EndWar: The Missing Read online

  Alone now, she would do what she always did: fight her way to freedom or die trying. The Russian Federation had kept her under their thumb for many years, used and abused her. They had accomplished that without the use of technology. She’d rather die than allow herself to become a puppet for these eccentric idealists.

  She didn’t pretend to understand what the cylindrical tanks and network of pipes that resembled the intestines of some colossal mechanical beast were used for; that they stretched out for what seemed like a kilometer within the sweeping walls and vaulted ceiling of the processing plant was useful because the maze of catwalks, ladders, and boxy substations provided plenty of cover. She gathered up two pistols and a second Uzi with extra thirty-two-round magazine. She slung that second machine gun over her shoulder, and then, at the sound of shouts from below, she took off, bounding across the catwalk.

  The echoing of her footfalls made her wince, and she considered abandoning her knee-high black leather boots to pad more silently toward the exit on the south end, but once she was outside, the snow and temps hovering around twenty degrees Fahrenheit would put an abrupt end to any barefoot escape.

  This was no puppy patrol Fedorovich had hired. Judging from their commands, movements, and weaponry, they were former Army, maybe even Spetsnaz, now able to sell their talents to the highest bidder.

  She estimated there were fifteen to twenty of them, based on her observations during her arrival on the island. She’d noted the two guard posts outside the refinery and headquarters buildings, and she’d made certain to remember the others at their posts inside. Years of training as a GRU officer and field operative had become ingrained and second nature, situational awareness always a top priority—especially when trust was at a premium.

  Reaching a pair of pipes at the end of the catwalk, she crouched down and listened for a moment as the guards came thumping up the ladders. Four now.

  Behind her lay a footbridge, one of four that connected the north and south sides of the plant, narrower but with much higher railings than the catwalks. These were the modern versions of those long and precarious rope bridges she’d crossed in Pakistan, Northern Ireland, and Malaysia while tailing various subjects for her government.

  The guards coming up assumed she was heading for that footbridge, and so she pricked up her ears, listening once more as another pair mounted a ladder on the other side of the plant, preparing to cut her off, believing she’d run right into them. They, of course, were unaware of who she actually was, unaware they only had minutes to live.

  Before the four guards at the end of the catwalk ever reached the tops of their ladders, the Snow Maiden was already scaling the pipes behind her, utilizing the fittings like rungs of a ladder, reaching the top about three meters above where they elbowed off, connecting with a series of more narrow conduits whose diameters were barely larger than her wrists.

  She tucked herself tightly into the groove between the pipes, which were as thick as her own waist. She imagined herself an old Russian Blue, a cat ready to pounce. Fatigue was setting in now, her thoughts beginning to scatter. She gritted her teeth and focused. The four guards came thundering down the catwalk and the other two reached the end of the footbridge to her left.

  The leader of the four pointed to the other two, signaling them across the footbridge, while he sent a pair of his men off to the left, down another catwalk intersecting hers. She watched it all unfold. Three pairs, six men in all.

  The media was right about her. She would kill all six of them. And she would feel nothing—because forever burning in the back of her mind were the faces of her husband, her brothers, the face of Izotov trying to tell her it was all “unintentional.” Now the fury sent a shudder up her back.

  They drew closer. She didn’t move. The leader and his partner spun back and forth, cursing under their breaths, now within a few meters of the pipes. Neither of them thought to look up—

  But one guard on the footbridge, a baby-faced man with the thin voice of a bird, cried, “She’s right there!”

  When the first pair below lifted their heads, they stared directly into the Snow Maiden’s flashing muzzle, no time to even gape before her nine-millimeter rounds stitched jagged lines across their chests, their own shots falling wild as they reflexively squeezed their triggers and fell back to their deaths.

  With brass casings clattering loudly across the pipes, she brought the Uzi around, directing it at the guards on the footbridge.

  The man who’d spotted her had already hit the deck and propped himself onto his elbows and was returning fire, rounds pinging and sparking off the pipes at her elbows. His covering fire bought his partner a few seconds to come up behind him, adding his rounds to the fray, the onslaught effectively pinning her down. She gasped as the slugs drew closer, the ricocheting relentless, a single round rebounding off three, four, even five surfaces. The Uzi was hot in her grip, the stench of gunpowder so strong that it burned her eyes.

  She remembered the other two guards who’d been sent down the intersecting catwalk—no doubt on their way back to her position.

  No, she couldn’t remain any longer. Her mantra was shoot and move . . .

  A pause in the fire had her lifting her head a fraction, the Uzi shaking in her hand, and then, damning her fears, she sprang up, sighting the guy on his belly, taking him out with two rounds to the face, while his partner shifted aim. The Snow Maiden’s rounds drummed him to his knees. He collapsed sideways to slip off the footbridge and crash onto one of the big tanks below. He slid down the tank’s side and into a web of attached ducts, arms and legs snapping against hardened steel.

