Black Eagle (Jason Trapp Book 6)
Date: 2021-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Black Eagle

Jason Trapp Book 6

Jack Slater

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Epilogue

Author’s Note

1

The bar on Ulitsa Dekabristov in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk had lived many lives. Concentric circles of motor oil on the grimy concrete floor spoke to a previous incarnation as an automobile repair shop. Faint, darkened outlines of units against the far walls told of years spent as a grocery store.

And now it was a drinking establishment. Trapp pushed the door open, blasting a gust of icy wind into the space and earning him a curse. He closed it and dusted the snow off his boots. He was wearing outdoor gear—brandless, colorless, drab, but warm enough to meet the 10° weather of the sub-Arctic in April.

The street of Ulitsa Dekabristov was a half mile from the brutalist Soviet office block that housed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Federation of Russia. The ministry was responsible for the Politsiya—the feared Russian federal police service. A number of Politsiya officers were seated in the small establishment, mostly in small groups, their fur hats placed by their glasses on the table in front of them. There were a few lieutenants, younger men who already sported the grizzled features chiseled into them by the cold and the dark of the northern region. A captain was reading the paper, and a fat major, distinguished by the single gold star over two red stripes on his dark blue epaulets, was seated near the beer taps. He still had his jacket on instead of draped over the back of his bar stool. A half-drunk beer glass was clutched in a liver-spotted hand, and two full shots of vodka sat a short distance away.

Trapp walked toward him, lifting his pack off his shoulder and setting it by his side. He took a seat on the bar but left a few stools between him and the major, who didn’t look over. He studied him through his peripheral vision. The officer was even more corpulent up close than at a distance. Heavy, toad-like jowls hung over his collar. His nose was a luminous red, and not, Trapp suspected, from the cold.

“Pivo, pozhaluysta,” Trapp grumbled as he sat down. Beer, please.

The bartender furnished his request with neither smile nor comment. He merely stuck out his arm for payment. Trapp supplied the necessary rubles, and with the trade complete, he began to drink.

The beer was a local lager, neither tasty, offensive, or memorable. Still, it went down surprisingly easily as the warmth began to return to Trapp’s limbs. It wasn’t so much the temperature outside that was hard to manage, but the wind, which found every crack in your clothing and punished them mercilessly. He didn’t understand why anyone would choose to live this far north, where the mercury plunged far below zero, and days in winter lasted just a couple of hours.

But they did, and so he was here.

The bar was barely decorated, save for two portraits on the wall. The larger one was stacked over the other and bore the image of the president of the Russian Federation, a man whom Trapp knew well. The other face belonged to the governor of Irkutsk Oblast.

The bartender approached him. The first—and so far only—words out of his mouth were, “Another?”

Trapp nodded and pushed the now-empty glass back across the bar. “Da.” Yes.

This trade went much like the last. The bartender wasn’t a man of conversation, and Trapp appreciated that. He had a working understanding of Russian, if long forgotten, and this was by no means his first excursion into the country. But the crash language courses that often preceded a foreign operation that Langley greenlit usually focused on what the Agency knew best: the cultured dialect and accents used by diplomats in Moscow.

Not the thick, grunted indifference of the inhabitants of a place like Irkutsk.

Still, Trapp thought as he steadily drank his way through the second glass of beer, the language was coming back to him. He’d been in-country for almost a week now, making his way across the vast nation from Moscow to Siberia by plane, train, bus, and car. And unlike tonight, he’d spent as many hours as possible practicing. He wasn’t quite a natural at languages, though he was intelligent and had a passably good ear, but he had persistence on his side. And the knowledge that a single slipup could cost him his life was as good a motivator as any.

Instead of talking, he listened. But the bartender was silent, and the Politsiya major beside him seemed mostly consumed by getting as drunk as possible as fast as he could. The other inhabitants of the establishment were somewhat noisier. The junior officers were engaged in a heated conversation about the relative merits of the various ice hockey teams Trapp learned were to compete at a tournament at Lake Baikal the coming month. He observed them lazily in the mirrored finish behind the bar.

“They’re shit,” a dark-haired, rat-like lieutenant scoffed, his voice carrying across the bar. “You know that.”

“Zayetsev’s son is in net.” Another shrugged. “You think they’ll lose?”

“Forget about him,” the rat said, flicking the air with disgust.

“How can I forget about him? You think anything else matters?”

“Quiet,” the major beside Trapp grumbled, twisting his neck without turning his frame and chiding the younger men. He rubbed his temples. “I’m trying to think.”

Trapp doubted that. He signaled for the bartender’s attention by clicking his fingers consistently in the air.

The man shuffled over to him, scowling. “What?”

“Vodka,” Trapp replied, handing over the necessary rubles. “A bottle.”

The bartender shrugged and returned a moment later with a couple of small glasses and the requested liquor. “Just for you?”

“What does it matter to you?” Trapp grunted, reaching for the chilled vodka and pouring himself a strong measure. He lifted it to his lips and tossed it back in one without grimacing. In truth, it wasn’t too bad. Vodka was one thing the Russians did well, he had to give them that. Though given how much they drank, that was kind of table stakes.

“Go to hell,” the barman said, turning away. He didn’t seem particularly offended. Dealing with slovenly drunks was just part of the job, especially in a region where half of all men drank themselves to death by their mid-fifties.

I’m already there, Trapp thought. He poured another shot, and it met the same fate. Already, the combination of liquor and fatigue was a potent mix in his veins.

“Who are you?” the police major asked, turning toward him and resting his bulk on his right elbow. The man reached for one of the vodka shots in front of him, by now many times refilled, and succeeded in spilling a few drops onto the wooden bar before it reached his mouth.

Trapp stared studiously forward without responding. He pushed the empty shot glass from side to side across the wooden bar, listening to the rhythmic sound it made. The major was breathing heavily, clearly drunk. It was an off-putting, almost stomach-turning sound, or would have been if Trapp’s gut wasn’t already home to a seething pit of straight liquor.

He felt the weight of the man’s gaze on his skin and flicked his fingers dismissively without saying a word. He heard a grunt in reply.

“You!” the Russian said, almost accusingly. He slurred his words. “I asked you a question.”

“What do you want?” Trapp snarled, finally turning toward the man. “Can’t you see I’m trying to drink?”

The Politsiya major recoiled slightly, his befuddled drunken features scrunching not so much in fright as surprise. He was patently not a man who often found himself on the receiving end of a verbal broadside. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Trapp said, reaching for the bottle and refilling his glass. He deliberately caused his hand to shake as he did so, spilling a few drops.

“No need to be so rude,” the Russian said. He looked meaningfully at the bottle in front of Trapp. “Why don’t you make amends?”

Trapp guzzled down the new shot of vodka, inhaling slightly as the liquor raced down his throat on a carpet of fumes. It caused a lightheadedness that combined with the alcohol coursing through his veins. “What, you want my vodka now, too?”

“Where are you from?”

Saying nothing, Trapp reached for the unused shot glass and filled it to the brim with the clear liquor. He refilled his own once again and pushed the spare across the bar with a perfunctory nod. “Drink it. And leave me the hell alone.”

The Politsiya officer reached for the glass with a face like thunder, almost over balancing as he did so. Yet he pulled the glass toward him with the perfect balance of a practiced drunk, not spilling a drop. “You should work on your manners.”

“I gave you a drink, didn’t I?” Trapp mumbled. He tipped back another shot of his own.

By now, his own drunkenness was far from just an act. His stomach was roiling with over a third of a bottle of vodka, never mind the two beers. It wasn’t so much the volume of alcohol as the speed with which he had imbibed it. And on an empty stomach, no less.

“I don’t recognize you,” the Russian said. “Where have you come from?”

Trapp refilled his drink. “Who says I have to speak to you, old man?”

“Old!” the Russian said, his voice booming across the bar and momentarily silencing his junior colleagues, who looked toward the commotion. “You have a lot of nerve.”

The bar fell entirely silent. The assorted Politsiya were now engrossed by the growing ruckus, all talk of women and ice hockey temporarily forgotten. The few civilian customers were beginning to look a little uneasy, though nobody attempted to leave.

Trapp said nothing. He reached for the bottle again. Poured yet another shot of vodka. Lifted it to his lips.

“Say something!” the Russian commanded.

“Here,” Trapp said, sprawling across the bar as he reached for the major’s empty glass to refill it. “I told you once already—drink that and leave me alone.”

“I don’t want your vodka,” the major said with a tone of a man who understood that his colleagues’ eyes were upon him.

“That’s not what you said a moment ago,” Trapp mumbled.

The major stood, his barstool scraping against the concrete floor. “Say that to my face, prick.”

“Otyebis ot menya,” Trapp said. Get the fuck away from me.

“Look at me,” the major commanded. Trapp heard the metallic click as he unclipped his holster. “Before I have you arrested.”

Trapp reached for the vodka bottle. He stood up, pushing his own barstool back. Still, he did not give the Russian his attention. Instead, he gripped the bar until his knuckles turned white. His beard, two weeks old, began to itch even through the fog of his drunkenness.

Finally, he turned. He brandished the half-empty bottle in front of the fat major’s eyes. “You want this?”

“Put that down,” the man replied. If it wasn’t for a steadying hand of his own against the bar, Trapp suspected he would be swaying.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me? When was the last time you checked out on that thing? I bet you couldn’t hit a barn door at five paces, you impotent fuck.”

The major’s face went beet red, starting at the already rosy nose and glowing outward like a volcano erupting. “Say that again.”

“You want this?” Trapp said, gesturing at the man with the bottle. The cap was a little unscrewed, and a few droplets sloshed out as he shook it. “Come and get it.”

As the major started to draw his weapon, Trapp moved. He smashed the vodka bottle against the bar, and the crack of shattering glass seemed to stun the entire room into paralysis. The Russian’s eyes went wide as he saw the jagged weapon now in Trapp’s hands.

“Not so brave now are you, you drunk?” Trapp mumbled, throwing an insult that was somewhat ironic given his present state of mind. He took a step forward.

The major stepped back.

Trapp advanced again.

The Russian retreated.

Trapp waved the bottle around madly and rushed the major, who tripped and fell backward against the concrete floor with an almighty crash. As he went down, Trapp tossed his makeshift weapon aside and straddled the fallen police officer, laying into him with a few heavy yet—if anyone in the room had recognized him—measured blows.

Still, they stole the wind from the major’s gut, and he started to choke. Trapp punched him once in the side for good measure, and what little resistance the man had posed instantly faded.

Finally, the bar seemed to react. A lieutenant—the rat—rushed him, and Trapp reacted slowly, reactions truly numbed by the alcohol. He scrambled backward, tripping over the major’s limp body, and hit the deck, nicking his outstretched hand on a shard of glass and drawing blood.

“Balls.” The curse came out in Russian.

The lieutenant’s first blow—a right hook—was telegraphed a million miles off, even in Trapp’s present condition. He threw up an arm to defend himself against it and lashed out with a strike of his own into the officer’s torso. The impact drove the glass deeper into Trapp’s palm, and he cried out involuntarily.

Winded, the rat stumbled back but angrily urged his compatriots onward. They came. Trapp struggled to his feet, but too late. The next hit came from a brute of a man with the build of a lumberjack and the face of a boxer. It drove the oxygen from Trapp’s lungs.

The next strike dropped him back to the ground. His bloodied hand left a streak on the floor.

Then they started kicking.

2

Trapp woke in a cold, concrete cell that might easily have dated back to the days of Beria’s NKVD. It was windowless and had the damp, still feel of a place deep below ground. The walls were painted a faded hospital green. Clinical. Perhaps that was the intention.

Despite himself, he shivered. This was the kind of place from which people never left. Purgatory.

Status report, he thought as he stirred to life. Where are you? How are you?

The where was most likely the dungeons of the Interior Ministry building, just a few hundred yards from the bar on Ulitsa Dekabristov. The cell itself was small, perhaps ten feet long and five feet wide. There was barely space for a small metal cot without a mattress, only the slats on which he now lay. Not yet willing to trust his body, he explored the frame with his fingers. The slats were welded to it, and he suspected that it was soldered to the floor of the cell.

“Like that matters,” he muttered in Russian. Always Russian now.

The sound bounced off the cell’s hard walls, and without any soft furnishings to dull its edge, it ricocheted back into Trapp’s hungover mind, causing him to wince and reminding him of how he was doing. He placed his palms over his face and groaned. “Never again.”

For now, at least, that was likely. The Politsiya weren’t going to let him get away with this. Not after what he’d done in that bar. They would throw the book at him.

Trapp turned his head and found himself staring at a steel toilet. It was no more than eighteen inches from his face, and the smell that rose from it indicated that it hadn’t been cleaned in a long while.

Perhaps the smell itself, on another day or at a time when he felt less fragile, wouldn’t have been sufficient to provoke what happened.

But it was not another day.

Vomit always has a way of making its presence known a couple of seconds before it actually erupts. There’s usually enough warning to get your fingers to your mouth. Most often not long enough to do anything more substantial about it.

So it proved.

Trapp’s stomach spasmed, and he rolled desperately off the side of the metal cot as a wave of magma rose from deep within him. He landed on his hands and knees, almost knocking himself out on the toilet’s steel rim. He clutched it like a shipwrecked sailor, heedless of the filth that coated it, and shook violently as he painted it with yet more.

Twice more, his stomach clenched, and twice more the liquid supper he’d consumed the previous evening rose from within him. It had an acidic, foul stink that singed the tender flesh of his nostrils and burned the back of his throat.

He moaned into the toilet basin as his stomach clenched and clenched, causing him to dry retch into the filthy receptacle.

After perhaps five, maybe ten minutes of this pathetic desperation, Trapp finally released his hold and sank back against the metal cot. It grated as it accepted his weight.

Only now that the more immediate concern of choking on his own vomit was sated was he able to focus on the just as pressing damage inflicted on his body by the Politsiya officers the day before. He was still wearing the T-shirt and pants that he’d had on when they apprehended him, though the former was now speckled with vomit and blood. The rest of his possessions—his pack, coat, belt, wallet, everything—were gone.

He used the cot’s frame to pull himself halfway up, then heaved himself the rest of the way. His right thigh cried out in pain, and he undid his fly as he leaned against the wall for support. His pants, a size too large and already the victim of several days’ hard traveling, fell to his thick calf muscles. He pushed his boxer shorts to one side and let his eyes drop.

“Dammit,” he groaned as he probed the enormous purple bruise that coated the upper half of his leg, spidering all the way up to his hip. He wasn’t someone who bruised easily, which meant they must have kicked him hard. He didn’t even remember suffering this one.

There was a small washbasin next to the toilet, and he shuffled toward it, his pants still around his ankles. He turned the faucet and grimaced at the flow of water that trickled out, which was feeble, ice-cold—and brown with rust.

Trapp washed his hands first, scything through the grime, then shaking the droplets of filth onto the side of the basin. He dropped his face to it and cleaned what he discovered to be a split lip and a boxer’s ear, both tangled and matted with blood. The injury to his lip had dripped and clotted into his new beard, and the water was still clouding red when he gave up.

He tore the T-shirt over his head, wincing as a particularly unpleasant contusion on his torso announced its presence.

Maybe a broken rib. Hopefully just bruised.

He dropped the T-shirt, then rolled his neck, gingerly testing one leg after another then windmilling his arms, clenching his fists, and touching his toes. The pants still loitered around his ankles. Either pulling them back up or stepping out seemed a bridge too far at the present time.

Trapp concluded that he was hurt but not seriously injured. Unless he had any internal bleeding that might still spell his doom, he was okay. It would take a week or two to fully recover, and even then, strenuous activity would probably cause him to wince, but that was as good as he might have expected.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. A keychain jangled. This place was real old school, that was for sure. He doubted there were any cameras. They could do anything to him down here, and no one would blink an eye.

The cell’s thick steel door swung open, and a mean-looking guard with a linebacker build emerged from behind it, brandishing a thick black baton. He didn’t say a word, but the look on his face was clear enough. Trapp backed away from the entrance, allowing a somewhat fearful expression to crawl across his features.

The guard stepped aside, and the Politsiya major from the bar the night before entered the cell. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, and his white uniform shirt barely contained his gut. He looked much as he had done the previous night, except for the makings of a pretty decent black eye on the left-hand side. His cheek was swollen, the liquid drooping like a toad’s jowls below his chin.

He leered at Trapp. “Not so arrogant now, are you?”

Trapp played dumb. “Who are you?”

The question seemed to take some of the wind out of the major’s sails, though not for long. The man looked his prisoner up and down, drinking in the full details of his near-nakedness and general humiliation, and began to cackle. It took him a good twenty seconds to calm back down. “You don’t remember?”

“What did you thugs do to me?” Trapp demanded. “How did I get here?”

The major squinted. “Are you retarded? Did someone hit you on the head as a little boy?”

“That’s no business of yours,” Trapp replied. “Where are my things?”

Looking slightly bewildered, the officer turned back to the guard who had opened the cell door with a look on his face that said Do you believe this guy? He received an indifferent shrug for his troubles, then turned back. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit,” Trapp agreed with equanimity. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You really don’t remember?” the major asked wonderingly. When he received no response, he shrugged. “You assaulted me. Along with half a dozen other police officers. You know the penalty for that?”

“What proof do you have?”

In reply, the man pointed at his swollen eye. “Does this jog your memory?”

Trapp faked offence. “I would have hit you harder than that.”

“Apparently not.” The major shrugged. “You’re going away for a long time, you know that?”

Mumbling something, Trapp took a step backward.

“What did you say?”

Trapp grinned. He formed his right knuckles into a fist and twisted his aching torso, catching the man in the jaw hard enough to knock his lights out in an instant. “I said I may as well make it count.”

3

Yavoriv Combat Training Center,

Lviv Oblast, Ukraine.

Staff Sergeant Nelson Packer snapped to attention as Lieutenant Graff entered the gently billowing olive-green Ukrainian army tent. The rest of his squad followed suit. They were in various states of undress, though to their squad leader’s relief they were at least all wearing their woodland camo pants.

“Easy,” the young officer said with a tired wave of his hand. “Come with me, Sergeant. There’s a few guys I need you to meet.”

“Yes, sir.”

Packer followed the lieutenant back out through the low, overhanging entrance to the tent. Patches of dirty snow still lingered in places on the ground, and there was a bitter chill to the air as the last clutches of winter refused to give up their grasp. It was almost enough to make a man hanker for the heat of summer back home, and Nelson never thought he would miss the humidity of Atlanta, Georgia.

“What’s this about, Lieutenant?” Packer asked, raising his voice as they passed the motor pool which catered to the military training base in the west of the country that housed the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine.

An old ex-Soviet self-propelled howitzer roared into life as a mechanic worked on it, hollering something in a language that the sergeant didn’t understand before he choked on an eruption of thick, black diesel smoke that suddenly belched from the vehicle’s exhaust. His comrades around him doubled over with laughter as the engine noise died away, though the mechanic in question was left coughing for dear life and clutching his chest for a very different reason.

Packer winced as the scene passed out of sight. The guy would be hacking that shit up for weeks. Maybe he would see the funny side of it in the small window between the wheezing stopping and before he inevitably developed black lung. The mechanics here were doing God’s work, as far as he was concerned, coaxing life out of machinery that ought to have ended up on the scrapheap decades earlier. Some of the tanks the Ukrainians trained their people on must have come out of some Moscow armament factory in the mid-sixties, and it was a miracle that they still ran at all.

As an ear-splitting engine death rattle chased them from behind, he decided that perhaps in this case, at least, one no longer did.

“I understand you and your men are looking forward to a week of leave following tomorrow’s graduation ceremony,” Graff said without stopping.

The sergeant answered warily, “That is correct, sir.”

“Not anymore it isn’t,” the lieutenant said with a grimace. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to your boys. And you, of course. But our Ukrainian friends asked someone on high for a favor, and the shit trickled downhill until it reached my desk.”

“And you kicked it on to me, huh, sir?” Packer said with a wry smile.

“That’s how the world turns, Sergeant,” Graff agreed with amusement.

Packer didn’t mind. Not really. The lieutenant was a good officer, which in his book meant he did his fair share of the paperwork the Army’s bureaucracy demanded and let the men underneath him do what they did best. And the officer was right. If Packer had wanted an employer to respect his vacation days, he wouldn’t have re-upped.

“Yes sir.” He shrugged back with a knowing smile.

Their destination was a temporary barracks tent much like the one they’d just departed. The signs on the base were in English as well as Ukrainian, which was a blessing, as the layout had about as much personality as the sergeant’s first wife.

As he ducked his head inside, Packer was hit by a thick wall of stale cigarette smoke. It reminded him of the smell of the Vegas chapel in which he’d married the wife in question, which handily enough had helped arrange the annulment before he hopped on the shuttle back to Atlanta at the end of the week.

As he blinked away the memory, the interior came into view. A dozen or so Ukrainians—because there was no mistaking their nationality—were either slumped on bunks or playing cards on top of an upturned green ammunition crate. A handle of local vodka sat proudly alongside the cards, the red screw top nowhere to be seen. It was a long way past half empty.

Nobody jumped to attention as either he or the lieutenant entered. That didn’t surprise Packer. The local soldiers he’d helped train over the past few months had been generally willing to learn and had taken quickly to American standards of discipline—but sure hadn’t come to it naturally.

Lieutenant Graff cleared his throat. Bleary eyes turned to face him, some seeming to realize for the first time that anyone had entered the sanctum. Two men rose to their feet. Slowly.

Graff enunciated clearly. “I’m looking for a lieutenant.” He frowned for a second, as if reaching for the name. “Lieutenant Timothy Ponomorenko.”

For a moment there was silence, accented only by the scrape of steel against flint as one of the soldiers sparked a fresh cigarette. The man was bald, through the march of time rather than choice, except at the sides. A beer—or vodka—belly hung over his belt, and his forearm was enveloped by a tattoo of a coiled snake. His gut engorged with air as he sucked in the first breath of his smoke.

Surely that can’t be him, Packer thought as he struggled to keep his face impassive. These men were not soldiers. They were detritus—or at least, that was the persona they had chosen to adopt.

His eye was attracted to the movement of a whippet-like man rising to his feet. His hair was dark and cut short everywhere but about his neck, where it hung in a mullet.

“Timofey,” he said, enunciating the correct pronunciation carefully—though it sounded no different to Packer’s untrained ear. “Not Timothy.”

“Understood, Lieutenant,” Graff said, wisely choosing to continue with the man’s rank rather than his name as he extended his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Hank Graff. This is Staff Sergeant Nelson Packer. He will be helping train your boys on the new equipment.”

Reading the officer’s tone, Packer stepped forward and hesitated only a second before rendering the disheveled Ukrainian lieutenant a crisp salute. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”

Ponomorenko squinted back for a moment longer than was entirely polite, during which time it became obvious that his eyes were red-rimmed with either exhaustion or alcohol—or both. Eventually, he returned the greeting. “And you, Sergeant.”

Lieutenant Graff clapped his hands together. “Well, Lieutenant, I’ll leave you all to get acquainted. If you have any trouble, you know where to find me.”

The Ukrainian grumbled a response, and though the words were lost somewhere in his throat, his demeanor certainly wasn’t. He was done with this meeting, and not too happy that someone in his chain of command had railroaded him into it.

Graff turned to leave, and Packer nodded to keep things polite as he followed suit. He followed the American officer out of the tent, lengthening his stride to keep up.

Once both men were clear of the tent, he cleared his throat and said softly, “Sir—is it okay with you if I speak freely?”

Graff nodded and jerked his head toward somewhere private. Once they were suitably far from the Ukrainian outfit, he spoke in a low voice. “What is it, Packer?”

“I’m not one to judge, Lieutenant, but who exactly are these guys? I’m trying real hard to watch my tongue here, but the men I just saw are a rabble. A Javelin costs what, a hundred grand a pop—and the Ukrainians want to hand them over to this mob?”

The lieutenant glanced back at the tent they’d just exited before replying. If anything, his voice dropped a couple decibels. “You’ll find no argument here, Sergeant. That said, I know they don’t look like much, but I think you’ll be surprised what they are capable of.”

“Why is that, sir?” Packer pressed.

After another shifty glance to ensure that they weren’t being overheard, Graff replied, “They’re an irregular unit. At least, they used to be, before the Ukrainians rolled them into their National Guard. Most of them signed up after the Russians invaded the Donbas region back in 2014. They’ve seen combat like you wouldn’t believe. First World War trench warfare shit. No body armor, mostly with hunting rifles, shotguns, and eventually weapons taken from the bodies of the men they killed.”

Packer’s eyebrows rose with newfound respect. It didn’t quite square with the initial impression he’d gained of the Ukrainians, but the more he thought it over, the more it made sense. Lieutenant Ponomorenko’s men had a real special forces outlaw vibe to them, a fact that was clearly related to their unit being birthed outside of a regular military structure.

“I read about that before we shipped out,” he said grudgingly. “But I thought those irregular units were put in the reserve after the Ukrainian Army got up to speed. After all, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Sir.”

“You didn’t hear this from me, Sergeant, but I heard rumors that the Russians and the separatists in the east are starting to nibble at the frontline. They killed a few Ukrainian regulars last week. The guys you just met are”—Graff cleared his throat—“a little more deniable, if you catch my drift. But like I said, Packer, that’s between us. You just focus on getting them as proficient as you can.”

“You got it, Lieutenant.”

The worried expression on Packer’s face apparently spoke volumes. Graff hiked an eyebrow and said, “Something on your mind, soldier?”

“Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, Lieutenant Ponomorenko seems a little”—he winced before continuing—“recalcitrant. Just so I’m clear: What are my rules of engagement?”

Graff nodded with understanding. “Like I said, Sergeant, you concentrate on getting them ready for the fight the way you know best. Be firm but professional. I’ll handle any blowback.”

Packer’s shoulders un-knotted just a little. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

He lingered a few moments longer after Graff departed, wondering how he was going to play this. He had been posted here for several months and had put several Ukrainian regular infantry units through their paces, familiarizing them with NATO communication protocols and military tactics. Most had been eager to learn, if a little rough around the edges in comparison with the units he was used to back home.

These irregulars, though, were something else.

Still, he had a job to do. And moaning about it wouldn’t get him anywhere. As hard as he tried, it never did. He turned back to the tent, shouldered his way through the open flaps, and walked right up to the Ukrainian officer.

“Lieutenant, do your men speak English?”

Ponomorenko shrugged. “I do. My men understand some. They watch English movies. And The Office.”

Packer concealed his surprise at the admission, though it took considerable effort. “You like Jim Halpert, huh? I watched a few episodes on the plane over.”

“Big Tuna!” the lieutenant said emphatically.

“Big Tuna,” Packer agreed, wracking his brain as he tried to remember which episode the Ukrainian was referring to. At least he’d gotten the guy talking. That was a kind of breakthrough, wasn’t it?

He pressed his advantage, not knowing how long it would last. “You mind if I take your men out for some PT?”

“PT?” Ponomorenko repeated, his top lip kinking into a mountain as his face scrunched up. “What is PT?”

“Physical training,” Packer said before breaking it down. “I want to take them out running. You’re more than welcome to join us of course, Lieutenant.”

The Ukrainian officer said nothing for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. “Running! I don’t run.”

That explains a lot, Packer thought as he did his best to remain impassive.

It wasn’t his place to risk a diplomatic demarche as a result of dressing down a foreign officer. But more importantly, that course of action wouldn’t get him anywhere. He might not like it, and he sure didn’t expect that these guys would shape up and get anywhere close to being ready for battle—but he had his orders.

“What about your men?” Packer said after the laughter subsided. “You mind if I take them out?”

“Do as you wish.” Ponomorenko shrugged before addressing his unit in their native language.

He pointed out each of his men in turn, though between the unfamiliar names and his thick accent, Packer only caught one: Stanislav Chernyak—the guy with the beer belly mainlining nicotine on his way to an early grave. He committed the name to memory.

“Outside in two minutes,” Packer yelled.

Most of Ponomorenko’s irregulars looked to their officer for confirmation. The Ukrainian paused for just a second before he gave his assent, which Packer read as an implicit reminder about who was really in charge.

“It’s your funeral, guys,” he murmured as he exited the tent, careful to keep the words inaudible. His own drill instructors had always repeated the mantra train hard, fight easy. But these guys seemed to have it the exact wrong way around.

It took at least twice the time he’d allotted before the Ukrainians were gathered outside the tent. In the daylight, he saw that the unit resembled the aftermath of a supermarket sweep at a military surplus store. True to form, Chernyak was puffing on a fresh cigarette.

“Time to put that out, buddy,” Packer called, fixing the man in the eye.

Chernyak pretended not to understand and took another drag.

Packer shrugged, knowing that there was nothing he could do to change the man’s mind. And besides, his punishment would come. He jerked his head toward one of the military camp’s internal roads. It was paved, but in quintessentially local style riddled with potholes and loose gravel. “Let’s go.”

He set off at an easy pace, which he would expect even a raw recruit on her first day at boot camp to match. It would be a stretch to even describe it as jogging. Still, the last thing he needed was for one of these guys to blow an Achilles in the first five minutes, and since they mostly looked like they’d spent the last few years in a gaming chair staring goggle-eyed at a screen, not humping a ruck up and down hillsides, he was happy to play it safe.

Packer stole a glance over his shoulder and was gratified to see that so far, at least, each of his new charges was managing to keep up. They were strung out in a messy line, rather than the neat formation he would have preferred, but he was confident neither in his language skills nor their fitness being sufficient to make it so.

“Let’s pick it up a little,” he called.

You could officially call this a jog, he decided as he sped up the pace steadily over the next five minutes. He was grateful as the exercise raised his heartbeat, as a brisk breeze had whipped up and was stinging his cheeks.

“How we feeling?” he asked without breaking stride.

The only response he got was an outbreak of strained coughing, with one set of pipes particularly prominent. He guessed they belonged to Chernyak, since it sounded like whoever was responsible was hacking up most of their left lung. He thought he heard someone curse at him in Ukrainian and grinned with the perverse delight of a drill sergeant before a 4 a.m. wakeup call.

Packer ran them for a little under half an hour, looping through the base’s relatively diminutive main section—a square of brutalist concrete buildings—and around the much larger tent city that had cropped up to house the thousands of troops who rotated through on training exercises every quarter. Twice, he ran past their starting point to raise false hope before dashing it against the rocks of continued exertion.

Periodic glances over his shoulder soon told him that the unit was just about ready to collapse. Strained pink cheeks and hunched-over running gaits added to the evidence of his ears: coughs, curses, and a high-pitched background wheeze.

Time to call it a day, he decided, not impressed by the unit’s physical condition—but at least gratified that they had enough grit to keep pumping their feet.

“One last push,” he yelled as the unit’s tent came into view in the distance. It was about a hundred yards away now. “I’ll buy the winner a beer. How’s that?”

He grinned, wondering if any of them understood a damn word that he was saying.

To Packer’s surprise, when he finally came to a halt, Chernyak was only a couple of yards behind him. The Ukrainian’s face was beet red, and he looked to be on the verge of a cardiac event—but the big guy was deceptively quick. He skidded to a stop and jutted out his chin with the arrogance of a mating peacock, though he couldn’t conceal the redness on his cheeks.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Packer remarked, scarcely out of breath from what to him had been little more than a warm-up.

“Screw you,” Chernyak coughed, hunching over and placing his palms on his thighs for support. He greedily sucked oxygen into his lungs—though the effort clearly required outsized exertion. After a few moments, he started patting his pockets.

Packer squinted with confusion, then laughed out loud as he realized what the man was doing. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Chernyak opened the squashed cigarette box, extracted the last of his smokes, then searched for a lighter as he placed it between his lips. Around him, the remaining members of his unit straggled in. They were mostly men with far more athletic physiques than the big Ukrainian—and much less grit.

He struck the flint and coaxed an ember into life at the end of the cigarette, all while Packer watched. His breathing was steady now, and he sucked in a full lungful of smoke.

After exhaling, he said, “You know something, American? I’ve decided the Russians aren’t so bad after all.”

“Why’s that?”

“They just try to kill us. But they don’t make us fucking run.”

Packer grinned. “You’ll thank me when they start shooting.”

Chernyak burned through the remainder of the cigarette in just two more drags, then extinguished it under the heel of his boot. “You think I’m scared of those savages? I’ll never run from them.”

“I believe it,” Packer replied carefully. He remembered what Lieutenant Graff had said—these guys were veterans, and combat troops to match. Besides, it was obvious from the way that Chernyak carried himself. He decided that he wouldn’t want to be the Russian that first stormed into the man’s trench.

As the last of the bedraggled unit stumbled to a halt, Chernyak met Packer’s eye. “Don’t forget my beer.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it…”

4

They at least found him fresh clothes for the court hearing, though Trapp suspected that nobody would make a spot for him on a catwalk. A pair of guards placed a thick leather belt around his waist and shackled both his hands and his feet to it, so that he was forced to take half, shuffling steps to walk.

Only two other prisoners made the journey with him in the back of the paddy wagon. One was a skinhead, and when his jacket pulled up from his wrists, the tattoos that no doubt covered his entire body revealed themselves. They had the semi-faded, indistinct appearance of art inked behind bars. Trapp suspected that he’d spent most of his life in the care of the state, one way or another. He was squat and powerful, with the physique of a steel dumpster.

The other was a more timid kind of guy entirely. He was white with fear and repeated an inaudible mantra over and over. What it was wasn’t exactly clear, but it seemed to calm him. For a time.

“Quiet!” the driver yelled.

The courthouse was only a few blocks from the holding cells and was strangely peaceful. The previous day’s snowstorm had faded, and the city was coated in a fresh layer of snow, not yet turned into a gray, melted slush or pushed aside by snowplows.

They arrived, and another guard hauled them from the vehicle into the courthouse. It was an old Soviet structure with two flags flapping overhead: the red, white and blue of the Russian Federation and the altogether more sinister design that belonged to the Irkutsk Oblast—a stylized black tiger with a dead animal in its mouth.

“Comforting,” Trapp mumbled to himself.

Dumpster guy was taken before the judge first. Trapp was left for about an hour in a fresh holding pen before the quiet prisoner too was summoned for his hearing. As the guard pulled him out of the cell, he looked back at Trapp as if for support. Trapp simply shrugged.

What do you expect me to do about it?

On the other side of the rusted cell bars, a wall clock slowly counted through the hours. It was a little before ten in the morning when the guards returned with the skinhead, who they frog-marched past to a separate holding cell as he wore a grimace of acceptance. The gate slammed closed once again, and this time he was left alone and in silence, surrounded by the disconcerting stench of neglect.

“Hey!” Trapp called out, rattling his chains against the bars of the cell. “I’m hungry.”

There was no response. He tried again, but his cries merely echoed into the expanse of a seemingly abandoned building. He turned around and slumped back onto the hard wooden bench that was the cell’s only furniture. The food in the prison had been almost inedible, but now that little seemed better than nothing at all.

The lunch break lasted about two hours, or at least it was a little after 2 p.m. when the guards came for him. They allowed him to walk under his own power but looked as if they were waiting for any excuse to use the batons strapped to their belts. No doubt they’d heard what he’d done to their colleagues.

This time, his course already set, Trapp didn’t push his luck. The second beating had been, if anything, more intense than the first. He’d managed to shield his head under the frame of the cot as the prison guard rained down blows on him, but that was about the only silver lining. His body was marked with a dozen more bruises, each deeper in color than the last. Every step was agony.

They pushed him into the courtroom. It was small, with only space for about a dozen or so onlookers, though there were none in attendance. Only a male prosecutor, a female judge in dark robes and short blond hair that was cut a little above her shoulders, and a third guard standing post near the door. They ushered him into a glass box and closed it behind him.

The prosecutor didn’t look up from his notes. He had thinning gray hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched about halfway down a slender nose. “Prisoner will state his name.”

“Kolya,” Trapp said, leaning toward a microphone attached to the glass wall of his new prison. It wasn’t, but he liked it. And it was the name on the passport with which he’d traveled into Russia, in case anyone cared to search that far back. The document itself was long destroyed.

“Family name?”

Trapp shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

The prosecutor glanced up, actually looking somewhat surprised. “What do you mean you don’t remember? It’s a basic question.”

“I mean what I said. I don’t remember.”

“Then where are you from?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you an idiot?”

“The major asked me that,” Trapp remarked, glancing around the courtroom. It was a drab little place in a drab little city. The customary portraits of President Murov and the local governor, Maxim Zayetsev, sat side by side behind the judge.

“And your answer?” the prosecutor asked with a touch of exasperation.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. My name is Kolya. I don’t remember where I’m from. Does it matter?”

The prosecutor cocked his head and frowned before glancing up at the judge. “I suppose not.”

The judge gestured as though she agreed. She was well fed, with rosy cheeks, and leaned back into a heavy leather chair with almost complete indifference. Trapp wondered whether she really had any power, or whether she jumped to someone else’s tune.

“You understand the charges?” the prosecutor continued, glancing back down at his notes.

“I have an idea.”

“Seven counts of assaulting an officer of the law,” he read out. “One of resisting arrest. One of public drunkenness.”

“That prick was just as drunk as me,” Trapp grumbled, though nobody listened.

The prosecutor cleared his throat and looked up at the judge. “The state seeks nine years, Your Honor.”

“Hey!” Trapp protested, pounding against the little cell’s glass walls. “Don’t I get a lawyer?”

Both the judge and prosecutor ignored him as though he simply wasn’t there. The prosecutor shuffled through his notes as if he was searching for an important detail, rather than simply going through the motions.

The judge asked a question, though its precise content eluded his still-rusty Russian language skills. She spoke both too quickly and too quietly for him to make any sense of it. He ceased his one-man protest, recognizing it for the fruitless act it was, and leaned back against the glass wall of his cage, wincing as the material made contact with tender flesh.

As the gray-haired prosecutor deliberated over his answer, she yawned, opening up a mouth full of coffee-yellowed teeth and dark splotches that served as tombstones for fillings. She scratched her chin but didn’t cover her mouth.

Trapp winced at the sight, thankful for his present imprisonment inside this glass box. He could almost smell her from here.

The judge looked up. “Prisoner Kolya, do you have anything to say in your defense?”

He shook his head, crossing his arms and adopting a pose of surly defiance. He needed to speak as sparsely as possible. The last thing he needed was to be deported. They must already suspect that he was not Russian, though it hadn’t seemed to bother them so far. Still, there was always a chance.

She squinted at him, patently baffled by his behavior. “You understand the consequences of failing to cooperate with the court?”

In truth, he didn’t really understand the word sotrudnichat', but deduced it from the rest of the question. Cooperate. Or something like that, anyway. He nodded.

The judge shrugged and appeared to reach the conclusion that her time could be better spent somewhere other than trying to talk a recalcitrant halfwit out of a prison sentence that in truth he wholly deserved. She reached for her gavel, then paused, hand frozen in midair.

Trapp held his breath.

She beckoned to the prosecutor, who quickly yielded a piece of paper which the woman consulted, then returned to him. He watched the whole charade unfold without saying a word.

At last, the judge picked up the gavel and rapped it once against her bench. “In the absence of a defense, and persuaded by the incontrovertible evidence of your behavior, I find in favor of the state. You will serve nine years of labor in camp IK-29.”

5

The prison transport van was a rickety thing, though Trapp quickly learned that it was entirely impregnable. It fit well in the long Russian tradition of not much caring how things look so long as they work.

The back of the van had space for eight cages. They were constructed out of steel and painted gray. One of them was full of cardboard boxes—mostly food and other supplies. The remaining seven were functional.

Trapp was locked into the one farthest from the door and left alone for about five minutes before the guards returned. He used the time to explore his new home, which was matchbox-sized and contained only a metal bench upon which he could sit. There were no further concessions to either comfort or basic human dignity. A narrow viewing slit was cut into the vehicle’s chassis, allowing him about a six-inch view of the fenced courtyard of the Interior Ministry building. The window itself was made of darkened glass, which made it difficult to determine whether the snow outside was filthy or whether it was just an optical illusion.

Footsteps crunching on the snow outside signaled the return of his jailers. Neither of them paid him any attention as one puffed away on a cigarette dangling lazily from his lips. Between two of the guards was the shackled figure of the powerful yet diminutive skinhead from the courthouse the day before. Like Trapp, he too was now dressed in a prison uniform, all cut from a cloth that was somewhere between black and dark brown, and with reflective strips sewn onto the chest area. He was shackled, but the chains hung loose, allowing him to walk freely. Neither of the guards looked concerned that he might run, and Trapp judged from his bearing that this was not his first experience of this journey.

They unshackled him, put him in one of the cages opposite Trapp, then gave both prisoners a little food and water for the journey. Surprisingly, after “dumpster guy” was secure, the van’s rear doors swung closed without the further addition of the timid man from the day before. Perhaps he had been found innocent. Or more likely he knew the judge’s price.

The engine was either poorly maintained or domestically produced, or probably both, and spat out thick clouds of smog at the slightest provocation—the stink of which found its way into the poorly insulated cargo compartment with startling ease. At first, it irritated Trapp’s throat and lungs, but before long he’d grown used to it. It was no worse than burn barrels in the Iraqi desert.

What the hell are you doing, Jason?

The roads in Ust-Ilimsk were nothing to write home about, but they were positively futuristic in comparison with those that lay beyond the city’s limits. Whether it was the effects of a harsh winter on the local infrastructure or just decades—centuries, even—of underinvestment in the region, Trapp didn’t know. But the end result was the same: more potholes than asphalt.

For the thousandth time in just the first hour, Trapp cursed as the truck hit one such obstacle and bounced him from one side of his cage to the other. His body, already fragile from the ministrations of the Politsiya in the days prior, got another tenderizing.

“What’s your name?” the skinhead asked, raising his voice over the rattling of metal in the ground of the engine.

Trapp ignored him.

The guy tried again. “Listen, friend. This is going to be a long journey. We may as well talk to each other.”

The van turned a corner, and both men slid across their cages, colliding with the bars on the other side. Trapp grunted in discomfort, and the skinhead cackled. A wide smile split the man’s face and made him look about ten years younger than he otherwise seemed.

“I’m Anton,” the guy said, slapping his chest for emphasis.

“Kolya,” Trapp grunted after a short pause in which he weighed up whether or not to respond. “I don’t talk much.”

“Where you from, Kolya?” Anton asked. “I don’t recognize your accent. You’re not from here.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Here and there,” Trapp said with a wave of his hand. He watched Anton lower himself to the floor and wedge his body between the metal bench and one of the cage’s walls. It stopped him being thrown so violently around. Trapp copied it, though with less success. He had height on his Russian counterpart, but not mass.

“You don’t talk much,” Anton agreed. “That’s fine. Probably a good idea where we’re going. They’ve given me two more years. You?”

“Nine,” Trapp grunted.

Anton whistled. “Shit. They really wanted you, huh? What did you do?”

A genuine smile crossed Trapp’s face as he relived the memory of punching the fat Russian police officer. He kept his answers short and sweet, so as not to test his vocabulary beyond its present limit, but the practice was good. “Hit a cop.”

The skinhead’s eyebrow kinked up. “That was you?”

Trapp nodded. “He was a friend of yours?”

Anton snorted. “Major Stepanov is an asshole. He deserved it, no doubt about that. But nine years is a long time. Was it worth it?”

Trapp shrugged, judging in his own mind that it was far too early to tell. “I guess we’ll find out.”

* * *

The hours passed in long periods of silence and occasional bursts of conversation, while Anton mostly slumbered and Trapp stared aimlessly out of the narrow slit window. They were traveling southeast, following the course of the River Angara, if he correctly recalled the topographical maps of the region. It was a wide expanse—a mile across in many parts—and almost entirely frozen into ice. The only evidence that there was water underneath was a narrow channel down the very center, a dark scar on the frost, kept open by the occasional passing vessel.

The daylight died slowly, then all at once, and then the only light came from the reflection of the headlights. The roads only worsened once they turned fully to the east, away from the river. They followed frozen mud roads that were almost impassable in places, and the more he was thrown about in the rear of the van, the more a wave of nausea rose within him.

“You know where we’re going?” Trapp called out as Anton awoke from yet another nap and stretched catlike against the bars.

“Colony 29,” his new friend replied with an enigmatic expression on his face that wasn’t quite foreboding and wasn’t quite a smile. “The Black Eagle. I only just left.”

“Why is it called that?”

The answer was both infuriating and enigmatic, but Trapp knew better than to allow himself to get irritated by it. Anton grinned. “You’ll see.”

They stopped in a small settlement—the first sign of humanity they’d seen in at least four hours—and the two guards killed the engine and climbed out. For the first few seconds after they left, the van’s chassis clicked and groaned as the engine block cooled. Trapp worried it would freeze solid.

After five minutes, during which the interior temperature in the prisoner compartment quickly declined, Trapp asked, “Where did they go?”

Anton didn’t look around. “Pickup, maybe.”

“They coming back?”

“At some point.”

Trapp wanted to ask why the hell they hadn’t left the heater running but found he didn’t have either the vocabulary or the energy to translate it into Russian, so he kept his mouth shut.

Instead, he stripped off his prison-issue jersey and sweatshirt and folded them neatly on the bench. He threaded his fingers through the bars of the cage and wrapped them tightly on to the metal. He levered himself slowly up, so that he was hanging in midair, and performed a half dozen extremely slow chin-ups to ensure that everything was warmed up before he really got going.

“Hey, man—what the hell you doing?” Anton asked, looking truly startled for the first time. “You’ll freeze.”

“Not like this,” Trapp replied through gritted teeth.

His bruised flesh cried out in pain as he worked out, but he ignored it. Long experience had taught him that there was very little that the human body could not do given sufficient willpower. It was rarely physical strength that gave out—much more often, motivation.

“They really hurt you bad,” Anton remarked. Trapp saw the skinhead studying him out of the corner of his eye.

“It’ll pass.”

Trapp counted the repetitions in his head, stopping the first set once he got to twenty. He allowed himself about sixty seconds of rest—though the only stopwatch he had was the one in his own head—then embarked on the second.

“What’s that around your neck?”

“Nothing,” Trapp growled, his chest heaving as he lowered himself back to the floor of the cage after the second set. Though his fingers were now ice cold from the contact with the metal bars, the rest of him was pleasantly warm. His biceps throbbed gently, but he felt better for the exercise already.

Anton didn’t say anything but started to strip off himself. Trapp glanced up, quickly cooling now that he was still. “It’s not a competition.”

The Russian was now bare chested, just like him. His torso was covered in tattoos, the most obvious of which was a large Orthodox cross right down the center of his chest that started at the sternum and finished below the belly button. As Trapp had first noticed in the holding cell at the courtroom, the ink was vivacious but indistinct—every line drawn on the inside. A thick network of scar tissue acted as an underlay for the artwork, which was further decorated by a random array of bruises and contusions. He was careful not to stare.

Anton pointed at a piece on his left shoulder. A rose, done in blue ink. “You know what this means?”

Trapp shook his head. His eyes were drawn to an entirely separate—and more concerning—piece of ink on the prisoner’s forearm. A swastika.

“This is your first time behind bars, isn’t it?” Anton asked.

“Why do you say that?” Trapp replied, quickly looking away.

“Because this, all this,” Anton said, touching each of his tattoos in turn, “tells a story. Each tattoo has its own meaning.”

“Including the rose?”

“It means I became a man behind bars.”

Trapp didn’t understand. He wasn’t sure whether it was polite to ask, but he did so anyway. “You killed a man?”

Anton looked offended. “You know nothing about me.”

“I’m sorry,” Trapp said, holding his palms out in apology. “This is new to me.”

“It means I turned eighteen in a place like the one they are taking us to. If they keep extending my sentence I will stay there until I turn eighty. If I last that long. They are…” His voice became quiet. “Not nice. You will need friends.”

Trapp nodded, noticing for the first time the etching of a devil’s head on each of Anton’s powerful biceps. He wondered what story their lips could tell but knew better than to ask. “Perhaps I have one.”

The sound of footsteps announced the return of the guards a moment later, with only a few seconds to spare before the van’s heavy rear doors swung open again, letting in a burst of freezing air.

“What the hell are you fags doing?” one of the guards growled, pushing another figure inside before him. “Put your damn clothes on before you freeze to death.”

That, Trapp thought, sounded like an extremely sensible idea. He did as he was instructed, though even with the heating vents on full, it took the prisoner compartment at least an hour to heat back up from the chill of the Siberian night. They stopped once more and picked up a fourth prisoner. Neither of the two new men spoke a word.

It must have been early morning when the van finally crept up to its final destination. Trapp was first alerted to a change when the pitch darkness outside the van’s narrow window began to lighten. It wasn’t daylight, he knew instantly – it was too artificial for that.

And still too early.

The next sign was that the quality of the road beneath them improved. It was a small, barely perceptible change, but after being knocked around for over twelve hours as they traveled on logging roads through the depths of the Siberian forest, he quickly picked up on it.

The penal colony came into view around the next bend in the road. It was surrounded by a high, frozen chain-link fence with razor wire on top and lit by brilliant white searchlights. They didn’t seem to move, so the glow each cast was an island of vision in the darkness. What lay behind wasn’t exactly clear.

The gate swung open as the van approached, slowing as the drivers up front exchanged friendly words with whoever was unlucky enough to be on duty on a night as bleak as this. As it stopped, Trapp pressed his cheek against the window and looked up.

Suspended over the archway, he saw it. A carving in the darkness, lit by the glow of a nearby searchlight that seemed to be trained upon it. It was evocative, accurate, and entirely lifelike, if not nearly to scale. The appreciation of the skill required to turn such a thing from wood into art nearly took his breath away.

Anton chuckled knowingly. “So you see it… The black eagle.”

6

The guards entered the mostly-empty dormitory just a few hours later, clapping their hands together and stomping their winter boots on the tiled floor, both with the intention of making as much noise as humanly possible.

Many years had passed since Trapp had shipped out of boot camp, but the principle was the same, and he knew what to do. He rolled out of the bottom bunk of one of about fifty identical beds in the large hall and climbed to his feet. He let his arms hang loosely at his side and rolled some of the previous day’s tension out of his neck.

As a previous resident of the prison, Anton had been taken straight to his usual cell block. They’d left the rest of the new arrivals in this place the previous night and chained the doors, leaving them a meager supper of stale black bread and tasteless cheese. Trapp had forced down every mouthful, washing each down with ice-cold water, then fallen deeply asleep. One benefit to a long and tiring career spent in spartan and austere environments was that he could sleep just about anywhere.

Still, he guessed they’d only been given a couple of hours’ rest, and he was old enough that nights like this had long since begun to take their toll. His throat was rough from the freezing, bone-dry Siberian air, and his stomach rumbled to remind him that the previous night’s supper had been entirely insufficient.

Footsteps echoed toward him. A half dozen guards wearing blue digital camouflage uniforms and thick insulated jackets appeared.

Who you hiding from, guys?

Trapp quickly schooled any sign of amusement from his face. The relative merits of their camouflage choices aside, if these guys were the guards, then he hated to think what the prisoners they guarded would be like. To a man, each was mean. It wasn’t that they were particularly large; in fact, quite the opposite was the case. It was that they were the products of a harsh land and had adapted in response to that stress.

“Everything you’re wearing,” one of the guards called out, a sneering expression on his face. “Take it off. Now!”

A further benefit of having been churned through the boot camp system was that Trapp was entirely lacking in the embarrassment gene. He stripped instantly, tossing the uniform he’d been issued at the Interior Ministry onto the bunk beside him and stood naked.

The guard who seemed to be in charge caught sight of him and let out a low whistle. Turning to his comrades, he said, “This one’s an ox, huh?”

The joke elicited a smattering of laughter. Trapp kept his eyes front. Now that he was in this place, there was no need to tempt fate any further. He suspected that penal colony IK-29 was the kind of place in which it was easy for a prisoner to disappear. And prisoner Kolya had no family who might ask unwelcome questions. He was an easy target.

“What’s he been eating?” the guard continued, slapping Trapp around the face. Not hard enough to cause any damage, but enough to sting—especially in the dormitory’s cold air. “Well, he’ll lose the weight soon enough. Won’t you?”

Trapp shrugged.

The guard appeared to lose interest and jerked his thumb toward the door. “All of you, out. Don’t make me ask twice.”

They were marched barefoot across a frozen courtyard and past a column of prisoners walking in the other direction. Inevitably, a chorus of hollering and catcalls erupted—and though Trapp didn’t catch all of the slang, the subtext was clear enough. These guys were mean. Probably lifers. Not the kind of people you wanted to meet in a dark alley at night, let alone a place like this. But it was hard to care when it was this cold, and every footstep felt like walking on a bed of nails. He craned his neck to see if Anton was watching but could not pick him out of the crowd.

A few flakes of snow drifted on the wind, mostly driven off the roof of the single-story housing blocks all around. It had clearly snowed the previous night, and the climate was cold enough that in places—which Trapp tried to hopscotch—it was still fluffy underfoot. His toes began to numb, which was a relief for the spots which he could not avoid.

There were about a dozen buildings in the prison camp, surrounded by a double set of chain-link fences. All but one of the structures was single-story. He figured the remaining building—a featureless, soulless concrete husk right in the center of the camp—must contain administrative facilities and perhaps housing for the guards.

“Quicker!” one of the guards called out, pushing one of the two prisoners who’d joined them the previous night in the back and causing him to stumble and almost topple into the snow.

Trapp judiciously picked up his own pace. He was bigger than all but one of the guards escorting the small procession and suspected that if it came to a fight he would be the match of any one of them—and perhaps more. But his body had taken enough of a beating over the past few days to last him a lifetime, and he needed to conserve his strength.

A gap opened between several of the buildings, causing Trapp to briefly halt as he noticed what was on the other side: a secondary courtyard, like its big brother contained within a pair of chain-link fences. Unlike the main section of the camp, this one only contained a pair of buildings, built in the same functional concrete style as the rest. If he squinted, he could just make out the Cyrillic character that represented the letter B on a frost-bitten sign on the nearest wall.

B Wing, maybe?

“Don’t stop, you lazy prick,” came the cry.

They were led into a building that looked to Trapp’s untrained eye much like the one they’d just left. He glanced down at his vital parts as they entered and wished he had not. He suspected he wasn’t too far away from frostbite.

The first stop was a barber. This place got more and more like basic training every second. Trapp’s dark hair went first, shorn off in thick, uneven strips that made him feel more like livestock than a human being. They took his newly grown beard as well, though this was less upsetting, since all it did was itch.

Trapp ran his palm across his hair as they marched them to the next stop. It was mostly trimmed all the way to the scalp, though a couple of thin tufts remained. If this was back home, he sure as shit wouldn’t have tipped them.

But you’re a long way from Kansas, kid.

It was at least warmer inside here. He could hear the building’s ancient pipes clanking, which both reassured him that they were working and made him worry about how long that would continue to be the case.

The guards handed each of the four prisoners a bottle of what looked like shampoo as they shooed them into a shower block. Though the mechanics of the spoken language were beginning to come easier to Trapp, the written form entirely eluded him. The Cyrillic characters might as well have been an alien alphabet for all he could understand them. The black-and-white image of the swollen body of a well-fed louse thankfully made the purpose clear enough.

Rust streaks sank from the shower’s pipes all the way to the tiled floor, and Trapp regarded it uneasily.

“Hell,” he grunted as he stepped under the icy blast of water. Cold showers never usually bothered him, but this was something else entirely. It was practically torture. He suspected, given how far they must be from anything that resembled civilization, that the water wasn’t drinkable.

He stepped out of the flow and welcomed the respite from the cold as he worked up a lather between his palms before liberally coating his body in the lice treatment.

The guards shut the water off after about a minute, though by that point Trapp was already long finished. His skin was pink, except for where it was purple, and smarted from the assault of the freezing water.

The towels they were given to dry off with were strangely luxurious—thick, soft, and new. Not quite Egyptian cotton but compared to the privations of every other element of this place, Trapp enjoyed every moment. He’d half worried that they would make them dress while still wet. It would be easy enough to succumb to hypothermia in a climate like this even bone dry.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Trapp was handed another prison uniform, just like the one he’d been given at the ministry, complete with reflective stripes. He wasn’t sure about the design. It kind of made him look like a road worker. But the Russians always were a curious people. At least this time he was given an insulated jacket and a furry hat. Neither was new, but both felt thick enough to combat the weather. The boots were surprisingly good quality and looked like army surplus, same as the olive-green socks.

“Stand against the wall,” a guard barked.

He proceeded to give each of them numbers. Trapp learned that from now on, he was 6167. It was easy enough to remember, he supposed.

They stood there for about fifteen minutes, during which time nothing much happened. The guards chatted among themselves. A couple lit up cigarettes, paying little attention to the signs on the walls stating that this was a no-smoking zone. It was a whole lot of hurry up and wait—something that Trapp was well enough accustomed to.

And then, just like that, there was another burst of activity. An exterior door opened, rattling against the wall and letting in a burst of icy Siberian wind. A guard walked through, followed by a smaller man. He was dressed neither as a jailer nor a prisoner but wore a reasonably expensive-looking wool overcoat. It was dusted with flecks of snow that quickly melted to form glistening water droplets.

The man—Trapp strongly suspected he was the warden of the colony—walked toward the small gaggle of prisoners in silence. His coat was well cut and did a good job of concealing what was undoubtedly a protruding stomach, making him look broader and taller than his five foot seven frame otherwise might.

He removed his hat and handed it to one of the guards behind him, revealing salt-and-pepper hair. He was clean-shaven, and his face had that curiously young, un-wrinkled sheen of a well-fed man.

“My name is Yevgeny Makarov,” he murmured in a soft voice that Trapp was forced to strain his ears to listen to. “I am the warden of this facility. For the length of your stay in this place, you will do as either I or my subordinates command. Is that understood?”

Trapp realized he was supposed to nod his agreement. The other two prisoners—both ashen-faced and nervous—shortly followed suit.

“Good. What you must understand is that from here there is nowhere to run. We are a hundred miles from the nearest inhabited settlement. Even now, as we enter spring it is 15 Fahrenheit outside of these walls. Storms can and do appear out of nowhere. And even when summer comes, the ground softens and becomes boggy until it is almost impassable. And then…”

Warden Makarov clicked his fingers and gestured irritably at one of the guards behind him. The man walked to the door, opened it, and stuck his head outside. He spoke a few words, then climbed back in.

Trapp waited. The warden’s moment of suspense dragged out until it lost most of its force.

A man entered with a sleek Alsatian working dog beside him attached to a thick metal chain. It growled, though to Trapp’s ear it seemed in response to some unspoken command, rather than truly designed to intimidate.

Makarov smiled, seemingly unaffected by the delay. “And then there are the dogs. Lots of dogs. They don’t get much to eat. I suggest you don’t give me an opportunity to feed them. Is that understood?”

Trapp nodded.

“Say it,” Makarov growled in that strangely feminine tone of voice of his.

“Da.”

* * *

It was a Sunday, it transpired, and even in the wildest extremes of Irkutsk Oblast, prisoners got Sundays off. So after Trapp’s induction, assignment of a bed, and a few other administrative tasks, he mostly had the rest of the day to himself.

He walked the perimeter of the courtyard with his hands thrust into his pockets and fixed the layout of the penal colony into his mind. He didn’t noticeably pause when the satellite facility came into sight on the other side of the chain-link fence, but he did slow. He deduced that it was occupied, since electric lights glowed on the other side of the windows in the building’s snow-dusted concrete shell.

But other than that, he saw no sign of activity. And he knew better than to linger.

He figured the prison colony probably had the capacity for seven or eight hundred “guests,” though it appeared to currently house just half that number. It was hard to say for sure. In their winter coats, bundled up against the cold, everybody looked much the same. And anyone with a lick of sense would doubtless be inside.

Anton didn’t appear in the mess hall for dinner, so Trapp sat down at an empty table and ate by himself. The meal consisted of an unidentified meat in a stew that wasn’t just tasteless but almost inedible, and a large quantity of black bread and cabbage. The bread was at least fresher than the stuff he’d been given on arrival. He gave up on the stew after the third time he was forced to pick a chunk of gristle out of his mouth. None of the prisoners bothered him, though he felt the weight of their gaze upon him.

Trapp retired to his dormitory long before a bell rang out at about 8 p.m., which he understood must mean that it was time for lights out. It was a room with space for a dozen single cots—a scratched military green with stained white sheets under heavy woolen blankets. Each bed was occupied.

He was given the one nearest the toilet. The blanket was full of holes. But he didn’t mind. He’d slept in worse locations, in worse conditions, and with the heat of twelve bodies, the room would be warm enough.

You hope.

No one bothered him until long past midnight, by which time he was deep asleep. But a long-practiced instinct woke him up moments before he otherwise might have. His eyes snapped open, only to find another pair staring directly at him.

“Who the fuck are you?” Trapp grunted, his voice still thick with sleep. “Get the hell away from me, faggot.”

The slur was not one that he would ordinarily be comfortable using. He was a real don’t ask/don’t tell kind of guy. But neither was Trapp an unintelligent man. He remembered the guards’ disgust a day earlier in the transport van. And everything has a time and place.

This was one of them.

A hand reached out and gripped his upper arm, squeezing tightly. “Watch your language, rookie.”

The word the man used wasn’t actually rookie, but that was as good a translation as Trapp’s sleep-befuddled mind was able to reach for.

He grabbed the man by the wrist with his right hand and twisted hard, jumping softly onto the hard concrete floor as he did so. The force—and surprise—of the act twisted the man into submission, and suddenly he was kneeling at Trapp’s feet, staring up.

“Hey—” the guy called out, his voice taut with pain. “Do something!”

For the first time, Trapp realized that his nocturnal visitor was not alone. He looked around and saw that half of the dormitory’s beds were empty. The other six were occupied, but each of the owners was awake—and watching what was happening.

It’s a hazing, then.

He didn’t know much about the Russian penal system. But what little he’d learned before arrival had told him that not much had changed since the days of the gulags. Of the million or so incarcerated Russians, only about a third served time in formal prisons.

The rest found themselves doing labor in places like IK-29. Places like this.

And many of the traditions that had been pioneered in the harsh camps of the former USSR had persisted to this very day. Every year, dozens died in hazing accidents. Unhappy victims of an unhappy system.

Trapp twisted harder, and the man at his feet squealed in pain. He raised his voice over the sound, warning them, “Stay back or I break his wrist.”

It was difficult to make out anyone’s features in the dark, but the man who spoke had tattoos all over his face. Even for Trapp, watching him speak was a distinctly unsettling experience. “Break his wrist then, rookie. See if I care.”

The problem was, he thought, it was a heck of a tempting offer. The kid was a bully and had it coming. But Trapp suspected that his present prisoner wasn’t the brains behind this nighttime raid. Just the one who had the bad luck to get caught.

“You want to tell me something?” he asked, yanking the man’s wrist a little farther back, but not to the point at which he was in any danger of inflicting permanent damage.

“Huh?” tattooed guy mumbled.

“This is your idea, da?” he inquired. “Why?”

The man with the tattoos didn’t look so confident now. Trapp had his measure. He was nothing more than a common garden thug—not used to people who fought back.

He glanced at the inmate cowering at his feet and shoved him aside. Momentarily forgetting his pain, the kid scrambled backward and hid behind one of the cots, cradling his arm.

Trapp stretched out his arm and pointed at the man with the tattooed face. “You.”

The guy gestured at the others around him and said, “Get him!”

“Don’t,” Trapp said, the word cracking out with vicious intensity. “This is between us.”

He took a step forward. He didn’t bother looking around. These men were criminals, not soldiers. Their bravery was built on numbers and intimidation, and while on this occasion they had the first, they certainly did not have the second.

And their problem was that when their strength of numbers didn’t inspire fear, they weren’t strong enough to stick together—and so their only strength melted away like ice on a summer’s day.

“Good,” Trapp murmured.

“Cowards,” his opponent swore, balling up his fists. “Fine—just us, then.”

Casting one last, glowering look at those around him who’d failed him, he came at Trapp, arms flailing.

Trapp stepped aside and punched him hard in the side of his torso. He grunted and stumbled over, tumbling onto his hands and knees, though he quickly pulled himself upright. Foolhardy he might be, but he was clearly no stranger to a fight.

Still, the single blow that he’d already suffered was enough to limit his movement. He looked slightly winded and was clearly struggling for breath. He came forward again.

And again, Trapp stepped aside. This time, he didn’t inflict another blow. He toyed with his opponent, relying on his superior movement and anticipation. The guy came at him swinging once again and missed by at least a foot. Someone lunged for Trapp’s ankle, but he kicked the errant hand aside and ground down on the offending knuckles for good measure. If he’d been wearing boots, maybe they would have been crushed, but it no doubt hurt either way.

It was, however, a good reminder that not everyone in this room had his best interest at heart.

Time to finish this.

He stepped forward as the inmate lunged for him once more. The movement clearly surprised his opponent, and it showed in the gawping expression stretching his face. Trapp drove his balled fist into the man’s stomach, and as he collapsed inward brought his elbow down hard against the guy’s back. He dropped hard, almost knocking his teeth out as he hit the deck.

The fighter collapsed, choking as he desperately tried sucking air into his protesting lungs. Trapp looked down at the man dispassionately. He would be fine. Winded, for sure, and he wouldn’t forget the injury to his pride. Probably wouldn’t be able to breathe without pain for at least a week. But he would survive.

He looked up and saw on the faces of those arrayed around him a newfound expression of respect. “Anyone else?”

No one stepped forward.

“I didn’t think so.”

7

A siren roused Trapp from sleep the next morning at precisely 6 a.m. He sat bolt upright, causing the metal cot underneath him to squeak before it settled. The dormitory was cold, but that was not the reason that the hair on the back of his arms was on end. It was hard to sleep peacefully in a place where people intended to stab you in the back.

This whole place gave him the creeps.

It was like some forgotten relic of Stalin’s gulag system, still ticking along in this far-flung corner of the reborn Russian Federation. The overt brutality of the Soviet prison camps was gone—he suspected that he would neither be worked nor starved to death, at least not directly—but the imprint of its origin lingered.

Still, the lesson he’d dished out the previous night appeared to have taken root. His bunkmates barely dared to look him in the eye, let alone try him on for size. The wiry prisoner who’d woken him several hours earlier was moving gingerly and kept his distance. In the light, Trapp could see a large black tattoo of a bird on the guy’s back. An eagle—just like the one over the prison gate.

He smiled at the guy and murmured, “Dobroye utro.” Good morning.

No reply.

Trapp dressed himself and laced up his boots. His nose wrinkled at the smell of a dozen active men. Either his block wasn’t slated for access to the shower facilities, or his roommates were not sticklers for personal hygiene, and certainly none made any move to rectify this problem. Judging by the state of their teeth and the grime under their nails, it wasn’t one they even recognized.

Breakfast was black bread—of course—butter, and some kind of reconstituted sausage meat. It was filling, if not nutritious, and Trapp was careful to take his fair share. His body was still healing from the numerous assaults it had suffered over the previous few days, and though it felt much improved this morning, he was still sore as hell. Besides, who knew what the day had in store? It was better to meet it fully fueled.

The general attitude in the dining hall was not too dissimilar to one that might be observed in any office or train carriage this early on a Monday morning anywhere in the world. Inmates greeted friends they hadn’t seen since the day before, ate tasteless food, grumbled about the weather, and drank bitter black coffee. Nobody seemed to have much energy. Trapp leaned back and surveyed the scene, once or twice catching a sharp glance in his direction, but not sensing much interest.

“6167.”

It took him a moment to remember his new moniker. He turned his head to the source of the announcement and found a guard by the mess hall’s entrance looking impatient. “Da?”

The man jerked his finger, acting irritated that Trapp hadn’t immediately joined him. He grabbed the last few morsels of food off his plate, stuffed them into his mouth, then racked his dirty crockery.

He was led silently to a sub-basement in the colony’s administration building, where he found the new prisoners waiting by a closed door in a cramped hallway. Poorly insulated heating pipes ran along the ceiling only about six inches above Trapp’s head, and he was forced to duck through doorways built for men a foot smaller in an age long past. The walls had long ago been painted a dark blue to about chest height and white above, though the former was peeling and the latter stained.

“Wait here,” the guard ordered before departing.

Trapp leaned against the wall and did as he was told. It was, in fact, one of his special talents—one which the Army had worked diligently to instill in him. He didn’t worry much about why he was here or what might be coming down the pipe. A man could go mad that way.

The door opened a moment later, and Anton emerged, jerking his head at the next man. He smiled as he spied Trapp. “Kitchen duty,” he said.

