“No,” Rostov said, waving at the drab concrete building on the outskirts of the base. Its back to the perimeter fence and barren mountains, the barracks was separated from the other buildings by a gurgling stream that contained more sewage than water. “Lodygin is a loaner. This is where he prefers to live.”
The FSB agent stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps, her hand on the peeling paint of a metal rail. “Captain Lodygin keeps prisoners at his residence?”
Rostov motioned for the driver to stay with the car, wondering how to couch his answer so he did not sound too callous and scare away the young redhead. In the end, he decided that if she was an agent for the FSB, she should be capable of handling unvarnished truth.
“Captain Lodygin is an interesting soul,” Rostov said. “But his methods have, thus far, yielded results. He does not have an interrogation cell in his home so much as he lives in a room off the interrogation cell.”
Kanatova nodded thoughtfully, seeming to chew on this information as she made her way up the stairs and through the twin metal doors. Their footsteps echoed down a long tile hallway that was covered with a thin patina of glacial dust and lined on either side with wooden dormitory doors every three or four meters. There was a forgotten emptiness to the place, like a condemned prison. Rostov caught a whiff of strong cleaning solution as they walked — and something else he could not quite identify.
“You have been to this place before?” Kanatova said as they neared a pool of light that spilled from an open door at the far end of the passageway.
“No,” Rostov said. “The captain has only described it to me.”
“Most interesting,” the FSB agent said. “Where are the guards? Why have we not been challenged?”
“I am not certain,” Rostov said honestly, as they reached the open door. “We will have to inquire.”
They found Lodygin sitting at a small metal table in front of a bowl of soup, addressing a young woman across from him with a spoon. He was dressed in his uniform trousers and a T-shirt, but his tunic and light green shirt hung over the back of a chair beside him. The young woman across from him wore a thin cotton shift. She dipped a spoon into a bowl of soup identical to his and put it to her mouth with a shaking hand. Soup drizzled back into the bowl and she stared at Lodygin and went through the motions of eating without ever opening her mouth. Dark hair hung on trembling shoulders in greasy matted strands. Providenya saw little sun this time of year and everyone was pale, but the girl looked as though the life had been drained from her body. Her hands were free but a chain connected a bruised and bloody ankle to the leg of her metal chair. The chair appeared to be bolted to the floor.
Rostov was immediately struck with the foul odor of the well-used toilet bucket in the corner. He had to concentrate to keep from retching when he saw the metal ring affixed to the back wall above a thin prison mattress. A single filthy sheet for bedding was crumpled at the end, sopping up a spill from the bucket. Torn underwear, now little more than sad pieces of cotton and elastic lay on the tile next to the mattress. The sight of them made Rostov want to vomit.
“Colonel!” Lodygin said, jumping to his feet. “I wish you would have informed me you were going to visit. I would have made myself more presentable.” He gestured toward the girl with an open hand. “Our Rosalina has been very cooperative in the last few minutes, so she earned some much needed nourishment.”
The girl convulsed at Lodygin’s every word, a look of hopelessness in her sunken eyes such as Rostov had never seen. For the first time, the colonel noticed a short wooden truncheon on the table, resting on top of a pair of flaccid latex gloves beside Lodygin’s soup bowl.
Kanatova ignored the girl, looking instead at the captain. “So, this Rosalina has provided you information on the Black Hundreds?”
A smile crept over Lodygin’s face. He walked around the table to stand beside the girl and stroked her hair with the back of his hand. “She has told me a great deal about her friend Kaija Merculief, who is involved with this Black Hundreds.”
“I do not care about Kaija Merculief,” Kanatova spat, apparently lacking in patience. “We require information on the Black Hundreds group. I will need to speak with this girl myself.”
Rosalina threw back her head in despair. “Kaija is a friend from school only,” she sobbed. “I do not know about any Black Hundreds—”
Without warning, Kanatova drew a black H&K pistol from beneath her down jacket and shot Lodygin in the center of his forehead.
“I believe you,” she said.
Chapter 55
“Now!” Quinn said, scooping up the rifle. He grabbed the pack and sock with his free hand. “Follow me. Move, move, move!”
Quinn counted strides as he ran, knowing that each bounding step put approximately one meter of distance between himself and Zolner. He stopped when he’d widened the gap twenty more meters and immediately dropped the pack on the ground. Settling in behind the scope, he squeezed the sock to bring the crosshairs of his scope where they centered on the Russian’s prone body. He took two full breaths, giving his nerves a quick moment to settle, then exhaled, pausing at the bottom to send the round in the stillness of his respiratory pause. He didn’t wait for impact but worked the bolt and fired again, using the same hold.
The .338 Lapua’s two-and-a-half-second flight gave Quinn time to get back on the scope before the projectile made it to the target. He’d seen Zolner fire as well, but the shot had fallen far short, kicking up a shower of snow just past the imprint where Quinn had been set up before. It would have been a hit.
“Hot damn, Quinn, you hit his rifle,” Beaudine yelled, binoculars to her eyes. “Bet he’s never had anybody shoot back at him like that. Have you, Mr. Worst of the Moon?”
The first shot from the Lapua sent up a splash of mud a foot in front of Zolner as he adjusted to Quinn’s new location. The second, still traveling 1200 feet per second, slammed into the ground a few inches closer and then bounced, striking the big CheyTac in the metal stock. At first Quinn thought the round had been a hit on Zolner, but the greater likelihood was that the solid round had sent up spalling from the metal rifle stock on impact along with fragments of copper. It was impossible to tell through the scope at over 1300 meters, but from the way Zolner rolled away, it looked as though he’d been struck in the arm and face.
Zolner was up and running by the time Quinn could send another shot his direction. As good as he was, shooting of any kind was a perishable skill. A moving target at nearly a mile away proved to be impossible to hit. The Russian didn’t even pause when he reached his ATV but sped away after Volodin.
“Can you believe that?” Beaudine said. “He just abandoned his fancy gun.”
“Smart,” Quinn said, sitting up to brush the tundra muck off the front of his jacket and pants. “What’s the doctor doing?”
Beaudine swung the binoculars around. “They’re long gone,” she said. “Must have gotten their machine tumped back on its wheels.”
A quick check of the Arctic Cat showed Zolner’s round had come in perfectly under the front fender and clipped the oil line. The machine was oil cooled, which meant it was out of commission. There were two extra quarts of oil under the seat, but the rubber hose was too short to reuse once the damage had been trimmed away.
“I can fix it,” Beaudine said, holding up one of the empty .338 Lapua cases and the file from her Leatherman multi-tool. “It’ll take a minute, but I can do it.”
Quinn nodded. “We can saw the end of the empty and use it as a hard splice. You’re pretty handy to have around.”