Chapter 31

31

May 13, 1:18 P . M . MSK

Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast

Tucker walked Marco across the snow-packed pavement, heading for a sparse patch of yellow grass where a steam grate had melted a swath of the church's yard. He eyed the tunnel below the grate as he stomped over it, shaking a crust of ice from his boots, weighing the vent's usefulness as a means of escape.

His assessment: No chance in hell.

Especially now.

A trio of armed guards in white Arctic gear trailed them during this relief break for Tucker's four-legged partner. Elle strode alongside them, bundled in a puffy coat that was too large for her.

Their small group had just finished a meager lunch in their cell. It had consisted of a cold gruel of lentils with a gristly meat of unknown origin. But at least the loaf of bread had only a few scabs of mold on it. Even Marco had turned his nose up at the offering, until Tucker had ordered him to eat. The dog needed to keep his strength up.

They all did.

As Marco sniffed and circled, Tucker gazed out at the spread of the White Sea Naval Base. The sun sat wanly overhead in cloud-scudded skies. It had snowed last night, just a dusting, when they had arrived in Severodvinsk, but a dark line sitting at the horizon suggested a bigger storm would roll in from the sea before nightfall.

Closer at hand, the base looked like the many others that Tucker had transited through as a Ranger: cement block buildings, yellow dock cranes, narrow brick stacks churning out smoke. Uniformed men and women soldiered past, keeping a wary distance, eyes down, huddled in their jackets. The sound of heavy machinery and the sharper notes of rivet guns echoed all around the shipyards.

A larger rumbling drew all their eyes to a corner, where an eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier trundled past, topped by a 30mm cannon. Tucker recognized the BTR-80A APC. From its larger wheels and wider treads, this one looked adapted to Arctic conditions, like much of the base's equipment—not to mention the brigade that trained out of this base, using the surrounding frozen landscape and seas for their exercises.

" Potoraplivat'sya ," a guard barked behind them, hurrying them along with a wave of his rifle.

"Seems like our leisurely stroll has come to an end," Tucker commented to Elle.

Marco must've understood and finally squatted over the grate and defecated a wet stream directly into the steam tunnel. Tucker hoped the smell spread far across the base. That's what they get for the quality of their food, but Tucker knew that sludgy stool was also likely due to stress.

Another guard yelled at the dog, raising the butt of his rifle.

Elle stepped in the way before Tucker could. She cursed the soldier out in Russian, or at least it sounded that way.

The soldier backed down and pointed his weapon toward the church, ordering them inside. " Shevelis'. "

They were herded back toward the sanctuary. The centuries-old Church of the Holy Sacrament was built of lichen-crusted stone and hewn pine, gone black with age. But atop its tall steeple shone a golden orthodox cross, one that looked newly installed.

They were taken to the rear of the church, where steps led down into the cellar. Last night, Tucker had been surprised at the site of their imprisonment, then they were herded into the gloomy basement below the gilded nave of the church. He had quickly identified this level to be a lingering holdout of the old Soviet era, a site of a former jail, maybe an old black-ops facility.

Clearly, its new owners, the orthodox church—or at least, a certain archpriest—still found such a place useful.

The guards marched them to their cell. Elle had been offered her own accommodation, but she had insisted on joining Tucker instead, clearly not wanting to be alone. Though, he suspected it had less to do with his own presence than Marco's. The dog had slept next to her in her cot. She had kept one arm protectively over him.

Once locked in their cell, Tucker dropped to his bed on the other side of the room, which had a mattress as thick and stiff as a deck of playing cards. They shared a single commode and shower that continually dripped in the open corner. But with their respective backs turned, they managed a degree of privacy.

Elle sank atop her cot.

Without being told, Marco hopped next to her.

Tucker gave him the smallest nod.

Good boy.

Elle stared across at him, leaning back on her arms. She was silent for a spell, then shifted straighter. "Tell me about yourself," she said softly. "How did you end up here, locked up with me?"

"A series of bad choices apparently."

She scowled at him, clearly wanting more than flippancy. He read the pinch of fear that haunted her eyes, along with the thin cast to her lips. She recognized the danger, the likelihood of a fatal outcome, yet she held herself together, maybe from an ingrained Russian stoicism, an acceptance of life's injustices. But he suspected it was just this woman, one who had twice stepped between a rifle and his dog.

