They were ahead of him. He'd seen some of the transports, sensed others. Troops had been lowered from ropes or landed in small clearings above and below, and ahead of him. Behind him, others had followed his trail of snapped twigs and branches, trodden litter on the forest floor, disturbed snow on the fir boles. Signs of his passage cried out for their attention.
He reached the end of the ledge. The crack of the ravine glinted with ice and a frozen stream at its bottom. He looked up, then around. Nothing. The noise of the MiLs had receded. Eye of the storm. Silence. He waited, but distinguished no noises that indicated stealth or the springing of the trap. The ravine dizzied him as he looked down into it. He would have to jump the ravine now that the ledge had petered out. Push himself outward, away from the rock at his back, as if to fly, hands grabbing the opposite side of the ravine, holding on—
He swallowed. A radio crackled momentarily, until stilled by a harsh whisper. His body shook with reaction. The trees concealed them now. The morning air magnified, made sounds louder and closer, but how close? He strained to hear other noises, boot on rock, the rustle of pine litter, the click of a round of ammunition levered into the chamber. He heard nothing, except the now-back-ground throbbing of gunship rotors. The rock arched above him like a shell. The ravine was below him. The trees were thin — too thin— above and to his left, the way he had come. They would see him easily.
He rubbed one hand over his face, which seemed unformed, loosely put together. His mouth was wet with saliva. He listened once more, looking down into the ravine and fighting the dizziness. The mouse-scrape of boots through the pine needles rotting on the ground. Eventually, he heard at least one man moving. Then a second, perhaps a minute later, and realized the neck of the bag, the trap itself — was there, precisely there.
They'd designed it that way. His sense of his immediate surroundings had enlarged, he'd noticed the way the slope fell sheer away beyond the ravine and an outcrop of bare rock. He could glimpse the plain far below through the last of the poor trees. If he reached the outcrop by jumping across the ravine, he could not go down nor continue north because the ground rose steeply and there were no trees. Below him, only the ravine, where he would lie until they abseiled or climbed down to reach the cassettes in the kit bag slung across his body.
He pressed back against the rock. They wanted to drive him upward, on to bare rock, to flounder through the snow until they surrounded him.
He stared down again. The tiny frozen stream glinted like a snail track down there. The ravine was perhaps fifty feet deep — no, it fell away down a slope that twisted out of sight. In summer the stream would rush down it toward the foothills and the plain. Crazily, he wondered whether he could follow the course of the stream, out of sight of the hunt. Could he even get down there? If he fell, he would break bones. Be finished. He listened above and stared be low, estimating the width of the ravine, its roughnesses, the steepness of the frozen stream's descent. He shivered. It was dark in the ravine, as narrow as a straitjacket.
He heard more small noises above him. They were closing in on the ledge, knowing he was not to the south or the north, knowing he could go no other way. The gunships seemed to have been called off.
He lowered himself slowly, carefully, until he sat on the ledge, his feet dangling into the ravine. He breathed deeply twice, three times, then gingerly turned his body so that he was hanging, weight on his forearms and wrists, into the crack in the rock. He glanced to right and left. Empty. They hadn't linked up yet and weren't using the radios, to avoid giving their positions away. When they met, they'd cast about urgently to locate him.
He, too, was making noises now, the scrabbling of his boots for toeholds. His toes were numb with damp cold and moved inside the KGB uniform boots sullenly, reluctant to assist him. His eyes came level with the ledge, then he lowered himself farther into the ravine. Bile was sour at the back of his throat as fear surged. Fingerholds, boots scraping, his arms aching because he had to move so slowly in order not to give himself away with noise. Fingerholds, toeholds. He eased his body into a half-crouch, seeking new fingerholds. The rock was smooth, but cracked and pitted like scored metal. And icy cold. Down—
Caterpillar. Straightening, then arching, then straightening-Each tiny sound was a failure and an alarm. He descended the side of the ravine as it narrowed and darkened. Was it wide enough? His body seemed to ask the question with a flood of panicky heat.