Trapp’s eyebrow kinked. That explained it. “Work assignments?”

“Yes.”

“You cook?”

“I wash dishes.” Anton laughed uproariously, slapping his barrel chest. “But it’s better than being outside.”

“It’s not too bad today.” Trapp shrugged. “Sunny. Not that cold.”

“Right, today.” Anton snorted. “You’re here for nine years, my friend. No good behavior, not if you beat a cop. You want my advice?”

“Sure.” Trapp shrugged.

“Don’t find yourself on a work party in December. I’ve seen men lose fingers. One guy had his foot amputated.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Anton lightly punched his shoulder and departed, shaking his head. “You’re a funny guy, Kolya, you know that?”

Not my intention, Trapp thought.

The other two prisoners cycled through over the next 20 minutes, and then it was his turn. He walked through the same door, and instead of seeing a man in uniform behind the desk, or even a civilian member of the colony’s administration team, it was just another inmate.

This one was slight, with an owlish face and glasses. He had light brown hair, and his prison issue jacket was draped over the back of an uncomfortable-looking metal chair. The office itself was tiny—more of a closet—and swelteringly hot. Brown cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall to above head height, and messy piles of paper covered every square inch of desk space.

“Can you read or write?” the man asked brusquely without resorting to small talk.

Trapp shook his head. “Nyet.”

His counterpart exhaled slightly with disappointment and made a note on the form in front of him. It had Trapp’s prison number on the top right. The rest of it was written in indecipherable Cyrillic script.

“Any skills?”

Trapp thought about Anton’s warning of a few moments before but dismissed it. If he was still here in six months’ time, then things would have gone very wrong indeed. “Not really.”

The man looked up. “You must be good at something. What did you do on the outside?”

“As little as possible,” Trapp remarked dryly.

The pen scratched against the form. Trapp waited to learn his fate. Behind him, the little office’s door opened with a click.

“Sasha, this one is mine,” a gravelly voice announced in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.

“The warden—”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” the man snapped. He jabbed Trapp’s shoulder. “You, with me. Now.”

He followed his new boss in silence to a fenced parking lot, which contained about half a dozen ancient cars, vans, and trucks—and one long bus that looked held together by prayers and duct tape. They were mostly of Russian manufacture, with logos that Trapp did not recognize. They stopped at the back of the bus, which was already mostly full.

“Get in,” the man grunted, allowing Trapp to glimpse him from head on for the first time.

He was almost Trapp’s height—a little over six foot—and a similar weight, of which much was muscle. Unlike most of the camp’s residents, he had a rusty beard, which momentarily made Trapp wonder if he was an employee rather than an inmate. The fact he was wearing a reflective black prison uniform likely ruled that out.

Still, he clearly merited special treatment.

Trapp climbed in without question, not unhappy to be taking a trip beyond the confines of the camp’s fence. He was eager to reacquaint himself with the lay of the land, not to mention how such excursions were organized.

Barring the driver—a fat guard in the customary camouflage chain-smoking cigarettes—the work party was composed of just under thirty inmates. They drove perhaps fifteen miles through the frozen forest, though the decrepit vehicle moved so slowly it was difficult to be certain. The landscape was obscured by thick forest, which called to mind Warden Makarov’s warning from the day before. It wasn’t impassable, but between the uneven ground and the vegetation if you tried to run you’d get nowhere fast.

Occasionally they passed sections where the tall pines had already been felled, presumably by work parties just like this one. In the older ones, shrubbery had begun the laborious process of reclaiming the forest. Tiny saplings poked above the thick blanket of snow. Others were just unbroken blankets of white.

They arrived at their destination shortly after. The ancient bus creaked to a halt in the dead center of the road, and the guard killed its engine. Since the only tracks leading up to this place were the ones they’d just made, Trapp figured they weren’t about to hold up traffic.

The inmates started climbing out, most chatting amiably among each other. Trapp followed. They all stopped at a mound of snow that rose out of the ground. He squinted, not sure why. All became clear a moment later, when someone reached into the mound, pulled it back, and revealed that it was actually a tarpaulin over a small, red-painted excavator, against which was stacked a number of chainsaws and axes.

“6167,” the man with the beard called out. Trapp walked over to him. “Your name is Kolya, correct?”

Trapp nodded. “That’s right.”

“I’m Pavel,” he said roughly in response. “Work hard and don’t complain, you understand? You’re a big ox. If you do as I say, I’ll see that you’re well fed.”

“Sure.”

Pavel reached out and grabbed him by the collar. The second the big man’s fingers clutched at the material, Trapp got the sense that this wasn’t the kind of guy he wanted to have to fight, so long as he could avoid it. The guy was strong. Not Instagram model, box gym strong—but the real kind, which came from a lifetime of hard work in places like this.

“Hey,” Trapp protested. “I said okay, all right?”

The big Russian grimaced, then dropped him. He turned, reach for an ax, then thumped it against Trapp’s chest. “This is yours. You know how to use?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Pavel squinted as if wondering if he was being mocked, then seemed to decide he didn’t care. He walked away, grumbling, “Try not to hurt yourself. The wood is slippery in winter, and we’re a long way from a doctor.”

Trapp got to figuring. It wasn’t difficult, though the unvarnished ax handle quickly did a number on his palms. A couple months of desk duty had clearly left him softer than he’d realized. Another prisoner, a little shorter than himself, was working on a tree about ten feet away, but made no attempt to make conversation.

After only a few minutes, he took his jacket off. The vigorous exercise was raising his core temperature quickly despite the cold all around. His breaths formed thick clouds of condensation every time he exhaled, and before long he realized he was starting to work up a sweat. An hour in, he took a short break to cool down, knowing the risks of soaking his clothing with perspiration in a climate as cold as this one. He took the time to survey his surroundings. Pavel was somewhere out of sight, and the decrepit prison guard was leaning against the bus smoking a cigarette.

For the first time, his silent partner spoke up, though he didn’t make eye contact. “I would not do that for long,” he muttered, grunting with effort between blows of his ax.

“Why not?” Trapp replied easily, matching the man’s tone.

“Pavel likes us to work,” he replied blandly, though Trapp detected an undercurrent of resentment in his words.

“What’s it to him?”

“No more,” the man hissed, glancing around nervously. “Forget I said anything.”

“Sure thing,” Trapp murmured in reply, filing the encounter away in his mind for further analysis. He wondered how widely shared his colleague’s opinion of Pavel was. It sure wasn’t a ringing endorsement of the man’s character.

But instead of returning to work, Trapp leaned his ax against a toppled tree trunk—one of several he’d downed so far that morning—and strode back toward the prison transport bus.

Behind him, the prisoner hissed, “Where are you going? He won’t like it.”

Trapp ignored the man. It didn’t take long before he was approaching the guard, who only seemed to recognize his presence when he was a few feet out. The man tossed his cigarette onto the snow and blearily pushed himself off the side of the bus.

“What do you want, inmate?” he snapped. “Why aren’t you working?”

The guard looked around, as if preparing to summon assistance, but Trapp forestalled him. “Just a favor,” he said.

He got a laugh in reply. “Piss off. Get back to work.”

“It could be worth your while,” Trapp replied.

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“I want to speak to the warden.”

“And I want Mila Kunis to adopt me,” the guard chuckled. “But I’m 63 and I live in Siberia, so it seems we don’t always get what we want.”

“Name your commission, it’s yours,” Trapp persisted. “One meeting. The warden will want to hear what I have to offer.”

After spitting nicotine-colored saliva into the snow, the guard said, “Who are you?”

“A man with friends,” Trapp replied. “Friends who want to see me looked after. Can you help?”

Trapp heard footsteps approaching from behind but didn’t look around, instead maintaining his gaze. The guard seemed to consider his request for a time, then sneered and pushed him away.

“Fuck off,” he said. “Pavel—get your boys under control. This prick wanted a cigarette. I’m not a damn charity.”

Pavel emerged into Trapp’s field of view with a face like thunder. He grabbed the man he knew as Kolya by the shoulder and hauled him away. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Trapp didn’t answer. He looked over his shoulder at the guard, who was now disappearing into the distance, and yet whose eyes hadn’t once looked away.

8

“This is not fun, Pecker,” Stanislav Chernyak grumbled.

For once, the Ukrainian irregular fighter was in full uniform. Even more surprisingly, both items of clothing matched. He was seated cross-legged on the dirt behind a wall of sandbags and had an olive-green Javelin missile tube resting on his shoulder, aimed into the ordnance range on the other side of the wall.

“It’s Packer,” the sergeant corrected, stifling a smile. “And believe me, if you ever need to use this thing, you’ll be grateful I showed you how.”

A thick black cable hung out of the back of the Javelin’s seeker unit and was plugged into a laptop computer in front of him. The system was used to train operators to fire the anti-tank missile. On-screen was the computer-generated image that Chernyak saw through the seeker.

“Let me fire it,” the Ukrainian pressed. “A real one. This is a game for children.”

“You’ve missed three of the last five shots you took, buddy. I’m guessing my four-year-old nephew would figure out how to fire this thing faster than you.”

Packer spoke the words with a genial good humor. It had been at least twenty minutes since Chernyak last lit a cigarette, and he knew that the man’s irritability was more a product of nicotine withdrawal than any real anger.

“Watch me,” Chernyak said, his tone biting. “I will hit tank.”

“How about this for a deal—you hit it, I’ll buy you a drink. Just like last time. You miss, same deal, just the other way around.”

“Fine,” he agreed.

Packer watched on-screen as a simulated tank crossed the infrared picture. It disappeared behind a thick wall of foliage, and Chernyak lost it for a few moments as he continued to rotate the actual launcher unit.

“Easy,” Packer murmured. “Adjust the contrast.”

Chernyak did so, his stubby fingers easily accomplishing a task that had stumped both him and them a day before. The Ukrainians had surprised Packer, and he wasn’t too proud to admit it. They were batshit crazy, there was no denying it, but they knew how to fight. And they learned quickly.

“Okay, you got it,” he said as the tank reappeared. “Use the tracker aids.”

A pair of crosshairs appeared on screen and fixated on the simulated tank. The image changed slightly, becoming grainier, but Packer knew that this was simply the system switching to the missile’s video view.

“Lock it in,” he advised.

“I know what I do,” Chernyak groused.

Packer concealed a smile. A beep signaled that the training system was simulating a launch. As the Ukrainian pulled the heavy tube off his shoulder with a grunt and set it on the ground next to them, a readout appeared on the screen.

“I guess not.” Packer grinned, rotating the laptop so that Chernyak could see what it said. “You missed.”

The Ukrainian’s face screwed up with disbelief. He flicked his fingers dismissively. “May that box be hit with thunder.”

“That curse sounds better in Ukrainian, right?”

“Go to hell,” Chernyak grumbled. “You like that better?”

Packer raised his palms wide. “Hey, I’m just here to teach you how to shoot, buddy. If you can’t do it, that’s your problem.”

“I shoot fine. Not with these boxes, microchips,” Chernyak said disdainfully. “Technology. Pah!”

“Uh-huh. But you’re still buying tonight. We had a deal, right?”

Despite the evident irritation on his counterpart’s face, Packer had spent enough time with the man over the previous week to know that though the squalls of his rage hit with unpredictable strength, they also passed just as quickly as they arrived.

Chernyak cocked his head, eyes squinting as he proposed a deal. “How is it you say: double and nothing? We buy for the whole unit. I win, you pay. You win, I do.”

“Double or nothing,” Packer corrected. He thought about it for a moment and decided there was little risk—both because Chernyak was a terrible Javelin shot and because the beer on this side of the pond was dirt cheap, and the vodka even more economical than that.

He shrugged. “Fine. I’ll take that bet.”

Next, he leaned forward to tap a command into the Javelin training control unit, but Chernyak closed one of his beefy, stubby palms around his forearm.

“Not this,” Chernyak said scornfully, mimicking aiming an imaginary rifle. “We will fire proper weapons. I don’t trust this computer. It lies.”

“Sure it does, buddy.” Packer grinned. “But I’m a terrible shot. I’ll take your bet, just so long as I can nominate a second.”

“A second?”

Packer mimed withdrawing an old-fashioned dueling pistol from an equally imaginary holster. He theatrically cocked the weapon. “You know, like they did it in the old days. I pick a representative, you choose yours, and they fight it out while we sip mimosas.”

“I only buy beer,” Chernyak said. “But fine. I take your deal. If you are not man enough to shoot for yourself, that is your problem.”

“Hey, Stu,” Packer called out before sticking to fingers between his lips and letting out a piercing wolf whistle to attract his friend’s attention. “Come over. I’ve got a challenge for ya.”

Sergeant Stu Long was engaged in training another of the irregular fighters on a similar Javelin tube. He jumped up, patted his trainee on the shoulder and added some encouraging words, then trotted over. He was just about Chernyak’s mirror opposite: lean where the Ukrainian was large, an ultra-marathon running health nut when his counterpart was decidedly not.

And most importantly, he was a hell of a shot.

“What’s up, Sergeant?”

“You up for sampling some more of the local beers tonight? Stan here is organizing a tasting for us.”

“I’m still recovering from last time,” Long said with a mock scowl. He massaged his temples. “Besides, I’m about flat broke.”

“What if I said you didn’t have to pay?”

“Now you’re talking…” Long said, peering down with renewed interest. “So what’s the deal?”

Packer reached out and squeezed Chernyak’s shoulder, finally revealing a devilish grin. “Our Ukrainian friend here thinks he can out-shoot you. And since I’ve seen you on the range, I said I’d take the other side of that bet. You think you can do me proud?”

“Do my best, Sergeant,” Long said as he snapped a lazy salute. “When you throwing this hoedown?”

“Now,” Chernyak said, grunting as he lumbered his heavy frame upright. “Come.”

“Man of few words, isn’t he?” Long said as the two Americans followed a few paces behind their erstwhile trainee.

“You’re not here to chat, Stu,” Packer replied. “I got two dozen beers riding on you not being beat. So don’t let me down.”

The base’s shooting range wasn’t more than a skip and a jump from the area in which they had been practicing with the Javelin tubes. It was close to the end of the day, and while a couple of units were still practicing, two-thirds of the shooting booths were empty. Packer hung back as Chernyak approached the range officer.

He’d already noticed that Ukrainian regulars treated the National Guard volunteer units with a certain level of—well, respect wasn’t quite the word. It was part of it, for sure, but there was a general wariness to it also. Evidently, the officer had either decided it wasn’t worth his while to argue, or he just didn’t care. The guy disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a pair of AK-47 rifles and a pistol for each shooter, as well as several magazines for both weapons. He handed them over, then sauntered off without a care in the world.

Chernyak jerked his head toward a pair of booths at the far right of the range. He gave Sergeant Long his choice of weapons. “This is fair contest, you agree? You pick gun. No complaints later.”

Long ostentatiously checked over both weapons, though mostly tongue-in-cheek. “Iron sights, huh?”

“This is problem?”

“No problem. Just checking.”

An approving whistle from behind alerted Packer to the fact that a few soldiers from both the Ukrainian unit and his own had caught wind of the impromptu shooting comp. He told him to keep it down but didn’t kick them out. They’d come to a comfortable working relationship with the irregulars for the past week, but this was a good way of breaking down whatever barriers remained.

Chernyak brandished his AK, then held a single magazine alongside it. “This one is practice. Get used to gun. Then it is time.”

Stu said nothing, as Packer expected him to. He pushed the magazine into his own weapon, then laid it on the bench in front of him as he slotted a target paper into a clip and sent it a hundred yards downrange. The pulley mechanism was clicky and squealed as it stopped. The American shooter paused for a second, raised his weapon, and started to work through his practice shots.

To his right, Chernyak did the same. The bulky Ukrainian swiftly brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired a single shot. He waited a breath, then fired the next. He proceeded like a metronome until all thirty rounds were eaten up, then bashed the pulley button with his fist to return the target.

Since Packer knew that his friend could shoot, he focused on Chernyak. The guy was good, he saw. The first dozen shots had gone a little wide, but he’d quickly adjusted his aim, and the remaining rounds had mostly impacted center mass. A tight grouping had pulverized the spot where bin Laden’s eyes used to be.

He briefly found it amusing that the Ukrainians used the same targets they did but figured they probably all came from the same factory in China.

He joined his compatriot once he was finished with his own practice rounds, figuring to gee him up, and slapped him on the shoulder. Stu frowned down at the rifle, which was lying safe on the bench in front of him, barrel pointed downrange. “Hell, this thing’s looser than a hooker at a Tennessee truck stop.”

“What’s your problem with Tennessee?” Packer asked.

Sergeant Long shrugged. “Never been there. Just like the way it sounded.”

“You think you got this?”

“I know I can shoot. But I don’t know jack about the other guy.”

“Well, I believe in you, man. Just remember, if you lose it’s not me you’re letting down, it’s your country. So no pressure.”

Stu acknowledged him with a wry nod, then loaded his rifle at Chernyak’s prompting.

“Are you ready, American?” he asked, a humorous tone in his voice. “I think there is no lose for you. Either way, somebody is buying you beers tonight.”

“Ignore him, Sergeant,” Packer interjected with good humor. “Your honor’s riding on this, not just my credit card. Don’t forget that.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Stu said. “Before we get started—what are the rules?”

“Sixty seconds and the full magazine,” the Ukrainian said, jerking his thumb at Packer. “He will time.”

“You got it.”

Both men loaded the pulleys with a fresh target. Stalin this time. Packer thought this fit better in these parts. He half-wondered whether they had any of the current Russian president lying around.

Maybe there’s a business opportunity in that.

The mechanism squealed again as the targets locked in, the sheets of paper swaying slightly before their momentum dissipated. Packer removed his wristwatch, a cheap digital unit. He selected the stopwatch function and called out, “Ready in three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

Chernyak squeezed his trigger barely a fraction of a second after Packer initiated the timer. This time, the Ukrainian’s ear protection was only covering the ear that faced his weapon.

“This guy’s real on brand,” Packer muttered.

The two men fired calmly: single shots with a pause of a second or two in between each round to give them a chance to steady themselves. Brass casings flew through the air, and the pungent smell of oxidized nitroglycerin bit at Packer’s nostrils, though it quickly dissipated.

The timer had just hit forty seconds by the time Chernyak fired his last round. He squeezed the trigger a second time to make certain the weapon was safe, then set it back down on the bench in front of him, turning to Packer with his arms outstretched as if emulating a gladiator after a successful fight. Stu only lost to him by a second.

Packer bounced from heel to heel as the pulleys reeled both targets in. He was surprisingly invested in the outcome of the competition now. It wasn’t the money at stake—more the unit’s honor. It was an old-fashioned concept amid the cold brutality of modern warfare, but still no less important to the men who did the killing.

Chernyak looked supremely unconcerned as he plucked his target free of the clip that held it. He walked into Stu’s booth, and they laid both targets side by side. A bullet hole outside Josef’s torso scored zero points. A round that penetrated anywhere in his center mass counted for one, the area around the heart for three, and a headshot was five.

“I make mine…” Stu murmured after about thirty seconds’ counting time, “138.”

“You’re good,” Chernyak said grudgingly. “But I’m better. 141.”

Packer held his hands up and shot Stu a mock-glower. “All right. Fair’s fair. Beer’s on me tonight, I guess. But don’t think this changes things. I expect you to be able to hit at least the side of a barn with one of those missiles by the end of the week. Or you’re buying.”

9

“Honey,” Eliza Ikeda called out, her voice tinkling with laughter as she walked through the door of the apartment in Washington DC’s Kalamata neighborhood that she and Trapp had been renting for the past couple of months. “I’m home…”

She pulled the door closed behind her and tossed the keys to her rental car onto a table by the door, kicking off her boots with relief. Japan to DC was a long flight, and one she was becoming far too acquainted with of late.

“Jason?”

The problem, Ikeda reflected as she shucked off her coat, with two covert operatives maintaining a relationship was that you couldn’t just sync calendars and hop on the phone at the end of a long day to catch up. She’d been away for almost three weeks, but Trapp hadn’t said anything about being gone when she returned.

However, since all the windows in the neat apartment were closed, and it smelled like they’d been that way for several days, she suspected that he’d been called somewhere on short notice. It was, unfortunately, one of the perils of the job.

She worried about him, of course, but no more than he would for her. They both did this job because they wanted to, not because anyone had a gun to their head. That part was simply a perk. Sometimes they groused about it, but neither could give it up.

And yet, Ikeda thought as she pushed open their bedroom door, that didn’t make it any easier to return to an empty home. Especially not when you got ahead of yourself and assumed it would be otherwise. The worst of it was that you didn’t know whether he would be gone a week or a month.

“But it better not be longer,” she grumbled.

The bed was neatly made, with hospital corners—which was right on brand. She didn’t recognize the bedding, which meant that Jason must have gone shopping. She smiled as she tried to imagine him browsing in Salt & Sundry on 14th and found that she just couldn’t picture it.

Ikeda flopped onto the bed and closed her eyes for a moment, resting her head on the pillow on her side of the bed. It only took a second before she realized that whatever was on the pillow wasn’t soft but crinkling instead. Her eyes snapped open.

“The heck?”

She reached up and snatched the paper out from underneath her. It was a white envelope with her name inked in Jason’s handwriting. The lettering was brisk and businesslike, but that didn’t mean anything. It could be divorce papers or the most heartfelt love letter you’d ever seen, and he’d write it just the same way. She hefted it, wondering what it contained. It was thicker than a mere letter had any right to be.

Divorce papers, she scoffed. You’re getting ahead of yourself.

Ikeda threaded her finger under the flap and tore it open, then reached inside. She frowned when she saw what came out. A single sheet of paper with a few lines written on it in Jason’s handwriting was jacketed over a sheaf of high-resolution satellite photos.

She glanced at them first. It was a facility of some sort, somewhere frozen. A prison, perhaps, judging by the fences that surrounded it. It was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow-dusted treetops as far as the eye could see—or at least as far as the photos allowed her to.

The quality of the surveillance shots didn’t surprise her. She was used to reviewing images of this fidelity. Just not usually in her own bedroom.

It was a prison, she was sure of that now. The occupants—all men—walked in lines with other figures just to their side who could only be guards. As far as she could tell they weren’t armed with anything more dangerous than a baton at their waist, but the clarity wasn’t sufficient to be sure.

She shuffled through the sheaf of images but found only that they were mainly different shots of the same location. There was also a printout from a tool that the Agency used to turn signal imagery into dimensions. Measurements were overlaid onto the shots of the prison, indicating the length of the fences and the sizes of buildings. There was an infrared shot, which didn’t reveal much. The last was a map, with the location of the prison noted in neat handwriting.

Siberia?

She quickly flipped through the images one last time, and one jumped out that she had failed to notice on the first go-around. Unlike all the rest, it had nothing to do with the mysterious facility itself. It was an image of a man—not someone she recognized—who looked to be in his late thirties. He had blond hair and a healthy build. It was a file photo, of the kind used in a personnel records jacket.

“So who are you?”

Ikeda stared at the man for a few moments longer, but when no further flash of insight revealed itself, she set the photos aside and turned to the note that Jason had left. It was short and sweet, and raised a heck of a lot more questions than it answered. She started reading.

Liz, I’m sorry about this. Take it to Mike. He’ll know what it’s about. When the demand comes in, pay it. Use my money if Langley won’t. J.

Underneath was an email address, a login, and a password. She dropped the piece of paper and groaned. “Oh, Lord, Jason. What the hell have you gotten yourself involved in now…”

* * *

Mike Mitchell’s office was located on the sixth floor of the CIA’s New Headquarters Building. He rated a room with a window, though any sensitive business had to be carried out in a SCIF. Ikeda marched in, ignoring his assistant’s entreaties that she stop, and threw the satellite images onto his desk.

“Where is he, Mike?”

The Agency wasn’t usually a place that stood on ceremony, but even as Ikeda waited with her arms crossed obstreperously over her chest, she knew this was pushing it. Still, Mitchell wasn’t the kind of guy who took this type of thing to heart. You couldn’t be in Langley anyway. It was a place where egos brushed up against each other on the daily.

He squinted up at her, ignoring the gift. “Where’s who?”

“Who do you think, Santa Claus?”

“Calm down, Liz. I have no idea what you’re talking about. If this has something to do with Jason, then it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Ikeda leaned forward and tapped the stack of photographs in front of him. “Then what’s this? Because I’m guessing he didn’t print these off Google Earth.”

Mitchell’s eyes dropped to study them. He didn’t even look beyond the first image of the frozen prison camp before he pushed his fingers through his hair and groaned. “Oh, shit.”

She gritted her teeth. “You planning on cluing me in anytime soon, Mike—or shall I book a flight to Siberia myself?”

He exhaled and waved off his assistant, who was now standing awkwardly in the doorway. Mitchell waited until the latch clicked behind him before he spoke. “Listen, Liz—this has nothing to do with me. I’m telling you the truth.”

“I don’t even know what this is,” she replied pointedly. “Why don’t you catch me up, and then I’ll be able to make that determination all by myself.”

10

Trapp reclined on his cot, luxuriating in a sensation that had been denied to him ever since he stepped foot on Russian soil—a full body ache. Or at least, one that was brought about as a result of hard work rather than a good working over.

The dormitory’s other inmates were doing much the same. A few were playing chess on a handcrafted board, and occasionally a cry of satisfaction or shame rang out as one side of a wager came to fruition or failure. Other inmates smoked illicitly obtained cigarettes in flagrant violation of the signage on the walls. One man muttered to himself, the precise words both inaudible and meaningless, and the lack of attention paid to him by his cellmates suggested that this was not a newfound or beloved affectation.

Ignoring it all, Trapp used the thumb and fingers of his right hand to work the opposite forearm. He winced as he found a knot, and more as he punished it mercilessly.

Logging was an exhausting job, especially in this frozen northern climate where the wood itself was tough with cold, and when the only tool provided to him was a humble ax. But Trapp’s concern wasn’t the penal colony’s productivity statistics, but whether the activity would help keep him in shape—which he was certain it would. The simple act of raising the ax high above his head and burying it into the trunk of a tree over and over again didn’t sound like much but had left his shoulders sore and aches in places he didn’t know needed training.

Like his forearms.

The dormitory’s metal door clattered open, and an impatient voice rang out, “6167!”

It took Trapp’s non-native mind a couple of seconds to translate the numbers back into English, then process their meaning, and only then did he know to turn and face the door. Two guards were standing there, their thick, fleece-lined coats frosted with snow.

“Wake up, idiot,” the same voice groused. “I don’t have all night. The warden wants to see you.”

One of the other inmates let out a low whistle, earning him a curse from the guard who’d just called Trapp’s number. It didn’t seem to deter him entirely, and though he refrained from vocalizing his interest further, he turned his attention on Trapp.

“Coming,” Trapp grunted, rolling off the cot with a slight groan as his stiffening muscles protested the movement.

“Faster. I don’t have all day.”

“You’ve done it now,” one of the inmates called out, earning himself a cheer that briefly built before a withering look from the guard caused it to die. Someone threw a lit cigarette at him, though it missed by a good foot and a half and sparked against the concrete floor.

Trapp ignored his audience as he laced on his boots. It was no surprise that they were baying for his blood, not after the lesson he’d already dealt their friend. The guy was still hobbling around, casting black looks in his direction every chance he got. He probably thought he was responsible for this, though Trapp knew better.

At least, he hoped he did.

“Leave the coat,” the guard grumbled as Trapp stooped to retrieve it from the crate underneath his bed. “This won’t take long.”

Wincing, Trapp did as he was instructed. He didn’t like the idea of leaving the warmth of the accommodation block without proper clothing on principle. The guard was probably telling the truth, but he didn’t have to like it.

Still, there was no sense in antagonizing the man. Not when the power dynamics in this place were so comprehensively skewed in his favor.

He walked toward the guards through a gentle hail of trash thrown by his dorm mates. Mostly, they missed—as though unwilling to risk actually hitting him, just in case—but a few candy wrappers and spent cigarette ends found their target. Trapp shrugged the attention off. As he exited with his two escorts, a buzz of intrigue erupted on the other side of the closing dormitory door.

The guards led him across the camp. It was snowing, if only in light and occasional flakes, but the real killer was the wind which drove them against Trapp’s frame. He was dressed only in pants, vest, and a work jacket. It wasn’t nearly enough clothing to fight off the cold.

Thankfully, he hadn’t been lied to, and the journey really was a short one. They led him through the doors of the administration block, which was almost tropical in comparison with the bitter chill of the Siberian night. The clock on the wall indicated that it was a little after 7 p.m.

With a start, Trapp realized that time was one of the things he’d missed most since arriving in this place. In the outside world, its dominance over every waking minute could easily be taken for granted. But now that it was gone, it was like someone had hacked off one of his limbs.

They walked through the now-empty offices of the administration block. The concrete walls looked like they might not have been painted in years. Perhaps not since the place was built by the Soviets decades before. It also smelled like boiled cabbage, a scent that seemed to be steaming from the heating ducts.

Still, it was a small price to pay to avoid freezing to death.

The warden’s office appeared to be on the building’s second floor—a fact Trapp deduced by dint of this being where they stopped. It was slightly smarter than the rest of the block, but not by much. The walls were lime green, like everywhere else. Why this was, only some long-archived five-year plan could say.

“Stay there,” one of the guards said to him, gesturing at a spot by the wall. Trapp did as he was instructed and took the opportunity to dust as much of the wind-blown snow off his torso as possible. Some had already melted, and his pants were a little damp.

The guard opened the warden’s office door and informed Makarov of the prisoner’s arrival. “6167, sir. As you requested.”

“Spasiba, Dimitri,” Makarov murmured without looking up from the paperwork on his desk. “Bring him in.”

“Da.”

Trapp followed his cues to enter the warden’s private office and found that he was left inside with only Makarov himself and the one of the two guards who seemed to have working vocal cords. He walked right up to the man’s desk and waited in silence. The door closed behind him.

The warden ignored him and concentrated on his paperwork. The room was quiet, save for the scratching of the man’s pen against cheap paper and the heavy breaths of the overweight guard behind him.

It took almost two full minutes before Makarov finally set his pen down and looked up at him. He was only a small man, especially compared to Trapp, and the disparity forced him to angle his neck up.

“Go back,” he ordered, irritably flicking his fingers at Trapp, who complied, shuffling backward until he was in the office’s dead center. “You can stop.”

“Yes, warden.”

“So…?” Makarov said, frowning. “This had better be good.”

Trapp bowed his head respectfully. “Thank you for meeting with me, warden. I have a small request. I thought it was better to make it in person.”

Instead of responding, Makarov fell silent for several long seconds. He squinted at Trapp in disbelief, then let out a short, sharp grunt of laughter and aimed his gaze at the guard behind, who joined in.

“He has a small request,” he mimicked. “Take him away. This isn’t a damn hotel.”

The guard stopped laughing and stepped toward Trapp, who blurted out, “Will you at least hear me out?”

Makarov held up his palm for the guard to stop. “That depends on you. Is it worth a week in solitary?”

Trapp nodded. “I think it will be profitable. For you.”

The warden’s interest was clearly piqued, though more out of incredulity than avarice. Trapp couldn’t blame him for that. Running a prison camp in the depths of the Siberian forest wasn’t exactly a plum posting, which meant that Makarov was either lacking in connections or ambition. And in either case, the best he could hope for in the way of bribes was a few rubles to pad his salary. Unfortunately for him, that meant he didn’t know a good deal even when it looked him right in the eye.

“So what is it?” Makarov asked.

“I want my own room.”

“And I want to screw Miss Irkutsk,” Makarov laughed, shaking his head at Trapp’s impertinence. “But I told you once—this isn’t a hotel. You don’t get to make requests. You’re here to serve your time, and you better hope that I don’t decide to add any on for this.”

“I’m willing to pay good money,” Trapp said.

Makarov’s eyes darted toward the guard, just for a second, before they returned to his charge. “I don’t accept bribes,” he glowered.

“Of course not. Call it a donation. This place must run up a hell of an energy bill.” Trapp turned and glanced at the guard behind him. The man’s expression was noticeably bland. “Perhaps we could discuss this in private.”

“Your file says you’re a bum,” Makarov scoffed, ignoring his request—a fact that spoke volumes of his self-perceived impunity in this place. “You don’t have the funds to make good on this even if you wanted to.”

“Perhaps I have friends outside”—Trapp shrugged—“who might want to make my life more comfortable. Think this through, warden. I’m here for nine years. That’s a lot of… donations.”

“What friends?”

“That, I’m afraid”—Trapp winced—“will have to remain between me and them. At least, if I want them to cough up.”

“So you’re Bratva?” Makarov said, his eyes widening. “You must have crossed somebody to end up in here. Why should I believe they will pay?”

“I keep my secrets,” Trapp said blandly now that the warden had reached the exact conclusion he’d wanted him to.

Makarov reclined in his chair and studied Trapp with real interest for the first time, as if sizing him up. “What do you want?”

“Just to serve my time in a little comfort. A room of my own, a little freedom—”

“I can’t let you go,” Makarov snapped.

Trapp raised his palms and spoke in a conciliatory tone. “Of course not. Just enough to stretch my legs.”

The warden licked his lower lip. “How much?”

“You have a pen?”

“Pen? Why?”

Trapp took a step forward, and behind him he heard the rustling of the guard’s uniform as the man moved to intervene. Makarov held up his hand, and Trapp took advantage of the momentary freedom to snatch a pen from the man’s desk and scribble an email address on a scrap of paper.

He pushed it toward the warden. “Think of a number. It will come every month so long as I am in this place. When you have it, send my friends the bank details.”

Makarov’s gaze dropped to the scrap of paper, which he studied intently. Then he scrunched it up and tossed it in the wastepaper basket.

Scowling, he said, “Dimitri. Take this fantasist to the odinochka. It’s time he learned a lesson about wasting my time.”

Trapp didn’t resist as Dimitri dragged him out of the office, through the snow, into another of the colony’s identikit buildings and from there into a freezing cellblock. This was what the warden meant, Trapp saw. It couldn’t be above 50 degrees, and condensation dripped down the concrete walls. The metal cell doors were freezing to the touch and streaked with rust.

Dimitri grabbed a bunch of keys off the wall and unlocked one of them. It had Cyrillic writing on the front in white paint, though the markings had long ago departed the realms of legibility. He gave Trapp a push in the back and said, “Get in.”

Intentionally stumbling, Trapp did as he was instructed—stopping dead only when he was confronted by the true horror of his new home. The cell was a squalid, fetid place. The concrete walls were gray with grime and streaked in places with a substance that he very much hoped was not blood. Unlike the cells in the Interior Ministry building days earlier, there was no toilet, only a metal pail on the floor beside two wooden shipping pallets that made up his bed. A jagged nail emerged prominently from one, threatening tetanus should he toss and turn in the night.

If anything, it was colder even than the cellblock outside.

Trapp turned to face Dimitri, noticing the guard’s baton was extended a moment too late. It whistled toward him, bouncing off his already-aching upper arm. Immediately, the man lifted it again and started on another blow.

Knowing better than to resist, Trapp howled with pain to exaggerate the perceived impact of the assault. He tilted forward as another strike came for his stomach, enough only to smother the worst of the sting of the strike. It was still enough to knock the wind out of him, but hopefully not much more. Another followed, and though he did his best to ride the impacts and absorb the energy, the cumulative toll began to tell. Acid singed his throat, sent upward by a protesting stomach.

“Blyad,” Trapp groaned, sinking to the ground as though in real pain. He was careful not to take his eyes off his assailant. His torso could take the damage. He’d spent years training his core musculature to just that end. The brain, though, was an entirely more delicate organ. And you only got one.

Fuck.

Dimitri took the curse as a sign of encouragement rather than victory. He aimed a kick at Trapp’s calf, then landed a hard punch on his upper shoulder. As his victim appeared to cower on the floor in front of him, he conjured a pool of saliva and spat.

The liquid collided with Trapp’s cheek and began a slow, repulsive trickle downward. Strangely, Trapp would almost have preferred another blow to this indignity.

“Enjoy…” Dimitri laughed, turning on his heel and locking the cell door behind him as he left.

Trapp rolled onto his back and lay for a few seconds to catch his breath before wiping the spit on his face. He scraped his palm against the ground to rid himself of the worst of it, then dried his hand on his upper thigh. He stared at the ceiling of the cell as his heart rate returned to baseline, and the worst of his bodily aches started to fade.

That was unexpected.

Perhaps he had been naïve. He’d assumed that Makarov would be hooked by the offer, not insulted. He certainly hadn’t considered he might end up in here. Which sort of altered the equation.

So now it was down to Ikeda. Trapp wondered how she would react and wished he been able to explain his motives to her in person. She would know what to do, he knew. But whether she would forgive him for leaving her in the dark about his intentions was another question entirely.

“I hope you understand…” he whispered. “You would do the same.”

11

Trapp had long since abandoned any effort to stop his teeth chattering. He had no real conception of how long he’d been abandoned in the cell. There were no windows, and the electric lighting was kept burning twenty-four hours a day.

At least he assumed it was. He must have fallen asleep at some point, though between the cold, the exhaustion, and the hunger, it was getting difficult to distinguish night from day, or whatever passed for time in this place. Were his meals delivered at a particular hour, or whenever the guards felt like it?

It was impossible to say.

“Come on,” he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth to hush just for a moment the incessant pounding of enamel against enamel. “Get up.”

There was a constant paradox in this place: You needed to keep moving to stay warm, but if you broke a sweat then the moment you stopped, the cold redoubled its attack. And it had a hell of a lot more resolve than he did. It was probably only a little under fifty degrees—unlikely to kill him, but certainly cool enough that his paranoid mammalian brain wouldn’t quit reminding him about the danger.

That was before you even mentioned the food. If you could call it that, which Trapp certainly didn’t. Two trays sat just inside the metal door, pushed through a slot at floor height. One mounted the other. The bread on them was moldy—not just a little, but almost entirely green, and had arrived that way. In extremis, he might eat it, but right now he wasn’t convinced that he was willing to add diarrhea to his present list of problems.

The less that could be said of the remainder of the tray’s contents, the better. He was pretty sure that the slop on it had been taken right from the bottom of the scraps bucket in the mess hall—the one the inmates scraped their trays onto before dumping them on the rack.

Judging by the smell, it had been left to ferment for several days before it made its way to him. He wrinkled his nose and looked away.

Trapp performed ten slow jumping jacks to start, lumbering his body up after a period of inactivity on the shipping pallets that stood in for a mattress. Some of the slats had been removed—no doubt intentionally—to ensure that there was no way of getting comfortable. Either a bent nail jabbed into your cheek, or an edge cut off the circulation in your upper thigh. He would ordinarily have chosen the floor, but the wooden pallets at least provided a little insulation from the freezing concrete.

The ever more inventive contortions that he forced his body into inevitably resulted in muscle knots and spasms, and without occasional sessions of exercise, his experience was that these only worsened.

He stacked the pallets on top of each other and used the height to perform a set of tricep dips. Then push-ups. After that came jumps, lunges, and Bulgarian split squats, never pushing himself hard enough to work up a dreaded sweat or to tax his already fading energy reserves.

The full routine took him what he judged to be about ten minutes to complete. By the time he finished, he was panting slightly but showed no real signs of exertion. His stomach ached where Dimitri had hit him, and his body was spidered with a web of fading bruises and other contusions from the long litany of assaults he’d suffered over the past week.

But it was all manageable. For now. He never allowed himself to consider the question of how much longer things would remain that way.

He reassembled the crates and was about to lie back down when a sound caught his attention: a distant metallic squeal. It was the sound that signaled someone was entering the hallway outside, though they never cared to open the actual door to his cell.

Lunchtime already? he wondered dryly, not knowing whether it was four in the afternoon, the morning, or somewhere in between.

The gate to the solitary wing opened, and footsteps sounded. Two pairs, he figured. That was new.

A voice spoke. What it said was impossible to make out. But a moment later, a keychain jangled, and he heard the click of metal as a key was entered into the lock of his cell.

This was also new.

The key turned, and the mechanism unlocked with a heavy, analog thunk. A single set of footsteps sounded someone’s departure.

What the hell’s going on?

His cell door swung open.

“You,” Trapp murmured when he saw who was standing on the other side. His voice was rusty with disuse. He recognized the owlish face from their brief meeting a few days prior. “What are you doing here?”

Sasha—ever the professional—didn’t even blink at the sight that greeted him. “I’m here to take you to your new cell.”

Trapp blinked. It was amazing how quickly you lost all sense of your own humanity, he thought. Without time, without human contact, it was all too easy for the brain to lose its tether with reality. “How long have I been here?”

“Two days,” Sasha replied. “I think.”

“Is that all?”

Sasha nodded. “So—do you want to leave?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” Trapp quipped, though from the questioning look on his fellow inmate’s face, he might not have nailed the translation. He kneeled to pull on then lace up his boots and added, “That’s a yes.”

The prisoner handed him a warm jacket, which he gratefully shrugged on, then said, “Follow me.”

The cold was an order of magnitude more intense once they exited the cellblock and stepped outside into the biting chill of the Siberian night, but it scarcely bothered Trapp. He couldn’t remember a time when his senses had felt more alive than right now—as though he’d sloughed off an old coat of skin, and his nerve endings were reacquainting themselves with reality.

“I’m too late to eat, right?” Trapp asked, his boots crunching against a day-old snowfall. There was no cloud cover tonight, and a cornucopia of stars glittered in the sky overhead. It was almost breathtaking.

“A few hours,” Sasha agreed. “But I can find something.”

Trapp smiled his thanks and thrust his hands into his pockets. After his initial moment of exultation, the toll that the previous two days had inflicted on him began to rear its head. The hunger gnawing at his belly was almost impossible to ignore, even with the promise that it was about to disappear. And stomping through the thick snow taxed what meager reserves of energy he had left.

“Where are we going?” he asked after a moment of silence.

“Block five.”

“What’s block five?”

“Where the administration puts those in their favor. Mostly prisoners who’ve been here for years. A reward for good behavior.”

“And me,” Trapp said without varying his tone of voice, though attuned to the man’s response. It hadn’t escaped him that his current companion was a man of considerable power, in his own way. He might easily prove useful.

“And you,” Sasha agreed.

“Does that surprise you?”

“I have no expectations,” Sasha said blandly. “It’s easier to avoid disappointment that way.”

“That sounds like a hard way to live.”

They stopped short in front of an accommodation wing that looked just like all the rest: a snow-dusted concrete shell with tiny windows and no distinguishing features. “This is block five?” Trapp asked.

Sasha pushed the door open and beckoned him to follow. “It is.”

Trapp followed the quiet Russian inside and found a layout that was very different from the building in which he’d initially been placed. Where that consisted of a single story with two large dormitories on either side of a long corridor, this was built differently.

“How many people live here?” Trapp asked.

“About a dozen.”

“You?”

Sasha shook his head. “I don’t have the connections,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly without bitterness. He led Trapp to a closed door. “But I get by.”

“I bet you do,” Trapp murmured.

There were almost thirty single rooms in this block, and yet it was barely a third full. It was clear that even if Sasha wasn’t quite the linchpin on which the orderly running of this colony depended, then he was at least the lubricant that kept it smooth. And yet even he didn’t merit his own room.

The lights flickered on inside the bedroom, groaning in that way that fluorescent tubes do before they spring entirely into life. The early light was dull and gray, illuminating a sparse, dirty room which consisted only of a bunk bed against the wall, a metal toilet, and a sink. Still, compared to the cell in which Trapp had spent the last few days, it was like a luxury hotel.

“Give me five minutes,” Sasha said, turning to leave. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

Trapp was too tired to argue. While his new friend was gone, he washed his face in the sink. It ran rusty for a good five minutes before the flow of water lightened, but he didn’t bother waiting. It seemed unlikely that Legionella bacteria could survive the weather out here, and even if it could it was a risk he was willing to take. He also relieved himself for the first time in forty-eight hours into a receptacle that wasn’t an overflowing bucket.

You couldn’t put a price on a luxury like that.

“Especially when they never empty it,” he mumbled.

“Did you say something?”

Trapp spun to find Sasha had returned with a parcel wrapped in brown paper. The Russian held it out to him, and he accepted gratefully, unwrapping it with indecent haste to find a thick hunk of rye bread, some cheese, and a length of dried sausage. It was a meal that he was becoming disturbingly familiar with, but right now he didn’t give a damn. It wasn’t green, which was as good an endorsement as any Michelin star ever could be.

“Thank you,” he grumbled, a stream of crumbs coursing down his chin as he tore hunks out of the crust. It was all gone inside 60 seconds. “I needed that.”

“You want to hear the rules?”

Frowning, Trapp asked, “What rules?”

“You can walk in the camp at any time, except after curfew. That’s midnight to 6 a.m. After that, I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Why not?”

“You might get shot,” Sasha said simply.

As good a reason as any, Trapp thought. “Seems fair. What time is it now?”

“About nine.”

“Wait, you said they don’t close the gates?”

“Only the ones for vehicles. You can walk out no problem. But where would you go?”

“Anyone ever try and make a break for it?” Trapp asked.

“Sure.” Sasha shrugged. “But what they tell you at intake is correct. If you don’t freeze to death, the dogs get you.”

“What about summer?”

“You drown. And there are the tigers.”

Assuming he was joking—and thinking that the quip was quite unlike the man he had come to know—Trapp grinned. It swiftly faded away. “You’re serious…”

“Sure. Not many left, but they’re out there.”

Trapp walked to the sink and gulped down enough water to soak the bread in his stomach. The gnawing in his belly that had kept him awake the past few days had mostly faded, though a ghost remained. “You want to take a walk?”

Sasha squinted. “Why?”

“My conversation’s that bad?”

“Not at all!” the Russian exclaimed, his palms flying up before he realized that Trapp was only joking. “Okay. I could use the exercise.”

His energy at least temporarily refilled, Trapp took the lead as they walked outside. The cold felt somehow less intense and more invigorating. The depth of the snow on the ground didn’t sap his energy so rapaciously. He led his companion to the fence and started a leisurely circumnavigation of the frozen colony. They walked the first few minutes in silence.

“Tell me about yourself,” Trapp finally asked.

“What do you want to know?”

“How’d you end up in here? Or is that rude?”

“Embezzlement. I’m an accountant. Or at least, I was.”

Genuinely startled, Trapp said, “And they sent you here?”

Sasha replied fatalistically. “In Russia it’s not what you do that matters, it’s who gets hurt. I picked the wrong mark. It happens.”

“How long you been here?”

There was a brief silence before the prisoner replied. It was perhaps the only sign that the question carried an emotional cost. “Five years,” came the eventual answer.

Then a short silence.

“You want to know how long I have left, don’t you?”

Trapp protested, but the words sounded false, even in a different language.

“A lifetime,” Sasha explained.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. My life is not so bad. You see, I have become useful, have I not?”

“To me,” Trapp said, pausing to grin at his new friend. “Sure. I would’ve gone to bed hungry without you.”

Sasha inclined his head. “My pleasure. What about you? Where are you from? You don’t sound—”

“Russian?” Trapp laughed over the question. “I get around. Sometimes here, mostly not. It’s good to practice.”

“Yes,” Sasha agreed softly. “It is nice to talk. The others are not so friendly…”

“No. Mostly murderers. Not men like you.”

“Exactly,” Sasha said with a slight exhale, as though at long last someone understood him. Trapp felt slightly ashamed that his motivation for striking up this conversation wasn’t entirely pure. “And you—how did you end up here?”

“Same story,” Trapp chuckled. “Hit the wrong guy. A cop.”

“That’ll do it.”

They both paused at about the same time and looked up at the sky. Something passed across the heavens—either a shooting star, or more likely a passenger plane. Trapp didn’t allow himself to imagine what being inside it would be like, plied with alcohol and fed from a tray. He’d never pined for plane food before.

Trapp realized that the satellite camp was in view. He wondered whether or not to mention it to Sasha. Perhaps there was something he could learn. Or was it too early?

The opportunity was stolen from him by the fact that the bank of exterior lights in the other facility snapped on, shining an artificial glow onto the fresh snow—which, Trapp noticed, had been recently swept.

Sasha turned quickly and targeted Trapp’s arm. “We should go.”

Unmoving, Trapp asked, “Why?”

Another answer presented itself a moment later, though not in the form of a direct response. Instead, the distant sound of helicopter rotors drifted across the night sky—quiet, but unmistakable.

“Please,” Sasha said, an uneasy note in his voice. “We can’t be out here.”

Trapp acquiesced to his wishes but walked slowly, craning his neck to the sound. The engine noise quickly grew, and before long an indistinct black shape was visible against the glittering diamond canvas of the sky. It was unmistakably a helicopter—and an expensive executive model, quite at odds with the poverty of its surroundings.

Sasha pulled him behind a building and froze. Trapp peered around the corner and watched as the chopper landed in the pool of light. It died before anyone stepped out.

“What’s in there?” Trapp asked.

“High-security.”

Trapp frowned. “I was just in solitary. Other than me, it was empty. So who’s in there?”

Sasha was clearly spooked. He stomped away without turning his head. “You ask too many questions. Come, we must go.”

12

There was a three-way battle going on inside the American’s body between thirst, cold and hunger—and for now at least, thirst was winning. His tongue was sandpaper, his lips chapped, his Adam’s apple bobbing helplessly as he swallowed over and over, more in hope than expectation.

He opened his eyelids, only for his retinas to suffer the assault of the burning lightbulb on the ceiling that never dimmed. Raising his hand to cover them would take too much energy, so he just turned his head. A sense of loss pervaded his mind.

He’d dreamt that someone had come to rescue him from this place. The same dream every time. There were no faces, no real markers to which his fading memory could cling. Only a general feeling of warmth, the sweetness of fruit on his tongue, and the trickle of juice down his chin.

None of it was real, of course. He was still imprisoned here—wherever here was—and that wasn’t going to change. There was no knight in shining armor climbing the fortress walls, no happy ending to his story. Just more hunger, more pain, and an inevitable slide toward death.

He rolled off the shipping-crate bed, knocking the wind from his chest as he landed on the floor, his muscles too weak to support his weight as he fell. He lay there for a few seconds to regain his strength, then crawled to the water bowl.

It was secured to the concrete floor as if meant for a dog. The metal itself was rusty, which meant that the water inside was sometimes brackish, although not today. Someone had refilled it while he slept.

You didn’t notice? he thought. You’re slipping.

But of course he was. What kind of man could survive this treatment? Maybe a stronger one than he, but it was hard to imagine that such a creature existed.

He would break. He knew it, they knew it. It was only a matter of time, and that was one thing his captors had on their hands. There was no hurry. Nothing would happen until the snow melted, and that had to be weeks away. Maybe a month.

You can last that long.

The affirmation felt hollow even in the privacy of his own mind. It rang false. And besides, the only prize for holding out would be to confirm his own uselessness and thus condemn himself to death.

The American knelt over the water bowl and lowered his face to it. He didn’t recognize the man in the shimmering reflection. The person was him, but he couldn’t believe it. His face was covered by a thin, wispy beard—perhaps two weeks’ growth. His cheeks were hollow and growing more so every day. He ran his fingers through his hair and was unsurprised when several strands came loose. It had been happening more and more often these past few days.

He closed his eyes, no longer able to bear the sight of the man he had become, and dropped his mouth to the bowl. When the Russians had first brought him here, the act of drinking like this—like an animal—had summoned hot tears of shame. He was long past that now.

The scrape of rubber against the concrete outside his cell door announced the arrival of the guards. He scrambled backward, into the far corner of the room—wary of catching a stray boot or wayward fist. His flesh was marked by the many occasions on which he had failed to do this in time.

Metal crashed on concrete, and the American realized with horror that in his haste he had knocked over the pail containing his bodily waste. It had been days since they’d properly fed him, so it was mostly liquid, but the acrid ammonia stench filled his nostrils and caused his fragile, bloated stomach to cramp and spasm.

He clamped his palm across his lips to prevent any chance of vomit adding to the horrendous stench and desperately attempted to think of anything else. The cell door slammed against the concrete wall, the thick, heavy metal sending a shower of stone dust onto the floor as it impacted. He flinched in spite of himself.

“Up!” a man in black fatigues screamed hoarsely in accented English, stomping heavily into the cell before pulling up short.

They never wore recognizable uniforms—only something vaguely paramilitary—and never had unit insignia. The only hint as to their origin was the language. Beyond that, it was impossible to know who exactly had him. The disorientation was the point.

The Russian scrunched up his nose at the smell of the American’s bodily waste and kicked the metal pail aside. It bounced off the wall and rocked from side to side. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

The prisoner simply cowered in his corner. He knew by now that it was better not to speak. Reacting simply drew more attention, which resulted in more pain, more deprivation. When he stayed quiet, they eventually tired of their sport.

“I said get up,” the Russian repeated.

He did as he was instructed. For once, his guard didn’t reach out and grab him—no doubt because he was shielded by his own bodily waste.

Though the American’s legs were shaky underneath him, they held. He leaned against the wall for support as the Russian surveyed him with a critical eye before muttering, “Come. You’ll need fresh clothes. The boss won’t want to see you like this.”

The guard promptly turned on his heel, presumably expecting his prisoner to follow—which he did, but not before a stunned attempt to process this new change in his circumstances. He knew better than to think too far into the future, but this time it proved impossible.

Because this was new. Who was the boss?

And why had he come?

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, the American found himself in a warm meeting room wearing a fresh prison jumpsuit. They forced him to shower, though in cold water with little time to properly dry himself, so his light hair was still damp.

Thankfully, the room was heated. It was the first time warm air had contacted his skin in longer than he cared to remember. Though it was pleasant, he was still shivering. Between the icy shower and the endless days spent in his freezing prison cell, it would take a whole lot more than a few minutes of comfort to heal him.

Still, for the first time since his arrival, he felt somewhat human. He decided to chance his arm.

“Who are we waiting for?” he asked, directing his question at the guard standing by the door. “What is this all about?”

The American knew better than to beg for his freedom, or lodge any form of protest with this man. Either he was not equipped for, or not authorized to engage in conscious thought. He suspected the former.

“Shut up,” came the gruff response.

Doing as instructed, the American instead allowed his gaze to wander around the meeting room. It wasn’t enormous—about enough space around the wooden table for about eight attendees. Right now, he was the only person seated.

There was a coffee machine on the table by the wall. The type that eats pods and spits java out. Beside it was a plate of cookies. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. What would his captor do if he simply stood up and ate one?

Better not try and find out.

“The juice won’t be worth the squeeze,” he whispered, looking up at the man, whose fists had started to clench.

The Russian scowled and took a pace toward him. “I said—”

“Okay, okay…” the American said, raising his hands. He squinted, hearing for the first time the sound of helicopter blades settling somewhere very close by. The boss, then. Someone important, if they merited transport like that. The coffee cups started vibrating on their tray.

He reclined in his chair, leaving the next few moments up to fate. He didn’t have the energy to try and work through the permutations. Whoever was about to walk through that door, the outcome would be the same: more pain. Thinking too hard about it could drive a man mad.

The chopper’s engine cut out, and the whine of the rotor blades started to slow. Soon they died away entirely. The American’s eyes lost focus. His mind was retreating behind the wall that he had erected since his capture. The only way to survive a torment like this was to hide from it. But the risk was that if it continued much longer it might also be impossible ever to return.

A door opened in the hallway outside, causing a momentary imbalance in air pressure that swung the meeting room’s own entrance open before rattling shut once more. Ten seconds later, the door opened fully, and a man in his sixties strode through. He had salt-and-pepper hair and was wearing a thick wool overcoat.

“This is him?” he asked in Russian. It was a language the American spoke well. Kind of de rigueur in eastern and central Europe, the regions where he’d spent most of his career.

Is that where you are now?

“Da,” the guard agreed, snapping to attention as the boss strode in. He was followed by another man in a suit. Probably a bodyguard, if size was anything to go by.

“Good. Now get out.”

The guard seemed to bristle for a moment before immediately departing. The American took that as a small win. You had to take them where you could get them, he thought dryly.

“So,” the new arrival said, studying his prisoner with his hands resting on his hips. It took the American a moment to notice that he was speaking in English. “You’re him.”

“Please…” the American croaked. “I don’t know who you think I am, or what you think—”

“Do you drink coffee?” the man said unexpectedly.

His voice was as strong and healthy as his visage. He had that sense of health and strength that comes hand in hand with wealth, at least for men of his vintage. Money for personal trainers, private chefs, medicines, supplements, and personalized diet plans. He might have passed for ten years younger.

“Coffee?”

“The drink. It’s hot. You might like it.”

The American blinked. “I know—Yeah, sure.”

“My name is Maxim,” the man announced as he walked over to the coffee machine. He fed in a pod, and the device started to hum. “Maxim Zayetsev.”

Do I know that name?

Perhaps. It was hard to say, with a mind dulled by exhaustion and hunger and fear. Perhaps Maxim Zayetsev was a man he knew. The name was familiar, and perhaps the face too. Or was it?

It was impossible to say. He was just tying himself up in knots. “Do I know you?”

Zayetsev didn’t answer the question. “Creamer, Mr. Fowler?”

The American—Chase Fowler—froze just a second too long. He coughed and replied, “I don’t know who that is. My name is Fleming.”

Zayetsev seemed to ignore the first part of his answer. “What about the creamer? That’s what you call it in America, no? For your coffee.”

“Oh,” Fowler replied dumbly, the aroma of coffee torturing his nostrils and reminding him of a life before this torment. “Yeah, sure.”

He ordinarily took his coffee black, but right now any nutrition was better than none—even the little he would get from a pasteurized packet of creamer.

Zayetsev picked up the plate of cookies, walked over to the meeting table, and placed it in the center. As he doubtless intended, it was all Fowler could look at. He reached out to take one as the urbane Russian walked away, then stopped dead. Zayetsev’s bodyguard shot him a black stare—and though it wasn’t exactly clear whether that was simply his resting henchman face or a warning, he chose to play it safe.

Zayetsev fed a second pod into the coffee machine. About twenty seconds later, his own cup was ready—this one black—and he returned to the table and set Fowler’s drink in front of him.

“You’re not hungry?” Zayetsev remarked with false surprise, gesturing at the cookies as he took his own seat. “I can have them removed if—”

“No!” Fowler said, reaching out quickly and grabbing a handful of the crumbly treats. He knew he was betraying his own weakness, and yet was incapable of resisting the urge. He cracked one of them in half and fed it into his mouth, barely swallowing before it was joined by the next piece.

“You really shouldn’t have waited,” Zayetsev chided him. “If I’d known you were so hungry, I would have arranged for a more substantial meal. Sandwiches, maybe, or a burger. That’s what you Americans eat, correct? Of course there is no McDonald’s out here. But I’m sure a suitable replacement could be found.”

Where is here?

Fowler knew the game that Zayetsev was playing. It was hardly subtle. And yet for all that, it was a seductive prospect. He was this man’s prisoner, and while it might be his sworn duty to attempt to escape—to warn Washington of what he had learned—that was surely impossible.

Was he still in Ukraine? He didn’t even know that, so how could he hope to escape? His cell was impregnable. There was no denying that. And even if he made it out, he was far too weak to hope to succeed.

So was it even worth trying? Why not just tell Zayetsev what he wanted to know? At least that way the end would be quick. And perhaps they would feed him before they pulled the trigger. A last meal. Did they do that here?

He cleared his throat. “The cookies are fine. Thank you.”

Zayetsev inclined his head. “As you wish. So who did you tell, Mr. Fowler?”

He did what he’d been trained to do and stuck to the script, though he didn’t know how long he could hold out. “I told you, my name isn’t—”

“But of course it is.” Zayetsev smiled. He clicked his fingers, and the bodyguard produced a manila folder, which he handed over to his master, who set it on the table between them.

Fowler glanced at the prop uncertainly. He said nothing.

Zayetsev flipped open the jacket, revealing a glossy full-page photo. He picked it up, spun it around, and showed it to the American. “This was taken of you in Islamabad, yes? In 2011. You were assigned to the CIA station in the embassy.”

“No—”

“Is that you or isn’t it?” Zayetsev said harshly, cutting across him. “It’s a simple question, Mr. Fowler.”

“Yes, it’s me. No, I wasn’t working for the CIA. I never have. I don’t know where you got that from, but they got it all wrong. You have to believe me. I’m a diplomat. At least, I was back then. I joined a private contractor three years ago. Twice the money and half the time abroad. My name is Fleming.”

“Chase Fleming,” Zayetsev agreed with a smile. “Yes, I’ve seen your documents. They are excellent, of course. But then, they would be.”

“Because they’re real!” Fowler protested. “I can’t tell you anything except the truth.”

“You’re very convincing.” Zayetsev nodded. “And yet we both know that what you are saying simply isn’t true.”

Fowler reached numbly for his coffee cup. He drank half of it in a single gulp, heedless of the scalding heat. He needed the caffeine. Needed to think. “You can’t know that. It isn’t—”

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” Zayetsev said with a cunning smile that made his opposite number’s heart sink. What had he given away?

“Have you heard of the Office of Personnel Management?”

“Sure.” Fowler shrugged, apprehensive at this new line of questioning. He suspected he knew where the Russian was going, and he didn’t know how to head him off. “I work—worked—for the government. They handle health insurance, that kind of thing.”

“And they were hacked several years ago, were they not?”

“I think I read something about that. The Iranians, I heard.”

“Yes,” Zayetsev agreed. “But that’s the thing about information. It has a habit of getting around.”

“I don’t see what this has—”

As so often, the Russian cut him off. “You see, the CIA has a very strange way of handling things. I used to work for the FSB, did you know that? Before the wall fell. When it had a different name.”

Fowler finished the coffee. Instead of waking him up, it was having the opposite effect. His eyelids felt weighted. Had they spiked it? “The KGB.”

“You see, we’re getting somewhere. Yes, the KGB. Even today, in the Lubyanka our personnel records are stored only on paper. It’s safer that way.”

“So I opened a history textbook once. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“We both know there’s more to it than that,” Zayetsev said. He was wearing the self-satisfied expression of a cat toying with its prey.

“Please, just let me go,” Fowler begged. “You have the wrong guy. I don’t know anything.”

“Since you know your history, Mr. Fowler, I shall tell you a story about the Great Patriotic War,” Zayetsev said. “And say what you want about the Germans, they were meticulous. Imagine keeping detailed records of six million Jews, just so the world would know what you did when you worked them to death.”

Fowler didn’t dare look up from the table in front of him, too scared that he would give something away. He just listened.

“And you can imagine our surprise when we discovered that the Americans are just the same. You would think that if the CIA was going to allow its employees’ information to mix with all the rest of your country’s bureaucrats, they would at least make it look like all the rest. And yet, they did not.”

“You’re reading it wrong.”

“The CIA pays very slightly differently than the State Department. Not much. But just enough to be noticeable. Did you know that, Mr. Fowler?”

“Fleming.”

“Please, let’s stop this game. I know who you are. You know that I know. And you know too that I have time on my side. It would be better for all of us if you simply told me what I want to know.”

Fowler placed one arm on either cheek and pressed hard, as if attempting to crush his skull. In truth, it would have been a blessing. The demands of duty and survival were pulling in very different directions. “You have the wrong guy.”

Zayetsev shook his head. He sounded almost sad. “I do not. But I will give you 48 hours to think this over. Do you remember what I told you about my time in the KGB?”

“Just that you worked there.”

“I was an interrogator.” Zayetsev smiled. “A very good one, as it happens. Of course, when the USSR crumbled, I was forced to find a different outlet for my talents. But I still remember the man I was. I hope you do not have to find out.”

13

The following morning Trapp woke better rested than he had in a week. His cot was uncomfortable, the mattress musty, the bedding stained. And yet sleeping alone was an almost incomparable luxury when you had experienced the alternative.

He arrived at the vehicle lot ten minutes early, just before seven in the morning. The sky was overcast, but it was not especially cold—at least, in comparison with the previous day. Most of the logging crew was already waiting, mostly huddled in small groups smoking cigarettes.

Trapp stood alone. He watched as the guard attempted to start the bus. The engine turned over but did not catch. The man swore and tried several more times with equally little success. He jumped out of the bus, lit a cigarette, and smoked the whole thing in several angry drags before flicking it into a nearby snowbank.

Pavel—the tattooed overseer from his first day on the job—arrived several minutes late, with a hanger-on on either side. He was a mean-looking bastard, Trapp reflected. Muscular, tall, and doubtless a killer. As Sasha had explained, they mostly were in this place. He was clearly afforded privileges by the penal colony’s administration. He hadn’t troubled himself to work much when given the chance, and Trapp suspected he would do the same today.

The big, tattooed Russian walked toward a pair of metal oil barrels in the center of the yard. They had a second life as furnaces for the workers to warm themselves by and were already smoldering away gently, scenting the air with a faint aroma of wood smoke. He checked in with the guard on the way and then bellowed for the inmates to join him.

Trapp did so but kept his eye on the way the other inmates responded to him and his lackeys. They obeyed, but not out of any deep well of respect. It was clear they would do exactly as they were told, but not a step further. The man had power, but not loyalty.

“We’re in the yard today,” Pavel grunted when they were all assembled. His complexion was pale—and he looked somewhat hungover. This close, Trapp was able to make out the outline of a bird’s head inked against his neck. Another black eagle. “Bus is fucked.”

The description was succinct but hard to argue with.

Pavel led the work crew to the colony’s lumberyard, where Trapp was handed an ax, pointed toward a pile of wood not too far from the storage barn at the far corner of the yard, and tasked with turning large logs into smaller ones. It was mindless work, but tiring, and he welcomed the challenge as a way of staying in shape.

He worked for about an hour, losing himself in the repetitive melody of the ax head burying itself deep inside the pine log, then a second thump as he brought the log itself back down against the frozen ground, splitting it in two. He tossed the pieces aside and grabbed the next. He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.

“I’ve been here eight years, you know that?”

Trapp turned to find Pavel’s gaze burning a hole in his forehead. He let the ax drop to his side but kept his grip of it. “A long time,” he replied blandly, his chest heaving from the effort.

The inmate grimaced at his response, and Trapp noticed that the man’s hands were clenching into fists. He didn’t get the impression that he was about to eat a punch, but it was worth paying attention to regardless.

“You know how old I was when I came through those gates the first time?” Pavel asked, his voice a case study in aggression.

Trapp shrugged. This only seemed to irritate the Russian more.

“Thirty. I will die in this place. And you know the last time I slept alone, without some prick snoring, his buddy crying out for mama, and someone else playing with their dick?”

“When?”

“The night before I arrived. And yet you come here, and by the time your first week’s out you’ve already found yourself a room. So tell me, how did you do it?”

Trapp hefted the ax. Not so much as a threat, just a warning that it was there. “Just good behavior, I guess.”

“Don’t mock me,” Pavel said, hawking up a loogie and releasing it into the snow. “I don’t have much to lose, you see. So maybe we make a deal. Maybe you give me some of what you got.”

Trapp started to turn, and as he did so he noticed that the inmate’s two friends were edging toward him. He took a step to the side, away from the pile of logs, to free up his movement in case it proved necessary. “I don’t think so.”

Pavel reached out to grasp his shoulder, but Trapp danced away, growling, “Don’t touch me.”

The Russian’s two lackeys stepped forward as they saw the scene hotting up and came to a halt just behind their master. Both were relatively spindly, unlike Pavel himself. He wasn’t too worried about either.

With his reinforcements now on-scene, Pavel was clearly emboldened. He lurched forward, his arm reaching wildly for Trapp’s chest, only to blanch dumbly as the limb was batted aside.

“Last chance,” Trapp announced calmly. He was aware that behind the Russian, a small semi-circle of inmates had formed to watch. That was problematic, not because he expected them to join the scrap, but because men like Pavel could never back down in front of an audience.

“Fuck you,” Pavel spat.

“Okay then.” Trapp shrugged. He tossed the ax to the ground. “Your choice.”

Pavel lunged for him again but found that his opponent wasn’t where he expected him to be. Instead of falling back, Trapp stepped forward and drove his fist into the big Russian’s stomach with lightning speed. As the overseer hunched over, instinctively clutching his midriff, Trapp grasped his own right wrist, steadied his right elbow, and drove the makeshift club into Pavel’s back.

In an instant, the fight was over. Pavel collapsed to the snowy ground with a grunt and toppled onto his side. Trapp looked up at the man’s two associates. As he did so, each glanced at the other. When the first shuffled awkwardly backward after the display of violence he had just witnessed, the second was quick to follow.

By now, Pavel was clutching at his throat, his face turning puce as he struggled for air. His legs kicked feebly at the snow, but with less and less energy as the oxygen faded from his brain.

