The Survivor (36 page)

Gadai started for the door as his men cast off the still-thrashing woman. “Burn everything. And tell our pilots to lay in a flight plan to Ukhta.”

N
ORTHWESTERN
R
USSIA

T
HE
plane's left side dipped violently, stretching the seat belt across Mitch Rapp's lap and slamming his head into the window. He awoke and squinted through the glass, but there wasn't much to see. A wing with a disconcerting number of rivets missing, heavy snow streaking past the lights, and the darkness beyond.

Another violent gust struck but this time the plane rose, shoving him down in his seat with impressive force. He closed his eyes again. The weather was the pilot's problem. And while the Russians couldn't do much right, they did blizzards better than anyone.

A long, terrified scream became audible but he ignored it and let himself drift again. It was the first time in days that he'd been able to get fully asleep. There would be no more posthumous chess games with Joe Rickman. No more talk. Finally, he and his team had an opportunity to take action.

Marcus Dumond—the source of the scream—believed that if their competition really was Pakistan, enough files had been released for the ISI to have traced the location of the hacker they were on their way to find. In fact, S Wing operatives might have already been there, obtained Rickman's encryption key, and gone. If that was the case, the
trip to Russia would be a complete waste of time but still better than standing around Langley waiting for another gloating video to hit Kennedy's inbox.

Rapp felt a hand close on his shoulder followed by the voice of Scott Coleman shouting over the roar of the wind and straining engines. “We're going in!”

“Crashing or landing?”

“I'm not sure. The good news is that the pilot says we'll be fine. The bad news is that it looks like he's been crying.”

Rapp just nodded and went back to sleep.

•  •  •

“Mitch! Rise and shine. We made it!”

Rapp opened his eyes and stretched, looking around at the carnage on the small plane. Most of the overhead bins had given way during landing, leaving some of their gear strewn across empty seats and the rest on the floor. Charlie Wicker and Bruno McGraw were gathering everything up while Marcus Dumond clutched his laptop, looking queasy. He was standing near the cockpit as their sweat-soaked pilot threw a shoulder repeatedly against the door. It finally came free with a blast of wind nearly strong enough to knock him over. That didn't deter Dumond, though. He leapt through the opening and into the snow.

The cold was both immediate and lung searing. Rapp pulled on a white parka designed to camouflage him against the winter landscape and headed for the front. The stairs were down now and he descended, pulling Dumond out of a snowbank and dusting him off.

“I shouldn't be here, Mitch. I'm a tech guy. This is ops. It's fucking freezing and we're a hundred miles from the middle of nowhere. We could get trapped out here. How would anybody help us? No one even knows we're here, do they? I told my girlfriend I was—”

“Marcus. Shut up and try to relax.”

Rapp moved away, studying what little he could see. Beyond the circle of illumination generated by the plane, there was nothing but
blackness. Inside the circle, there was nothing but snow. If anyone was out there, they'd have an advantage, but not much of one. Even a shooter with state-of-the-art optics would have to be within ten yards to even pick out a target, let alone hit it.

His men started throwing duffels out the door just as the muffled hum of a motor separated itself from the storm. A set of lights appeared a few moments later, mounted to a bright red tracked vehicle. Rapp unzipped his jacket for better access to his weapon as it came to a stop. The logo was Cyrillic but below was an English translation: Shulyov Hunting and Snowmobile Tours.

They'd gotten lucky when Nash found the outfitter. Their camp was only about thirty miles from where the Rickman files were being released by a Russian crook named Pavel Katdsyn. Their cover was as a last-minute booking by a corporate team-building group. There wasn't time to create an elaborate legend, so Rapp just had to hope that Nash hadn't missed anything. After Istanbul, it wasn't a great time for him to get recognized in Russia.