  Her hackles rising at the sound of more guards—in addition to the remaining two—the Snow Maiden cursed and let the Uzi go slack on its sling. She used both hands to pull herself up and across the big pipes. Time to call upon the special forces training she’d received during her early days with the GRU, the many obstacle courses she’d forded, the live-fire gauntlets, the inverted suspension bridges that had her swinging arms-only like a primate. Her courses in covert residency, source recruiting, and source manipulation were a joke when compared to dodging grenades and trying to get a man with knife pried off her back.

  She swung her right leg up, hooked her foot over the top of the pipe, and then, working hand over hand, slid herself across the overhanging conduit, driving past a heating duct that sent its warm, metallic breath into her face.

  Boots clattered close now. She craned her neck and spotted the two remaining guards below, returning to the main catwalk to check on their fallen comrades. But where were the fresh ones? She could hear them . . .

  Realizing she had a chance to come around a much larger pipe and exploit its cover, she reached out and seized the more narrow pipe running parallel to her own.

  But that pipe was so hot that she jerked back and groaned, trying to balance herself—just as one of the men behind her shouted.

  Her heart sank. They had her.

  A second before the gunfire came in, the Snow Maiden looked down. Twelve meters now to the concrete below. With her burned hand, she dug out one of her pistols, and, biting back her scream, she returned fire—

  Dropping one of the guards while the second rolled back for cover.

  She shot a glance up, toward the highest catwalk, terminating at an exit door to the roof. The ground-floor door on the other side of the plant seemed a world away now, and the sound of those additional guards pouring into the processing plant had her pulling herself up, around, and on top of the pipes so she could reach the next section, checking these first for temperature, then scaling them, swinging across and heading toward that highest walkway.

  The guards could not get a good bead on her with all the piping in the way, rounds caroming everywhere and shattering two of the heavy industrial lights, their protective glass covers raining deadly shards across the floor.

  By the time sh
e reached the bottom of that final catwalk that would get her on the roof, she saw that at least four more guards had joined the pursuit and were rushing up ladders. Their security force might be a lot larger than she had anticipated, and while that thought chilled her, two other obstacles loomed more terribly in her path:

  She was being forced up to the roof—the last place she wanted to be to effect an escape. Once there, where would she go? Jump thirty feet to the parking lot? Second—and this was a fact she’d denied because she was a warrior and refused to give up—the SinoRus Headquarters was located on an island. Fedorovich could alert local authorities to shut down the ferries, ground all the planes and helicopters, even report her appearance to the Russian government. Spetsnaz troops would be en route in seconds . . . If she got away, how long could she hide in the forest before they finally picked up her heat signature?

  Cursing away those inescapable facts, she swung up onto the catwalk, stood, grabbed her Uzi, then aimed for the guards ascending the ladders—

  Because she was a fighter. Because she didn’t give a shit about the facts anymore. Because even if trying to escape made no sense at all and was utterly helpless, she would go down trying. She would make them remember whom they had faced. They could not take her soul. Never.

  Suddenly, the door leading to the roof behind her swung open with a rush of snow and frigid night wind, and in charged four more guards, the leader screaming, “Hold fire, Snegurochka! There’s nowhere to go! You turn, face me, and raise your arms high above your head.”

  The Snow Maiden glanced sidelong at him, slowly lifting her hand to rake her fingers through her spiky black hair, her face covered in sweat.

  He was an older guard, graying at the temples, definitely former Spetsnaz, the lines of his jaw improbably sharp, his eyes wide and daring her to make a move. He grinned crookedly, teeth yellow as pine.

  He’d referred to her by her old code name, but did he know the Russian folklore about the Snow Maiden being the daughter of Spring and Frost, about how she fell in love with a shepherd, which caused her heart to warm, and she melted?

  Yes, love would eventually kill her. The love she had for her late husband and brothers had driven her to this. The love she had for revenge, for wanting to see Moscow burn, had already poisoned her thoughts. The love she had for one of her former colleagues, Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, had left her vulnerable.

  Maybe she wasn’t a fighter after all. Maybe she should surrender to the Ganjin. Let them take away the pain. After all, living hurt more than anything now, didn’t it? Obedience brought pleasure, and weren’t they all slaves to their own desires?

  “I said, turn toward me and get your hands in the air.” The guard’s tone was twice as menacing. He took a step toward her, letting the muzzle of his rifle drift down to her hip. Shoot her in the leg. Make her docile. That was his plan.

  The other guards rushed up from the catwalk, and she regarded them with hatred in her eyes. She opened her lips to say something, but there was nothing left.

  She glanced down at her Uzi, at the magazine, then flicked her eyes back at the lead guard.

  “Snegurochka!” he screamed. “I will kill you!”

  “No, you won’t,” she answered.

  Then she whirled and leveled her Uzi on him.

  FIVE

  Caucasus Mountains

  Near North Ossetia, Russia

  Major Stephanie Halverson landed with a breath-robbing thud on the back of the maglev train’s second car, which, along with the wedge-shaped forward car, was dangling off the edge of the burning bridge above Darial Gorge.

