It had been sometime since anyone used the trail and Quinn had to get off several times to push and tug deadfall out of the path. Eventually, they turned back to the east and broke out of the trees into the open.
The tundra wasn’t frozen solid, even in the snow and cold, leaving the ground boggy and difficult to negotiate. Heavy clouds and a steady snow made for poor visibility — turning everything around them gray or white. In the open, with no trees to guide him, Quinn had to concentrate to maintain a heading and keep from getting stuck.
Beaudine’s humming changed to “Froggy Went a Courtin’.” Quinn wondered if she even realized she was doing it. He hadn’t heard the song in ages, but the beat matched the bump and tumble of the ATV’s tires on the trail and he enjoyed the break from their heavy mood. Even through the humming Beaudine kept her head up, scanning the horizon for Zolner or Volodin. Quinn could tell by the way she moved that her brain was going a million miles an hour. There was certainly a lot to think about. The U.S. had been attacked twice with poison gas. Beaudine had investigated two break-ins, witnessed bloody gunfights at the lodge and in Needle, been in a plane crash, watched Lovita die beside a lonely river, nearly died herself of hypothermia, watched Quinn tear out a man’s throat — and then kill another with a sniper rifle.
“You okay?” she suddenly asked. Her voice a husky whisper in his ear.
“I’m fine,” he said, wishing she would go back to humming.
“Okay,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “It’s just… stuff like that back there, it can change you. That’s a fact.”
“I’m good, really,” Quinn said. The truth was, he felt like leaning out and puking on the trail, but he didn’t have the time. He chalked it up to fatigue and pain as much as anything. One thing was certain — he didn’t want to talk about his feelings.
Millions of falling snowflakes erased the horizon line leaving the white landscape to meld with a milky gray sky. They skirted dozens of lakes with rings of ice just beginning to form around their edges. Bumps of low-bush blueberry and scrub willow lined small streams, the smallest of which had already frozen over, spreading across the tundra like white veins.
“Maybe we should have just taken the river?” Beaudine nuzzled in closer to his back. “I mean, it goes to Ambler too — and we know that’s where they’re going.”
“The river does go to Ambler,” Quinn said. “But everyone says this guy Zolner is supposed to be a hunter. Volodin and his daughter might not even make it to Ambler. We need to intercept them en route. If that package Volodin took from the lodge was nerve gas…”
“And I thought this assignment was a bullshit job,” Beaudine said. “Listen, I hate to be a nag, but when’s the last time you put somethin’ in your belly?” She surprised him by passing up one of Lovita’s salmon strips.
Quinn thanked her and took the fish, feeling the oil warm him as he chewed. He was about to ask for another when he heard the shot.
Chapter 51
The grizzly bear was small, not quite a year old, but even small bears could knock over an ATV — or at least cause a startled driver to do so. Kaija sped up at the flash of brown on the tundra ahead, blinking her eyes as her subconscious and conscious minds came together to agree on what she was seeing. It took her a moment more to remember that small bears almost always came with a big bear in tow, a bear with big claws and a big protective attitude about the little bear.
Kaija cut the handlebars sharply to take a trail around the cub, but the left front wheel dropped into a rut causing the nose to dip. Kaija and her father flew forward. Both were too slow to give up their grips and pulled the machine over with them as they fell.
Her father got to his knees and adjusted his glasses, wiping snow and grass off his face. Kaija scrambled quickly to peer around the overturned ATV, looking for the bear.
Still in its first year of life, the curious cub sat back on its haunches square in the middle of the trail less than fifty feet in front of the wrecked ATV.
“Go!” Kaija whispered, willing the thing to move rather than actually giving an audible command. She’d heard far too many stories of good Russians who’d been torn to pieces by the giant bears of Kamchatka. Though she was certain American grizzly bears would prove to be more puny, she had no desire to face even a lesser mother bear.
“Please go!” she said again, louder this time. She tried to add more force but the words just came out wobbly and without commitment. Adrenaline threatened to buckle her knees and she struggled to gain control. “Please…”
The mother bear padded across the snow toward the yearling. Her thick fur had to be three inches long, and blonder than her baby’s, with chocolate legs and a dark, sincere face. Layers of fat, laid on for winter, rolled on her shoulders and buttocks as she waddled up and sat beside her cub. She turned her head from side to side, sniffing the wind and staring at the ATV with tiny pig-like eyes.
“Get out of here!” Kaija said again, almost screaming now. The snow had stopped but the change in the weather brought a breeze that chilled her down to her bones. “Please, we mean you no harm.”
The mother bear gave a single woof and rose onto her hind legs, forelimbs up and paws exhibiting long, scimitarlike claws.
Kaija jumped at the sound of her father’s voice behind her. “Leave us alone!” he barked.
She took her eyes off the grizzly long enough to glance over her shoulder and see that he’d retrieved the rifle from the scabbard on the overturned ATV. Her hands flew to her ears as a deafening boom shook the air beside her head.
The mother bear remained on her hind legs and turned her head from side to side at the sound of the shot. The bullet had come nowhere near her. If it frightened her, she certainly didn’t act like it. Dropping to all fours, the grizzly gave another woof and nipped at her cub to get it moving north at an easy, ambling gait.
Fuming, Kaija clenched her jaw and wheeled to face her father. The old fool was actually smiling. He held the rifle in front of him like some Hero of the Soviet Union.
“I have saved us, kroshka,” he said.
“You idiot,” she spat, waving him forward. “Put that gun away and help me get this machine back on four tires.”
Volodin slumped. “But Kaija, my dear…” He looked as though he would break into tears at the slightest nudge.
“You have killed us, my dear Papa.” She gave a derisive laugh. Her mother had been right about this man. He was at once the most brilliant and densest man she had ever seen. “How can you not be embarrassed? We were fortunate that the snow hid our tracks and now your shooting has told the world exactly where to find us.”
Chapter 52
Quinn was off the Arctic Cat as soon as he heard the shot. He yanked the cord that held the Lapua in place and held it in one hand and the pack in the other, sprinting forward to put some distance between himself and the ATV.
“Wanna tell me where we’re goin’?” Beaudine said, hustling after him with her pack and the AR-10.
“The four-wheeler isn’t camouflaged against the snow,” Quinn said. He tugged at the fabric of his over whites. “We are.” He dropped the pack in front of him and knelt down beside it, feeling himself begin to sink into the cold wet mush of the tundra as soon as his knee hit the ground. Ignoring the chill, he put the rifle to his shoulder and began to scan through the scope in the direction he thought the shot had come from.
It was difficult to get a bearing from a single shot, especially on the open tundra where sound spread like a flooding tide across the vast openness. He went on instinct, and the direction he’d first turned his head when he’d heard the distant report. Quinn guessed it to be a medium power deer rifle, maybe a .30.30. It was absent the massive concussive boom that would have come with a round as big as the CheyTac Davydov said Zolner used. He’d heard no crack-thump, so the shots didn’t appear to be coming in his direction.