“He’s just winded,” Trapp said to forestall an act of bravery or revenge that he didn’t really believe was forthcoming. “He’ll be just fine.”

When it was clear that neither henchman intended to court the same fate as their fallen leader, Trapp leaned over and retrieved the ax from the ground. Both flunkies flinched as he did so, but he hid the amusement this engendered in him and returned to the task from which he’d been distracted, ignoring the attention he could sense on his back from the assorted inmates—none of whom were still working.

Trapp returned to his task and started to work up a proper sweat. The pine logs were easy to split, and before long a large pile of freshly cut wood was stacked at his feet. He paused several times to arrange the disorderly piles into neater ones. Even so, before long it became clear that he needed to shift some of it inside the barn.

He brought the ax down into a log and left it there, the shaft vibrating from the impact. He paused for a few seconds to let the strain on his body subside and studied his palms. He was building a real set of calluses on his right hand, the one that bore the brunt of the effort.

“Who’d have thought it?” he murmured to himself, stooping to squeeze a little snow in his fist to cool the skin down. “You’re doing something worthwhile with your life after all.”

He scooped up an armful of logs to carry inside as he stood back up. Pavel was still standing gingerly by the burn barrels, warming his hands and studiously avoiding acknowledging the existence of the man who had so recently humiliated him.

That was just fine by Trapp. He wasn’t looking for the surly overseer’s respect—just an understanding that their paths needn’t cross. He suspected that the truce wouldn’t last forever—men like Pavel rarely found themselves able to override their emotions, even when doing so served their own best interests.

He noticed that Sasha was in the yard, carrying a clipboard. The bookish Russian seemed to be carrying out some kind of inventory check on the tools. Trapp tried to wave, found that his arms were occupied, and instead gave a kind of awkward head nod instead.

The outbuilding was scarcely warmer than the lumber yard, but it was both dry and protected the wood from the worst of the elements. The Siberian climate, he was quickly learning, could be bone dry when it wasn’t actually snowing. Even then, the white stuff was light and powdery, not thick and wet.

Half the barn was already occupied by wood in all its various guises—seasoning as it was prepared for its intended use. The logs were on the far side of the building, beyond the construction lumber, cut and stacked for the summer season.

Trapp hoped he would not be here to see it. If he was, then something had gone horribly wrong.

He barely heard his footsteps, so thickly was the floor of the space covered in years’ worth of wood chips and sawdust, but the logs sang a more melodic tune as he tossed them onto a budding stack and arranged them. Almost instrumental, like a kind of native chant. He found a wheelbarrow leaning by the lumber and grabbed it, reasoning that it would be more efficient than shifting the fruits of his efforts by hand.

Trapp exited the barn, pushing the barrow ahead of him. The air was still tinged with wood smoke, and the soundscape was the same—the grunting of men engaged in manual labor and the growl of machinery in the distance.

There was, however, one distinct difference. Sasha was no longer in view.

And neither was Pavel. His underlings were gone too, and Trapp immediately sensed that something was off. He dropped the wheelbarrow lightly to the ground and stood still, scanning the space intently.

It was no coincidence; he was sure about that. Pavel was up to something.

The snow by the rusting burn barrels was chewed up and melted around their bases, but mostly the tracks went in a few very predictable paths: either toward the large stacks of wood by the lumberyard’s entrance, into the barn, or toward one of the several worksites set up in the center of the yard.

Only one trail didn’t fit this very simple pattern. But what it did hew quite closely to was the path around the barn that Sasha had been following when they passed each other outside. The dominoes fell into place in Trapp’s mind. He broke into a sprint, leaving the discarded wheelbarrow in his wake without a thought. He bent as he ran to scoop up a discarded ax that was leaning against the side of the barn and hefted the comforting weight in his palm.

The trio of prison thugs came into view as Trapp rounded the back of the barn. Sasha was warily backing away from them, but as he looked up and noticed his friend’s arrival, the two lackeys grabbed him. Trapp couldn’t see Pavel’s face from behind his thick skull, but he was sure the prick was smiling.

He instantly slowed his pace and angled his run to stay in his opponents’ blind spots. There was little he could do about the sound of snow crunching beneath his boots, but they didn’t seem to notice.

Amateurs.

A feral grin stretched across Trapp’s face as he closed the last few steps. Pavel looked around at the last second, his mouth full of bile, but by then it was too late to react.

“Ya govoril tebe,” he spat as he grabbed Pavel from behind with his right arm, kicked his standing leg from out under him, and sent him toppling back to the earth. I told you.

The grunt as the air was driven out of the Russian’s lungs for the second time in as many hours was audible, and the sound confirmed in Trapp’s mind the certain knowledge that for the next few moments he was out of the picture and could be safely ignored.

He promptly did so.

Instead, Trapp switched the ax from his left palm to the right. Pavel’s henchmen were still positioned to either side of Sasha, and judging by the confused expressions on both their faces—still drawn downward, toward the boss—they hadn’t yet registered what was happening.

He didn’t wait. He flipped the ax upside down and used the handle as a club, jabbing it into the chest of the wiry Russian on the right. Something cracked, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the makeshift halberd.

Trapp drew up his leg and kicked the now-moaning inmate with the footpad of his boot, both sending him stumbling backward and spinning Sasha around from the momentum.

He didn’t bother giving the other guy warning. Instead he brought the ax handle up and hit him in the side of the head. Not hard enough to do any real damage, unless the man’s skull was thinner than an eggshell, but sufficient that he wouldn’t forget it in a hurry.

The Russian dropped to his knees with such alacrity that a more empathetic man might have felt a little remorse. It wasn’t an emotion that often troubled Trapp’s conscience.

“You okay?” he asked, putting his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. The quiet inmate’s complexion—usually pale—had gone positively ghostly.

“Fine,” he panted. “Kolya, please don’t—”

“Stay there,” Trapp said, ignoring whatever he was about to say. It was time to send a message, since apparently his first hadn’t been received. Sasha didn’t have to like it, so long as he didn’t get in the way.

The two smaller inmates were both conscious, but neither dared to so much as look at him. Trapp turned to find that Pavel was still lying on the ground, slowly dragging himself away from the action.

Trapp tossed the ax from hand to hand several times, luxuriating in the sound of the slap of wood against his palms. He wished his Russian was good enough to say something that would stick with Pavel for good but decided instead that silence would work just as well.

He walked over to the fallen overseer and grabbed him by the left ankle.

“What are you doing?”

Trapp didn’t answer.

Instead, he dragged Pavel through the snow, moving fast enough that his captive was never able to find any purchase against the snow-choked ground with which to fashion an escape.

In the end, the Russian seemed to give up. Trapp pulled him about twenty feet, far enough that his lungs began to labor in the cold air. He stopped in front of a pyramid of long pine trunks. They were held in place by stakes driven into the ground and were all parallel with each other. They’d been stacked recently, and so only a few were covered in snow.

Trapp tossed Pavel on top and gruffly said, “Don’t move.”

“What—” Pavel started. “What are you doing?”

Hefting the ax above his head, Trapp held it there for a few seconds, staring directly into the Russian’s eyes.

Then he brought it down.

The blade lodged in the trunk no more than a couple of inches from Pavel’s left ear, scoring the bark and exposing a large section of pale timber. He left it there for a couple of seconds, then levered it out, grunting at the effort.

Pavel’s eyes were wide open now, registering clear shock at how close he’d just come to death. His arms scrabbled against the wood underneath him as he attempted to escape, but Trapp roughly kicked him back. A small crowd had once again gathered to watch the scene, though they were circumspectly keeping their distance.

“Kolya, please…” Sasha begged. “Let him go.”

Trapp didn’t reply. He didn’t say a word. He brought the ax up over his head once more and heaved it back down into the pine, where it lodged with a resonant crack. A chip of wood broke free and scraped Pavel’s cheek before lodging in his beard.

He raised it back up, not pausing this time, and began to alternate his strikes. One to the left, the next to the right, working himself into an easy rhythm. Each time, the blade was angled away from the Russian’s flesh—but unless he had eagle eyes he wouldn’t know that. Judging by the expression of abject fear on the man’s face, he was convinced every single time that the next blow would land in the center of his skull.

The pine chips began to rain down Pavel’s front, coating him in a thin dust. Trapp didn’t stop until in places they were half an inch thick. He didn’t stop until he’d almost entirely severed the pine trunk underneath his victim in half. Only then did he bring the ax down one last time, leaving it embedded in the wood, quivering from the effort.

Trapp took a step back to survey his handiwork. The scene was entirely silent, as if all the onlookers feared that should they say something, they would be next on the chopping block. Pavel’s eyes fell closed.

A dark stain formed around his crotch.

“Don’t fuck with me again,” Trapp grunted. He turned away, but paused just long enough to say, “Or him.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Sasha murmured as he fell in behind Trapp, stumbling through the snow as he attempted to keep up with his longer legs.

“Yeah.” Trapp shrugged. “And I wish I was the king of England.”

Sasha said nothing in response. He didn’t have to. His silence spoke volumes. The truth was Trapp felt a bit guilty at what he’d just done. Not to Pavel, but to the agreeable, fretful man by his side. He’d picked a side on his behalf and not given him an opportunity to reject the offer.

There were a team now. Whether Sasha liked it or not.

14

Trapp stepped out of his accommodation block at about five p.m., just as dusk was beginning to fall in earnest. Though it had been only a matter of hours since the events in the lumberyard, it appeared by the way that the few inmates he encountered gave him a wide berth that the story had already made it onto the camp grapevine.

It wasn’t exactly an outcome that he was unhappy with. The prison movie trope of going up to the biggest, baddest guy behind bars and punching him right in the face was a tired one—but it had a grain of truth to it. Pavel was neither the biggest nor baddest individual he’d ever come across. But he certainly did—or had—exercised a significant amount of power in this place.

It seemed unlikely that anyone would attempt to mess with either him or Sasha for the foreseeable future. And that was all that he was really concerned with.

He followed the fence at the edge of the camp all the way to the front gate. As Sasha had explained, the vehicle entrance was closed, but a side door beside it was wide open. A guard was inside a small hut beside it, huddled next to an electric heater. It seemed as though his presence was more a result of tradition than any great necessity.

“It’s okay?” Trapp asked as he walked up to the exit. It seemed counterintuitive that he would actually just be allowed to walk out of the penal colony, but that was exactly what happened.

The prison officer shrugged, putting as little effort into the motion as humanly possible, then tapped his watch as if to say, “Curfew.”

And just like that, Trapp was free.

Just so long as you used the term in its most general sense. He supposed that the reality was this place was little different from a minimum-security jail back home, which for many prisoners allowed work release. You could stroll in and out as easily as he just had, so long as you returned on time.

The colony was no different, except that they could extend the same freedom to the rapists, murderers, and—in Sasha’s case, at least—white-collar criminals who populated IK-29. After all—where could they go?

The low cloud that had hung over the camp for most of that day had lifted, and once again the night sky was crystal clear and blanketed with glittering stars. The corollary of that improvement was obvious: the temperature was dropping fast. It was an easy reminder of just why the colony needed such trivial walls.

The forest around the colony had been hacked back about fifty feet from the fence line. But this had happened long ago, meaning that though the towering, frost-capped birches and pines no longer craned over the prison camp, no one had paid much attention to what came after. Years’—perhaps a couple of decades’—worth of foliage had sprung up to replace the mature trees. And where the forest canopy might have blocked out the light needed to encourage the growth of the saplings below, as so often, humanity had on this occasion changed the equation.

The result was that the border between the forest proper and the camp was a sort of semi-woodland, with bushes and trees that rose to about a man’s height in most places. The worst of the foliage was crushed to the ground by the weight of the snow, but as Trapp crunched through the frost underfoot, he was mostly hidden from view.

Not that anyone was watching.

There were no cameras either on or aimed at the fence. At least, none that he could see: another sign of the confidence that the administration had in the impenetrability of the colony’s natural escape deterrents. A tangle of razor wire ran along the very top of the fence, but Trapp suspected that it had been placed there more out of habit than because it was truly needed.

The fence itself was entirely intact. It was made of wire, and he doubted that it was electrified, given the climactic environment. It would probably be easy enough to get through with only a simple pair of construction pliers.

He followed the boundary of the camp all the way around until he found that he was close to the high-security facility on the other side.

This was the place. He knew it.

There could be no other explanation for Zayetsev’s presence in a peripheral outpost like this. He was not a man who cared much for the territory that he nominally administered. President Murov had granted his favored oligarch the title and trappings of power much as feudal kings once had to their chosen lords.

And Maxim Zayetsev was precisely that. So entirely trusted by the scheming Russian president that it was widely believed that a palatial palace he owned on the Black Sea that Trapp had seen with his own eyes was not actually his but held instead in trust for the use of his powerful boss. A convenient fig leaf to spare the publicly abstemious Murov’s blushes.

It was hardly a secret that power and money interacted in ways in Mother Russia that would be unthinkable in the democratic West.

He’s here.

The judgment added to the sense of grim determination in Trapp’s mind. He’d crossed an ocean and half the world on the back of only a hunch that his old friend had been brought here, to the frozen edge of nowhere. A place where life was cheap and he could be tossed on the scrapheap the moment they coaxed what they needed out of him.

What that was, of course, was still an open question. Perhaps it was simply a matter of spite. It was no great surprise that Dmitry Murov was a vindictive man. In some ways, he was a relic of a time when geopolitics could not easily be untangled from the personal grudges of princes and kings. He’d never forgotten the lesson that had been dealt him at his villa near Sochi all those months before, even if he didn’t know the name of the man who had inflicted it.

So perhaps his friend had merely been swept up in matters beyond his understanding. A helpless victim of a tide he could neither have predicted nor influenced.

Or maybe he knew something after all.

There was only one way to find out.

Trapp inched as close to the fence as he could without advertising his presence to any watchful eye. He crouched low, shielding the bulk of his frame behind a sturdy sapling, and studied the colony’s high-security wing.

The fence around it was no different than the one that surrounded the main camp. Two layers thick with a no-man’s land in between the segments and topped with razor wire. They would probably release the dogs between the two sections in the spring and summer. Right now they would only freeze to death.

Still, it would prove no real obstacle. There were cameras around the isolated facility itself, but only a couple, and those that he could see had fields of vision that could be easily avoided, which meant that he would have the ally of time, and with that on his side any defense could be breached.

Making it into the building itself would pose another challenge entirely. There were no obvious defenses, but it was cast out of thick concrete, and a small gray keypad indicated that the main door locked electronically. Trapp’s face screwed up at the sight like he was chewing a wasp. No lock to pick was a problem.

As he crouched there, with the temperature quickly dropping as night fell in earnest, the futility of the task ahead of him reared its head. His presence here counted for little. They didn’t hand out prizes for showing up. He needed to make it through the fence, then into the secure building, avoiding whatever security measures he might find, and the guards that operated them, in order to find a man he didn’t even know for certain was here.

And then what?

After all, escape was impossible. Warden Makarov had said it himself.

A soft click carried on the night’s gentle breeze. It would have been practically inaudible, save for Trapp’s intense focus. He froze, pressing himself to the ground as he waited.

But very little seemed to happen.

Not for twenty seconds, at least. Then the facility’s door sprung open, and the sound of voices emerged. At this distance, it was impossible to make out exactly what they were saying, but the language was clear enough.

A man laughed. Still, no one emerged.

A light flickered on—like a motion sensitive garage bulb. The artificial glow bounced back off the snow in the space cordoned out around the little prison, a smaller facsimile of the main colony’s exercise yard. Trapp drank in the wealth of additional information this development revealed.

A trail of footsteps decorated the thick blanket of snow. They were aimless, and mostly covered only the nearest section to the building. The rest was untouched.

The door itself was suddenly bathed in light. It was painted gray and half open, though whatever lay behind was impossible to make out.

At least until it swung open and two men emerged, walking side by side.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Trapp squinted, and saw that only one of them was actually walking. The other was being hauled, his feet on the ground but only barely. A guard and a prisoner.

Without warning, the prisoner toppled forward into the snow, with sufficient force that they could only have been pushed. The vicious curse that followed confirmed that suspicion in Trapp’s mind. Again, the words were too far away to make out, but the meaning was clear enough.

The guard turned and walked back into the building.

The gray door closed behind him with a loud click.

And the prisoner was left on his hands and knees in the snow.

Who are you?

Trapp leaned forward, heedless of the fact that his head was now poking free of the shrub line. Though he was almost invisible, he was not quite. But he needed to see.

The man in the snow didn’t move. It was as though he didn’t have the energy. His features were difficult to make out at this distance in the gloom, but one thing was clear—he was dressed only in a thin coat.

God, Trapp thought in the truest sense of the word. How could men be so cruel? He’d seen too many horrors in his life to count, but this numbered among them. The prisoner was vibrating like a two-stroke lawnmower. He was gaunt. His clothing hung off him as though the body underneath had no more substance than a coat hanger.

It wasn’t even ten degrees out here. Cold enough that a man could freeze to death before long even dressed for the weather and in rude health.

How long did this guy have?

Look up, Trapp urged, desperate to get a glimpse of the man’s face.

He didn’t get that. But he got something almost as good. The prisoner climbed laboriously to his feet, turning to face the building he just been thrown out of, as if begging to be saved from the cruelty of the freezing night. The light was still on him, shining from behind, so that his frame was mostly a silhouette.

All but his hair, which was a halo of gold.

He was blond. And that was an unusual thing indeed in this part of Russia. What were the chances of that?

“Chase,” Trapp whispered, speaking English for the first time in days. His native tongue sounded strangely foreign in this desolate, icy place.

He’d been right.

But what did any of it mean? Fowler looked so weak. He couldn’t possibly survive much more of this, even if his present freezing torment was just a cruel game and the guards dragged him back inside.

Was he even strong enough to survive an escape attempt, if one could be arranged? Had he come all this way only to have to leave him behind?

Trapp almost called out Fowler’s name, but the urge died on his lips. He checked left and right in case anyone was watching. They were not, so far as he could tell, but still it was too dangerous. He closed his eyes and thought.

The idea came to him at once. The northern cardinal. Fowler would know.

Trapp pursed his lips and placed one finger over them to modulate the airflow. He began to whistle. The first time, the results were nothing like he’d intended. Instead of birdsong, it sounded more like a strangled goat.

Still, Fowler seemed to flinch. He’d heard it.

“Come on,” Trapp murmured. He tried again.

This time, the sound came out more like he remembered it from the woods of Virginia all those years ago, lying in the dirt with Chase Fowler by his side as birds twittered in the canopy above. Northern cardinals, they’d learned. Curious birds, and nervous ones too, liable to dart into the air at the slightest provocation, loudly warning their friends.

Trapp made the call he’d practiced so long ago. It didn’t sound much like it really should, but it was close enough. And Fowler clearly heard it. And still he stood there, as if he didn’t believe the evidence of his own ears.

He whistled the call again and again, ignoring the consequences of attracting unwanted attention. Did birds even exist in a place as cold as this through the winter? It seemed unlikely.

And Fowler turned. He moved so slowly, as if he barely had the energy, but he did it. His head cocked at an angle as he searched for the source of the sound.

Trapp made the call again and stepped fully out of the woods. There was no way that his old friend could see his face, not in this darkness, and he had no flashlight to change that. But the human eye is naturally attracted to movement, and the illumination from the stars and the moon overhead was just enough to call attention to the silhouette of a man.

Fowler knew it was him. Trapp sensed that instantly. It was something about the way he stiffened and stood tall once more—like a man rather than a beast of burden.

And just as quickly, the spell was broken. The door to the security facility swung open once more, and the guard stomped out. He cursed, grabbed Fowler by the upper arm, and dragged him back inside.

15

Nelson Packer crumpled an empty soda can between his fingers, grimacing slightly as the few remaining droplets within dribbled through his digits and ended up trickling down the side of his leg. The credits had just started rolling on a movie in the recreation hall at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center, and he lingered on his seat for a few moments, rolling tension from his neck that had built up after two hours of inactivity.

“You missed the end,” he observed as Chernyak pushed against the tide of exiting soldiers to join him. The tips of the Ukrainian’s fingers were stained an iodine yellow, and he carried with him a musk of cigarette smoke, courtesy of a half dozen trips outside to light up.

“They play the same shit movies every week,” Chernyak replied with a careless shrug. “Come, we will have a nightcap. I have some vodka at the tent.”

“Not tonight, Stanislav. The lieutenant wants me to come see him in the morning, 0600. I need to rest up.”

“It is just one drink,” Chernyak replied. “No problem. But you Americans are different. I understand this. I will drink one for you.”

“You do that, man.” Packer grinned.

He was long past the point of merely beginning to like the gruff Ukrainian. The guy harked back to a time before warriors were soldiers. He could imagine Chernyak with thick braids running down his back, blue paint caking his face, drunk out of his mind as he charged with a bronze sword toward a battleline of hardened Roman legionaries.

Packer understood, of course, that discipline and order were foundational principles of modern warfare. You couldn’t staff a 21st-century military with men like Stanislav Chernyak and expect to go toe to toe with a peer competitor.

But it sure would be fun to give it a try…

“What is this meeting?” Chernyak asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. He probably just wants to know how the training cycle is progressing. I owe him a report.”

Chernyak’s face lit up with sly glee. “You will tell him I beat your sergeant, no?”

“If I tell him that, I’ll have to explain what happened after. I think it’s best we keep that one between us.”

What had happened after the shooting competition was simple: pure mayhem. If Packer had known that Ukrainian beer was cheap, it was positively liquid gold compared to the local vodka. He’d awoken the next morning with a splitting headache that didn’t even begin to subside until a second sunset had passed, and he didn’t trust his fragile stomach with anything more substantial than thin oatmeal for a full 24 hours.

Chernyak, by contrast, had suffered no ill effect from the alcohol. He didn’t come out and voice his disappointment with his American counterparts—but the judgment was implied.

Still, Packer comforted himself with the knowledge that the man couldn’t hit a barn door with the Javelin, a weapon designed with the dumbest grunt’s faculties in mind.

An unfamiliar sound split the calm of night like a European fire engine siren, only prolonged and coming from every direction at once.

He frowned and craned his neck in search of the source. “What the hell is that?”

It clocked a moment later before Chernyak had a chance to explain. It was a warning siren. He’d seen the large speakers mounted on poles all around the base though not heard them make a sound. “Are we being attacked?”

Packer automatically began patting his uniform down in search of a weapon before his conscious mind remembered that he hadn’t been issued with one to carry while on-base.

“Probably only false alarm,” Chernyak said, though he too was swiveling his neck in search of danger. All around, soldiers emerged from barracks buildings. Some rubbed their eyes or otherwise shook the sleep from their bodies. “Come with me.”

They jogged to the barracks tent assigned to Chernyak’s unit. It wasn’t far and only took about a minute. Upon arrival, he conversed with several of his comrades, one of whom had a cell phone pressed against his right ear and a radio handset in his left hand. The man alternated between the two communications devices, speaking rapidly in impenetrable Ukrainian.

Chernyak pulled away.

“Maybe drone.” He shrugged. “Maybe sentry drank too much.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

The Ukrainian frowned. “This is first time here for us. But I think this is unlikely. There was no briefing.”

That rang true for Packer also. Military intelligence had given the whole company a rundown of the threats they might expect to come across in this part of Ukraine. But so far as he could remember, neither the Russians nor the separatists from the east of the country had ever pushed this far west. That was part of the reason for basing the training center here, 800 miles from the front line.

The flash of light caught Packer’s attention a moment before the sound assaulted his eardrums. He instinctively flinched and dropped into a crouch even as he scanned toward the source of the explosion, his ears ringing loudly.

“What the fuck was that?” he cursed. He blinked several times, hoping to speed the departure of the ghost of light in his retinas. It couldn’t hurt, but it didn’t help.

Apparently, the feeling was universal, though the irregulars around him made the same point in their own language. The radio operator continued to bark queries into his handset but only shrugged helplessly as the other members of the unit inquired what the hell was going on. Packer didn’t have to speak a word of the language to understand that he didn’t have a clue.

For the first time, Packer realized that his heart was thumping in his chest. He’d been posted for a few months to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and the Taliban, or whatever loose federation of local militant groups had a stick up their ass on any given day, and who had lightened up plenty of evenings by lobbing a few mortar shells over the perimeter wall. But at least back then he’d known he was in a fucking war zone.

Packer flicked the tip of his tongue across suddenly parched lips. He could taste the acrid adrenaline at the back of his mouth, and his instincts were knife-edge sharp. The sirens stopped screaming for a few seconds, but the cilia hairs deep within his ear canal picked up the slack by crooning their death song in return.

The respite didn’t last long. The wail of the sirens returned, as did a new development that Packer initially interpreted as signaling another attack—but turned out only to be isolated banks of floodlights igniting into life. Most only illuminated a large running track at the north end of the training camp, but the electric light helped some.

“You see anything?” he called out, noticing that Chernyak was close, also searching the sky for any sign of the invaders. “Maybe it was just—”

He saw a blur of movement across his peripheral vision and flung his hand out. “There! You see that?”

“Wait here,” Chernyak grunted, which wasn’t exactly the response that Packer was hoping for. He watched helplessly as the Ukrainian disappeared inside the barracks tent, splitting his attention between the shape whizzing across the sky and wherever his new acquaintance had gone.

“This better be good, asshole,” he grunted, mainly to allay his growing nerves.

A pair of boots skidded to a halt at his side, and a familiar voice said, “You know what the fuck is going on, Sergeant? I called the company CP, but it don’t seem like anyone knows what’s happening. Apparently somebody spotted a drone?”

It was Stu. His friend’s presence gave him a little comfort—but only to the extent that anything could when there was an unknown flying object in the sky, possibly about to drop explosives on all their heads.

“That’s about the state of it,” he agreed tersely. “I think I just saw one up there, but I lost it. You see anything?”

Stu took a knee, clocked the patch of sky that Packer was occupied searching, and picked a different quadrant. As he did so, Chernyak returned, carrying two long objects. It wasn’t until he got close and tossed one directly at his chest that Packer recognized what they were.

As he snatched it out of the air, Packer realized that he was now holding a pump-action shotgun. A real heavy bastard, too.

He stared at it dumbly for a moment before turning to Chernyak, who was already bringing the muzzle of his weapon up to the stars. “You got clearance to fire this thing?”

Light flared behind him, and Packer spun 180° as another explosion popped about 50 yards away. This time, he caught the full blast of light. It seared his retinas and blew away any vestigial night vision he was holding on to. A deep part of his subconscious knew that there was something strange about these blasts, but as he blinked away the aftermath, he sure as hell couldn’t figure out what that was.

“Stu, take this,” he cursed, holding out the shotgun as he massaged his eyeballs. “Fuck!”

“You kosher, Sergeant?” Stu yelled, evidently concerned, though sufficiently professional to deftly pluck the weapon out of his hands and aim it into the sky.

“I think we don’t let that happen again, yes?” Chernyak stated as the vision slowly returned to Packer’s eyes. “Better to ask forgiveness, not permission.”

“Sounds good to me,” Packer replied. He half-wondered whether there would be any blowback for allowing Sergeant Long to fire a loaded weapon inside the camp. But just like no one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got shit-canned for keeping the soldiers in their unit alive.

That’s the idea, anyway.

He squeezed his eyes shut again and waited for the glow to fade. It undulated in concentric circles but eventually did so—at least enough to give him a toehold into the fight. He blinked them open and stared up at the sky. The last flickers of light shimmered in the darkness.

The sound of men yelling and engines starting carried on the breeze, along with the aroma of smoke. Chernyak called out to the other members of his unit, and his meaning became clear as each sank to their knees and turned their heads upward. Almost two dozen spotters were now scanning the sky overhead, arrayed in a circle around the two shooters in the center.

“You see anything, Sergeant?” Stu muttered, slowly swiveling as he aimed the shotgun into the sky.

“Negative,” Packer replied tersely. He rotated his head, scowling with irritation as a number of the men from Chernyak’s unit babbled urgently, their tones high-pitched with tension.

“Quiet!” he yelled, doing his best impression of a drill instructor. “The only words I want to hear coming out of your damn fool mouths are a heading and a location, you understand?”

No one replied, but he sensed that the message had been understood nonetheless.

Though the clamor of an army camp consisting of thousands of men rousing itself awake was still evident in the distance, a cone of calm descended around Packer. It would have been a strange sight for anyone on the edge who stopped to watch, though nobody did. Necks swiveled like satellite dishes tracking a signal across the sky.

“Do you hear that, Packer?” Chernyak said.

He frowned. “Hear what—?”

And then he caught it. A high-pitched whine, coming from somewhere far overhead. At first it was hard to make out the direction from which the noise was emanating. Packer cupped his hand around his right ear to focus it and slowly pivoted his head from right to left as he searched.

Twice he stopped as he thought he had it, only to discover that now the wind was coming from another direction, and the whine with it. He swept his head back and forth and stopped dead.

“There!” he called out softly, pointing at the sky. “It’s coming from the northeast. Sixty, maybe 70 yards away. That’s the best I got.”

“With me,” Chernyak said, his voice rough with determination. He kept the stock of the shotgun resting against his neck as he jogged quickly in the direction that Packer had pointed. After a moment’s hesitation, Stu followed, though he was noticeably more judicious with the safety of his own weapon.

Not for the first time, the Ukrainian’s fitness under conditions of adversity both surprised and impressed Packer. He was easily outpacing the rest of his unit, despite the fact that he had thirty pounds on most of them, not to mention the fact he was aiming a weapon into the sky. And still, he did not put a foot out of place.

They covered most of the ground before Chernyak held his left hand up in a fist, bringing the unruly gaggle of Ukrainian irregulars and American instructors to a slightly breathless halt. Packer had to wrestle his heaving chest into submission before the sound of the blood in his ears faded into the background sufficiently for him to concentrate on the threat at hand.

“Anyone got a bead?” Stu called out.

“I hear it, but I see nothing,” Chernyak said, swiveling in place. His finger was on the shotgun’s trigger, his posture coiled with tension.

Packer returned to scanning the sky. The whine of the drone was incessant now, giving him a sense of how it felt to be one of the insurgents that the American military had gained such prowess in hunting. It was a horrible sensation to know that at any moment an unseen enemy could wipe you out. His palms were clammy with sweat.

“Come on, people,” he said, unable to conceal the note of tension in his voice.

A flash of movement caught his attention, along with what looked for all the world like the blinking of a red LED. Thick horror bubbled up into his gut as he anticipated a grenade falling to earth.

“It’s right on top of us,” he yelled. “Chernyak, to your left. It’s about sixty feet up.”

“I see it,” Chernyak murmured calmly. He twisted, hesitated for a second as he lined up a shot, then pulled the trigger. In the little dome of silence that had swallowed them, the noise of the shotgun shell exploding out of the barrel had an almost physical impact.

“No hit,” Packer called out, squinting as he attempted to track the target through the darkness. “Move your aim about five yards left.”

Stu fired almost before he was done talking. It was difficult to make out where the buckshot was going in the blackness of night, but though the second shot seemed to run the drone closer, it wasn’t close enough.

Chernyak swore in his native language, pumped a new shell into the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. Stu aped him.

Sparks briefly flared in the sky overhead. There was a loud pop, and the rotor noise instantly ceased. A second later, Packer heard a clatter of plastic impacting the ground just a few feet away.

In the end, it was impossible to know who had fired the shot that had taken the drone down. Both men claimed the kill. Packer was happy enough to give it to both of them. His mind momentarily short-circuiting and ignoring the danger of any unexploded ordnance the thing might have been carrying, he ran toward the downed drone. It was a cheap civilian quadcopter model, probably costing under a thousand bucks. Its plastic chassis, originally white, was camouflaged by streaks of black and gray spray paint.

Hanging off the bottom of the drone was an unusual object. The top half resembled an M-67 grenade—about the size and shape of a baseball. It even had a pin. So far, so normal. The weird bit was on the bottom, where Packer saw dozens of tiny black spikes. It reminded him of a massage ball, the particularly devilish kind. The launching system was fairly simple. A wire had been tied around the pin, and the other end threaded through a small electric motor. The explosive was attached to the drone itself with an electromagnet.

Stu crouched by Packer’s side. Typically, he wasn’t even breathing heavily as he said, “That a fucking sex toy?”

Chernyak joined them, only hesitating a second before plucking the device from the bottom of the drone and pulling the pin. He held it in his palm for a few seconds before spinning on one heel and throwing it into a patch of scrubland about 15 yards away.

Packer scrambled back. “The hell you think you’re doing?”

The grenade exploded in a puff of white smoke, and a flash of light that briefly went supernova. The sound of the explosion pummeled Packer’s ears. He instinctively flinched, anticipating a hail of shrapnel, even as his conscious brain understood that none was coming.

“Just stun grenade,” Chernyak laughed, the sound booming out of his gravelly lungs.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Packer swore. His cheeks colored a little with embarrassment, though he reminded himself that it was better to seem a fool than end up dead. He exhaled.

“What the hell just happened, Sergeant?” Stu asked, his face scrunched up in confusion as all around, the rest of the Uranian irregulars began to laugh. At first, it was a nervous, tension-relieving sound before descending into hysterics.

Even Packer felt the hilarity of the moment straining his cheeks. He shook his head again. “I don’t know. Someone messing with us?”

“GRU,” Chernyak said, his expression suddenly twisted with disgust. “Russian military intelligence. They do this on the frontline to stop us sleeping.”

A Jeep skidded to a halt nearby, and a pair of Ukrainian officers jumped out.

Packer hiked his eyebrow. “We’re a long way from the front. Have they ever tried anything like this before?”

The Ukrainian frowned pensively. “No.”

“Then we’re the crash test dummies. Well, ain’t that just great.”

16

Trapp was consumed by the image of Chase Fowler that was burned onto his retinas as he stomped back into Block Five. He kicked the concrete wall just inside the door to bash the snow off his boots and left scraps of dirty ice that began to melt and trickle down, leaving in their wake streaks of dirt that layered upon thousands of previous iterations of this very act.

Dammit, but Fowler looked weak.

He hadn’t known what to expect when he arrived in this place, and it would’ve been foolhardy to expect that the Russians would treat their prisoner well, but he’d hoped they might at least afford him basic human dignity. And feed him.

It seemed neither was the case.

He was so absorbed by a form of survivor’s guilt that he barely noticed that there was a man slouched in a heap by the door to his room until he was right up close to him.

“What are you doing here?” he mumbled abruptly, startling Sasha out of what appeared to be either a daydream or a full-on slumber. The Russian was clutching a plastic shopping bag with a few items of clothing, some toiletries, and a glass bottle of something.

Sasha looked up and blinked vigorously several times. “I—I need somewhere to stay.”

Trapp shrugged. “So why are you here?”

The bookish inmate looked up at him wordlessly, with more than a hint of sorrow in his eyes. And perhaps a little blame, though not so much as was warranted. The expression etched onto his lined face was one of fear and dismay.

And Trapp understood. This was on him. By taking on the overseer, Pavel, he’d upset the power dynamic in the camp. Where before the slight, intelligent Sasha had survived by being adaptable and useful to all parties, now he’d made an enemy without doing anything himself to invite such vitriol.

He shouldered open the door to his room and elbowed the light switch as he walked through. “It was open, you know,” he said as he gestured for Sasha to follow, which he did—quickly and gratefully.

“I try not to make a habit of entering without permission in this place,” Sasha said once the door closed behind him.

The bulb overhead was still warming up, so the light was harsh and bright. It didn’t get much better than this at the best of times, but it didn’t flatter either of them. Certainly not the Russian, with the bag of all his worldly possessions still dangling limply at his side.

Trapp kicked off his boots and gestured at the bunkbed. “You can take the top. I’d give you mine, but this thing’s janky enough it might topple over if I try to climb up that ladder.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” Sasha declared, finally dropping the bag to the concrete. It clanked.

Trapp surveyed the man for a few seconds, all thoughts of Chase Fowler momentarily forgotten. He did feel a real pang of guilt as to what he’d done to the Russian. He certainly wasn’t blessed with the kind of physical gifts you needed to survive in a place like this, or the seemingly psychopathic but entirely rational brutality that could make up for what an inmate lacked in mass.

Sasha had chosen a different path—the only open to him. He was like water. When something stood in his way, he didn’t run headlong into it like Trapp himself did; he adapted, improvised, contorted who he was to fit the mold he was in. And it had worked, hadn’t it?

Before Trapp had arrived, Sasha was doing just fine. Maybe he didn’t get the kind of respect that a man’s pride might desire. But he lived well. Probably ate okay, too. The guards would throw him just enough of a bone to keep him working hard, since he did the best part of their jobs for them.

“The hell you will,” Trapp grunted at last, or at least in his best approximation of the slang required. “Get up there. Don’t make me carry you.”

“Thank you,” Sasha said.

“Look, buddy,” Trapp said, noticing that the Russian was still prevaricating. “I got you into this mess, I get it. Make yourself at home. It’s the least I can do.”

It wasn’t a path that he would’ve chosen for himself, Trapp reflected as Sasha climbed up the shaking, squealing metal bunk. But you couldn’t help but admire what the bookish Russian had done. He’d come to this place with nothing and fashioned a good hand out of a bad one. And wasn’t that what Trapp himself had to do now? He didn’t have the CIA’s resources backing him up like he usually did. There was no cavalry coming. This time he was on his own with only his wits to rely on.

Maybe he needed to be more like Sasha.

He gestured at the plastic bag in the Russian’s hand as the man passed him halfway, the thought still percolating in his mind. “What you got in that thing, anyway?”

Sasha lay down on the mattress, and a shower of dust fell out of it, causing Trapp to sneeze. “I keep most of my things in my office. They let me lock it,” he explained. “On account of the records. And sometimes I handle personal matters for the guards. Like the warden, he’s fighting a custody battle with his wife. I handle the court filings. So mostly it’s just clothes and a toothbrush. But—” he said, reaching into the bag with a rustle. “There’s also this.”

A shape appeared from the top bunk and dropped down. It was a glass liquor bottle, about two thirds full. The clear liquid sloshed and bubbled as it swayed through the air. The sight was as powerful as the call of any siren.

Trapp reached up and grasped it, unscrewed the cap, and sucked the fiery aroma into his nostrils. He lasted about two seconds before he started coughing. “What is this stuff—moonshine?”

“Vodka,” Sasha said. It was a strange arrangement, listening to the Russian’s voice from so close without seeing him, only sensing the vibrations as he shifted in the bunk above. “Cheap stuff. But it works.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It’s currency in here,” Sasha said. “I am useful to a lot of people. I was, anyway. I get these, I trade them for something else. It’s a whole economy.”

“I’m sorry,” Trapp said, vocalizing the apology for the first time. “You mind?”

“Don’t be,” Sasha sighed. “The storm will pass. And go ahead.”

Sasha was, Trapp thought as he took a gulp of the acrid liquor, one of life’s winners, even if he didn’t know it yet. There was undoubtedly something about his new cellmate that served the guy well. Malleability, maybe. An ability to bounce back from whatever travails life threw at him without ever allowing himself to feel wronged.

And there was, of course, the awkward but unignorable fact that he could be useful. In truth, was his newfound presence even an accident? Or had Trapp—subconsciously or not—worked to make it so?

He winced as the alcohol coursed down his throat and decided that wasn’t a well he wanted to plumb the depths of. At least, not right now. There was rarely much honor in the intelligence game, but working an asset against his own best interests never sat right with Trapp. He lofted the bottle. “You want some?”

“There are worse nights for it,” Sasha said. He reached down and plucked it from Trapp’s fingers.

As he drank, Trapp said, “So tell me about this place. What mess have I stepped in with Pavel?”

Sasha coughed and spoke with an emotion in his tight throat that was either frustration or astonishment or both. He answered the question with one of his own. “Is this your first time inside?”

“In Russia,” Trapp agreed.

“Maybe it’s different wherever you come from,” Sasha said, passing the bottle back down. “But here there aren’t enough guards. Not really. Not to maintain order without help. It’s hard to attract men so far from civilization when the pay is so poor. That’s why they built these camps so far from anything that matters.”

“I noticed,” Trapp said dryly. Sasha spoke the truth. The guard force at IK-29 was hopelessly undermanned—or at least, it would be if any real trouble broke out. There were maybe 40 guards to watch over a prisoner population that was more than ten times as large.

“It works for two reasons,” Sasha explained as Trapp took a second drink of vodka. The first was already smoldering in his gut. “The guards they do have are armed, and there’s not much paperwork if a prisoner dies. Believe me, I’m the one who fills it out.”

“I believe you.”

“Then there’s the riot police, of course. OMON. If there’s an uprising they come and put an end to it quickly. And if a dozen prisoners die, or twenty, then who really cares?”

“I guess,” Trapp said, feeling less certain of a position he might once have held before he actually became a prisoner—however short-lived.

“But the real reason is that uprisings are rare. Not because they treat us well, or feed us well, or pay us more than a couple of rubles an hour for our labor—”

“I noticed that too,” Trapp chuckled.

“It’s because Makarov recruits the nastiest people that come into this place. Men like Pavel and the overseers in every block and every work detail. They get privileges, and in return they keep order so the guards don’t have to. They call themselves eagles because they soar above the rest of us.”

“So that’s what that’s all about,” Trapp slurred as he reached for the vodka bottle that was once again making its way down the side of the bunk.

He was now pleasantly tipsy. He didn’t ordinarily allow himself to lose control like this, but his present location was reason enough to loosen that restriction. If you couldn’t drink too much vodka in Siberia, then where the hell could you?

An image of Pavel’s eagle tattoo floated across his mind. He realized that he’d seen a few of them. He didn’t have to wait too long for Sasha to explain.

“It’s clever, you see,” Sasha said. “Once they get the bird tattooed on them, they don’t have a choice whether they want to keep working. Most prisoners here are lifers. Either they do time in this camp or another just like it. And so long as they are behind bars, everyone knows the choice they made. So you can guess what—”

“That makes a man do,” Trapp murmured.

He thought of the kapos in the Nazi concentration camps—ordinary men and women who turned into brutal overseers given a sniff of power and a shot at survival. And the inmates of IK-29 were not ordinary men. They were already hardened criminals by the time they walked through the gates.

“Exactly,” Sasha said. His voice was losing clarity, too. He sounded a little sluggish now, as though the combination of the alcohol and the stress of a long day was tipping him toward sleep. “So it’s not just the guards. You also have thirty of the meanest, hardest prisoners in this place doing their dirty work for them. Living alongside us regular inmates. How are you going to plan an uprising when your guard sleeps in the bunk next to you?”

“You want another slug?” Trapp inquired, waving the bottle messily in Sasha’s general direction.

“I’m good. I’m drunk,” the Russian said.

“Me too,” Trapp chuckled. It was true, and strangely it was a long time since he’d felt this relaxed. A thought wheedled into his mind. “But you think they want to—the regular inmates? You think they would fight back against the eagles if they had a chance?”

“Sure,” Sasha mumbled as sleep took him. “But it’s never gonna happen.”

17

Could it really have been him? Chase Fowler wondered as he huddled over his knees in a failing bid to warm himself. The shape in the dark had looked like Jason. It had even moved like Jason, with the feline grace that was his old friend’s trademark.

Or was it just a delusion?

He’d started to have them over the past few days. Shadows moving in the corners of his cell. Insects crawling across his skin. Under it. The sensation of their legs brushing against his nerve endings. The feel of breath against his skin—not human, but something cold and dead and wrong.

But this time was different.

Wasn’t it?

Fowler’s lips formed the shape of his name before he glanced up at the camera that surveilled his cell every moment of every day. A red LED blinked on its front, baleful and every bit as unyielding as the Eye of Sauron.

He quickly wiped the expression off his face, suddenly terrified that his jailers might be able to read his thoughts. It was impossible, of course, and the rational part of Fowler’s mind knew so. But that part of a man’s consciousness starts to fade after days without either sustenance or proper sleep. All such an individual is left with is the evidence of the misfiring neurons in his broken brain.

And now that man was him.

Jason.

The slot on his cell door crashed open, startling him from his addled rumination. For one terrible moment, he thought they knew.

But it was only food. In his more lucid moments, he suspected they varied the times at which they fed him, sometimes stretching out the gap over many hours, other times squashing it to only minutes. Always the food arrived as he was in the process of drifting off to sleep.

If he left it—which the ever-present pangs of hunger made impossible—then it was gone by the time he woke. He could not afford to ignore any single meal, especially in his weakened condition, even when they were invariably so meager as to be almost entirely pointless. Sometimes he suspected that they cost more calories to chew than they gained him.

And yet a starving man will eat whatever he is offered. That is a maxim that is as old as time.

“Eat,” a harsh voice commanded, thrusting a tray through the slot. It hung in midair, drawing his rapt attention.

It could not be real. Surely this was some trick?

“What’s wrong with you? You’re not hungry?”

“No,” Fowler whimpered, hating the sound of his weakness even as it left his lips. Hating himself because he knew that the guard was playing with him but fearing that he was not. He scrabbled over on exhausted limbs, scraping his frail skin on the hard concrete floor. “Wait.”

He snatched the proffered tray out of the guard’s hands. A hunk of bread—a real, thick one—flew through the air and landed in a puddle of brackish water on the floor. He grabbed at it desperately.

The slot crashed closed with thunderous violence. Fowler yanked his fingers back as though he’d been burned.

What’s happening?

He stared dumbly down at the tray he’d been given for several long seconds. His mind almost could not comprehend what it was seeing. The tray was piled high with food—a burger, even. And fries. And bread. Even some limp, tired salad. If he’d been offered this in a fast food restaurant back home, he would have sent it back. But right now it was meat and it was food and it was fit for a king.

And then the moment was gone. He tore at the meal with animal desperation, removing the burger patty from between the thin bun and thrusting it into his gullet like it was going through a wood chipper. It was dry and unpleasant and the best thing he’d ever eaten.

He wanted to slow down, wanted to savor this meal, his conscious mind knowing even as he swallowed that it might be the last he would be offered for a long while. But in a moment like that, the human mind is simply a passenger in a far older vehicle. His body was in the driver’s seat now. Its only goal was survival. He might as easily have been a starving animal chancing on a piece of roadkill.

The meal was gone in minutes. Maybe even just a few seconds. His stomach became distended and bulging, and he was still hungry, but the worst of the pain was already beginning to fade.

He started to lick the metal tray, scouring it for every droplet of fat and nutrition. He picked the fallen crumbs from the floor, biting them between his upper and lower sets of incisors to approximate the sensation of chewing real food.

And when he was done, he sagged back against the uncomfortable shipping pallets that made up his mattress and stared up at the camera, his numb mind dumbfounded by what had just occurred.

Why had they given this to him? Nothing in this place was a result of simple human kindness. There was always an ulterior motive, always a plan.

They had done this to break him. He wasn’t sure how, and he hated that too. Despised the way that his mind clung onto frail threads of salvation when they were anything but. Consciously he understood that it was all part of his captors’ strategy. But his mind built up a picture of survival despite his best efforts to prevent it—which only made it worse when his hopes were inevitably dashed against the cliffs of reality.

Fowler clutched his knees once more, as he had been doing when this all began, and dropped his head against them and started to rock back and forth.

Jason. What was he doing here? Surely it could only mean one thing: rescue.

Don’t do this to yourself.

Another metallic crash rang out. He flinched. The cell door was thrust open and rotated on its hinges until it came to a halt against the wall with a brutal clang.

“Stay there,” a masked man grunted, gesturing toward him angrily.

Fowler didn’t move. He knew that to either say or do anything that attracted this man’s attention could not bring him anything other than pain. He was nothing more than an abused animal now, wary of humans because he had seen humanity.

Another guard came through the cell door. He was dragging something. Fowler didn’t dare look, though he saw a boxy, rectangular shape through his peripheral vision.

The first guard strode over to him and roughly demanded his wrists, which he offered up without protest. The man pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt, then cinched them tight. He pushed his prisoner down without comment, and Fowler collapsed shivering on the floor.

He could see what they were bringing now, and a cold dread began to pool in his stomach. His world was about to darken. This should not have surprised him, because the experience of the past two weeks had taught him that things could always get worse, but the mind doesn’t like to believe anything can top its current torment.

Speakers.

They were bringing him speakers. And not just speakers, but a large strobe light on a stand. The second guard began to hook the equipment up to a socket outside, with a power cord which he threaded through the slot in cell’s door.

“Up,” the guard grunted, yanking his charge to his feet before Fowler was given the chance to react in the first place. In truth, he wasn’t even sure whether he would have been able to rise to a standing position without the man’s assistance—if you could call his rough ministrations that.

The guard attached a chain to his handcuffs, then threaded it through a loop high on the wall. He yanked on it slowly, ratcheting it hand over hand until Fowler’s wrists were over his head. The tension twisted his shoulders, and he yelped in pain.

“Please,” he begged. “Please, you have the wrong man. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll sign anything. Just make it stop.”

“Shut the fuck up,” came the response. The guard hauled on the chain, and Fowler’s moans were truncated by a sharp wave of pain as his right shoulder almost popped out as his wrists were pulled directly above his own head. He flung his head back and screamed with pain. He was forced onto his tiptoes to remain standing at all.

The guard killed the lights. For a moment, all that Fowler could see was the red LED on the camera high on the wall.

Then the man cackled. “Enjoy…”

The cell door slammed once more. There was only silence, punctuated by whimpers of pain coming from Fowler’s own lips.

And then the music started. The speakers were large, each almost the size of a man. And there were two of them, in a space no larger than a small sedan car, cranked up to full blast. At first the force of it was a physical shock that caused him to tremble violently. That in turn only increased the pressure on his shoulder sockets.

Fowler screamed. He closed his eyes, but at that moment the strobe lights turned on, and he saw flashes of color imprinted through the useless flaps of skin.

Fowler screamed until his throat went hoarse, screamed so that for only a moment he could hear only himself and not the blasting German death metal. He screamed until he sagged, his body momentarily limp against his restraints, the front of his feet grazing the floor.

But even that could only last a few seconds. There was no position that was comfortable. It didn’t take long for the pain to build once again, for the pressure to become unbearable, for heat to build up between his shoulder blades, and then he was scrabbling against the floor for purchase, standing on his tip toes once again.

“You fucking assholes,” he yelled through a throat that was already raw. “Why are you doing this to me?”

They were watching him, of course. That was part of the job. Whatever rational part of his mind was left knew that they would have muted the sound feed long before the music started.

Somehow the worst of it was that he didn’t understand the lyrics. He could make out the words, but there was no meaning to them, so his mind was left unable to focus on anything other than the excruciating pain now wracking his body.

The cycle repeated over and over again. His toes grew exhausted, his lower body wracked with cramp from attempting to stay standing for minutes, then hours.

Next he collapsed and hung from the chain for respite. And the pain built and built, and he returned to his cramped toes, and he collapsed and he stood and he collapsed and he wept and faded into a space that wasn’t quite unconsciousness, not quite delusion, a space in between, all punctuated by the random flashes of the strobes.

Had he been conscious, rested and fed, he would have understood that every aspect of this treatment was designed to remove all points that his mind could latch on to. Even the spacing between the flashes from the strobe came at haphazard intervals. The human mind searches for patterns in everything. Even when there is none to be found.

After a while, the music stopped. The light died. He hung in darkness.

Then the music started. No strobe this time.

They killed the music. But the light flashed.

Drool fell from Fowler’s lips. His eyes were glazed when they were open, and at this point he had little control over whether or not that was the case.

They turned off the light. The cell returned to darkness. Now only the LED blinked.

The cell door opened. How long had it been since they’d started this torture? An hour?

Ten?

He was too broken to feel relief as the guards entered. One loosened his chain, and his legs put up no resistance as he collapsed to the floor, grazing his chin in a heavy fall.

Fingers roughly probed at his skin. A man mumbled something in Russian. Fowler pried his eyes open and saw that he was wearing scrubs. The medic jabbed a plastic-tipped thermometer into his ear and waited until it chirped. Then he checked his pulse.

“He’s good,” the man informed the guard standing somewhere above. All that Fowler could see of this one was a shape.

“He’s coming,” Fowler mumbled, delirious with pain and exhaustion. He spoke in English. In his delirium, he saw Jason’s face. He knew he shouldn’t talk, and yet he did. “Let me go. He won’t warn you like I am.”

The medic looked down with the skin above his eyes crinkling. “Who is he talking about?”

“Who cares?” someone else said. The timbre of the sound changed, perhaps because this man turned his head. “Come on. Give me a hand.”

They dragged Fowler’s limp, unresisting body between them. Perhaps he fell asleep in their arms. Afterwards, he would not have been able to say. They took him to a room that was lit only by a square lamp hanging from the ceiling, directing all its light downward.

The glow reflected off a metal gurney, off which dangled a multitude of leather straps. Dread might have coursed through the American’s veins, but he was long past that.

They threw him roughly onto the cold metal. His head lolled from side to side, and in a moment of lucidity he felt something like a seam in the steel beneath his skull. They strapped his feet into the gurney.

“Cut them off,” someone ordered. He felt the cool touch of metal against his skin as a pair of scissors scythed his jumpsuit off. Then his filthy underwear.

He was naked. They tore the cloth away and tossed it somewhere out of sight. He looked up but was blinded by the hanging lamp. His entire universe was shapes, not men, and the rough touch of their fingers against his flesh as they manhandled him into place.

“You have one chance,” a man said from somewhere directly overhead once they were done cinching and tying and strapping him into place. “Tell me what you saw, and I won’t do this.”

“What is this?” Fowler mumbled.

But he knew. He been through this once before, at SERE school, though not in anger. Back then he knew that there was always a way out. That they wouldn’t go too far. These men were cut from different cloth.

“Tell me what you saw,” the interrogator repeated.

Fowler grasped for the only story he knew. He had to hold out. If he told them what they wanted, they would have no use for him. And rescue was so close. He just needed to survive until the cavalry arrived.

“I’m an American,” he whimpered. “Contact the embassy. I work for the contractor. I—”

“Tip his head back,” the interrogator snapped.

It happened so suddenly. The seam underneath his skull became a hinge, and his neck dropped back, compressing the exhausted muscles in his shoulders. Then the entire gurney tilted, as if on some unseen axis, leaving his ankles above his heart.

His face was covered by a layer of rough cloth. They yanked it down hard, so that it alone was enough to limit his oxygen. Then another was pressed against the first.

“Pour.”

The flow of water started instantly. The first thing he felt was how cold it was, splashing against his naked torso. It was bracing, instantly returning him to full consciousness—and complete awareness of the hopelessness of his situation.

It trickled into his nostrils to begin with, slowly seeping through the thick double layer of fabric over his mouth and nose. But once the cloth was sodden, the trickle became a stream became a flood. He felt a finger pressing against his solar plexus, and he knew why, even as the panic began to build into his mind. His torture was testing to see if he was timing his breaths to avoid the flow of water.

Fowler knew this, and yet as the deluge began to slow, he tried it anyway.

“Pour,” the interrogator hissed.

The flow redoubled. Cortisol coursed through his veins. A wave of nausea rose from his stomach. And he didn’t care about any of it because all his brain desired was the one thing he could not have: oxygen.

They tore the fabric away from his lips, and he gasped desperately for it. Water had flooded into his throat, and he sucked some of it into his lungs and it stung but he didn’t care, couldn’t care. His chest heaved with agony.

“What did you see?” the interrogator asked. “Tell me what you saw, and this can all be over.”

“I’m an American,” Fowler moaned. “A contractor. I work for the State Department. We—”

“Again.”

The cloth went back over his mouth and nose. It was heavy this time, damp with water and spit and mucus and foreboding. This time, he knew what was coming, and he dreaded it all the more. The flow went on and on, and the panic built in his mind, and his stomach cramped and retched with fear until his hard-won meal from earlier came back up as vomit and acid and singed his nostrils and made him choke, and all for nothing.

They tilted the gurney back. The flow stopped. His nostrils burned.

The interrogator squinted his uncaring eyes and asked the same question. “Tell me what you saw.”

18

“Come,” Chernyak said roughly as he grabbed Sergeant Packer’s shoulder and pulled him through a loose line of Ukrainian military police troops.

They were attired in fatigues and their customary red berets, which came complete with a badge in the shape of an eight-pointed shield and emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords and a double-headed ax. Both officers and enlisted men alike studiously ignored the presence of the gruff irregular fighter. It was a pattern of behavior that Packer had come to recognize from Chernyak’s regular army brethren. He wasn’t sure whether it was born of respect or fear, or most likely a little of both.

They were outside the barbed wire-topped fence that surrounded Yavoriv Combat Training Center, near a section that bordered a small wood, and a tumbledown shack that had long ago housed farm animals before falling into disrepair. The corrugated iron roof had rusted, bowed, and eventually split into two pieces. It was covered in a thick carpet of green and brown moss.

It was a little past six in the morning, and dew glistened all over foliage that crept from the edge of the wood all the way to the fence line. Dawn was only just breaking on the horizon and lightening the sky, and the blue lights of military police trucks reflected back off the droplets. The thick greenery ought to have been hacked back years ago. But it hadn’t been, and that had provided a staging post for an unknown party to coordinate the previous night’s theatrics with the drones.

The aerial assault had stopped a few minutes after Chernyak and Sergeant Long shot down one of the small rotorcraft. A single further stun grenade had been dropped by a different drone. It had landed on a canvas tent and sparked a small conflagration that was quickly brought under control.

Chernyak said something to a Ukrainian lieutenant as they approached the crime scene marked with Cyrillic-lettered tape. The woman, her blond hair tied back in a neat bun, shrugged enigmatically.

“They have their pictures,” Chernyak explained. “And the forensic people have already done their work.”

“Tell them to click enhance, and this case should be cracked by breakfast.”

The Ukrainian’s grizzled forehead wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t get NCIS out here, huh?”

“It is TV show, yes?”

“Sure. I prefer to think of it as a cultural sensation, but I guess your description works just as good,” Packer said deadpan. “Anyway, what am I looking at?”

Chernyak crouched and scanned the ground in front of them quickly, then slowly. Packer noted that the man’s gaze swept in quadrants, as it had the night before. He wondered whether anyone had shown him how to do that, or whether he just worked it out himself. It was smart. It was hard to miss key details that way.

“You see here?” He pointed at three shallow indentations in the grass. “They had tripod.”

Packer joined him and studied the holes. “Good catch. You think it was for the controllers?”

“No,” Chernyak said with an emphatic shake of his head. “Control is on cell phone. They were watching.”

“You think this was for a camera?”

“Yes. Or maybe sensor.”

Packer looked at the indents with renewed interest. He’d initially assumed that the previous night’s theatrics had simply been the GRU—if Chernyak was right about that—reminding the Ukrainians that they weren’t safe anywhere. But if he was right, then this put things in a whole new light. They’d been toying with their prey. Perhaps observing how the Ukrainians handled the assault.

“What do you think they wanted?” he mused aloud.

Chernyak shrugged. “Maybe send a message that next time they use real bombs. Maybe something else.”

“Comforting.”

He turned on the ball of his foot and drank in all the details of the scene that jumped out at him. A single set of tire tracks. Something wide and heavy. Probably a truck or 4 x 4 of some kind. He figured the forensic guys had already casted them. The same went for the numerous visible boot prints. He doubted that anything would come of it.

“You think they’ll catch them?” he asked.

“No,” Chernyak replied simply. “They are far away now. Maybe back in Russia by tomorrow. Or Poland. Doesn’t matter.”

“So what next?”

“Our time is over, my friend,” Chernyak said impassively.

“What do you mean?”

“My battalion has been activated. We are going to the front.”

A number of thoughts crossed Packer’s mind—both personal and professional. On a personal basis, he would miss the Ukrainian. Professionally, he worried that they hadn’t had enough training on the new weapons systems. The course should have lasted another couple of weeks, culminating with a live firing to get accustomed to the rocket exhaust and the nuances inherent in actually targeting a vehicle in real life.

“When were you told?”

“This morning. Before I came to get you.”

“Shit,” Packer whistled. “It isn’t related to what went down last night, is it?”

Chernyak shook his head. “The Russians are moving troops to the border. Their snipers killed two men yesterday.”

“Your people expecting trouble?” Packer asked.

“Maybe it’s like tonight,” Chernyak said with a thrust of his pelvis for good measure. “They are just showing us the size of their balls.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is. But if not, make sure someone else fires the Javelins, okay?” He grinned. “Seriously, man, I hope things go okay for you.”

Chernyak gestured at a pistol holstered above a nearby MP’s hip. “I will do it the old-fashioned way,” he said.

Packer held out his hand and winced a little when Chernyak grasped it with a ferocious intensity. “I don’t doubt it. Good luck.”

* * *

Packer saluted as he entered Lieutenant Graff’s headquarters tent. The officer greeted him with a grunt but continued filling out a sheaf of paperwork with a scratchy yellow pencil.

“I’ll be with you in a second, Staff Sergeant.”

“No problem, sir.”

He spent the next sixty seconds or so glancing around the cramped but surprisingly busy command post. Behind him, soldiers rushed in and out on errands, either carrying clipboards or glued to cell phones.

“Okay,” Graff said, dropping the pencil. “Sorry about that, Packer.”

The sergeant nodded. “It’s real busy in here, sir.”

“That’s why I wanted to see you. I need to volunteer you for something.”

Packer decided that agreeing was the safest course of action. “Yes, sir.”

“The Ruskies are getting damn frisky down in the Donbas region. European Command wants to get some boots on the ground to figure out whether this thing’s about to hit the fan, or if it’s just another round of saber rattling.”

“Yes, sir,” Packer said, sticking with what he knew. He had a sense of where this was going, and he would’ve been lying if he said he wasn’t at least intrigued.

Graff spread a map out on his desk and beckoned him over. He placed a finger on a spot that indicated their current location, then traced a route east. “I want you to embed with the National Guard unit you’ve been training. Head down with them and get some eyes on. I’ll be setting up a CP here, near Pishtevik. You’ll be taking a satellite phone. I want daily updates, you understand?”

Packer nodded. “Can do, Lieutenant.”

“Take your whole squad with you. You’ll be carrying weapons, but you’re only to use them in self-defense, you understand? The last thing anyone needs is us to set off World War III.”

“It’s that serious, sir?”

Graff looked troubled. “Hell if I know. I’m guessing it’s just President Murov giving us his annual reminder not to forget he exists. But last I heard, the Russians have at least 60,000 troops headed to the border, including armor, close air support, you name it. You know the score: Ukraine isn’t part of NATO, and this mess isn’t our problem. Until the other side tries to make it so.”

“Sounds real safe,” Packer said dryly. “Glad I volunteered. Sir.”

“If you want out, just tell me, Sergeant. But I need to know now.”

“Want out, sir? Well, I never said a damn-fool thing like that. Just point me in the right direction, and I’ll get marching.”

“Good man,” Graff grunted. He scribbled his signature on a document, then folded it and handed it to Packer.

“Take this and sign out the supplies you need. Then get your men together so I can brief you on the rules of engagement. But I’ll boil them down for you right here and now, Packer. If you fire your weapon, you better be damn sure that a Russian is about to put a bullet through either you or one of your men. Clear?”

Packer saluted. “Crystal, sir.”

“Then get moving, soldier.”

19

Mike Mitchell parked in the second closest spot to the Great Falls Park visitor center and killed the engine. He twisted in his seat to grab a gray sweatshirt from the back and replaced his suit jacket with it to avoid sticking out among the hikers streaming toward the walking trails.

That, and because with a stiff breeze sending puffs of cotton wool scuttling across a patchwork sky, he figured it might prove a wise decision.

It was surprisingly busy for a Thursday afternoon, though since most of the visitors could easily be mistaken for attendees at an AARP convention, he figured they didn’t have much else to occupy them. There were also a few office types—no doubt employees of one of the many government agencies in this part of the world. It wasn’t a bad place to eat lunch, he reflected.

The park was a couple of miles from the CIA’s McLean headquarters and straddled the Potomac River. It was a thickly forested area, though the trees were still skeletal after a particularly brutal winter. Birdsong punctuated the roar of the river in the distance, which grew louder with every step.

The lead agent on the director’s detail had told Mitchell to follow the river loop trail, which he did. The shoots of spring were evident on either side as he walked, buds bursting out of branches and twigs and the scent of fresh grass on the brisk air. He could already chew the pollen, he noticed with dismay, which heralded an unpleasant few months ahead of him.

He found the man he was looking for soon enough, at an outlook point about fifteen minutes down the trail. Either it had rained the night before, or the trail was simply chewed up after months of winter, but by the time he arrived, his leather shoes were coated in mud. He grimaced as he noticed his pants were equally speckled. Thankfully, Lawrence wasn’t known for being a stickler for appearances. Mitchell brushed the worst of the dirt off before striding toward his boss, nodding to a member of the director’s personal detail as he walked past.

The director was attired significantly more practically than he was—in black hiking boots, tan pants, and a striped shirt. He had a pair of foldout binoculars dangling from a strap around his neck.

Lawrence acknowledged his arrival without turning round. “Michael.”

Mitchell grinned and jumped down to his boss’s side. “You’ve got good ears, sir. Or else I’m losing my touch.”

“I have a good team,” Lawrence said, gesturing at the men in dark suits and earpieces standing post up and down the river trail. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be.”

“Neither’s mine, sir,” Mitchell said with a knowing chuckle. “You’re telling me it gets worse from here?”

“I can only speak for myself, but I don’t have the range time you do. I hope you wore your defenders.”

“Not as often as I should,” Mitchell reflected. “That’s the problem with the young. They think they’ll live forever. I sure did.”

“And the tragedy is that you don’t,” Lawrence agreed. “I decided long ago to see as much of the world as I could while I still can. Doing this job doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s why you’re here, sir?” Mitchell inquired. “Better than the office, I bet.”

“I try and take an hour to myself when I can,” Lawrence explained. “I get out to the countryside as often as possible to clear my head. This business in the Crimea put a stop to that. And the birds, of course.”

“The birds?”

“I’m a twitcher, Mike. Nobody tell you?”

“Sir?”

Lawrence turned his head slightly, and Mitchell noticed a mischievous smile on it. “A birdwatcher. Just a hobby. I took it up a couple of years back. They don’t scheme, birds.”

“Scheme?”

“Well, ravens might,” Lawrence allowed. “But mostly down here you get to see wrens, goldfinches, a red-tailed hawk if you’re lucky. And cardinals, of course.”

“Of course,” Mitchell agreed, hiding a smile. It wasn’t one of mockery, but of endearment. It wasn’t often he saw the director this relaxed. Shorn of the stresses of the job he seemed a different man.

“They’re called Virginia nightingales in these parts,” Lawrence said, raising the binoculars to his eyes and tracking something along the riverbank. “Nowhere else, though.”

“What are, sir?”

“Cardinals. Or northern cardinals, to give them their proper name. You find them all down the East Coast. Hell, they’re all over Mexico too. But you don’t hear our southern neighbors calling them Mexican Cardinals, do you? Only Virginians.”

“To be honest, Director, I hadn’t really heard of them until right this moment,” Mitchell admitted. “I’ll be sure to rectify that oversight immediately.”

Lawrence said nothing for a few seconds, just kept the looking glasses pressed to his eyes. What he was studying, Mitchell couldn’t make out. At last, he sighed and said softly, “No, birds are just birds. They eat, hunt, forage, and survive. And that’s all they have ever done. Not like us.”

Not sure he really understood what the director was driving at, Mitchell shook his head slightly awkwardly. “No.”

“So why are you here, Michael?” Lawrence asked, lowering the binoculars and letting them hang against his chest.

Mitchell felt a pang of regret for interrupting his boss. “Sir, you know that last month we lost touch with an asset on the ground in Ukraine. Chase Fowler.”

“I had noticed.”

“In the last few days we’ve been monitoring chatter, mostly from low-level sources, that an American—perhaps Fowler, perhaps not—was transported to a penal colony in Irkutsk province in Siberia. And it occurs to me that this might be connected with the Russian activity we’ve been monitoring on the border.”

“Michael, have you interrupted my afternoon off just to give me a pop quiz on the contents of my daily brief? Or are you here to try and get me to do something about it?” Lawrence said. His tone was measured but carried with it a level of bite that a casual onlooker might not have believed him capable of.

“Because you know the score,” the director continued. “My hands are tied. We have no solid evidence that Fowler is in that place. Even if we did, what could we do about it? Mount a raid on a Russian government facility? It would be tantamount to an act of war. That’s the plot of a Clancy novel, not real life.”

