiff and ready to launch, looking ahead at an angle.
“Ambush,” Devan declared.
Reece was squinting into the darkness when the first round took him square in the chest.
CHAPTER 74
DEVAN HIT THE GROUND and sent ten rounds in the direction of the ambush before yelling, “CONTACT FRONT!”
“Plotz!” he yelled at Edo over the sound of his rifle, ensuring Edo would stay down and by his side.
“ON LINE!”
Eli low-crawled toward Reece, Devan, and Edo, elbows sinking into the snow, digging in with his knees and feet to propel himself forward. In the darkness they didn’t have targets and he’d only caught the slightest hint of a muzzle flash as he hit the deck moments earlier. Suppressors.
Firing from their aggressors ceased.
They had been on a slight incline and the fact that they weren’t all dead meant that Edo had kept them out of the kill zone. If they stayed down, they were below the enemy’s line of sight, meaning they were en defilade.
Win the fight, Eli thought. Hard to do with nothing to shoot at.
Farkus was by his side in an instant. They grabbed Reece by his pant leg and began dragging him back toward a rock formation protruding from the snow behind. Devan pushed himself