Tucker sighed, knowing he owed her an honest response. "I grew up in a country not much warmer than Siberia. Rolla, North Dakota. Near the Canadian border."

"What was it like? Growing up there?"

"Pretty nice. Spent summers at Willow Lake, hiking the North Woods. In winter, it was snowshoeing and ice fishing. But it wasn't as idyllic as that postcard sounds."

"Why's that?"

"My mom and dad died when I was three." He shrugged. "Don't really remember them. They're just pictures in a photo album. It was my grandfather who raised me. Then, when I was thirteen, he had a heart attack from shoveling snow one hard winter. I found his body after coming home from school."

She winced. "How horrible."

He continued, not entirely sure why he was being so forthright. "From there, with no other relatives, I ended up in the foster care system. I petitioned for early emancipation and joined the military at seventeen."

He skipped over the dark years between those two tentpoles of his life.

It's no wonder I like dogs better than people .

"That's how you ended up with Marco and Kane?" she asked, rubbing fingers through Marco's ruff. "Military working dogs."

"Actually, it was Kane and Abel first—Kane's littermate brother."

She must have read something in his voice or attitude. She winced again, as if sensing this was a well of pain.

"I lost him during a firefight in Takur Ghar. We were assisting soldiers from the Tenth Mountain Division, securing bunkers in a place called Hell's Halfpipe, when a pair of IEDs exploded. Taliban fighters swarmed from concealed positions."

He shook his head, trying to clear the memory, but it was branded there.

He fell back to that mountaintop.

He and a handful of survivors had been able to reach a defensible position, to hold out long enough for an evac helicopter to land. Once Kane and his teammates were loaded, he had been about to jump off and go for Abel, who was injured, but before he could, a crewman dragged him back aboard and held him down—where he could only watch.

A pair of Taliban fighters chased down Abel, who was limping toward the rising helo, his pained eyes fixed on Tucker, his leg trailing blood. Tucker scrambled for the door, only to be pulled back yet again.

Then the Taliban fighters had reached Abel.

He squeezed those last memories away, but not the haunting voice forever in the back of his mind: You could've tried harder; you could have reached him .

If he had, he knew he would have been killed, too, but at least Abel wouldn't have died alone. Alone and wondering why Tucker had abandoned him...

"I'm sorry," Elle whispered.

"I've come to peace with it."

Barely...

He pictured the arid Arizona desert, and a glimpse of sun dogs chasing across the sky, where he had been able to let go of some of his grief.

But he would never be entirely over that loss.

And he knew why.

I don't want to be.

Abel had earned that pain.

Plus, that grief taught him an important lesson.

He stared over at Marco.

Never again will I allow myself to be held back.

He cleared his throat and nodded at Elle, ready to change the subject. "What about you? How did you end up being a botanist? Especially one who specializes in carnivorous plants."

She looked like she wanted to press him more, but she let it go. "I grew up in Saint Petersburg, raised by a single father. He was an agronomist, specializing in crop production during the Soviet era. I spent summers at the city's botanical gardens, often acting as my father's lab assistant, sometimes traveling across Russia with him. While he leaned toward the practicality of food production, specifically grain crops, I found myself more fascinated by the unusual strategies plants employed to survive, to compete, to thrive."

"And I suspect nothing is more unusual than plants that become carnivorous."

She gave him a tired smile. "It's actually an old strategy, going back eighty million years. A way of adapting and surviving in regions of nutrient-poor soils. Even my father was interested in their genes. It was part of his research, to see if some of the thirty-six-thousand genes that are unique to carnivorous plants could be incorporated into food crops to make them hardier."

"So, he wanted to create a field of wheat that would eat locusts, rather than the other way around."

Her smile widened. "Nothing so dramatic. He simply wanted to increase the rate of nutrient acquisition from poor soils."

"Was he successful?"

She looked down. "He had some minor success, then he got cancer, pancreatic, nine years ago, when I was still at the university. Took him down in six months. He died before the advent of gene technology that would have accelerated his research."

"And you're continuing in his footsteps."

