that he was either going to have to convince them that he was no longer running, or make it so they couldn’t chase him.
At the very least, he’d do enough damage to force them to fall back, regroup, and be very nervous about coming after him.
They would, of course, come after him, but if they did so with trepidation, he would have secured the upper hand.
Injecting fear into the hearts of battle-hardened special forces soldiers, Russians or otherwise, was no easy feat. It was quite a tall order, but one that—if he was lucky—he might just be able to pull off.
For that to happen, though, a lot had to take place between now and his eventual escape. And all of it had to go right. One single screwup on his part would mean either death or capture, which he was certain were pretty much the same thing.
Arriving back in Adjágas, the first thing he did was to ditch the pine bough. He followed that up by hiding his skiing equipment in a crawl space beneath one of the cabins.
Now, his only liability was his boots. They left very distinct prints. But as he had done when trying to disguise his ski tracks, all he could do was hope that in the chaos of the moment, with loads of adrenaline pumping through them, that none of the mercenaries noticed.
Hope, though, wasn’t a plan. In fact, he needed to do everything he could to make sure his tracks would not stick out.
Staying away from fresh snow, he trod only where the villagers themselves had walked, altering how he placed his feet so as not to leave a full print.
The boots were rigid. They not only hurt his feet, they also slowed him down. Nevertheless, it was worth it. He hadn’t come this far to leave a trail that would lead right to him. The element of surprise, right now, was the only thing he had going for him.
Arriving at Jompá’s cabin, he peered into one of the windows. Sini was nowhere to be seen. Coming back around, he tried the door and, as he had expected in such a small village, it was unlocked.
Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him, removed the flashlight from his pocket, and set it on the floor so as not to draw attention from anyone outside.
Unshouldering his rucksack, he pulled out the box of shotgun shells he had taken from the trapper’s cabin and made a tough decision—how many could he part with? He settled on half.
Giving up ammo, especially when you didn’t know how many of the enemy you were facing, normally wasn’t the best idea. But in this case, the rounds could end up acting as a force multiplier.
After retrieving a glass jar he had seen earlier in the kitchen, he took out his knife and began opening the shells, making sure all of the powder went inside and that all of his buckshot was accounted for.
It took him several more minutes to complete his improvised explosive device, but when it was done, he felt confident that it was more than up to the task. The only problem remaining was where to place it.
He lacked the materials necessary to create a fuse with a delay. If he set it up at the front door, it would go off the minute someone set foot inside and only affect the first person through. To be worth it, it had to kill, or at the very least injure, as many of the Wagner mercenaries as possible. He decided to set it up farther inside and use the bed as bait.
Christina had been right about playing up his injuries. The more blood and bandages they saw, the more their confidence grew that he was weak and unable to put up a decent fight. If he was lucky, a booby-trap would be one of the last things they’d be thinking about.
All of Sini’s supplies were still scattered about. After setting up the bed to make it look as if someone was sleeping in it, he placed other items nearby so that to anyone entering, it would appear that he was in even worse shape.
By the time they got close enough to realize that the bed was empty, it would be too late. They would have already hit the trip wire.
At least that was the plan. He had constructed several IEDs in his day that had worked, as well as several that hadn’t. It seemed that the more he needed