Twenty feet down, thirty perhaps now. Caterpillar. His arms and legs were aching, his fingers stiff and clawlike. Icy cold. The rifle, slipping around on its strap from his back, rattled against the rock. He paused. Looked up.
They'd linked up from north and south. *He heard the crackling of a radio and the urgency of muffled words. They were very close, and alarmed that he had disappeared. Caterpillar. His back protested, his legs were quivering with weakness and effort, his arms were shrill with pain. Forty feet.
The ravine echoed his breathing, every tiny noise of his descent. It was a funnel for sound. They'd hear, any moment they'd hear.
His grip slackened, he scrabbled for it, felt his boots distantly attempt a foothold, then his body, suddenly seeming much heavier, slid the last feet. He buckled into a fetal position, onto the surface of the frozen stream, hands scraped raw, his cheek bruised and bleeding. Inertia moved him downward almost at once as he rolled onto his back. Like an amusement park slide, the stream moved him.
The face above him looked down, fifty feet away. Gant slid helplessly, as the shout of alarm reached him and a second face appeared. At once, the noise of a rifle and the cry of bullets from the surface of the rock. With a huge effort, he rolled into the shadow of a small outcrop. And sat hunched until someone ordered the firing to stop.
Silence again, then.
Ropes.
Unslung from packs, dropped like writhing snakes into the ravine, curled on the ice perhaps fifty yards away. The noise of boots on the ledge, then seeking for a foothold on the wall of the ravine. A lamp flickering over the coiled ropes, over the ice so that it glimmered, and over the outcrop beneath which he huddled. The bulk of the first man to descend. He could shoot the climber — and be shot himself. He immediately abandoned the idea. And stretched his limbs carefully, checking their mobility, their lack of pain. His hands were beginning to warm, held beneath his armpits. His feet were still cold and numb.
He had to move, now. Out of sight as the stream bent in its channel. The ice was like glass, without footing. He climbed to his feet, his back using the rock behind him to keep his body upright.
His feet careful of the ice, testing its smoothness, his eyes studying the downward course of the stream, the angle of descent.
The sense of his mistake, his fatal error, assailed him, while his body went on making its independent attempt to survive. He had walked into an even more certain trap than the one they had set. The climber was halfway down the ravine's side, abseiling like a careful spider, face turned repeatedly in his direction, rifle across his chest ready to respond to any action of his.
He looked up at the other faces, then at the protecting outcrop and at the lamp swinging back and forth along the dark channel. And then fired—
— and ran, stumbling and bent double, scraping his side along the rock, his feet constantly slipping, the gunfire hideously loud behind him and cutting across the cry of surprised pain from the fallen climber, who lay still, he saw as he half turned from a collision with the ravine wall. He reached the curve of the stream and tumbled onto the ice, skittering down its slope like a flung stone. Slowing gently.
He rose onto all fours, panting like a wearied dog. He had killed another of them. They'd want him. They could move quickly above him, once away from the ledge, along the outcrop. He estimated it was now seventy feet to the lip of the ravine. He was a more difficult target, they'd be reluctant to descend from any other place than the ledge, now out of his sight. For the moment, they'd hesitate.
He heard his name called, booming through some kind of loudspeaker. Above the noise of returned rotors. Magnified and wailing down the ravine like a wind.
Using the Kalashnikov as a crutch, he got to his feet. There would be two more on the ice by now, abseiling down from the ledge. He moved with infinite caution, one foot shuffled in front of the other, sliding step by step down the slope, using the ravine wall as a brake on his progress, dragging his shoulder against the rock. Looking back every second or third step, waiting for them to appear; counting his breaths, his heartbeats, passing seconds, distance— anything to prevent the paralysis induced by desperation from overtaking his legs and feet. He could hear radios, rotors, the clatter of equipment.
Single shots. Whining off the rock. Chips of it struck his face and hands. He returned their fire even though he could not see them. A lamp flicked its beam out toward him. He fired again. They returned fire more heavily. Still single shots. His name boomed through the loudspeaker, sapping his will