“I’m not here to convince you of anything, Director,” Mitchell began, deciding that honesty was the best policy. When Lawrence first came in, he wasn’t sure whether the man had the spine for the job. There was no doubting now that he had been wrong about that.

“But…”

“I’m here to inform you about a… development.”

“Go on.”

Mitchell winced, but knew he had no other choice. “Sir, Jason Trapp has infiltrated the prison.”

Lawrence’s neck snapped around faster than might have been expected for a man of his age and bulk. “What? On whose authority?”

“It seems his own, Director.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Lawrence snapped after a period of silence. “You see, Mike, Jason doesn’t have any authority. He is an asset. He carries out the orders that he is given. He doesn’t assign missions to himself. That’s just not how things work.”

It didn’t require much in the way of people skills for Mitchell to read the director’s anger. He felt the heat of it on his skin. Lawrence was ordinarily a mild-mannered man, but right now he was fuming. The truth was, Mitchell felt the same way. There were rules, processes that had to be followed in intelligence work. Instead, Jason had simply thrown them—and him—under the bus.

He spoke somewhat helplessly. “Sir, we both know who Trapp is.”

“Trapp is an operative. A very good one, sure. But he doesn’t get to dictate American policy just because he’s a friend of the president’s, or because he’s killed a few people we don’t like. You know how this business works. It’s not what have you done for me, it’s what have you done for me lately. And what Trapp has gone and done is set in motion a potential international incident. And that falls on you, Mike.”

“I know, sir. I brought this to you as soon as I found out,” Mitchell said. It was a white lie, but almost the entire truth. “That’s why I came to you out here instead of in the office. I know how sensitive this is.”

Lawrence turned to face his underling. “I want you to look me in the eye, Mike, and assure me you had no prior knowledge of what Jason was planning.”

Mitchell nodded. “Scout’s honor, sir. I knew he wasn’t a fan of leaving Fowler in there. But I thought he was on board. He knows how the game is played. You get caught, we don’t know you. And Fowler did.”

The director tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. “Let’s park our personal feelings on the matter,” he said at last. “Trapp’s not a stupid man. Why do you think he did this?”

It was the same question that Mitchell had been trying to work out for several days. “The Russians must think Fowler knows something,” he said. “Maxim Zayetsev is in Murov’s inner circle. Officially he’s a telecoms mogul. Unofficially, there are persistent rumors of close contacts with the GRU, even though he was KGB before perestroika. He wouldn’t get his own hands dirty unless it was big.”

“Or it’s nothing,” Lawrence said, playing devil’s advocate. “And some intel puke just gave Zayetsev the same speech, except from their perspective. The Americans must be poking around for a reason. We need to find out what it is…”

“That’s a possibility, sir,” Mitchell allowed. “But two nights ago a helicopter with a registration number that matched Zayetsev’s own chopper landed at IK-29. That’s the penal colony. They must be worried about something concrete if Zayetsev himself is involved in this. The question is—what?”

“What do you propose then, Mike? And before you ask, I’m not authorizing boots on the ground. Trapp decided to walk into that place, and that’s on him. If he wants to walk back out, it’s on him to work out how.”

“Right now, Director, not a whole lot. Trapp is doing something, even if we don’t know exactly what. A couple of days ago we paid a bribe to Yevgeny Makarov, the warden of the facility—”

“A couple of days?”

Lawrence’s tone of voice was soft—but deceptively dangerous. Mitchell instantly understood that he’d misstepped. “Yes, sir.”

“I thought you came to me the moment you had something? And now I learn you had time to give this guy an allowance.”

“It’s true, Director. I didn’t want to come to you until I had something more solid. When we paid, Zayetsev hadn’t yet visited the prison. It seemed like a matter that could be handled quietly. Without needing to bring you into the loop.”

“Well, I’m in it now,” Lawrence snapped. “No more secrets, Mike. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t think to ask permission before you made the payment?” Lawrence asked icily. “Or did you just decide to shoot first and ask for forgiveness later, like Jason?”

Mitchell gritted his teeth.

Sure, he was both embarrassed and frustrated that Trapp had put him in this position. It wasn’t any secret that this matter didn’t reflect well on him. But neither was he a novice in this business. “I have my own discretionary authority, Director. I don’t have to come running to you every time I want to wipe my ass. I saw a play, and I ran with it. Was I wrong to? Or in future should I come to you every time I need to add two and two together?”

Both men locked eyes like prizefighters before a bout. Eventually, Lawrence blinked, and let out a weary sigh. “Okay, Mike,” he said. “I’ll back you on this one. But from now on, you tell me everything.”

20

Trapp was mildly hung over the next morning, but that was unfortunately no different from any night he’d had a drink since about his 25th birthday. It was just one of the many drawbacks that came with age.

He’d eaten breakfast alongside Sasha—not unintentionally, for he suspected that his presence at the kindly Russian’s side would send a message that the man was under his protection. He was quickly coming to understand the way men communicated behind bars, which was less with words than actions and body language, like a troop of gorillas in the forest.

He also sensed that Sasha appreciated the gesture, though the man was too practiced to indicate so in public.

It was a little after seven as they stepped out of the mess hall, and Trapp noticed that not only was the sky clear, a bluish tinge just over the frosted pine canopy beyond the fence hinting that it might be a blockbuster day, but it was warming up. He heard a drip-drip-drip, glanced behind himself, and saw that the building’s slanted roof was beginning to melt.

“You think winter’s over?” he said, nudging Sasha with his elbow and gesturing.

Sasha squinted before zeroing in on what Trapp was pointing at. “Maybe. But don’t hold your breath.”

“Why not?”

“This is Siberia, Kolya,” Sasha said. “Winter lasts as long as it wants to. It’s only just April. There could still be snow on the ground at the end of May. Not always, but it’s not unusual. And besides, I hear there’s a storm coming.”

“A storm?”

“A big one,” Sasha nodded. “Could snow us in for a week, maybe longer.”

Trapp’s ears pricked up, and not in a good way. His present situation was complicated enough already without adding a weather hold into the mix. The Chase Fowler he’d seen through the fence the other night wasn’t the same virile, energetic man he knew. This Chase was exhausted and bowed by whatever torment those bastards were putting him through in there.

Breaking him out when he was this frail would be hard enough already, and that was before adding ten-foot-tall snow drifts into the planning mix.

“When?” he asked, a little more sharply than he initially intended.

“A day, maybe two from now. The models aren’t so accurate this far from civilization. Or should I say Moscow. Why?”

Trapp surreptitiously cleared his throat and played off his interest. “No reason. I was kind of enjoying making the ax sing, you know?”

Sasha didn’t look entirely convinced but dropped it. “You’re the only one,” he said.

They walked around the camp for a few minutes, burning time before the day’s work details were due to begin. Trapp’s stomach was roiling with anxiety—not for himself, but for Chase. It was clear that this development with the weather would impact his plans, such as they were. He needed to move faster.

They passed the high-security facility on their left at about the same time as shift change—at least that’s what Trapp presumed was happening. Three men walked through the fenced-off walkway between the two sets of chain-link fences, unlocking the gate on the other end with a set of keys that one of them pulled off his belt.

That’s interesting, Trapp thought, filing the detail away for later.

One of the men was dressed differently from the others—not in a guard’s uniform, but still formally. About all that Trapp could make out was that he wore glasses. He jabbed Sasha in the side and said conversationally, “Who’s that?”

Sasha’s head snapped around automatically, then made the same journey in reverse—and even faster—when he realized exactly what it was that Trapp had drawn his attention to.

“The doctor,” he said in a strangled voice. “I told you, Kolya. Don’t look too interested in what happens there. It won’t be good for you.”

“Oh yeah,” Trapp said, ignoring the warning. “I thought I recognized him. He’s the guy who cupped my balls at intake, right?”

“Right,” Sasha agreed, seeming to relax as the facility passed out of sight, and perhaps reassured by Trapp’s locker-room explanation of his interest.

They resumed a comfortable silence, but Trapp replayed in his mind what he’d seen. Two guards and the doctor entering the facility at about 7:15 a.m. Only one guard exiting.

The night shift.

Trapp recognized that he’d uncovered a key piece of information, even if he didn’t yet know what to do with it. As he walked to the vehicle park to begin the day’s work, he dwelled on the problem of how he could get inside. Because he had to do so, he knew that. The Agency wouldn’t do a damn thing to help unless he gave them a real reason—and that meant something in it for them.

So he had to get inside. And fast. The coming storm put pressure on the timeline. And Chase’s frail health heaped it back on him. The presence of the camp doctor couldn’t be a good sign. Either it meant that his friend was more unwell than he knew, or that they were torturing him.

It was probably both.

“I have to go,” Sasha said, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. “See you later, Kolya.”

“You too.”

The vehicle lot was still locked when Trapp arrived, though a few members of his work detail were already waiting outside. They mostly studiously ignored him, though he caught a few intrigued glances in his direction when they thought he wasn’t watching.

His colleagues—for lack of a better description—arrived in dribs and drabs. The usual fat guard wasn’t here yet, and neither was Pavel. Trapp leaned against the fence around the lot and amused himself by placing a wager with himself over whether the humiliated overseer would show his face.

He would have lost that bet, he found just moments later as the big Russian showed his face without coming close to Trapp.

But he didn’t have time to gloat because shortly behind Pavel trudged the warden—Yevgeny Makarov. And the man was making a beeline for him.

“Can I help you, Warden?” Trapp inquired when it was clear that Makarov wasn’t here to meet anybody else.

“I heard you’ve been causing trouble,” Makarov said curtly.

Trapp glanced over toward where Pavel was skulking. His face was bruised, and he was moving gingerly and saying little. “I stopped trouble,” he said. “There won’t be any more.”

“For your sake, I hope so,” Makarov snapped.

The two men stood in silence for a few moments, and when the warden didn’t leave, Trapp knew that something else was on the man’s mind. He leaned into it, judging it would be better to keep the man off balance. “I trust that my friends played their part?”

Makarov’s eyes narrowed, something Trapp assumed was due to the implicit assertion that he’d accepted a bribe. He glanced left and right, and the tip of his tongue darted out and rinsed his upper lip. “They did.”

They fell silent as the elderly guard trudged past, and then waited as he unlocked the gate. Trapp wondered why Makarov cared what these people thought. The fact that he was on the take couldn’t have slipped past anyone inside the camp. But perhaps it was easier—even if only on a personal level—to pretend that people didn’t see the man you truly were.

“That’s good.” Trapp nodded. “Thanks for holding up your end.”

“That’s the thing. I don’t think I’m getting a fair share of this bargain,” Makarov said, a wheedling, insincere tone coating his words like syrup.

“The money arrived, didn’t it? Just like I said.”

“It did,” Makarov repeated.

“Then what is the problem?” Trapp said, snapping a little himself. “We had a deal. I delivered.”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” the warden hissed, leaning forward until the foul heat of his breath basted Trapp’s nostrils. “Perhaps I’ve decided to change the terms, now that you’ve had a chance to get used to my hospitality.”

Trapp remembered how Sasha had referred to the vodka they’d shared last night. It wasn’t a drink, it was currency. He gambled. “Fine. But I want something in return.”

“Go on.”

“A crate of vodka. Good vodka. Every month. And you take an extra ten percent. Plus costs.”

Makarov seemed to bridle at his request, but the expression of distaste didn’t last long on his face before it was replaced with one of sheer—and transparent—animal cunning. He wasn’t quite as good a negotiator as he thought he was.

“It smells like you found some already,” he snarled. “I could put you back in solitary for that. It would be winter again by the time you get out.”

“It could be.” Trapp shrugged. “But then my friends would stop paying. I doubt that’s what you want.” He stuck out his hand. “So do we have a deal?”

Makarov left him hanging. After several seconds, he walked away, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll think about it.”

As he passed the guard, he snapped, “Get the prisoners onto the damn bus.”

* * *

The workdays inside the camp started early, and though Trapp enjoyed the hard physical labor more than most, even he would admit that it was draining. By the time he was back behind the fences that evening, had eaten and was back in his room, he was exhausted.

Sasha was lying on his bed, reading a well-worn paperback with a blue and yellow cover. The title was in English. It looked vaguely familiar, but Trapp didn’t ask about it. The Russian fell asleep not long after, snoring gently on the bunk above. When Trapp rolled out, he saw that his new friend had dozed off in the middle of a chapter, and that the book had toppled into a triangle on his chest.

He lifted it off, replaced the makeshift bookmark, and put it with the rest of Sasha’s meager possessions. Once that was done, and after seeing no further signs of life from his bunkmate, he quietly dressed and left.

“Sleep tight, buddy,” he muttered to himself as he closed the door behind him, holding down the handle so the mechanism didn’t click.

The prison wing’s outer door wasn’t locked either. It never was, which might have seemed strange except that Makarov was right: the real prison was the Siberian climate. And as he stepped outside, Trapp realized that Sasha had been right about the storm.

The sky was still mostly clear, but a fierce wind had begun to gust, blowing on it thick flakes of snow that had possibly spawned hundreds of miles away before being carried on the gale’s leading edge. It wasn’t here yet. Perhaps not even close. But it was coming, and already the strength of the gusts was enough to cut through his outer clothing with pitiful ease. He thrust his hands into his pockets as deep as they would go and pulled the material tight around his body.

It didn’t help much.

The camp’s grounds were empty. Only a fool would be out on a night like this. A fool, and Jason Trapp.

The snowflakes tickled his face as he walked into the wind, hunched slightly over for extra leverage against its force. The snow that remained on the ground was being blown backward, exposing the ground underneath, which was at times concrete, a step later crumbling asphalt, or just frozen dirt.

Trapp shivered as he considered what might lie underneath. It wasn’t impossible—was likely even—that the bones of dozens, perhaps hundreds of the victims of Soviet oppression lay just feet below him, encased in permafrost forevermore. And there was an equally good chance that if he played his cards wrong tonight, he might join them.

He walked around the edge of the camp in a counterclockwise direction, passing by the main gates. The carved black eagle was now frosted white. The side gate was open, the guard somewhere inside the lighted security booth, probably watching some Russian movie or even just half asleep. It was hard to blame him. No one would be visiting on a night like this.

It wasn’t long before he sighted the secure satellite camp once again. The few cameras that dotted the exterior would be all but useless on a night like this—even if anyone was watching them, which he doubted given the general professionalism of the guard garrison—since they were frozen over by a thin crust of windswept snow.

Trapp paused in a pool of darkness, only a few feet from the narrow tunnel of fencing that led between the two sections of the camp. The lock on the front of it was analog, not digital—a hefty mechanism, built to survive all the aggression of the cold Siberian night.

That was good.

He froze as he saw the motion-activated exterior security light flare into life across the white waste between the two sections of IK 29. He glanced around him, confirming that he would be essentially invisible, so long as he didn’t move. There was nothing to illuminate him, not even the moon overhead. His apparel was dusted with enough snow to render him a ghost.

So he watched.

A man stepped out of the single-story prison wing, briefly illuminated in a halo of light. He tossed something into the snow in front of him, then took a step to the left and into his own darkness.

Trapp cursed. The hell was he doing?

And then it became clear. He saw the flash of a flint, then another, and then the lighter caught, flickering as the guard momentarily leaned toward it. The tip of his cigarette glowed and hung in the air like a firefly.

He couldn’t tell whether it was a cloud of cigarette smoke that he could see, exhaled into the light on the side of the building, or just a trick of the eye caused by the gusting snow. But it was plain what the man was doing.

Are you alone? Trapp wondered.

It would be bad practice, but not that unlikely. He’d seen three men enter that morning, and only one leave. Was it the same guy he now saw? He thought so, but it was impossible to be sure at this distance.

Trapp’s toes began to freeze as he stood in the cold, unwilling to move before his prey did. But the man had no such intention. He leaned over to retrieve whatever he’d thrown into the snow. It glinted as he pulled it out.

What is it?

He tasted as much as realized the answer—it was vodka. Just like he and Sasha had drunk the night before. But this guy was going at it. He raised the bottle to his lips five times in as many minutes, alternating cigarettes and pure liquor. Trapp couldn’t be sure how much he was putting away, but it had to be a lot.

Hope flared in his breast. This was an opportunity. Not a big one, to be sure, but a chink in the armor at the very least. He waited until the guard tossed his second cigarette into the snow, took another long pull from the vodka bottle, and then stepped inside before he left.

When he returned to his room, Sasha looked up blearily from his bunk. “Where were you?” he groaned. “It’s after curfew.”

Trapp held a finger to his lips, watching as the sleep-addled Russian drifted back into slumber. His own mind was too alert for sleep as it turned over what he’d just witnessed. “Nowhere. Go back to sleep.”

21

The next morning, there was no hot food. The penal colony was already coated in several feet of fresh snow, and more was tumbling steadily out of the sky. It wasn’t yet a full-on storm, but that was coming. The world outside the cell’s tiny window was a frozen, howling place.

“No work today,” Sasha said, returning to the room with an arm full of plastic-wrapped black bread and a jug of milk. “For you, anyway. The electricity is out. And the roads are closed.”

“So what do we do?” Trapp asked.

He washed his face in the room’s little sink, then brushed his teeth. The toothpaste the prison provided tasted somehow stale and coarse, as though it had been sitting in its tube for decades waiting for this moment. He wondered if that could be true. Perhaps it was taken from some rotting Soviet stockpile.

“Whatever you want.” Sasha shrugged. He bit into a hunk of bread and chewed before speaking again. “I have to do some things for the warden. He has a generator.”

“Of course,” Trapp remarked dryly.

He lay down on his bunk and tried not to look excited as Sasha performed his own morning ablutions, dressed properly, and left. There was no sense giving the game away. This could be the opportunity he’d been looking for.

The oncoming storm, of course, was the confounding element. It had been a few years since Trapp last did any Arctic training. It was a specialized field, and its foremost practitioners were almost shamanic in his eyes. Weather like this could bring you to your knees, no matter how tough you thought you were. If either God or Mother Nature got it into their minds to break you, you didn’t stand a chance.

He grabbed his insulated overcoat and laid it down on the bunk after he was sure that Sasha wasn’t coming back. He felt his way down the seams and tore open a few threads just under the armpit on the right-hand side. Then the same on the left.

He unraveled a cotton sock until he had a good length of thread, then attached it to a two-inch long pin he’d found in one corner of the room. That was the hardest part. His eyes weren’t as good as they used to be, though Trapp blamed the light.

It took about fifteen minutes to fashion a hidden pocket on either side. Any tailor worth their salt would probably laugh him out of town at the sight, and the stitches likely wouldn’t last more than a few days, but that was more than he needed. Time was his real enemy at this moment.

He pulled pairs of thick socks on, and as many layers on top as would fit over his broad shoulders. His drill instructors always told him not to do the double sock thing to avoid blisters, but he wasn’t going far, and even through the wing’s concrete walls he could sense that it was hellishly cold. Definitely colder than he’d experienced any time since he’d arrived.

By the time he left, the falling snow was so thick Trapp could only see about twenty feet around him in any direction. The camp’s buildings loomed out of the whiteness like ships in the night as he passed.

He headed directly for the camp gates. By the time he arrived, his coat was so thickly covered in snow it was impossible to tell whether he was a guard or an inmate. In truth, he was barely visible at all.

Trapp waited by the fence until the guard stomped out of his little cabin, and until he could hear the trickle of piss against its back wall. Then he darted through. He left footsteps behind him, but there were already a couple of sets heading out, and about as many returning, and he suspected that one more wouldn’t be noticed.

And in this weather, it would be a matter of moments before they were gone.

He walked down the edge of the road and hit the tree line in under thirty seconds. When he was sheltered behind sufficient cover, he glanced over his shoulder to determine whether anyone had watched him leave.

“Probably not,” he muttered out loud after a short pause. The weather was so inclement that it was effectively impossible to say. There was no real reason for anyone to have been looking for him, and that would have to do.

So he started down the road, counting on Sasha being right that no one would be traveling down it today. If anyone was, he might have a few seconds warning, but the falling snow deadened even the sound of his footsteps, shrinking his awareness to only a few feet of vision around him and the rattle of his own breath.

Trapp followed a mental map that he’d drawn up about ten days earlier. He followed the road about three quarters of a mile. He hit the boulder at the side of the road just where he expected to. He almost missed the snowy lump, except that he remembered the road kinked just after, which made him retrace his footsteps. And then he turned into the forest.

The canopy stopped most of the assault from above—or slowed it, at any rate. It piled in mounds where it managed to slink through gaps, and as long as he avoided those he made faster progress here.

The forest was entirely silent, except for that strange whisper of falling snow. The wind appeared to have died down a bit, but he sensed that it was probably only a short intermission. Something was building out there, and it wasn’t fixing to be pleasant.

“So hurry your ass up,” he muttered out loud—speaking English for the first time in days. His native tongue sounded strange to his ears. Not alien, but not entirely natural either.

He made quick progress, since the surface of the snow underfoot had thawed and then refrozen into a hard crust that was easier to walk on, though occasionally he took a step and crashed through a thin patch of ice and found himself buried almost to the hip. He consequently worked up a fair sweat by the time he hit the clearing about ten minutes later.

He almost missed it.

His first—and only—visit to this place had occurred about twelve days earlier, before he returned to Ust-Ilimsk and booked his fist a date with the Politsiya major. It had looked different then. The snow wasn’t coursing through the gaps in the trees, and they were mostly a mottled patchwork of brown and green, instead of an indistinguishable white. Plus he’d had the distinct advantage of charting his course with a satellite navigation device, and the speed of a rugged dirt bike on his side.

But he was here.

He paused by a tree, as if to catch his breath, and took the opportunity to scan the forest around him for at least the tenth time for any sign that he’d been followed. He was pretty sure he was alone, but this would be a bad time to be overseen. As he finished his scan, satisfied that he was indeed on his own, he tipped his head back and glanced at what little he could see of the sky.

Somewhere up there a satellite was looking down. Maybe not right this minute, but a dozen scopes had orbits that ran over Russia. Maybe a couple fewer over Siberia, but there were missile silos out here that had been under constant surveillance from space for decades. If there wasn’t one up there right now, there would be in a couple of minutes.

Would he be visible from up there, even as a tiny infrared dot?

She would know it was him, even if she didn’t know why. Trapp cringed as he realized—or perhaps it would be better to say remembered—the burden he’d placed on her without so much as asking permission. Given the choice, she would be right here by his side.

“Get on with it,” he mumbled, pushing the momentary well of emotion behind a thick wall and sealing it tight. Again.

The clearing was arranged as a rough square, about fifty feet long and the same wide. It wasn’t exactly clear why it was here. It seemed too far away from the road for it to have been logged—and for the timber to have been carried away. Perhaps the skeleton of a hunting cabin lay somewhere under the blanket of ice and snow. For now it remained a mystery.

Either way, Trapp was able to identify a frost-coated silver birch at the top left corner and counted fifteen across. He’d made a cut in the correct tree the last time he was here: a cross about the size of his palm on the trunk of a dead pine tree at about head height. He couldn’t see it under the ice, but he thankfully didn’t need the hint.

He stomped his way over and stopped a couple of feet back from the base of the tree. There had been at least a foot of fresh snow since he was last here, but he knew roughly where it was buried. So he started digging.

Without the proper equipment, it took longer than he expected. Perhaps ten minutes of scrabbling in the powdery fresh snow, removing a handful at a time, only for half as much to slide back into his dig site. And the bag was camouflaged with snow, which made it difficult to find. At last he saw a corner poking out.

Gotcha.

Trapp grunted as he hauled the duffel bag out of its frozen cache, cursing the fact that he’d stored it inside a double layer of waterproof plastic sacks which gave no purchase for his cheap, prison-issue gloves. But shortly after, it lay at his feet. He undid the strap that sealed the first layer of plastic, pulled out the second, and did the same. Finally, perching on top of both, he set the Arctic-camouflage duffel onto the ground in front of him and kneeled in front of it.

He worked quickly, knowing exactly where in the stuffed bag he’d packed each of the items he was looking for: a satellite phone, some sachets of a high-energy peanut protein paste—each providing about a thousand calories, a small monocular scope, and a foldable black lock pick gun. He opened his thick coat, audibly cursing as a gust of wind cut through him like an icicle, and hid the items on his person.

Once he was done, he quickly resealed the bag, put it back inside its waterproofing, and buried it in the same hole it had come out of. He kicked the piles of snow messily back over it, knowing that since the tree above was dead, there was no canopy, meaning the snow would soon cover his handiwork.

Before he left, he glanced at the cache. It didn’t stand out, and he suspected that unless someone knew what they were looking for, it would look no different from the depressions left by falling snow off the branches on any of the trees in the clearing.

Trapp patted his coat down, checking that his own hiding places were equally concealed from sight as he began to retrace his footsteps back to the road. He thought so. Each of the items he’d liberated from his cache was individually small enough to not cause a noticeable bulge.

The storm’s wind speed was growing quickly now, and heavy flakes of snow battered his exposed face unrelentingly, sticking to his eyelashes and making it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. The footprints he left on his journey to the clearing were still just visible, but only just, as the storm scoured away the evidence of his passage.

“Let’s get moving, Jason,” he grumbled to himself over the keening of the howling wind. His core temperature was dropping fast as the gale cut through his clothing with the mocking ease that only nature can manage. It plateaued once he got his limbs moving, but it was an uneasy balance.

He cut a couple of minutes off the journey time back to the road and hung back in the trees for a moment before stepping out onto it to ensure that he was alone. There were no footprints left in the snow here. The storm had already hidden them. If they had left scars, the conditions were too inclement to make them out. It was the same for any vehicle tracks there might have been.

It couldn’t be much more ten Fahrenheit now, and the wind chill made it feel colder still. Trapp made the decision that he needed to get back to the camp fast before the weather turned even more brutally against him. He traded caution for speed and walked down the verge of the road—close enough to dive behind cover if he got sufficient warning.

The thing was, that was far from likely. The wind was so loud and the snow so thick on it that he was basically blind. He could barely see the trees to either side, and he was beginning to lose his orientation.

Trapp gritted his teeth and stared directly down, and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. As long as he followed the road he would be fine. Even if it didn’t feel like it.

He looked down and noticed a small depression in the snow. Like the footsteps behind him, it was already frosted by fresh snowfall. His instincts, perhaps dulled by the energy-sapping cold and the effort of stomping through the snow, didn’t save him on this occasion.

He should have acted immediately.

But he did not.

Trapp glanced left and right and noticed that the same strange indentations were all around him. Footsteps.

Mine?

No, they couldn’t be.

And that was when he took the first punch. It came out of nowhere. He couldn’t see more than a foot ahead in any direction now, and it connected on his neck, just behind the jaw. He spun around, and someone else hit him from behind. The second blow carried with it the force of a traction engine. It was like a carrier jet had just rocketed off the deck of the USS Nimitz and collided with his lower back.

His boots lost traction, and he toppled forward into the snow. The second he went down, someone kicked him, and their boot struck his right thigh, deadening the muscle. The adrenaline kicked in and stifled the pain.

But it was already too late.

The blows were coming from every angle. There had to be half a dozen attackers, maybe more. He couldn’t see their faces, and they probably couldn’t see his either. But that didn’t seem to dampen their ardor. Trapp struggled to his feet and lashed out at the nearest shape in the storm. His victim doubled over, and Trapp grabbed the guy’s head, jammed his gloved fingers into the mouth and pulled viciously until he felt the skin begin to tear. He felt it rip but didn’t give up.

Panicked bloodlust rose within him, salving the pain and feeding him with chemical energy. He couldn’t die. Not after coming this far.

Someone grabbed him tightly and held him until he rocked back with another vicious blow in his stomach. He lost his grip and went down again. He tried to rise, but someone thrust him back down. He reached out and grabbed a leg, reeling it in, scrabbling in the snow. He rolled onto the man’s back and twisted his arm back. He kept turning until he felt it snap.

The storm was too intense now to hear it. But he couldn’t miss the scream that followed.

Another shape pushed them aside. It was like fighting in a steamy bathhouse. They leapt onto him, holding his legs. Another attacker did the same, rolling him onto his front and kneeling on his back. Trapp attempted to rise, but the weight of a third man put paid to that.

“Turn him over,” a voice snapped, the sound almost immediately stolen by the wind.

Trapp recognized the voice. He struggled against the men holding him down, but his efforts were impotent.

Pavel.

The big Russian’s face leered out of the white haze in front of him. Even with three other men holding him down, it was all Trapp could see. He tried to suck in a breath, but his rib cage felt like it might collapse. His lungs were useless.

Pavel descended on him. The bruised, angry Russian placed his hands around Trapp’s neck and started to squeeze. The pressure was immense. Another burst of adrenaline flooded through his body, offering up a fresh burst of energy, but it was useless. He had no leverage. His limbs were pinned by men who were just as heavy as he was.

They had him.

Strangulation is a hell of a way to die. It’s a hell of a way to kill a man, as well, but Trapp sensed that he was far from Pavel’s first victim. The man leered down at him with a deranged, rapid snarl as he choked the life out of him.

And slowly, second by second, Trapp’s vision started to constrict. At first he didn’t notice, consumed by his brain’s desperate messages to his lungs demanding air. But then the darkness constricted around his peripheral vision.

Pavel’s face was all that was left.

And then, that too began to fade.

22

Trapp’s head rocked sideways, rolling with the force of a powerful slap. His eyes snapped open, and he gasped deeply for air—not surprising, since the last thing he remembered was slipping into the empty embrace of an eternal nothingness.

“You’re awake.” Pavel grinned, grabbing his chin and manipulating his head left and right as he luxuriated in his victory. “Good. I didn’t want you to miss this. A man only gets to die once.”

He traced the scar around Trapp’s neck, a curious look crossing his face as a bitter gust of wind snapped against both of them. “Although in your case, perhaps that’s not true… Regardless.”

Trapp’s mind was still running through molasses. Every half-thought was taking an eternity to process. Where was he? What the hell was going on? The last thing he remembered was lying on the ground with the Russian’s face glaring down at him as he slipped out of consciousness.

Now he was vertical.

How?

The answer came to him slowly as his faculties properly returned to him. While he was out, they’d begun tying him to a tree. His ankles were already bound to the base of the trunk. He tried prying them apart, but to no avail. Whatever material they’d used was unyielding.

Pavel undid the top button of Trapp’s winter coat and found the zipper. With a wicked sneer on his face, he pulled at it, slowly exposing Trapp’s torso to the brutality of the Siberian storm still swirling around them. Behind him, four of his men lurked menacingly. One’s face was painted red. Another clutched his broken arm.

“What are you doing?” Trapp asked, horribly conscious of exactly what it was that he might be about to lose. Without the items in his coat, he had no way of contacting Langley.

The prospect of his impending death, however, strangely didn’t cross his mind.

Pavel ignored him.

“Boss,” an anxious voice called from near Trapp’s feet as another section of cord looped over Trapp’s knees, then tightened around the tree, fixing him ever more tightly in place. “We need to go. The storm’s coming in hard.”

Trapp realized that so far, nothing was holding his hands. Knowing the act was hopeless, he balled the fingers on his right hand into a tight fist, then swung a wild blow in Pavel’s direction.

Of course, he missed. It wasn’t even close, and the momentum toppled him forward until he was hanging from the fetters on his lower half and gasping for breath. Losing consciousness had clearly taken more out of him than he knew.

“Get his arms,” Pavel growled, threading his fingers through Trapp’s hair and yanking him upward, so the faces of the two men were only inches apart. “I hope that felt good. Because it is the last thing you’ll ever do.”

Trapp didn’t bother reaching for a smartass retort, as he ordinarily would. He was exhausted, hurting, still deprived of oxygen, and the cold was now sapping at the last reserves of his fading energy. He just hung limply, held in place only by Pavel and his bounds.

He barely reacted as his wrists were grasped by someone behind the tree, nor as his gloves were tossed into the snow, and a callused, broad hand held his own in place as another long length of rope secured him tight.

No, not rope, Trapp thought, all hope of escape now fading. It’s wire.

Pavel returned to the zipper, pulling it all away to the bottom before tearing his coat wide open. A vicious gust of wind stole all reserves of warmth from around Trapp’s torso in a single stinging bite. He started to shiver as the relentless barrage of snow blasted against his inner layers, coating them white in a matter of seconds.

“You done?” Pavel snapped. “I’m freezing my balls off.”

The voice of the man behind Trapp was cold and emotionless. He almost would have preferred his executioner to demonstrate a little glee. At least that way his death might have felt like it meant something. “Da.”

“Then let’s go.” Pavel motioned.

Trapp’s head dropped, his chin flush against the top of his chest. His teeth started chattering uncontrollably as his body fought to generate heat. It was a hopeless task, Trapp already knew. How could he have allowed himself to stumble into such an amateur ambush?

A dagger plunged into his heart at the realization that when his body was inevitably found, so too would be the contraband he was carrying. He had sacrificed Chase’s life, too.

“Don’t worry, Kolya,” Pavel said. He reached for his prisoner’s chin once again and raised it until his eyes were level with his own. “We’ll be back for you. Unfortunately, I doubt you’ll survive that long.”

Pavel’s small posse turned their backs without another glance, leaving Trapp to slump against the tree once more. He kept his eyes trained on them until they disappeared into the swirling snowstorm. It didn’t take long. Within a matter of seconds, he was alone.

And very, very cold.

The drumbeat of his chattering teeth was his entire universe, that and the falsetto wail of the wind. No matter how he struggled against his restraints, he knew the tune he was listening to was his death march. His hands were entirely numb.

He started to tremble.

Second by second, his core temperature was dropping. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. His brain, struggling to fight off the inevitable, shut off the flow of blood to his fingers and toes, then to his legs and arms, trying to conserve as much heat as possible in his torso.

But it was only staving off the inevitable.

He was a dead man.

Drunkenly, with his chin resting against his chest and an icy blast of air surging down the back of his neck to steal what little warmth remained, Trapp’s eyes searched for the bottom of the coat’s zipper, as if willing it to rise and save him.

“Kolya!”

He recognized that voice. Was it Pavel, returning to finish the job? Trapp raised his neck, his head unsteadily lolling from side to side as he attempted to fix it in place. The burst of energy only lasted a matter of seconds before he collapsed once again.

“Oh God, what have they done to you?”

It was Sasha.

Trapp mumbled drunkenly, “What—?”

“Be quiet,” Sasha yelled, his gloved fingers reaching for the open coat, which was flapping viciously in the storm.

He wrapped the two sides around Trapp’s body, mercifully shielding him from the worst of the wind. His fingers—trembling, though whether from cold or anxiety Trapp’s dulled mind had no opinion on—struggled to stitch it together. Once, twice, a third time Sasha tried zipping it up, cursing as he failed.

He looked up, his face taut and apologetic, but Trapp didn’t care. He was shivering uncontrollably now, which wasn’t making Sasha’s task any easier. He was lightheaded and felt his consciousness drifting away, as if being tugged by a thread.

Finally, Sasha got the zipper to catch. He pulled it the whole way up, sealing it tight. But surely he was too late. There was no heat left to retain. Trapp knew he should be thankful, that he should even care, but he did not. He had no energy to.

The bookish Russian tore the hat off his own head and thrust it onto Trapp’s, pulling it down so far that it covered his eyes.

“I need to get you free,” he moaned over the howling wind. “My God, my God—”

Sasha was on the verge of a panic attack, and there wasn’t a damn thing that Trapp could do about it. Or more accurately, there wasn’t a damn thing he cared to do. He didn’t even sense the cold anymore. He was lightheaded, almost dreamlike as his consciousness started to seep into the storm. The Russian disappeared behind Trapp, and once again his head lolled forward, his vision now blocked by the cheap plastic fibers of the hat.

His fingers were now too numb to feel, but he somehow sensed that something was going over them, too. It must be his gloves.

Was there hope still? Or was this the end?

Trapp closed his eyes. And in the darkness, he saw Chase Fowler’s gaunt, haunted expression. Not as he’d once known the man, but as he’d looked a few nights before.

Broken.

Resigned to his fate.

“No,” Trapp mumbled, drawing strength from his friend’s plight. If he gave up, then Chase was dead, as surely as night follows day.

He lifted his head once more, his heart already jack-hammering in his chest just from the effort of pushing thick, frozen blood around his body, its efforts now redoubling as he found a new lease on life. And yet there was nothing that he could actually do as Sasha struggled with the wire that bound his ankles to the tree.

Trapp turned his head right, but all he could see was frosted bark. It was the same on the left. He was in Sasha’s hands now. There was nothing he could do to alter his own fate.

And then he felt an inch of freedom around his left ankle as the wire slackened. Thoughtlessly, he kicked out to free it more fully, and Sasha cursed with pain.

“Izvinite,” he said, almost drunkenly remembering at the last second to stick to Russian. Sorry.

Sasha said nothing in response but inhaled a pained breath.

After a moment’s pause, he returned to his task and freed Trapp’s ankles. It was lost on neither of them that the storm was growing in intensity. Even with his jacket closed once again, Trapp’s core was almost devoid of heat. His body was doing what it could to stoke the fires, but without the warmth generated by motion, there was little it could do.

His knees came loose. This time Trapp resisted the temptation to spring them apart.

Next he felt Sasha working on the twine around his wrists. It seemed to take an interminable length of time before they too were free, but Trapp knew better than to cajole him into working faster. People rarely responded well to such pleas.

“We need to go,” Sasha said, returning to the front side of the tree and casting an anxious look at the white morass over his shoulder, somewhere in which was the road. “The storm’s closing in. If we don’t get back to the camp now, the snow will be waist deep. Neither of us will survive.”

Trapp took an experimental step forward.

But shorn of the support of the tree trunk, he simply collapsed to the ground.

“Come on,” Sasha said, a note of panic injecting into his voice. He grabbed the back of Trapp’s coat and tried pulling him up. “We’ve got to get moving. You need to help me, Kolya. If you don’t move, you’ll die.”

Sasha tried to pull, but his efforts were fruitless. Trapp had almost sixty pounds on the short, wiry Russian—and right now he was dead weight.

And you’ll stay that way if you don’t fucking move.

He gritted his teeth and rolled onto his back. Sucking in a deep breath of air, he grabbed Sasha’s thigh with numbed fingers that barely found purchase and pulled. Somehow, his arms and shoulders and wrists and knuckles responded to his brain’s demands. A moment later he was clutching Sasha’s waist.

Another supreme effort later, and he clung on to the Russian’s narrow shoulders, panting furiously.

“That’s good,” Sasha panted, grabbing Trapp’s arm and securing it around his own neck. He took a step forward, and Trapp hurriedly copied. His legs didn’t seem to want to follow his mind’s instructions. He couldn’t feel the snow underneath his frozen toes. “I need to get you to a doctor—fast, or you’ll lose a finger. Can you help me?”

Trapp froze, mindful once again of the items concealed around his body. And yet he was no fool. Sasha had saved him once today already—even if his motivations were still unclear. If he abandoned him now, Trapp would stand no chance against the elements. Maybe it wasn’t wise to trust him.

But what choice do I have?

He grasped the Russian’s arm and coughed hoarsely. “I need you to do something for me,” he choked, the freezing air cutting him from the inside.

“Keep moving, Kolya,” Sasha begged. “We need to go.”

Trapp stopped dead. The few steps they’d taken had stoked a little warmth inside him. Not enough to survive, but it was a start. He leaned his head against Sasha’s forehead. “Promise me something.”

“Anything,” Sasha said, panic starting to capture him. “But be quick.”

“When we get back to the camp, I need you to hide my coat,” Trapp said.

The confusion was wrought on Sasha’s face. “What?”

“Just promise me.”

“Fine,” the Russian said, driving Trapp forward. “I don’t care. Just move.”

23

“You’re awake,” a male voice said from somewhere beyond Trapp’s line of sight. “Can you tell me your name?”

The first time he attempted to answer, Trapp only produced a fit of coughing that scraped the back of his throat, which felt tender and raw. He swallowed and tried again. “Kolya.”

The man hove into sight, though his face was hidden behind a clipboard that rested against his left forearm as he scribbled something down. He was wearing dark blue scrubs and looked familiar.

“And your surname?”

Still floating in a dream world somewhere between consciousness and wherever he’d just been, Trapp almost said it. He’d already opened his mouth, and when the panic hit him, it tightened his voice and produced an intemperate response. “None of your fucking business.”

For a few seconds, the medic said nothing. Then the man turned, and Trapp angled his gaze slightly to watch him set the notes down on the other side of the room. He rummaged inside a drawer, pulling something out, but whatever it was was obscured by his wiry frame.

As he returned, Trapp was able to get a proper look at his face for the first time. There was a gap between his two front incisors, and a sort of rattish demeanor that reminded him of Josef Mengele, the infamous camp doctor of Auschwitz, but with glasses. The thought sent a cold shiver down his spine. It didn’t bode well. Mengele had been no more a doctor than any garden-variety psychopath in a white coat.

Was this one any different? He’d been with Fowler, too, and Trapp couldn’t see how that fit with any kind of Hippocratic oath—if they even swore those in Russia.

The doctor brandished a syringe in front of him. A droplet of liquid flew through the air between the two men, glinting in the cold light. “Do you know what this is?”

Trapp shrugged, only to learn that his frame was held down by straps, as if he was a dangerous escaped convict. “Should I?”

“It’s morphine,” the medic said, seeming to lean closer in order to study Trapp’s reaction. “A hundred and fifty milligrams.”

Perhaps the ignorance that Trapp felt at this baldly delivered statement was displayed on his face, because the medic grimaced. After a few seconds of silence, Trapp asked, “Is that a lot?”

“Enough to kill an ox,” came the snapped reply.

The response tripped off Trapp’s tongue before he could call it back. “Good thing you’re not a vet.”

This time, his tormentor chose action rather than words. The syringe dropped out of sight as a pair of fingers trailed down his left arm, clearly searching for a vein. They located their prize just below the elbow.

The medic paused there for a moment, as if to build the tension, then stabbed the needle in with unnecessary force, no doubt inflicting additional damage on Trapp’s already battered body. He could feel the cool plastic syringe against the skin of his upturned forearm. This time, he wisely chose not to speak, lest he tempt the man into another rash fit of rage.

The guy didn’t seem entirely in control of his responses. In fact, the twisted expression on his narrow face was positively deranged. And since he was a hair’s breadth away from dumping what was probably a lethal dose of opiates into Trapp’s veins, there was no sense provoking him.

“You know, Kolya, if I wheeled you out of here in a sealed body bag, no one would ask me what went wrong. Life is cheap this far north. The guards would just dump your corpse outside for a few days, and then they’d shovel it into the furnace with the rest of the camp’s trash. No blood tests. No autopsy—though even if there was, I would be the one doing it. You came in here with hypothermia, and as far as anyone else is concerned, that’s why you died.”

Trapp held the medic’s gaze now. He believed the man’s threat. He wasn’t exactly making it implicit.

“So what do you want?” he muttered at last. The adrenaline caused by his present predicament was battling a deep exhaustion in his mind. It was a stalemate, for now. But the fatigue was slowly gaining ground.

The medic depressed the syringe just a little bit, and Trapp felt an icy flow within the open vein under his left elbow. His eyes snapped open wide. “What are you doing?”

The man smiled coldly. “Do you feel it yet?”

Trapp closed his eyes, wondering that same question. Was this really happening? Had this guy actually put morphine into the syringe, or was it just saline? Was he just playing a game—or was this real? There was even a chance that this was a frostbite-induced delusion. Perhaps nothing he sensed was genuinely happening at all.

Personally, he’d always subscribed to the madman theory in his own negotiations: the other guy had to think you were happy to go all the way. And for him to think that, it had to be true.

He’ll do it, he thought grimly. I’m nothing to him.

“What do you want?” Trapp repeated. “I’m no good to you dead, so why don’t you just tell me?”

Another cold smile opened on the medic’s face. “Good,” he said. “We’re getting somewhere.”

Trapp’s eyes closed again, but this time he wasn’t so sure it was intentional. The prickly sensation that had coated his torso when he first returned to consciousness was fading. In its place was a cozy warmth, a feeling that all was right with the world, when reality couldn’t be further from the truth. It was morphine, all right. No doubt about it.

“I know you’re paying Makarov,” the medic hissed. “No one strolls into this camp and gets their own bed. All I want is what he’s getting. A little extra. For my comfort.”

“What do I get out of it?” Trapp slurred. He regretted his tone almost as soon as the words came out. The morphine was affecting his judgment, clouding his mind.

“You don’t value your life?”

“I do,” Trapp said, feeling as though someone was sitting on his chest. He wanted to fall asleep but knew that he had to resist the urge. He concentrated on the danger he was in, hoping that a fresh burst of adrenaline within him would blunt some of the effects of the opiates in his veins.

He glanced down at the syringe and saw to his horror that the chamber barely seemed to have emptied. If just that dose was enough to have him feeling like this, then the full measure would surely kill him.

“How much?”

“What do you want?” Trapp replied.

“Five hundred thousand rubles.”

Trapp did the math quickly in his mind. The demand wasn’t that much. About $7000. He would’ve paid ten times that and still left with a smile on his face. The man didn’t know how right he was when he’d said that life was cheap in Siberia.

“Two hundred thousand,” he mumbled, knowing that he had to be seen to bargain, even when he had no leverage to prevent the medic from feeling short-changed if he agreed to the first demand. “And I want something extra.”

The medic cackled, jerking the hand holding the syringe as he did so. The needle probed around the center of Trapp’s vein. It didn’t hurt so much as feel entirely unnatural. “What? You’re in no position to bargain.”

“Pills,” Trapp said, now feeling nauseous yet in a somehow enjoyable fashion that was hard to describe. “OxyContin, or whatever you got. And something to help me sleep.”

“Oh…” the medic said, his fingers once again probing the skin on Trapp’s arms, this time on both of them. “So you’re a junkie. I don’t see any track marks.”

“I’m not a needles guy,” Trapp said, this time slurring his words in earnest. He needed to move this along, or he’d just pass out. “So—do we have a deal or not?”

The medic paused momentarily before saying, “A quarter million. And 20,000 rubles for every refill.”

Trapp relaxed his head against the gurney with relief. The man’s tone had shifted subtly. He no longer sounded vindictive, but instead cunning. If he believed that his patient—or whatever Trapp was to him—was an opiate addict, then he probably figured he’d just unearthed a good source of income.

And dealers never killed their golden goose.

“Fine,” Trapp groaned, panting at the effort it now took to form words. “You got a pen?”

He felt the needle withdraw from his skin, then a cool trickle down his lower arm as a rivulet of blood seeped from the tiny cut. There was a metallic rattle as the man tossed the syringe onto a tray on his desk. The medic didn’t bother giving him a Band-Aid or wiping it away as he undid the straps that held Trapp down.

Trapp set up, then swung his legs woozily over the side of the gurney. The floor appeared to be undulating, but the mirage resolved as he slid onto his feet, steadying himself with a hand on the trolley’s thin foam mattress.

“Over there,” the medic said, pointing at a pad on his desk.

“Give me a sec,” Trapp replied. He took a deep breath, and then walked over.

All the pain was gone now. The opiate was doing its job. He didn’t feel any of the fear he’d experienced a few moments before while still strapped to the gurney. But neither did he have any sense of anticipation. No zest for life. Nothing driving him forward.

Just an all-consuming contentment.

And in those moments before the narcotic haze enveloped his mind completely, Trapp felt true terror for the first time since he was a little boy. Not fear of something that might happen to him, but a horror that he could indeed go through life like this. A man’s drive is intrinsically linked to stress, and drip, drip, drip, his own was fading away.

He could chase this feeling.

Trapp picked up the pen and quickly scrawled the email address he’d given to Makarov. The handwriting was messy—and though this wasn’t unusual for him, it was the manner in which the loops and swirls grew and shrank that was.

“Send it there,” he mumbled, not dropping the pen. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Subtly, he took a small bit of flesh inside his mouth between his upper and lower canines and bit down hard. The sharp teeth had evolved to tear meat, and he quickly drew blood. He bit down harder, and the pain momentarily overpowered the all-consuming embrace of the tranquilizer.

The doctor snatched the slip of paper out of his fingers, and the rustling sound that followed indicated that he was studying it intently.

“I want my meds,” Trapp said, this time intentionally overdoing the slur in his voice. “Like we agreed.”

“Fine, fine,” the medic grumbled. Trapp opened his eyes to see the man reaching into a desk and pulling out a couple of plastic drug bottles. He studied them intently before handing them over.

The Russian didn’t release the grip of his fingers as he said, “We made a deal, remember. No money, no drugs. This is just a taster. Don’t forget that I can turn off the tap.”

“Okay,” Trapp moaned, injecting a little of that wheedling tone so common to those dependent on narcotics. He snatched the packets. “Just give them.”

The doctor handed them over and took a step back. A smug, self-satisfied smile crossed his face, tempting rage out of Trapp’s ever-fading well of emotion. This man was amongst the worst of society. Happy to extort, to bully, to feed addictions.

And he was responsible for whatever those animals were doing to his friend.

That last bit was what coaxed the fire out of him. He reversed the pen in his hand so that the nib jutted out like the point of a knife and charged toward the doctor. He grabbed the man by the throat and placed the tip of the pen at the point where his subclavian artery was closest to the surface. He dug it in hard enough to dent the skin.

“You know what’s there, right?” Trapp snarled.

The medic nodded numbly, seemingly unable to understand how the tables had shifted so swiftly.

Trapp glanced left and right and noticed that the syringe that the man had so recently threatened him with was still lying on a metal tray on his desk. He pushed the guy back, tightening his grip on his neck so that he couldn’t resist, and reached for it—dropping the pen in the process.

The Russian struggled but was unable to break free. In a matter of seconds, Trapp replaced the pen with the needle of the syringe and pushed it through the top layer of skin. The tables had turned, all right.

“You’ll make the arrangements so I can come get my pills whenever I want, won’t you?” he said. He said it matter-of-factly, and somehow that injected even more menace into the threat than there already was.

The doctor almost nodded, but then seemed to catch himself. Trapp noticed the flinch as that played out in real time. He whispered, “Yes.”

Trapp depressed the syringe, just like the guy had done to him a few moments before. Only a fraction of an inch. He saw that the Russian felt what he’d done. The man’s eyes pooled with dark dread.

Releasing the hand he had around his neck, he reached for the medic’s own and guided it to the syringe. He closed the guy’s numbed fingers around it, then released his grip. He took a step back and surveyed him pitilessly.

“Make sure you keep this agreement between just us,” he said, reaching for his last reserves of energy, understanding that he could collapse after he left this man’s sight, but not a moment before. “I’ll be a man of my word. So long as you keep yours.”

24

Packer’s squad piled once more into the back of a Ukrainian army six-wheeled troop transport. There was barely space for all twelve men, especially when half a dozen irregulars squashed in after them. Heavily laden backpacks formed a wall in between the benches that ran parallel to each other on either side of the cargo compartment and were crammed into every spare inch of space that could be found.

The big truck was currently idling, vibrating gently and occasionally belching a cloud of black smoke that rose into the air in a corporeal mass before finally dissipating in the wind. The vehicle was only one of a convoy that contained dozens just like it. They’d been driving for almost two days, and they were barely halfway through the thousand-mile journey, as the roads were befouled with military traffic streaming in the same direction. Both nationalities had long since run out of topics of conversation, and the focus of attention had shifted to attempting to find a way of getting comfortable in the limited space available.

“Are we there yet?” a soldier from Packer’s squad called out as the truck’s engine grumbled back into life. He wasn’t sure whether this signaled they would soon be moving again, or whether it was just another false alarm.

“Can it, Dumont,” he replied, rolling his neck to relieve some of the tension that had built throughout the journey. “Or I’ll make you walk the rest of the way.”

“Couldn’t be crappier than this, Sergeant” came the smart-ass reply.

“You sure about that, private?”

“Maybe not.”

“I need a shit,” Chernyak said out of nowhere. “Make sure they don’t leave.”

Before Packer could ask exactly how he was supposed to achieve such a request, the Ukrainian jumped out of the rear of the truck with a gracefulness that belied his hefty frame. He left his rifle in the vehicle and jogged to the side of the road where he dropped his pants and did his business in broad daylight. Before long, whoops and mocking cheers rang out from the line of stopped troop trucks. By the time he was done and started to saunter back to the unit, it sounded like a thousand soldiers were cheering him on.

“That motherfucker has balls of steel,” Long remarked, sticking his head out of the side of the canvas that sheltered them from the worst of the wind. “Man, my asshole would pucker up like you wouldn’t believe if I tried a stunt like that.”

“That’s an image I don’t need in my mind, Stu. Thanks.”

“Any time, Sergeant. You know I’m good for it.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Packer replied.

The engine noise from the vehicles ahead of them in the convoy built to a fever pitch as Chernyak closed the last few yards to the truck. He hoisted himself up just as the wheels started turning, and Packer reached out to grab his forearm to make sure he didn’t topple back.

“You made it,” he said.

“I had faith in you, my friend. It’s a long walk.”

“Don’t worry. I would’ve sent Dumont to keep you company.”

A few minutes later, the brief spurt of excitement caused by the stoppage faded away, and most of both units attempted to catch some sleep. Packer tried but found it impossible. Not because of the austere conditions—he’d spent most of his adult life in the Army, which was a crash course in passing out wherever the hell you could—but because all he’d done for the last two days was nap.

Instead, he stared idly out of the back of the truck. A train track ran parallel with the highway, and a passenger train rattled past. Occasionally he isolated the shape of a face staring back at him, though the image only lasted a second before disappearing in a streak of white. He wondered what those people were thinking and where they were going.

Doing the smart thing and getting the hell away from this fight, he thought.

A short while later, a cargo train went in the opposite direction—heading the same way he was. The locomotive was pulling an endless procession of flatbeds, which wasn’t so unusual. What caught his attention was the cargo on top of them.

Tanks.

Not just tanks, but artillery pieces, antiaircraft guns, armored personnel carriers, engineering equipment, and hundreds of olive-green shipping containers stuffed with supplies. It was enough equipment to fight a decent-sized war. Packer was only surprised that the locomotive car wasn’t bristling with barbed wire and sandbags, as he’d seen in old World War II movies. He’d seen such trains before, of course—the US Army itself moved equipment in just this way for its own exercises. But there was something more foreboding what he was witnessing. It was deeply unsettling.

Sergeant Long leaned toward him and thrust out his chin to catch Packer’s attention. “Can I ask you something, Sergeant?”

Packer reached for his water can and unscrewed the top. He lifted it to his lips and wetted his suddenly parched throat. After allowing enough time to collect himself, he said, “Shoot.”

Stu looked uncharacteristically worried for a man so ordinarily unflappable. His young face was lined with concern. “You think this is how the world ends?”

“I do not,” Packer pronounced in reply with far more confidence than he felt. “We’re just here to do our jobs. Dollars to doughnuts this is just Murov compensating for his own inadequacies, whatever they may be.”

“Yeah,” Stu agreed unconvincingly. “You’re probably right.”

“We should just nuke ‘em,” Dumont said from the back of the truck, his voice almost drowned out by the roar of the engine and physically obscured from sight by a high wall of backpacks.

Packer opened his mouth to remonstrate once more with the private, but Chernyak cut in before he had the chance. “And maybe we could, if it was not for you.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Dumont said, clearly aggrieved by Chernyak’s harsh tone.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chernyak said, reaching inside his jacket and pulling out a pack of smokes. To Packer’s practiced eye, the violent clumsiness of the small movements suggested that something did indeed matter.

“Hey buddy, if you got a problem with me, why don’t you just—”

“Private Dumont!” Packer growled, pushing himself upright so that he could fix the kid in the eyes and nip this brewing confrontation in the bud. They’d all been crushed on top of each other inside this damn tin can for far too long, and tempers were boiling over. “Why don’t you shut the hell up before you make me do something about it. Understood?”

A muscle throbbed on Dumont’s jaw, but he consciously relaxed as he took in Packer’s demeanor. His buddy beside him threw an arm over his shoulder and tousled his hair. The tension broke, and the sergeant slowly sat back down.

“Ignore the kid,” he said apologetically to Chernyak. “He’s got a short temper, but he’s good at what he does.”

“They say the same about me,” Chernyak said in reply. “There are, how do you say—no worries.”

“You were about to say something before,” Packer said, intrigued by the way the situation had developed. “What was it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Chernyak extended his arm out the back of the truck and let the wind whip the ash off the end of his cigarette. When the nicotine-stained fingers returned, he let Packer wait for a second or two further as he inhaled a greedy lungful of smoke.

“Did you know, for a short time my country had the third most nuclear weapons in all the world,” he said at long last. His expression was pensive, his gaze focused somewhere far away.

“I didn’t,” Packer said softly, though he wasn’t certain that Chernyak desired a response. He glanced to his right and noticed an intrigued gleam in Stu’s eyes, though the young sergeant was bright enough to know not to interrupt.

“It was after the Soviets left,” Chernyak explained. “Thirty years ago. I was ten. They left behind more than a thousand nuclear bombs, as well as the missiles and planes and submarines we needed to launch them. I think if we had kept all those things, Mother Russia would not be looking to swallow us all over again.”

Packer’s mouth opened to ask the question, but when it came out it was Stu’s voice that had asked it. “So what happened?”

“We gave them back,” Chernyak said, letting go of a laugh pitched somewhere between despair and outright rage. “And look where we are. The Russians are climbing the castle walls, just like they did for hundreds of years.”

“But why?” Stu continued.

Chernyak’s face grew black, and he sucked in another deep breath of smoke before sending the still lit cigarette stop flying out onto the highway. “Because you told us to.”

“I—!” the sergeant started before his brow cleared with understanding. “Oh.”

“There was a conference in Budapest. The result was a memorandum that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” Chernyak continued as though he hadn’t heard Stu’s interruption. “Russia promised never to attack us again, and America assured us that they would enforce that promise. Our leaders believed you. And here we are.”

Packer was suffused by a grim awkwardness born of the sins of people he had never met, the long-departed leaders of his own country who had so failed the citizens of this one. They were good people. Patriotic. And it looked as though they were headed into a war that they could not win. One they should never have tumbled into to begin with.

One they never would have, if we’d held up our end of the bargain.

“I’m sorry, Stanislav,” he mumbled, knowing that the words meant nothing but feeling an urge to say them anyway.

Chernyak shook his head, as if blinking away a blackness in which he had long stewed. Packer figured he probably had. This was a man who had given up his entire life to defend his country—not by joining the army, but by simply picking up arms and walking into the fight.

“It is not your fault,” he said with a smile. “And besides, you are here—are you not?”

“We are,” Packer agreed. “But there’s only ten of us. What good will that do?”

“Thirteen,” Chernyak corrected. “I choose not to question fate. If God desires it, maybe you will make the difference.”

25

Trapp woke with a start, gasping for breath as a memory of Pavel’s hands closing around his neck surfaced in his mind.

“Relax,” a familiar voice murmured from the darkness. “Here, drink this.”

Something moistened his lips. Just a tiny trickle of liquid. He parted them and gratefully allowed the gentle flow of water to slide across his parched tongue.

“Thank you,” he gasped. “Who—?”

“Sasha,” the voice said. “Don’t worry, it’s only me. You can relax. You’re safe.”

Safe, Trapp thought, repeating the word in his own mind. Was he really? Could he ever be, in a place like this?

Slowly, he opened his eyelids. At first, he only saw the blurred outline of dark shapes and an indistinct fuzziness. After a few seconds, his vision resolved, and he saw Sasha’s worried face hovering over him.

“Where am I?” Trapp whispered, his mind still groggy from the narcotics and the physical toll of what had happened to him.

“Our room,” Sasha said before correcting himself. “Your room.”

“It’s yours now,” Trapp groaned. “You earned it.”

He closed his eyes to gather his strength. The back of his throat felt raw, probably from the frozen air in the storm. In fact, every piece of skin that had been exposed to the elements was on fire. It felt like he had pins and needles across his face, the tips of his ears, his fingers. And that was before he considered the damage wrought by the blows of Pavel’s thugs. His thick clothing had absorbed the worst of them, and the attack had been thankfully short-lived, but he had a whole new catalog of aches and pains to contend with.

And there was something else, too. He opened his eyes again. “Why do I smell like bacon?”

Sasha grinned for the first time. He trailed his finger across Trapp’s face. The pins and needles sensation seemed to coalesce in the wake of his touch. “An old family remedy,” he explained.

“For what?”

“Frostbite. They say the Mongols used it. Well, I don’t know if they had pigs, but that’s what the guards’ kitchen could spare. I got them to render it down, then smeared it on your face.”

“Smells good,” Trapp mumbled clearly. “Does it work?”

“The doctor doesn’t think you’ll sustain much damage. Maybe your ears will hurt in the winter, but maybe the fat will do the job. I make no promises.”

Trapp attempted to reach for the man’s hand but found that his efforts were blocked. He opened his eyes again and looked down to find that he was covered in several layers of thick blankets.

“You were cold,” Sasha explained. “Even after you got back from the medical wing.”

After freeing his arm, Trapp thrust it out of the covers and grasped Sasha’s arm. “Thank you, my friend. For everything.”

Sasha pulled away, looking faintly embarrassed. “I only did—”

“You saved my life,” Trapp said firmly. Perhaps Sasha was an unusual vessel for a hero, but that was exactly what he was. Even if he did not know it.

“What were you doing out there?” Sasha asked.

Trapp sensed the steely question in the man’s tone but tried to play it off. “I just wanted to get some air,” he said. “I guess they jumped me. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kolya,” Sasha said with surprising vigor. “I know you’re up to something. You don’t owe me anything, but at least don’t lie to me.”

Again, Trapp closed his eyes. Maybe some of that morphine was still running through his brains. He had a hell of a headache, though. If he was still high, surely that wouldn’t be possible. In truth, he was embarrassed. Just because Sasha didn’t fit the usual mold or allowed himself to appear weak didn’t mean that Trapp had any right to treat him the way others did.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I—”

Suddenly, he shot bolt upright in bed as a twin wave of fear built and crashed within him. The covers, tucked tight around his body, resisted his efforts but eventually gave way. His eyes darted frantically around the squalid bedroom. “How long have I been out?”

“Relax,” Sasha said, pressing him back down into the bed. “You won’t do yourself any good this way.”

“How long, Sasha?” Trapp repeated. “It’s important.”

“About eighteen hours.” Sasha squinted, patently not understanding why he was being asked the question. “Don’t worry, you’re safe.”

But even as Trapp looked around the room, noticing that the doorway was blocked by a chair under the door handle, it wasn’t himself he was thinking of.

It was Chase.

“The guards—”

“Don’t care,” Sasha said, presumably thinking Trapp was concerned for the consequences that might befall him, rather than a man that he had never met. “We’ve been snowed in ever since the storm hit. Nothing is happening.”

Trapp relaxed, hoping that that held true for the interrogations that he knew Fowler must be undergoing. He lay back in the bed. Sasha’s footsteps scraped against the bedroom’s concrete floor. He closed his eyes, suddenly feeling nauseous.

“And then there’s this,” Sasha said. The words came out as a question.

“What?” Trapp asked, squinting as his eyelids fluttered open again. Sasha was on the other side of the room, holding up a winter coat.

The same coat he’d worn when visiting the cache in the forest. He said nothing, hoping that Sasha didn’t know what it was that he was holding.

That hope was promptly dashed. Trapp’s bunkmate looked as though he’d been chewing over the questions on his mind the entire time he was out.

“What are these things, Kolya? And who are you really? I think we both know that is not your real name.”

Trapp said nothing, only partly because his first instinct was always not to put his foot in his mouth before he got a chance to think things over. Sasha had some real balls to be asking him this. He’d clearly found the contraband in the coat. But he could have pretended otherwise. It would have been safer for him that way.

There was always the possibility that this was a trap, of course. A faint chance that his cellmate could be wearing a wire. But Trapp didn’t think that likely. Sasha was nervous, but he didn’t have that stink of betrayal that came with turning snitch. He was worried about his own safety, but not by his conscience.

So Trapp took a risk. “You have family, don’t you, Sasha?”

The Russian’s forehead crinkled with confusion. “You know I do. I don’t see—”

“And you would do anything for them?”

“Of course,” he started before stopping dead in horror. “If you’re threatening them—!”

Trapp quickly raised his palms in mute apology. The second the words came out with his mouth he’d heard how they sounded and wished he could take them back. “I’m not. Of course I’m not. You know me better than that.”

“I don’t know you at all,” Sasha snapped. “I know a name that isn’t real. I don’t know where you’re from, if you have family of your own, or even why you’re really in here. Don’t pretend we’re anything other than cellmates.”

Taken slightly aback by the vigor of Sasha’s response, Trapp fell silent. Of course, nothing the man had said was incorrect. That was the problem. Kolya wasn’t real.

“You love your family, Sasha?”

Tight-lipped, Sasha said, “You already know the answer to that. I might never get to see them again, but that doesn’t change a thing.”

“Well, I was never lucky enough to have a family like yours in the first place,” Trapp said. “But I found one. And a man I love like a brother is in this camp right now. And if I don’t do something about it, he’ll die here. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

Sasha’s face screwed up with incomprehension. “What do you mean you won’t? This is prison. You don’t get a say in the matter.”

Trapp shrugged, shifting his weight in the creaky bunk. He considered the risks of the bridge he was about to cross, and then sauntered over it anyway. “Well, what if you could?”

“Your friend,” Sasha whispered, the color visibly draining from his face. “He’s the one Zayetsev comes to visit.”

“Maybe.” Trapp nodded.

“No, no, no…” Sasha moaned. He slapped himself on the side of the head, then twisted his hands through his hair. He began building himself into a lather of piteous fear.

Trapp watched him closely, knowing that there were only two paths here. At first, his stomach twisted as he considered what they both were. Either Sasha would agree to work with him, or he would not. And if he did not, then he would have to kill him.

There was no other way of assuring the sanctity of his mission.

Is that what Chase would want? he wondered.

It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. If he was to kill an innocent like Sasha to save his friend, Chase would never forgive him. Trapp couldn’t blame him. He would feel the exact same way if the tables were turned.

And that’s what made his choice so devilish. What so often broke men just like him. And yet he knew what decision he would make. No matter the consequences.

“Sasha,” he said coldly, breaking through the man’s growing anxiety and momentarily silencing him. The Russian looked up.

“What would you do to see your family again?” Trapp asked.

For a moment, it seemed as though the possibility of freedom was actually beyond Sasha’s comprehension. Trapp reflected how long he’d been inside. Men got that way, didn’t they? Institutionalized.

“Impossible,” Sasha breathed. “My only way out of here before I turn eighty is in a wooden box.”

“Look at me, Sasha,” Trapp said, skating over the exact truth of his situation. “Do you think I would have allowed myself to come here if that was my only way out?”

“And what if I did?” the inmate moaned. “Where would I go? They know who my family are, and where they live. Do you think I could just resume my old life? No. Even if I somehow escaped this place, they would find me in days.”

“They would not,” Trapp said harshly. He was exhausted now, but he had to get this point across. “Believe me, I can help you, Sasha. I can get you out of here. But I need you to trust me. So do you?”

Sasha looked up, his face practically distended with worry. His leg was trembling. “I trust who you are,” he said. “You’re a good man, no matter what else you are hiding.”

“Then trust that I am telling you the truth,” Trapp said, his own tone softening. “If you help me, I promise that I will get you out of this place. But I need you to trust me entirely. To do exactly what I say. Can you do that?”

Squeezing his right leg to still the unwanted motion, Sasha drew in a deep breath. “I want something.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Trapp said. “You’re either in, or you’re out.”

“The world doesn’t work that way,” Sasha snapped back. “I want to speak to my wife. That’s my only condition. If you make that happen, then I’m with you.”

Trapp tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. Using the satellite phone for anything other than contacting Langley was a risk. A minor one—after all, it was highly unlikely that the prison colony had the equipment to monitor such transmissions, or that Sasha’s wife was under surveillance—but a risk still.

And yet even if Sasha didn’t know it, Trapp needed him just as much as the other way round. He gritted his teeth. “Done.”

“You’re serious?”

“Deadly.”

Sasha looked up with an expression of mute gratitude. The Russian nodded slowly, as if sealing their deal.

Trapp glanced around the room, allowing the tension between them to seep away. His eyes returned to the furniture shoved under the door handle. “Did anyone try to get in while I was out?”

“Someone tried the door handle a few times” came the reply. It seemed as though Sasha was just as willing to de-escalate. “Not seriously. Just to let me know they were there.”

As he was thinking that piece of information over, Trapp’s eyes alighted upon a cardboard box in the corner of the room. He jerked his chin at it. “What’s in that?”

