Chapter 40

40

May 14, 2:02 P . M . ANAT

Airborne over the East Siberian Sea

"They've got to be down there somewhere, right?" Tucker asked.

He crouched in the copilot seat of the Baikal, serving as an extra pair of eyes as Monk glided them over a featureless fogbank. It stretched to the horizon in all directions.

Behind them, Elle and Kowalski searched from the windows back there. The only two who remained unconcerned were Kane and Marco, who slept in tight curls on two chairs.

Monk leaned forward. "Keep an eye out for any sign of them."

Despite the tension, Monk stifled a jaw-cracking yawn with a fist. The man had had little sleep during the eight hours of flight. Tucker had briefly relieved him after catching Monk's chin resting on his collarbone, drowsing off. With the plane on autopilot, Tucker had kept vigil during Monk's nap, nervously watching the instrument panel, while the night skies had swirled with shimmering veils of the borealis.

They had to stop at daybreak to refuel at the northernmost tip of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. They landed at a small gravel airstrip next to a Russian Arctic park. Elle spoke with the lone keeper of that remote spot. Luckily, the park allowed dogs, so Tucker was able to let Kane and Marco run free over the rocky landscape, stretching their legs and releasing some of the tension from the past days. He kept them close, though, as distant white specks marked the presence of polar bears.

But there was another reason they had stopped, too.

Out of sight of the airstrip's lone caretaker, he and Kowalski had carried Fadd's body to a remote barren gully. They built a cairn of rocks over the young man, promising to come back and give him a proper burial.

When the two had returned to the plane, Tucker found Elle sobbing inside. She did her best to hide it, rubbing a fist over her eyes. A bloody rag lay next to her, where she must have tried to clean the floor of the plane.

Tucker had pulled her close and held her as Monk got the Baikal back in the air. At that moment, Tucker had needed her warmth as much as she did his. During his years with the Rangers, he had buried too many, too young. One never grew numb to it.

"Check to the right!" Elle called out, drawing Tucker back to the present. "Is that a break in the fog?"

Tucker leaned over to search in that direction. Off in the distance, thirty or forty miles away, a patch of glaring light shone from the featureless expanse of the gray fogbank. It looked like the sun reflecting off open ice.

"You're right," Tucker confirmed.

"I thought I saw a brief flash of fire from that direction a moment ago," Elle said. "It caught my eye. But it's gone."

"There's smoke, too," Monk said. "Just a thin trail."

Tucker squinted and saw he was right. "Could that be coming from Gray and the others?"

"Let's hope so." Monk swung the aircraft in that direction. "We're running low on fuel... and they're running out of time."

Tucker nodded.

Two hours ago, from the air, they had spotted a shattered dark trail through the white ice, heading north. The route had led straight into the fogbank and vanished. They had turned and followed it, recognizing the path of an icebreaker. They prayed it was the ship that Gray and the others had boarded.

But Tucker's group wasn't the only one following that well-marked trail.

Just before reaching the fogbank, they spotted another ship. They swept low, then quickly angled away once they saw it was a Russian vessel, an icebreaking patrol boat. Tucker had used binoculars to study the gray-blue ship. He made out the massive AK-176MA naval gun mounted at its bow. A Kamov Ka-27 anti-submarine helicopter sat on the boat's stern pad.

They all knew what that Russian vessel, alone in these waters, must have been dispatched to do.

The same as us—to find the others .

Like Tucker's group, the patrol boat must have come across the broken path through the ice and now steamed hard along it, making good time with the route already shattered for them.

It was what made Tucker's current search so desperate.

Gray and the others needed to be warned, to know what was coming.

Still, Tucker knew such foreknowledge would do little good, especially out here, locked in ice. He scanned across the unbroken landscape.

Where could any of us go? Where could we hide?