After allowing his legs to know the earth for a moment, he turned and pulled his skis off the special rack on the landing skids. Mounted on the other side of the tubular skid strut was a 9mm machine gun that the pilot could fire after aiming his machine at the target.
Crepov decided there might be something to these things after all. He placed his skis, stepped into them and clamped the bindings over the toes of his boots. After stretching his legs for a minute, he struck off toward the game trail he had spotted from the air.
Where are you going?” the captain snapped. “I didn’t order you to move out.”
Crepov stopped and twisted to regard her.
“I’m going to do my job. I will also do as I please. You may do the same.” He moved out again, setting a track for them to follow.
Not until he reached the game trail did he look back. They were methodically closing his hundred meter lead. He carefully examined the trail.
Only small game and predator tracks; no ski had passed since the last snow. From the crust on the white mantle, he would estimate the last snowfall at over a week before.
The captain slid up to him, trying not to breathe hard. Crepov pointed to the trail.
“What?” she asked, looking at it then back at him.
“No human has been by here yet. Are you sure this is where our quarry will pass?”
“Yes, as sure as I can be.”
“Then let’s find a good ambush site.” He skied down the trail toward the tree-covered ridges.
21
Grisha and Nik sat and ate a cold lunch on a pile of needles under an unusually large spruce tree. After swallowing his last bite of moose jerky, Grisha said, “I want some fresh meat.”
“We don’t have any.”
“I know that. I want to hunt for a while. This is a game trail.”
“Not now. Maybe tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to hunt if you don’t want to, General,” Grisha said.
“But I’m hungry for rabbit.”
“But…”
Grisha abruptly stood and secured his poles to his pack before swinging it onto his shoulders. He put on his skis and finally picked up the recurve bow and his quiver.
“Grisha, please let me be in front.”
“I’m a better hunter than you are,” he said with a grin. “Better shot too. Besides, you’ve been in front all day long. It’s my turn.”
“Tomorrow you can be in front. Today I want to be first.”
Grisha stared hard at his companion.
“I heard a saying once that they use down in the American countries.
’Go fuck yourself,’ is what they say. And that’s exactly what you can do.” He skied away, pulling an arrow out of the quiver as he went.
The game trail wound through the woods and curved into a cut separating two ridges. He decided there could be game in the heavy brush at the cut. He nocked an arrow and skied as quietly as he could into the entrance.
Abruptly a snowshoe hare bolted out of the brush ahead and ran toward him for three lunging strides. Suddenly the animal saw Grisha and veered off to the man’s right. For five seconds the hare presented an easily accessible target before disappearing in the timbered flank of the ridge.
Grisha didn’t shoot. His heart thundered in his ears and he concentrated on maintaining his grip on the bowstring.
What scared the animal? Wrong time of the year for bear. Nik is behind me. Maybe a moose? St. Nicholas, please let it be a moose.
He crept forward a step, then hesitated. He glanced behind him. In the distance, Nik slid into his pack and took his first sliding stride toward Grisha.
He jerked his head around to face the cut again. The merest breath of a sound carried across the snow to his ears. The bow suddenly seemed like a child’s toy as he recognized the protest of oiled metal against metal.
Another glance over his shoulder. Nik moved forward swiftly, craning his head to get a better look at Grisha.
Good. He knows something out of the ordinary is happening.
Slowly, quietly, Grisha eased the skis backward. No good—he had to keep looking back to judge his steps. He bent down and rapidly unfastened his bindings.
He pulled the skis up and jammed them butt down in the snow. Watching the cut as closely as possible, he carefully retreated back down the trail. Nik slid to a stop ten meters away and waited.
Grisha got to his friend’s ski tips before he allowed himself to whisper.
“There’s somebody in the cut.”
“How do you know?” Nik stared past Grisha, watching the cut.
He told about the snowshoe hare, hesitated.
“Then I heard someone chamber a round.”
“Your hearing must be extraordinary,” Nik said softly, “or else you’re imagining things.”
Grisha felt his jaw muscles go taut and he squinted at the man.
“I know what I heard,” he hissed. “There’s somebody in there.”
“Well, move then, let me see.”
Nik swung a ski pole up and smacked it across Grisha’s left arm. Instinctively, Grisha jerked away from the pole just before it made contact and fell flat in the slightly softer snow at trail’s edge.
Nik skied for the cut. Grisha stifled a roar of anger and, gripping his bow and arrow in one hand, flopped through the deep snow to the relative firmness of the trail. He scrambled to his feet as Nik passed Grisha’s skis, standing like silent sentinels.
The Russian disappeared into the cut. Grisha ran to his skis, quickly dropped them on the trail and snapped down the spring-loaded clamp over the front lip of his boot soles. Then he was gliding along, smoothly, silently, swiftly, arrow nocked, adrenaline charged. He skied into the cut.
22
As soon as Bear Crepov saw the cut in the ridgeline, he knew it perfect for an ambush site. He side stepped off the game trail and motioned for the captain to come up next to him. When she stopped beside him, the Kalashnikov lay cradled in her right arm, her finger on the trigger.
What is it?” she said loudly.
Bear winced and nearly slapped her. “Quiet, you bitch! Do you want them to kill us?”
She blinked at him, whispered, “Are they close?”
“They have to be. Get your pet corporal into the brush line over there,” he pointed, “and I’ll take cover on the other side of the trail. You pull back into those spruce behind that large mound, I think it’s a rock.”
“Are you worried for my safety?”
He quickly searched her face for signs of mockery, but found none.
“I think you can take care of yourself,” he said slowly. “But if there’s shooting I want you out of the way. You’re the only one who knows why we’re doing this.” He skied ahead another thirty meters, stopped, took his skis off, and hid his equipment in the brush.
The corporal quietly disappeared on the other side of the trail. Crepov glanced back down the trail but could see nothing of the woman. He carefully pulled the slide back on his weapon and chambered a round.
The quiet of winter settled on him. No birds this time of year, they had all gone south to the Confederacy and New Spain. He must be his own sentry.
A voice broke the stillness. Bear couldn’t make out the words, but he knew it for human. He tensed when he heard skis on snow, moving fast.
23
Valari Kominskiya saw the huge promyshlennik stiffen and raise his weapon slightly. She pulled back a little even though it was impossible for anyone on the trail to see her. She felt a thrill of fear when close to the woodsman and had yet to decide whether she liked it or not.