Sasha walked over to it, ripped the tape off the seam, and opened it. The angle was all wrong for Trapp to make out what was inside. A second later, his cellmate pulled out a long glass bottle and held it out to him.

Trapp plucked it from the man’s hands and ran his fingers across it. He didn’t know squat about vodka, except that Makarov had held up his end of their bargain. The label felt heavy and expensive. The lettering was stamped in gold. “Is it good?”

“Better than anything I’ve drunk in years,” Sasha said, with a note of melancholic hunger in his voice. “How much is he charging you?”

“Who cares?” Trapp shrugged, setting it onto the floor. “Too much, no doubt. But it’ll be worth every ruble.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain that later.”

Sasha sighed but didn’t press the matter.

Trapp scratched his nose, thinking. “The eagles—is that what they’re called?”

“It’s as good a name as any,” Sasha agreed.

“Do they have a quarrel with anyone else apart from me? Anyone who can be useful to us, I mean.”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

“There is someone,” Sasha said uncertainly. “But he’s not a good guy. He was gone for a while, but now he’s back.”

“I don’t care if they’ll allow him through the pearly gates,” Trapp said. “In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t. Can you arrange a meeting? Somewhere discreet.”

Sasha nodded.

“Good.”

26

Trapp pushed himself off the concrete wall of one of the colony’s accommodation blocks when he saw the guard. The movement sent whispers of pain spidering through his aching neck and shoulders, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it. The discomfort was at least improved today.

The stink of bacon, unfortunately, was now an ever-present addition to his life. Sasha had informed him that if he wanted to minimize the damage to his skin from the forced exposure to the storm, he had to keep wearing it for at least a week.

So far, it’d only been three days.

It wasn’t even that he minded the smell. In truth, he didn’t. Sure, he smelled like a food truck, but the real issue was that he hadn’t had a tasty meal since they’d locked him up and thrown away the key.

He watched as his target exited the guards’ fenced-off accommodation wing and irritably slammed the gate shut behind him. The man’s name, Sasha had told him, was Konstantin. His surname wasn’t known, nor the patronymic they favored in Russia, but neither of those mattered. In truth, neither did the first name, but Trapp liked to learn as much as he could about his marks. It rarely helped, usually serving only to add to his stress. But at least he had the mental comfort that he’d done everything he could.

As Konstantin passed under the glow of one of the few working lights that lit the camp’s interior at night, Trapp noticed that the man had a sallow, pitted complexion, with heavy bags underneath his eyes of the kind that didn’t disappear after a good night’s sleep. It was the visage of a problem drinker.

Which was exactly what Trapp was hoping for.

Knowing that Konstantin’s destination had to be the secure facility in which they were holding Fowler, which was to the north of the camp, he circled around the accommodation block at a jog. It was the long way around but kept him out of his target’s sight and allowed him to pick his own angle of attack.

Guessing that he’d made a few seconds on the man, Trapp stopped behind another of the identical Soviet-style camp buildings and rested to catch his breath. He was lucky; though it had been a relatively warm day, tonight was cold—meaning there were few other inmates around. No one spared him more than a passing glance.

He opened up his coat and pulled out a bottle of vodka in which he’d dissolved the Xanax tablets. He twisted off the top and took a big gulp, swilling the fiery liquid around his teeth and gums. Trapp gave it a good 10 seconds, dribbling a little around his chin to ensure that the liquor scent was impossible to miss before spitting the rest into the snow at his feet.

Could he taste the pills?

No. There was a whole heap of finely-crushed sedative in this bottle, but they were dissolved in enough liquid to be undetectable. And anyway, Trapp suspected that Konstantin’s tastebuds had long since been scoured away by his diet of liquor and cigarettes, so it probably didn’t matter.

He screwed the top back on to the vodka bottle, wrapped his fingers around the neck, and allowed it to drop down to his side. He waited until he picked up Konstantin’s heavy stomp through the snow. The man was deeply out of shape. It was usually that way with alcoholics. Even when they didn’t pack on the pounds, their body was rotting away inside them. Konstantin suffered from both afflictions.

Trapp held his position until he could almost smell the booze on the guy’s breath before stepping out around the corner of the building and running right into him. He drove his right shoulder low at the precise moment of impact, forming a pivot against which Konstantin now fell.

“Blyad,” the guard swore as he tumbled headfirst into the snow.

Trapp was a little surprised that the tectonic plates underneath didn’t rumble in response. He went down himself a second later, snarling as he dropped into the snow. Still, he rose back to his feet quicker than the heavyset Konstantin.

“I’m sorry,” Trapp said, pretending to slur a little as he gestured his apology at the guard now climbing to his feet. The liquor sloshed in the bottle, immediately drawing the man’s attention.

“Where did you steal that from, criminal?” Konstantin snarled. He grabbed the bottle from Trapp’s fingers, then pushed him in the chest. “You’re drunk.”

Trapp didn’t resist and allowed himself to stumble backward—selling his drunkenness without actually toppling back over. “Hey! That’s mine.”

“I asked you where you stole it from,” Konstantin said, stepping forward and jabbing Trapp in his bruised throat. This time, he didn’t have to feign the pain.

“And I told you,” Trapp snapped back with the confidence only a drunk can muster, “I didn’t.”

“Then where did you get it?” Konstantin asked, turning the bottle over in his fingers. He seemed to realize its quality instantaneously and looked up at Trapp with outrage in his eyes. “This is good stuff.”

It’s vodka, Trapp thought. It’s barely drinkable.

“The warden gave it to me,” he said instead, wistfully daydreaming of his first sip of scotch when he was out of this place. He injected just the right note of indignation into his voice. Konstantin was a drunk himself. Inmate or not, he would suspect something if Kolya gave up too easily.

There was cunning in the guard’s expression now. “Oh, so you’re Makarov’s new pet,” he said.

“That’s right,” Trapp replied, taking a step forward as if to snatch the bottle back from Konstantin. He got a slap for his troubles, though the blow was telegraphed with enough warning that he could’ve written the best part of a novel before getting around to rolling with the punch.

“You want a night in solitary, inmate?” Konstantin snapped, looking incredulous at what Trapp had just done. “You can’t drink in this place.”

“Everybody else does,” Trapp whined.

“Then report them,” Konstantin said smugly. He hefted the bottle, giving a self-satisfied smile. “You know the rules. I have to confiscate this.”

“No, please…”

The guard scowled smugly. “Get the hell out of my way.”

This time, Trapp didn’t resist. He knew he’d done his job.

He walked in the opposite direction from Konstantin for just long enough to be certain that the guard had lost interest before he doubled back toward B wing. He watched from the shadows as the man walked through the fenced pathway, then as the day shift passed him in the other direction. The vodka bottle was conspicuously out of sight as he greeted the two men.

Trapp smiled. There was enough Xanax in that bottle to knock out half the camp. He guessed Konstantin would be on his ass within an hour, though he decided to give it two just to be certain.

He’d circled the camp’s inner fences that evening before the light faded and knew that most of the security cameras were covered in a layer of frost and windblown snow from the storm several days earlier. Those that weren’t were mostly mounted on the camp’s buildings, which were slightly warmer and melted off the worst.

But so long as he stuck to the shadows, there was almost no chance he would be seen.

He crouched down and rotated his gaze to check that no one was watching him. There wasn’t anyone in sight. Now certain that he was alone, Trapp reached inside his jacket’s hidden pocket and removed one of the items he’d brought back from his cache in the forest several days before: a hooded poncho.

It was made from a mottled white fabric, and once it was over his shoulders he was essentially indistinguishable from the snow all around him. It came all the way down to just above his ankles. Between the all-encompassing inky blackness of the Siberian night and the cloud cover overhead stifling what little light might otherwise have filtered down from the moon and stars, it would have to be a pair of eagle eyes that detected him.

After glancing down and passing a practiced eye over his disguise, Trapp began to crawl closer to the fence. The snow on the ground was already pockmarked by a day’s worth of footsteps, and a hard crust had formed on top, so he wasn’t too worried about leaving evidence of his presence.

Slow and steady, buddy, he reminded himself.

Trapp might have functionally resembled a ghost, but if the human eye is good at one thing, it is detecting movement—and he wanted to avoid making things easy for anyone who happened past. The backdrop of hundreds, even thousands of miles of empty forest was about as dark a background as it got, but it would be impossible to explain away the items he was carrying, and thus infinitely better not to be caught at all.

He crawled inch by painstaking inch for almost fifteen minutes until he made it to the fence. The night was cold, but he was dressed for that, and besides there was no wind. He stopped about a yard from the base of the fence and kept his belly flat against the ground as he reached inside his coat. The only way through the poncho was the holes for his arms, so he retracted the right one and pulled out the scope he’d returned from the forest with a couple days earlier.

And then he settled in to wait.

The tricky part was going to be judging how much time had passed without a watch. He cursed himself for failing to retrieve such a basic item from the cache in the woods. The worst of it was he could picture its exact location in a side zipper pocket on the duffel.

“Well, it’s no good to you now,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. A gentle breath of wind danced across the surface of the snow but failed to rumple his clothes before the night’s stillness returned.

Moving as slowly as he could, Trapp pressed the scope’s opening to his eye and scanned the field of view across the dark expanse between the two sections of the prison colony until the shadow of a building came into view. He adjusted the zoom and brought the picture into focus.

It was exactly as still and seemingly empty as he’d expected, only closer. He spent a few minutes—impossible to say precisely how long—studying the building as closely as he could. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t going to be tripped up by any security features newly installed since his earlier reconnaissance.

It’s the ones you can’t see that’ll be a problem…

Periodically, he brought his focus away from the scope and simply immersed himself in the grumblings of IK-29 at night. Occasionally one of the camp’s many furnaces clanked and groaned, or disgorged a healthy belch of white steam into the sky. Trapp soon realized that the loudest of these eruptions occurred on a fairly regular timetable that corresponded roughly to him counting three minutes out in his head.

Which solved the problem of how he was going to keep time.

Slowly, the snowy ground leached the heat from his body. After an hour he started shivering, though not with sufficient violence to make himself visible. Still, it was deeply unpleasant. He slowly worked his hands underneath his body and looped one leg over the other to retain as much warmth as possible. It didn’t do much but was at least better than nothing.

Trapp dipped his eye to the small scope once more. He studied the locations of the few cameras on B wing’s exterior walls and committed them to memory. He worked the angles on their fields of view in his head until he was sure that he knew when and where to move without being seen.

Another half an hour ticked by. There was no sign of movement, whether in the secure wing in front of him or the camp at large. It was clear that Makarov hadn’t assigned guards to walk the perimeter fence at night – or if he had, they simply ignored him.

He exhaled, and a tiny puff of wind blew the condensation back against his face. It froze immediately on the rough stubble on his chin, which had long since become devoid of feeling.

He closed his eyes. How much longer should he wait? Surely Konstantin was passed out by now? The concoction in that bottle was strong, and though he was a practiced drunk, Trapp had no reason to suspect he also abused sleeping pills.

A crack echoed out into the night. Trapp stiffened. He opened his eyes slowly. It took them a couple of seconds to focus, but when they did he saw a pool of light extending out into the exercise yard in front of B wing.

Konstantin clearly had the constitution of an ox. Maybe an elephant. Trapp watched him emerge into the night, stumbling, but still upright. He was clutching the vodka bottle in his left palm. He left the door to the facility open as he stepped across the threshold. Trapp breathed a sigh of relief. The bump key was able to defeat many electronic security devices, but not all.

The burly Russian camp guard reached into his pockets, pulled something out, and almost as quickly dropped it into the snow. A curse echoed across the open space, but by the time it reached Trapp it was impossible to make out the words. The tone was clear enough.

He stooped down and plucked whatever it was off the ice. As he rose, he reached back into his pockets and lifted something to his lips. The first item sparked, then burst into flame.

It was a cigarette lighter.

Which he promptly dropped a second time. The tip of the cigarette flared in the darkness, and though Konstantin seemed to scowl down at the lighter on the ground, he didn’t bother reaching down a second time. He inhaled a deep drag of smoke, then blew it out in a thick cloud which caught in B wing’s exterior lights. He tilted his head back as if watching in awe, then fell back into the snow.

Another curse rang out. Distinctly fruitier this time. The Russian lay on his back in the snow and didn’t move for a few seconds. He tried pushing himself upright but failed. The sight reminded Trapp of an upturned tortoise.

Konstantin’s head sank back against the snow. He grumbled something to himself, but even at this distance Trapp could tell that he was losing interest—and energy.

Trapp slowly levered himself upright, moving only an inch at a time. Even if Konstantin’s night vision hadn’t been wiped out by the halo of light around him, and even if he was looking in this direction, Trapp still would have been close to invisible.

But the guard did neither.

He crept toward the fence. It only took a couple of minutes before he was crouching by the entrance to the passageway that led from the main camp to B wing. He reached inside his jacket for the bump key and pressed it into the lock. The electronic mechanism vibrated, and after about ten seconds found the right combination of tumblers.

He was in.

It took a full five minutes to cross to the other side, even though the distance was only thirty yards. Trapp wanted to play things extra careful. But by the time he was halfway, he knew he was home free. Konstantin was outright snoring. The fat Russian had curled himself into a ball against the wall and seemed to be out for the count.

Which was probably true, Trapp reflected. Xanax would take him out for three or four hours. He was a big guy, which might lower that somewhat, but he’d also ingested a lot of sedatives. As long as he was in and out in under 30 minutes, he figured he was home free.

The gate at the other end was no challenge. Trapp crept across the snow, pausing every time Konstantin so much as belched in his sleep.

Unfortunately, this was often.

Finally, he reached the edge of the pool of electric light. He was close enough to make out Konstantin’s cello features now. The man was definitely out for the count. He was sleeping with the vodka bottle in his grip.

Trapp edged toward him, keeping the hood as low over his face as it stretched, and on a hair trigger to run the moment it proved necessary.

Which it did not.

27

Trapp pushed the synthetic-fur ushanka down low over his eyes. The folding Russian winter hat was a size too large for him, which would help obscure his face from any cameras he missed. He’d found it along with the guard’s overcoat he was now wearing on a peg just inside the main entrance.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, so alert was he to the prospect that there might be another guard in here beyond the one sleeping it off in the snow outside.

A quick glance down the hallway revealed that only one surveillance camera overlooked his path into the building. He checked his garb one last time before exiting the shelter of the open doorway. The digital blue camouflage guard’s overcoat came down all the way to his knees. Unlike the hat, it was a little too small, but it buttoned up fine.

His pants didn’t look anything like those issued to Konstantin and his ilk. But that was okay, since it would take a very close inspection for anyone on the other end of the feed to make that out.

And I’m hoping you’re alone, sleeping beauty.

Trapp strode down the hallway as if he owned it. It was better to look like you belonged in cases like this. If things went right tonight, nobody would ever know that he’d been inside. They would have no cause to check over the surveillance footage.

Only Konstantin would know that he’d passed out in the snow, and he was hardly likely to admit it—or to check the footage, given the headache he was sure to wake up with in about six hours.

There was always a slight possibility that the bulky Russian would freeze to death in the harsh Siberian climate, but Trapp suspected that the man’s body would intervene before it got that bad. It was cold out, but there wasn’t much of a wind, so his thick clothing should suffice to keep him alive, if not comfortable. And if the worst should happen, it was no real loss to humanity in his eyes.

Trapp made it about ten yards down the hall before he encountered the first doorway. It was closed, and the icon on the Cyrillic plaque on the right-hand side indicated that it was probably a conference room of some kind. He ignored it and kept walking.

The reverberation of the death metal tunes—barely audible from beyond the building’s concrete shell—were far more prominent now that he was inside, if still muffled. With every step he took, the sound sharpened. He walked quickly with his head tilted to the ground so that unless someone walked directly into him, they wouldn’t know at first glance he didn’t belong— hopefully buying him the precious half-second he would need.

He approached a junction and found that it was probably the dead center of the entire single-story building. It was a crossroads that seemed to bisect the facility from either side, right down the middle. There was no signage to help him make his decision as to where to go next.

So he went left, only because the tiled floor was slightly more worn in that direction.

“Jackpot,” he whispered under his breath a moment later as he came across an open doorway, through which he could hear some unknown Russian pop singer crooning. It wasn’t the same source as the muffled howl he could feel through the soles of his boots.

Glancing over his shoulder to check he hadn’t been followed, Trapp saw only a trail of drying footsteps that led in only one direction. His. A second look revealed that this section of the hallway was devoid of cameras and all other signs of life.

Here we go.

He crept toward the open doorway. The presence of an empty pack of smokes and a stained coffee mug provided pretty clear evidence that this was where Konstantin had been before he decided to take his cigarette break. He moved slowly and silently, barely an inch at a time, pressing his body flat against the wall. The vibrating beat pulsated through him at the touch, and he recoiled, knowing what it signaled.

Head in the game, Jason.

Trapp took another step forward, and his boot scraped against the wall, knocking free a little shard of crumbling brick. He froze, holding his breath and hoping to all hell that that was the end of it.

It wasn’t.

The shard fell, sliding down the front of his boot and skittering about five feet across the floor of the hallway before coming to a halt by the opposite wall. Trapp would’ve cursed, only he couldn’t spare the sound. Or the energy. It was costing everything he had to keep from moving.

Come out, come out, he thought.

But if anyone other than the ethereal pop singer was in there, they did not reveal themselves. Trapp looked down quickly to check that he wasn’t about to be surprised a second time and found that his path was clear. He took a step forward.

He was now close enough to get his first real glance into the room. At this angle, all he could see was a desk against a wall. It had two LCD screens on, like a banker’s workstation. Both displayed surveillance footage from the cameras arrayed both inside the facility and on the outer walls. The screen on the left was split into eight sections, each of which corresponded to a different security feed. The one on the right highlighted one of the feeds at any given time, large enough that you could actually do something about it.

And then he saw it.

Him.

“My God,” he mouthed. “Chase, what have they done to you?”

The image glowed on the right-hand screen for only a second before the security program cycled through to the next—an exterior camera, mostly obscured by windblown snow and black where it wasn’t white.

For a moment, Trapp stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. It wasn’t that he’d never seen horror before. Nor that he’d never seen it inflicted on his own friends. But when man’s capacity for inhumanity against other men ceases to stun you, you lose whatever it is that makes you human in the first place. For Trapp it would have meant losing the drive that propelled him forward, even when others could not.

And then it was over. Because that was another tool in his arsenal, if one that came at a heavy personal cost. It wasn’t that he was unaffected by violence or evil. It was that he processed it faster than others could, knowing that nothing would change if he did not effect it.

He crept forward another inch. A few more degrees of visibility opened up as he changed the angle. The rest of the security desk came into view. It was messy, covered by magazines and loose sheets of paper, and a single shot glass surrounded by a pool of recently spilled vodka.

Konstantin.

Trapp’s lip curled with disgust. What kind of man could sit here night after night and watch what was happening in that cell without doing something about it?

Maybe that’s why he drinks.

Pretty sure that the security office was empty, Trapp moved faster. He gently teased his head around the door and confirmed that his suspicions were correct. He also glanced around the room in search of a camera—could somebody be watching the watchers?

There was not, which was no great surprise. If someone knew what Konstantin got up to in here all night, every night, something would probably have been done about it long ago.

Trapp returned his focus to the surveillance feeds, committing each to memory. He didn’t touch the system in case he changed a setting which he was unable to recover with his non-existent grasp of Cyrillic script, but he was satisfied that there were no more than the eight cameras that he was already aware of.

Three of them studded the exterior of the building. Two were blacked out by frost and snow. The last showed only endless, oily blackness—the pixels vibrating noisily as the camera software searched for light.

Two more showed corridors, and he knew he’d already passed underneath one of them. That left three: one of an empty, blindingly light prison cell. One in Fowler’s dark, strobing hellhole. And one that displayed an unchanging feed of the cell doors in the space outside.

Where are you?

The images gave away no more information, so Trapp went with his gut and followed the beating of the bass, moving faster now that he knew where the cameras were located. The death metal led him to a door with a round viewport, behind which was only darkness. His hand itched for a weapon—any kind of weapon—but he had none. That was probably for the best. If he encountered a guard in his present state of fury, they would likely not survive, no matter the consequences for his mission.

He shouldered it open and burst into a stairwell, his heart beating, his stomach faintly nauseous with that same uneasy sensation he usually got just before a fight. But it wasn’t combat he was worried about now.

It was what—or who—he might find below his feet.

The stairwell stank, and it was noticeably colder in here even through his thick uniform overcoat. Even with the exterior door currently open into the hallway, the rest of the facility aboveground was heated. Down here it wasn’t. He walked a few steps down, pulled his glove off his right hand, and pressed it against the wall.

It was freezing. And wet, with liquid seeping through from the soil on the other side. It must have been melted by the heat of the building above. It was cold in here, but not ice cold.

And water doesn’t flow uphill.

Trapp swallowed and descended into the darkness. Despite his confidence that he wasn’t on candid camera, there was no sense giving the bad guys a leg up when he didn’t need to. A dull red glow from an emergency light somewhere below provided just enough light to see.

He went down twenty steps before the stairwell reversed and shot him in the other direction. He picked up his pace, heedless of the sound his boots were generating. Even the conditions here were despicable. With every step, the temperature dropped. It was frigid and dank, and rat piss seared his nostrils.

Unknown lyrics reverberated against the hard concrete walls with such ferocity he was already developing a headache. He didn’t know whether they were speaking Latvian or Swedish or what, but it was obvious what toll this would take on a human brain. It was almost too loud to think, and he’d barely been exposed.

It was hard not to run as he exited the stairwell. He knew that the camera was mounted just above the door, looking out. It would only see his coat and hat and nothing more. There were six cells down here. Five of them were open. One of those—the same one he’d seen on the feed upstairs—was open and for some unknown reason brightly lit.

The sixth was closed. There was a food slot at the bottom of the door, and every couple of seconds Trapp saw a flash of light escape through it. It had to be a strobe, pulsating into Fowler’s eyes. The music felt full volume now, beating into his eardrums like a blacksmith’s hammer.

He reached for the cell door.

It was locked.

Trapp raged, cursing himself for being so damn foolish. It was a grimly predictable outcome, and yet somehow he’d overlooked it in his desire for haste rather than speed. He reversed his course, keeping his head low to avoid the camera, and walked to the stairwell. He sprinted the second he left the camera’s field of view and took the stairs three at a time. He burst back into the hallway above with an audible bang.

Pull yourself together.

It took enormous effort to roll back on the frustration inside him enough to stop himself from breaking into a sprint. Somehow he managed it. He strode briskly through the hallways, ducking his head to avoid the camera he’d passed on his first entry into the facility. He met no one. The facility was colder now, as the open door bled precious heat into the Siberian night.

Trapp followed the cool air back out. The exterior security light was still glowing bright, illuminating the trampled snow just beyond the doorway. He spied a bank of light switches by the coat pegs, and played with them until he hit the one he needed.

The light outside died, and night returned to swallow him up. He dived gratefully into it.

Konstantin was exactly where he’d left him, still passed out on the snow. The only change was that now he was curled up on his side, cuddling the vodka bottle as though it was a childhood teddy bear. What little liquor had remained a few minutes back had mostly now dribbled into the snow.

That’s enough of that, Trapp thought, squatting down over the snoring Russian. He reached for the bottle and gingerly pried it from the drunk’s grip. As it slipped out, Konstantin grumbled.

Trapp froze and held his breath for a full count of ten. When the guard gave no other sign that he was waking up, he swirled the few remaining drops of liquor around the base of the bottle to empty out any Xanax sediment and dumped it onto the ice. He didn’t risk replacing the bottle where he’d found it and instead set it down by Konstantin’s side.

But that was the easy part.

What are you going to do if he wakes up, huh? Trapp wondered.

There was only one answer to that, and it involved leaving Konstantin with more of a headache than he was already looking forward to. It would be better to avoid it entirely, but only the intoxicated Russian knew whether that was possible.

He held his breath as he patted the guard’s frame down, ears pricked up for the giveaway tinkle of a metal keychain. He checked the belt and frisked his hands over every available inch of the man’s clothing, finding only a radio handset stowed in an inside pocket.

But Konstantin was lying on his right-hand side. And with a creeping sensation of horror, Trapp remembered the glint of metal he’d seen earlier that day. A thick key ring, attached to a chain on the man’s belt.

He’s lying on it.

28

Trapp bit back his apprehension as he placed his gloved hands on Konstantin’s hip and shoulder and began to apply pressure. The burly guard was heavier than he looked—and he looked like a five-ton truck.

The effort tested Trapp’s bruised body—not so much the force required to roll Konstantin over as the need to do so slowly to avoid waking him as he crashed into the snow on the other side. It stretched out across almost thirty seconds, and every one lasted a lifetime.

With one last stifled grunt of effort, the job was done. Trapp’s neck muscles corded with effort as he slowly lowered him back down to the ground. Konstantin grumbled something inaudible as Trapp laid him down on his back. His eyelids seemed to flicker for a second as if about to open, which caused him to freeze.

Easy, big boy.

After about a minute, Trapp’s confidence grew that the Russian wasn’t about to wake. He reached for the keys he hoped were there and was rewarded with the chinking of metal on metal. For a second, he closed his eyes with relief.

And then he lifted them from Konstantin’s belt with practiced ease. He was a little louder than he’d have liked because of the thick gloves, but the Russian was out for the count.

Now that he knew where he was going, the journey back down to Fowler’s cell didn’t take long. The whole time, Trapp scanned the keychain, searching for the right one.

Six of the keys were the exact same—about an inch and a half longer than all the rest. That corresponded to the number of cells in the basement. But which was the correct one? They weren’t numbered, as far as he could tell. He removed the glove and fingered them as he took the stairs back down to a time, hoping to discern a clue that wasn’t visible from the naked eye.

But that—of course—was a false hope.

The death metal assaults on his eardrums recommenced the second he stepped back into the hallway where the cells branched off. Trapp had only been exposed to it for the combined sum of about 60 seconds, and that was about as much as he wanted for the rest of his life. It reminded him of his experience of SERE school, and the less he thought about that the better.

He strode right for Fowler’s cell door and tried the first key, careful to keep his little finger on the key ring so he didn’t lose his place. It went in easily enough but didn’t turn. That pattern held true for the second, and the third, and the fourth.

His frustration rising with every failure, he inserted the fifth and turned it.

The lock mechanism clicked. He felt rather than heard it, due to the thumping music. His hand quivered as it rested on the cell door for a second, as if his mind didn’t want to see what was on the other side. And then he drew it back, the door with it.

His every sense was battered by what was on the other side. The squalid little cell stank of human waste. The music, emanating from two large speakers aimed at Chase’s back, visibly vibrated with every beat. It reverberated through the floor and caused what little water remained in the dark bowl on the floor to tremble like he was living through an earthquake.

“God damn them for this,” Trapp spat in English.

It wasn’t blasphemy. If someone was up there looking down on him now, he wanted them to smite the evil bastards who’d done this to his friend with all the spite he had.

And if that wasn’t going to happen, then he’d find the free will to do it himself.

Fowler was suspended between two cables that were attached to opposite walls of the cell and hung between them like Jesus on the cross, and just as forlorn. His interrogators—either through compassion or more likely recognition that he wouldn’t survive even crueller treatment—had loosened them enough that he could rest on his knees. But his shoulders were still contorted out of all normality, his head sunk forward against his chest at an awkward angle.

Was he even breathing?

The camera gazed down at the scene impassively from above and opposite Trapp. He was careful to keep his own face angled to the floor so the folded peak of the ushanka hat obscured his features. It probably wasn’t strictly necessary. The strobe flashed every half a second, causing the beginnings of a migraine to build in Trapp’s brain, and any camera would struggle to resolve its picture in the meager time before the next flash.

There were moments when the strobe flashed in time with the music, but mostly it was random. If either his brain or Fowler’s was looking for a pattern, they weren’t going to find it here. And the music wasn’t music. It was just some Baltic metalhead screaming into a microphone, and that primal scream being amplified a thousand times.

Do the artists know what it’s being used for? Trapp wondered, his boots still fused to the floor of the cell with horror.

Of course not.

Trapp’s retinas shrank and grew with every flash of the strobe. And every time, another piece of the jigsaw of horror was filled in. Fowler was gaunt. Entirely naked, there was nothing to hide the rigid, jutting lines of his spine and ribs, or the hipbones that protruded from his narrow frame with the same curve as a ship’s anchor.

The man’s back was covered in lacerations. Some new, some older, some several layers thick. They glistened in the light. Pus wept from some.

He didn’t know how long he stood there for. Eventually, Trapp shook his head, reminded that he needed to act for the camera, just in case. He strode forward and walked around Chase without looking at him, then turned in such a way that his own face was never exposed to the baleful eye above.

“Chase, buddy,” he whispered as he sank to his haunches in front of his friend. “Wake up. It’s me.”

There was no response. The strobe burned his friend’s despondent, beaten expression into Trapp’s mind, burying it so deep he would never forget. He didn’t want to. No one who had any part in this was going to get a pass, so long as he drew breath.

Trapp reached out and gently touched Fowler’s shoulder. It was sticky with sweat and bodily fluids and God only knew what else. He shook him softly. “Chase, wake up.”

Still nothing.

Changing tack, Trapp reached through his many layers of clothing—feeling guilt as he saw the way that Fowler’s almost unconscious body was shivering for heat—and drew out the two sachets of peanut paste he’d carried back from the forest a couple days before. He ripped the top of one of them open and held it to his friend’s lips, feeding him as he might a sickly animal.

“That’s right,” Trapp said, holding back emotion.

Strangely—or perhaps not so—the taste of food seemed to rouse Chase in a way that mere words hadn’t. It was only his tongue at first, but he reached out and licked his lips. Trapp didn’t even know whether it was a conscious act at all, or the body simply doing what needed to be done.

He didn’t know how long this lasted. Perhaps five minutes. Maybe ten. Enough for Chase to go through two entire packets of the nutritious, densely calorific substance. Even as Trapp whispered to him, his friend never opened his eyes.

He tried again. “Chase, it’s me, Jason. Are you in there?”

Finally, he got a response. Fowler’s head lolled, and his eyelids flickered without fully opening. “Jason—?”

“That’s right, buddy,” Trapp said, putting his fingers on his friend’s chin and tilting his head up. Fowler’s eyelids were closed but pulsating with effort. “I’m here. I’m going to get you out of here, I promise you.”

“I saw you,” Fowler mumbled. “Outside.”

His body went rigid, and somehow he drove himself upright, lifting himself up from his knees so that the cables running off the walls hung slightly limp. His eyes snapped open, but instead somewhere past Trapp’s left shoulder.

“I’m just a contractor,” he moaned, seeming to pull back before being caught by the cables. “Please, you have to believe me.”

“Chase,” Trapp said softly, understanding that Fowler’s mind had traveled someplace else. The look on his friend’s face tore at his soul. “Relax. No one’s going to hurt you.”

He winced as he realized that he’d spoken a lie. He had no intention of hurting his friend. But the Russians labored under no such compunctions. Was he just giving Fowler false hope?

But no—it wasn’t even that. Trapp’s presence was just tormenting the man in a different way. He was so exhausted, so broken, so beaten that he could not even trust the evidence of his own eyes and ears. He did not know whether the man he could see and hear and touch was actually Trapp, rather than just a figment of a delusion.

“I don’t believe you,” Fowler snapped, pulling at the cables and twisting his shoulders into shapes. “This is a trick.”

“It’s not, buddy,” Trapp said, grimacing with his own pain. He was caught between two competing desires. On the one hand, he needed Fowler to tell him something that he could relay to Langley. Without the Agency’s help, getting his friend out of this place was going to be a hell of a job.

And yet—how could he possibly ask, given the state that Chase was in? It wasn’t just that he wanted to give his friend the respect of allowing him to believe that Trapp’s presence was entirely unselfish—which was the case—but right now the guy didn’t know what was up and what was down. He thought this was another part of the interrogation. He couldn’t build trust that way.

Trapp searched for a third way.

He squeezed Fowler’s shoulder. “Hey, you remember those twins back in Honolulu? That had to be almost a decade ago, right? A hell of a night.”

Fowler grinned, though his eyes fluttered shut once more. “You thought you had a chance, you big dope.”

Trapp laughed. “That’s not how I remember it. You were the one who told me to go up to her.”

The shattered prisoner sagged back to the ground, and Trapp reached out only in time to slow his fall. The cables tightened and yanked on Fowler’s shoulders, but he didn’t display any sign of pain. He looked up. “It’s really you.”

“That’s right,” Trapp said, relieved that he’d managed to get through. “It’s really me.”

“You have to save them, Jason,” Fowler hissed, his face twisting in a rictus of pain. “Americans are going to die. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten caught.”

“Who’s going to die, Chase?” Trapp said quickly. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay? Just tell me what’s happening.”

“Just save them,” Fowler said, the air wheezing out of his lungs like a braying donkey. “Promise me.”

“I promise you,” Trapp said, squeezing the man’s painfully thin shoulder. “I’ll do it.”

But do what? he wondered.

Just like that, Fowler’s burst of energy was gone. He slipped back into blessed unconsciousness, and his body sank a little farther to the floor. Trapp held him like that as long as he dared. Probably longer than was advisable. He was tempted to simply cut his friend’s bonds and carry him out of here on his own back. He could steal one of the trucks in the vehicle park.

He might get twenty miles before they realized he was gone. He could get water and food. And at least Chase would be warm.

And not long after that, he will be dead, Trapp thought bitterly.

No, he had to concentrate on the big picture. The only way to break Fowler out of this place was with the Agency’s help. At least that was the only way the Trapp could figure that didn’t end up in both their deaths.

Trapp gathered the empty energy sachets from the floor and stuffed them inside his clothing. He checked to see if he’d dropped anything and rested his hand on Fowler’s cheek for a few seconds, wishing that he could stay by his friend’s side.

But the seconds were taking away. And for every one that he lingered, his risk increased immeasurably.

“Time to go,” he muttered. “But I’m coming back, buddy. Don’t give up.”

As he strode out of the cell, he gave the booming speakers one last lingering glance. He was tempted to rip out the power cords and hang the consequences. At least Fowler would get one night of rest.

But he couldn’t do it. It would invite someone to check the tapes to figure out why. And if they were smart—or if Konstantin was honest about how he’d spent his night—it wouldn’t take long to put two and two together.

Trapp retraced his footsteps through the torture complex. Because that’s what it was. It was a place where dark men did darker things, things that had to be hidden from the rest of the world. His stomach churned at the betrayal of leaving Fowler behind.

He hung up the purloined coat where he’d found it and pulled the white poncho back over his inmate’s uniform. He paused in the entrance to the facility for a few seconds, just listening.

That’s when he heard it. A squawk on the radio.

Where the hell’s that coming from?

Trapp remembered the handset he’d fingered inside Konstantin’s uniform and froze. Was someone trying to contact the unconscious guard? If so, he needed to get out of here—and fast.

He slipped into the frozen night, leaving the door ajar behind him. Fast, angry Russian words were jabbering out of the radio handset now, though it was impossible to make out their meaning through the thick, muffling fabric. He skipped past Konstantin only long enough to dump the stolen keys and check if he was waking up.

As far as he could tell, the big guy wasn’t moving.

But something else was. Trapp’s attention was instantly drawn to a change flagged up by his peripheral vision. Light reflecting off the snow. His head snapped around, and immediately he realized what had attracted his interest: a pair of flashlight beams dancing across the ice.

Someone was coming.

A particularly loud burst of Russian from Konstantin’s handset prompted Trapp into action. He kept himself low and moved steadily toward the fenced pathway back to the main camp. He reached inside his clothing for the bump key.

But it was too late. The flashlights had already made it to the other end of the passageway. Now that the booming death metal had faded from his eardrums, the click of the lock mechanism carried easily through the silence of the night.

Shit.

The fence was about ten yards ahead of him. The pathway out of here was the same distance, and a bit to the right. There was no mistaking his predicament now—two guards were tramping through. They would be here in seconds. Their voices, harsh and irritated, rang out and echoed toward him.

Trapp dropped quietly to the ground and crawled into the heavy snow, hoping that the shouts would drown out the sound of crunching ice. He only made it about five yards before the lock at the near end of the path clicked open.

He froze, realizing as he did so that the poncho hood wasn’t over his head. Most of his body was covered by the camouflage, but in his haste, he’d left his hair uncovered. If one of those flashlights passed across him, it would stick out like a hooker in church.

So he prayed it didn’t.

“Konstantin!” a voice called out. “You there? Why the hell aren’t you answering your radio?”

The beams flickered discordantly across the snow, hitting mounds and dips which cast long dark shadows behind. They gave Trapp a little hope. Perhaps his big, dumb head wouldn’t be so obvious after all.

A pair of boots crunched past, no more than a few feet away. They called out again. His heart was hammering inside his rib cage, and he bit down on the side of his cheek to calm it.

It didn’t work.

The two men stopped. A voice rang out. “Wait.”

“What is it?” the other guard asked.

Trapp held his breath, mentally preparing himself to spring into action. He might have to kill both of them here and now, and he wished he’d thought to bring a weapon.

“You see that?”

See what? Trapp wondered, silently working his gloved hands until they were flat on the ground. He was ready to pounce.

“There, by the wall.” The flashlight beam moved, illuminating the complex that he’d just emerged from. “Is that him?”

The first voice rumbled something in audible, then spat into the snow not far from Trapp’s boots. “It’s him all right. Fucking drunk.”

Trapp barely took another breath until ten long minutes had passed, and Konstantin had been dragged back inside to sleep it off. When nobody raised the alarm, he finally relaxed. And then he slipped into the darkness.

29

It was still dark outside when Trapp awoke. He lay on his bunk for several minutes, massaging the worst of his aches and pains. His body was still tender from the many indignities it had sustained over the preceding couple of weeks, but as he probed his torso it at least didn’t feel any worse. In truth a proper recovery required more sleep, but time was presently a luxury that was in short supply.

When he closed his eyes he saw Fowler’s broken, tortured frame hanging in the darkness. His friend wouldn’t survive much longer if his captors continued treating him like this. Another week and Fowler would be dead. Even if he walked away now, he would carry both physical and mental scars for the rest of his life.

The knowledge added an extra urgency to Trapp’s thoughts.

Not sensing Sasha’s presence, he poked his head out of the bottom bunk and looked upward. As he expected, the Russian was gone. The top bunk was neatly made, as Trapp had come to expect.

He rolled out of bed to take advantage of his privacy. Sasha was aware of the satellite phone, had even briefly used it to call his wife and child, but the less he knew of the entire plan the better.

Plan is putting it strongly, he thought.

Trapp stuck his head out of the cell’s door and checked both ways down the hallway. It was empty, which was about what he’d expected this early. He ducked back inside, closed the door behind him, and retrieved the satellite phone from its hiding place.

Since it was built for resilience and durability rather than speed, the device took almost ninety seconds to power up and locate a satellite signal. It was weak, but sufficient to communicate with the text server.

He input the correct server details, typed in a pin code, and waited for the network connection to initialize. It didn’t take long.

A message flashed up on the phone’s small LCD display.

NO ACTION AUTHORIZED. OBSERVATION ONLY. DON’T GET CAUGHT. ENDS.

Trapp grimaced. It was about what he’d expected, and a whole lot less than he’d hoped for. At least the Agency wasn’t ordering him to bug out. Not that he would have followed such an instruction—something Mitchell probably realized when he wrote the message. But this was Langley doing what it did best: sitting on the fence. And he didn’t have time to play their bureaucratic games right now.

Fowler’s life hung in the balance.

He tapped a button to irrevocably delete the missive. If the guards caught him with this device, they wouldn’t get anything off it. It was designed not to save anything—including communication presets, which had to be inputted manually each time.

Trapp composed a reply.

ASSET LOCATED. IN BAD SHAPE. IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION NECESSARY. REQUEST ADVICE. ENDS.

His finger hovered over the send message button, then went back to edit the message.

ASSET LOCATED. IN BAD SHAPE. CRITICAL INFORMATION RE: IMMINENT DANGER TO US PERSONS. IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION NECESSARY. ENDS.

That would light a fire under their asses, he thought. After the 9/11 commission, the thing Langley’s bureaucrats feared above all else was missing “the big one.” Whatever intelligence Fowler had stumbled across was vanishingly unlikely to be that.

But it might be. And the uncertainty was all that mattered.

He cycled the satellite phone’s memory to confirm that nothing could be retrieved from it if the device was found, and then powered it down. As he did so, a sound in the hallway caught his attention. He stuffed the phone back into its drywall hiding place and then started concealing it.

Too late. The cell door’s hinges squealed. He was out of time.

Trapp turned like a guilty child and kept his back to it. Sasha stepped through the door, frowning when he saw he was being stared at.

“Damn, you scared the hell out of me,” he grumbled when he realized who it was.

“My apologies,” Sasha said. “But I did what you wanted. It seems you’ve already made his acquaintance.”

“What are you talking about?” Trapp asked, frowning—completely blanking on what it was he’d apparently asked for.

“The meeting. His name is Anton. Please, for both our sakes, be careful.”

* * *

The meeting took place that evening in Sasha’s cramped, overheated office deep in the bowels of the camp’s administration building. Trapp’s anxious cellmate told him to arrive after six p.m., by which time most of the administrative staff would have finished for the day, but early enough that their presence wouldn’t be missed in the mess hall.

So it proved. Trapp slunk through empty hallways, twice bashing his head on poorly insulated heating pipes before he walked through the office door. He didn’t pass another soul.

He was first to the meeting. He perched on the edge of Sasha’s desk, careful not to disturb any of the many piles of paperwork that rose from it like stalagmites. Valves and heating ducts hung from the ceiling, which only added to the sensation that he’d gotten lost while spelunking.

The door opened ten minutes later, and Sasha came through. The Russian cast an anxious glance in Trapp’s direction as if to confirm that he was there, then backed out of his own office. Another presence loomed behind him.

Trapp inclined his head. “Nice to see you again.”

Anton said nothing. He seemed to be sizing him up in an altogether different manner to their first meeting in Ust-Ilimsk. Despite the cold, he hadn’t bothered to wear proper winter clothing, and was instead in a dark black prison-issue sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Trapp’s attention was again drawn to a prominent tattoo on his left forearm. It was simply one of many that decorated every spare scrap of skin—but this one was impossible to ignore. He decided to get the lay of the land.

“Nice tat,” he remarked.

“You think I’m a fascist?” Anton said, leaning forward with a menacing grimace on his face.

“Now why would I think that?” Trapp said dryly.

Near the door, he saw that Sasha’s eyes had gone wide with fear. The diminutive accountant had done his job, so Trapp gestured at him to leave. He did so with alacrity, closing the door firmly behind him as if to protect himself from Anton’s ministrations.

The powerful-looking Russian held out his left arm and stabbed at the tattoo with his right index finger.

“You know why I have this?” he said in a low growl. Any bonhomie shared by fellow travellers was long gone. Trapp peered at the ink his conversation partner was so keen to show off. Up close, it was definitely what he’d first suspected in the transport van.

A swastika.

In particular, the Nazi kind. There was no doubt about it. This wasn’t an Indian symbol of peace and love. No accident in a tattoo parlor. It was a good old-fashioned symbol of racial hate.

“Why don’t you tell me?” he said calmly, sizing the man up.

The last thing he needed was to pick a fight with a potential ally, since presently the only fighter in his camp was Sasha, who wasn’t exactly gifted in the martial department. But though Trapp had broken bread with many objectionable types during his career, he drew the line at associating with actual Nazis.

Are you willing to trade Fowler’s life for your principles? he questioned.

That was a bridge he could cross when he came to it. He didn’t have to marry this guy, only hear him out.

Instead of replying, Anton did something that Trapp definitely hadn’t expected. He grabbed the crewneck of his sweatshirt and started to pull it over his neck, along with the T-shirt underneath it. A second later the job was done, and the pile of clothing lay in a crumpled heap at his feet.

Trapp’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. Anton’s torso was as deeply scarred as any he’d ever seen. This close, he could see far more detail than through the bars of the prison transport. Some of the bruises were newer, others more ripe. More cuts and scrapes still had solidified into thick layers of milky scar tissue that covered more of his flesh than the skin he was born in.

“You see this one?” Anton said, his face descending into a snarl.

He pointed at a scar about four inches long just under his left armpit. Though the wound that had caused it was obviously long healed, it was still pinkish rather than fully white. It had clearly been a hell of an injury.

“I do,” Trapp confirmed.

“The guards gave me that one the first day I walked underneath the black eagle and entered this hellhole,” Anton said. “They didn’t know who I was or what I’d done. They didn’t care. That was long before I got this tattoo.”

“Okay,” Trapp said, still not understanding as Anton pointed to another.

“This one I got six months later for the crime of failing to stack my meal tray the right way round. It got infected. They sent me to solitary instead of the infirmary. I nearly died. Then a month after that, I stacked my tray the way they told me, and I got this one for my troubles,” Anton snarled as he remembered the long-forgotten pain he’d suffered.

“So the tattoo is what?” Trapp asked.

“A protest. You’re not Russian, are you.” Anton said. The question came out as a statement.

Trapp didn’t answer.

“I knew you weren’t the moment we met. I don’t care where you’re from, or who you’re pretending to be. Just know this,” he snarled, tapping the tattoo on his forearm, “I understand what this symbol means to my countrymen better than you can imagine. The fucking fascists raped the rodina during the Great Patriotic War. Twenty million dead, but you know what Stalin said about statistics. Maybe it was more. Maybe a few less, though I doubt it. And yet I inked it onto my skin willingly. Can you guess why?”

“I have an idea,” Trapp replied slowly, a wave of understanding—and not a little compassion for the man—coming over him. “It’s what—a provocation?”

Anton smiled, revealing a missing tooth on his lower jaw about three quarters of the way back on the left-hand side. He clapped slowly several times. “Very good, Kolya. Or whatever it is you want people to call you.”

“What’s the point?” Trapp asked. He thought he knew, but he wanted to hear it anyway. You could learn a lot about a man by listening to him narrate his troubles. “Why torment yourself like this? You know it’ll only make the guards hurt you more. Why do it to yourself?”

“Because,” Anton said with a curious expression on his face—almost confessional. It was as though he didn’t believe how much he was giving away either. Perhaps Trapp was the first person who had truly listened to him since he’d arrived in this place, “after I marked myself, I was in control. The bastards who run this place were no longer hurting me because they could, but because I made them do it. They know what this symbol means. They tried to break me, but they never will.”

The justification seemed flimsy to Trapp, but who was he to judge?

He’d been incarcerated for only a few days, and already he’d spent time in solitary, been starved and beaten and just last night looked upon the face of hell. The entire structure of this place was designed to degrade and destroy any sense of control a prisoner might have—to reduce them to a state lower than a beast of burden.

Trapp would probably be targeted by the same careless violence he’d seen meted out in this camp day after day if he was just a little less intimidating and didn’t have the wherewithal to do something about it. So was it any surprise that Anton had devised himself a way to cope—as strange as it seemed to an outsider? In truth, it was no different in that respect than any number of psychological pathologies, from cutting to anorexia.

“You’re right,” Trapp agreed. “How long are you in here for?”

“Life,” Anton snorted. “Plus twenty-two years. It would’ve been life plus ten if I behaved. They add two years for every one I serve. You were there last time.”

“Not much of an incentive,” Trapp remarked.

“No.”

Trapp reached out and tapped Anton’s swastika tattoo. He still found it difficult to contemplate marking himself in that way, but he now understood why the big Russian had chosen to do so.

“And is that it?” he asked, hating himself for doing so—and yet not seeing that he had any other choice.

Anton recoiled, tensing with anger as he did so. “What?”

“How many inmates think the same way you do?” Trapp asked, changing tack.

A look of confusion crept across the Russian’s face. “Why?”

“What if you didn’t have to be at the bottom of the pile anymore?”

“You think I haven’t tried? It’s hopeless.”

“Just answer my question.”

Anton considered for a few seconds, before saying, “Maybe fifty. Then there’s two hundred more who don’t like to make waves.”

“But they’ll follow whoever seems most powerful, right?” Trapp said, continuing to probe.

“It’s possible.” Anton shrugged. “But who’s going to make the first splash? It’s suicide.”

“You might be right,” Trapp said. “But what if it didn’t have to be?”

30

“What is happening?” Sasha asked a day later as he and Trapp strolled through the penal colony’s central courtyard the next day.

It was early evening, and the prisoners had about an hour of free association and exercise in the camp’s grounds before dinner. Unlike Trapp, most were confined to their accommodation blocks when they were not either working or eating.

It was cold, but not unduly so, and Trapp had his winter coat unbuttoned to about halfway down his chest. Even so, the atmosphere was undeniably charged with tension.

“What do you mean?” Trapp replied without looking at his cellmate. He faced the center of the courtyard, which had the added advantage of meaning he was backed up by a foot-thick concrete wall.

“You don’t feel that?” Sasha said, anxiously craning his neck. “I think we should leave.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Trapp replied softly.

“Fine,” Sasha said, clearly unhappy. “What aren’t you telling me, Kolya?”

“Nothing,” Trapp lied. “Just wait.”

The two men stood in silence. Trapp’s eyes endlessly roved the enclosed space. There were a half dozen guards scattered around the walls, standing much like he and Sasha were, and mostly chatting and smoking. About two hundred inmates—half of the prison’s population—were wandering around. Very few walked alone. All could sense that something was brewing.

Most just didn’t know what.

Pavel was standing about fifty feet from Trapp, surrounded by a gaggle of fellow kapos, perhaps half a dozen strong. They were given a wide berth by most prisoners—a grudging respect extracted through the medium of countless years of beatings and random acts of violence.

Trapp despised all of them. To him, violence was an unfortunate but necessary fact of life. He didn’t like inflicting it but understood that sometimes to do so was necessary in service of the greater good. Sometimes that good was murky, and he didn’t always get it right, but in his mind at least it was there.

Pavel and the kapos, beyond striking him as a halfway passable name for a band, viewed it in an entirely different light. They found a joy in inflicting pain. It fed some unacknowledged need inside them. Perhaps it was their own perverse pathology. He could tolerate it no longer.

Anton sauntered into the courtyard at the head of a small column of perhaps ten meaty-looking prisoners, most of whom Trapp didn’t recognize. As the previous night, he wasn’t wearing a coat. The only concession he appeared to be prepared to make to the weather was to thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

Trapp raised his eyebrows in a show of respect. The weather was reasonably springlike, but this was still evening in Siberia, so the word reasonably was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

“Here we go,” he murmured, keeping his voice low enough that it only carried as far as Sasha.

His cellmate needed no warning. Sasha’s gaze had been fixed on Anton from the moment he entered the snowy exercise yard. He simply shrugged glumly and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me too,” Trapp said with a chuckle.

Anton’s crew made a beeline for the circle of kapos, who all faced inward. A murmur of intrigue raced around the crowd, and even several of the guards turned to see what was happening—if in a half-interested kind of way.

Pavel was sucking on a cigarette and didn’t turn, as though he took a perverse pride in paying no attention to the excitements of the rank-and-file. He was in the middle of a conversation—seemingly reaching the climax of a particularly gripping anecdote—when Anton stopped beside him.

And promptly swept the kapo’s legs out from underneath him.

The brutish enforcer toppled over and hit the dirt hard. His cigarette sizzled in the snow before it was extinguished entirely. Anton did not stop. Neither did any of the men following him, though Trapp thought one let out a low chuckle.

He briefly sized them up.

They each looked like mean fighters. Not all tall, or even particularly muscular. But fighting man to man isn’t always about size. The men in Anton’s retinue had that indescribable look about them that told even a casual observer that they were not people to be messed with. A hardness behind the eyes. The slight baring of the teeth. Whatever it was, it was plain as day so long as you knew where to look.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Pavel spluttered as he climbed to his feet and started toward Anton—who did not stop. “Hey!”

Finally, Trapp’s ally glanced over his shoulder, reacting with mock surprise. In fact, it was so obviously mocking that it was clear to all watching that Anton had acted intentionally. This seemed to occur to Pavel last. Trapp watched the realization play out on the brute’s face as if it was happening in slow motion.

“Is there a problem?” Anton asked, pitching his voice to carry across the courtyard.

“You’re the damn problem,” Pavel spat. “Come here.”

Anton touched his chest and said, “Who, me?”

A low, somewhat uneasy chuckle rose from the crowd. The sound of a group of people who sensed the wind might be shifting but were not yet convinced.

Pavel seemed to hear it too—and to understand what it meant. He jerked his head at his men to signal he needed support, then turned back. “You sure you want this fight, pig?”

Anton raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure you do?”

The question seemed to leave Pavel short. He clearly understood that he was being toyed with—and yet the numbers were stacked against him and his men. Anton’s crew currently outnumbered them almost two to one.

And yet he could hardly fail to be aware that he could not refuse this fight. It was a Sophie’s Choice if Trapp had ever seen one. Pavel must have known several things at once: first, that he could not win this particular fight, not without reinforcements. Second, if he spurned Anton’s challenge, he would look weak. Especially with a large crowd watching.

And finally if he accepted it and lost—then he would seem fallible.

Still, as the brutish enforcer demonstrated, he was only ever going to go one way. “Have it your way,” he snarled.

Pavel charged forward, fists clenched. After a moment’s hesitation, his men followed behind—though with notably less enthusiasm.

Trapp quickly glanced at the guards to see how they were reacting to the impending battle. He noticed Konstantin’s brooding presence trudge into the exercise yard and head toward a small gaggle of officers and curtailed a smile. The drunk was another issue entirely, and one he would probably have to deal with at some point.

“They don’t seem to care,” he said to Sasha.

“Something like this happens once a week,” the Russian replied. “Well, not quite like this. But a fight, anyway. Someone sat on the wrong bench in the mess hall or looked at someone else the wrong way.”

Pavel threw his first punch, and Trapp turned his attention back to the drama playing out in the courtyard. Anton ducked the blow and leveled one of his own directly into his attacker’s stomach. It doubled him over and stopped his followers dead in their tracks.

They looked uneasily at their boss, presently crouching on the ground cradling his stomach. Trapp winced. He’d heard the impact from here. And Pavel already had to be tender after their own scrap a few days earlier.

“Get him!” Pavel choked, gesturing toward Anton.

Though they didn’t look too happy about it, his men acquiesced. Whatever their personal feelings on the rights and wrongs of the fight, they laid into Anton’s crew with gusto. Trapp thought he saw a tooth fly through the air as one of the kapos landed a right hook into his opposite number’s jaw.

Sasha jabbed him in the ribs. “Shouldn’t we do something?” he said urgently.

Trapp hiked up an eyebrow. “You want to get involved in that? Be my guest. But I’m going to stand here and watch.”

“But didn’t you—?”

He pinched his lips and shot Sasha a cold stare that carried a very clear message. Shut the hell up.

The brawl no longer involved two distinct sets of battle lines. Both groups had merged and were throwing punches, jabs, and kicks with reckless abandon. Anton’s relatively diminutive height meant that he often disappeared into the crowd.

But when Trapp saw him, he had a look of glee painted on his face. He seemed to revel in the chaos, as though he’d thrown off the shackles that had held him back for so long.

Finally, the guards seemed to appreciate the gravity of what was going on. There were now about nine of them in the courtyard, and all started running toward the scrap. Several of them placed whistles between their lips and started blowing, adding a discordant melody to the vicious scene.

A few of the fighters peeled away at the first hint of trouble, popping their collars and hoods and melting into the crowd of baying prisoners. Trapp suspected that when the bruises came up in the morning, it would be easy enough to identify who had taken part.

If the guards cared.

“Enough!” one of the guards yelled, drawing his pistol and holding it above his head. Trapp half-expected him to fire a warning shot, but it seemed that that was a step too far, even in a place as isolated and violent as this.

Others drew batons and began laying blows into the crowd, not caring whether they hit Anton’s men or the kapos. Finally, the orgasm of violence started to subside. The participants still left fighting started shielding their heads and running away from this new threat.

The guards pushed their new captives to the ground and made those involved put their hands on the backs of their heads. One put his boot on Anton’s back and prodded his baton into the Russian’s cheek before leaning down and saying something that couldn’t be heard from this distance—but it was clearly unpleasant. A few got kicks in of their own, but soon seemed to lose interest. In the end, and much to Trapp’s surprise, they didn’t bother hauling anyone away to solitary.

“What the hell was that?” Sasha asked when it was done.

“It was about laying down a marker.” Trapp shrugged.

“What does that mean?”

“Look around,” Trapp said, gesturing at a crowd of inmates that was beginning to dissipate, but still very much full. “How many are on Pavel’s side, do you think?”

Sasha paused and scanned the faces of the men streaming past through half-lidded eyes. “I see a lot of smiles,” he admitted at length.

“Exactly,” Trapp said. “Anton said what had to be said. Now he has, people will wonder how firm Pavel and his thugs’ grip really is. Maybe the balance of power is beginning to shift. That forces them to pick a side. How many do you think will stand with Pavel?”

Trapp thrust his hands into his pockets as his stomach picked that moment to remind him it was time to eat. He turned to walk back to the mess hall, noticing a small gaggle of guards out of the corner of his eye as he did so. He paid them no attention.

“So you planned it?” Sasha asked in a soft voice. “When you spoke to Anton last night.”

“You give me too much credit.” Trapp grinned.

Something slammed into his shoulder hard. With one foot off the ground, he found that he was slightly off-balance and tumbled into the dirty icy slush that only moments ago he’d been walking on. Instantly on edge, Trapp used the momentum of the fall to roll several paces away before springing back to his feet.

It was Konstantin. And he was pissed.

“You!” he screamed, striding toward Trapp and jabbing his finger an inch from his eyes. “What did you do to me?”

Ah.

Trapp scrunched his face into a maze of wrinkles and knots. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, taking a step backward to get himself out of the guard’s punching range.

“You drugged me!” Konstantin said. Behind him, two guards weren’t trying very hard to conceal their amusement.

Deciding attack was the best form of defense, Trapp crossed his arms. “You stole my vodka.”

“Leave him, you fucking drunk,” one of the guards called. “You know the warden likes him.”

“You should listen to your friend,” Trapp said. “I would’ve given you a bottle if you’d just asked.”

Konstantin went skin to skin with him like a rutting stag. They locked foreheads instead of antlers. Trapp stared him down, and after a few seconds, the Russian seemed to relent—though not without shoving him in the chest several times and daring him to react. Trapp kept his emotions in check throughout and gave him no such joy.

“Stay the hell away from me,” the Russian spat before stalking away.

Trapp frowned, hoping that this would not become a problem. “My pleasure.”

31

Trapp waited outside the doctor’s office at the tail end of a short line. At least half of its members appeared to be junkies of some description, though he didn’t recognize any of them individually. As he waited, he wondered how brisk a trade the camp doctor was doing. The thought sickened him.

In truth, Trapp didn’t blame any inmate of IK-29 who chose to abuse either narcotics or alcohol. Life had no value here, so why not have a little fun?

He sat on an undersized, rusting metal chair, his heel drumming against the ground. Once or twice another inmate looked to the source of the sound, irritation briefly gracing their cheeks before they realized who they were staring at.

Word clearly gets around, he thought.

A week ago, nobody in this place knew his assumed name. But prison in Russia was no different to doing a stint behind bars back home. If you wanted to send a message that people shouldn’t mess with you, you went right up to the biggest, hardest looking dude around and demonstrated why. Unfortunately for Pavel, he was the punching bag Trapp had picked.

The line dwindled over the course of about an hour. Inmates left in varying states of satisfaction. Trapp looked up to see the man ahead of him step back out, his shoulders slumped forward in abject dejection.

He pitied him. Opiate withdrawal was a helluva thing to suffer.

“Next,” came the familiar call from inside the office.

Trapp rose slowly and took his time walking in. When your head was shaved by clippers with blunt blades, and you were forced to wear identical prison uniforms, it was difficult to demonstrate your status in the ordinary ways of the world: expensive suits and heavy watches.

But behind bars, time was power. The guards knew to wield it as a constant reminder of their superiority over you. A week in solitary here, a month added to the end of your sentence there.

To consciously refuse to play that game, then, was a protest in itself. Petty? Absolutely. And no more effective than Anton’s swastika tattoo. But damned if it didn’t feel good.

“I said next,” the doctor snapped. He slammed his palm on the desk in front of him with frustration as Trapp entered the office. The look of fury clenching his jaw quickly dissolved when he saw who was standing in front of him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he continued, his voice now bearing no traces of his earlier anger. He adopted a mocking smile instead. “What do you want—more pills already?”

“Did my money arrive?” Trapp said. He leaned against the room’s plastic-coated observation table, his arms crossed casually across his chest.

“Of course it did,” he said, anxiously licking his lips despite clearly trying to put on a brave face. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Good,” Trapp replied before lapsing into silence. It built into a heavy, pregnant weight between the two men. That didn’t faze him in the slightest. He needed the medic off balance.

“Well—what is it you want?” the doc said, a slight crack in his voice.

At long last, Trapp uncrossed his arms and gestured reasonably. “I came here to ask you the same question,” he said.

The doctor’s face wrinkled with confusion. “Stop playing games. Do you want your damn pills or not? Don’t forget, I’m the one who controls your supply. I suggest you stop this, whatever this is.”

Trapp glanced around the dingy office. “When you were a boy, did you dream of ending up in a place like this?”

“Fuck off. And get out of my office before I call—”

“You will do no such thing,” Trapp snapped, leaning forward and causing the man to flinch. “And we both know it.”

The doctor quickly changed tack. It was impressive, Trapp thought. The man was like a chameleon, always cycling through different ways of getting what he wanted.

“Fine,” he wheedled. “Just tell me what you want. I’m a reasonable man. And this arrangement has already been profitable for us both, has it not?”

“It has,” Trapp agreed, backing off a touch. He fell silent again and studied the man’s face as he tried to work out the best way to broach his ask. After all, Fowler’s life rested on his answer.

“How much have you saved?” Trapp asked in a conversational tone. “It looks to me like you’re doing good business. Is it enough to leave this place for good?”

The doctor gulped. “That’s none of your concern.”

“I’m not trying to rob you,” Trapp chuckled easily. “You just told me that you are a reasonable man. Well, I’m coming to you looking to make a deal.”

“What deal?” came a suspicious reply.

“First you tell me how much you would need to leave this place for good. You don’t have a wife, do you? Or kids?”

The doctor laughed bitterly. “In a place like this? Where do you think I’d find a woman to screw?”

Trapp thought the answer said a lot about the man. It wasn’t love he was seeking, nor the satisfaction of raising children. No, just a woman willing to look the other way and open her legs once a week until he dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty.

Good luck to her, he thought. She’ll need it.

He did not, of course, voice those thoughts. “Who said anything about a place like this? I’m asking what it would take for you not just to leave this camp, but to leave Russia for good. To live somewhere warm. A beach, maybe. Find yourself a woman, and never come back.”

The doctor’s face screwed up with mistrust. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just answer the question,” Trapp growled.

“Thirty million rubles. No, make that fifty,” the man said mockingly. “You have that? I didn’t think so, you fucking junkie. Now stop asking me these crazy questions and get out of my office.”

Trapp did some quick math. The man had asked for about $600,000, when he finally made up his mind. That was a pittance, compared to the upside.

The question was how could he couch his request in a way that wouldn’t either have the man thinking he was loony or worse, scaring him into believing that he was actually serious—and prompting him to run off to Warden Makarov?

“What if there was—?” he began.

His head pivoted toward the doorway as a cacophony of shouts and the thudding of boot steps attracted the attention of both men. Two guards burst through the office doorway, their faces serious and their shoulders strangely angled backward.

They soon learned why. Each was holding one handle of a stretcher. They ran into the room, with two more guards holding up the rear, and slid the contraption onto the observation table.

“Doc!” one of them yelled. “He’s fucking dying.”

Trapp’s stomach clenched in an iron vise. He recognized the face looking up from that gurney. How could he not? It belonged to the man he’d come here to rescue.

Fowler’s lips had turned blue. His clothing was soaking wet, and frost had already curled the edges of a thin jacket the guards had draped over him for the short journey from B wing. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Or at least, if he was, the movement of his chest was so shallow the effect was the same.

His eyes went wide. For a moment, none of the guards seemed to have recognized he was present. They were clustered anxiously around their dying charge. Trapp knew he should leave, knew that this moment was too dangerous. If one of the guards noticed his reaction and reported it, it could ruin everything.

And yet he couldn’t help himself.

He rose and tiptoed toward the table on which Fowler was lying. For all the crooked doctor’s faults, he at least appeared to be good at his actual job. He was stripping the frozen, soaked clothing away from Fowler’s body.

That had to be a good thing, right? Trapp thought. If Fowler was already dead, the doc wouldn’t go to all this effort. So there was a chance.

“You!” the medic barked at one of the guards, singling him out by stabbing a finger at his chest. “Get blankets. And someone turn the damn heat up. What the hell did you do to this guy? I told you—”

But whatever it was that the medic was about to say next was lost as he turned away and grabbed an oxygen mask from a drawer under the table. He checked the lines were clear, then clamped it onto Fowler’s face.

Trapp moved into the space vacated by guards now bustling in search of supplies and leaned over the observation table. At the very moment he did so, Fowler’s eyes fluttered open. Perhaps his friend had been awakened by the flow of oxygen. Maybe it was just coincidence. But the look of recognition was obvious.

“Help me!” he begged, his voice barely audible over the flow of gas through the mask. He reached out, and his freezing-cold fingers brushed Trapp’s forearm. “Don’t let them kill me.”

Trapp froze. He should never have put Fowler into this position. And what he had to do now broke his heart.

But it has to be done, he knew. They can’t suspect a thing.

“Get off me,” he snapped in harsh Russian, slapping his friend’s hand away as gently as he dared while still producing the effect he desired. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Inmate,” one of the guards growled, seeming to notice Trapp’s presence for the first time. He grabbed him by the chest and pushed him toward the door. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in here? Out!”

He didn’t resist as the man physically shoved him from the room. His mind was still reeling from the consequences of what he’d just seen. Fowler wasn’t going to survive more than a few more hours of this. If they took him back to his cell, then his friend’s life was as good as gone.

The guard grasped Trapp’s collar and pressed him against the wall outside the doctor’s office. The guy was a full head shorter than him, so the sight was somewhat comical, but he didn’t resist.

“If you know what’s good for you,” he growled, foul breath stinging Trapp’s nostrils, “you’ll forget you ever saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Don’t play games,” the guard snapped, releasing Trapp’s collar. He gave him a painful jab in his side for his troubles, then stalked back into the room, slamming the door behind him. A patter of dust danced off the frame and floated toward the floor.

Trapp lingered.

The door was a thin, fragile thing, and even from a few feet away he could hear the rumble of raised voices. He took a step closer, acutely conscious that at any time the guard who’d disappeared to find blankets might return. He didn’t have long.

Another step, and the voices became louder, though indistinct. He glanced up and down the hallway and finding it empty, took a risk and pressed his ear against the door.

The doctor’s voice was audible, if muffled. “I need to get an IV line in,” he said. “He’s too weak!”

“How long will this take?” a second voice asked.

“A few seconds. Give me that.”

Trapp heard a rustle of movement. “No, you fool,” the second voice cursed. “How long until he’s better?”

“I’ll need to observe him for at least a day,” the doctor said hurriedly, clearly occupied by caring for his patient. “Ideally longer.”

“Not possible,” the guard snapped.

“Why not? You’ll kill him if you push any harder.”

“The boss is coming tonight. So do what you have to. But you have six hours.”

Trapp’s eyes flared wide with horror. This upset everything. He heard footsteps and peeled away from the door just in time, passing a guard running in his direction with a tall stack of thick blankets and towels in his arms. The man didn’t pay him a second’s notice.

What the hell am I going to do?

He set a course back to the cell he shared with Sasha, his pulse raised the entire way back as he wrestled with a problem to which he could find no sensible solution. There was no hiding how weak Fowler now was. A stiff breeze would probably finish him off, and if the governor was returning tonight, then a whole lot worse than that was in store for him.

There was no way he would survive. Which meant Trapp had to accelerate his plans, such as they were.

And yet this new development rendered his preparations mostly moot. Anton was on his side, but his opportunity to co-opt the doctor had been rudely interrupted. The inmates were angry—but were they yet ready to boil over?

It was impossible to say.

Trapp shouldered the door to the cellblock aside and strode toward his cell with a single-minded focus on informing Langley. He needed an ace in the hole, and they were all he had.

Sasha was standing outside their shared cell, anxiously running his hands through his hair when he heard Trapp’s approaching footsteps.

