“So, who the hell are you?” Jake asked them, stalling.
“Tell us about missile and we might let you freeze to death. Otherwise.” He waved the knife in the air.
Why should he hold back anything? Jake thought about what Yuri had told him only hours ago. Would it matter if he told these people?
“The missile failed,” Jake said. He could have made up any bullshit story. One was as good as the next. “It started to go haywire and the Russians thought it might head toward Kamchatka. They were forced to destroy it.”
Two things happened almost simultaneously. The man swished his knife toward Jake and Jake flipped around to his right. The knife slit the binding on his back, freeing his feet, and, unexpectedly, the tie that ran up to his neck. Jake rolled over again and again in the snow as if in pain. Then he sent his right foot into the knee of the approaching man. He heard a crack and the man collapsed in pain, dropping the knife in the snow.
By now, Jake had gotten to his knees. The woman was on him in a hurry, though. Her right foot caught him in the sternum and sent him flying to his back. As she got closer, he caught her legs with a sweep of his leg and sent her to her back. Then he scurried toward her, grabbed the mask covering her head, and, with one smooth motion, pulled it from her head, her long, black hair flopping out in a ponytail.
Damn. A Chinese woman. Gorgeous but shocked. He chopped her in the throat and she rolled over, out of breath.
He had to move now. Jumping to his feet, Jake ran into the forest. His bare feet were freezing, yet he knew he couldn’t stop. And those feet would occasionally stumble onto unseen branches under the two feet of snow. He continued on, branches whipping his face as he leapt over deadfalls. Expecting to hear gunshots, he slowed to a jog and then stopped behind a large pine tree, his breath nearly out of control.
He listened now. Nothing.
Then he saw it. A single light shone from where he had just come. The two of them had hesitated long enough to go back to the car for a flashlight, and now they were simply following his tracks. Who knew what else they had gotten at the car. Guns?
Standing idle, the cold caught up to him in a hurry, and he shook uncontrollably now. Move Jake. Move. He glanced about the forest. There was only one thing he could do. Back track to the road.
He ran off again, his arms trying to protect his face from branches. How far had he run? The road had to be soon, he thought, his feet and legs lifting high out of the snow with each step, trying his best to keep from gouging the souls of his bare feet again.
Shortly he saw an opening ahead, the swirling clouds offering a slight view of a meadow or field.
Coming to the edge of the opening, he hesitated among some smaller pines. If he entered, he knew he would be one big target, picked off like that airborne laser had dropped the Russian missile. Instead, he worked his way around the outside of the field.
There. The road. On the far end of the field, the road ran along the edge.
Out of breath and his extremities freezing, Jake stopped and glanced behind him. He couldn’t see the light, and that wasn’t particularly comforting.
He would have to run along the road for a hundred meters of open area, fully exposed to anyone to see, as he worked his way back toward the car. And then what? Could he reasonably expect them to have left the keys there?
Suddenly, from the same direction he planned to head, a car approached slowly down the frozen, snow-covered dirt road, its lights off. Jake ducked deep into the snow behind a pine tree.
He closed his eyes and his head ached. Held his breath and slowly let out some air.
Just as he thought the car would pass, it stopped, and Jake looked up to see the red tail lights brighten the car before going out.
Now he knew he was in trouble.
4
Huddled in the deep snow, his legs numb, Jake heard a noise in the woods behind him. Slowly he glanced back and saw the light along the far edge of the meadow.
He was understandably confused. Had one stayed with the tracks while the other went for the car?
“Adams?” came a hushed voice from the car, an older Russian Volga sedan.
Jake shifted his head around. That wasn’t the voice of the man or woman.
“Adams,” came the voice again. “You wanna live, get your ass in here. I’m American.”
He had no choice. His confusion would have to give way to survival and trust-the last of which was in short supply in his mind at the moment.
The driver’s door opened, illuminating a man waving his arm to him.
Without further coaxing, Jake sprinted from the snow to the road and around to the front passenger seat.
Swinging the door open, he quickly assessed the driver, a man in his early forties, clean-cut and wearing a dark green parka.
“Get in, Jake. Let’s go.”
He did just that. The car pulled away as soon as he closed the door. Jake peered back behind him, and in the distance he saw two figures appear on the road with the light.
Jake looked at the driver more carefully now. “Who the hell are you?”
“The guy who just saved your ass.” The driver turned up the heat and switched the fan to high.
“Thanks. But you didn’t answer my question.”
Sitting on the seat next to the man was a high-end set of night vision goggles. So Jake reasoned the guy had been slowly driving down the road with the goggles on, watching for any movement.
“Agency,” Jake said. “Who sent you?”
The guy laughed. “Toni said you could be a brusque son-of-a-bitch.”
That was twice in the evening someone had mentioned his former girlfriend.
“Toni who?”
The guy shook his head. “This a test?” His eyes shifted toward Jake as he said, “Toni Contardo. Until six months ago, your live-in squeeze. Black hair that flows over strong shoulders, followed a bit lower by the nicest set of tits I’ll never see. A New York Italian.”
“Those two back there knew that much,” Jake said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Reaching inside his coat, the man started to pull something out, but Jake grabbed his hand before he could pull it out.
“Let me help you with that,” Jake said, as he put his hand inside the guy’s coat and pulled out what the man had been reaching to retrieve. It was a passport. A dark burgundy U.S. passport. Jake flipped it to the back and found what he was looking for, an annotation that indicated this man had diplomatic immunity. Definitely a spook. Then he opened the passport to the front. It was official. Lance Turner. Born in Memphis, Tennessee.
The car came to the end of the road. The driver turned left toward Khabarovsk.
“All right?”
“Lance? Your parents must have wanted you to get your ass whipped in school.”
“Ha. Ha. Gimme that.” He took the passport from Jake and put it back in his pocket.
“So, you’re an Agency spook. How do I know you know Toni?”
“Because she’s probably the most gorgeous officer we have.” He hesitated and then said, “You two worked together in Italy years ago. Then, when you went private, you worked another case there with a Naval officer from a carrier. You took a bullet to the left temple on that carrier, and the hair still doesn’t grow right there, from what I understand. You also had a little run-in with some Hungarians at her apartment, where you killed one and wounded another. Should I go on?”
His head ached even more thinking about that grazing shot he had taken in Italy. “That won’t be necessary. How is Toni?”
The man’s eyes shifted to the side as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “We haven’t heard from her.”