them, the greater the odds were that they would fail. He hoped that tonight, that wouldn’t be the case.
After doing one last sweep to make sure everything was perfect, he backed out of the cabin and closed the door. Far in the distance, he could hear snowmobiles.
All of a sudden, he got another idea. Slinging the rucksack and his shotgun, he ran off toward the trail Sini had pointed to earlier, the one that led to Friddja.
And as he ran, he said a silent prayer that not only were the snowmobiles taking that route, but that he could get to the right spot before they did.
CHAPTER 51
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Harvath ran as fast as he could up the trail. He didn’t care if he was leaving footprints in the snow or not. All that mattered was speed.
As he ran, he kept his eyes peeled for the ideal place to set his trap. Finally, he found it.
The two trees were thick enough and were positioned perfectly on either side of the trail.
Rummaging through his rucksack, he pulled out the second spool of wire he had taken from the trapper. It was a heavier gauge than he had just used to set the trip wire for his IED. Because of the amount of force it was going to have to withstand, it needed to be.
While he would have loved to have been equipped to kill multiple birds with one stone, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. The trail was too narrow for the mercenaries to be riding in anything other than single file.
Harvath only had enough wire for two traps. The best he could hope to do was to take out the men piloting the first and second snowmobiles. After that, he’d be reliant on his shotgun.
He worked quickly, guesstimating where precisely to set the first wire, and then making sure it was as secure as humanly possible. Clipping the wire, he ran about five meters farther down the trail, where he set the second trap. This one was even more difficult.
Based on what Christina had seen while picking up his dinner in Nivsky, he knew the mercenaries would be wearing night vision goggles. That meant he would have to camouflage himself. He couldn’t arm the second trap, though, until the first snowmobiler had raced past, and even then, he had to remain hidden. He needed a spring, something he could activate from his hiding place without revealing his presence.
He found exactly what he needed in the shape of a younger, more pliable tree, which even in the deep arctic cold he was able to bend. He tied it down using a piece of cord and an adjacent tree trunk.
With his wires set, he stashed his rucksack and then dug a place in the snow, which he covered with several pine branches. Holding his knife in one hand and the shotgun in the other, he made ready. He could hear the snowmobiles. They were close, almost there.
He was about to lose his only advantage—the element of surprise. Once the first rider hit the first trap, the mercenaries would know they were under attack. The tricky part for him would be timing the leap from his hiding spot. Fortunately, he had a halfway decent view of the trail and would be able to make that call on the fly.
Straining his ears, he tried to discern how many snowmobiles were approaching. It was an impossible task. All he could tell was that it sounded like more than one. He had no way of knowing how many men he was about to face.
Lying there in the snow, he would have given a decade’s worth of paychecks for a few claymores or a box of hand grenades. There was precious little cover available beyond tree trunks. If this turned into an all-out gunfight, he was going to be in trouble.
He had to win it before they could get in it. That meant he had to be fast as hell and on the money with each shot.
Reminding himself of the old maxim for coming out on top in a gunfight, he repeated, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”
The snowmobiles were hauling ass. He could hear the whine of their engines as they raced toward him. That was a good sign—the faster, the better.
They were seconds away now. Ten. Maybe twenty.
Extending his knife out from under the cover of his hide site, he let it hover just above the taut cord that would spring the