Seconds later, Jake heard a protracted scream and he imagined Fisher was also on his way.
Air immediately streamed in, cold and biting his only exposed skin along the outside of his goggles and mask.
Jake tried to remember the briefing. Dropped from twenty thousand feet. Rate of descent and terminal velocity, based on weight and gravitational force. Drag coefficient and resistance. Force equals mass times acceleration; Newton’s second law of motion. Shit. Just hang on and enjoy the damn ride. Hope like hell the first altimeter releases the drogue and slows the descent before the second altimeter releases the parachute.
He didn’t have to wait long. With a sudden lurch, he was seemingly pulled at his shoulders, like a giant hand grabbed him from the air and shook him before letting him go again. Seconds later there was another pull on him, and Jake guessed the chute had deployed properly. The air that had been rushing in was now a slow stream, barely noticeable.
Remember the briefing, Jake. What next? Then he heard it in his headset. The beeping came slow, seconds apart. Then the beeps increased. A second apart.
Just as the beeps became a solid, high-pitched sound, his legs collapsed, taking his breath away for a second.
The pod shattered into thousands of pieces. Jake found himself rolling around in a foot of snow, the parachute attached to his shoulders, pulling him slightly. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, his eyes spinning around his new environment. It was as if he had just come from the womb into a cold new world.
He hurried to wrap his parachute around his arms, rolling it into a ball. Then he dug a hole in the snow and buried it.
Wandering back to the spot he had hit, he looked around at what was left of the pod. There wasn’t much. It had been like dropping a light bulb.
His eyes started to adjust to his new surroundings. He was in a snowy field no more than a kilometer long by a half a kilometer wide. Damn nice drop, he thought. How in the hell had they done that?
Jake took off his helmet, returned the headset to his disheveled hair, and covered that with a wool hat from his pocket.
“Fisher. You there?” Jake whispered into the mic.
There was a slight grunt and then, “Yeah. I think I’m alive.”
“Where the hell are ya?”
“I don’t know. A field of snow.”
Jake turned around, scanning the entire field in the darkness. “Can you flash your penlight once?”
There. About two hundred meters to the north, alongside the pine forest. He had missed the trees by only a few meters. “Got ya. Be there in a second.”
Jake trudged through the foot-deep snow, lifting his feet high as he hurried toward Fisher’s location. When he got there, he found Fisher laying in the snow among the remains of the pod.
“You all right?” Jake asked him.
Fisher turned on his light for a second, revealing his ankle.
“Is it broken?”
“Don’t think so. Just a bad sprain.”
Jake looked around and settled his eyes on the black cloth that had lined the container. He ripped that into long strips and then wrapped it around the Agency man’s ankle and foot. Then Jake helped him to his feet.
“Give that a try.”
Fisher stood and put pressure on his ankle. “Hey, you do good work.”
Jake helped him bury his chute and helmet. They were about to start walking when Jake sensed that something wasn’t right. Maybe he saw a flash of movement. Perhaps there was a slight sound, like a crack of a twig.
Fisher started to walk, but Jake stopped him with his hand to his chest.
Then came the familiar sound of a pistol sliding a bullet into a chamber, echoing through the night air. That was followed by a dancing red dot bouncing about Jake’s chest.
47
Jake thought about going for his gun, but he knew the shooter could pull the trigger before his right hand reached inside his coat.
“Jake Adams?” came a voice from the darkness.
Damn. Jake rushed toward the woods, Fisher hobbling up from behind.
“What the hell are you doin’ here, Turner?” Jake asked.
“What the hell ya think? Just like last time, pulling your ass out of the frigid Russian snow. That agent Fisher?”
“Yeah. He hurt his ankle in the drop.” Jake introduced Agency external ops officer, Lance Turner to Fisher.
“You out of Vladivostok?” Fisher asked.
“Yeah, but we need to get our asses in gear. Shit could be goin’ down right now. The car’s up the woods about half a click.”
The three of them moved off into the woods following Turner’s tracks back toward the car. They got to the isolated road, barely a one-lane track between the tall pines, where Turner’s car sat against a snow bank.
“A taxi?” Jake said. “That’s a step up from that crappy Volga you were driving.”
Turning the key to enter, Turner said, “It’s a loaner I found at the train station.”
They piled in, Turner driving, Jake in the front passenger side, and Fisher in the back. The car jumped to life and they waited for a moment before slowly driving off down the road.
“How in the hell’d you find us?” Fisher asked.
Turner raised a small device. “I set the DZ by G.P.S. I was briefed you’d be dropping by. They didn’t tell me how you did it, though. Didn’t even hear a plane. Heard this weird crash. Twice. Never heard anything like it.”
“I take it they had you follow the Asian women,” Jake said. “Where’d they go?”
Turner’s face was uncertain. “I found Chang Li in Vladivostok flying in from Seoul. She went directly from the airport to the train station-took the Trans-Siberian all the way to Khabarovsk. Had the pork and potatoes for dinner. No wine. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink wine.”
“What about the other woman?” Jake asked. “Chang Su.”
“They related?”
Jake hesitated and then nodded. “Sisters.”
“They in it together?”
Jake explained how Chang Su had helped him in China, and how she had been working as an Agency agent. Then Fisher told him about how he had been tracking Chang Li from California.
Turner listened carefully before saying, “That Li is the one who jumped you in Khabarovsk, Jake. Her and her boss. I have nothing on that guy, though. No intel. I saw both women on the train. They weren’t traveling together. Li was in first class and Su was in third class, among the derelicts.”
“Where are they now?” Jake asked.
“A couple miles down the road. A dacha on a small lake. Very isolated.”
“What the hell they doing there?”
“No clue. Now, hang on a moment. I said they weren’t traveling together. When Li got off the train in Khabarovsk, the other woman stopped her. She looked pissed. That’s when the bald guy showed up.”
“The guy who nabbed me,” Jake said.
“I’m guessing so,” Turner said. “Strangest thing, though. “The bald guy kept yelling at Li. Something about an album. Where the fuck was his album. You forgot my fuckin’ album. Strange shit.”
“Can’t help you there,” Jake said. “So you followed them up into the country. How you know they haven’t moved?”
Turner thought about that. “I was told to leave them there and pick up the two of you.”
Fisher stirred in the back seat, leaning forward against the front seat. “You know the two women have satellite tracking?”
Looking in the rearview mirror, Turner said, “Yeah, that’s why I’m pretty sure they haven’t gone anywhere. Bailey in Osan said he’d call me if they started to move. Hell, it’s after midnight. They’re probably crashing. It’s just up ahead.”
The car slowed and Turner pulled over to the side of the road, cutting the lights.