"Tangentially. I've been working with those same genes, creating hybrids, studying how certain traits arise from combinations of different chromosomes. It's fascinating how similar so many of those genes—those that produce digestive enzymes or allow for movement—have analogs in animals. It's a stunning example of parallel evolution between flora and fauna. In fact—"

A loud bang made her jump. Even Marco sat up sharply.

Tucker turned toward the door.

A tiny, barred window allowed him to spot the tonsured head of Yerik Raz rush past their cell, heading toward the stairs leading up into the church.

Tucker frowned, sensing the monk's tension.

Did that mean Sychkin had arrived from Sergiyev Posad? And if so, what does that mean for us?

Elle swallowed hard and looked at him. The question was easy to read on her face.

What are we going to do?

As Tucker listened to Yerik's heavy footsteps echo away, he knew only one certainty.

We're running out of time.

5:09 P . M .

Kowalski hopped out of the Siberian bush plane—a single-engine Baikal LMS-901—which sat atop a small lake ten miles south of the town of Severodvinsk. As his boots hit the ice, a loud cracking sounded underfoot. He crouched for a breath, waiting to fall through, but it held—for the moment.

He eyed the parked aircraft with suspicion, expecting it to plummet through the ice.

Off to the side, Yuri crossed with two of his handpicked men, Vinogradov and Sidorov. The trio opened the plane's rear cargo hatch and began tossing out duffels of equipment. The two brothers were twins, but only fraternal. Blond-haired Vin stood a few inches shorter than Kowalski with a quarterback's build, while Sid stood a foot shorter with the stocky bulk of a linebacker. The only feature that was identical were their hard expressions, and even harder eyes.

Both had served with Yuri in the Russian Navy.

Another young man, no older than twenty, named Fadd, had been the Baikal's pilot. The guy spent more time yammering than paying attention to airspeed, altitude, and angles of approach. Still, Fadd landed them squarely on the lake without crashing through the ice.

Not that Kowalski didn't expect that still to happen.

Monk finished making final arrangements with the pilot, then joined Kowalski out on the lake. The last member of their extraction team hopped out. Kane lifted his snout, testing the air, already searching for his missing partners.

The hope was that the Malinois would perform as well as he had in Sergiyev Posad and pick up the scent of their teammates. Clearly failing at the moment, Kane lowered his nose and shook the long trip from his fur.

They had left in the middle of the night, traveling the seven hundred miles in a pair of trucks. It had taken them fourteen hours to reach Arkhangelsk, a portside city on the White Sea. Once there, they had collected the bush plane from a fishing charter, which required Yuri handing over a satchel weighted down with rolls of rubles.

Afterward, they had made the thirty-mile hop to the lake. To continue their ruse as simple fishermen, Fadd would start drilling holes through the ice and set up rods.

But there would be no one to man them.

Monk waved to the western shore, to a snowy forest covering low hills. "Let's head out."

The five men and Kane set off across the ice.

It was a sullen march.

Yesterday afternoon, Gray had returned after nearly drowning in the lost library. He had reported the deaths of Bishop Yelagin and Father Bailey. He had also shared what knowledge that sacrifice had gained them: the possible location of a lost continent, one that came with a dire warning, a danger that could threaten the world if unleashed. Gray and the others, including Sister Anna, were already en route by air to the city of Pevek on the coast of the East Siberian Sea, where they would take a helicopter out to a commercial icebreaker and begin their search of those frozen waters.

But despite the urgency of finding the site, of discovering the nature of that threat before the Russians claimed it, they could not abandon Tucker and Dr. Stutt, or even Marco. Not without attempting a rescue.

To that end, they had recruited additional allies—and resources.

Once off the lake and onto the wooded shoreline, Yuri removed a GPS unit from his pack. He took a moment to get his bearings, then set off into the hills, tracking a red dot on his screen. After fifteen minutes of hiking, they topped a rise.

"We're here," Yuri stated firmly.

It took Kowalski a few breaths to spot the white camouflage netting bulging at the bottom of the hollow ahead of them. It helped that there were some tread tracks leading to the spot, though the overnight snow had partially filled the path.

"Suit up and let's get going," Monk said, searching the skies between the pines. The winds had picked up, blowing snow from branches and dusting over them. "That storm's coming in fast. We want to be in the teeth of it by the time we reach the base."

