“George, I’m coming in,” said Thomas.
“No, you fall back, out of sight. You come in here, you’re done, you hear me? I’ll get out.
Brent could barely contain himself as he witnessed George’s escape. At the top of the stairs, the Splinter Cell turned right, then left, then rushed toward a door and slammed it open with a fist. He stopped. Looked back. Listened.
The troops were entering downstairs.
He rushed forward, through what had to be a teenager’s room loaded with games and movies. He reached the window and tugged it open, and then he was all about his portable scaling tools, wrenching them from his web gear. He fired a zip line across to the next house, and the “sticky mount” stuck like superglue to the side.
He climbed through the window and was sliding down the line with a whirr and hiss.
It was impossibly frustrating not to be there and lend a hand. Brent reached reflexively for his sidearm to take out the Spetsnaz troops as he imagined them storming into the bedroom only seconds after George got out.
But all Brent could do was watch George gliding down toward the next house as gunfire suddenly punched holes in the wooden siding ahead of him.
Before George reached the house he fired another line at a shed lying across the backyard. The sticky mount struck the sloping roofline. George grabbed that line in one hand, and then he fired a third shot. Line number three attached itself to the roof of the current building. Using the shed line as a guide, he released the first line, gripped the second, then swung around, out of the enemy line of fire. It was a brilliant piece of maneuvering that left Brent awestruck.
Once around the next house, he slid down the rope and hit the ground hard, lost his balance, and tumbled.
“Thomas, fall back even more. Get over that fence and wait there for me. I think there’s a shed.”
“Roger that.”
George was up on his feet now, running at full tilt along the row of apartments. He ducked behind a pair of parked cars and paused.
The spy’s own labored breathing raised Brent’s pulse, and it was getting even harder to watch.
Meanwhile, Thomas scaled the fence his brother had mentioned, dropped behind, and spotted a small utility shed. He bounded for the shed, wrenched open the door, and stepped inside between pieces of lawn and landscaping equipment. He quietly closed the door and stood there, staring through the dust-covered window and just breathing. “I’m inside the shed,” he reported. “Hidden pretty good.”
“I see that. Stay there,” said George.
Brent longed to pull up a close-in satellite view of the area so he could tell George where the troops were moving. The team had nothing, though, technology rendered useless by more technology. They would rely now on their good old-fashioned wits to escape.
Thomas remained in the shed, staring through that dusty window at the second story of the apartment. He could see Russian troops appearing in the window from where George had escaped. They were tearing up the house, while one remained there, sweeping the yard with his scoped rifle.
With an audible shiver, Thomas swore again as the Russians shouted to each other on the other side of the fence.
Brent could barely breathe now as he checked the images coming in from George’s goggles. “George, just get some cover like your brother and wait for us.”
“That’s the plan,” said the spy. “That’s the plan.” He burst up from the parked cars.
From around the corner of the next apartment building came two Spetsnaz troops — Grim Reapers dressed in black uniforms and web gear, with black helmets and balaclavas concealing their identities.
They were but fifty meters away.
George dropped to the ground and shot one guy in the face with his pistol, while the other ducked and George did likewise. Gunfire struck the cars behind him as he jogged around and sought cover once more.
Brent wanted to scream at the Splinter Cell, tell him not to remain there in a standoff while that Russian troop called for backup. But George was a seasoned veteran and didn’t need Brent pointing out the obvious.
In fact, George did something remarkable again. He suddenly broke cover and darted to the building, even as the trooper, who’d sought refuge behind the corner, eased out for another look, the top of his helmet jutting out.
While the Russian’s gaze was reaching out toward the car, George came at him from the side, sliding an arm around the man’s head while raising a combat dagger high in his free hand.
George plunged the knife deep into the man’s neck, just north of his clavicle, then George grabbed the hilt and got to work. To say that George opened up the man’s head like a Pez dispenser would be understating the point, and Brent had a front-row seat to all the carnage. He grimaced.
George dropped the body and shifted to the front side of the apartment. He hunkered down beside a row of shrubs and stole a look out at the helicopter sitting in the field across the street.
Two civilians had come out of the homes, one holding a kitchen knife, the other an antique-looking pistol. They were a husband-and-wife team, white-haired, wizened, and wild, and they waved and shouted as two troops who’d been stationed just outside the helicopter drifted toward them.
“No, don’t do it,” Brent muttered aloud.
It was over before it started. One Russian shot both the man and the woman execution style, boom-boom. And George just sat there and gasped. Then George cleared his throat and said, “Thomas, stay in the shed.”
“I will.”
George sighed into his microphone. “They must’ve found our car by now. We can’t get out on foot or by car if they still got that bird.”
“George, don’t even think about it,” said Thomas.
“George, just dig in and do not do anything,” said Brent. “That’s an order!”
“Too late.”
“Voeckler!” Brent cried. “What’re you doing?”
The image coming in from George’s trident goggles grew so shaky that Brent couldn’t see anything.
But he could hear the man breathing. Faster. And faster. Panting now.
The Snow Maiden let out a faint snort as she glanced sidelong at Hussein. The boy was staring out the window, looking bored and about to fall asleep as they continued on toward Dover.
Chopra was droning on and on about what the boy’s father had wanted for him, and the old man’s cadence and tone had become yet another form of white noise, like the wind buffeting the car, the engine’s hum, and the steady vibration of the tires on the pavement.
Even the Snow Maiden herself was beginning to drift off, barely listening, reminding herself that if she didn’t keep her guard up, the sixteen-year-old next to her could launch a surprise.
Abruptly, her cell phone rang. “You’ll be met at Dover,” said Patti. “They know you’re coming.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you in Geneva. Excellent work, as always.”
“You might want to call Izotov and thank him as well.”
Patti laughed. “I’m sure he’d appreciate that.”
The Russians — in their attempt to capture her — had inadvertently helped her escape. It seemed they might come in handy now, and she thought about manipulating them to her benefit in the near future.
For just the briefest of moments, though, she took herself back to the tiny town of Banff, just off the Trans- Canada Highway, seventy-eight miles west of Calgary. She was with Green Vox, that terrorist leader whose identity was kept a secret so that he could “live forever” through any number of followers assuming his role. Together, they had chosen Banff so they would be upwind from the nuclear fallout, once she had detonated the nukes. But the entire operation had been foiled by the Americans. No matter. She’d had other plans.
“I am Snegurochka. What did you expect?” she’d asked the terrorist.