  The Russian Interceptors streaked overhead as she shuddered against the horrific impact and explosion of her F-35B into a wall of rock, the flames and smoke rising quickly through the shattered bridge.

  She seized a thick electrical cable torn free from between the cars, barely catching hold before her chute jerked hard, nearly wrenching her off the train before she cut it away. She was swinging now by one arm, the train groaning and hissing, gases leaking from the damaged cars.

  Her grip on the electric cable faltered. She cursed. And then, to her shock, a Russian troop came crawling across the car above.

  They looked at each other. He went for his pistol.

  She went for hers.

  He was slower.

  But the moment she shot him in the head, the car creaked and jerked forward. The troop slid off the top of the car and plunged toward the shadows.

  Halverson was about to holster her pistol and try to swing her legs up onto the back of the car when more gunfire ripped into the windows behind her.

  Shit. The troops who were outside the train and on the more stable portion of the bridge had spotted her. They were shouting and firing, some laughing, a carnival game of shoot the Yankee pilot who was dangling from a wire.

  She looked down at the wavering expanse of snow-covered rock and trees below, her burning jet like a bonfire in the mountains.

  An ache formed deep in her gut. She’d once told her old wingman Jake Boyd that a lost plane is a failed mission no matter how you look at it. But when he’d been shot down over Canada and she’d been forced to leave him—only to be killed by the invading Russians—she realized she was wrong. Jake, a man who should’ve known how she truly felt about him, had lost his plane but their mission was not a failure. He’d fought valiantly to the death. He would be remembered as long as she drew breath.

  More shouts from the troops. Two more rounds burrowed into the car not a meter away.

  Her gloved hand began to slide down the cable.

  “Hold your fire!” came a cry from the bridge. She knew enough Russian to understand the command and assumed the order had come from an officer who’d already seen her capture as a career-advancing opportunity.

  But several men ignored him, and the gunfire returned, forcing her to jerk left, raise her pistol again, and return fire as one troop appeared like a scarecrow atop the car, waving his arms as though he were drunk before she shot him in the chest.

  And then she saw it: a bottle of vodka jutting from his fist before he fell away. Sure enough, they were all drunk, partying on the train before hell had arrived, and hell hath no fury like a woman shot down.

  Her hand slid a little more, and now she was forced to holster the pistol and hang on with both hands. With a groan, she tried to ascend the wire, moving up about a meter—before the damned thing began to pull free from the train, lowering her toward the undercarriage. She tried swinging to and fro to latch on to something. No use. She couldn’t reach.

  There had to be dozens of them crawling up onto the train now, vying for a front-row seat at the Yankee pilot’s demise. They wanted blood, payback, the vodka making them hypercritical of the show. They urged her to try again for the train, swing some more, go for it.

  “Somebody shoot him,” one cried.

  Sexist bastards.

  With her helmet on, they didn’t know she was a woman, and with her helmet on, her peripheral vision was being cut off. She wanted to tear it off and curse at them, let them see the acid in her eyes.

  More gunfire.

  She glanced up. A pair had reached the edge of the car and were taking potshots at the wire, hoping to cut it with one lucky shot. This, apparently, was much more fun than just shooting her. More of their comrades gathered behind them, cheering one another on. A fight broke out between two troops, pushing and shoving, and the train began groaning, almost imperceptibly at first, then rising into a crescendo that reverberated up into Halverson’s arms.

  The drunken fools had put so much weight on the car that it was now threatening to pull the rest of the train over the edge. Two more bridge cables snapped free with booms that sounded like mortar fire.

  One cable came down on the troops, their arms raised in sheer terror before they were swatted like flies and whipped into the air, shrieki
ng as they tumbled away.

  Halverson fought once more with the wire, dragging herself up as the wind buffeted the cars more violently, the sonic booms of the Interceptors resounding, letting everyone know they were still in the area, still watching.

  She looked down again, the snow whipping off the rocky outcroppings along the gorge, the trees bowing to the forces of nature.

  A third cable popped on the other side of the bridge, swinging down in a chaotic, almost drug-induced dance, slashing at the fires still raging across the tracks and girders.

  “Hey, pilot, come on, we will help!” cried one of the troops. She turned her head, saw him waving to her, and then he tossed down a half-full bottle of vodka that she let bounce off her chest. The troops hooted and guffawed.

  I’m asleep, she thought. We haven’t lifted off from Turkey yet and this is a nightmare produced by all the fears lying dormant in my subconscious. That’s all this is.

  She laughed bitterly. Here she was trying to intellectualize her way out of the situation, when in fact she had ejected, these troops were here, and she was about to become a prisoner of war if she didn’t make the dreaded decision, the one she’d been avoiding from the moment she’d clutched the wire.

  Not suicide . . . but a fighting chance, one represented by the small pouch located on the small of her back. Ordinarily she flew without a reserve chute, but there was room in the F-35B’s cockpit and seat, and being that this was a test mission, she’d decided matter-of-factly to take one along. Slightly more uncomfortable, yes.

  Maybe it wasn’t her time to die or be tortured inside some newly built sharashka hidden in these mountains.