“Kolya!” he squeaked, eyes wide with panic.

“Out of my way,” Trapp grunted. He didn’t have time for pleasantries. He turned to enter the cell, gently but firmly brushing Sasha aside.

“No, Kolya,” the little Russian squeaked. “You don’t understand…”

But the second Trapp saw who was rummaging around inside the cell, things fell into place. The entire room had been tossed. The sheets were pulled off the mattresses, which lay at right angles on the floor. Sasha’s books lay scattered everywhere, dozens of pages torn loose in an act of what could only have been spite. One of the vodka bottles from the crate stood upright on the floor, its cap nowhere to be seen. Others rolled on their sides on the concrete.

Trapp had seen enough. He slapped his palm against the door, and Konstantin’s head turned sharply. His eyes flickered with momentary concern.

“I thought your friends told you to stay away?” Trapp said, his voice low and threatening. “If I were you, I would do what they said.”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Konstantin replied, drawing himself up to his full height. His skin was gray, but he looked neither drunk nor significantly hung over. No more than he usually was, anyway. “I don’t care who you’re paying.”

Trapp pointed at the hallway behind him. “Get out!”

“Fuck you!” Konstantin exploded, reaching for the baton on his belt. “Get on your knees, now.”

His blood running hot, Trapp refused. Truthfully, he knew there was a better way to handle this. But he was already fuming over what had happened to Fowler. And he’d disliked Konstantin from the moment he’d set eyes on him. “No.”

Konstantin’s hand froze over the handle of the baton on the left-hand side of his belt. Then his fingers crept toward the right-hand side. The location of his gun holster. He flicked the button that held it closed.

“Do as I say,” he spat. “If you die here today, no one will shed a tear.”

Trapp took a deep breath and consciously attempted to defuse the situation. “I don’t think the warden would like that,” he said mildly.

“Fuck Makarov,” Konstantin said. He drew his pistol, flicked the safety, and pointed it at Trapp’s chest. He glanced to his right for only a moment before refocusing on his target, but something flashed in his eyes as he did so.

Uh-oh.

“Do you even know how to use that thing?” Trapp said, skepticism dripping like poison from his tongue as he attempted to bait the Russian toward him. “Why don’t you put it down before you get hurt.”

Konstantin’s face screwed up with anger. But to Trapp’s surprise—and mounting horror—he didn’t take the bait. Instead, his gaze crept back to the side and focused on the only spot in the cell that he simply, positively could not be allowed to take an interest in.

“Hey!” Trapp called. “Over here, big guy.”

But Konstantin was not to be distracted. With his pistol still outstretched, his left arm reached over his right and tugged at the loose section of drywall that hid the satellite phone. Smug satisfaction clouded his face. “Well, what have you been hiding?”

Trapp did the only thing he could. He stepped forward, clenched his fingers into a fist, and drove it through the Russian’s nose, cursing as he did so. Without stopping, he batted the guard’s arm aside, smashing it against the door hard enough for the man’s knuckles to reflexively retract. The pistol dropped free of his hand, and Trapp plucked it out of the air.

Konstantin doubled over, which prompted Trapp to relax.

It was a big mistake.

The big Russian drove forward like a raging bull, his shoulder colliding with Trapp’s stomach and tossing him forward. Trapp only barely kept hold of the pistol.

“Crap,” he grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. He smashed his elbow down onto the back of Konstantin’s head, but the blow seemed to do nothing but enrage his enemy. He tried again, only to achieve the same limited result.

Realizing he had no choice but to end this fast before the scuffle drew attention, Trapp planted his left foot against the ground and scooped his right around the guard’s ankles before drawing it back at the same time as he applied pressure to his shoulders.

Suddenly shorn of balance, Konstantin collapsed against his back on the ground, his limbs scrabbling in the air for a moment like an upturned cockroach. Trapp didn’t give him a moment’s rest spite. He fell on him, straddling his torso as he smashed his right elbow into Konstantin’s temple.

The impact landed with a dull thud and seemed to knock the comprehension out of the man’s eyes. He went limp against the ground.

Trapp took no pleasure in what he did next. Fowler’s life was in the balance, and weighed against that, he had no real choice to make. He grabbed Konstantin by the long, oily hair that hung over his forehead, pulled the man’s skull toward his chest, and smashed it back down against the concrete.

It only took one sickening blow.

His heart racing, Trapp sank back, toppling to a spot between the Russian’s outstretched toes. He swallowed and put his palms over his eyes, pressing as hard as he could as he attempted to salve his nerves. The situation had just gone to hell in a hand cart. A guard was dead. There was no plausible way they could get rid of the body.

And things were about to move very, very fast.

“You killed him!” Sasha said, his voice a strangled choke.

“Close the door,” Trapp snapped. Even as his conscious mind reeled from the consequences, his body sprang into action as his survival instincts kicked in.

He removed Konstantin’s boots, tossing them to one side, and busied himself stripping off the rest of the man’s uniform. Once he was done, he pulled off his own jacket, and then each of the layers underneath it. Next he reversed his movements and dressed the dead man in Trapp’s inmate’s uniform, and clothed himself as a guard. Luckily, they were about the same size. He hoped they didn’t look too different. If you squinted. In the dark.

Sasha did as he was instructed but hung as far away from Trapp—and the body he was working on—as he reasonably could inside the small cell. On the few occasions where Trapp looked up from his task, he saw the man was ashen faced.

“What have you done?” Sasha moaned.

Trapp ground his jaw. He didn’t like this any better than his cellmate did. But it no longer mattered. The die was cast. “The only thing I could.”

32

Sasha took off out of the cell door at a brisk walk. He started at a dead run before Trapp hissed that it was a sure way to attract attention.

While the anxious Russian was gone, Trapp scrubbed Konstantin’s blood from the cell’s concrete floor. It was hard, gut-busting work—especially in his present state—and when he was done, the floor still had a pinkish hue. It would have to do.

Trapp patted the corpse down to check whether he could be of any more use and relieved the dead man of his wristwatch. It was a cheap Chinese model. On closer examination, the inside of the plastic strap was discolored by sweat and skin oils. He fastened it around his own wrist with a grimace of distaste, then disguised Konstantin’s body with blankets and pillows from both bunks.

He took a step back to survey his work. Biting his lower lip nervously, Trapp concluded that as long as the lights were out a passing observer might be momentarily convinced. But if Konstantin was reported as missing, it wouldn’t hold up for long.

Think, Jason. What needs doing?

Trapp pivoted and glanced at the wristwatch. It was about 1530. An hour until sunset. Already he could see a late afternoon gloom descending over the penal colony, and he prayed for it to arrive faster. Perhaps he could move Konstantin’s body somewhere once the dark fell in earnest? There was sufficient fresh snow outside that he could cover it deep enough it might not be found for days.

“No way,” he muttered underneath his breath as he went for the satellite phone’s hiding spot.

He removed the loose panel that had so fatefully attracted Konstantin’s attention and pulled it out as his mind tussled with the problem. Zayetsev would arrive in about five and a half hours’ time. It was unlikely that Konstantin would be missed before then. And if he was, his absence would probably be written off as in keeping with his recent behavior.

Sorry about that, buddy, Trapp thought somewhat regretfully. Konstantin had been surly, violent, and abusive to the inmates supposedly in his care. But was that enough of a crime to condemn him to death? As he powered up the satellite phone, he decided that he would have to take that question up with his maker when his own number was called.

There was no reason to expect anyone would come looking for Konstantin. The man was clearly known to be a drunk by his colleagues. A short absence would likely be chalked up as another bender. So long as Trapp made sure no one came through that cell door before he was ready to move, then an unwelcome discovery needn’t be much of a risk factor. And by that time, it would be the least of the guards’ concerns.

Trapp keyed an SOS message into the sat phone, and pressed send. This was it. Either the cavalry was coming, or he’d condemned himself to death.

A quiet knock sounded at the door before it opened. Trapp glanced down at his present attire—a stolen guard’s uniform—and hoped to high hell that it was Sasha on the other side. Otherwise this costume would be a doozy to explain. He pocketed the phone anyway.

“It’s me,” Sasha whispered as he came through, laying that concern to rest. “I found him.”

Which answered Trapp’s second question.

Anton followed Trapp’s cellmate through the door. The two men were of a similar height, but significantly contrasting body types. Where Sasha was lean, almost wispy, Anton was the exact opposite. He was built like a concrete outhouse.

He walked in with a curious expression on his face: one eyebrow kinked a half-inch above its usual resting place. He said nothing as his gaze passed across Trapp’s unusual outfit.

“Close the door,” Trapp said shortly. He said nothing to Anton, waiting to see how this played out. Sasha did as he was asked, standing in front of the cell door with his arms clasped nervously behind his back.

Anton walked over to the bottom bunk and pulled back the sheet that Trapp had so artfully arranged over Konstantin’s body. The dead man’s eyes were still open and stared unblinking at the bunk above. It was a little unsettling, even for someone so used to death as he.

Still, the stocky Russian inmate said nothing. He just stared down at the body, lost in thought.

As the silence dragged on, Trapp glanced at Sasha. He felt as though he was in a television sketch show and hadn’t been told the punchline. What the hell was the guy waiting for? Maybe Trapp had misread him all along. How would the warden reward a man like Anton for turning in the murderer of one of his guards?

He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, just in case.

At long last, Anton let out a sharp, deep belly laugh. He shook his head and dropped the sheet back down on the body, leaving it askew so that one of Konstantin’s open eyes continued staring out.

He turned back to Trapp. “I didn’t think you had the balls.”

“Do I give you that impression?” Trapp replied carefully, still tense.

Anton shrugged. “All inmates talk. But words are often cheap. I see now that yours are not.”

“So you approve?”

“Approve?” the Russian snorted. “I just wish I could have been here to watch.”

Trapp walked over and pulled the sheet back over Konstantin’s death mask. He arranged the pillows once more and doubled them up. As he did so, he debated how to approach his ask and decided that Anton struck him as a man who valued directness.

He cleared his throat. “This changes things,” he said, watching carefully for the man’s response. “Are you ready to move tonight?”

Anton dragged the tip of his tongue across his lower lip. He eyed Trapp back with equal—and unashamed—interest. “It’s very soon.”

“It’s now or never,” Trapp said.

“What do you really want, Kolya?” Anton said.

The hairs on the back of Trapp’s neck stood up. How far could he trust this man, bedecked as he was in Nazi tattoos, carrying the rage of decades of injustices inside him? Was Anton really on his side—or was he just waiting for an opportunity to snap?

What choice do you have?

“Does that matter?” he replied, still playing it safe.

“I like to know who my friends are. If they trust me, then my decision is made, and I trust them in return. So now I ask you, Kolya: Do you trust me?”

Trapp grimaced. He thought back to his gut reaction. As so often, it had cut through to the heart of the matter. He didn’t really have a choice. He needed allies, and as useful as Sasha had been until now, his present requirement was altogether more kinetic.

“What you know about B wing?” he asked, deciding to gamble and holding his breath in hope that Fowler didn’t pay for it.

“People come, people go,” Anton said dismissively. “Mostly it is not very pleasant for them, I think.”

“Well, a friend of mine is in there right now. And I want him back,” Trapp said, reaching into an inside pocket of his uniform greatcoat and pulling out the pistol he’d taken from Konstantin’s body. Anton didn’t flinch as he brandished it, though from the other side of the room Sasha let out a stifled squeak.

“And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get him back.”

“Is that a threat?” Anton asked, raising a single eyebrow.

“You misunderstand me,” Trapp said. “I’ll burn this place to the ground if that’s what it takes. And it strikes me that you might have an interest in that kind of chaos.”

Anton paused for a second thinking before a broad smile broke on his face. He spread his arms wide and beckoned for Trapp to join him. He did so, if cautiously, keeping his fingers clenched securely around the pistol grip, and enveloping the Russian with his own left arm as they embraced in what could only be described as a bear hug.

“You should have just said so,” Anton said, jovially slapping Trapp several times on the back. “We could have avoided all this unpleasantness.”

Trapp drew back and pocketed the weapon. “So you’re in?”

“Absolutely.” Anton beamed, his eyes alive with excitement. “But we will need a few items.”

“Like what?”

“For a start,” Anton said, “guns. Lots of guns.”

* * *

Irkutsk Penal Colony IK-29,

1755 HRS.

The sun was down as Trapp and Anton crept toward the central administrative building. They walked separately to avoid attracting undue interest and joined back up in the shadow of a dark storage facility, where they waited for almost half an hour as the lights behind various office windows blinked off. A steady stream of guards and administrative personnel walked out of the building toward their accommodation blocks. The flow had slowed about fifteen minutes earlier and now was almost non-existent.

“You’ve been there before?” Trapp pressed.

Anton frowned performatively. “Of course not,” he said. “You think they would allow a reprobate like me inside the armory?”

“But you know where it is?”

“Relax, Kolya,” Anton said. “Or whatever you truly call yourself. One of my bunk mates is the camp electrician. The lighting went out in that section of the building about nine months ago. They had to open the gate into the armory to allow him to run some new cable. They watched him like a hawk the entire time.”

He chuckled to himself at the memory.

Trapp breathed out a deep, tense sigh. His breath instantly clouded in the cold chill of night. “I hope you’re right.” He checked his new watch. “It’s six,” he said. “You think we’ve waited long enough?”

Anton held up a single finger and stared at the building’s main doorway, about 30 yards distant. Trapp held his breath and watched as a gray-haired woman exited the building, paused for a second to fasten the top button on her coat and light a cigarette, then walked off into the night.

“Now I think so,” he said with satisfaction. “Let’s go.”

Again, the two men split as they crossed the short distance—the putative guard going first. Trapp looked neither left nor right as he walked, trusting his instincts and his peripheral vision to give him any warning he might need.

But Anton was right. In typical Russian fashion, the guards and admin personnel had clocked off shift the second their stints ended. They encountered no one else in the empty courtyard.

Trapp studied the door lock as he fumbled for Konstantin’s keychain. It jangled as he pulled it from his stolen coat’s outside pocket. The lock was old and fashioned from long-dulled brass. It was also unusually deep, reflecting the thickness of the door to which it was attached, which looked as though it could survive a concerted assault with a medieval battering ram.

This narrowed it down to one of only two possible keys, and the first one that Trapp tried worked. The fact the door was locked was a good sign, he thought as he quietly pushed it open. It probably signified that most everyone was gone for the night.

He held a finger to his lips, returned the keys to his pocket, and closed his fingers instead around the pistol’s grip before he pushed the door open.

The lights inside were off.

More good news, he thought.

As previously agreed, Anton took the lead. He led Trapp decisively to the back of the building, then up a flight of concrete stairs with a dusty, disused smell. The door that led onto the floor above squealed like a stuck pig as they pushed it open, causing Trapp to flinch.

Anton seemed to feel no such concern. They crossed back to the front of the building, occasionally walking through lit hallways, more often not. The Russian held up his hand.

“Over there,” he whispered, gesturing at a pale green and perfectly ordinary doorway at the end of a drab corridor. A white sign about the size of a computer keyboard explained its purpose in dark Cyrillic lettering. “Do you see it?”

Trapp followed the arc of his outstretched finger. He nodded. “That’s the armory?”

“Certainly.” Anton frowned. “Don’t –?”

“Talk me through the layout,” Trapp said softly, cutting him off. “What’s behind that door?”

“The door is unlocked,” Anton explained. Trapp could see that from where he was crouched—it looked like the entrance to a public restroom.

“A couple of feet behind it is a locked gate. Behind that there is a desk, where a duty officer sits all day and night to sign weapons in and out.”

“Okay,” Trapp murmured, thinking fast. “We need to attract his attention, and then get him to come to us.”

“Can’t you just shoot him?” Anton grumbled.

“Too loud,” Trapp said, deciding to appeal to the Russian’s practical nature rather than any vestigial sentimentality. “And if I was designing a security protocol, then the only man with a key to that gate would be the officer behind it. No, this is the only way.”

Anton agreed with a curt nod. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Trapp cautiously looked left and right before he moved and paused for a few long seconds to listen for approaching footsteps. There were none, only the bars of the strip lighting overhead. He walked quickly over to the doorway to the armory and paused just in front of it for his companion to catch up. He pushed his ushanka hat low over his eyes and tightened his coat so it swallowed up the lower half of his chin.

It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it would have to serve. He turned to Anton with a questioning look in his eye. The Russian nodded.

Trapp spun him around, grabbing his upper arms and feeling his way down to the man’s wrists. He crossed them over as though about to snap handcuffs around them and then pushed him through the swinging door, hunching slightly over so that Anton—in his visible inmate’s uniform—hid his face from view. The position afforded him a restricted view of the locked gate to the armory, just as Anton had described.

“Help!” he called out. The noise visibly startled an overweight, balding man with his feet up on the desk in front of him. He was watching something on a phone screen, which toppled onto the desk with a clatter.

“This fucker tried to attack me,” Trapp lied in an outraged tone as the guard jumped to his feet, a keychain jangling off his belt. “Are you armed?”

“Of course,” the guard said, sounding slightly shocked by the sudden commotion. His eyes narrowed as he tried to focus them on the scene that had so suddenly developed.

“Hold a weapon on him while I secure him,” Trapp said thickly.

He grunted audibly and swung Anton around, pressing him up against the door and acting as though his prisoner had attempted to escape. Anton leaned into the role, struggling with gusto. Their new orientation had the added benefit of completely shielding Trapp’s identity from view.

“Come here, you fool!” he snapped. “I need your help.”

“I’ll call—” the duty officer started.

“No time,” Trapp replied, keeping his face angled away from the man’s gaze as he pretended to wrestle with Anton against the doorframe. “Quickly, man!”

Grudgingly, the guard started shuffling down the linoleum-floored armory hallway toward the locked gate. Trapp counted his steps, measuring them in jangles of the keychain.

“Get close,” he said once he judged that the man was only a couple of feet behind the locked gate. “So your aim is good. This piece of shit is strong.”

“Who are you?” the guard asked anxiously, the closeness of his tone signaling his location. “I don’t recognize your voice.”

“I’ll spin him around,” Trapp said between feigned gasps for breath. “Are you ready—on three.”

“Ready,” the guard reported anxiously.

“One,” Trapp said.

“Two…”

Without waiting to play fair, Trapp spun around, released Anton, and drew his own pistol in one smooth motion. He fixed his point of aim right between the stunned guard’s eyes.

“Don’t fucking move,” he said coldly.

The man’s outstretched arms started to quiver. His gun was aimed, but at precisely the wrong spot. Trapp didn’t want to have to kill the guy, but if it came to it, he’d have a good second’s worth of warning.

“Put the gun on the floor,” Trapp ordered.

It took a moment for his instruction to penetrate the man’s skull, but he did as he was ordered. “Please,” he moaned. “Don’t –”

“Kick the weapon away,” Trapp said.

It skittered silently across the plastic floor.

“Good,” Trapp said soothingly. He beckoned the man toward him. “Now come to the bars and put your arms through. I promise if you do exactly as I say, I won’t hurt you.”

The man’s wide eyes darted between Anton and Trapp several times. He seemed to be wallowing in shock. “Who are you?” he mumbled. “I don’t recognize your face.”

“Arms,” Trapp snapped.

The guard took another pace forward and stretched his bare arms through the bars of the gate.

“Anton,” Trapp said, his tone still commanding, though more restrained. “Secure him.”

“My pleasure,” the Russian said, his voice hoarse.

He took a step forward and reached out with one arm to grab the guard’s wrists and yank him toward the bars. The other flashed at his side.

“What are you doing?” Trapp hissed, eyes wide with surprise.

It was too late. A steel blade glinted in the light overhead. It flashed only for a second before Anton buried it in the guard’s chin, burying it to its hilt. The second the point of the knife penetrated the man’s skin, Anton dropped his wrists and clamped his left palm over his mouth to swallow any dying screams.

There were none.

Almost as swiftly as the attack itself occurred, the light died in the man’s eyes. His body went limp, held up only by the knife buried in his skull. Anton reached down casually and freed the keychain from his belt.

“Did you have to do that?” Trapp said angrily, still remembering to keep his voice quiet. He glanced over his shoulder to check that no one was about to surprise them, but the coast was still clear.

Anton said nothing. He twisted the blade to ensure that the guard was dead, then yanked it free of his jaw and pushed the body backward. It fell against the floor with a thump, spraying splatters of blood to either side. Ignoring Trapp, he found the right key, and opened the gate.

Trapp couldn’t let the matter rest. He wasn’t shocked by the man’s death. The reality was that—whether he was successful or not—many more would die tonight as a consequence of his choices.

But there was no need for this man to die. He had been complying with them. To murder him so summarily felt wrong. Unjustified.

He clapped a hand around Anton’s shoulder. “What the hell was that about?” he said in a low, angry whisper.

Anton shook himself free and viciously kicked the still body at his feet. The pool of blood around the corpse had stopped growing and was already starting to thicken. “You know who he was?”

“Should I?” Trapp asked, confused.

“This pig raped me,” Anton said, raw anger written on his face as he leered down at his fallen foe. “Held me down with three other men. They didn’t stop until each was done. That was seven years ago.”

Instantly, Trapp’s own anger faded. He’d done worse to better men for far less defensible reasons. “I’m sorry—”

“Does this shock you?” Anton hissed as if he hadn’t heard. “Because if it does, then stop me now. Because every one of these pigs is the same. Either they’ve done the things that this man did, or they stood by knowing what was happening. It ends tonight. For all of them.”

“That’s your fight,” Trapp said simply. “Not mine. I don’t see any reason to stand in your way.”

“Good,” Anton said, shaking his attention away from the dead man. “We need to hurry. Let’s get the guns.”

Trapp bent to remove the guard’s wristwatch before he followed. A part of him was still guilty for what he had unleashed.

But not a big one.

33

Anton led Trapp back out of the administrative complex and across the empty exercise yard. Night had fallen in earnest, and there was a bitter chill to the air, a reminder that it wasn’t only the guards whose force was arrayed against him tonight. Even if he dodged their attention, the weather posed an entirely separate test.

Trapp followed his accomplice to his own accommodation block, instead of returning to the cell where Konstantin’s body now lay in rest. The exterior door was unlocked, and an inmate stood watch outside the door into Anton’s dormitory. The man scowled at Trapp as he walked inside and kicked the snow off the soles of his boots. His nose was red from prolonged exposure to both the cold and prison moonshine, and he had the sour demeanor of a habitual drinker.

Standing in Trapp’s way, he crossed his arms and refused to move. Trapp simply stood there, a duffel bag full of automatic weapons weighing down on his shoulder.

“Let him pass, Vasily,” Anton said gruffly. “We need to get these out of sight.”

Vasily stepped aside, though not without another grimace of disapproval, and Trapp shouldered his way into the dormitory.

“Cheery guy,” Trapp commented as the door swung closed behind him with a thud. Anton merely shrugged and shot him a look as if to say: What do you expect?

Like the block to which he’d first been taken after his induction, the dormitory contained approximately twenty bunks, though the room was a little fuller than that. Trapp counted almost three dozen inmates of all shapes and sizes. Some were tall and muscular, others short and decidedly not. Most were somewhere in the middle. None were soldiers, but even as they conversed quietly among one another, they each shared an expression of resolved determination. Others were just drunk.

Trapp had seen it many times before. It was the look of men who were psyching themselves up for battle.

“Gather round,” Anton called out loudly enough to be heard only in the confines of the room.

He shrugged the duffel bag off his right shoulder and threw it onto the bunk. The ancient metal bed frame groaned and squeaked in protest, and the sound was matched by the clink of the weapons inside. Trapp did the same.

“How many of you know how to shoot?” Anton asked.

Trapp didn’t wait for the weapons to be doled out. He knew exactly what he wanted, and in what quantities. He unzipped the bag he’d carried from the armory and retrieved one of about a dozen Kalashnikov rifles. The AK-47 was ancient and un-modernized—likely churned out by some Soviet factory several decades earlier, but it would almost certainly still shoot just fine. The Russians knew how to build a gun so that it would survive repeated contact with ice, fire, dirt, rain, sand, and whatever else a backwoods conscript could throw at it.

He placed the weapon on its side on top of the bunk, and then extracted half a dozen curved magazines from the bottom of the bag, slapping an inquisitive hand away as he did so. He’d carried out more than enough weapons for these men to share out between them—but he intended to get the pick of the bunch. He spirited the ammunition, a couple of hundred rounds’ worth, in different pockets around his frame.

To his side, Anton was doing the same—only with significantly less care. He opened his own bag, hoisted it with a grunt, and let gravity do the rest. Trapp winced as they clattered against each other on the bunk. Thankfully they came to a stop without an accidental discharge. He was sure the guns in his own bag had all been unloaded, but he had little faith in the professionalism of the camp’s guards. And given how many of Anton’s people were now crowding around, arms outstretched in search of a weapon, a single stray round would have caused significant damage. Not to mention cost them the element of surprise.

But hell—you go to war with the army you have. And they’re mean-looking bastards, that’s for sure.

Amidst the maelstrom, Trapp spied a pair of beastly pump-action shotguns, with barrels bigger than anything he’d ever fired. He fought off ravenous competition and snatched one from the bed, along with several clips of shells. It was a snub-nosed weapon with no stock and had a barrel as thick as a policeman’s nightstick. He played with it and found that it racked a fresh shell by pushing the forestock forward instead of back, as would be customary with a Western weapon. It was heavy, too.

He waved it in front of Anton and said, “What the hell is this?”

The Russian laughed. “I was a soldier, did I tell you that?”

“You did not.”

“It was a long time ago. I was a conscript. It was supposed to be for two years, but I hated every day. I ran away after nine months. It took them a year to catch up with me.”

If an American had related a similar story to him, Trapp would have been disgusted. But the Russian and American militaries were very different animals. Following in its Soviet predecessor’s footsteps, the modern-day Russian Armed Forces were still largely composed of poorly trained draftees. And while for many coddled, overweight American teens the experience of boot camp was hell—it was their choice.

Their Russian counterparts could not say the same. And life for such a conscript was a brutal awakening, likely not too different from spending time in a penal colony. Dozens died each year from hazing, assault, and murder. Thousands more were traumatized for life. No, Trapp could not blame the stocky inmate for escaping such a horror.

“What happened when they found you?”

Anton shrugged and smiled dryly. “How do you think I ended up here? Anyway, while I was still serving they let me fire one of those things. I think it is a KS-23. They take barrels from old anti-aircraft guns and saw them down. They can’t take the heat of automatic firing, but they will handle a shotgun shell with no problem. It is almost four gauge. Will take your arm off when you fire. Make sure you hold tight.”

Trapp hefted the weapon with renewed respect. He extracted a shell from one of the clips and tossed it toward Anton. It had Cyrillic writing on, but nothing he could read. “What does it say?”

Turning it over in his fingers, Anton examined the shell. He looked up. “Shrapnel, 10 meter range.”

“I’ll take it,” Trapp said, satisfied. If he needed to blow a hole through a door, this would do the job. It would wake up every guard inside a mile radius, but by the time he needed to use it, then they would already be well aware of what was happening. He also grabbed several additional magazines of ammunition for the pistol he’d taken from Konstantin and stored them in the same pocket as the gun itself.

Trapp glanced at his watch again. It was already almost 1830. It was fully dark outside now, and his stomach was filling with acid with every minute that passed.

Jerking his head in Anton’s direction as the remaining inmates finished equipping themselves—and arguing with each other over who received which weapon—he said, “A word?”

“Of course, my friend,” Anton agreed.

They separated from the main group and found a quiet spot by the door where they could not be overheard. As they walked over, Trapp slung the Kalashnikov over his shoulder and found a way to hook the shotgun inside his greatcoat. The loose magazines clinked as he walked, and he pressed his hand into his pocket to rearrange them. It helped some but didn’t completely eliminate the sound.

“What’s your plan?” Trapp asked once they were alone.

“Same as any coup.” Anton grinned, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. “The guards still have their pistols, and even without the armory they will have access to a few heavier weapons. Not as many as we now possess, but enough to do damage. We will split into two groups: one to find and capture the warden, the other to”—he cleared his throat—“subdue anyone who dares to fight against us.”

Trapp scratched his nose. “What about reinforcements?”

“They will come,” Anton agreed, seemingly without worry. “But our quarrel isn’t with them.”

“The Eagles?”

“That’s right,” Anton said darkly. “I have a score to settle. When the time comes, I will gladly put down my rifle. Perhaps some of my comrades might not be so willing—but that is their choice, not mine. I cannot speak for them.”

Trapp grimaced as he took in both Anton’s words and his demeanor as he spoke them. The man was quite calmly talking about how he planned to carry out a slaughter on the camp’s kapos—and probably whichever of the guards had tormented him over the years. It was entirely plausible that dozens of men would die tonight.

How much of that guilt would ultimately lay at his own feet?

“They will make you pay,” he said, despite knowing he should not. If he allowed Anton to do what he planned, then he had a chance of saving Fowler’s life. If he talked the Russian out of it, then he would save the lives of men who probably didn’t deserve saving—and condemn a man who did.

And never find out what Fowler knows, he reminded himself.

But evil as they might be, the men Anton would kill were still human. They had value to someone. Mothers, fathers, daughters, wives. Tonight’s actions would create a hundred individual ripples of grief. And who knew what consequences that would have down the line?

“I have already paid,” Anton said simply. He gestured around the room, forcing Trapp’s eyes to follow. “And so has every man in here. They know the consequences of what we will do tonight. They are at peace with that. And who knows, perhaps some of us will escape. They might be able to hunt one of us, or even five—but not dozens. Not hundreds.”

Trapp nodded. It was a faint hope, but men had subsisted on less. And Anton was right—it was his choice, and his alone.

“How long can you give me?” he asked.

Anton thrust his hands into his pockets and started back to the main group. “How long do you need?”

Trapp opened his mouth to reply, but as he did so he heard a faint roar in the distance. His eyes automatically darted up to the ceiling. The sound was easily identifiable as rotor noise. Zayetsev was early. His right hand formed into a tense fist as he quickly recalculated.

“Thirty minutes,” he said after a short pause.

“I will do my best, friend.” Anton nodded.

Without warning, he opened his arms wide and gathered Trapp in for a tight bear hug. The muzzle of the shotgun pinched painfully against his left pectoral muscle as the Russian squeezed. Trapp relaxed into the embrace. He barely knew the man, and yet he’d known so many just like him. Damaged, broken things who found peace and purpose in the darkest of places.

“Good luck,” he said as they broke away from each other. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Me too.” Anton nodded thoughtfully. “Me too.”

The chopper’s engine noise built in intensity until it seemed that the bird must be floating just a few feet over the accommodation block as it came in to land. Anton’s men looked around uneasily, as if assuming that it must be coming for them.

Anton turned away and—perhaps using the noise as cover—addressed the other inmates, his speech building in emotion and intensity with every word. He grabbed a weapon and brandished it over his head as he worked them to a crescendo.

Trapp watched for a few moments, trying not to store in his memory the faces of men who would doubtlessly die tonight. And those who weren’t would probably wish they had met such a fate. But Anton was right. It was their choice. He had no right to stand in their way. He lingered for a second longer, then slipped away.

He had work to do.

34

The rumble of thunder echoed across no man’s land. Occasionally the Russians—or their separatist foot soldiers—fired an illumination round from a mortar. The flare hung on a parachute and shakily lit the hellish moonscape between the two sets of trenches for about thirty seconds before burning out.

Staff Sergeant Nelson Packer drummed his fingers against his rifle as he stared out at the empty battlefield. He supposed it was a method of convincing his brain that it was in control, even though the truth was decidedly otherwise. American soldiers hadn’t been on the receiving end of massed enemy artillery fire for long enough for it to have become a lost art. Saddam’s forces had taken the odd potshot during Operation Iraqi Freedom, though between American aerial superiority and accurate counter-battery fire, most of his artillery pieces were out of commission by the time the first week of the war was out.

Before that it was Vietnam, but between the chill in the air and the location, Packer was reminded of two very different wars, ones known by numbers rather than words. A shell whistled overhead, close enough to hear but angled far enough overhead that it would land safely a couple of miles in the rear. He waited and felt the vibration of its impact through the soles of his boots and shuddered in thanks that it wasn’t any closer.

He knew that if things continued like this, he’d have to inform Lieutenant Graff, which would lead to his squad pulling out faster than a horny Catholic teen. How would that look to the Ukrainians?

Chernyak stole up to him so silently that it wasn’t until he flinched at the familiar murmur of his voice that he realized he wasn’t alone. “Are you enjoying the orchestra?”

Packer took a deep breath to still his nerves. “That’s what you call it, huh?”

The irregular looked down, then slumped onto the bench beside him. “They fire the big guns at night to stop us sleeping.”

“Well, they’re doing a damn fine job, I guess. What are they aiming at?”

“Most times just a field behind the lines. It is a delicate balance: if they kill too many of us at once, then tensions rise, and Kiev is forced to respond. They prefer to pick us off. One this week, two the next. Sometimes a shell lands and destroys an entire bunker. They say it was an accident, but I think their artillery officers are too good for that, no?”

“You’re probably right,” Packer agreed, glancing over at his companion for the first time and absently noting that the man’s face was lost in shadow. “The whole situation is fucked.”

“Very eloquent,” Chernyak chuckled.

They fell silent. Another illumination round popped into the air about a mile farther down the line. It cast just enough light this far for Packer to see that his friend’s face was coated in camouflage grease. He was wearing a webbing vest which was evidently weighed down by additional ammo pouches.

“You planning on taking a walk? Hell of a night for it.”

“There are no drones available this week,” Chernyak explained. “They are needed somewhere else. And still we need to know what the Russians are up to.”

“So you have to go out there?” Packer said, his eyebrows rising as he tried to hide his concern by looking back out over the battlefield. “Shit.”

“Do not worry.” Chernyak grinned, his usually yellow teeth glowing in the darkness. “After all this time maybe I have come to enjoy it.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Chernyak stood and shook his head before slinking off as quietly as he’d appeared. “Nothing, my friend.”

Packer sat staring out into the battlefield for several long minutes after. Silence descended on the scene, and so too did the dark, for long enough that he started to believe that the Russians were done playing games. He expelled a breath from his lungs, and the artillery grumbled once more. He counted the seconds like a child in a thunderstorm, but the flash of lightning never arrived.

At length, he stood and walked through the trench back toward the rest of the unit. Stu was sitting cross-legged on the muddy wood-slatted floor cleaning his rifle with a head light. One of the Ukrainian irregulars was on watch in a gun emplacement a few yards farther down the trench with a graveyard of energy drink bottles around his boots.

“You see them go, Sergeant?” he asked after looking up to see who was approaching.

Packer nodded. “Sure did.”

“Feels pretty shitty hiding back here,” Stu remarked as he unscrewed a can of gun oil.

“Sure does. You can’t sleep?”

“It’s not the artillery,” Stu explained. “I just don’t like the idea of closing my eyes while we have people on the other side of the wire.”

“It’s not our fight, Sergeant,” Packer said with more conviction than he felt. “We’re just here to observe.”

Stu snorted. “I’m betting there’s more to it than that.”

“How so?” Packer asked. He knew better than to indulge in the kind of conspiratorial thinking so easy to dip into during the embers of night, but knew it was a pastime which most soldiers find impossible to resist.

“You think maybe we’re a tripwire? Someone’s sent us here to make the Russians think twice about invading. Or someone on our side wants a reason to pick a fight with them and figures our deaths are just what the doctor ordered.”

“You have too much faith in the Army,” Packer laughed. “I think some smartass staff officer decided that his three-star needed a grunt’s eye view of what’s happening here, and we drew the short straw.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Stu said with venom. He started reassembling his rifle as the two men lapsed into silence.

It dragged on for perhaps half an hour, during which time a tense tightness built in Packer’s throat. On several occasions he stood and joined the Ukrainian on watch, sliding out his night vision scope and using it to search the darkness for any sign of movement. Even that provoked guilt within him: the irregulars they were embedded with had no such technology—or if they did it was practically obsolete. They were fighting blind.

He sighed and offered the device to the man beside him. The guy shook his head. Was he too proud to accept the offer—or did he think less of his American counterparts for being so removed from their own instincts? It was impossible to say.

Nearby gunfire split the night in an instant, and adrenaline dumped into his veins. Within seconds, several Ukrainians sprinted from their own bunkers and sleeping spots. Each one carried a weapon, but most were in various states of undress. Despite the chill of the night, one was clothed only in boxer shorts and a belt of ammunition, which he accessorized with a squad automatic weapon.

Stu leapt up to the lookout spot and snapped the bipod rest out from the front of his M110 marksman’s rifle, laying it on the lip of the trench and cocking his head in search of the source of the gunfire.

Packer tightened his grip on his own weapon but bit down on the battle lust rising within him. He laid a hand on Stu’s shoulder.

“Easy, Sergeant,” he said in a calming voice. “Remember the rules of engagement. Self-defense only.”

“Fuck the rules of engagement,” Stu swore. “We’ve been with these guys for weeks, Nelson. If someone’s shooting at them, you best be damn sure that I’m gonna do something about it.”

“It’s Staff Sergeant,” Packer snapped, despite feeling awful about it. He lowered his voice so as not to draw attention from the Ukrainians now scurrying busily around them. “If you squeeze your trigger without my say-so, or without some Russian fuck pointing his weapon directly between your eyes, then I’ll have you drummed out of the Army quicker than you can blink. You understand?”

Stu ground his teeth together but nodded angrily.

“Good.”

Another illumination round fizzed overhead, sizzling through the air and leaving a trail of white smoke as it sank. The light cast shadows across the battlefield. Packer squinted to make out any sight of movement, clamping down on the nauseous guilt that rose within him. He was doing his job, and no more. So why did it feel so bad?

A burst of tracer fire arced out from one of the separatist positions on the other side of no man’s land. One of the tracer rounds bounced off the ground and spun through the air. Packer used the scope of his rifle to find out what they were shooting at.

As the flare started to die in the sky overhead, he finally made them out. Three men, half-bent as they scurried back to the Ukrainian lines. The phosphorus glow burnt out. Darkness returned. The night sky was alive with the boom of thunder, the rattle of nearby gunfire, and the acrid smell of smoke.

A terrible cry of pain rang out from the wasteland out front. One of the Ukrainians in the trench with them screamed something, and all the rest opened up into the darkness. The separatists on the other side returned fire, and tracer rounds and real bullets started zipping overhead.

“What about now, Staff Sergeant?” Stu enunciated mockingly. “Is it self-defense yet?”

“Hold your fire, Stu,” Packer growled. “And keep your fucking head down.”

He lay on his front and brought the night vision scope up to his eye. Tracer rounds zipped in bright white across the field of vision. Everything else was a raucous green. He found the runners. There were just two of them now, carrying the third between them. They were only 20 or 30 yards away.

Another line of heavy machine gun fire exploded out of the separatist side, chewing up every square inch of ground around the retreating Ukrainians—but miraculously doing no further harm. Packer swiveled back to its source.

“Long, you see where that’s coming from?” he said evenly. “I see a gunner. About 600 yards. I think he’s aiming at us. You think you can make the shot?”

“Hell yeah,” Stu replied with relish. His weapon scraped against the earth as he took aim. Several seconds passed. Another rasping crackle of machine gun fire.

He squeezed the trigger.

The heavy weapon fell silent.

Packer had no time to celebrate. Panicked, rasping breath sounded just a few feet away like a wounded horse. A man jumped down into the trench, then turned immediately and helped lower a casualty after him. A third man—Chernyak—fell in a moment after in a spray of mud and dirt. He grunted as he hit the floor of the trench but didn’t seem to notice the pain as he instantly turned to put pressure on his friend’s wound.

“Medic!” Packer called out, knowing that it was almost certainly too late. The injured man had a hole the size of a man’s fist ripped out of his side. His uniform was soaked with blood. His eyes bulged in their sockets.

It was done by the time the man arrived. The casualty passed away with no fanfare. Chernyak slumped back against the wall of the trench and threw his helmet aside with disgust.

Packer slipped away as the rest of the Ukrainians gathered around the fallen comrade. It wasn’t his place to join them. Guilt raged like a storm inside him. He returned to Stu, who was keeping watch now that the irregulars were distracted.

“Good shooting,” he said, knowing that his words were as empty as they sounded.

“Yeah,” Stu said without turning. There was no malice in his tone. He knew the score. “And where did it get him?”

35

“Come with me.”

Sasha was white with horror as Trapp stuck his head around the door of their shared cell. He was lying on the top bunk and bolted upright as the door opened. “Where have you been?” he hissed.

“I’m here now,” Trapp said, internally wincing at the state of a man who he had come to think of as something of a friend. There was no doubt that Sasha had both lived through and seen things inside IK-29 that no man should ever have to witness. Death no doubt lurked among that long list. But there was a difference between watching an assault or a prison murder and having to cohabit with a body for the better part of two hours.

Especially as it was already beginning to smell.

The lean inmate scrambled off his bunk and landed a little off-balance in his haste to get out the door. He was already wearing his boots and grabbed his winter coat. He lingered at the door for a moment, turning toward Konstantin and saying, “What about him?”

“What about him?” Trapp repeated, jerking his thumb toward the building’s main entrance. “He’s already dead.”

“What if someone finds him?”

Trapp glanced at Konstantin’s watch. Four minutes had already passed since he’d made his deal with Anton. The clock was ticking. “They won’t. And even if they do, it won’t make any difference.”

I hope.

Sasha was still struggling with his coat’s zipper as Trapp barged back out into the colony’s grounds. There was a slight breeze, carrying on it a few flakes of snow, but it didn’t taste like much more would fall that night.

“Keep your eyes open,” Trapp warned, rotating his shoulder to waggle the AK-47 resting on it in front of Sasha’s eyes. “If you see a guard, let me know. It would be a real bad idea for someone to see me carrying this.”

“He’s here, isn’t he?” Sasha said quietly, barely keeping pace at his side.

“Who?”

“The governor. Mikhail Zayetsev. I heard the helicopter.”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get us out of here,” Trapp said. He checked his watch once again. Another sixty seconds had already passed. Time was quickly slipping away. “Hurry.”

“Us?” Sasha repeated.

“Yes, us,” Trapp said, constantly swiveling his neck in an almost owl-like fashion as he searched for trouble. The camp’s grounds were dead-quiet—as if its inhabitants already suspected trouble. In truth, it would be crazy to expect it to be otherwise. Word travels fast inside a prison. If the kapos didn’t already know what was coming, it wouldn’t take long.

And once they knew, so would the prison administration. Trapp bit the inside of his lip. This whole thing was a powder keg sitting on top of a faulty fuse, just waiting for one wrong move.

And this camp is a tectonic fault line, Trapp thought. Too many actors, too many motives, too many crazies.

“I’m not going to abandon you, Sasha,” Trapp said as they made it toward the building that contained the medical suite. “I promise you.”

Sasha said nothing, though his silence spoke volumes. He clearly did not entirely believe the man at his side. Trapp didn’t blame him. For men like Sasha, prison was a twenty-year college degree in disappointment. Stronger, more powerful men could use and abuse you—because what the hell were you going to do about it?

“Okay,” Trapp said as they reached the building’s main door. He pulled the ushanka hat low over his forehead once again, though he was conscious how paltry a disguise it really was. “The doctor—what’s his name?”

“Nikolai,” Sasha said with an anxious nod. “But I don’t know his surname.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Trapp replied, placing his hand on the door handle. He pushed it down but didn’t yet open the door fully. “Stay close, okay?”

This question earned him a second, more rapid nod of agreement.

Trapp closed his other hand around the hilt of a borrowed knife inside one of the greatcoat’s exterior pockets. He glanced meaningfully at Sasha to communicate his intentions, then yanked the door open quietly but firmly.

The hallway on the other side was lit but empty, the sickly green hallways almost luminescent after the dark of the night. Trapp blinked as his eyes refocused, then stepped inside. He turned his head left and right and exhaled softly once he was satisfied that they were indeed alone. Even the whisper of his breath made him wince.

Sasha stepped through the door after him, tripping over the threshold and letting out a squeak of anxiety as he almost fell over. Trapp grabbed him by the shoulder, held him upright, and repeated his scan a second time.

It didn’t seem like anyone had heard.

This time.

He released Sasha, turning to him with his eyes flashing, and placed one finger over his lips to reinforce the message. His heart was beating fast, and as so often before his body saw danger, it was in fight-or-flight mode. He just knew how to handle it better than his novice counterpart.

Trapp walked softly toward the door he’d left not so long—and yet in another life—earlier, before Konstantin’s death, and everything that had followed. Was Fowler still inside?

Is he even still alive?

The answer to the first question seemed unlikely. And though Trapp didn’t want to think about it, there was a good chance that held true for the second. He stopped in front of the door to the medical wing. It was closed. He glanced left and right to check that the corridor was still empty and saw only Sasha in his eye line.

Trapp pointed at a spot on the ground to indicate where he wanted the Russian to stand. He leaned close and whispered, “When I’m inside, close the door and stay well away from the action. Understand?”

Sasha’s chin jack hammered up and down in response.

On three, Trapp thought, counting down in the privacy of his head. His fingers tightened around the hilt of the blade before he changed his mind and switched to the pistol. A slight scrape of metal was the only sign that this change had been made.

His left hand closed around the door handle. He twisted his body and rested the tip of his left shoulder against the door.

One.

Trapp burst into the medical wing, drawing the pistol in the same movement and leveling it. The room behind was both empty and dark.

“Fuck,” he hissed underneath his breath. This was not good.

He kept the pistol tight to his body and reached for the light switch by the door. It took a couple of seconds for the strip lighting overhead to fizz into life. The room was the same one he’d been in earlier, with the doctor’s computer and observation table—now covered with a fresh sheet of sterile paper.

There was no sign of Nikolai.

Trapp swiveled his frame left and right to confirm his initial suspicion that the room was empty. He swallowed as a wave of adrenaline ended in a momentary head rush of vertigo. Steadying himself, he placed his left foot in front of his right and crept forward into the room.

The examination room had doors on both sides. One, Trapp thought, led to Nikolai’s office. The other he wasn’t so sure. Maybe a storage closet, or perhaps another treatment room.

He picked the office.

Trapp crept forward, knowing that since the medic had no reason to believe he was in any danger, he was unlikely to read much into the sound of the door opening. He planted his feet in front of the door to the office and dragged in a deep breath to steady himself.

A voice called out from behind the frame. “Hello?”

He closed his finger on the door handle.

The voice spoke up again, this time tinged with a little uncertainty. “Is someone there?”

Trapp yanked down on the handle and rammed his shoulder into the door for a second time in as many minutes. He grimaced with pain from the force of the blow as it swung back and took a chunk of plaster out of the drywall behind.

The doctor was sitting on a couch and threw himself back against the cushions when he heard the noise. His pupils were narrowed, and a red indentation on his cheek indicated that he had just been sleeping. “Who the hell—?”

“Shut up, Nikolai,” Trapp said, his voice caustic and threatening. He quickly scanned the office. There was a computer on a cheap metal desk and a telephone just to its side. He pulled the power cables from both, keeping the pistol sighted between the medic’s eyes as he did so.

“Sasha,” he called out without blinking. “Get inside and shut the door behind you.”

A click and a shuffle of footsteps confirmed that his instructions were being carried out.

“It’s you,” Nikolai whispered, his eyes widening as the scales of sleep fell from them.

“That’s right,” Trapp growled. He saw Sasha coming up behind in his peripheral vision but focused instead on the doctor. “I got a job for you. The pay is crap. But it will be good exposure.”

Nikolai’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “What?”

“Forget it,” Trapp said. Without turning, he said, “Sasha—find a medical bag. A big one.”

“What is this all about?” Nikolai demanded, half-rising to his feet. Trapp took a step forward and kicked him back onto the couch—not hard enough to do any damage, but with sufficient force to knock the wind from the man’s lungs.

He took the opportunity to pat the medic down. He was carrying a cell phone, which on first glance appeared to be connected to Wi-Fi but had no cell signal. That made sense. Trapp suspected that the nearest tower was a couple hundred miles away. He dropped it on the floor and crushed it underneath his boot, just to be sure.

When Nikolai regained his breath, he appeared to have received the message that it would be safer to stay silent. He sat on the couch, leaning sideways against the rear cushion, and stared nervously up at his captor.

“Found one,” Sasha said, coming up behind and speaking breathlessly. “Will this—?”

“That’s perfect,” Trapp said, snatching the green medical bag from his cellmate’s hands. The material was faded and ripped, but between the color and the white medical cross emblazoned on all four sides, its purpose was obvious. He tossed it onto the couch by Nikolai.

“What do you want me to do with this?” the man asked, his voice quavering, despite what was clearly intended to be an attempt at bravery.

“Fill it,” Trapp snapped.

“With what?”

“The man the guards brought in here earlier,” Trapp said. “What’s wrong with him?”

Nikolai looked lost for a moment, but a look of understanding resolved on his face. “Hypothermia, for sure. Perhaps an infection. And he needs fluids and proper food.”

“What kind of infection?”

“In his blood,” Nikolai explained.

“Sepsis?” Trapp asked, momentarily shocked. He’d seen men die from the condition, even young ones in the prime of their life.

“It could be.” Nikolai shrugged wanly. His hands were shaking.

Trapp’s jaw tightened. He took a step forward and jammed the barrel of his pistol through the medic’s teeth. The metal scraped against enamel, and he thought he heard a crack as one of them chipped. “I want you to pack everything you need to save his life, you understand?”

Nikolai attempted to say something, but all that came out of his occupied mouth was a jumbled gargle. His eyes were wide with shock.

Slowly, Trapp withdrew the weapon. “Spit it out.”

“I gave him antibiotics,” Nikolai gulped, massaging his lower lip. “Through an IV line. Enough to start fighting the infection. I’m not the one—”

“Save your excuses,” Trapp spat, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Pack what you need to save his life. I don’t care whose fault it is. If you screw up, I’m holding you responsible. Now go!”

As Nikolai stumbled to his feet and commenced on a supermarket sweep, Trapp turned to Sasha—though he kept his attention on the hapless doctor just in case.

“How you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Sasha said, though he didn’t look it.

Trapp glanced at Nikolai, who had his hands full of IV lines that he was packing into the bag. He reversed the pistol in his hands. “You know how to fire one of these things?”

“My grandfather taught me to hunt,” Sasha said, holding the weapon as though it were a hot coal.

“With a rifle?”

“And shotguns, for the birds. But I’ve never fired one of these.”

“Same principle,” Trapp said, pointing out the relevant parts. “The safety is off. You pull this thing, and this part goes bang.”

“Okay,” Sasha said, his Adam’s apple tightening. “What do you want me to do?”

“Are you prepared to kill a man, Sasha?”

“What?” he squeaked.

“I need to know I can count on you,” Trapp said. “If it comes to it. If you can’t do it, tell me now, and I will find another way. But if you think you can—I need to be sure you’ll follow through.”

The Russian considered the question—and perhaps what it meant for his life—for a very long time. At long last, he nodded. “Yes. I’ll do what you ask.”

“Good.”

Looking up, Trapp saw that Nikolai was now standing only a few feet away. He was holding up the medical bag, as if in sacrificial offering. “I’m ready,” he said.

“Okay,” Trapp muttered, glancing at his watch. Only sixteen minutes remained of the time that Anton had promised him. He needed to hurry things up.

He looked up at Nikolai. “Do what I say, and I’ll let you live. Try and escape, and I’ll snap your neck. Understood?”

Nikolai nodded furiously.

“Then let’s go.”

36

Nikolai’s sneaker-clad foot slipped on a patch of refrozen slush, and he tumbled to the ground, landing with a gasp of air on top of his medical bag.

“Careful with that,” Trapp warned, yanking the man’s arm and pulling him upright. “Is anything in there fragile?”

“It’s fine,” Nikolai gasped, evidently terrified by his current predicament. “I packed it carefully.”

“You better hope so,” Trapp said. “Remember what I told you.”

“How can I forget?” Nikolai said almost plaintively.

The truth was, Trapp wasn’t the kind of guy who would simply execute the doctor in cold blood. But it was better for everyone if he didn’t know that.

“Come on,” Trapp said, casting another anxious look at his watch. Only nine minutes remained, and time was slipping away fast. It would take them at least three minutes to reach the pathway to B wing, another minute—best case—to unlock the gates and cross to the other side. That left only five for everything else.

“What you want from me?” Nikolai asked, clutching the bag to his chest and panting as he struggled to keep pace.

“You got a call from the warden,” Trapp explained. “There’s been a problem with the prisoner you examined earlier on. Zayetsev needs you inside right away. You do the talking, you understand? If they even look at me, make sure you steal their focus back. Sasha is here to assist you. I am just the muscle.”

“But won’t they know he wasn’t called?” Sasha protested from alongside. He’d stashed the pistol in a side pocket and had his hand pressed against his jacket as if he was scared that if he jostled it the wrong way it might go off.

“Thanks for pointing out my plan is full of holes.” Trapp grinned sardonically. “I only need them distracted for a few seconds.”

He didn’t explain why, but judging from the pallid look on Sasha’s face, he understood.

They reached the gate that led to B wing three minutes later, just as Trapp had expected. Six minutes remained. Trapp reached into his inside pocket for Konstantin’s keychain and selected the only key that looked to fit. He inserted it into the lock, and it turned without complaint.

“Give Sasha the bag,” Trapp said in a low growl before the three of them stepped into the gated pathway.

“What?” Nikolai exclaimed.

“Just do it,” Trapp said, grabbing the bag and handing it to Sasha. His presence would be easier to explain if he was holding something vaguely medical-looking. “Now open up your coat. Take the zipper down all the way.”

“I’ll freeze!”

“Not in a couple of minutes, you won’t,” Trapp said, casting a glance down to the end of the pathway. The lights on the exterior of B wing were blazing, and the silhouette of the helicopter was visible from the other side.

Nikolai did as he was instructed, revealing his dark green scrubs underneath. Trapp eyed him critically and nodded, deciding that at first glance the medic would pass as exactly what he was.

“Come on,” Trapp said, ushering both men into the pathway and pushing the doctor out front. He let Sasha follow up and took the rear. As he waited for the two men to build up a lead of a couple of steps, he reached up and loosened the strap of the Kalashnikov on his shoulder so that it would be easier to maneuver into position if it was needed.

When, he thought blackly. Because for all his attempts at subterfuge, they would buy him a few moments at best. This was always going to end in violence.

“Sasha,” he said, keeping his voice quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry. “Let me do the shooting unless I tell you otherwise, okay?”

“Okay,” the Russian agreed gladly, bobbing his head as his boots crunched over the less-worn snow at the bottom of the path.

Between the bright security lights and the gate at the far end of the pathway, it was difficult to determine whether anyone was on watch. But Trapp knew there had to be.

His suspicions were confirmed a moment later.

A voice cried out in harsh Russian, “Who is that?”

“Faster,” Trapp urged both his companions. He checked how much time he had to work with. Five minutes. Not nearly enough.

“Nikolai,” Trapp ordered. “Tell him you’re the doctor. Don’t say why you’re here.”

Nikolai raised his voice and relayed the message, and all the while they made up ground on the gate at the other end. It was only a dozen yards away now. Then ten.

“What do you want?” the guard snapped. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Keep walking,” Trapp said softly. The man sounded irritated without seeming particularly perturbed by their arrival. Just like Nikolai himself a few minutes earlier, it was hard for anyone to believe any real danger could lurk in this camp, so far from civilization. Zayetsev’s bodyguards would think the prison was secure.

“Tell him,” he whispered. “And put pressure on him when we get to the gate. Tell him a man’s life is on the line.”

Nikolai regurgitated his instructions, telling the guard what Trapp had ordered him to.

They reached the gate. Only a single man stood watch at the other end, on their side of the fencing. He wasn’t wearing the same uniform as Trapp. In fact, he was dressed in a dark wool overcoat that went past his knees and a matching beanie on his head. A submachine gun hung on a sling around his neck. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a flashlight, which he clicked on and directed at their faces.

Trapp breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that this guy must be on Zayetsev’s personal detail. Unlike the camp’s usual guards, he would have no way of recognizing that he wasn’t who he said he was.

“Nobody told me about this,” the man snapped angrily. He made no move to unlock the gate. “I’ll have to call for instructions.”

“There’s no time!” Nikolai protested. He improvised and grabbed the bag from Sasha’s hands. He unzipped the flap at the top and held the contents up to the gate. From where Trapp was standing, he could see the flashlight’s beam pass over a tangle of IV lines.

“The prisoner your boss is interrogating is dying right now. You want to explain to him that he died because you got in my way?”

Bravo, Trapp thought as he watched the doc’s performance. He raised an eyebrow. It was Oscar-worthy. He actually seemed angry—like a real doctor would—instead of the shit-scared, snivelling speck of dog mess he really was.

“I’ll—” the guard repeated.

“I don’t have time for this,” Nikolai snapped. He turned to Trapp and said, “Guard! Unlock this damn gate now.”

“Da,” Trapp agreed, keeping his response as minimal as possible. He already had the right key prepared, so he stepped forward and placed it in the lock.

“Stop!” the guard ordered. He raised his weapon but gestured with it instead of aiming. “Don’t take another step.”

A crack from behind Trapp caught the man’s attention. His forehead collapsed into a mass of lines as his brain visibly attempted to process what he’d just heard.

Anton, you asshole, Trapp thought glumly. You couldn’t wait another damn minute?

He acted quickly because that was the only option left to him. While the guard was distracted, he took a step back and swung the AK-47 off his shoulder. The man’s focus was stolen a moment longer as a half dozen crackles of what was unmistakably gunfire erupted in the main body of the camp. It was a real Fourth of July party out there.

A second too late, his peripheral vision warned of a more immediate threat. The barrel of the submachine gun started to rise through the air.

But by then it was too late. Trapp barely had to aim the rifle at this range. He squeezed the trigger and fired.

A single round punched a hole through the man’s coat just under his left shoulder. He spun around, and instantly blood painted the white snow at his feet. Trapp didn’t allow himself to stop. There was a chance that the shot hadn’t been heard from inside B wing. The walls were thick and the inhabitants otherwise occupied.

It wasn’t a big one, though.

And the longer the gunfire echoed from the main camp, the less chance there was. Trapp tried to cast his mind back to what he’d seen of the building’s security system. He couldn’t remember whether or not he’d seen anything to indicate it was tied in to the prison at large, but reasoned there was no way it couldn’t be.

He twisted the key in the lock and shoved the gate aside. It jangled against the fence and swung back a few inches, but by that time he’d already stormed through.

“Sasha,” he snapped, voice urgent without being panicked. “Draw your weapon.”

“Okay,” the Russian replied, his reply strangled.

Trapp glanced at the helicopter. The blades were presently still, but the engine was firing up, so that wouldn’t last long.

“With me,” he said. When Nikolai didn’t move, seemingly transfixed by the bloody ice at his feet, he grabbed the man by the shoulder. “Both of you.”

He brought the stock of the AK-47 back to his shoulder and strode toward the chopper. He needed to make sure it wasn’t under guard. He suspected it wasn’t, since if it had been, someone would doubtless have tried to shoot him by now. Trapp slowed as he reached the chopper’s rear side door. He sidled up beside the pilot’s entrance, pulled the door open, and stepped back.

Two sets of terrified eyes greeted him. Both pilots were male. Neither said a word.

“Sasha,” he said loudly. “Get in the back. If either of these men do anything you don’t like, shoot one of them. This bird only needs one pilot. Understood?”

“Yes,” Sasha replied with a surprising amount of conviction. “I look forward to it.”

Trapp wondered whether it was real or faked and decided he didn’t care—just so long as the pilots believed it to be true. And since they had both just watched him eliminate one of Zayetsev’s bodyguards, it was clear they meant business.

“Get the rotors turning,” he said. “But if they try and lift off, remember what I said.”

“You got it.” Sasha nodded.

“You,” he said, grabbing Nikolai by the arm with his free hand. The man followed numbly as Sasha climbed into the rear of the chopper.

“What are you going to do with me?” he moaned.

“Nothing,” Trapp replied. “Just so long as you keep your damn mouth shut and do exactly as I say. Do we understand each other?”

Nikolai nodded. It was apparent he didn’t trust Trapp, but that fact was irrelevant so long as he believed his chances of survival were greater by working with him rather than against.

“Wait,” Trapp said.

He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired half a dozen rounds at various targets, taking a second or so to steady his aim before squeezing the trigger each time. One by one, the security lights and cameras that dotted the building’s exterior exploded into a shower of shattered glass and sparks.

He missed the last light, grimaced, and adjusted his aim. The light was on a pillar on the fence and wasn’t shining directly at him, which made it difficult to accurately judge the correct angle. He fired twice more and was rewarded as the B wing compound descended into total blackness.

“Nikolai…” Trapp called softly as he heard the gentle crunch of footsteps in the night. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Nowhere,” came a defeated reply.

“Good.” Trapp checked that the man was watching, raised his arm, and pointed at the compound’s main door. “You see that? Go stand ten feet in front of it.”

“Why?” Nikolai asked, visibly reticent. His body language was stiff, and his feet remained planted on the ground.

Trapp gestured with the AK-47, aware that a full minute had already passed since the shooting started. A smart protective detail might attempt to go on the front foot—especially if they knew there was only one attacker. He didn’t have time for this.

“Just do as I say,” he growled. “Before you make me change my mind.”

37

Trapp crouched on one knee and dumped the half-spent magazine from his rifle. He loaded a fresh one and with the fingers of his free hand unbuttoned his borrowed greatcoat to free his access to the shotgun stowed by his chest. The night’s bitter chill instantly scythed through his remaining layers, swiftly draining his body heat. His fingers, exposed to the cold this entire time, felt like icicles. Trapp had no doubt that the longer this went on, the worse his aim would get.

“I just stand here?” Nikolai yelped in a nervous, high-pitched voice. The camp doctor was clutching his medical bag to his chest as if for comfort.

“You just stand there and keep your mouth shut,” Trapp confirmed. “The second part is just as important as the first.”

He was parallel with B wing’s outer wall with his rifle aimed directly at the recessed entrance he’d gone through several days earlier. He was crouching with a two-foot gap from the wall, which gave him an improved firing angle. Someone could hide in the recess, but they would struggle to get a bead on him without exposing themselves—and Trapp backed himself to be quicker on the draw.

But only if Zayetsev committed his men to battle.

If he decided not to, and holed up inside instead, then the odds would significantly worsen. Either Trapp could freeze to death out here—and risk the main camp’s guards getting the upper hand in their fight with Anton—or he would be forced to breach a fortified building containing an unknown number of armed men all on his own.

He barely got a second’s warning.

The keypad on the outside of the compound’s thick steel door beeped to signify that it had been unlocked from the inside. The hinges were well-oiled, and Trapp barely heard it inch open. His jaw tightened, and a frozen finger caressed the AK’s trigger.

A voice murmured something inaudible from inside the building. Trapp guessed that meant there were at least two shooters.

Then a shape stepped into the darkness. He almost missed it, but the man’s boot crunched against the snow, which gave his eyes something to focus on. The silhouette was only a few feet away—impossible to miss.

But Trapp didn’t dare fire without identification. There remained the slight possibility that Zayetsev might have sent Fowler out to act as a canary in the coal mine.

“Viktor, are you out there?”

Trapp relaxed. The voice most definitely didn’t belong to his friend. He figured Viktor was the bodyguard he’d just shot.

Sorry buddy. Viktor ain’t coming back.

“Who is that?” the shape called anxiously, twisting and aiming at the space Nikolai was presently occupying.

Trapp squeezed the trigger three times. He didn’t care much for the medic’s personality, but knew he needed to keep him alive for at least a little longer, if only for Fowler’s sake. The crackle of gunfire split through a momentary lull in fighting in the main camp. The figure was dead before he hit the ground.

Nikolai screamed.

A loud bang echoed from the main body of the prison. Despite all of his training and experience, Trapp was unable to prevent himself from indulging the human reaction of looking over to see what had caused it. For a moment, it was impossible to tell. And then a fiery blaze erupted behind a window on the second floor of the main administration building.

He snapped his attention back to the threat right in front of him, but almost a second too late. Half a dozen flashes erupted from the recessed doorway into B wing. Trapp instinctively threw himself to the ground and returned fire. The incoming gunshots were poorly aimed, which suggested that whoever was on the other side of the door had simply extended their rifle around the corner and squeezed the trigger.

“Nikolai—get down!” Trapp yelled during a momentary break in the gunfire. It took the man a second to respond, but he dived onto the snow hard enough to elicit an audible groan of pain.

Trapp switched the Kalashnikov to full automatic. He knew there were almost twenty rounds left inside the magazine—and he intended to fire all of them.

The shooter inside B wing opened fire again. Again, the gunfire was wayward, mostly ending up somewhere far to Trapp’s left. The second the man’s weapon ran dry, Trapp leapt up and started shooting. He squeezed off half the remaining rounds in his magazine in a single burst of fire, paused for a little under two seconds in which he advanced about half the distance that separated him from the building’s entrance, and then opened fire once more.

By the time the Kalashnikov’s action clicked to signify the weapon was empty, he was only a couple of feet away from the gunman inside, separated only by a thick concrete corner.

Trapp slung the AK-47 back over his shoulder and reached into the greatcoat in the same move. He plucked the weapon out of the internal pocket and caught it in midair, racking a shell as he brought it up into firing position. The clip contained about half a dozen shells, and he had several more on his person.

But instead of advancing around the corner, he simply waited.

The fire in the administrative building was roaring by now. His peripheral vision told him that it had already advanced into several more rooms and would likely consume the entire block before too much longer, leaving only a concrete husk when the flames burnt out. Occasional strings of gunfire echoed from the main prison, but they were becoming fewer and fewer. Trapp dreaded to imagine why.

He just waited.

Trapp could hear the other shooter’s terrified panting now—just a few feet away—and fought a battle with his own body to restrain the same response. He wanted the man scared, because fearful people make bad choices.

His opponent was proving that right now. The guy should have just retreated. He had no way of achieving a firing angle without exposing himself—and he had to know that Trapp would turn him into a pincushion before he succeeded in finding one.

But he didn’t.

He stuck his weapon around the corner again, too scared to face the threat head on and too dumb to do the only thing that might have saved him.

Trapp held the shotgun tight, keeping his stance loose to absorb what was going to be a hell of a kick. And before the opposing shooter’s finger squeezed his weapon’s trigger, he got there first.

The blocky Soviet-era shotgun kicked like a meth-addicted mule. The ignition of the shell did what felt like a decade’s worth damage to his eardrums and tore a hefty chunk out of the concrete behind which the shooter was hiding.

And judging from the sound of metal scraping against concrete, it physically tore his weapon out of his hand.

Maybe the fingers, too, Trapp thought.

He made to pump the shotgun’s forestock back, then reversed his action at the last moment and did it the Russian way. It was counterintuitive, but a new shell fell into place, and Trapp took two quicksteps to his left, keeping the bulk of his body shielded behind the concrete wall, and aimed the weapon into the dark hallway behind.

The shooter was on the floor, clutching a bloodied stump of a hand to his chest. It was difficult to tell how much flesh remained, but he definitely wouldn’t be doing much oil painting for a while. He was panting like a wounded horse, sucking in panicked, keening breaths.

Trapp oriented the weapon upward so the cone of buckshot wouldn’t cut the body at his feet into bits. The guy would be mutilated for the rest of his life. But if he made smart choices, he didn’t have to die.

He fired a second time, funneling a hail of death into the dark hallway. A flash emanated from the shotgun’s barrel, momentarily lighting up the space. As far as he could tell, it was empty. And whoever Zayetsev had with him would probably be dissuaded from advancing by the sound of shrapnel carving chunks from the hallway’s walls.

He racked a third round and took a step forward into the doorway.

“Nikolai,” he called urgently. “With me. Now!”

Looking down, he saw that the shooter at his feet was losing blood fast. He crouched, meaning to see if there was anything he could do to help, and almost didn’t catch the movement. The casualty reached with his functioning left hand, and Trapp watched in slow motion as the man’s fingers closed around the grip of a pistol holstered on his thigh.

Without taking time to think, Trapp dropped the barrel of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. For a third time, a boom echoed, worse now that he was in a more confined space. His head rang.

And the bodyguard at his feet no longer had one.

“Nikolai!” Trapp yelled, not bothering with silence now. The enemy could hardly fail to know that he was coming. “What’s the damn holdup?”

“I’m coming,” the man yelped, his feet scuffling as they slid on the snow. He crept toward Trapp, still clutching the bag to his chest as if attempting to hide behind it.