A figure in a North Face Himalayan suit jumped out of the vehicle and started running toward them. It wasn't until the person got within a few feet that Rapp could make out the face inside the hood. The woman's skin was a bit more windburned than the pictures he'd seen but still unlined, with dark eyes and a long, straight nose. She was only twenty-nine and as far as the CIA could tell had spent nearly all of those years in this wilderness. Her father had started the company after leaving the Soviet army and had run it until his death two years ago.

“Mr. Kramer!” she said, extending a gloved hand. “I'm Irena Shulyov. I'm so sorry I wasn't here to meet you. We only just got word from the pilot that you were coming in. We never expected him to fly in this weather. Are you and your people all right?”

“Fine,” Rapp said, regretting not putting Scott Coleman front and center to deal with her. He did easygoing charm a lot more convincingly. “There was a little turbulence there at the end, but not too bad.”

Her expression was incredulous, and he realized that he'd overplayed his attempt to be disarming. Shulyov's clientele were probably accustomed to safer and more luxurious travel methods. In contrast, he and his men had spent half their lives stuffed into the back of C-130s. At least the aircraft they'd come in on that day had windows and wasn't a prime target for every radical old enough to lift a rocket launcher.

“We heard there's a wolf pack in the area,” he said, changing the subject. “Do you think we'll have a chance to get a few photos?”

She looked past him at Coleman, who was still tossing duffels to McGraw and Wicker on the ground. Dumond had carved out a rough seat in the snow and was planted in it, trying to calm down.

“That's a lot of gear.”

“We weren't sure what to bring, so I guess you could say we brought everything.”

“This is no problem,” she said, still looking a bit confused. “Let me help you carry your bags to the truck.”

She started around Rapp, but he blocked her path and thumbed toward Dumond. “We can handle it. My friend over there got a little airsick on the way in, though. Maybe you could take him to your rig. A little sympathy wouldn't hurt, either.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry! Of course.”

Shulyov rushed to his side and helped him up. Keeping an arm locked in his, she chatted encouragingly as they made their way across the snowpack.

“Cute,” Charlie Wicker said, coming up next to Rapp.

“Your kind of woman.”

Wicker was debatably one of the top five operatives in the world and undisputedly one of the top three snipers. He'd grown up in a small town in Wyoming hunting with his brothers. When he was twelve, he'd gotten separated from them in a storm not unlike this one. After three days, everyone assumed he was dead and that they wouldn't find him until the snow melted in the spring. On day four he'd emerged from the wilderness without a scratch, dragging an antelope he'd shot.

Rapp originally thought it was just a legend, but when Wicker left
the SEALs to join Coleman's company, he'd pulled the man's file. In it was a copy of the news story, complete with a photo of a skinny kid with a big grin and a rifle towering over his back. Since then, not much had changed.

“Grab the gear and let's get out of here,” Rapp said. “I want to be on the trail in an hour.”

I
RENA
Shulyov seemed to be piloting the vehicle entirely by memory. The powerful headlights illuminated nothing but a disorienting tunnel of snowflakes that looked like they were being shot from a cannon. Powerful windshield wipers swept manically across the glass, but appeared to have no purpose other than to create an electric whine that competed with the howl of the wind.

According to the Agency's weather forecasters, the storm would continue through the night with temperatures dipping into the single digits. Windchill would be in the negative-twenty range. Not exactly Rapp's favorite operating conditions.

A few years back he'd acknowledged this gap in his skill set and joined a couple of SAS friends on a two-month-long training session in Antarctica. To this day, he remembered it as sixty of the most miserable days of his life—a blur of frozen appendages, unruly sled dogs, and hypothermia.

Rapp had managed to be the first to drag himself across the finish line of a hundred-mile self-supported race across the tundra. He could still hear the instructor's comment: “Well, you can't ski for shit, but you've
sure got a big motor.” Even fresher in his mind was the frost-bitten chunk of his right thumb that turned black and fell off. It eventually grew back, but he still didn't have full sensation.

“I don't want you and your friends to worry!” Irena Shulyov shouted over the ambient noise. “We have a high-pressure system coming in tomorrow. Blue skies and no wind. It will be a perfect day for touring and taking photos.”

