“You still with us Jake?” Petrova yelled.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Jake said.
Bullets buzzed by his head, but instead of returning fire, Jake’s focus turned to his left. Something made him turn. As he did, he saw the Swede, coke bottle, dragging his leg, a gun pointed at Jake.
The two of them fired simultaneously. The Swede missed. Jake didn’t. He hit the man three times. Twice in the chest and once in the mouth. He dropped instantly.
Okay. Now there were two.
Jake belly crawled toward the man he had just shot, taking a position behind a larger tree. He would be more protected and might have a better angle on the blond man.
Petrova yelled at Jake some more, but now Jake didn’t answer. He wanted them to think he was dead. He didn’t have to wait too long. Petrova was getting anxious. Now he switched from English to Russian — giving orders.
Seconds later, the little blond man stepped lightly from behind a tree. Jake aimed and shot three times. This time the guy was down for good. Jake had seen the bullets strike.
Just one left. Victor Petrova.
“Jake, I knew this was going to be fun. You were worth every Krona and Euro.”
Slowly making his way through the woods, Jake kept his gun aimed toward the car on the road, his steps as quiet as possible. All he could hear was the tiny brook, song birds, and a couple of ravens flying overhead. Probably anxious to get at those dead bodies, Jake guessed.
Where the hell was that little troll? On the edge of the road now, Jake stopped and waited, his eyes and ears working hard to pick up anything. The pain in his left shoulder made his left arm almost useless.
Concentrating on the car, Jake noticed the rear window down. He aimed his gun there and took another step. Stop.
On the road now, he was vulnerable. In the open.
He saw the barrel clear the top of the window and bullets flew toward him almost immediately.
Diving to his left while he shot three times, he landed hard on his hip and rolled into the ditch. His bullets struck the rear door.
Silence.
He lay in the ditch of water, his gun through the weeds aimed at the car, and saw two little legs under the car. Jake shot twice and the little man’s leg shattered, dropping him to the ground on the other side of the car. The old KGB man fired at Jake until his gun was empty.
Jake fired at Petrova until his gun locked the bolt back. Then he put in the last magazine and waited, his heart racing out of control.
He couldn’t see the little man anywhere. Where was his body? That’s assuming Jake had even hit him. But he had to have hit him a second time.
Using the car as cover, Jake rose up and rounded the front of the car, his gun leading him to his objective. When he got to the front of the car, he finally saw the little Russian in the ditch, his face down in the water.
Jake moved cautiously toward Petrova, thinking he might have one more ruse left for him. But the man’s gun was laying at his side, and Jake could see blood everywhere. He kicked the man. Nothing. Felt for a pulse. Again, nothing.
He was dead. Jake rolled the man over, out of the watery ditch. Part of Jake wished the man had lived. He had come to respect his intellect.
Seconds later, Jake thought he heard a helicopter coming from the southwest. He sat down on the ground and wished like hell he had a beer or something stronger. Now the pain in his shoulder brought a chill to him as he sunk lower to the ground. What was that swishing sound?
The helo swooped around a couple of times, Kjersti and crew checking the area for any sign of danger. One car sat down the road, possibly empty. Kjersti set the chopper down and dropped off Toni and Colonel Reed there and then took off toward the second car.
Anna had spotted two men near that second car, and one, she thought, might have been Jake. The jacket looked the same. But both men were down and that bothered and concerned her.
When Kjersti set the Bell down near the second car, Anna was the first out, running toward the car, her gun out and her eyes scanning the area. But she went only one place — toward the one she thought was Jake.
She rounded the car and saw him near the ditch, his body slumped over in the grass. She rushed to Jake now, dropping her gun to the ground as she picked up Jake’s head and set it in her lap. His bristly face was covered with blood splatter from where a bullet had struck his shoulder. His clothes were wet and dirty, full of pine pitch. She pried the 9mm handgun from his right hand and started to cry. God, don’t take him from me. Not now.
Sobbing, she whispered to him, “Jake. It’s Anna. Wake up, lover.” She kissed him on the lips, hoping to bring him to life.
Time seemed to linger in a strange tempo of nothingness, the only sound now of birds chirping and trees slowly swaying in a light breeze.
“Wake up, Jake,” she said louder. “You’ve got to wake up. I can’t do this alone.”
Kjersti came over and checked the man in the ditch. “It’s Victor Petrova,” she said to Anna. “He’s dead.”
Jake yawned first and then his eyes opened slowly. “They’re all dead,” he muttered. “What took you guys so long? I left enough bread crumbs.”
Anna kissed him again on the lips and then hugged him tightly.
“Oww,” Jake said. “Watch the shoulder.”
“I’m sorry.”
They both heard someone running up the road and they turned to see Colonel Reed and Toni Contardo.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” Jake said.
But neither of them said a word. They just stopped and stood about ten feet back, both with a look of uncertainty on their faces.
“The Agency sent Toni with the scientists,” Anna explained.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” Colonel Reed finally said.
Jake shook his head. “No problem, colonel. That little troll is dead. He had people running all over for him. We just got caught up in his grand scheme.”
Anna tried to help Jake to his feet. When she couldn’t do it alone, Kjersti helped her. Together they got Jake up and the three of them struggled toward the helo. Toni and Colonel Reed followed closely behind.
After sitting against the chopper for a minute, drinking a full bottle of water, Jake stood on his own and took in a deep breath, stretching his muscles like a cat getting up from a nap.
“I’ve gotta get something,” Jake said. “And I need to do it alone.”
They all let him pass, and he wandered up the road about a hundred yards before scooting into the woods. About two minutes later, he came out carrying a metal box in his left arm like a baby.
He walked up to them smiling. “Now we can go.”
Anna said, “What about the bodies? How do we explain them?”
Kjersti said, “I’ll take care of that. But first we need to get Jake out of the country and to a doctor.”
Now Toni spoke up for the first time. “One of the scientists is a medical doctor. He can patch Jake up on the Agency Gulfstream. Where do you want to go?”
Jake shrugged his only good shoulder — the one with the box of gems. “Back to Austria.”
“What happens to those?” Colonel Reed asked, his eyes on the metal box.
“Jake taught me an American idiom,” Anna said. “Finders keepers?”
“She’s right,” Toni said. “They were found by Jake. And since he’s not affiliated with any government agency, he has the right to keep them.”
Jake smiled. “Colonel, do you still work for the Agency?”
“Not officially,” Colonel Reed said.
“Then you’ll get some of this,” Jake said. “So will the families of our two officers who died in the Arctic in eighty-six — Steve Olson and John Korkala. Let’s go. No offense, Kjersti, but I think I’ve seen enough of Norway for a while.”
Kjersti smiled and got into the chopper. Moments later, they were all inside, airborne, and on their way to Oslo.