Trapp didn’t think it would stop a bullet, but if it kept the guy happy—and more importantly, moving—he wasn’t about to tell him.

“Stay a step behind me at all times, you understand? If you move into my field of fire, that’s on you. I promise you it won’t end well.”

The Russian nodded as though the top of his head was on a puppeteer’s string.

“Good,” Trapp said. He racked the fourth shell into the shotgun, then crouched behind cover for a moment to reload the rifle. Before he left the shooter at his feet, he reached for the pistol the man was stretching for in his final moments and pocketed it. “Let’s go.”

He stepped into the darkness, moving cautiously now he was inside the building. Any SWAT team trainer or Delta operator would tell you that you should never try and clear an enemy building alone. But he didn’t have the luxury of backup.

Fuck, but it was dark. And did Nikolai have to be so damn loud?

What did you just say about fearful men?

Trapp attempted to calm himself. He was seeing monsters in every shadow, and there were a whole lot of those. He remembered that Konstantin had had a flashlight and cursed himself for not checking whether he was carrying it earlier. As he crept forward, heart battering against his rib cage, he patted his pockets down.

There.

He withdrew the metal cylinder from an internal pocket. It was about the size of a beer bottle, and it took a moment to find out how to turn it on. Suddenly, everywhere he turned was bathed in light.

Okay, better.

How many men would Zayetsev have with him, Trapp wondered as he moved forward with a little more purpose. A pair of closed doorways were coming up about ten feet away. They faced each other, which meant his choices were either to leave them unexplored—and potentially leave a shooter free to pump his six full of lead, or to clear the rooms that lay behind.

That option, of course, meant that while he was clearing one, an enemy could surprise him from behind. Trapp’s mind spun with all the possibilities.

The chopper looked like it could take at least five passengers. Probably six, if they were packed in like sardines.

But was that likely?

Trapp figured that Zayetsev would be a vain man. He knew the type. Individuals with that much wealth and power didn’t like sitting shoulder to shoulder with other, lesser men.

If he had to bet, then he would go with Zayetsev having brought a three-man detail with him. Maybe four, but definitely not five. He’d killed one of them so far—the man at the gate. The two men he’d just disposed of were ordinary camp guards.

“Okay then,” he murmured underneath his breath to steady himself. “That leaves three. Two if I’m lucky.”

“What?” Nikolai asked with a toddler’s sense of place and time.

“Nothing,” Trapp snapped.

Where would they be? Probably Fowler’s cell, but that wasn’t certain. Would a man like Zayetsev retreat to a fetid little hellhole like that? It was possible—especially if he was forced to suffer the indignity in service of degrading another man. But Trapp couldn’t be sure.

Which in turn meant that he could not simply leave those two doorways unexplored.

And worse still, he couldn’t just open the door a crack and squeeze the shotgun’s trigger, letting the buckshot do the messy work, because Fowler might be behind any of these doors.

“Shit,” Trapp hissed. He loosened his grip on the shotgun and stowed it back inside his coat, switching the firearm out for the pistol. It was an infinitely less comforting weapon than the hefty shotgun. But firing it didn’t risk blending his friend’s skull, which was definitely a bonus.

He crossed the flashlight over the pistol and pressed his wrists together for stability.

“Nikolai,” he said, gesturing at the door to his right. “I need you to open that.”

“What?” he squeaked.

“Just do it.”

The doctor stretched out a trembling right hand, keeping his left arm crossed over the bag at his chest. It settled on the door handle.

“When I say so,” Trapp whispered.

Nikolai nodded.

Trapp moved into position. He checked that the pistol’s safety was off, took a deep breath, and said, “Now!”

38

Trapp fired a single round from the pistol as the door opened, aiming high just in case a friendly face was sheltering behind it. The second the beam of the flashlight played out over the room’s contents, he relaxed.

If only for a second.

It was just a storeroom. Shelves of cleaning products and clean rags stared back at him.

He swiveled instantly, knowing that he was vulnerable from behind. He jerked his chin at the doorway opposite, and Nikolai did what he wanted without needing to be coaxed through the steps. He twisted the door handle, and it swung open a couple of inches, but instead of pushing it back, he stepped away.

Fuck, Trapp thought, knowing that if anyone was behind it, the element of surprise was now long gone. His mouth was bone dry from the effects of a relentless dose of adrenaline. He kicked the door and covered half his body behind the frame as he surveyed what lay behind.

Again, the room was empty. It contained two metal desks, and not a whole lot else.

Trapp didn’t stop moving. He turned back to the main hallway, uncomfortably aware that in the time that it’d taken to clear both rooms, anyone could have snuck up on him without him noticing. The hallway led up to a corner about ten feet away. He clicked the flashlight off, grabbed Nikolai’s shoulder to get him to stop, and just listened.

Three shooters, he thought. Plus Zayetsev and Fowler. So where the hell is everybody?

All he heard was silence. Unless he was being stalked by a wraith, then there was no one waiting around that corner.

Unless they were just as good as he was.

Screw it, he thought.

He would have to chance it. He didn’t have time to mess around. The longer he waited, the higher the chance that either Makarov or someone else from the main prison would get a message out. They were only a hundred miles or so from the nearest settlement, and a little more than twice that from the closest major town. This was oil country. Even if the police didn’t have access to helicopters, someone would—which meant he couldn’t afford to take his time.

Trapp crept toward the apex of the corner. He paused for a second in near-total darkness, priming himself for what he needed to do. Then before he could talk himself out of it, he jump-stepped to his right, throwing himself into a crouch against the far wall. The flashlight clicked on.

Again, the hallway was empty.

“Fuck,” he swore, panting hard as adrenaline assailed his nervous system. His palms were sweaty with tension. He wiped the left, then the right, never allowing the barrel of the pistol to drop.

He thought back to his previous visit to this place. The security office was up on his right. If a guard was lying in wait for him, that would be a natural place to do it. He itched to bring out the shotgun once more but knew he couldn’t. Not until he had Fowler safe in his possession.

Fourteen rounds remained in the pistol magazine. It was the same model as Konstantin’s, which meant he had three spare mags in an inside pocket.

If you have to fire that many, then something has gone horribly wrong…

Trapp stiffened as he heard the chopper’s engine build to a whine outside. It sounded as though the bird was about to take off. Could Sasha be about to betray him like that?

“Is he—?” Nikolai hissed.

“Shut the hell up,” Trapp said.

He waited for a moment, ready to sprint back outside and do what he could to prevent the helicopter from lifting off. But after a couple of seconds, the engine noise died. Maybe they were just warming it up, or one of the pilots had tried to test how much rope Sasha was giving him.

Trapp put it out of his mind.

“Keep moving,” he whispered.

He placed one foot after another, pushing through as much resistance as his brain was capable of generating—which was a hell of a lot. There is nothing natural about walking into danger. No matter how often you do it, it never gets easier. He gulped.

The security office was just a few feet away now. Again, the damn door was closed. He cursed silently. Charging through a doorway was the moment of greatest vulnerability. The enemy knew exactly when you were coming, and if they were a halfway decent shot, then they could kill you before you got a chance to repay the favor.

“Okay, kid,” he whispered to himself. “Go.”

He didn’t trust in Nikolai’s flimsy attempts this time. He twisted the door handle and kicked it inward but didn’t instantly enter. He sheltered behind the door frame as he brought the pistol up to a firing position.

This time, it happened a second too late.

His eyes picked up the flash of a bullet being fired. He didn’t actually hear the sound until the bullet hit him, tugging at his left shoulder and yanking him back half a step. The pain neurons weren’t yet firing, and his body instinctually brought the pistol up half an inch and a little to the right as it acquired a target.

Trapp squeezed the trigger three times. The first shot went awry, missing the shooter by little more than a hair’s breadth. The second two ran true, landing in the man’s chest and spinning him around.

He squeezed the trigger a fourth time, aiming a little lower, but by now his target had disappeared behind the security desk. He fired again, and the slug drilled through a computer monitor, which momentarily flickered with electrical sparks before it toppled to the floor.

Only now did the pain in his arm flare, though it remained muted. Mostly he sensed a sticky wetness in his armpit as the blood trickled down from the shoulder wound and coagulated in his wool coat. He experimented with moving the joint, and while doing so elicited flashes of agony, his range of motion wasn’t restricted—physically, anyway.

Trapp shook it off. He wasn’t about to die, he was certain of that much. The blood loss felt minimal, which meant he could categorize this problem in the serious, but not urgent quadrant.

“Stay where you are,” he said, glancing over his shoulder and fixing Nikolai with a short but meaningful glare.

Without waiting for a response, Trapp took a step left and pivoted to his right in order to clear the rest of the room. No one else fired at him, which he took as a good sign.

Slowly, he crept farther into the security office. It was a little messier than he remembered, especially after the scuffle that had just taken place. The desk was a little askew, maybe kicked aside as the shooter fell.

Trapp kept the pistol steady. He was doing fine for ammunition. He moved a pace to his right, sidestepping a gray filing cabinet which blocked his path. He played the beam of the flashlight side to side as he searched for the fallen gunman. His heart was still pounding, though the unpleasant metallic tang of adrenaline at the back of his throat was starting to fade.

Even so, anxiety built within him with every step he took. It would only take one misstep for an injured shooter to put a bullet through his forehead. Perhaps the man was even wearing a plate carrier. He might only be winded.

He stopped dead, and the flashlight beam halted as it hit flesh. A leg was sticking out from behind the desk. Specifically, a black leather loafer, now painted an incandescent electric white.

Not exactly IK-29 standard chic…

One of Zayetsev’s bodyguards, then. That left one or two max. Plus an unknown number of prison guards. But Trapp still suspected that he’d killed the only ones who would have been present. As far as he knew, there were never more than two in this facility at any one time.

Trapp surveyed the furniture arrayed in front of them. If he moved another couple of feet forward, then a man lying on the floor would be able to make an angle that would put a bullet through his head. His own aim would be blocked by the desk for a moment longer.

Screw that, he thought.

An idea struck him, immediately occasioning a disgusted grimace. He had standards, didn’t he?

You can’t help Fowler if you’re dead.

Figuring it was better to rip off the Band-Aid, he simply took aim and squeezed off a single round. The bullet went through the leather sole about an inch and a quarter from the tip of the shoe. Low enough down that he was certain he would hit flesh. The foot rocked backward in an unnatural fashion, and a scrap of material tore right off it.

“Ugh,” Trapp muttered as he confirmed that the shooter was in fact dead—and had been for a little while. Or if not, he was hell of an actor.

Nah, nobody’s that good.

Trapp’s chin sagged against his chest for a moment as exhaustion tugged at his limbs. It wasn’t so much physical as mental. This had been one hell of a day—and for all he knew it was only just getting started. No man could take much more of this and come out whole on the other side.

But that was a problem that future Jason would have to tangle with. Just like always.

“What are you?” Nikolai mumbled as he exited the now-cleared security office. His eyes were stricken with fear.

That just about summed it up, Trapp thought. Not who, but what.

“C’mon,” Trapp said, clearing his parched throat. He ejected the half-spent pistol mag and caught it in midair, holding it for a second as he pushed a new one home. He stored it in an empty chest pocket with the one he’d ejected from the Kalashnikov earlier, just in case.

The stairwell down to the cells was only a few yards away. Just past it was a section of hallway that Trapp had not explored on his previous visit. There was only one door leading off it.

He stopped dead, indecision written on his face. The unknown doorway was far enough from the passageway down to the cellblock that a smart enemy would have time to take him from the rear if he cleared it before heading down to Fowler’s cell.

But if he went down to the basement, then anyone behind the door would be able to stroll past without a care in the world.

Another fucking Catch-22.

Trapp turned to head downstairs, his heartstrings tugged by a desire to save his friend—no matter the consequences—before he stopped himself. He couldn’t risk it.

He pointed to the floor. “Lie flat,” he told Nikolai.

“Why?” The medic frowned anxiously, eyes darting from side to side.

“So you don’t get shot.”

His blunt tone got the message through faster than any other approach would have. Nikolai dropped to the ground and interlaced his fingers behind his head for good measure. Trapp wasn’t sure why he did that second part, but he didn’t argue. The corners of his mouth even kinked up a little in amusement.

He set the flashlight on the floor before reaching for the shotgun inside his coat. Next he ejected the clip and extracted the topmost shotgun shell. He bit off the top of the casing and dumped only the buckshot onto the floor before feeding the shell back into the top position in the clip and racking it. He hefted the weapon in his left hand but kept the pistol in his right.

“Here goes nothing,” he murmured to himself. He glanced down at the flashlight. There was no way he could carry all three items, and though his night vision was by now comprehensively torched, he wasn’t willing to give up either of the weapons. His eyes searched toward the end of the hallway. There was a bank of light switches just outside the door in question.

He edged toward it, moving as silently as he was able and as quickly as he dared. Occasionally, the ball bearing-like buckshot crunched between the soles of his boots and the concrete hallway floor, causing him to wince at the warning the sound provided to anyone inside.

Trapp made it to the doorway and paused, still not entirely sure how he was going to play this. For a second time the chopper engine powered up outside, causing his heart to race faster. But he ignored it. More to the point, he simply didn’t have either the time or energy to face up to yet another problem.

With his left forearm, he nudged all three available switches into what he hoped was the “on” position. He whispered a silent prayer, then kicked the door in, darting back the moment he applied the blow. Light streamed out.

A flurry of gunshots greeted the movement. Trapp thought he felt one of them pass just a few inches from his cheek, but it might just have been the result of an overactive imagination.

He waited for the gunfire to momentarily fade away, then took a risk. He extended his left arm—the one gripping the shotgun—toward the door. The barrel of the weapon extended a full foot inside the room.

And he fired. The shell erupted in a concussive blast, far louder than it had sounded outside now that it was confined within four walls. Even Trapp was briefly stunned by the explosion, which reminded him of a flashbang detonation.

A man’s voice erupted in a strangled squeal of terror inside.

Trapp took it as his cue to act and dropped the shotgun to the floor, switching it out for the pistol which he gripped with both hands. His wounded shoulder ached with the motion, but the pain was subsiding. It couldn’t be too bad.

He sucked in a deep breath and spun around the doorway.

39

Electric light blazed from inside the room and assaulted Trapp’s dilated pupils. It took him almost a full second to react—an eternity in combat. The room contained a conference table and about eight chairs. Several of them were askew, as though their inhabitants had departed in a hurry.

There was also one other occupant. He was wearing a similar dark overcoat to the bodyguard Trapp had encountered outside. The guy’s head was shaved right down to the skin and gleamed in the overhead light. His right hand was clamped to his ear, from which an evident trickle of blood was escaping.

“Drop it!” Trapp roared the second he saw the submachine gun cradled to the bodyguard’s gut as the man attempted to rise to face this new threat.

Perhaps he either didn’t—or couldn’t—hear the order. But either way, the skinhead tried bringing the barrel of the weapon up in Trapp’s direction.

It was the last thing he ever did.

Trapp squeezed the trigger of his own pistol twice. Both rounds impacted his opponent’s center mass. The first stopped him in his tracks. The second spun him around. He collapsed to one knee, no longer facing in Trapp’s direction. The weapon dropped limply from fingers that were now clearly ignoring his brain’s orders and fell to the floor.

Then he slumped to his side. His chest was still heaving in fast, labored breaths, but the end was clearly near. With one eye on the body, Trapp quickly scanned the rest of the room. It appeared empty.

“You dumb bastard,” he said, grimacing as he strode toward what was now clearly a corpse. He kicked the weapon aside out of instinct, and quickly dropped to one knee to search the body for any additional weapons.

That’s when he saw them.

The whites of a pair of terrified eyes gleaming back at him from within the gloom underneath the room’s conference table. The man’s features were difficult to make out, but the cut of his suit was plain to see.

Trapp quickly shifted his aim, finding a new target. His face took on a mirthless smile. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Mikhail.”

At long last, he had some leverage.

He reached underneath the table and dragged Mikhail Zayetsev, governor of Irkutsk Oblast, out by the scruff of his neck. The man didn’t resist, but only since he appeared to be hyperventilating. Trapp quickly patted him down, finding nothing more deadly than a cell phone, which he tossed aside, and a thin black wallet which met the same fate. He wasn’t armed.

“What you want?” Zayetsev muttered, his tone pleading. “Who are you?”

“Listen, buddy,” Trapp said. “I don’t have time for this, okay? Just keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything dumb and we’ll be best friends. I’m guessing you don’t want to die, and I don’t want to kill you, so we have that in common.”

Zayetsev’s tongue was numb with shock. “You—?”

Trapp jabbed the barrel of the pistol into the back of the man’s right kidney hard enough to elicit a moan of pain. He kept his left hand gripped around the back of the Russian’s neck as he guided him toward the door. He was glad his prisoner was walking in front of him, as his own face was presently twisted with pain from the hole in his shoulder.

Instinct warned him of the sound a moment before his conscious mind was alerted to it. He froze just before he would have exited the conference room’s doorway. It was the scuffle of footsteps on concrete.

Could it be Nikolai?

If that rat bastard is trying to run…

He pulled Zayetsev back a foot and leaned his mouth toward the man’s right ear, digging the muzzle of the pistol into his skin hard enough to ward off any urge to play the hero. He went in close enough that his lips grazed Zayetsev’s skin and spoke in a whisper.

“Remember what I said. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You understand?”

Zayetsev nodded.

“Good,” Trapp continued, still speaking softly but urgently. He released his grasp on the man’s clothing but didn’t pull back. “Interlace your fingers behind your head. When I tell you, you walk out that doorway. If you try and run, you’ll go the same way as your employee down there.”

Both men glanced at the corpse on the floor. The former bodyguard’s sightless eyes stared up at them. Trapp thought he heard Zayetsev’s throat produce a quiver of fear. The man swiftly did as he was instructed.

“Nice and slow,” Trapp said, giving him a push to reinforce the order.

The governor shuffled out of the conference room on legs made of Jell-O. Trapp followed close behind, using Zayetsev’s body as a shield. The smell hit him first: smoke thick enough to tickle the back of his throat.

Then he saw him.

It was Chase Fowler, live and in the flesh. Yet another man wearing a dark suit—this time without an accompanying overcoat—held him tight. He had a gun aimed at Fowler’s temple. Nikolai was stuck in no-man’s land between two competing sets of gunmen. The medic wept silently onto the floor.

Trapp winced as he stared at his friend. “Well, shit…”

Fowler’s eyes flared with recognition at the sound of Trapp’s voice, though there was no hiding how weak he now was. Judging by the stance of the guard holding him up, the man was supporting the best part of his weight. His face was pallid, his eyes sunken holes in a once-healthy face.

But he still sounded just the same. “I guess I wasn’t dreaming after all.”

40

The guard behind Fowler yelled and kneed him in the back of his legs while spewing a stream of unintelligible Russian curse words. Chase stumbled and almost fell. Trapp thought about switching his aim and taking a shot at the hostage-taker, but the guard quickly realized his mistake and pulled Fowler back toward him.

“Maybe it would be better if you were,” Trapp said softly.

Still, things weren’t all bad. In fact, depending what prescription lenses you were wearing, they could even be described as looking up. Fowler was still alive. A helicopter was waiting just outside to spirit both of them out of this place, and a doctor was conveniently lying on the floor between them to fix up any medical issues—of which Chase evidently had many.

And as Trapp’s throbbing shoulder reminded him, so did he. His upper arm felt sticky with blood. But it still seemed to work.

Only one shooter stood in the way of achieving all those aims. Trapp was conscious of how quickly time was passing.

“Let’s not do anything stupid, buddy,” he warned, searching for the guy’s eyes. “We both have something the other wants. Be smart.”

In response, the bodyguard jabbed Fowler in the back for a second time. Chase grunted but made no other acknowledgment of his obvious discomfort, if only because it was the least part of his recent suffering. His eyes darted left and right, as if he was searching for a way he could help, but Trapp doubted he would find one. He was simply too weak.

“Do that again,” Trapp spat, shifting his aim and finding a tiny scrap of the guard’s cheek to fix on, “and I will put a bullet in your boss’s skull and take my chances with what happens next. Do you want to pay that price? It won’t do shit for your career prospects. The job market is kinda crappy right now for bodyguards who let one of Murov’s friends die.”

“But like you said,” the guard retorted, “I have something you want also. And you must need him badly if you came all this way. So maybe I’m the one who will take my chances.”

Trapp bit down on the insult he wanted to fire back. He didn’t have time to waste trading barbs with this guy. He needed a solution—and fast. It was still possible that Warden Makarov or one of the other guards had been able to get a message out. Failing that, then Zayetsev’s people would expect their boss to depart at a set time. Either way, it wouldn’t take long for someone to sound the alarm.

“Why don’t we let your boss do the talking?” he suggested. “Mikhail, you seem like a reasonable man. Am I right?”

“Of course,” Zayetsev replied, though it sounded like the words came through gritted teeth.

“Do you want your employee of the month over there to continue risking your life, or would you prefer to cut a deal? It looks like you’ve gotten everything you need out of my friend over there. How about we trade a life for a life? Can’t say fairer than that.”

“How can I trust you to follow through?”

“Good question,” Trapp replied.

It really was. He wracked his brain as he tried to devise an answer that would satisfy all parties. It was a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Neither could trust each other to hold up their end of the bargain, which meant both would leave the table with less than they came with.

Unless they could deal.

Trapp’s eyes widened. He tapped Zayetsev on the shoulder and pointed at the mayor’s bodyguard with his free hand. “How good a shot is he?”

“I only hire the best,” came the reply with a speed born of scorn. The oligarch was scared, but he could no more restrain his belief in his innate superiority than a leopard could dye its own pelt.

“Then you trust him to put a bullet in me if I renege on our agreement?”

“What agreement?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I would,” Zayetsev said grudgingly.

“Good,” Trapp replied. He wanted to check his watch, but ironically couldn’t spare the time. “The cells down below. They lock from the outside. I propose to secure you and your man inside. We’ll do the trade in such a way that I always have a fix on him, and he’s able to get a shot off at me. That way so long as neither of us gets greedy, we both get what we want.”

“You get what you want,” Zayetsev spat. “I lose someone important to me.”

“He’s more important to me,” Trapp replied, more than a hint of steel in his voice. “And besides, would you rather lose a source—or your life?”

There was a long silence. Trapp waited for the Russian to think things over. Eventually, he did so. “You have your deal,” he said.

The next few minutes felt far longer. It was an awkward shuffle, neither party truly trusting the other. In fact, neither came close. The guard walked slowly in reverse, unable to peek over his shoulder in case it gave Trapp the opportunity to blow his brains out. The one time he stumbled, he took Fowler down with him so that the American’s body covered his as they fell to the ground.

The Russian almost strangled Chase as he yanked him back up to his feet by the neck. Trapp’s fingers went white around his pistol grip, but he pulled himself back from the edge. He couldn’t be sure of getting off a shot, and blowing up would only slow things down.

“I’m not going to shoot him,” he muttered into Zayetsev’s ear, too low for the bodyguard to hear. The man was taking the steps down to the basement one at a time, pausing on each to make sure he was behind cover. Trapp’s blood boiled another degree every time he did so.

“How can he know that?” Zayetsev asked, his tone reasonable, his expression anything but. “How can I?”

Trapp didn’t respond. He pushed the oligarch down another step. And then another. And then one after that, losing precious seconds every time he did so.

“Wait there!” the bodyguard snapped as they reached the bottom. The longer this dragged on, the jumpier he seemed to be getting.

“Hurry the hell up,” Trapp said, obliging even as he simmered.

Finally, the bodyguard backed Fowler up against the open cell in which he had been held. Trapp watched his friend grow more visibly distressed the closer he got. The sight almost caused him to snap. Twice he came close to a clean shot as the bodyguard’s eyes darted to the floor over to his side.

But he held back.

“Okay,” he growled. “Enough. It’s time to do the whole ten paces thing, you understand? My guy walks toward me, and Mikhail here won’t leave your sight as he does the same. Each matches the steps of the other. Do we have a deal?”

The bodyguard stared uneasily back at him but eventually nodded. Trapp didn’t think that the man intended to screw him. But the Russian was sure worried about the reverse being true. A bead of sweat glistened a little above his left temple and slowly began to trickle down his jawline.

I’m not gonna screw you either, guy. Unless you give me a reason…

Trapp reached out and squeezed Zayetsev’s shoulder but stared directly into Fowler’s eyes and spoke to him directly. “Let’s start with one step. Just one. Can you do that?”

It took Chase a few moments to respond. His eyes were still alive, but his posture was drunken and plainly unsteady. He nodded.

“Okay.” Trapp smiled. “Let’s go.”

He gave Zayetsev a little push. The Russian stumbled a step forward.

“That’s fine,” the bodyguard growled.

Now both he and Trapp had their pistols aimed directly at each other, rather than the men in front of them performing their best Bridge of Spies impression. Trapp barely blinked as he communicated his determination to his counterpart.

“Another,” Trapp said, deliberately forcing a slow inhale to steady his heart rate. It helped.

Some.

Both Fowler and Zayetsev took a pace forward. Then the Russian stole a second.

“Hold up,” Trapp growled. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Zayetsev glowered back over his shoulder, clearly itching to defy his instructions. But he held himself in place as Fowler tottered another step forward. Trapp was desperate to speed things along but knew that his friend was moving as fast as he could.

So he waited.

“Now two each,” the bodyguard grunted.

Trapp acceded to the request with a curt nod. Then Zayetsev and Fowler were now only a couple of paces from each other, close enough that he could reach out either arm and touch.

“Once you meet each other,” Trapp said, eyeing the bodyguard for his approval, “keep walking. Nice and slow.”

It was the Russian’s turn to nod his approval.

“Go.”

Fowler took a step forward and stumbled as his over-exerted limbs simply gave way under the demands being placed on them. He tottered forward, stumbling directly into Zayetsev’s path and knocking into the Russian.

Zayetsev swore and batted Fowler aside, so the enfeebled American tumbled to the floor with an audible grunt.

“Touch him again and you die,” Trapp stated coldly, audibly tapping his pistol with his index finger. The sound echoed into the dark space and caused Zayetsev to flinch—for all he attempted to disguise his response.

Fowler struggled to his feet. He swayed on his feet as he rose upright, but this time steadied himself. Both men were now level with each other. He didn’t bother gratifying Zayetsev with even a glance.

“Atta boy,” Trapp murmured, speaking in English now, despite the fact that his friend was far more fluent in Russian then he would ever hope to be. “Just walk straight to me.”

Zayetsev walked faster now, reaching his bodyguard’s side when Fowler was still steps away. He turned, glowering in Trapp’s direction, his back to the open cell door.

“Get in,” Trapp said, his voice grating. His trigger finger itched with the desire to put Zayetsev and his lackey into an early grave. Fowler reached his side, and Trapp sidestepped to shield his friend with his own body.

The governor opened his mouth to respond but saw the look on Trapp’s face and closed it abruptly. He nodded to his bodyguard, and both backed into the cell. Trapp advanced a step and kicked it shut.

The lock clicked into place. Trapp gave the thick metal cell door an experimental pull, and only when it did not give way did he allow himself to breathe a little easier. He wasn’t certain that it was locked, and for all he knew the bodyguard could have a key in there anyway.

But he sensed that Mikhail Zayetsev was in no mood to risk his life a second time that night. The governor had proven that once already tonight by hiding in the conference room. Trapp didn’t think he was about to grow a pair of balls.

Not tonight, anyway.

He turned and squeezed Fowler’s shoulder—deliberately as softly as he could. Even so, his friend swayed, seeming to almost lose consciousness as a wave of evident relief crashed into him.

“Speak later,” Trapp murmured, lifting Fowler’s practically weightless frame up and dangling the man’s right arm over his own shoulder and neck, ignoring the signals of pain from his shoulder that followed. The position allowed him free access to the pistol in his right hand, and while it would probably affect his aim, he still backed himself.

He hauled Fowler upstairs, barely pausing for breath until he reached the top of the stairwell and forced himself to block out his friend’s repeated yelps of discomfort and pain. It cut him deeply, despite knowing it had to be done.

They exited into the stairwell above at almost a dead run. Trapp’s lungs started to scream a song of their own, but he bit down on the pain and pushed harder. He saw a shadow disappearing ahead of him that he figured must belong to Nikolai.

The smell of smoke was thick in the corridor that led to the exit. He rounded the first corner and saw walls scarred with buckshot. A man’s body lay right where he’d left it. He scooped Fowler clean over it and didn’t look down.

They burst outside into a landscape that stank of flame and was lit by the flickering pyre that had engulfed the main body of the prison. A tongue of fire erupted into the sky as a window cracked, chased a moment later by an audible boom as heat started to disintegrate the building. Closer to home, the chopper’s blades beat down on the snow. It was almost at takeoff power—in fact, the wheels underneath the chassis almost seemed to be lifting up from the snow.

But that was not what stopped Trapp cold.

Two men wearing inmates’ uniforms were advancing on the bird. He could see Sasha inside, aiming his pistol out of the window, his complexion even more drained of color than usual.

Nikolai—the little rat had tried to run—was frozen in place watching more run through the pathway from the main camp.

The prisoners had control of the asylum, all right.

And they wanted out.

41

Sasha’s voice rang out even over the heavy thump-thump of the rotor blades, just a foot overhead. It was cracked and uneven. “Get back!”

“You won’t shoot me, faggot,” the lean inmate on the right crowed. He was a little closer to the chopper and was carrying one of the AK-47s that Trapp himself had liberated from the armory a few hours before.

“I’ll do it!” Sasha claimed, sounding implausible even to Trapp’s ears. His cellmate was putting up a brave front, but this was destined to end only one way.

And Trapp didn’t have time for it. He crouched low, taking Fowler with him, and left his friend to rest on the snowy ground. He jabbed his finger at the ground, and Nikolai numbly followed suit a few yards away. The rotor wash whipped up tiny chunks of ice and threw them at his face. It was like eating a frozen stand storm. The fine powder coated his hands, nose, and cheeks, draining the heat from all of them. He winced as he left his friend on the floor. Fowler was weak enough as it was—but what other choice did he have?

Just make it quick.

“I’ll give you two seconds,” the inmate continued, raising the stock of the AK to his shoulder and training it on the chopper’s rear door. “After that, I’m putting a bullet right through you. You know I’ll do it. One—”

Trapp rose, crab-walked to his left to open a firing angle that didn’t risk a bullet ending up in the helicopter’s airframe, and took aim. The movement caught Sasha’s attention, and his eyes widened—which in turn transmitted a message to the gunmen that something wasn’t right.

The inmate turned, clearly startled by what he’d seen. He whipped his rifle around as he searched for this fresh danger.

But not fast enough.

Trapp caressed the pistol’s trigger, firing a single shot aimed at the inmate’s head. The pistol exploded with sound and bucked in his hands before he steadied it and fired twice more in quick succession, this time lowering his aim and targeting center mass. The man dropped like a stone, his blood coating the wind-blasted ice red.

As the man fell, the rifle twisted in his hands and started to fall to the ground with its now-deceased owner. But a dying muscular spasm caused his finger to jerk uncontrollably within the trigger guard, and the weapon let out a three-round burst. Two of the bullets ended in plumes of snow.

The third pinged off the helicopter’s airframe.

Without waiting to analyze what new calamity that unwelcome development presaged, Trapp pivoted and searched for his second target. Only a couple of seconds had passed since the lean inmate first noticed someone coming up behind him, and his friend hadn’t yet wised up to the danger.

Trapp didn’t give him a chance. He sidestepped quickly a second time to improve his firing position and again aimed for the man’s head. He squeezed the trigger, and the guy’s head rocked back. His knees gave out from underneath him, and he fell limp into the snow.

This time, the pistol in the man’s hands remained silent.

Finally, a freaking break.

“Come on,” Trapp said, spinning round and grabbing Fowler. He gave Nikolai a nod. “Get in!”

This time, Trapp didn’t bother helping Fowler to walk. He simply picked him up and slung him over his shoulder before taking off at a half-sprint toward the chopper. The doors were only a few yards away, and he made the distance in a time that would have pleased an Olympian. He yanked the chopper door open and threw his friend inside.

Sasha looked down at him, his complexion drained of life. He looked on the verge of throwing up.

“Get him strapped in,” Trapp yelled over the noise of the chopper engine.

The Russian said nothing. He wasn’t just sick—he was clearly in shock. Trapp reached in and slapped the man’s thigh. The impact rocked him backward bodily but appeared to spark him into action. He nodded and choked, “I will.”

Trapp spun back around, the helicopter’s engine noise assaulting already battered ears as the effort of keeping moving threatened to topple him entirely. His head swiveled on his neck as he searched for Nikolai. The doctor wasn’t where he’d left him.

But the medical bag still was.

Nikolai’s problem was that he wasn’t a fast man. He was only a few feet away from the bag he’d dropped as he tried running through snow that was much thicker only a few feet away from the chopper’s landing spot.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Trapp yelled.

But he didn’t try and talk the man out of his life choices. He just raised the pistol and fired half a dozen shots—everything that remained in the magazine—in a circular spray that lassoed a noose around the medic’s path.

Nikolai stumbled, stopped dead, and spun around to face whoever was shooting at him. Trapp held the now-empty weapon steady and beckoned him back.

The doctor’s head drooped. For a moment he didn’t look terrified, just dejected. And then he began to trudge back to the chopper.

“Faster!” Trapp called, jogging in a loop to retrieve the fallen green medical bag. He planned to circle around and end up behind Nikolai when he was done to ensure compliance.

But instead, he froze.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered. For a moment, his mind went entirely blank, as though it wanted to just throw in the towel. His eyes closed. His head dropped back. He’d forgotten about them entirely.

And then he snatched the handle of the med bag out of the snow. His eyes opened once more, passing for a second time over a group of about half a dozen more inmates now charging toward the end of the gated pathway that led to B wing—and the chopper.

Like the two he’d just killed, these men were armed. They were sprinting through the snow, whooping and screaming like rioters, or a scene straight out of a low-grade zombie movie. They would be on top of him in under thirty seconds.

He should have expected it. Even amid the orgy of violence and fire that had been taking place in the main prison, the sound of a helicopter would have been impossible to miss. He had created a prison full of moths, and then lit a fucking candle. Perhaps even Anton had decided he didn’t want to face the music after all.

No time for that now.

Hoisting the bag over one shoulder, Trapp sprinted back toward Nikolai. He grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the chopper. A moment later, both bundled through its open door, and lay half-in, half-out of the bird, their faces down by Sasha’s feet.

“Go, go, go!” he yelled.

In English.

It didn’t seem to matter. While the co-pilot had his head turned, slack-jawed as he stared at the approaching torrent of inmates, the pilot was already pulling back on the cyclic. As Trapp clawed his way into the chopper, he was left with the sense that the man had been wanting to do just that for a very long time.

A moment later, he was safe. He wrapped his hand around a safety-belt strap and made sure he was secure as the helicopter’s nose tilted upward, and the bird started rising away from the ground. The pitch of the chopper’s engine shifted as it gained power.

Trapp looked around to check that Fowler was safely secured and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his friend was securely belted in. Sasha had done well.

But Nikolai wasn’t the whole way inside the chopper, which was now about five feet off solid ground. He was still scrabbling to get inside. As he finally levered himself in, his right foot kicked back and collided with the med bag.

“Sasha, the bag,” Trapp yelled, pointing at the medical bag now beginning to slide out of the still-open door.

His former cellmate reached to catch it with his free left hand, but his own chest strap stopped him halfway. And as the chopper’s nose tilted forward and the pilot began picking up speed, the added movement gave momentum to the bag’s fall.

From down below, Trapp was almost certain he heard gunfire. But his attention was still almost entirely focused on the drama taking place right before his eyes.

The pilot up front struggled with the pedals, and the helicopter started moving forward at a hefty clip, swiftly putting distance and altitude between them and the violence on the ground. The bird climbed with enough speed to make Trapp’s stomach lurch.

Sasha’s fingers fumbled with his chest strap and undid one of the clips. He lurched forward and snatched the bag’s trailing strap with about half an inch to spare. The main bulk of the case was almost entirely out of the airframe when he caught it. The Russian audibly struggled to lever it back in as the outside air tugged in the opposite direction.

Finally, he got the job done, and a second later closed the chopper’s open door, quieting a dull roar that until this moment Trapp had not even properly noticed. This act also silenced an alarm that had been blaring inside the cockpit that whole time. Another continued—though what it signaled, Trapp had no idea.

He reached out and squeezed Sasha’s shin in thanks before pulling himself upright and into one of the thick leather seats in the passenger compartment of the executive helicopter and belting himself in. His eyes closed for just a second with relief.

When they opened, he found that he was looking out of the window at the burning shell of IK-29. The towering pyre that had replaced the administrative building lit the night sky and sent a thick plume of smoke toward the stars. The flames flickered against a black-and-white canvas, illuminating the tiny shapes of humans moving like ants on the snow.

It was over.

And still the alarm blared as the pilot battled with the helicopter’s controls.

“What the hell is that?” Trapp called out, again in English. Thankfully it was the common language of global aviation, and the pilot replied, his response thickly accented but perfectly audible.

“Hydraulic fluid,” he grunted. “We lost some. I’m dealing with it.”

“Will this thing stay in the air?” Trapp questioned.

Looking troubled, the pilot nodded curtly. He reached up and keyed a switch over his head, and the noise temporarily stopped—though a flashing orange indicator light indicated that the actual problem hadn’t so easily been dealt with. “For now.”

“Good,” Trapp said. “Climb to 5000 feet and fly on a heading of one-one-zero for five minutes.”

Something pressed against his left thigh as he finished speaking. Trapp looked down to see a hand—Fowler’s—squeezing as hard as he could manage. Which wasn’t very.

“What are you doing?” he croaked weakly. He could barely open his eyes, but the concern on his face spoke volumes. “That’s too high. They’ll see us on radar.”

Trapp grinned and took Fowler’s hand in his own. “Relax, buddy. That’s kind of the point.”

Fowler frowned in confusion but said nothing—either because he was too exhausted to devise a response or simply trusted his friend’s judgment.

“Doctor,” Trapp said with an overly polite manner as he turned back to Nikolai, now facing him on the opposite leather seats. “Maybe you should take another look at your patient. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

Nikolai blanched as he grasped the implied threat and quickly moved to unbuckle his seatbelt. He grabbed the bag that Sasha happily provided and got to work.

Trapp finally dug into his coat and searched for his lifeline out of this mess. So far they had escaped the fire—literally—but they were still flying over hundreds of miles of the enemy frying pan.

Real tortured metaphor, buddy.

He grinned with sheer dumb relief at the situation and shook his head as his fingers closed around the hard plastic of the satellite phone. They itched a little as they thawed out from the ice storm outside.

“What’s so funny?” Sasha asked. He was sitting on his hands: perfectly still, and patently anxious.

“I’ll tell you about it when,” Trapp started before clearing his throat, “—if we get out of this mess.”

“Let’s hope it’s when,” Sasha said.

“You and me both,” Trapp muttered.

He pulled the sat phone from the inside pocket and held down the power button. It took about thirty seconds to boot up, and about the same to find a signal. Shortly after that, it started downloading a series of messages from Langley.

EXTRACTION OPERATION NOT APPROVED. ENDS.

Then:

MONITORING UNUSUAL ACTIVITY IN CAMP IK-29. ADVISE STATUS. ENDS.

And finally, a simple string of coordinates, received only a few minutes earlier. He grinned with relief. It seemed his earlier messages had set the cat among the pigeons. Langley had bent in the end, as he’d hoped they would.

Trapp attracted the copilot’s attention. He spoke in clipped, excited Russian. “Do you have a GPS unit?”

Twisting in his seat, the man frowned. “Of course.”

Trapp read out the GPS coordinates and chewed the inside of his cheek with anticipation as the copilot keyed them into the system. It took a few seconds for the satellite unit to pull the information it wanted. He leaned forward as a fresh map flashed up on the screen.

“Where is that?”

“Not far,” the copilot said. “About 40 miles west of here.”

Trapp clenched his fist with satisfaction. Ikeda had come through for him. He hadn’t doubted her once—only the bureaucrats standing in her way. But apparently she’d forced the issue.

“Okay,” he said, his voice instantly calm and businesslike. He glanced at the map as he formulated a plan.

“Take the bird down to about 4000 feet. Then declare an emergency, you understand? Report that you’re having engine trouble and you need assistance. Then descend fast to 500 feet, as if you’ve lost control. Once you’re there, set a course for the coordinates I just read out. You understand?”

The pilot maintained his grip on the instruments but twisted in his seat, his face a rictus of concern. “It’s suicide. This aircraft isn’t equipped to fly that low at night.”

“You were in the military, yes?” Trapp replied, sizing the man up. He was older, probably mid-fifties. About the right age to have flown during one of the post-Soviet Russian conflicts. Probably Chechnya.

“That’s right,” the man said grudgingly, taking a quick glance at his instruments.

“Then you flew much shittier birds than this one in far worse conditions. I only need one pilot, you understand?”

He didn’t brandish a weapon, but he didn’t need to.

The pilot’s teeth bared in a barely repressed snarl, then he nodded. He keyed a button on his flight control and stated, “Viper Kilo Foxtrot 95 declaring an emergency. Say again, Viper KF95 is declaring an immediate emergency with five souls on board. Engine trouble.”

The chopper started to descend. First slowly, then with increased speed. Again, Trapp’s stomach lurched—this time in the opposite direction. The descent steepened until Sasha was looking so white that Trapp wondered if he was about to empty his stomach. Nikolai slid to one side just as he finished inserting an IV line of fluids into Fowler’s arm. Trapp reached out and steadied his friend. He was weak enough as it was. The last thing they needed was for him to burst a vein.

The helicopter leveled out so low over the dark ground below that it was impossible to make out any features at all. The pilot didn’t even bother looking out the canopy but stared only at his altimeter—and a device that Trapp figured must be ground-sensing radar, judging by the display.

“Air traffic control wants to know what’s wrong,” the pilot said, lifting his microphone away from his lips.

“Let them wonder,” Trapp said.

The aircraft banked to the left and shortly afterward steadied out on a new course—heading toward the coordinates Trapp read out. They held it for several minutes in dead silence, each for various reasons. The pilots were concentrating on not killing everybody aboard. Fowler was practically unconscious. Nikolai was keeping his head down, and Sasha looked like he was about to vomit.

Trapp closed his eyes and tried to relax.

The second he did so, a pair of discordant alarms started competing with each other inside the helicopter’s cockpit. They were matched by a display of warning lights that lit up like an epileptic Christmas tree.

Worse still, Trapp smelled smoke.

The helicopter lurched to the right as though it had hit turbulence. Trapp didn’t even know if it was possible at this altitude.

Then the engine started to scream.

42

“What’s happening?” Trapp snapped through his headset.

The pilots ignored him and turned on a bright white spotlight on the chopper’s nose as they wrestled with the controls. The helicopter was lurching from side to side and seemed to be losing power and altitude.

Trapp’s stomach was doing somersaults. This was a problem he could do nothing to help solve—and judging by the tenseness with which the two men up front were facing the situation, they were all in deep trouble.

“We’re going down!” the pilot called out, tightening his own chest harness as the engine started making a grinding sound. “Make sure you’re strapped in.”

“How long?” Trapp called out as he checked Fowler’s harness, then his own.

“I don’t know.” The man shrugged helplessly, momentarily seeming to give up on trying to keep the chopper in the air. “The engine is locking up. The hydraulics are fucked.”

Trapp’s eyes were glued to the map screen. The small red dot that indicated their position within an endless green expanse of Siberian forest was still miles away from their extraction point. And they were now so low over the tree canopy—now visible with the spotlight—the occasional branch was clipping the bottom of the airframe.

One impacted with an audible bang.

And then the engine died entirely.

For a moment, all that could be heard was the sound of branches scraping across the bottom of the helicopter, and a strange high-pitched tone generated by the rotor gear turning in a powerless engine. The blades beat through the air in almost total silence, though a vibration still transmitted through the airframe and up Trapp’s spine.

He was entirely powerless to affect his survival now. The helicopter dropped twenty feet in an instant, sending his nuts right up through his stomach.

“Der’mo,” the pilot swore. Shit. “Find us a landing spot!”

“Da,” the copilot replied tersely, swiveling his head left and right as he operated a small gimbal that controlled the helicopter’s undercarriage-mounted searchlight.

The pilot bottomed out the collective, changing the angle of the rotor blades as they cut through the air and momentarily bought a little lift. He turned the chopper back to the east, into a slight headwind and drove the aircraft forward.

Even so, it was sinking fast.

“There!” the copilot said excitedly, stretching out an arm and pointing at a clearing in the forest below that Trapp could barely make out. “You see it?”

“Yes,” the pilot said tersely, playing with the rotor’s angle as he coaxed a few more seconds of flight out of the stricken bird.

One of the alarms was now a constant, high-pitched chime that drilled into Trapp’s skull. He wished he could reach out and silence it, but for once in his life his fear was getting the better of him. He could barely take his eyes off the window to his side and the forest canopy fast approaching from below.

It was nothing like the movies, he thought. On screen, when a helicopter lost power, it hit the dirt fast. An old joke surfaced in his mind. When a plane loses engine power, it becomes a glider. When a chopper does it, it turns into a brick.

Only apparently that wasn’t true. The pilot was clearly skilled at his trade, and despite the fact that his bird’s throttle was now dead weight, he was keeping the thing in the air just using the inertia in the blades. Not just keeping it in the air, but actively controlling its descent. They weren’t spinning madly out of control or simply dropping like a stone. No, there was a technique to this.

And if they survived, Trapp vowed that no chopper pilot in the same ZIP code as him would ever have to buy a beer again.

“A hundred twenty feet,” the co-pilot reported, reading out the instruments for his boss so that he didn’t have to take his eyes off the more pressing business of keeping them alive. “Now 90…”

The chopper banked into a steep turn, and the spotlight lit up a clearing through the helicopter’s front windows. It was, Trapp instantly saw, going to be a tight squeeze. As far as he could tell, it was a natural clearing—and thick snow-covered bushes rose from an otherwise flat surface. The rotors turned a few skeletal, thin branches that had escaped the rest of the forest canopy into sawdust as they cut through.

A thought struck him.

Oh God, please don’t be a lake.

But even if it was, it was too late to do anything about it. The co-pilot said they were fifty feet above the ground, then forty, and a moment later the ground was coming up fast below them. There wasn’t a cockpit alarm that wasn’t blaring at this point.

Trapp saw it at the last moment. There was a tree trunk, disguised by fallen snow, lying diagonally across the section of clearing they were about to land on, and propped up by the forest to the other side.

And there was nothing the pilot could do to avoid it.

He tried his best, but the landing gear underneath clipped the top of the trunk and pitched the chopper’s nose forward just as he was trying to pull it back. Instead of generating lift to soften the final landing, the exact opposite happened.

Trapp’s eyes went wide with fear. He gripped Fowler tight and prayed that it would be enough.

The chopper hit the deck and carved a rut about forty yards through the snow ahead of it, coming to a stop only inches from the tree line. The rotors, now heavy and slow, rocked the aircraft from side to side and beat loose snow from the ground.

“Not a lake, then…” Trapp murmured, feeling almost light-headed with relief.

Amusement welled from deep inside him: a shock reaction, a rational part of his mind informed him—though this information sounded very quiet inside his head.

He started to laugh.

Nikolai stared at him from the seat opposite like he’d lost his mind. And maybe he had, in a way. The stresses and tribulations and worries of the past couple of weeks, seasoned by the adrenaline rush of the last few hours, and of course the sheer outright terror of the last sixty seconds, had breached a dam inside his mind.

And now it was all coming out.

“Is everybody okay?” Trapp asked, his sides sore from laughter as the amusement finally died away. He blinked tears from his eyes and started to unbuckle his belt.

Everybody else—both pilots, Nikolai, and Sasha—just sat in disbelieving silence a little longer. Trapp didn’t think it had anything to do with him. They were just stunned to be alive.

For his part, Fowler had slept through the whole thing. Trapp quickly checked him over. The IV line was still feeding into the cannula at his left elbow, and half the bag of saline fluid and antibiotics was already in his system. If anything, he was breathing a little stronger than he had before.

“Doc,” Trapp murmured, looking up. “How—”

But he found that he was staring directly into the barrel of a pistol. Nikolai had the weapon aimed directly at him. His hands were trembling, and his arms were extended the whole way across the small gap between the two banks of seats. If he wanted to, it would be easy enough to reach out and slap the gun away.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Trapp asked conversationally. He straightened his shoulders and leaned back against the chopper’s leather bench.

“Put your hands above your head!” Nikolai said. His face was taut with tension.

“Okay.” Trapp shrugged, slowly doing as he was asked. “But I’m not sure you want me to do that…”

“Why not?” Nikolai said, making a stabbing motion with the pistol. The weapon seemed to be adding to his confidence with every moment that passed.

Trapp did two things at once. First, he slapped his right hand down and across his body, knocking the pistol out of the Russian doctor’s grip. Then he pulled himself back up against the seat and kicked out with both feet, ramming Nikolai directly in the chest hard enough that every last ounce of oxygen in his lungs hissed out. He thought he heard a rib crack. He wasn’t sorry about it, either.

When Trapp withdrew his legs, the medic toppled over, clutching his torso, gasping soundlessly as he struggled for oxygen.

“You don’t stop, do you?” Trapp snarled, blood pumping in his ears as he retrieved the weapon from the floor. He checked the magazine, then clicked the safety into place and stowed it inside his coat.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said anxiously. “I wasn’t paying attention and—”

“Forget about it,” Trapp said as his own anxiety began to recede. Conditions were a long way from perfect, but he and Fowler were both still breathing. That counted for a lot.

“You two,” he said, gesturing at the two pilots. “How long will the heat stay on?”

The pilot cursed instead, beating the control console in front of him in frustration. “What the hell have you made us do? We’ll all die out here without help.”

“I strongly suggest you don’t call for any,” Trapp said icily. “I won’t ask again—do you understand?”

The man held Trapp’s gaze, his dark eyes flashing with anger, but he finally nodded.

“An hour, maybe two if we turn it down low,” he said. “It runs off a battery, but it’s not designed to operate for long without being charged by the engine.”

“Fine.” Trapp nodded. “Do you have survival clothing?”

“Of course.” The pilot nodded.

“Then get into it. Touch the radio and—”

“I know the consequences.”

Sasha reached for Trapp’s arm. He spoke quietly—clearly hoping to keep the conversation private. “What are we going to do? Your friend is too weak for us to carry. But if we stay here, it won’t take long for someone to find us. And when that happens…”

The accountant fell silent, but it was clear from the expression on his face that he was already picturing the repercussions of attempting—and failing—to escape from a work camp.

Trapp raised his booted foot and nudged Nikolai with his toe. The doctor rocked with the force of the touch and let out a little groan. Still, he too seemed to be breathing more easily.

“Help me tie him up,” he said, no longer able to trust the man. If Fowler needed medical attention then they could release him to administer it, but for now he had too many other problems on his hands to let this one run around free.

Conveniently, Konstantin’s uniform came equipped with a set of handcuffs. Trapp grabbed Nikolai’s wrists as Sasha helped hold him down. He twisted them behind his back, at which point he snapped the cuffs into place. He shot the guy an icy stare, then turned away.

The co-pilot had his head in his hands and appeared to be weeping. Trapp didn’t blame him. Unlike Zayetsev’s bodyguards, these two had never signed up for this. The pilot was simply unresponsive, whether through shock or simple despair wasn’t clear.

Again, so long as they didn’t try and cause trouble, he wasn’t concerned what else they did. And after watching what had happened to Nikolai, he suspected they would not.

“The satellite phone,” he said urgently, realizing that it was no longer in his hand. “Do you see it?”

As they searched the footwell in the helicopter’s passenger section, Trapp prayed that it was neither lost nor broken.

“Here!” Sasha said a moment later, emerging from a position on his hands and knees as he peered underneath the seats, and holding the device triumphantly above his head.

Trapp snatched it gratefully from his hands. It was still powered on.

Thank God.

Instead of typing out a message, he keyed in a phone number that he’d memorized by heart.

A familiar voice answered. “Jason—are you okay?”

Trapp closed his eyes as an almost indecent wave of relief crashed into him. God, but it felt good to hear her voice. “Liz,” he said. “How you doing?”

“Just fine,” she said, almost yelling on her end. “But that’s not really the issue right now. Where the heck are you? The prison is –”

“Burning.” He laughed, feeling himself for the first time in weeks. “I know. Kinda my fault. Secondhand, anyway.”

“Where are you?”

“That’s why I’m calling you. I borrowed a helicopter on my way out. I’ll explain later. Only we had technical difficulties.”

“Technical difficulties?”

“Well,” he admitted, “someone took a shot at us. I think it took out the hydraulics or something. No big deal.”

“I’m no pilot, Jason, but it sounds like kind of a big deal.”

“We landed,” he said. “It was a little unexpected.”

“You mean you crashed.”

“Potato, po-tah-to… Listen, I need a hand.”

“If you think I’m going to let you forget you just said that, you’ve been inside too long,” Ikeda said, though a note of laughter in her tone quickly gave way to a businesslike sensibility. “Where did you go down?”

Trapp leaned over the seat in front of him, wedging his knee on Nikolai’s back and causing the Russian to moan with pain. “Shut up,” he hissed.

“Watch your language,” Ikeda said.

“Not you.” He read off the GPS coordinates on the chopper’s central console. Thankfully, it still appeared to be functioning. “Tell me you can get to me fast. I got Fowler out, but he’s not doing so great.”

“He’s alive?”

“More or less.” Trapp winced.

“Hold tight,” Ikeda said, sounding a little breathless. “I’m coming to get you.”

“ETA?”

“If you let me get off the phone, about 15 minutes.”

Trapp grinned. “Then what are you waiting for?”

The phone line went dead. He exhaled with relief and noticed that Sasha was staring at him expectantly—almost hungrily.

“Who was that?” the Russian asked.

“Help.”

“Someone’s coming?”

“You better believe it.”

The next few minutes passed busily. He moved the pilots into the passenger compartment, ignoring their complaints about the cold. As he worked, he wished he’d asked Ikeda how she was planning to get to them. They were still deep inside Dorothy territory.

Trapp gazed around at the desolate, frozen forest and thought, This sure ain’t Kansas.

One last question still bugged him. What the hell was it that Chase had stumbled onto? Whatever it was, it was important enough for the Russians to risk snatching him. Dangerous enough that Mikhail Zayetsev himself—one of Murov’s closest allies—wasn’t even willing to outsource the grunt work of interrogating the man.

And what if you’ve blown it?

Trapp bit his lip. There had to be a way that he could preserve at least a slight chance of maintaining the integrity of Fowler’s operation. He’d seen the infestation of inmates heading toward B wing—and if the bloodlust of the two he was forced to kill was any guide, then a steel cell door was unlikely to save Zayetsev’s life.

His bodyguards were dead. So too was everyone else who had interrogated Fowler.

So the question was: How tight had Zayetsev kept his circle? Was there a chance that it had died with him?

Maybe.

And if that was the case, then he needed to do whatever it took to confuse whoever came to investigate this disaster. It might just be possible to buy enough time to achieve—whatever it was that Fowler had stumbled on to.

Which gave Trapp a thought.

He turned to one of the pilots and asked, “Is there a survival kit on this bird?”

The man nodded and gestured to a panel to his side. “Is okay?”

Trapp nodded. “As long as you do it slowly.”

The pilot pushed the panel in question, and it popped out to reveal a canvas bag about the size of an overnight case. He handed it over silently.

“Thanks. Sit tight.”

He unzipped it on his lap, hoping it would contain what he thought it would.

Jackpot.

There were half a dozen survival flares inside, along with a portable radio and a first-aid kit. Unlike the versions aboard military aircraft, there was no service weapon—but he had those coming out his ears. He snatched two of the flares, pocketing both, and left the rest.

He turned back to the pilot as an idea fulminated in his mind. “What fuel does this thing use?”

43

It was entirely possible that no man had ever set foot on the patch of snowy ground he was presently standing on, Trapp thought as he re-emerged from the other side of the chopper—two flares down but his task complete.

They had come down dozens of miles from the nearest human settlement, which itself was a labor camp purposely removed from the rest of civilization. Wind whistled through the trees, sending flurries of snow tumbling toward the ground. Otherwise there was silence.

Until Nikolai moaned once again.

Trapp ground his jaw together but didn’t react. He was still a long way from home, and though Ikeda was coming to rescue him, there was no guarantee that she would arrive on scene first. His flight from IK-29 had played out not more than a hundred feet from the top of the forest canopy, which had probably minimized the chopper’s radar signature, but the possibility remained that the Russian Air Force might have had an aircraft in the air that could have spotted him. Or, this far north, a military defense radar might have gotten lucky.

“Can you walk?” he called to Sasha, who was shivering from a combination of cold and shock. His best chance of survival was to stay occupied, and Trapp was happy to put him to work.

“Yeah, I think so.” The Russian coughed.

“Good.” Trapp pointed out a boulder at the edge of the narrow clearing in the trees. “You see that?”

Sasha nodded.

“Pick a spot that’s sheltered from the wind and start moving anything we might need to survive.”

“Someone is coming to rescue us, correct?” Sasha asked, his voice cracking.

“That’s the plan,” Trapp confirmed. “But better safe than sorry, right?”

Sasha swallowed but nodded. The man had stones, there was no denying it. “What about your friend?”

“Don’t worry about him. I’ll handle it.”

Trapp ducked inside the helicopter. Nikolai appeared to be beseeching the pilots to call for help, which he put to an end with a quick but measured strike to the top of the medic’s shoulder that left him reeling but at no risk of serious damage.

“Cut that out,” he snarled, staring at both until he had their full attention. “Here’s the deal, guys. You keep my friend here alive, and I’ll let you all live. What do you say?”

The pilots immediately nodded their acquiescence.

Nikolai took a little longer to come round, his eyes burning with hatred, but finally ducked his head in agreement. “I have no choice,” he muttered.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Trapp said, reaching over and rattling the handcuff that kept Nikolai chained to the chopper. “Just so you know I’m not messing around, I’ve left a flare poking out of the top of the fuel tank. Don’t give me a reason to turn this bird into a bonfire.”

“I said yes,” Nikolai said, passive-aggressively turning to Fowler and using his free hand to check the man’s pulse.

Trapp quickly reloaded the purloined Kalashnikov and checked he had a couple of spare magazines on his person as he watched. He presumed that anyone who came after him would be equipped with enough firepower to make the rifle look like a pea shooter but hoped that at least he could use it to buy him some time.

For what, precisely, wasn’t exactly clear.

He jogged over to the boulder, passing Sasha, who was on his second trip. Once there, he dragged several fallen branches and tree trunks and built them into a makeshift windbreak, patting snow into the cracks as he worked. He crouched down for a few moments when he was done and found that the space was surprisingly warm.

“That’ll have to do,” he muttered to himself.

Sasha returned carrying the medical bag. “That is everything,” he said.

“Get the blankets ready,” Trapp said as he rose to his feet. “I’m getting my friend.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Sasha asked. “He’s so frail.”

“Just do it.”

Trapp’s thoughts echoed the same question, though, as he sprinted back through the snow. It wouldn’t be long. Maybe only a few minutes before Ikeda arrived with help. Fowler would pull through. He’d survived worse. But he was too exposed inside the helicopter. If the enemy came across them first, it would be their first target.

He released both Nikolai and the pilot and forced them to walk ten paces ahead of him as he carried Fowler back to the new hiding spot. The medic stumbled and fell in the snow, and Trapp fired a warning shot rather than chastising him. The pilot hauled him up and hustled him forward.

And then they waited, Sasha huddling Fowler for warmth underneath several thick layers of blankets as Trapp crouched behind a tree with the stock of the rifle pressed up against his shoulder. The cold started setting in, eating away flesh like acid searching for bone. There was no sound but for Nikolai’s pained whining and the eerie sigh of the trees shifting in the wind.

Until, in the distance, Trapp heard the sound of helicopter rotors. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks, but after a minute or so, he was certain.

“We’re saved!” Sasha exclaimed.

“Don’t move until I say so,” Trapp called softly. He watched as the heavy transport helicopter approached. It was flying without lights, which caused him to suspect that it was indeed Ikeda, but he saw no reason to show his hand before he was certain. He had his own pilots, after all. If it was the Russians in that chopper, then they might as easily be showing up with the keys to his new ride.

The helicopter circled above the trees, and a spotlight flicked on its belly and played out across the snow before resolving on the crash site below. It held steady for a short time, and then began to land—a little more gracefully than its crippled companion had.

The next few moments was a kaleidoscope of images inside Trapp’s mind. The chopper hovered about a foot off the surface of the snow—presumably because the pilot worried that if they set it down entirely it might never lift off again. The ramp at the rear lowered.

And Ikeda’s recognizable form ran down it and jumped into the swirling wall of blown snow.

Trapp sagged with relief. It was over. They had made it. He put two fingers between his lips and let out a high-pitched whistle to attract her attention before jogging toward her. They briefly embraced halfway, though both knew it was not the time to linger.

Ikeda glowered at him from underneath her winter clothing as they parted to load the chopper. He sensed that once they were out of immediate danger, he would be forced to explain his actions.

“Don’t leave without me,” Trapp called out once he was done sliding Fowler’s inert form into the belly of the huge helicopter, and both Sasha and the prisoners were safely secured inside. He jogged down the ramp and powered through the snow toward the crash site. The rotor wash whipped tiny pebbles of ice through the air, blasting the back of his neck and sending a chill right through his body.

He rounded the downed airframe and retraced his earlier footprints in the snow until he was standing in front of the fuel filler cap. The tank was already open from his earlier efforts, the cap hanging from a chain down the side of the aircraft’s chassis. More pertinently, he had wedged the business end of one of the survival flares half-inside and half-out of the fuel tank and connected it to another that he’d lowered into the tank itself with a piece of fragile, flammable string.

The chopper ran on aviation kerosene.

A fact that would probably surprise most casual observers was that jet fuel is far more stable than ordinary automotive gasoline and ignites only at significantly greater temperatures. It was the only reason that Trapp was even contemplating his current course of action—that and the fact that the ambient temperature of the Siberian nighttime meant that the fuel inside the tank was currently half-frozen rather than already vaporizing.

He twisted the end of the external survival flare and pulled the cap clean off, staying careful not to dislodge the one inside the tank. Instantly a bright red flame appeared, torching what was left of his night vision. The length of string tied to it ignited a second later, and even as he watched it began to fray. Smoke filled the air, choking Trapp’s sight and complicating his task.

Time to go.

The second he was done, he sprinted headlong toward his waiting salvation. He strapped himself in and yelled at the pilot to build altitude. The engines—already powered up in anticipation of the command, groaned in response.

As the Russian transport helicopter climbed through the air, the string that connected the two flares finally severed. Gravity tore the mostly-snapped section of cap free from the second flare, and ignition followed as it fell before quickly disappearing underneath the surface of the liquid.

For a moment, nothing happened.

“What am I looking at?” Ikeda called through the bulky headset. She craned her neck to peer out of one of the chopper’s dirty portholes. The aircraft reached an altitude of about thirty feet above the canopy of the forest below and tilted as it built speed.

“Just wait…” Trapp replied.

Though it was beneath the fuel line, and drowning in a half-frozen slurry of fuel, the survival flare did not go out since the chemical reaction producing its flame required no external oxygen. Neither did it instantly ignite the bath of flammable liquid it was swimming in.

For a short time, the strength of the flame burning heated and soon vaporized the kerosene around it. The burning stick itself started to fade in intensity.

But its work was done.

A cloud of vaporized fuel had formed inside the tank into a pregnant explosive. All it required to ignite was a spark. And even as it began to die, the smoking flare above provided it.

A belch of fire emitted from the side of the downed helicopter at the very last second before it disappeared from view. A heartbeat later, a much larger glow filled the clearing they had just departed, reflecting off the snow all around. Though it was no longer in view, Trapp knew that flame was now devouring what was left of Zayetsev’s helicopter.

He turned away, his shoulders relaxing for the first time in weeks. Though the back of a rickety Soviet-designed helicopter wasn’t the place for a heart-to-heart, he met Ikeda’s gaze. “Thank you. For coming.”

“They’ll find it, you know,” she replied, thin-lipped. “You just lit a torch and showed them where to look.”

“Maybe.” He nodded, slumping back against the hard-backed seat. “But we’re a long way from civilization. It might take them days to find, let alone realize there are no bodies inside. It might buy us some time.”

“You think that’s important?”

Trapp shrugged. “I don’t know.”

44

Zheleznogorsk Airport

351 miles from Ust-Ilimsk

“Let’s go,” Trapp called out, tearing the headphone cans off his ears as the landing gear touched solid ground. Up front, in the chopper’s cockpit, he saw Ikeda’s pilot reach up and flick a selection of switches as he powered down the bird’s powerful engines. Overhead, the rotors began to slow, and the whine of the gearing system began to fade.

A familiar butterfly feeling made its presence known in his stomach as he placed his hand on the door latch. The isolated airport only hosted a couple of flights each day, and the manager had been paid to look the other way, but he wouldn’t feel safe until they finally escaped Russian airspace. He drew his pistol and kept it by his thigh—out of sight, but ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He closed his eyes and offered up a prayer, then squeezed the latch and jumped out.

His boots grazed the concrete at about the exact moment that Ikeda’s did on the opposite side. He had no doubt that she was mirroring his actions exactly, scanning the environment and constructing a threat picture inside her mind.

“I think we’re clear,” Ikeda called from her side of the helicopter. She was practically shouting to be heard over the sound of the powerful engine, even as it powered down, but there was no chance that she might be overheard.

“I agree,” Trapp said, relaxing just a fraction. “Where’s—?”

A doorway of light opened in the darkness before he was finished vocalizing his question. It was barely fifty feet away. Adrenaline surged in his mind as he presumed a threat, only to fade a second later as he realized that he was looking at the inside of a small aircraft. The outline of a sleek private jet came into focus against the gloomy background. Trapp saw a shadow of movement from inside. At the very same moment, the jet’s engines started spooling up.

A male voice called out into the darkness, “Pearl.”

Ikeda circled around the chopper and returned the matching code word. “Diver.”

She turned to Trapp and said, “It’s them. Let’s get the passengers inside.”

“Copy that,” Trapp replied with evident relief. “Can you handle Nikolai?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned on the sole of his right boot and jogged the few yards back to the helicopter. The pilot—also armed, Trapp saw—was already out of the cockpit. Trapp grabbed him by the shoulder and pivoted him toward the chopper’s passenger door.

“Be gentle,” he said roughly by way of explanation. “He’s in a bad way. We can’t afford to lose him now.”

The pilot nodded his understanding and yanked the door open. Trapp scrambled inside and checked that the various lines running into Fowler’s veins were secure. He triple-taped the IV leading into his left arm to be absolutely sure it wouldn’t rip out in transit. His friend was so weak he wasn’t sure he would survive even that little blood loss.

The helicopter’s engine noise was now completely gone, though the bird still rocked back and forth as the rotors came to a complete halt. The sound had been replaced by the burgeoning roar of the jet engines a few feet away. The latch on the other side of the helicopter clicked open, and Ikeda’s face appeared.

She clambered inside and grabbed Nikolai by the chest. “Can you walk?”

The Russian blinked several times, his reactions clearly dulled by pain and anger. His wrists were now bound behind his back. “I think so.”

“Come on, I’ll help,” Ikeda replied without pity. She cut him free, then grabbed his arm and looped it around her own shoulders before physically shoving him out of the aircraft. His feet hit the ground accompanied by an audible hiss of pain, but she didn’t let him wallow in it before dragging him over to the jet, forcing Zayetsev’s pilots out ahead of her.

“Our turn, buddy,” Trapp muttered, patting Fowler’s cheek in an expression of helpless worry. “We’re almost home free. You just hold on.”

He twisted in place and turned to the pilot. “Is there a stretcher in this thing?”

“Yes. Behind you.”

Trapp grimaced, already rethinking his plan. If someone was watching from the dark and decrepit terminal building, the sudden appearance of a stretcher would confirm that something was amiss. “Scratch that. You take his left arm. I’ll take the right.”

