Ice Hunt (9 page)

Matt straightened. “Don’t worry. There’s an old Alaskan saying.”

“What’s that?”

“Up here, only the strong survive…but sometimes even they’re killed.”

His words clearly offered no consolation to the Seattle reporter.

10:48 P.M.

Stefan Yurgen wore nightvision goggles, allowing him to see in the dark without the motorcycle’s lights, but the snowstorm kept his vision to no more than ten meters. The snow fell thickly, a green fog through the scopes.

He kept his snow-and-ice bike steady, grinding and carving up the switchback trail. The snow might block his view, but it allowed him to follow his prey easily. The fresh snow clearly marked their trail. He counted one horse, four dogs. Both men were riding. Occasionally, one man hopped off and led the horse afoot across some trickier terrain, then remounted.

He watched for any sign of the pair splitting, but no prints led away from the main trail.

Good
. He wanted them together.

Under the frozen goggles, a permanent scowl etched his features. Mikal had been his younger brother. An hour ago, he had found his brother’s tortured body beside a small stream, nearly comatose from pain, his face a bloody wreck. He’d had no choice. He had orders to follow. It had still torn him to pull the trigger, but at least the agony had ended for Mikal.

Afterward, he had marked his forehead with his brother’s blood. This was no longer just a search-and-destroy mission. It was an oath vendetta. He would return with the American’s ears and nose. He would hand them to his father back in Vladistak. For Mikal…for what had been done to his younger brother. This he swore on Mikal’s blood.

Stefan had caught a brief glimpse of his target earlier through his rifle’s scope: tall, sandy-haired, windburned face. The man had proven resourceful, but Mikal had been the newest member to the Leopard ops team, ten years his junior. His younger brother did not have Stefan’s years of battle-honed experience. He was a cub compared to a lion. Now forewarned of his target’s skill, Stefan would not underestimate his quarry. Upon his brother’s blood, he would capture the American alive, carve his carcass while he still breathed. His screams would reach all the way back to Mother Russia.

As Stefan climbed through the wooded ravine, the trail left by his quarry grew more distinct. His features hardened. The distance between them was closing. No more than a hundred meters, he estimated. A skilled tracker, trained in the winter mountains of Afghanistan, Stefan knew how to judge a trail.

He manhandled the bike up another switchback, then throttled down. He climbed off the cycle, shrugging his rifle snugly in place. He reached next to the weapon holstered on the side of the vehicle. It was now time to begin the true hunt. Raised along the Siberian coast, Stefan knew the cold, knew snow and ice, and he knew how to chase prey through a storm.

From here, he would proceed on foot…but first he needed to shake his targets, panic them into acting instinctively. And like any wild animal, once panicked, people made mistakes.

He slid up his nightvision goggles, raised the heavy weapon, then read the distance and elevation indicators through the scope.

Satisfied, he pulled the trigger.

11:02 P.M.

Craig shivered, clinging close to the man saddled ahead of him. He tried to glean whatever warmth he could from the shared contact. At least he was shielded from the worst of the wind by the Fish and Game warden’s broad back.

Matt spoke as they climbed through the snowstorm. “I don’t understand,” he said, pressing the issue. “There has to be a reason for all this. Does it have to do with your story? Or is it something else?”

“I don’t know,” Craig repeated for the tenth time, speaking through a wool scarf wrapped over his lower face. He didn’t want to talk about it. He only wanted to concentrate on staying warm.
Damn this assignment…

“If it’s you, why go to all this trouble to keep you away from your story?”

“I don’t know. Back in Seattle, I covered alderman races and tracked AP stories out of Washington from a local angle. I was given this assignment because the editor has a grudge. So I dated his niece once. She
was
twenty years old, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like she was twelve.”

Matt mumbled, “A political reporter. I mean why would a scientific research station call in a political reporter anyway?”

