Davydov couldn’t understand her words but her meaning was clear. They were to leave her village immediately.
She made it to within ten feet of the men before Kravchuk began to laugh derisively and shot her in the belly with his rifle.
Doubling over in pain, the woman dropped to her knees. Yakibov began to laugh as well and shot her in the arm. They were toying with her.
The poor woman’s face convulsed and twitched, and it was obvious she was in tremendous pain, but she said nothing, glaring instead at the men.
Kravchuk gave a heartless chuckle. “Let us see how brave you are when—”
Davydov shot the woman in the head with his pistol, ending her suffering but bringing a sneer from Kravchuk and Yakibov.
“Your heart is much too soft, my friend,” Kravchuk said. “I consider it my duty to toughen you up.”
Yakibov pointed his Kalashnikov toward the village with one hand, where small groups of women and children ran toward the school. “The old woman was stalling us,” he said. “Kravchuk, you go ahead and secure any communications at the school. Davydov and I will clear the remaining houses, then we will join you there. If people are not already fleeing toward the haven of the school, they are still sleeping. This should go quickly.” The former Spetsnaz man nudged Davydov and grinned. “Maybe we can toughen you up with a little fun and games while on the way.”
Chapter 47
Quinn knelt among the thick willows beside Beaudine, peering through the dead leaves and falling snow at the old fuel shack that stood between them and the main dirt street of Needle. The village was laid out in a lopsided T with the long road stretching approximately a half mile between the small airstrip and the school. The top of the T, which was now to Quinn’s left, ran up from the river in front of the blue metal school, continuing on to what looked like the dump a few hundred meters out of town. It was difficult to tell from his vantage point but Quinn guessed there to be no more than ten weathered wood-sided homes along the main street and another four or five on the shorter street beyond the school. Green hides hung over two-by-four wooden banisters in front of nearly every house. Here and there, partially butchered caribou quarters hung on wooden frames, now covered with snow.
Trails of fresh footprints led toward the school.
Quinn took a slow breath, scanning.
“We should have landed further upriver,” he whispered. “The tracks would have given us an idea of how many we’re dealing with.”
“Or they would have heard the boat and killed us before we hit the beach,” Beaudine said.
“There is that,” Quinn said. He nodded toward the school as two more women hurried up and banged on the front door. A young man with a red beard and glasses waved them in quickly before shutting the door again.
“Looks like everyone’s moving to shelter,” Beaudine said. “That’s good.”
“The school is the center of—” Quinn stopped mid-sentence and held up a hand to silence Beaudine, tipping his head slightly toward the back of the houses on the other side of the fuel shacks. A Native girl, who looked to be in her mid-teens, dragged a small preschool-age boy through the snow toward the school. The girl crept slowly, skirting junked snow machines and sagging meat racks. Obviously terrified, she checked back over her shoulder every few seconds.
The old fuel shack was located nearer the school on the long leg of the T. A newer fuel shack — two pumps surrounded by a tall chain-link fence — had been built fifty feet upriver, likely to meet some safety code about standoff distance from the school. Quinn waited for the girl to look behind her and motioned for Beaudine to follow him, breaking out of the alders just below the new fuel shack.
Believing any threat was coming from the airport, the girl focused her attention backward and didn’t see Quinn until he’d already come up behind her. He clamped a hand over her mouth and dragged her back into the alders as gently as he could. Beaudine followed with the child.
Quinn was surprised how strong the girl was. She kicked and jerked and screamed into his open hand, almost spinning out of his grasp several times. It took everything he had to keep her arms pinned to her sides without hurting her.
“We’re friends!” he hissed, his lips next to her ear. “Here to help.”
It took a moment for the message to sink in, and the girl snapped her head back, narrowly missing Quinn’s nose with what would have been a devastating head butt.
“I’m Jericho,” he said when she calmed down. The little boy fell into his sister’s arms and clung to her, his brown eyes wide with fright at being dragged into the bushes. He stared at the scar on Beaudine’s face, and Quinn realized he probably didn’t look much better. “This is my friend Khaki,” he whispered. “We’re police, chasing those bad men out there.”
The little boy nodded, giving Quinn a wary eye. “Like the Troopers?”
Quinn raised his eyebrows. Village kids often had no other contact with law enforcement beyond the Alaska State Troopers. “Yes,” he said. “Like Troopers.”
“I’m Hazel,” the girl said. “This is my little brother, Herman.”
“Your family okay?” Quinn asked.
“My mom works at the school,” Hazel said, eyes welling with tears. “I saw those men shoot Ms. Bernadette… They shot her and just laughed…”
“How many are there?” Beaudine asked.
“Three,” Hazel said. “They’re big and scary. All of ’em have beards.”
“Only three?” Quinn said. That was odd. According to the Russian at the lodge, Zolner was clean-shaven like a soldier.
The girl suddenly froze, eyes flicking toward the bushes. Quinn heard the wheezing grunt of someone shuffling through the snow. He turned slowly to see a lone man with a thick salt-and-pepper beard trotting behind the houses. Eyes focused toward the school, the man moved to an outbuilding behind the house nearest the abandoned fuel shack and stopped. Made of unpainted plywood and blue tarps, the six-by-six shed was not quite five feet tall. A rusted stovepipe and pile of split wood outside the door said it was a sweathouse.
The man scanned the houses in front of him, and then turned to face the side of the sweathouse. He let his Kalashnikov fall against the sling and pushed it behind his hip while he unzipped his pants.
“He’s stopping to take a leak,” Beaudine said, raising the AR-10. “Is that one of the men?”
Hazel nodded.
Quinn put a hand on top of the rifle barrel and shook his head. “We can’t afford to let the others hear the shot.”
He slipped the pack off his shoulders and stowed it with the Lapua in the willows to retrieve later. That left him with only what he had in his pockets and his war belt of the Kimber pistol, two extra magazines, and the Riot — a stubby but razor sharp sheath knife — allowing him to move quickly and, more important, silently.
“Hazel,” he said. “You and your brother keep an eye on the river and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
He drew the Riot and crouched, glancing toward the airstrip to make sure his target was alone before looking back at Beaudine, directly into her eyes. “This is one of those times I warned you about.
She gave a doubtful frown. “You’re going to fight him with a knife?”
Quinn shook his head. “This won’t be a fight.”
The silent killing of an unsuspecting enemy was conniving, cold blooded, and barbaric. Even when accomplished for a good cause, it felt an awful lot like murder. An otherwise moral man needed some kind of disconnect to kill another human being. Famed Border Patrol gunfighter Bill Jordan called it manufactured contempt. The memory of Lovita’s death was still raw in Quinn’s gut, making the total annihilation of any of the people involved an end game he was happy to work toward. Justice was just another name for societal vengeance, and Quinn had long before come to grips with being the instrument of it.