Savage Son (James Reece #3) - Jack Carr Page 0,128

them he could exploit his tactical advantages just as well as they could. He was just getting to his feet when it felt like he was hit in the side with a sledgehammer.

Edo had been born and bred for this very task. While some dogs longed to chase tennis balls or retrieve ducks, Edo wanted nothing more than to kill terrorists. Though this one didn’t smell or taste the way the ones had on his past trips to the warmer places with the one they called Devan, he knew this was his target. His job was to destroy the man before him, and Edo knew how to do just that.

Reece, Eli, and Devan were within twenty yards when they finally had a clear line of sight to the struggle between man and beast. They saw the Russian make a move to draw something from his waistline. Gun or knife, it didn’t matter. Three lasers found his head, the warriors depressing their triggers in the same instant, each sending deadly projectiles into the brain stem of their target, who dropped straight into the snow.

“Here,” Devan ordered, bringing Edo back to his master as Eli moved to the two downed SEALs.

Chavez was getting up, just a little dazed from the blast.

“You okay, buddy?” Reece asked, looking in his eyes and then doing a once-over of his body to ensure he still had all his fingers and toes.

“I’m good. Snow tamped the majority of the blast but Farkus was closer. I’ll go take care of our plausible deniability,” he said, unslinging the AK from his back and walking toward what was left of the dead Russian.

Eli was stuffing a wound on Farkus’s upper leg with gauze below a tourniquet. Even through his NODs, Reece could tell it was a bad one.

Farkus was conscious and gritting his teeth to stay quiet.

“Farkus, you are going to make it. That shrapnel missed your artery, so it’s not an arterial bleed. You have a bunch of small shards of shrapnel in there. It just hurts like hell. Take these,” Eli said, handing the wounded SEAL a handful of pills. “They will ward off infection and we’ll have you out of here and back to an ER in Alaska before they wear off.”

While Eli practiced medicine, Reece reached into Farkus’s pack and pulled out the small Kifaru Woobie, a twenty-first-century private sector version of the venerable military poncho liner. He extracted it from its small built-in stuff sack and wrapped it around the wounded Frogman. Next he pulled out the Sitka Gear Flash Shelter and wrapped that around the puffy poncho liner.

“This isn’t perfect, but it will keep you from freezing to death out here. We’ll be back. I need everybody for this assault. The lodge is just a klick east.”

Reece thought of Hanna and Raife. Though he hated to do it, he was not going to be able to leave a member of the team behind to tend to Farkus. If they failed, Farkus was a dead man, if not from the Russian military assets that would descend on the island, then from the freezing temperatures of Medny and the infections that were bound to set in as soon as the antibiotics wore off.

“Crush them, sir. Don’t worry about me. I have rear security,” he said, holding up his rifle.

Reece nodded. The other members of the assault force were primed to execute, the familiar look of resolve on their faces.

Before storming on toward the target, Reece looked down at the smallest member of the team, the multipurpose canine who had saved his life yet again.

The dog was chewing on something.

It was a chunk of Captain Karyavin Vasilievich’s triceps.

CHAPTER 78

RAIFE MOVED TOWARD HIGH ground, faster now that the sun was about to break the horizon.

Was Reece really on his way to Russia? Or was that just another one of Zharkov’s sick mind games?

The image of his sister’s dismembered head floating in formaldehyde burned in his mind, the hate keeping him warm. He squeezed himself into a rock outcropping and surveyed the terrain behind him. Weather was coming in off the Bering Sea. That might work to his advantage. He squinted back the way he had come and could just make out the monstrous 6x6 vehicle pushing through the tundra and snow, slowly gaining elevation in the early morning light. A snowmobile with a single skid in front followed a short distance behind. He knew he had been easy to follow. Now it was time to bait a trap