Craig sighed. The man would clearly not give up. In a desire to end this line of discussion, he finally loosened his tongue and spilled what he knew. “A marine biologist from the drift station has a cousin who works for the paper. He sent a telegram, indicating a discovery of significant interest. Something to do with an abandoned ice base discovered by their researchers. Whatever they found has stirred up a lot of excitement, but the station was placed under a gag order by the Navy personnel there.”

“A gag order? And this biologist was able to ferret this news out anyway.”

Craig nodded. “I was being sent to see if there really is a story of national interest.”

Matt sighed. “Well, it certainly stirred up someone’s interest.”

Craig snorted, but he was relieved when the man fell into a ruminative silence. Behind them, the growl of the motorcycle seemed to have ebbed. Maybe they were outdistancing their pursuer. Maybe he had turned back, giving up the chase.

Matt glanced behind them, slowing his horse.

With the cycle quieted, the woods seemed to have grown more still and a little darker. The snowfall drifted with a hushed whisper through the trees. Matt reined the horse to a stop. He stood in the stirrups, staring back, his eyebrows tucked together.

A sharp whistling suddenly pierced the quiet.

“What—” Craig began, twisting around.

Matt reached behind, grabbed him by the shoulders, and dragged them both out of the saddle. They fell to the snowy ground, knocking the wind from his chest.

Craig coughed, gasping.
What the hell is—

Matt shoved his face into the snow, half covering his body with his own. “Stay down!” he growled.

An explosion rocked the wintry quiet. A score of yards up the trail, snow, dirt, and bushes plumed upward. Leaves and needles were shredded from the surrounding trees.

The mare bucked, whinnying in terror, eyes rolling white. But Matt was already up, grabbing the reins. Dogs barked and yipped from all around.

Craig began to sit up. Matt reached down and yanked him to his feet. “Up, up,” he urged, shoving him toward the horse.

“What was—”

“Grenade…the bastard has a goddamn grenade launcher.”

As the ringing in his ears died away, Craig tried to wrap his mind around this concept. He scrambled back up into the saddle. The mountains had gone quiet. Even the motorcycle’s engine had gone silent.

“He’s coming after us on foot,” Matt explained. “We don’t have much time.” He whistled for his dogs, scattered by the explosion. They all returned, but one was limping. Matt bent to check the injured dog.

Craig was not so patient. “C’mon…leave the dog.”

Matt glanced sharply at him, then back to the malamute. He ran his hands down the lame limb. “Just sprained, Simon,” he whispered to the dog, relieved, and patted its head.

Standing, Matt grabbed the horse’s lead and headed away from the deer trail they had been following.

“Where are we going?” Craig continued to search both ahead and behind him. His ears strained for any telltale whistle of another grenade.

“The jackass is trying to spook us.”

In Craig’s case, the fellow had surely succeeded.

They tromped through some denser woods, through deeper snow. Craig was forced to duck low branches, getting snow dumped on his back with their passage. It was hard going, slow, too slow, but Matt seemed determined in his direction.

“Where are we headed?” Craig asked, dusting off his shoulders.

“To see if some old friends are still around.”

11:28 P.M.

Stefan crouched by the trail. Gloved, hooded, and cloaked in white, he blended perfectly with the snow. But to him, the world was traced and silhouetted in hues of green. Through his nightvision goggles, he examined the trail. His targets had struck off to the left, clearly scared from the trail by the grenade explosion ahead, just as he had hoped.

He turned to follow, moving swiftly and silently. He had hunted wolves in the rural hills around his hometown. He knew how to travel a wood silently, to use the available cover. Coupled with the tools of his ops training, he was a most skilled assassin.

Still, his targets needn’t have feared another grenade. He had left the launcher back at the bike. His rifle was enough…along with his hunting knife, with which he planned to skin the American who had killed his brother. He set off down their new trail, watching to make sure the pair did not split up. But the track of hoof, paw, and footprints remained a steady single course.

Before leaving the cycle, he had radioed his superiors and reported the events. The storm was too severe to send in reinforcements, but Stefan had assured his lieutenant that they were not needed. Before midnight struck, he would have his quarry contained. His evacuation the next morning had already been coordinated.

