Ice Hunt

With this goal in mind, Matt crossed back into the thicker woods and jogged down toward his camp. His wet clothes hung like sacks of cement on him, but after a few minutes, the exertion helped warm his limbs and staved off the threat of hypothermia. Once he reached camp, he could change into dry things.

As he continued down, a light snowfall drifted from the clouds overhead. The flakes were thick, heavy, heralding a more abundant fall to come. After ten minutes, this promise began to be fulfilled. The snow obscured the spruce forest, making it hard to see much past a few yards. But Matt knew these woods. He reached the ice-rimmed river on the valley floor and followed it downstream to his campsite. He found the horse trail.

The first to greet him was Bane. The dog all but tackled him as he slogged down the last of the trail.

“Yeah, I’m glad to see you, too.” He thumped the dog’s side and followed the way back to camp.

He found Mariah munching on some green reeds. The other dogs ran up, but there was no sign of the reporter. “Craig?”

From behind a bush, the reporter stood up. He bore a small hand ax in both fists. The relief on his face was etched in every corner. “I…I didn’t know what happened? I heard the gunfire…the scream…”

“It wasn’t me.” Matt crossed and collected the ax. “But we’re not out of the proverbial woods yet.”

Across the valley, the whining growl of the lone motorcycle persisted. Matt stared into the dark, snowy woods. No, they certainly weren’t out yet.

“What are we going to do?” Craig also listened to the motorcycle. The sound had already grown louder. The reporter’s eyes drifted to his shattered rifle.

Matt had forgotten he was even carrying it. “Broken,” he muttered. He turned back to camp and began to rummage through his supplies, quickly picking out what they would need for this midnight run. They would have to travel light.

“Do you have another gun?” Craig asked. “Or can we outrun the motorcycle on the horse?”

Matt shook his head, answering both questions.

“Then what are we going to do?”

He found what he was looking for. He added it to his bag. At least this wasn’t broken.

“What about the other motorcycle?” Craig’s voice edged toward panic.

Matt straightened. “Don’t worry. There’s an old Alaskan saying.”

“What’s that?”

“Up here, only the strong survive…but sometimes even they’re killed.”

His words clearly offered no consolation to the Seattle reporter.

10:48 P.M.

Stefan Yurgen wore nightvision goggles, allowing him to see in the dark without the motorcycle’s lights, but the snowstorm kept his vision to no more than ten meters. The snow fell thickly, a green fog through the scopes.

He kept his snow-and-ice bike steady, grinding and carving up the switchback trail. The snow might block his view, but it allowed him to follow his prey easily. The fresh snow clearly marked their trail. He counted one horse, four dogs. Both men were riding. Occasionally, one man hopped off and led the horse afoot across some trickier terrain, then remounted.

He watched for any sign of the pair splitting, but no prints led away from the main trail.

Good. He wanted them together.

Under the frozen goggles, a permanent scowl etched his features. Mikal had been his younger brother. An hour ago, he had found his brother’s tortured body beside a small stream, nearly comatose from pain, his face a bloody wreck. He’d had no choice. He had orders to follow. It had still torn him to pull the trigger, but at least the agony had ended for Mikal.

Afterward, he had marked his forehead with his brother’s blood. This was no longer just a search-and-destroy mission. It was an oath vendetta. He would return with the American’s ears and nose. He would hand them to his father back in Vladistak. For Mikal…for what had been done to his younger brother. This he swore on Mikal’s blood.

Stefan had caught a brief glimpse of his target earlier through his rifle’s scope: tall, sandy-haired, windburned face. The man had proven resourceful, but Mikal had been the newest member to the Leopard ops team, ten years his junior. His younger brother did not have Stefan’s years of battle-honed experience. He was a cub compared to a lion. Now forewarned of his target’s skill, Stefan would not underestimate his quarry. Upon his brother’s blood, he would capture the American alive, carve his carcass while he still breathed. His screams would reach all the way back to Mother Russia.

As Stefan climbed through the wooded ravine, the trail left by his quarry grew more distinct. His features hardened. The distance between them was closing. No more than a hundred meters, he estimated. A skilled tracker, trained in the winter mountains of Afghanistan, Stefan knew how to judge a trail.

He manhandled the bike up another switchback, then throttled down. He climbed off the cycle, shrugging his rifle snugly in place. He reached next to the weapon holstered on the side of the vehicle. It was now time to begin the true hunt. Raised along the Siberian coast, Stefan knew the cold, knew snow and ice, and he knew how to chase prey through a storm.

From here, he would proceed on foot…but first he needed to shake his targets, panic them into acting instinctively. And like any wild animal, once panicked, people made mistakes.

He slid up his nightvision goggles, raised the heavy weapon, then read the distance and elevation indicators through the scope.

Satisfied, he pulled the trigger.

11:02 P.M.

Craig shivered, clinging close to the man saddled ahead of him. He tried to glean whatever warmth he could from the shared contact. At least he was shielded from the worst of the wind by the Fish and Game warden’s broad back.

Matt spoke as they climbed through the snowstorm. “I don’t understand,” he said, pressing the issue. “There has to be a reason for all this. Does it have to do with your story? Or is it something else?”

“I don’t know,” Craig repeated for the tenth time, speaking through a wool scarf wrapped over his lower face. He didn’t want to talk about it. He only wanted to concentrate on staying warm. Damn this assignment…

“If it’s you, why go to all this trouble to keep you away from your story?”

“I don’t know. Back in Seattle, I covered alderman races and tracked AP stories out of Washington from a local angle. I was given this assignment because the editor has a grudge. So I dated his niece once. She was twenty years old, for God’s sake. It wasn’t like she was twelve.”