CHAPTER 85

TWO FLAT REPORTS. TWO flashes to our right.

The shots caught Sarah between the eyes, blew out the back of her head and helmet, and dropped the former Mossad operator in her tracks.

Bean spun with his rifle toward where the flashes had come from. I tackled Bree and we landed in a snowdrift.

I looked up just in time to see Bean open fire; his bullets whizzed and cracked past us and then the SAS man’s body was riddled with a volley of return shots. He arched and crumpled into the snow amid the rising chaos.

Two of the four operators who’d come into the clearing to back up Bean and Sarah started firing. The other two spun around and made for the trees as Malcomb started yelling in the helmet radio: “Extreme measures, Maestro! Repeat, extreme measures in place!”

More shots erupted from our right. One of the gunmen dropped. His partner ran for the woods, bullets slashing the snow at his heels, then vanished.

It all went quiet except for the ringing in our ears.

“What the hell just happened, Alex?” Bree asked in a shaking voice.

I looked up and saw several silhouetted figures, all carrying weapons, slipping from the trees and moving toward us single file in the gloaming. Snowmobile engines fired up in the distance.

The first silhouette said, “Dr. Cross? Are you okay?”

My jaw dropped. “Officer Fagan?”

“And me, Alex,” Ned Mahoney said, coming out from behind Fagan and turning on a headlamp. “And a lot of Mounties.”

Third in line, a big guy with a Viking-like beard caked in ice and snow said, “Captain John Olson, RCMP. Hell of a spot you got yourself into.”

I was so shocked by the sudden turn of events that for several moments, I didn’t know what to say.

And then I did.

“Sampson was shot thirty minutes ago about a mile from here,” I said. “We’ve got to get to him. Now.”