The pilot, clearly just as anxious to depart Russia as he was, simply nodded his agreement. Trapp slid Fowler carefully along the pitted, scratched faux-leather passenger bench. “Easy…”

They got him out without either waking him or pulling the medical lines from his veins. It barely required both men to carry his skeletal form—upright, propped between them—over to the door of the waiting jet. Ikeda helped bundle him inside. Trapp and the chopper pilot piled in an instant later, and she yelled departure instructions to the cockpit as the three of them pulled the aircraft’s door closed. The stairs retracted into a mechanism inside before it swung entirely flush.

“Get him on the gurney,” Ikeda said without pausing for breath. “We need to get him strapped in before takeoff.”

Trapp quickly scanned the inside of the jet. It was fitted out as a medical transport and so had a hospital bed bolted to the chassis on either side of the passenger cabin, along with a number of seats in the rear that looked similar to those found in the economy section of a passenger airplane, which now contained various trussed prisoners. There was a small working area—just a table surrounded by four seats. Medical cabinets ran down one side of the interior, blocking the windows behind. Nikolai was already slumped on top of one of the narrow medical beds, breathing, but with little vigor.

“Where’s the doctor?” he asked dumbly, looking around. He’d—perhaps naïvely—expected to be greeted by the medical cavalry on arrival. But he heard no hoofbeats and spied no scrubs.

“Joining us en route,” Ikeda explained tersely as the cabin began to shake underneath them from the power of the engines.

What the hell does that mean?

Trapp’s lips tightened with frustration, but he knew that there was no sense in giving voice to his thoughts. The three of them helped convey Fowler’s limp form to the empty gurney. As they did so, the jet’s engines increased in power, and he felt the aircraft start to roll underneath him. A high-pitched whine grew in strength as Ikeda strapped the CIA officer’s broken body down, and as the helicopter pilot went to sit down at the back of the jet, Trapp held his friend’s hand.

“We need to get some medicine into him,” Trapp said. He was beyond exhausted, his palms clammy with adrenaline sweat. He wiped them on his chest. But he couldn’t stop now.

Ikeda turned, her expression soft with empathy. “What meds?”

“I don’t know!”

The aircraft rumbled underneath as the wheels of the landing gear bumped over a minor crack in the runway. It wasn’t enough to cause either of them to fall but was a reminder that liftoff could not be far away. Ikeda secured the last of the straps holding Fowler in place. “Then what are you proposing?”

“I thought—”

“I told you,” she said calmly, beckoning him to join her and sit down. “Medical assistance is standing by. The moment we’re in the air, we can contact them. Come on, get strapped in. This will be a fast takeoff.”

Trapp expelled a powerful breath, torn with the agony of regret as he looked down on his friend’s drawn face. He rested a hand on his shoulder and prayed.

Then frowned.

His fingers sensed movement. Slight at first, but more than just the shallow rise and fall of his chest that he’d felt before. He squinted and leaned forward.

“Jason!” Fowler hissed. His throat sounded raw. He tried sitting up, but his movement was impeded by the straps. The bloodshot whites of his eyes swiveled wildly in their sockets.

“I’m here,” Trapp said softly, holding on to the side of the gurney as the jet’s engines increased in power. The aircraft vibrated with energy as the thrust being pushed out of the dual exhausts met in pitched battle with the brakes. “You’re safe now, man. I’m going to get you to a doctor real soon.”

“What’s the date?” he replied hoarsely, without seeming to comprehend anything that had come before. “Jason, tell me the date. I need to know, it’s—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Trapp said soothingly. He put his palm against Fowler’s left cheek and held it tight to his friend’s skin in an effort to reassure him. “We got out. You’re okay.”

“The date, Jason,” Fowler snapped, for a moment sounding like his usual self. “It’s important.”

“Okay, okay,” Trapp said. “It’s—”

He stopped. The truth was, he had no idea. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a calendar.

Ikeda clearly realized that he had no idea. “It’s April 15. Thursday.”

“Oh God,” Fowler moaned, his face contorting in a mixture of relief and agony. “Thank God.”

“What is it, Chase?” Trapp asked, sensing that whatever had his friend so hung up had to be of vital importance. “I’m here, buddy. You’re safe.”

Medical instruments rattled inside their cabinets as the jet’s engines built to a crescendo. There was a brief lull as they reached peak output, and then the pilot disengaged the brakes. The aircraft lurched forward, and Trapp tightened his grip around the sides of the bed in lieu of strapping himself in.

“Jason, sit down,” Ikeda called.

“They’re planning an attack,” Fowler said, his voice raw. “Are you sure you’re right about the date?”

“Who is?” Trapp asked, forced to raise his voice over the sound of the jet’s engines. The aircraft was now rattling down the small airfield’s uneven runway as it built to takeoff speed. The gurneys, seats, medicines, and equipment were all squeaking as they swayed back and forth.

“Unit 29155.” Fowler’s head rose up, and he stared sightlessly toward his toes. He was now gasping for breath.

Trapp knew he needed to keep his friend talking but fretted that doing so might cause him permanent damage. He pulled back a few inches and noticed an oxygen system clipped to the side of the gurney. He punched the power button and pulled the line toward Fowler’s face. He lifted the head up a little, and then slid the nasal cannula in place.

“Breathe through your nose, buddy. It’ll help.”

The jet tilted upward as Trapp’s right hand was still in the air. He caught himself with his left, but almost toppled back in the process as the aircraft lifted off from the runway. Gravity tugged him back. He held on tight, but as Fowler’s lips moved, he was unable to hear what his friend was saying. He pulled himself close, inch by inch, and placed his ear directly over his friend’s mouth.

“Tell me, Chase,” he said. “Unit 29155. What do they want?”

The unit was operated by the GRU—the Russian Federation’s military intelligence agency. Trapp knew the outfit well. The GRU as a whole was the unpredictable, unhinged poor relation to the SVR, the intelligence agency that had succeeded the Soviet KGB.

Unit 29155 itself had gone off the deep end. It was reportedly responsible for the attempted assassination of a Russian defector in England. With a highly toxic nerve agent.

It was behind the assassination of Bulgarian arms dealers, an attempted coup in Montenegro, and the destruction of an arms depot in the Czech Republic for good measure.

“Tell me we’re not too late, Jason,” Fowler rasped. He attempted to reach out and touch Trapp but was prevented from doing so by the strapping holding him down. The aircraft started to level off, and as it did so, Ikeda unclipped her seatbelt.

“I’ll contact the medics,” she said.

Trapp nodded his understanding. “We’re not too late, Chase,” he said. “But I need you to tell me what you know. Can you do that?”

The whites of Fowler’s eyes flashed. “You need to save them, Jason.”

“I will. Tell me what you know. I’m here.”

And Fowler did.

Trapp twisted, shocked by what he was hearing. He waved for Ikeda’s attention and mimed writing in the air. “I need a pad.”

She nodded and started going through drawers until she found one. “Here.”

He bit the lid off the pen and spat it onto the aircraft’s floor. He found a space for the notepad by Fowler’s head. Once the nib met paper, he didn’t stop writing for almost ten full minutes as his friend disgorged names, dates, places, and telephone numbers that he had somehow held on to through all the torment he had experienced.

“I didn’t tell them, Jason,” he finished, staring wildly into Trapp’s eyes. “I didn’t say a word. They don’t know I was on to them. They might suspect, but they don’t know.”

“You did everything you could,” Trapp said, his voice cracking.

But as he stared down, he realized it was too late. Fowler’s eyes were still open, but there was no recognition in them. He looked up wildly, for once drowning in search of a plan. The tinny, hyperactive chimes of the heartrate monitor rained down like a blacksmith’s blows.

“I have the medical team on conference call, Jason,” Ikeda said, gently but firmly tugging at his arm and pulling him away. “Let them do their job.”

Trapp numbly acquiesced. He bent the notepad between his palms as he stepped back, watching as Ikeda swiftly relayed Fowler’s vital signs and performed several basic diagnostic tests as requested by the doctors whose faces were visible on the screen of a portable tablet computer. He barely remembered a word that had come out of his friend’s mouth. He took another step back and was startled to feel something nudging up against the back of his leg. He looked around to find that he’d stumbled all the way to the seats at the rear of the aircraft. His legs gave way, and one swallowed him up.

Ikeda was contrastingly unhindered by any pesky personal attachment to her patient. She opened one of the cabinets and withdrew a vial of clear medicine, which she promptly added into the bag of saline now hanging over Fowler’s gurney. Within minutes, the pinging of the heartrate monitor began to calm before settling into a more manageable 80 bpm.

“Entering Kyrgyzstani airspace now,” the pilot reported to a crackly intercom. “ETA forty minutes.”

The Bombardier jet went nose down not long after that. The pilot executed a textbook landing at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, putting the plane down so gently that it wasn’t until Trapp glanced out the window that he was sure they were on solid ground at all.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. The aircraft rolled to a taxiway just off the main runway. He helped Ikeda open the hatch and set the steps down on the asphalt. The smell of spilled jet fuel wafted into the cabin. An SUV pulled up. Three men climbed out. They were wearing nondescript flight suits rather than scrubs, but each had the bearing of a trained medical professional. They climbed in and immediately began tending to both Fowler and—to Trapp’s irritation—Nikolai. The helicopter pilot walked to the exit hatch, gave an awkward farewell wave, then stepped out into the night.

The jet spun around, taxied back to the runway, and was in the air after less than 20 minutes on the ground.

Ikeda came to sit by him. She reached over and squeezed his hand, though as weeks of adrenaline faded from his body, replaced by shock and exhaustion, he scarcely felt her touch.

“He’s in good hands now,” she said. “I made sure that Mike arranged for the best. Just in case.”

Her voice cracked as she finished, and it was that which broke him out of his stupor. He looked up at her and saw the tension on her face that she’d restrained during their escape from the jaws of danger.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his tongue moving with all the deftness of a drunk’s feet as he searched for the right words. “It wasn’t right to tell you about this the way I did.”

“You didn’t tell me, Jason,” she snapped before holding up a finger and catching herself. “You left a note for me to find. You didn’t stop to think for a moment that maybe I was worth more than that?”

“I didn’t have time!” Trapp protested, knowing the moment the words left his lips that they were entirely the wrong ones.

He grimaced. “I found out that the Russians had taken him while you were incommunicado. The Agency wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it. I had no choice.”

Eliza scraped her teeth across her bottom lip. “You could have gotten yourself killed, Jason,” she said. “Heck, that’s not even why I’m so pissed. I know the world we live in. Our jobs are dangerous enough as it is. Why seek out more fires to throw yourself into?”

Trapp brandished the notepad silently, as if it were a totem.

“You got lucky, didn’t you?” she sighed, bowing her head for a moment. Her neck muscles vibrated with tension, and her fingers curled into fists. He got the sense that she was holding back a scream. “You always do.”

“I won’t apologize for making the choice I did,” Trapp said after a lengthy pause. “You know me. If I told you anything different, you’d know I was lying. But I am sorry for the way I let you find out. I’m sorry for the way I leveraged our relationship to force you to come after me. Believe me, I wish there had been another way, but there wasn’t.”

“I know, Jason,” Ikeda whispered. “I know.”

“And I’m grateful for this, you have to know that. You saved his life just as much as I did. We would have frozen to death out there. Or the Russians would’ve found us, and maybe we’d have prayed to have died that way.”

For a while, there was only the sound of Fowler’s heart rate monitor beeping metronomically over the background hum of the Bombardier’s engines, and Nikolai’s guttural groans as a medic tended to his various ailments. Pins and needles of words unsaid made Trapp twist uncomfortably in his seat.

“So what did you learn?” Ikeda asked at length. The emotion was gone from her voice. She was parking the emotional baggage for now. It was a tactic familiar to all intelligence operators, though rarely a healthy one.

Trapp glanced down at the bent notepad in his hands, blinking as if seeing it for the first time. “We need to speak to the director. Immediately.”

45

Since the aircraft was equipped as a medical transport jet, there was no space for the secure communications suite available on most of the jets in the Agency’s clandestine fleet. Ikeda jerryrigged an encrypted satellite line instead and plugged in her tablet. Both she and Trapp donned headphones, which helped both block out the background engine noise and prevent the others from overhearing their conversation.

Mike Mitchell was the first to join the video conference. He was sitting in front of a nondescript background and greeted Trapp with a similar tone. “It’s good to see that you’re alive, Jason. You had us worried.”

Trapp had worked with the CIA’s deputy director for special operations for long enough to know that he was fuming. There would be hell to pay for the decisions he’d made on his path to this point, that was plain.

You said it before, you wouldn’t change them if you could, he thought.

“Good to see you too, Mike,” he replied evenly. “Thanks for giving the green light to all this. I know it wasn’t easy.”

“It wasn’t,” Mitchell said with a curt nod.

“Listen, Mike—”

Mitchell cut him off with a palm raised to the camera. Trapp could see every callus and wrinkle in the older man’s skin as it filled the screen. “Let’s wait for the director.”

Trapp nodded. He considered cracking a joke to lighten the mood but figured he was already in too deep. All three sat in silence for two full, interminable minutes before an icon blinked into the center of the video conference software’s display. A moment after that, Director Lawrence’s salt-and-pepper-flecked beard dominated the screen as he logged on to the call. The microphone rustled, almost deafening Trapp, until Lawrence leaned back in his office chair.

“Did I miss a memo?” he asked coldly.

“I’m sorry, Director?” Trapp replied, knowing that he was leaning into a whipping but also that it was entirely deserved. More to the point, he wouldn’t make any progress until he took his fifty lashes.

Lawrence theatrically shuffled papers on his desk, flicking through different binders before finally eyeing the camera in evident fury. “I just wanted to check, since I don’t remember authorizing you to conduct your own foreign policy, Mr. Trapp. Do you understand what the consequences would be for the United States if you were discovered operating inside Russia? The kind of media firestorm it would generate.”

A glimmer of fire flickered in Trapp’s subconscious, and he retorted before he had a chance to wrestle back control. “It’s not like I haven’t been there before.”

“You went there with permission,” Lawrence growled. “You went there under orders. Smart men and women weighed up the consequences of allowing you to operate the way that you do and came to a limited conclusion that on a particular occasion, the benefits outweighed the risks. But that wasn’t the case this time, was it?”

Trapp ground his teeth but refrained from shooting back. “No, Director.”

“You know the consequences of being captured, Mr. Trapp. So did your friend. I can’t pretend to know what that sacrifice feels like myself: to know that if you are taken prisoner your country and your colleagues will disavow you and turn you into a non-person.”

Lawrence slapped his desk in fury. “But that is the way it must be. You signed up with full knowledge of the risks. You cannot change your mind when the going gets tough.”

This, Trapp considered, was easily the angriest he’d ever seen the usually measured Lawrence. Which was unfortunate, since he badly needed the man on his team. Should he continue allowing the director to vent or try and plead his case?

He gambled and held up a finger. “Director, you’re right. About everything. I am an asshole. I did play fast and loose, and I took a risk that could have blown up in my face. And if it did, then I’d have landed that mess in your lap. There will be consequences, I get that. But now is not the time.”

Lawrence’s single caterpillar eyebrow jumped as if yanked by a string. His lips went taut, and he spoke carefully. “Is that right?”

“Director, the reason the Russians snatched Chase Fowler was that he stumbled on to something. Something big. And if we act fast we might still have a chance to do something about it. The alternative is that sometime this week, the nightly news is going to play footage of a dozen soldiers touching down at Andrews in coffins, and President Murov is going to have a field day with the fallout. All I’m asking is that we do something about the threat while we still have time.”

The director’s forehead creased with interest, though he was clearly unwilling to relent so easily. “What threat?”

Trapp spread the creased notepad out in front of him. His eyes scanned the hastily scribbled text as if for the first time. “Are you aware of a unit in Ukraine? At a place called Yavoriv?”

Before he replied, the director tapped his keyboard several times. “What do you know, Trapp?”

“Only what Chase learned, Director. One of his sources put him onto a GRU unit surveilling an American training operation at Yavoriv Combat Training Center. The unit installed cell phone tracking equipment around the Ukrainian base to generate a picture of which units were inside. They then cross-referenced the phones they picked up with data from a similar operation within the continental US.”

Lawrence looked offscreen to communicate with an aide. “Is that possible?” he asked.

A garbled murmur followed.

Mitchell took the opportunity to jump in. “Are you up to date on the current threat picture, Trapp?”

Trapp shook his head.

“About two weeks ago, Murov ordered several divisions into the Crimea on a supposed training exercise. In the last week, the Russian military has also started moving a similar number of troops to the border with Ukraine. They shifted two amphibious troop carriers into the Baltic Sea, and—”

“Another exercise, I’m guessing,” Trapp remarked dryly.

“You got it.”

“So you think what Fowler stumbled on to is related?” Trapp asked, cocking his head to one side as he thought it over. “You think maybe the Russians want to finish the job with Ukraine? Murov always wanted that land bridge into the Crimea. Maybe he’s making a play—and why not bloody the nose of the mighty US of A in the bargain?”

“That’s our present thinking,” Mitchell said. He seemed to have warmed to his long-time operative over the course of the call. Trapp wasn’t surprised. He’d always been solutions oriented and wasn’t one to hold a grudge.

In truth, it was something he’d counted on.

“Trapp, I need the unit designation,” Lawrence said, still looking up at whoever was sitting offscreen. “We have a number of different units operating in Ukraine at the moment. We need to know which one is under threat so that we can pull them out.”

“I don’t think that’s the right move, Director,” Trapp replied immediately. “And anyway, I don’t have what you want. Only a window in which the attack is supposed to occur. It starts in about thirty-six hours.”

“Why not?” Lawrence snapped. “And what do you have?”

“I think we should ambush the Russians. Send them a message that we won’t accept this kind of behavior any longer. And we should feed the story to the media when it’s done. Embarrass Murov in the eyes of his own people. They already know he’s corrupt. Let them find out he’s incompetent, too…”

“I told you already, Trapp, you’ve freelanced enough. And what’s this about not knowing which unit is at risk? What do you know?”

Trapp shrugged. He spun the notepad around and held it up in front of the camera. “I have a list of telephone numbers that Unit 29155 was surveilling. Fowler memorized them before he was taken. No names. Just the numbers, along with dates, times, and locations.”

“Send over everything you have,” Lawrence said. “We’ll look into it. Your part in this is done, Trapp. When you land in Germany, you will be met on the runway and taken to a secure location. I’ll work out what to do with you after.”

The director’s third of the screen went blank as he exited the call. Trapp eyed his direct superior, but purposely said nothing.

Mitchell sighed and ran his fingers through his still dark hair. “Trapp, dammit to hell, but I agree with you. I’ll see what I can do. Send the intel over, and I’ll try and sweettalk the director. If I succeed, I need you to do me a favor.”

“You got it.” Trapp nodded.

“Try not to be such a prick for once in your life, okay?”

Mitchell ended the call.

Trapp photographed his scribbled notes and sent them on to Langley. When he was done, he leaned back in his seat and looked up at the medics still working on his friend. A pang of regret reverberated within him. He could’ve done more, acted faster to end the man’s tribulations. He blinked away the thought and massaged the bridge of his nose.

“You think he’ll be okay?” he asked Ikeda.

“Let’s find out.”

They stood and walked over to the gurney. The senior doctor turned and pulled his latex gloves off as he came to them to report.

“How is he, Doc?” Trapp asked.

“Not doing so good. But you already know that. Your friend has been through hell. His body mass is in the red zone, his electrolyte balance is still extremely worrying, and he has suffered prolonged dehydration…”

The medic exhaled deeply with frustration before continuing. “I think he’s going to come out of this with permanent nerve damage in his shoulders. He’ll walk again, but it will take some time before he does so without pain. He’s currently in a medically-induced coma, where he will remain until we make it to Landstuhl Medical Center. I suspect we won’t bring him out for at least a week.”

Trapp cursed. Fowler was a man after his own heart: an athlete and an outdoorsman. It was hard to contemplate a world in which he could be anything but.

“We’ll do our best,” the doctor finished with an awkward shrug. “That’s all I can promise.”

Langley dialed back in about half an hour later, rousing Trapp from the edge of slumber. He could barely remember the last time he’d had a proper rest. He sensed it might not arrive for a bit longer.

“I just got off the phone with European Command,” Lawrence said with little ceremony after the link initialized. “We have more than 300 troops in Ukraine. It’s going to take some time to pull them all out.”

Trapp glanced at Mitchell’s image on the screen. It was difficult to make eye contact through video, but he noticed that his boss seemed to be on the same wavelength. The diminutive former operator nodded, as if to say Go for it.

“Director, you mind if I offer my two cents?”

“Do I have a choice?” Lawrence replied with what might have been the seed of a smile. Perhaps Mitchell really had worked his magic.

“Sir, I think we have an opportunity. I’m guessing Murov wanted to make an example of our troops to dissuade us from getting involved in any conflict in Ukraine. Tracy from Ohio doesn’t want her youngest son dying in some field a hundred miles from Kiev, not after her eldest nearly shot his dick off in Kandahar. That puts us in a bind: If we stand our ground, the mission loses support back home. If we don’t, the Russians know we’re a paper tiger and they have carte blanche to do what they want.”

“Your language is excused, Jason,” Lawrence said dryly. “What are you suggesting?”

“I said it already, Director. I say we ambush the GRU hit squad. Catch them if we can, kill them if we have to. Splash the story all over the press and embarrass Murov. We can let the Ukrainians take credit, but he will know. We sent him a message once before, but I guess it wasn’t loud enough. This time let’s make it one he can’t ignore.”

“It’s a risk,” Lawrence said.

“This business is risky.” Trapp shrugged. “Like you already said, sir, we all know that going in. I understand I overstepped the mark before. I’ll accept my punishment. But you know my record. I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. The Russians are rogue operators. But for once we have the jump on them. Let’s make it count.”

“Overstepped?” Lawrence said. “Jason, you nuked the damn line from orbit.”

“What I’m asking is that you run my idea past the president. I don’t have to take point on this one. Just so long as it gets done.”

“But you’d like to,” Lawrence mused perceptively. “The Russians tortured your friend. Any rational human being would want to make them pay for that. How do I know you’re not just telling me what you want me to hear?”

“Sure, I’d like to. Love to, even. But I’m a team player. I give you my word that if you ask me to, I’ll sit this one out.” Trapp nodded, as if affirming his own point.

But he couldn’t resist getting the last word in. “Of course, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make sense for it to be me. If the unit’s comms have been intercepted, then someone has to go tell them. I’m already looped in. There’s no need to widen the circle. Just tell me how high to jump.”

Lawrence glanced off screen. He muted his line for a few moments as an aide briefed him on something, which somewhat blunted the impact of Trapp’s speech. Finally he looked back at the camera and cleared his throat in silence, his Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. He reached forward and un-muted.

“We got a ping on one of those phone numbers used by the GRU officers that Fowler was looking into.”

“Where?”

“The Donbass, Ukraine. Near the front line. Which clears up the question of which unit they are targeting.”

“How so?”

“EUCOM just got back to me. They embedded a squad of trainers with a Ukrainian National Guard unit, situated not far from a recent cell tower ping.”

Trapp made a fist. “Then I guess we found the target we were looking for. What are we going to do about it?”

Lawrence leaned back in his seat, his elbow filling the camera field momentarily as he stroked his beard. “That’s for the president to decide,” he mused at long last.

“Director–”

“I wasn’t finished, Jason. You have my authority to prepare a tactical plan and move to a staging point close enough that there won’t be a delay if—not when—you get the green light. But if the president decides to pull them out, then his decision is final, you understand? If you go against me on this one, then it won’t just be your time with the Agency that’s finished.”

46

“Sergeant?”

Packer looked up to see his radioman standing at the entrance to the spartan bunker dug beneath the trenches inside the Ukrainian combat outpost. The soldier was holding a scribbled sheet of paper by his side and now extended his arm outward.

“What is it?” the sergeant asked.

“Lieutenant Graff wants to see you.”

Packer sat upright and rolled out of the narrow cot. He didn’t rate his own, which didn’t bother him in the slightest. It was like the Navy here—the moment a bunk came free someone else slid in to steal your warmth. He took the message and squinted at the messy lettering, eyes still hazy with sleep. “He’s here?”

“No, Sarge. He’s at the COP a few miles behind the line.”

“Have I got time for coffee?”

The soldier shrugged. “Depends if you wanna be late.”

“Jackass,” Packer grumbled amiably. “Tell you what—if you rustle me up a flask of joe in the next five minutes I’ll forget you ever said that.”

The soldier grinned and spun around. “Deal.”

“Oh—and Specialist?”

“Sarge?”

“Get Stu for me, will ya? Make sure he’s ready to go in 10.”

Packer checked his stubble in a cracked mirror on the wall and decided that one supreme benefit of his complexion was that a couple of days’ growth was almost invisible. He rolled his neck and stretched a little before clambering inside his plate carrier and the rest of his body armor. He clipped the strap of his helmet to his vest and shouldered his M-4 carbine before exiting the cramped shelter.

Sergeant Long was waiting for him topside. As he saw Packer approaching, he turned his head to one side and ejected a thin stream of tobacco saliva.

“That shit’ll give you mouth cancer, you know,” Packer remarked. “Happened to my uncle. They had to cut out half of his tongue to get it under control.”

“I don’t say much as it is.” Long shrugged.

“Fair’s fair, I guess. But don’t say I didn’t try and tell you.”

“So what’s up?”

Packer shrugged and took in a deep lungful of the cool, crisp morning air, which he savored after hours spent in the stuffy bomb shelter.

“Hell if I know. Lieutenant wants to see us in the rear. Maybe we are bugging out of here after all.”

“You think?”

“Ours is not to reason why,” Packer replied.

He jumped up onto a ledge built into the side of the trench and looked out into no-man’s land. It was quiet. Unlike the images of torn-up earth and shell holes that were indelibly stamped into his mind of the battlefields of World War I, it was practically a rural idyll. War had changed in the last century. But he didn’t linger too long. It hadn’t changed that much.

They boot-packed through the communication lines, pressing themselves against the trench walls to allow men and supplies to head in the other direction, then climbed into the back of a battered pickup that carried them the short distance to the Ukrainian combat outpost.

It was a rough and ready creation, ringed by a wall of HESCO barriers topped with barbed wire. Machine gun nests bristled at all four corners, but they were waved through the gate easily enough. Packer didn’t notice any evidence that the COP had ever actually come under fire before—and the relaxed attitude of the Ukrainians guarding it seemed to suggest that was the case.

A runner was waiting for them inside, wearing dusty white sneakers, Adidas joggers, and a ripped camouflage jacket. Packer wasn’t sure whether he was a soldier, an irregular, or maybe even a mercenary. He didn’t say much but led them to a building made out of two shipping containers welded together. He gave a Gallic shrug and pointed at the door, then stomped off.

“Charming,” Stu remarked. “You think we should knock?”

Packer blew on his hands to warm them up. “I’m sure not waiting out here. But you do you.”

He raised his knuckles and rapped loudly twice against the hard metallic shipping container door.

There was a pause of barely a heartbeat before a familiar voice called out, “Enter.”

So he did, twisting the door handle and stepping inside. His boots reverberated against the plywood floor, and it took his eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the dim lighting. There were no windows, which made for a smell that was a potent combination of body odor and mud.

He wrinkled his nose—then frowned as he realized that it wasn’t just the lieutenant who was waiting for him, but also a man and a woman, neither of whom he recognized. The guy was the size of an eighteen-wheeler, and the woman—he quickly looked away, though not before his eyes betrayed him by widening in appreciation.

“Lieutenant,” Packer said, studiously ignoring the man and the woman seated beside the officer. He figured that if they were important, then he would be told, and if not, it was easier simply not to ask. “You wanted to see me?”

“That’s right, Sergeant,” Graff said, pointing at a free plastic chair on the other side. “Take a seat.”

Stu Long cleared his throat. “Should I wait out –?”

“You too, Sergeant,” Graff said. “And close the door after you.”

Both soldiers did as they were ordered and took seats opposite Graff’s desk. They sat in silence. Packer folded his hands across his lap, and a moment or two later Sergeant Long followed suit.

Graff glanced at his visitors before returning his attention to his men.

“Sergeant Packer, these two individuals are…” He cleared his throat as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “Are OGA. They have a proposal for you.”

It took Packer a couple of moments to process what he’d just heard. Was this a joke?

“Oh,” he mumbled as his mind worked furiously, replaying the lieutenant’s words and probing them for additional meaning.

OGA meant Other Government Agency. They were most likely CIA, though there was a whole alphabet soup of other organizations which they could belong to. The Defense Intelligence Agency came to mind, though this wasn’t exactly his area of expertise. He was just a dumb grunt.

Hey—did the lieutenant say something about a proposal?

The more Packer thought about it, the more he assumed he must have misheard. It was the only explanation. After all, you didn’t get proposals after you signed your Army contract; you got orders.

The big guy leaned over and extended his hand. He had a couple weeks’ stubble on both his chin and his head. Packer noticed that the very top of the man’s dome was a little lighter than the rest of it. He mentally placed the spook’s age as mid to late thirties. He had a yellowing bruise around his left eye, which he’d initially dismissed as a trick of the light, but which at this distance was unmistakable. He quickly looked away.

“Jason,” the man said in a gruff but friendly voice. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Staff Sergeant.”

Packer accepted the gesture and shook the proffered hand.

“Nelson’s fine,” he said—or more accurately, squeaked. Why did this CIA guy know who he was? In fact, why were the CIA—or whoever—here in the first place? He got an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Nelson, then,” Jason agreed. He squinted slightly as he read Long’s name patch, then repeated the exercise. Stu somehow kept his composure as he introduced himself on first name terms.

The woman introduced herself as Liz. Damn, but she was fine, Packer thought, careful to keep his thoughts to himself, since she gave off a sense that she could flip him onto his back and slit him from belly to throat in an instant if she so chose.

When the round of introductions was finished, Packer swept his fingers through his hair and asked, “You mind if I ask what this is all about? Did you guys have some questions about the raid the other night?”

“Raid?” Jason asked with a raised eyebrow.

“The other side has been probing the Ukrainian lines the last few nights. We, I mean they, took a casualty the night before last.” He closed his mouth, conscious that he had the undivided attention of the spooks and beginning to feel foolish.

“Was this happening before you arrived?” Liz asked.

Packer looked to the low, corrugated ceiling as he collected his thoughts. “I don’t think so. But the whole sector’s hotting up, right?”

“Your outpost in particular,” Graff interjected. “I received instructions to pull you out last night.”

“Yes sir,” Packer agreed, having no idea what was going on.

“Those orders were superseded by a higher authority,” the woman continued. “For now, anyway.”

What does that mean? Packer wondered.

“Nelson, we have reason to believe that your unit has caught the attention of a GRU strike team.”

“G—” he began before screwing up his face with confusion. “Wait, you’re talking about Russian military intelligence, right? What the hell do they want with us?”

Jason took up the thread of conversation. “That is an open question. They might be planning to kill you all. Or just kidnap you and take you to Crimea to plaster your confession that you’re a spy all over Russian state television.”

“But I’m not a spy!” Packer protested. His mind was swirling.

“I know you’re not.” Jason grinned. “And you know you’re not. Hell, the Russians sure do too. But they like fucking with us. And this would be a damn good way of doing it.”

“That’s why we’re being pulled out, sir?” Packer said with a momentary feeling of relief. “Wait—you said those orders were superseded?”

Internally he thought, Who the hell would do a damn fool thing like that?

“That’s right,” Liz confirmed. She snapped her fingers. “For now. If you say the word, we can pull you and your entire unit back from the front line like that.”

Not wanting to sound foolish, Packer proceeded cautiously. “Is there a reason I wouldn’t want to avoid Russian intelligence from hacking my entire unit into pieces?”

“We want to lay an ambush for them,” Jason said bluntly. “And your help would be… most appreciated.”

Packer glanced sideways at Long, mainly for confirmation that he wasn’t hallucinating. His friend shot back the tiniest of shrugs. He turned back. “What if they know we’re coming?”

“If the Russians knew we were on to them, they probably wouldn’t go ahead with their op,” Jason said.

Packer rolled his eyes, figuring that this wasn’t an occasion where he needed to stand on military ceremony. “Probably is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, sir.”

“Just Jason,” the spook replied peaceably, spreading his arms. “But you’re right. I can’t tell you exactly what will happen, or how many operatives we’re likely to come up against. I can tell you that we’ll be able to call on assistance from our friends in the Air Force, and they’ll be packing a hell of a lot of heat. To be blunt, Nelson, I want to fuck these guys up. I want to teach them a lesson that they won’t forget. And I’m hoping you’ll be right there by my side. If you want some private time to confer, then that’s all right by me.”

He glanced at a slim digital wristwatch. “But I’ll need your answer in the next 10 minutes.”

Stu leaned forward. “Don’t need it. Sounds good to me.”

Packer looked over sharply.

Stu shrugged and said, “You saw what they did the other night. I’m sick of acting as a target. ‘Bout time I got to shoot back.”

“What about my unit, sir?” Packer said, turning his attention to the lieutenant. “I don’t get to make this decision for them.”

“That’s fair. Each man gets to make this decision for themselves,” Graff confirmed.

“What are my rules of engagement?” Packer said.

Graff shook his head and gestured toward the spooks. “That’s not up to me. Once you leave this COP—if you agree—then you’re on loan to the Agency. Whatever these two say goes.”

“I work with pretty liberal ROE,” Jason said. “Just don’t put a bullet in my ass.”

Packer blinked and mulled things over. He remembered the conversation he’d had with Chernyak in the transport truck on the way to the front line and the bloody images of the aftermath of the nighttime raid a few days earlier. He sighed.

“Okay, I’m game,” he said at last. “But you guys better come up with a better plan than hit and hope.”

Jason grinned and clapped his hands together. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a green camouflage Boonie hat which he crushed over his head—presumably to obscure his features. He stood and walked to a stack of duffel bags and backpacks leaning against the wall and hoisted one over his shoulder with evident effort. “We’ve got some time.”

“When you expecting this attack, anyway?” Packer asked.

“Oh, you know…” Jason said casually. “Tonight.”

47

“You are spy, no?” the Ukrainian—Chernyak—guffawed as he watched the small circle of American soldiers filling out reams of paperwork in front of him. He reached over and plucked one of the unused forms from a stack on the floor.

Trapp raised his eyebrows but said nothing. It was obvious that this Ukrainian held a great deal of respect for his American counterparts—and vice versa. The second briefing had gone easier than the first. One of Packer’s men had voiced concerns but came around pretty easily.

Chernyak read out the heading at the top of the form, “SF-312. What is this? If you tell me you have to kill me?”

“No,” Trapp chuckled, finding himself taken by the Ukrainian’s irrepressible self-confidence. He jerked his thumb at the soldiers now scribbling their signatures on the national security nondisclosure agreements. “If they say anything about what happened here tonight, I have to kill them.”

“Yeah, right,” a young private scoffed. Trapp squinted but couldn’t make out the name patch on his fatigues at this distance. “I have a right to due process. That’s the third amendment, right? Or the tenth or something.”

Sergeant Packer strode over and plucked the form out of the soldier’s fingers. He cast his eye over it then smirked. “Not now you signed this, Dumont. Your life is in that man’s hands. So try and keep a lid on it. For once.”

“You do a lot of paperwork for spies,” Chernyak grumbled from the corner of the makeshift bunker. “Are you sure this is not just practical joke?”

“Pretty sure,” Trapp laughed. He took Private Dumont’s NDA and snapped pictures of every page on a cell phone camera, as he had done with each of the completed forms so far. There were only a couple more yet to be signed.

He raised his voice so that no one could miss it. “This is for their protection, anyway. Hey, so long as tonight goes to plan, I’m not so against these guys getting drunk and bragging about killing Russian spooks. Word will get back to Moscow, and they’ll know what we did.”

Chernyak waggled his blank form. “So why need for red tape?”

“Like I said,” Trapp continued loudly. “I don’t mind these guys blabbing about tonight to their girlfriends, or just some chick they want to pick up at a bar. The thing is, if they do, and the Russians decide they want to take revenge…”

He left the details purposefully obscure. The truth was that the Russians were very unlikely to attempt a reprisal for tonight’s actions. So long as everything went right, it would be too embarrassing—and there was nothing that Moscow disliked more than being left with egg on its face. Still, there was no sense in leaving things to chance.

“So long as everything goes right” is doing a whole lot of lifting here, too, he mused as he looked out into a sea of now ashen faces, remembering Sergeant Packer’s refrain from earlier.

“You say goes to plan,” Chernyak said. “Well, what is plan?”

Trapp grimaced. “That’s a very good question. You’re the local, right?”

“Right.” The Ukrainian nodded.

“If you were trying to attack this place, how would you do it? What route would you take from the Russian lines?”

Chernyak walked toward a map pasted onto one of the bunker’s curving walls. It was a little difficult to read but worked in a pinch. He traced a finger along two roughly parallel but uneven lines.

“This is us,” he said at the first, “and them. There is road here, between village on Russian side and village on ours.”

He dragged his finger down the road to the middle of no man’s land from the Ukrainian side, roughly equidistant from the two front lines. “Until here we have mines. Not possible for vehicles to go any further without us knowing about it.”

“That’s what, a mile and a half?” Trapp asked.

“Yes.” Chernyak nodded.

“They could drive there as a staging point,” Trapp thought out loud. “It looks like it’s mostly obscured by terrain.”

“That is correct. There is also gully to the side of the road, hidden by rushes,” Chernyak said. He screwed up his face and cocked it to one side. “Rushes—is it right? Long grass by stream.”

“Yeah, you got it,” Trapp confirmed.

“In fields there are mines,” Chernyak said, roughly scrubbing his finger across no man’s land. “Nasty ones, the kind that blow a man’s leg off but leave him to bleed to death. You can cross them, but not quickly. Quickest way is down this gully.”

Trapp frowned. “It’s not mined?”

Chernyak shook his head. “We use it to get to their side, they use it to get to ours. It is, how you say, unspoken agreement.”

“Okay, so unless they plan to come by air then there’s only one way in and out,” Trapp said, scratching his chin. “That makes things easier.”

“By air?” Packer said softly so that the rest of his men were left in the dark.

“It’s unlikely,” Trapp said. “Both sides agreed not to use aircraft because of the risk of sparking a greater fight. They both have fast alert jets on runways close to the front line. Any Russian chopper pilot would have to be balls out crazy to risk entering the no-fly zone.”

“And if they do?” Packer pressed.

“The Ukrainians are equipped with Javelins, correct?”

“Yes,” Packer agreed with a sideways glance at Chernyak, who beamed back nonchalantly. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

* * *

RAF Fairford,

Gloucestershire, England.

Sunset was a very recent memory when the wide hangar doors rumbled open a few minutes after 2000 hours in a leafy, isolated part of the English countryside. A thick bank of clouds obscured the last of the glow in the sky.

The lights in the hangar were out.

An airman in an orange vest jogged out onto the crescent-shaped taxiway and raised his arms in the air before gesturing toward his chest. An aircraft tug emerged from the cavernous black space first. It too was cloaked entirely in darkness.

The Royal Air Force base had long since been turned over for the almost exclusive use of the US Air Force—particularly for its strategic bombers, on account of a runway so long it was once the only European emergency landing site for NASA’s long since-decommissioned space shuttle. Further back still, troop carriers and gliders had lifted off from its asphalt en route for the Normandy coast, and from there to Berlin. In those days hundreds of aircraft had lined up in dense rows waiting for their turn to power up and lift off into the sky.

Tonight there would only be two.

The tug was now fully in the open, though the aircraft behind it was still obscured by the dark. That was kind of the point. Determining the precise chemical formula for the stealth coating on the B-2 Spirit had alone consumed billions of research dollars. It was barely visible at this time of night at fifty yards, let alone in the skies at 30,000 feet and traveling at hundreds of miles an hour. But now it crept along the ground only a few feet a second, and in almost complete silence.

After the airman judged that the distance between the aircraft and the hangar was sufficient that the B-2’s powerful engines wouldn’t toast everything inside, the tug disengaged and sped back toward the hangar to coax out the night’s second departure.

For a few minutes as the pilots inside the bomber performed their final flight checks, the only sound was the scraping of the airman’s boots on the taxiway, and a slight breeze rustling through the fields that ringed the airfield.

The quiet was broken by the screech and hiss of the engines powering up. Another brief pause ensued as the hidden pilots checked that every dial and gauge in front of them was reading in the normal range. And then it started to taxi toward the runway proper.

Flaps flared on the left side of the V-shaped wing, then the right. They disappeared. The aircraft came to a halt at the runway’s threshold, and the noise from the engines—a terrifying shriek—started to build. It sounded like a banshee howling in the night. The twin exhausts from the jet engines were barely visible even at this distance. The aircraft started to quiver.

Inside, the pilots released the brakes, and the B-2 bomber started to roll down the runway, quickly picking up pace. The nose lifted, and a moment later so too did the entire aircraft.

Twenty seconds after that, an observer on the ground would have been unable even to spot the unique shape of the stealth bomber in the sky above.

It was simply gone.

But the night’s activity was not yet finished at the leafy RAF base. A second, strangely similar—yet markedly smaller—aircraft was dragged from an adjoining hangar. The same checks were carried out, except this time by pilots sitting in an air-conditioned box that looked like a shipping container located on a military base several thousand miles away.

Ten minutes later, that aircraft too lifted off into the night.

And silence reclaimed the English countryside.

48

0045 hours.

Contested Ukrainian Border.

Trapp glanced down at the ruggedized information tablet in his hands with relief as he saw that the device had initialized a strong datalink with the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone now circling several thousand feet above his head. To extend its loiter time over the target, the small aircraft wasn’t armed—and the complement of Hellfire missiles that it ordinarily carried seemed superfluous when its big brother was in town.

The two aircraft had refueled from a tanker that had lifted off from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and which met them inside Ukrainian airspace. Since the distance across Ukraine alone was over a thousand kilometers—close to the 1400 km range of the Sentinel drone itself—the aircraft’s tanks had been topped up one final time less than an hour before. It would be well into morning before either aircraft would need to take on fuel once again.

He cocked one ear to the sky and listened but heard nothing. Even a B-2 bomber was almost silent when it needed to be. Its much smaller cousin might as well be a ghost.

“Strong connection, over,” he murmured into his throat mic. The glow from the screen was intentionally low, but even so he was covered by a blanket that had the additional benefit of blocking out his IR light signature. There was no doubt that even if the pro-Russian separatists weren’t equipped with modern nightvision goggles, the GRU unit certainly would be.

“Copy, ditto,” Ikeda confirmed from her position alongside Chernyak and some of the Ukrainian sergeant’s irregulars in one of the two machine gun nests which provided top cover and had clear fields of fire overlooking the coming battlefield.

Trapp himself was positioned on the eastern side of the gully exit near the Ukrainian lines, along with Sergeant Packer and the remainder of his unit. A similar sized formation of Ukrainians were positioned to the west. Cloud cover swirled overhead, and the night was so dark that he found it almost impossible to sense the presence of the soldiers only a few feet from him, covered by long grasses and foliage, let alone detect an enemy who was still yet to announce their presence.

Perhaps he had it all wrong, he mused. Maybe the Russians had worked out they were walking into a trap. Maybe the whole thing was a ruse—and he was leading his own men into a slaughter.

“No sign of movement,” he reported, even though Ikeda was looking at a tablet that showed her the exact same picture being beamed down from the Sentinel’s camera dome in the sky overhead. The image was a perfectly clear grayscale. Heat sources would show as a glowing white light. In fact, anything that absorbed heat during the day would do the same, to one extent or another.

The road that led from one side of no man’s land to the other was a perfect example. The dark asphalt soaked up the heat of the sun and slowly released it into the colder environment through the night, painting it a ghostly gray.

But for now, that was it. The only sound was that of the thump of bat wings in the air overhead and the occasional cough from the men around him.

Trapp consciously inhaled deeply, then released the breath slowly as he coaxed his muscles to relax. In all likelihood they would be here for a long time yet. The Russians would come just before dawn, when the human mind was lulled into a false sense of security.

He checked his weapons and resolved to be ready when they did.

* * *

0339 hours.

Two clicks sounded on the earpiece strapped around Trapp’s forehead, instantly taking him from a state of meditative calm into one of ready anticipation.

“Showtime,” Ikeda said calmly. “I see a column of vehicles and infantry moving away from the Russian lines. Heading right down the road. All copy, over.”

Each of the different units that composed their ambush checked in, one after another. Packer had stationed one of his men with each of the Ukrainian sections that didn’t have either Trapp or Ikeda with them, since the Ukrainian irregulars used an incompatible radio network than the Americans.

Trapp made sure the men lying in wait around him had understood the message, then returned his gaze to the miniaturized forward air control device in his hands. At least half a dozen armored vehicles were now creeping down the road toward the Ukrainian lines. They were driving so slowly that it was sometimes difficult to tell they were moving at all – but consequently they were impossible to hear.

Alongside the armored cars were at least thirty men traveling on foot. The Sentinel’s IR camera was sufficiently powerful that he was able to make out the shapes of weapons in their hands, helmets, even occasionally a flash of detail on their faces—though not nearly enough that he would be able to make them out in a crowd.

He relayed the details through his radio. An uneasy sensation settled in his belly. The Russians outnumbered his own force. Not by a lot, and defense usually requires far fewer men than attack, but even so…

It took the Russian assault team almost twenty minutes to reach the staging point Chernyak had identified earlier that day. The vehicles stopped, then one by one turned to face the other direction—clearly preparing for a hasty getaway. Once the maneuver was complete, about fifteen additional personnel disgorged from their bellies. Seven or eight of them formed into a distinct group that stood apart from the rest of the infantry force.

The plan was clear enough, Trapp thought. The Russians intended to hit the Ukrainian combat outpost hard and fast and get away just as quickly. The last thing a reeling defensive force would do after being attacked in the middle of the night was charge headlong into the darkness after their attackers—so once they were in the sheltered gully, the infantry was pretty much home free.

Or so they think.

He attempted to look at the problem from every direction in case there was something he had missed, but he came up empty. His own side had the high ground—both literally with the machine gun nests and metaphorically with the stealth aircraft in the skies overhead. More importantly, they had the element of surprise.

“Get ready,” he radioed. “Lead element in the gully. Hangman, out.”

The glowing dots on the screen that indicated between thirty and forty fighters slipped in and out of view as they advanced. Because the Sentinel drone was in a low, wide circle in the sky overhead, sometimes the sensor angle meant that the entire dismounted column was invisible.

Whenever that happened, the back of Trapp’s neck itched.

Finally, now only a few hundred feet away from where Trapp was crouched, the first of the dots exited the mouth of the drainage gully. The image on the screen in front of him panned, and the sensor dome focused for a few moments on the six parked armored vehicles at the staging point before moving back to the infantry now assembling just a couple of minutes’ run from the Ukrainian outpost.

The Russians split into three distinct sections, which Trapp termed Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie in his head. Alpha was the smaller grouping he’d noticed earlier – about eight fighters. Bravo and Charlie were each composed of about twice that and advanced to occupy positions about a hundred feet ahead of the left and right of the drainage channel—clearly to protect the retreat.

Alpha element was now so close that Trapp instead lifted his head away from the screen and focused on them directly through the IR scope mounted on top of his carbine. His eyes widened.

As quietly—yet quickly—as he dared, Trapp reached for the transmit button on his radio and whispered, “Gas, gas. All units be advised: enemy formation is wearing CBRN gear.”

The Russian gas masks were blocky and distorted the faces of the men in Alpha, who were crouched on their knees with their weapons easily slung across their chests.

Trapp slowly pivoted the direction of the scope until Bravo element came into view. They were more difficult to make out, but he was sure he saw faces—and more importantly, no masks.

Tear gas, maybe? he wondered.

Surely the separatists supporting the GRU wouldn’t have agreed to do so if they were going to be exposed to a nerve gas or something equally toxic. Maybe the Russian operators merely intended to flush the Ukrainians—and Americans—out of the trench network before opening fire and slaughtering them all.

Or perhaps they had devised something even more exotic than that.

He watched as Alpha element scanned left and right to see if they had been detected. They were now barely eighty yards away from the first line of Ukrainian trenches.

What the hell are you planning?

Seemingly assured that their approach had remained undetected, Alpha element began their advance—if painstakingly slowly. They dropped to their bellies and crawled. Another pivot indicated that both Bravo and Charlie remained in the same spot.

The tablet view now panned back to the column of armored cars. About half a dozen men—dots—formed a loose defensive perimeter around them or manned heavy guns on the vehicles themselves.

Trapp almost felt sorry for them.

Almost.

Alpha element slowed, then came to a halt all at once as if in response to some unheard command. They were about forty yards out from the Ukrainian outpost and stretched across a line about twice that in length, so that each operator was separated by at least ten yards. They were close enough that they could probably hear the local pop music that Chernyak’s unit had left playing through speakers inside the outpost.

Were they planning to simply open fire? None of this made sense. What was he missing?

“Okay,” Trapp murmured almost silently into his throat mic. “This is it. Nobody open fire until you hear the Big Bang. Hangman, out.”

He switched his radio to a different frequency, one that was relayed up to the Sentinel drone overhead, and then onward even farther. And waited.

Alpha team did nothing. He focused his scope on them, but if they were moving it wasn’t by much. He squinted at the nearest to him. The man looked like he was loading his weapon.

Odd timing.

The whump sound of the first projectile instantly clarified the situation in Trapp’s mind. The GRU operators—that’s who they had to be—were firing grenades. The first whistled through the air and seemed to trigger the other shooters into opening fire. One after another, and then simultaneously, a second, third, and a full half dozen grenades pinged into the darkness and rattled as they landed.

“No explosions,” someone murmured over the radio net.

“Hold fire,” Trapp said softly.

The situation reminded him of battles hundreds of years in the past, when infantry formed into dense squares and waited until they could see the whites of the eyes of the cavalry units charging toward them before they opened fire.

The Alpha operators quickly reloaded, and a second, third, even a fourth hail of projectiles landed inside the Ukrainian outpost.

“I think I see gas,” a Ukrainian voice said over the radio net. “In trenches. Hard to see, but I think is gas.”

Bastards, Trapp thought, grinding his jaw together.

The Russians had planned to smoke them out as they slept. Whatever was in those grenades was either designed to simply kill their targets as they slept, or perhaps drug them. A sense of foul play tugged at his mind—though he ignored the fact that he planned to pull a similar trick on his opponents.

That was different. Somehow.

One final gas grenade soared through the air and hissed its noxious contents into the air before the GRU operators stopped. One by one, they rose into a kneeling position and aimed their weapons forward, scanning left and right as they tried to pick out targets that didn’t appear.

The operators crept toward the trench line as one. They seemed hesitant—no doubt both hoping their plan had worked and fearing something was wrong. The line of men visibly gained in confidence the closer they got. Trapp’s nose wrinkled with distaste as he saw them rush the final yards in a ragged, ill-disciplined order.

The second they jumped down into the trenches proper, Trapp pressed the transmit button on his radio and said, “Launch, launch, launch.”

* * *

Thousands of feet above the heads of the various combatants, the loitering B-2 Spirit stealth bomber banked to the east. The bomb bay doors slid open, and the rotary launcher inside disgorged a pair of GBU-12 Paveway-II laser guided bombs.

Moments after release, the bomber’s bay doors closed once more, and the once-more stealthy aircraft increased power and headed for the safety of the Ukrainian interior proper. The bombs themselves fell in almost-complete silence as the seekers attached to each nose searched for the laser beam that was currently aimed at the small procession of Russian armored vehicles from the nose of the circling RQ-170 Sentinel. Fins emerged from the sides of each bomb to guide the munitions to target.

The fall took 26 seconds.

* * *

Each impact was greeted by a short-lived burst of light as the Tritonal high explosive core inside the bombs detonated. Smoke and dust billowed in the darkness, and retinas were scoured by the flash which kept pulsating even behind closed eyelids.

In the machine gun nest above the Ukrainian combat outpost, Ikeda was tense and ready for the explosion—which still sucked the air from her lungs, then pummeled her with the resulting shockwave. In years to come she would probably be grateful that she’d remembered to don ear protection, but in the initial seconds of stunned, half-drunk reaction, she was just happy to be alive.

Though she knew that the armored vehicles no longer existed—could no longer exist—she still wasted precious moments searching for the spot where they had last been seen. All that was visible was a dark cloud—and only then because it stole resolution from the darkness.

She shook herself and yelled, “Now!”

To her left, Chernyak echoed the command in his native language—speaking both to the gunner operating the ex-Soviet heavy machine gun next to him and through the radio net the Ukrainians used.

Tracer fire lanced into the night, first from the gun right next to them, and then from the second gun also. Ikeda raised her own weapon to fire, but soon realized there was no point. Both of the positions that the separatists had taken up to each side of the gully entrance were now receiving heavy and accurate gunfire from much more powerful weapons.

Chernyak had no such compunctions. He stood upright, not fearing the possibility of incoming fire—probably rightly, since the enemy seemed too stunned by the sudden turn of events to react. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, roaring some ancient battle cry into the darkness.

Instead, she crouched and focused the scope of her own rifle onto the area that was currently being battered by machine gun fire from the nest she was occupying. Her heartbeat was irregular and initially caused her aim to jump, but she consciously steadied the weapon and slaved it to an aiming point just left of the gully entrance.

The separatists were in headlong retreat. One stopped, crouched, and aimed his rifle in the vague direction of his attackers and fired several poorly aimed shots into the night sky before a tongue of fire ripped through his torso and sent him crashing to the ground. The other dots of heat in the night were either crawling on the ground or sprinting headlong to the gully mouth.

She didn’t bother checking the other separatist element; she already knew what she would see. Instead she turned to Chernyak, whose rifle had run dry. He faced her with a broad smile on his face and raise the weapon triumphantly above his head.

“We have them, yes?” He grinned.

“It’s not over yet.”

* * *

Trapp cast off the blanket that was covering him and stood upright. In his ear, a voice excitedly informed him that Bravo and Charlie elements—he appended the labels himself—were in outright retreat.

He resisted the urge to tell the Ukrainian half of the waiting ambush that it was time. They knew. He lowered the night vision goggles from his helmet and panned his head from left to right, searching the Ukrainian trench line for targets.

“I want them alive,” he murmured instead to Sergeant Packer. “But only so long as it doesn’t put your men at risk. If you have to, cut them down.”

“Copy that,” Packer confirmed.

There was a sudden stillness after the NCO finished speaking, and it took Trapp a moment to realize the cause—the machine guns on the hill above the COP had fallen silent. A final burst of red tracer fire arced into the darkness, and then it stopped for good.

He wondered what the Russians were thinking right now. They had to know they had stumbled into a trap. Had to suspect that there could be no way out. How would they choose to respond? Would they run? Surrender?

Or fight?

A primal urge inside him hungered for the last of the three options. The fire and fury of his escape from IK-29 had not quenched his rage at what had happened to Chase Fowler. Giving President Nash a foreign policy win by capturing a bunch of Russian spooks was a very abstract proposition.

Killing the Russians was different. It would make him whole. For a time.

And still they lingered in the trench.

Trapp keyed his throat mic, still scanning left and right to make sure that he wasn’t surprised as he said, “Liz, get the Ukrainians to rake the support trenches. Let’s give them a little motivation.”

It took a few seconds for anything to happen—probably because the command needed to be translated into a different language first, or maybe because the gunner had expended all of his ammunition in the previous frenzy.

But then the big machine gun started up again. The first burst was too short. One of the tracer rounds ricocheted off the ground and spun end over end through the darkness. The gunner corrected his aim. Long bursts of gunfire pummeled the trenches.

Trapp waited for a few moments then yelled, “Okay, that’s enough. Let’s let them think it’s over.”

It didn’t take the Russians long.

“Hey—we got movement,” one of Packer’s soldiers called out in a low voice.

As a shape emerged from behind the trench line, Trapp pivoted and aimed his weapon at what was first a head, then shoulders, and finally an entire body. Another appeared a moment later.

“They’re running,” Trapp said. “Stay calm. Wait until they get close.”

He stared at the target in his scope until the man could only have been fifty feet away. His trigger finger itched. Unknowingly, he drew his lips back and bared a snarl at the man who had caused so many so much pain.

“Down, down, down!” an American voice screamed.

The green target skidded to a halt. He fumbled with his weapon, and Trapp started to squeeze the trigger—not yet with sufficient force to fire around, but not far off.

“Get your fucking hands up!”

The operator clearly understood English. He stopped dead and didn’t move. His eyes glowed in the darkness as he looked up at the waiting ambush and his predicament hit home. He raised his hands over his head.

Trapp kept his weapon trained on the man.

Another soldier fired half a magazine worth of warning shots into the sky over the heads of the onrushing GRU operators. One of them dived to the floor in an instant. It was difficult to make out his precise movements in the darkness, even through the green glow of the NVGs, and one of Packer’s men pumped the fallen figure full of lead.

In his peripheral vision, Trapp watched as the other Russians bellowed their surrender and threw their weapons onto the ground or demonstrated that they were no longer a threat. Packer’s men cautiously advanced and disarmed their new prisoners, tossing away rifles and pistols and securing the men.

It was over.

But he still had a clear field of fire. No one would mourn this man’s death. And neither Packer nor his unit would report one more casualty.

He squeezed his trigger a little tighter. Only a feather’s weight now stood in between life and death for the Russian. Trapp’s heartbeat thundered in his chest. He saw Fowler’s broken face imprinted in his mind. His friend’s cries of pain echoed in his ears, and Pavel’s shocked face as he shielded himself from the shower of woodchips caused by his crazed ax assault.

Trapp closed his eyes. He didn’t need them to make the shot.

And finally, painstakingly, he lowered his weapon.

It really was over.

Epilogue

Trapp rolled the SUV to a halt in the center of a woodland clearing on the edge of one of the Agency’s many discreet Virginia estates. Stones pinged up from the gravel surface and rattled the undercarriage. Sasha was in the passenger seat next to him, staring anxiously forward. A dark sedan was waiting on the other side, the indistinct silhouettes of two men just barely visible. Neither moved.

As he killed the engine, one of the dark, pregnant clouds swirling in the skies overhead released a heavy rain drop, which splatted against the windshield like a giant tapping the glass. The vehicle almost seemed to rock with the impact.

“You did not have to do this, Jason,” he said, using Trapp’s real first name with a little hesitation, as if still unused to it.

Trapp twisted in his seat and plucked a slim manila folder from the rear seats. He placed it on his lap but did not yet open it. Sasha didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was sightless. He was drumming his fingers against his thigh in a jerky, speeded-up motion.

“I did,” Trapp sighed. “I owe you a lot, my friend. And after today, you won’t ever see me again.”

“The Marshals explained this to me, yes.” Sasha nodded. “They will give me a new name?”

“I think they let you choose.” Trapp nodded. Another raindrop landed on the SUV, on the closed sunroof this time. And then another. Now the heavens opened, and a squall broke over the Virginia countryside, limiting visibility to a matter of feet. “So long as you don’t pick something too obvious, you should be fine.”

Sasha exhaled. He turned to Trapp. “Thank you.”

Frowning, Trapp said, “For what?”

“You rescued me from… from that place,” he said, enunciating the final two words with sheer disgust. “I would have died there, there is no doubt about that. So thank you, Jason.”

“No, Sasha,” Trapp said, shaking his head. “You rescued yourself. You’re a survivor, trust me. I know one when I see one. But can I give you a piece of advice?”

“Please.”

Trapp grinned. “Next time you rip someone off, make sure they don’t have the power to send you to a fucking Gulag. I won’t be there to help you.”

“I’m a survivor.” Sasha grinned wanly. “You said it yourself. But no, my—how do you say—life of crime is over. I should never have done these things in the first place. I won’t risk it again. I learned about myself in the camp. I can work hard. I’m smart. I just need to make the right choices.”

“Easier said than done,” Trapp said. “But I believe in you, man. You’ll make it work.”

He dropped his gaze to the folder in his lap and played with the corner of the paper before flipping it open. A single photograph was inside. The image was as clinical as it was horrifying. Sasha gasped.

“Anton…” he whispered.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Trapp said, unaccountably feeling a lump in his throat.

The emotion was unlike him, and it wasn’t as though Anton had ever been a Boy Scout—and yet the Russian prisoner had essentially given his life so that both he and Sasha could get free. Anton probably didn’t see it like that. He was his own man, a product of both choices he made and circumstances he didn’t. He’d earned a little respect.

The photo showed the Anton they knew stripped naked and lying on a mortuary table. The cold steel seemed to wash out the image, but maybe that was just the pallid color of death. There was a bullet hole right through the Orthodox cross at the center of his chest. The blood had been washed away. Another, similar hole had torn his left shoulder apart.

“How did you get this?” Sasha asked, reaching for the photo.

“We have good hackers, I guess.” Trapp shrugged. “Not my department.”

“Can I keep?”

Trapp shook his head, giving Sasha the answer he knew he would receive. “No can do, my friend. But I thought you should see it.”

Sasha looked out of the window, though he couldn’t have seen much. “In Russia we say Hunger is not your aunt, and it won’t give you a pie.”

“What does it mean?”

“Hunger is a merciless enemy. You do what you have to do to survive. That’s what Anton did.”

“He’s dead,” Trapp murmured with a pang of guilt.

“Yes, but they did not beat him,” Sasha finished fiercely. The rain weakened a little just as another SUV rolled into the clearing.

“They’re here,” Trapp said. “Are you excited to see them?”

Sasha handed the photograph back and swallowed. “I have wished for this day for a very long time. But that is the wrong question.”

“What’s the right one?”

“Are they excited to see me?”

The SUV came to a halt, and its headlights flashed once. Trapp offered Sasha his hand and said, “There’s only one way to find out. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Sasha started reaching for Trapp’s hand with his own, then thought better of it. He pulled the man he once knew as Kolya into an embrace. After releasing it, he opened the door and said again, “Thank you.”

Trapp nodded. Sasha climbed out and closed the door behind him. He watched as the Russian trudged into the rain and whispered, “Good luck…”

When Sasha was halfway across the clearing, one of the rear doors on the waiting SUV swung open, and a young girl jumped out before sprinting toward her father. Sasha froze and seemed to visibly shake himself awake as the child launched herself into his arms. He crouched down on his haunches and hugged her, heedless of the rain hammering down and pressing his hair flat against his skull.

Simultaneously, the SUV’s front passenger door opened, and a woman climbed out of the back seats. Trapp guessed that she must be Sasha’s wife. She didn’t run into her husband’s arms, just watched as he and their daughter embraced. They looked like they were sobbing.

Ikeda stepped out of the passenger seat and murmured something to the woman before eyeing Trapp’s vehicle and walking over to it. She said nothing to Sasha as she passed him, but only because he was still locked in his huddle with his daughter.

As she reached Trapp’s passenger door, now soaked with rain, Sasha finally rose and took his daughter’s hand to lead her to their new life in witness protection. Trapp watched him until he disappeared into the care of the US Marshals Service. The SUV rolled away, followed moments later by the waiting sedan.

“He’s a good man,” Ikeda said once she was inside as both watched the vehicles disappear into the rain.

“He is,” Trapp agreed. “I didn’t expect to see you here today.”

The truth was he hadn’t seen much of her for almost a whole two weeks, ever since their return from Ukraine. Between the endless debriefings and his own visits to various medical clinics to resolve some of the many ailments he’d sustained in Siberia, it hadn’t been possible to carve out the time.

Or is that just an excuse? he wondered. He’d sensed a distance between them ever since he made the decision to go after Fowler. Perhaps his recklessness had caused Ikeda to reconsider where she stood.

“DCI had a message for you,” she said, looking straight ahead. “I convinced Mike it would be better coming from me.”

Trapp kept his tone noncommittal. He knew what was coming. “Oh.”

“You’re on leave, Jason. Indefinitely.”

It was hard to keep a slight hint of bitterness from infecting his voice. “Are you here to take my gun and badge?”

Ikeda’s gaze snapped toward him. She rolled her eyes. “Aside from the fact that the Agency issues us with neither, of course not. But sure, you’ve been benched. I don’t know how long for. Maybe forever. I get it, that sucks. But you had to expect there was a possibility something like this could happen.”

“I considered it.”

“But not for long, huh?”

Trapp grimaced. “Not really.”

She sighed. “It all worked out, didn’t it? For you it always does. You’re like a battering ram tumbling through life, knocking obstacles out of your way. You saved Chase and left Murov with egg on his face just because you could. It’s a hell of a win for the President. And Lawrence will figure out the same too.”

He held his breath, waiting for the hammer to fall. He could sense it, and yet was too numb to devise a way to dodge the blow.

“The world will always have a use for someone like you, Jason. The Agency will be back for you, I have no doubt about that.” She paused. “The thing is, I’m not sure I do. Not anymore.”

Trapp squeezed his eyes shut, briefly hoping to block the pain her words caused. She didn’t mean to do him harm, he knew that. Success had many fathers, but failure just one—his own.

“You can’t go through life expecting the world to bend to your will,” she said, her voice breaking. “Not when it’s the rest of us who have to pick up the pieces. I can’t do it any longer. I don’t regret anything between us. But this is where I get off.”

He nodded, his throat choked with emotion. “I don’t blame you,” he croaked. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “And I’m sorry. For everything.”

Ikeda shook her head. A tear formed in the corner of her eye but didn’t fall. She stared at him and said in a sobbing laugh, “Don’t be. It’s who you are.”

He reached out and rested his palm on the side of her cheek before cupping his fingers around the back of her neck and tangling himself in her hair. Then he gently pulled her toward him, eyes closed, and kissed her one last time.

Author’s Note

Dear reader,

Congratulations for making it to the end of Black Eagle! I started this book in the dark days of February 2021, during lockdown and plague and strife. I intended it to be quite a short book by my standards, and yet somehow here we are with a four-hundred-page tome that weighs in just where all the others do.

I read with interest feedback on The Apparatus, the fifth book in the main Jason Trapp series. The book didn’t feature Jason as much as others have, and I bit off quite a lot with the storyline. It worked for some, and not for others. I hope you’ll agree that Black Eagle was a return to the action-first Jason that you know. I had a blast writing this one, probably unlike Jason himself, who kind of went through hell, but as usual got out the other end mostly intact.

He has a few new scars, and will need to wait until his bruises heal. And that’s before he comes to terms with his new status out in the cold, both personally and professionally. Who knows how he’ll react to that…

The next book in the series, tentatively titled The Valley of Death, will be out before the end of the year. I’ll be making a start on it shortly.

Before that, you can expect the first book in my brand-new series. I’m hoping to release it at the start of September 2021 – I’m honestly just having a problem coming up with a title! As soon as I do, I’ll get the book up for preorder and announce it to my mailing list. I hope you’re following.

As always, I like to explain a little about the background about my books, and Black Eagle is no different.

I had the idea at the start of the year, when Russia was surging troops to the disputed border with Ukraine. There were by all accounts some very tense days in Washington and Kiev as people tried to work out whether Russia actually intended to invade Ukraine. Thankfully, that didn’t come to pass.

The other key events at the time that helped spark the idea was the spurious arrest of the Russian activist Alexei Navalny for the “high crime” of attempting to expose corruption in Putin’s inner circle – and that of the man himself. He released a video just before returning to Russia (after recovering from an attempted assassination using a toxic nerve agent) exposing just this corruption. I can’t fathom the bravery of a man who would do such a thing and then willingly turn himself over to Putin’s thugs.

His charge, by the way, was that he didn’t check-in with Russian probation officers while he was in a coma.

Predictably, he was committed to a Russian penal colony not unlike IK-29, where he lingers today in ill health. In fact the prison is known by the title IK-2 – so not so different at all.

In the end, the putative Russian invasion of Ukraine turned out to be nothing more than saber rattling head of forthcoming elections in which Putin’s party is not popular – and yet no doubt will win a resounding majority.

Because of the nature of the book, which was largely set inside the Gulag, there are fewer juicy facts for me to tell you about. I can confirm though that GRU Unit 29155, the Russian espionage group referred to in the book, is very real indeed. They were responsible for the Sergei Skripal poisoning, the assassination of a Bulgarian arms dealer, a destabilization campaign in Moldova and – possibly – a program in which the Taliban were paid cash bounties in return for killing American servicemen.

Not nice people at all!

Unfortunately, to my knowledge they haven’t been apprehended in quite such a satisfying way as Trapp does at the end of the book.

But here’s hoping…

Until next time,

Jack.

P.S. The next book in the Trapp series is tentatively titled Valley of Death, and it’s available for preorder now. Search the title in the Kindle store, or click here.

P.P.S. If you’re not already signed up to my newsletter, what are you waiting for? I don’t spam, and have probably sent only 1-2 emails in the last year. But they’re always good… Join at www.jack-slater.com/updates