Yuri and his two men rolled back the netting, revealing a pair of vehicles.

One was a Berkut-2 snowmobile. It had a two-man heated cab built over skids. Atop it was mounted a PKP Pecheneg 6P41 machine gun. In the back was an open-air gunner's seat, positioned over a rear cargo space.

The second vehicle was an A-1 double snowmobile. It looked like a motorcycle with a sidecar, but one sitting on oversize treads.

From the duffels, the team loaded additional rifles and sidearms into the two vehicles, then stripped down and changed into Russian Arctic combat gear, which consisted of camo suits in shades of white and gray. They pulled dark balaclavas over their heads, followed by white helmets with black visors.

As they geared up, Kowalski kept next to Yuri. He asked a question that had bothered him since they left Sergiyev Posad. "Why's your boss so willing to help us?"

"He is paid very well, da ?" Yuri shrugged.

Kowalski knew that Painter and Kat had arranged the equipment drop-offs with Bogdan, who also coordinated their transportation. The industrialist had plenty of underworld connections to facilitate all of this. Plus, it was well known that a slew of Russian military hardware had the unfortunate habit of falling out of trucks.

Kowalski kept staring at Yuri until the man admitted more.

"I tell him what you do, what you plan to do."

Kowalski remembered catching Yuri on the phone back at the Vatican embassy, speaking to his boss. "You've been reporting in, so what?"

"Bogdan is a happy man. Very rich. Very smart. Sanctions are bad already. War would be much worse. He is not alone in wishing for peace. He sees the wisdom in supporting a cause that will keep his funds flowing smoothly and steadily."

"I thought war was profitable for guys like your boss."

"For a few, da . For most others, nyet ." Yuri stared toward the horizon. "Bogdan also has five children and seven grandchildren. I have two daughters myself."

This last surprised Kowalski.

Yuri tugged on his helmet. "Not all costs of war are measured in profits."

He snapped the visor shut, ending this discourse, and headed toward the Berkut.

Monk crossed to Kowalski, noting him struggling with his coat. "How's your arm?"

"I'll manage." He yanked his limb through the sleeve, a bit too roughly, trying to prove his point. "Barely any seepage through the wrap."

Monk frowned at him. "You should've stayed behind."

As team medic, Monk had tried to sideline Kowalski, but that wasn't about to happen. Tucker got nabbed trying to save Kowalski's ass. So, he wasn't going to sit this out.

Besides, he was needed here—and for more than just his brawn and ability to blow things up. He whistled and signaled to Kane, who crossed over and followed him toward the Berkut. Tucker had taught Kowalski a basic set of verbal commands and hand signals to help him work with Marco. Kane knew those, too, and many more.

Tucker's last instruction had been the most pointed.

Trust the dog, and he'll trust you .

Kowalski hoped that was true.

Once ready, the group split up and set off. Monk climbed aboard the A-l snowmobile with Sid. Kowalski joined Yuri inside the Berkut, with Kane perched between them. Outside, Vin climbed into the gunner's seat behind the cab.

Two engines choked into roars. The vehicles lurched forward, then gained speed. They flew through the snow-covered woods, riding over hills and across open plains. This rural region was one of the many training areas used by the base's Arctic Brigade. The plan was to pose as late-returning soldiers, hurrying to beat the worst of the evening's storm. They would aim for the back gate onto the base, where they hoped less attention would be paid to them, where their forged papers had a better chance of passing inspection.

From there, their goal was a simple one.

Get in and get out as quickly as possible.

Kowalski stared ahead.

Kane panted beside him, expressing the anxiety they all shared.

Ahead, dark, snow-heavy clouds stacked high, obliterating the sun, casting the world in shadows. Winds blew at them in gusts that rattled their windshield.

The lights of the military town of Severodvinsk glowed in a widening spread before them. It required a special visa to enter the town, but where they were headed was even more restricted.

The White Sea Naval Base hugged the western edge of Dvina River delta, where it emptied into the sea. Its many docks and shipyards serviced and tested the latest submarines and ships in the Arctic fleet. It would undoubtably be highly protected.

But they had to risk it.

Kane whined next to him, a note barely above hearing.

"Quit complaining," he warned the dog. "We'll find them."

Kowalski stared toward the lights, the stormy skies.

Or die trying .