That jibed with what he'd been told but unless things went very wrong, he and his team would be long gone before visibility got much over a mile.

“Sounds great.”

“How is your friend doing?”

Rapp glanced back at Dumond, sandwiched between Coleman and Wicker. It was a bit hard to tell in the dim light but he seemed a little less green than he had back at the plane.

“Fine. He's really looking forward to taking in the sights.”

Rapp couldn't see her face, but the giant hood she was still wearing moved forward and back in what he assumed was a nod.

“Is there anything in particular you and your friends would like to do? I see you brought skis. Avalanche danger will likely be considerable but there are some lower-angle slopes that will remain stable. We're expecting at least two meters out of this storm.”

She spoke a little too fast, jumbling her passable English. It was possible that the nervousness was just a holdover from having her clients coming in on such a dangerous flight, but he suspected it was more than that. It would be pretty clear to anyone with even a room-temperature IQ that they weren't middle managers from Procter & Gamble. So now Irena Shulyov found herself alone in the wilderness with a group of men who would probably be familiar to her from her father's time in the Russian military.

“What kind of work do you do?” she asked, the silence obviously magnifying her discomfort.

“Product development.”

“What kind of products?”

“How
long have you lived here?” Rapp said, changing the subject.

“All my life. I went to college in St. Petersburg but hated the city. The people, the cars. The buildings blocking the sky. I can't imagine being anywhere else.”

Rapp was about to ask another question to keep the conversation focused on her, but she pointed through the windshield.

“We're here. That's the main building. My guides have prepared food and we have drinks available there if you like. If you're tired, though, I can take you directly to your cabins.”

“Are all of your guides in the main building?”

“Yes.”

“How many do you have working for you?”

Rapp knew he was being less than subtle, but there wasn't time to screw around.

“Only two,” she said. “My permanent men. In the high season I have as many as six.”

“Why don't we swing in for a drink, then,” Rapp said. “I'd like to meet them.”

“Of course.”

Irena relaxed a bit and it was no mystery why. According to Nash's intel, her two guides were brothers, both in their mid-thirties and both born and bred in the area. One was former army and the other had spent eight years roughnecking on oil rigs. They weren't to be underestimated.

She pulled up in front of a log building and Rapp twisted around to face the rear seats before getting out. “Irena's going to introduce us to our guides.”

Coleman gave a barely perceptible nod. The hope was that this would go smoothly, but the only thing that really mattered was that it went fast. The clock was ticking.

Snow blasted the exposed skin on Rapp's face, turning to ice on his beard as they passed through a rough-hewn door. Inside, it was probably only about forty degrees, but that temperature felt like the tropics by comparison.

“The
main building is a bit rustic,” Irena apologized. “But don't worry. The cabins were completely updated only a year ago.”

The modest heat was generated by a single greasy woodstove in the corner. The room was approximately thirty feet square with a rest-room at the back. The door to it was open and Rapp confirmed that it was unoccupied. Both guides were standing next to a low table arranged with liquor and food. They looked as formidable as expected.

Dumond went straight toward them, giving each a polite smile before going for the vodka. His actions were more the product of his near-death experience on the plane than a preconceived plan, but they worked nicely to divert the men's attention. Coleman used the opportunity to check out a shortwave radio near the building's only window. Wicker and McGraw took up positions on either side of the door.

“Alexi, Stepan,” Irena said. “I'd like to introduce you to Mitch Kramer.”

Rapp shook their hands and exchanged a few pleasantries before pointing to a map on the wall. The CIA had some broad-stroked stuff and a few high-resolution photos, but this looked quite a bit more detailed.

“So where are we?”

Irena tapped her finger near the center while her men took drink orders from the rest of his team. “Right here. Tomorrow we'll go out through this shallow canyon to the north. The plateau it leads to is where the wolf pack has been seen. With the weather clearing, I think we have a good chance of getting close enough for photos.”