were all on board, hit the gas and raced as fast as the sled would carry them back to the village.
• • •
On the outskirts of Adjágas, Harvath killed the engine. They left the snowmobile in the woods and crept the rest of the way on foot. It was better if no one knew that they were there.
The Wagner thugs were going to turn every house inside out. They were also going to sweat the inhabitants—hard.
With their boss and so many of their comrades dead, anyone holding out on them was going to get a severe beating and possibly worse. The mercenaries could get out of control and end up murdering everyone in the village and burning every house to the ground. Harvath couldn’t let that happen.
As he had warned Sini earlier, you couldn’t lie to these mercenaries. You had to tell them the absolute truth. If they did that, they might be able to escape any brutality. That meant he had to give them a good story—a true story.
He also needed to leave a trail that would take the mercenaries away from the village and, if possible, throw them off his scent. In other words, he needed a distraction. But first, he needed help.
They snuck up behind the cabin of Olá, Jompá’s brother, and stopped. Peering around the corner, he scanned the area with his night vision goggles. There was no one to be seen. The bodies of the dead mercenaries still lay in the snow. No one had touched them and according to Mokci, no one would. The Russians would have to claim their own dead. The Sámis, partly out of superstition and partly out of not wanting anything to do with what had happened, wouldn’t go near them.
That was good news for Harvath. Pulling Christina aside, he told her what he needed her to do and handed her Teplov’s backpack full of cash. Then, as she and Mokci slipped inside, he headed for the Wagner corpses.
Without having to worry that one of the villagers might roll one of the dead mercenaries over, he was able to set additional traps. Using frag grenades, he booby-trapped them all. No matter which body was touched first, it was guaranteed to be a deadly result.
Though he couldn’t see them, he could feel the villagers’ eyes on him. After he was done, he disappeared into the woods and rigged the corpses of the dead snowmobilers, before doubling back to the cabin where he had left Christina and Mokci.
Peering through the rear window, he waited for her signal. When she flashed him the thumbs-up, he pulled out Teplov’s satellite phone, extended the antenna, and powered it up.
“Please work,” he said under his breath, knowing this might be the only chance he got.
As he waited, he pulled out his GPS device courtesy of Christina’s uncle and powered that up as well. The clock was running out. Everything now depended on the groundwork being laid inside the cabin.
CHAPTER 58
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* * *
HOSTAGE RECOVERY FUSION CELL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“Quiet!” Nicholas yelled to the room, as he stood on top of his desk to get everyone’s attention. Instantly, the dogs were on guard and he had to give them the command to relax.
The room fell silent instantly and when it did, he returned his attention to his phone. “Say again, please?” he asked. It was a terrible connection and kept going in and out.
“Norseman,” Harvath repeated, using his call sign, as was their protocol for this type of emergency transmission.
A series of coded challenge questions and answers then went back and forth, ending with, “Tim has a metal roof. I repeat. Tim has a metal roof.”
“Tim has a metal roof. Good copy,” said Nicholas, acknowledging the final coded response. “Would you like to hear the specials?”
“Negative. My wife and I are ready to place our order.”
Nicholas looked at SPEHA Rogers, who had appeared at his desk, and pantomimed for the man to grab a pen and paper to take down the following information. Harvath had authenticated that it was him, that he was calling on comms he couldn’t trust, and that he was going to need to get pulled out plus one—a woman.
“I’m ready,” said the little man.
Harvath rattled off two strings of letters and numbers, which Nicholas repeated back to him. Rogers wrote them down and was about to race over to the NSA desk, which was coordinating with the National Reconnaissance Office, when Nicholas stopped him.
“Subtract one from the latitude coordinates and add two to the