exactly where he was, he knew that they had taken off from Murmansk. He also knew the geography of Russia well enough to know that the nearest friendly country was Finland.
It was all he had to go on, so he had decided to head in that direction—due west. He would course correct as circumstances dictated. In a survival situation, it was important to have a goal.
Staying put in hopes of a rescue by American forces was out of the question. They likely didn’t even know he had been kidnapped, much less that he had crash-landed in Russia. The only person who could save him was him.
So, once his breakfast was finished, he packed up his gear and made ready to leave, but not without taking care of one last thing.
Starting with the Spetsnaz operative behind the cargo container, he took out his fixed-blade knife and set about collecting the rest of his scalps.
The body of the dead soldier outside, as well as the man with the broken neck in the center section of the fuselage, had been torn apart by the wolves, but there was still enough left for Harvath to get what he needed.
He hung all four scalps on a piece of wire in the tail section.
Then, just as first light was breaking, he strapped on his snowshoes, picked up his pack and rifle, and headed out into the storm.
CHAPTER 15
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The arrival of daylight did little to improve the weather. It was still freezing. But if there was one thing SEALs were taught to withstand, it was the cold.
Harvath had spent more time in the frigid water of San Diego Bay than he cared to remember. After that, he had gone to the U.S. Navy’s facility in Alaska, where he endured extensive training in winter warfare and cold-weather survival.
It was no wonder to him that so many Navy SEALs moved to warm climates once they left the service. By then, they had seen more cold than most people do in a lifetime.
Sometimes, he wondered where he’d be if he hadn’t chosen a career that kept him glued to D.C. He was a big fan of the Florida Keys and the Greek islands. He also loved Park City, Utah, and the Swiss Alps. He didn’t have a “special” place he saw himself in. He had even moved to Boston for a time simply to be closer to Lara and her little boy, Marco.
Just the thought of her sent a wave of remorse through his body. He couldn’t believe she was gone. And not only was she gone, she was gone because of him. Once again, someone he loved had been marked for death, and it had been his fault. He vowed never to let that happen again.
Struggling through the snow, the visibility next to nothing, he made it into the trees at the edge of the clearing. Pushing Lara from his mind, he concentrated on his most important priority—putting as much distance between himself and the crash site as possible.
When a rescue team finally did show up, and when they realized the plane was carrying a prisoner who had disappeared, someone was going to start doing some math. Average speed per hour of a healthy adult male in snow would be multiplied by the estimated hours that had elapsed since the crash. A circle would be drawn on a map, and the hunt would be on.
Scenes of a Russian Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive telling his men to conduct a hard-target search of every “gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse” within that radius played across his mind.
He figured that at best, in the current conditions, he was making three miles an hour on his improvised snowshoes. How long he could keep it up was the question. At some point, he was going to have to stop to rest.
Then there was the issue of where he’d spend the night. He needed not only someplace where he could keep warm but also someplace from which he could defend himself. The image of the pack of hungry wolves wasn’t far from his mind. He had imagined something on his six o’clock ever since leaving the crash site. Even in this storm, he was keeping his eyes and ears open. The idea that they could be only feet behind him, ready to pounce, wasn’t very comforting.
The upside to the weather, though, was that wind and blowing snow would help to cover his tracks. Without a visible