They slowed, and Briggs cursed as they took in Anatoly’s handiwork:
One man was slumped over the wheel, the other lay beside his shovel with a gunshot wound in his neck. He clutched the wound and reached out toward them, then began pointing at an open cardboard box beside their cart. The box was labeled DINAMITA EXPLOSIVO with triangular warning symbols. Several bundles remained, but the man was trying to indicate something else that dawned on Fisher.
He opened his mouth to curse.
But he never finished.
The explosion ahead thundered so loudly and the concussion came so powerfully that Fisher and Briggs were blown flat onto their backs, the ground quaking, sharp-edged debris blasting through the tunnel.
There might’ve been a roar of flames, he wasn’t sure, but a heat wave passed over him, followed by clouds of choking black smoke that had him tucking his face into his parka.
“Keep down,” he told Briggs, who was right beside him, writhing and offering up more strings of epithets.
Fisher’s ears rang as the hailstorm of rock rained down on them, his pulse quickening over thoughts that at any second the entire tunnel would collapse.
Still covering his mouth and nose, he forced his head up and hazarded a look through his trifocals. Bad idea. His worst fears were coming true.
The side wall about five meters away began to collapse, splintering apart as though a demon were kicking his way through from the other side. The ceiling buckled and finally succumbed to all the force, the tunnel filling up with massive pieces of shale haloed in gravel and swelling dust.
“Get up!” he cried to Briggs. “We’ll be cut off!”
Briggs rose beside Fisher, coughing, and they pushed through the billowing dust, their goggles penetrating the veils until they reached the pile of rubble.
While Fisher expected the worst, he mounted the first pile of rubble, picking his way carefully across it as the timbers above creaked and more dust swirled down, making him feel as though he were shifting through an hourglass.
With a shudder of hope, he found an opening barely wide enough to squeeze through. He handed his crossbow and quiver to Briggs, pulled himself about two meters through it, then reached back and accepted the weapons. Briggs pulled himself through, and Fisher helped him down. Small miracle. They’d bridged the tunnel collapse.
Yet they both coughed even more now, and the air seemed much thinner.
“I’m getting a headache,” said Briggs.
“Let’s go,” Fisher urged him, feeling his own head rage with drummers and cymbal crashers.
Briggs took a few steps forward, then thrust out his hand for balance, barely finding the wall before he fell. “Dizzy, too.”
Intel on the mine said that symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning included headache, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion — all from an odorless, colorless gas, a silent and elusive killer, the chemical version of one Sam Fisher.
“We need to get out of here,” he cried. “Come on, run!”
They started forward, but not five steps later the ground quaked again.
Gasping, Fisher turned his gaze up to the ceiling, where a crack had opened and began splintering into more cracks, the webs threatening to pry apart the crossbars and buckle the supporting girders to their left and right.
The first explosion must’ve weakened the tunnel in this section. Fisher was no engineer, no seasoned miner, but he determined that if they didn’t reach the far end of the tunnel in the next few breaths, their deaths, wakes, funerals, and burials would occur with drive-thru expediency. At least Grim would save a few bucks on the flowers.
Briggs picked up the pace as shards of rock began plummeting behind them. The ceiling began to give way in a timpani roll of thunder that Fisher imagined would consume them whole.
Helmet lights were flashing at the far end, and Fisher picked up the pace, struggling up beside Briggs, who was beginning to falter.
“Almost there,” he urged the man, his voice strangely thin and unrecognizable.
With a terrific boom the rest of the ceiling collapsed, spitting forward a huge dust cloud that knocked both of them down onto their hands and knees.
The ground shook again, and Fisher tucked his face back into his parka for a few breaths.
When he glanced over at Briggs, the man was lying flat on his belly and unconscious. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His cheeks caved in.
There were few feelings in the world that Fisher despised more than helplessness. Being in control gave him a sense of peace and security, a sense of place and purpose.
But damn it, they couldn’t fight if they couldn’t breathe. He fell forward, smiting a fist on the ground.
No, this couldn’t be it. Not here, not now, not like this.
He thought he would vomit, but the darkness came first.
“What are you afraid of?”
Fisher wasn’t sure who was asking the question, but the voice sounded strangely like his own.
“I’m afraid that everything I’ve done with my life will mean nothing. I’m afraid of losing my daughter again. I’m afraid of being a terrible father.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“What about death?”
“No. I’m only afraid for my friends… for Sarah.”
The sun was in his eyes, and he was no longer pinned against a mantle of stars. The world spun chaotically for a moment, and his head throbbed.
He gasped and bolted upright, his senses failing him at first. Then… the nausea returned.
Opening his eyes to slits, he stared at the woman floating over him, her face out of focus then slowly, inevitably, growing distinct. Wild black hair. Chapped lips.
The Snow Maiden.
23
Major Viktoria Kolosov smirked at the two Americans she’d been tracking since they’d escaped from Sochi.
She’d been unable to find anything on the taller, older one, but there was some intel on the black man who’d shot her in the arm, a former CIA paramilitary spec ops officer, surname Briggs, thus it was no stretch to assume that the other operator was a spy as well.
Judging from the looks on their faces, they’d thought she’d given up. What did they know about her resolve? Her tenacity?
Very little back then. Very much right now.
She’d used Nadia’s chip to track them from Sochi to Bichvinta to Trabzon, and then back to Incirlik Air Base, where the signal from the chip had been cut off. It was there that she’d called upon an SVR agent operating within the base. He reported the transfer of a young woman from a C-17 to a private charter jet. That would be Nadia, whisked off to the United States, the chip removed from her back. She was a total loss now; however, the agents who’d captured her were, she believed, still on Kasperov’s trail, and she needed to follow them. That Nadia had been taken to the C-17 first instead of the base intrigued the Snow Maiden, and so she followed up on that aircraft.
Where was it headed next? She needed to review the flight plan, and yes its pilots would file one. No matter how clandestine the plane or its mission, clearances needed to be granted so that the aircraft wasn’t mistaken for a hostile and engaged by antiaircraft guns or attacked by fighter jets. The Americans could lie all they wanted about the plane’s true identity but not its course, especially if it planned to fly through other governments’ airspace.
The government of Turkey required a flight plan six hours prior to takeoff, although special permissions were granted for some military and diplomatic aircraft, allowing them to file just an hour or two prior, or even just after takeoff.