It was working.
She had no clear idea of how close the Spetsnaz were, so she dare not waste any time. The instant she rounded the tip of the point, breaking the line of sight with her pursuers, she broke laterally into the sea ice, scrambling over the man-high pressure ridge at the beach edge.
Crossing from the trail, Valentina carefully plotted each step and handgrip, hopping from one slab of snow-bared ice to the next like a person crossing a stream on stepping-stones, striving to minimize the trail she left. It would be impossible to leave no trace at all. Her pursuers would see where her boot tracks stopped on the main trail, but she was striving for confusion, to hold this one facet of the enemy in the killing zone for the arrival of the second.
Working her way roughly twenty yards offshore, she swung westward again, like a canny white-tail buck circling behind its stalking hunter. Out here, the sea ice was a living thing-softer, green-tinged, buckling and breaking with the rise and sink of the tides and the drag of the currents. Whipping out the survival blanket she carried, Valentina donned it as a camouflage cloak, wearing the white side out. Sinking down, she wormed along on hands and knees, staying below the outer edge of the pressure ridge.
She moved silently, but once she was almost startled into a yelp when a mushy emerald puddle of ice crystals erupted in front of her and she found herself literally nose to nose with an equally unnerved ring seal. Snorting in her face, the seal plunged back through his breathing hole, leaving her to reestablish her own breathing.
Then she heard the voices to shoreward. Her hunters had come to the break in her trail. That was it. The time for running was over. Drawing the white protective sheeting closer, she merged into a notch in the pressure ridge. Drawing her legs up tightly against her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees, she assumed the pu ning mu position, the “hiding like a stone” of ninjutsu. She also drew the neck of the sweatshirt up and over her mouth and nose, breathing down into the garment to kill her breath plume. Valentina Metrace became just another block of ice.
The pack beneath her creaked and sighed. The voices faded to an occasional fragmented mutter. By now the arms smugglers must have figured out what she had done and where she had gone. By now someone would be standing atop the pressure ridge, scanning with binoculars.
He’d be looking for color and movement. If she denied her hunters both, she’d be immune, at least for a time. Unfortunately Randi Russell had given these men the slip in much this same way before. It was questionable that they’d just give up twice. They’d look. They’d think. They’d talk it over for a minute. Then they’d start probing into the sea ice after her.
At least until the Russians walked in on them.
Valentina focused on breathing without chest movement. This was no worse than sitting it out in a leopard blind, only she couldn’t see, and she was the one being set for. She pushed her other senses out beyond the second skin of the survival blanket, listening for the rasp of exertion breathing or the vibration of a footfall on ice. Her fingers eased into the sleeve of her sweater, their tips touching the hilt of the knife strapped to her forearm.
Jon and the others should be well on their way by now. They’d be moving toward the station along the base of the ridge. With this batch of guns drawn off and theoretically engaged by the Spetsnaz, they’d have a better chance when they put the station and landing ground under sniper fire. Divide and conquer. Good strategy, Jon.
She gulped and wished she could sneak a mouthful of snow. Let’s see, what to do should the Spetsnaz not show? Don’t wait to be fallen over. Jump and knife the nearest man. Drop the second closest with a throw. Commandeer a submachine gun and ammunition. Keep to the cover of the pressure ridge, maximize casualties, and buy Jon and Randi their time yourself.
There, that was something of a plan anyway.
Where in the hell were those bloody Russians? Wasn’t that just the way of the world? There was never a Bolshevik around when you needed one.
Someone nearby gave a startled yell and an SMG chattered. Valentina went stark stiff for an instant, then realized there had been no shock of a bullet impact. Another automatic weapon replied-the sharper, more piercing crackle of a small-caliber assault rifle. Valentina recognized an AK-74. The Spetsnaz had just put their foot in it!
More shouts followed. A scream trailed off. The exchange of gunfire built explosively.
Valentina allowed herself a full, deep breath. Blinking for a moment in the snow-refracted sunlight, she slipped out from under the camo blanket. Drawing one of her knives, she began to slither on her belly through the buckled ice, moving toward the heart of the burgeoning firefight.
Jon’s orders had been specific. When their enemies engaged each other she was to fall back and disengage immediately. But Valentina had decided upon a loose definition of “immediate.” She intended to linger a bit, extending military assistance to both sides of the conflict.
At the first crash of automatic weapons fire, Jon Smith had drawn up sharply and looked back. Then, when it was returned and built in volume, he managed a grin. That was a battle, not an execution.
They’d been double-timing along the base of the central ridge, keeping out of sight of the shoreline trail. It had been snowshoe work and hard going, but they’d already covered a fair portion of the distance back to the science station. Now if they could only make the high ground overlooking the helipad and Kretek’s helicopter without being seen, they’d stand a chance of bitching somebody’s works.
The question marks were Val and Randi. Would Val be able to get clear and rejoin, and could Randi keep it together? Randi was slumped against Smyslov with her eyes closed and with the concerned Russian half-supporting her as she gasped for breath. She was carrying neither pack nor weapon, and he couldn’t doubt her will. But running in snowshoes was murderous even for someone who hadn’t already been half-killed by hypothermia.
“Randi?”
She looked up, her shadow-rimmed eyes fierce. “Go!” she whispered. “Just go!”
Three plumes of smoke rose over Wednesday Island Station. All three huts had now been torched. The remaining security teams had been pulled in tight around the Halo, the flight and demolition men were on board, and the heating tents around the engines had been stricken. Kretek paced warily beside the big aircraft, his sense of unease growing.
He glanced down at the submachine gun he carried. The MP-5 was a professional’s weapon, and the woman who had carried it had been a consummate professional. What of the others he had been told of? This history professor, the Russian and American military officers. Had they been of the same breed as the lethal little blonde? What of the team leader, this Jon Smith? Obviously it was the crudest of cover names. Who was he really?
For the thousandth time Kretek’s eyes swept the high ground above the station, tasting the blood from his cold-cracked lips. He could smell more than the smoke of the burning huts. He could smell the stink of an operation going rotten.
This was wrong. He’d acted without thinking when he’d sent Mikhail after the girl. Appearing above the camp at that moment had been too convenient, and he had snapped at the dangled bait too rapidly. Somebody was setting something up.
On an ordinary job, any other job, he would abort and run. But this was the job. The one that would never come again.
Abruptly he stopped his pacing and yelled up through the Halo’s open fuselage door, “Prepare to start the engines.”
One of the demolitions men leaned out of the hatch. “I haven’t rigged the time fuse on the other helicopter yet, sir.”
Because of its proximity to the parked Halo, the smaller Jet Ranger couldn’t be blown until after they were in the air.