James Cobb - The Arctic Event

“Damn! I was hoping for the whole platoon.” Smith reached across and collected the transponder. Collapsing its antenna, he pocketed it. It had served its purpose.

“The others are probably following,” Smyslov added.

“Maybe, but they might not get here in time to do us or themselves any good. Let me have the glasses.”

Smyslov unslung the binocular case and passed it to Smith. Coming up on his knees, Smith aimed the field glasses westward toward the science station, tracking along the flag-marked coastal trail.

“Can you see her yet, Jon?” Randi inquired.

“Not yet…Wait a minute. Yeah! There she is. She’s running.”

In his magnified field of view he could make out Valentina trotting along, seemingly at ease, the red and green of her clothing, or rather Randi’s clothing, making her stand out against the sun-washed white of the terrain. Again the timing was about what he had hoped for. Elevating the glasses farther, he could make out the knoll with its radio mast that overlooked the science station. Smoke seemed to be rising from behind the hill, and on the side facing them flyspeck figures moved. A line of men hastened down toward the shoreline, pursuing that other small, colorful dot that moved toward Smith’s position.

“Val’s pulling in her share! Five…six…eight-damn, not as many as I’d like there, either.”

Smith swiveled around 180 degrees and ran a scan down the east shore. There was the other half of the equation, the Spetsnaz force. Only one man followed the compacted pathway; the other five had fanned out on either side, scuffling along on snowshoes. The Russians were closer than the force advancing from the science station, but they were also moving slower. And so far, with the point blocking their line of sight, neither converging force had become aware of the other. Smith mentally computed times and distances. Yeah. It was going to be just about as good as they had any right to expect.

“Ladies and gentleman,” he said, lowering the binoculars, “it’s coming together. Randi, give Val the word.”

Randi gave the stainless steel signaling mirror a final quick buff on her sleeve. Squinting through the tiny sighting hole in its center, she acquired the dot on the snow that was Valentina Metrace. Angling the mirror, she produced a single flash that might be mistaken for a sun strike off the snow were you not looking for it.

After a few moments the pursued dot glinted back.

“She’s acknowledged,” Randi reported.

“Right. That’s all we can do here. Let’s move out.”

“I don’t like this, Jon,” Randi spoke vehemently under her breath. “I don’t like this part at all!”

“I’m not crazy about it myself.” Through the glasses he could make out Val as a human figure moving effortlessly as if she were out for a morning’s jog. Leading your troops into battle is easy, Sarge. Having to leave them there, on their own, that’s the real bear.

“She doesn’t even have a gun, damn it!”

“She didn’t seem to think she’d need one.” Smith slammed the binoculars back into their case.

“I do hope you realize that woman is just a hopeless showoff,” Randi said, binding on her bear-paw snowshoes.

“Oh, yes, most definitely. And speaking about guns…” Smith drew his sidearm from the holster pocket of his parka, passing the automatic to Smyslov, butt first. “You might find use for this today, Major. This one works, guaranteed.”

Smyslov grinned and accepted the P-226, stowing it in his pocket. “That is good to hear. I had a most disappointing experience with an American firearm not long ago.”

Valentina Metrace was a predator and huntress by both instinctive nature and personal preference. But as a successful predator, she also understood what was required of a successful, i.e., survivable, prey animal.

Staying alive as prey mandated you not only knew when to run but when, where, and how to hide, and the moment to break trail and disappear was almost upon her.

The single mirror flash from the top of the point had told her Jon Smith’s plan was on track. The Spetsnaz were moving into the killing zone from the other side of the point. Two flashes would have meant a scrub and for her to keep going, pulling her pursuers under the fire of the long guns atop the point.

As it was, their unknowing allies, the Spetsnaz, would hopefully do the job for them.

Smith had orchestrated his engagement well. On the landward side a thirty-foot cliff rose above a narrowed boulder-strewn beach, while to seaward the point acted like the prow of a ship, building up an exceptionally jagged and tumbled pile of pressure ice. It was a natural choke point and a superb killing ground, leaving neither force room to maneuver or successfully disengage.

All she had to do now was to squirm out from between their two fires, and the pressure ice jumble provided a magnificent maze to disappear into.

Now Valentina started looking back. The men chasing her were perhaps a quarter mile behind and slowly closing. She’d been deliberately sandbagging her pace, allowing them to overtake her, dangling the prospect of bringing her within gun range as a lure.

It was working.

She had no clear idea of how close the Spetsnaz were, so she dare not waste any time. The instant she rounded the tip of the point, breaking the line of sight with her pursuers, she broke laterally into the sea ice, scrambling over the man-high pressure ridge at the beach edge.

Crossing from the trail, Valentina carefully plotted each step and handgrip, hopping from one slab of snow-bared ice to the next like a person crossing a stream on stepping-stones, striving to minimize the trail she left. It would be impossible to leave no trace at all. Her pursuers would see where her boot tracks stopped on the main trail, but she was striving for confusion, to hold this one facet of the enemy in the killing zone for the arrival of the second.

Working her way roughly twenty yards offshore, she swung westward again, like a canny white-tail buck circling behind its stalking hunter. Out here, the sea ice was a living thing-softer, green-tinged, buckling and breaking with the rise and sink of the tides and the drag of the currents. Whipping out the survival blanket she carried, Valentina donned it as a camouflage cloak, wearing the white side out. Sinking down, she wormed along on hands and knees, staying below the outer edge of the pressure ridge.

She moved silently, but once she was almost startled into a yelp when a mushy emerald puddle of ice crystals erupted in front of her and she found herself literally nose to nose with an equally unnerved ring seal. Snorting in her face, the seal plunged back through his breathing hole, leaving her to reestablish her own breathing.

Then she heard the voices to shoreward. Her hunters had come to the break in her trail. That was it. The time for running was over. Drawing the white protective sheeting closer, she merged into a notch in the pressure ridge. Drawing her legs up tightly against her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees, she assumed the pu ning mu position, the “hiding like a stone” of ninjutsu. She also drew the neck of the sweatshirt up and over her mouth and nose, breathing down into the garment to kill her breath plume. Valentina Metrace became just another block of ice.

The pack beneath her creaked and sighed. The voices faded to an occasional fragmented mutter. By now the arms smugglers must have figured out what she had done and where she had gone. By now someone would be standing atop the pressure ridge, scanning with binoculars.

He’d be looking for color and movement. If she denied her hunters both, she’d be immune, at least for a time. Unfortunately Randi Russell had given these men the slip in much this same way before. It was questionable that they’d just give up twice. They’d look. They’d think. They’d talk it over for a minute. Then they’d start probing into the sea ice after her.