with him the moment she had agreed to help him. He was an answer to a question she didn’t even know she had.
It didn’t matter what lay ahead. All that mattered was that she keep moving forward and put Russia behind her.
She knew all too well how her country operated. Everything good came at a heavy price. It was why so many of its people were so miserable. Nothing good ever really happened to average Russians, there were just shades of “less worse.”
Living abroad had given her a taste of what could be. She just hadn’t had the courage then to stay abroad. And while England wasn’t the United States, she had gotten a taste of Western culture and understood what it meant.
The United States was still a land of opportunity. The only limits there were the ones you placed on yourself. Whatever she wanted to do, she could do it.
In Harvath’s opinion, she had nailed it. In fact, she had nailed it in a way that only someone who didn’t have those advantages and freedoms could. It eased his mind that involving her had been the right thing to do. Somehow, all of this seemed destined to have happened.
That said, they still had much to do before they could consider themselves free.
Looking at his watch, he tried to anticipate how much time remained before Nicholas would be able to see him again via satellite. Several times, he had heard the distant rumble of what sounded like the Wagner helicopter, but it had yet to make it this far out. In a way, that was a victory. And despite its being small, he knew he should celebrate it. So far, so good.
Christina must have had incredible hearing, because at the first, far off barking of the dogs, she stirred and sat up.
“Jompá and Olá?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“It sounds like it,” he replied, picking up the rifle. “We should get ready to move.”
Together, they packed up their gear except for a little bit of food, which they split between them.
They ate quickly and in silence. By the time the dog teams pulled up outside, they were ready to go.
With Christina translating, Harvath showed Jompá and Olá the spot on the map where he wanted them to be taken to.
The men nodded. The lake was known for its fishing and there was another Sámi village not far from there. Two Sámi coming to trade shouldn’t be an unusual sight. All that was left was to load Harvath and Christina onto the sleds.
Pulling back the reindeer hides, the brothers exposed the large slabs of frozen moose meat they had brought with them. They would be uncomfortable to hide beneath, but they would effectively shield them from any thermal imaging.
Harvath’s initial plan had been to purchase from Jompá and Olá two live reindeer that were scheduled for slaughter, have the brothers hollow, or “cape,” them out, and for him and Christina to be transported to the rendezvous inside those.
It would have been a warm, but somewhat disgusting way to travel. The weight, though, the brothers had explained, was too much for the dogs to pull, so they had settled on their current solution.
To help insulate their passengers from the cold, they had brought extra reindeer hides along.
Laying Harvath and Christina down, they helped bundle them up and then lowered the moose meat down over them.
Fortunately, there was a small, wooden framing system atop which the slabs set, but it didn’t leave a lot of room. Both Harvath and Christina had to turn their heads to the side or tuck their chins into their chests to avoid their noses pressing directly against the meat.
Once everything was set, Jompá and Olá called out to their teams, the dogs started barking, and the sleds lurched forward.
Over thousands of years, the Sámi had built up an amazing tolerance for the cold. Whereas Christina had warned Harvath that there was only so much distance he could travel before succumbing to exposure, Jompá and Olá could far outlast him. The dogs also moved a hell of a lot faster than a man on skis or snowshoes.
While he hated not being able to see what was going on, Harvath tried to relax and enjoy the ride. If everything went according to plan, they’d be across the border and into Finland in a matter of hours.
By the same token, he knew that very seldom did everything go according to plan. In fact, the better things seemed to be progressing, the