He continued down the side trail, watching for any treachery. But the grenade seemed to have done its job. It had sent them into flight.

A quarter mile down the side path, he found a spot where the snow was churned up. It looked like the horse might have taken a spill on the icy terrain. Stefan hoped a few bones had been broken during the fall.

He quickly searched the area, but only one trail led off from here. The track was much fresher. Slush had not yet frozen in the hoofprints. He was no more than five minutes behind. The American continued to walk his horse.

Stefan straightened, noting the ripe smell of offal. Some animal must have died nearby. But before this night was over, there would be more for the scavengers to feed upon.

Anticipating he was close enough to use the infrared feature in his goggles, he reached to his lens and toggled a tab on its edge, switching out of the current nightvision mode, which amplified ambient light, and over to infrared, which registered heat signatures. The green hues vanished, and the world went dark. He scanned ahead, seeking any heat sources. The range of the scope was a hundred yards in good weather. With the snowfall masking any warmth, he could expect half that distance. As such, he faintly made out a reddish blob, poorly defined just at the farthest range of his goggles.

He smiled and switched back to his nightvision spectrum so he could see again and continue his pursuit. With his target in sight, he hurried onto the fresh path. In his drive, he failed to see the thin white thread stretched across the path, but he felt the faint tug on his pant cuff and the snap of the thread.

He dove aside into a small snowbank, expecting an explosion or booby trap to spring. He glanced behind, only to see a faint flash of green through his goggles as something fell from an overhanging tree limb and shattered against a rock under it.

He covered his face, knocking loose his goggles, and ducked away.

Something damp splashed his legs.

He glanced down.
Blood…
the red stain was stark against his white snowsuit. His heart pounded in his throat, but he felt no secondary flare of pain. He calmed. It wasn’t his own blood.

Then the smell struck him. Back in Afghanistan, he had crawled through the rebel tunnels and come upon a group of dead soldiers, slaughtered, it appeared, by a nail bomb. Blood, ripped intestine, flies, maggots, the heat of the summer…it had festered and fermented for a week. This stench was worse.

Gagging reflexively, he tried to crawl away from it, but the stench clung to him, followed him, rising and swelling around him. Bile rose in his throat. He choked and emptied his stomach.

Still, he was a hardened soldier. He scrubbed his pant legs in the snow and fought to his feet. His eyes teared as the world swirled in black and white, shadow and snow.

He stumbled up the trail. If they thought a stench bomb would incapacitate him, the fuckers would learn otherwise. He had been trained to withstand assaults with tear gas and worse. Spitting, he clambered up the trail and reseated his nightvision goggles.

Reaching to the toggle, he checked infrared again and searched for his target. At first he saw nothing but blackness. He cursed, choking up bile. They may have delayed him, but their trail into the empty peaks remained clear through the snow. He would catch up with them.

He reached to his goggles, but before he could switch back to night vision, a reddish glow materialized against the dark background. The sudden infrared signature was bright and clear. The wind must have parted the snow enough to extend his field of view. He grinned. So they weren’t that far. He headed toward it.

As he moved, the heat signature grew quickly…
too quickly
. He stopped. The rosy glow swelled larger in the scopes, larger than a single man. Were they headed back here on the horse? Did they think to subdue him after their crude attempt at chemical warfare?

His eyes narrowed. If so, they were in for a rude surprise. It was wrong to underestimate one of Russia’s elite commandos. He swung around—then noticed a second heat signature approaching from the left. He spun, frowning, as a third and fourth bloomed into existence.

What the hell?

He crouched amid the reeking stench. It seemed to hang in the air. The shapes grew huge in his sights. The red signatures were massive, larger than any horse. A fifth and sixth shape shimmered into existence. They converged from all sides.

He now knew what they were.

Bears…grizzlies from their size.

He switched off the infrared and went to night vision again. The snow was falling thicker. The woods were cloaked in green fog. There was no sign of the approaching monsters. He switched back to infrared. They were closer still, almost upon him.

Lured here…the stench…
A groan escaped him.