The Alex King Series by A BATEMAN (free ebook reader for ipad TXT) 📕

raised the rifle and started to study the treeline. Again, there was only just enough light to see by. The moon had moved halfway across the sky and was still lighting up the snow, but he was aware that it would get darker soon. The moon would disappear, and the darkest hours of the day would bring almost total darkness. Dawn, as it was, would start around ten-AM and daylight would be from around mid-day to three-PM. What a place! he thought.

He had been awake enough to hear the last of the gunshots. The burst woke him, but the final shot had been clear enough in his mind to draw assumptions, if not conclusions. Medium calibre, high-velocity rifle round, semi-automatic. An assault rifle. But at what distance? How could the cold, dense air affect things? He knew that bullets travelled more slowly, that the drop was more acute at five-hundred metres when temperatures dipped below minus-five. Around twice that of a shot taken on the equator at low altitude. But what about noise? The pristine forest had nothing to absorb the sound. Everything was hard, the surfaces and surrounds offering nothing in the way of absorption, and even mundane things like getting off the snowmobile seemed to echo. Which meant his best guess at a mile or so away could put it considerably further than that.

Rashid could see nothing through the scope. But he hadn’t expected to. Not with the shots taken at that distance. It was merely instilled drills. Nothing taken at face-value. He lowered the rifle and reached for the thermos. He drank the hot liquid straight from the flask, savoured the warmth, the anticipation of the impending caffeine hit. He squared his kit away and settled in behind the rifle. He had chosen this spot, of the three most likely places, because of its qualities as a killing ground. With the gunshots at such a distance, the other rendezvous possibilities were still in play. Nothing was for certain. He just hoped his gamble would pay off.

46

“You’ve alerted her now!” Rechencovitch shoved the man in his chest, pushing him down onto his backside in the snow. “Idiot!”

The man glowered up at him, but hastily thought better of it. He knew the colonel’s reputation hadn’t been built upon fantasy or speculation. “I am sorry, I thought I had the shot…”

“Too far away,” Rechencovitch snapped. “Too cold.”

He cursed as he studied the map with his red-filtered torch that would both make his position less visible and keep his night-vision unaffected. He knew that the icy air would slow the bullet, coupled with the elevation of their position and the deep ravine which would be trapping the cooler air, it simply made the four-hundred metre shot from the 5.45x39mm bullet impossible. What’s more, the man now sitting on his backside in front of him should have known it too. They were now faced with either a dangerous rappel and near-impossible climb, or a two-kilometre trek to get around the ravine. The man’s shot had been a Hail Mary. A fire and hope shot. But it hadn’t paid off. It had alerted their quarry and given away their advantage. Now he was faced with the choice of time over safety. Could they rappel and climb safely in these temperatures, or should they press on and take the easier route, but put distance between his team and their prey?

The man with the sniper rifle had dropped into a prone position, scanning the area on the other side of the ravine. His more powerful 7.62x54mm weapon would make the distance easily. But as he got back to his feet and dusted the snow off himself, he shook his head at Rechencovitch.

She was long gone.

***

Natalia did not turn around and she did not stop moving. She knew that moving was key. She had to put time and distance between herself and her pursuers. The gunshots could only have come from the other side of the ravine, and she knew how long it had taken her to cross. She estimated she would treble her distance from whoever was hunting her, just so long as she kept moving.

After what she estimated to be a strenuous kilometre, she stopped and dared a look behind her. Her footprints were clear. A half-centimetre indentation in the crust of frozen, compacted snow. She felt deflated. Her tracks were so clear, so easy to follow, all that kept her separated from her pursuers was fitness. And she was feeling exhausted.

She looked around her, settled for a fallen branch from a fir tree. She trudged over and picked it up, used it as a sweeping brush to clear her tracks. It worked well. Pine needles fell from the branch, and she could make out a trail from the loose snow, but it was a hundred times harder to spot than her original footprints, and that would be enough to slow her pursuers down. She then looked at her map and the button compass. She strained her eyes to see in the dim light. As always, the snow and occasional glimpse of the moon giving off just enough ambience to stave off complete darkness. She had practiced map reading in her room. Using the coordinates and memorising every detail on the map she had a feel for the surrounding area, if not the experience of walking it. But she had made her way to the ravine ahead of schedule and had been impressed by her efforts making it out of the facility and due west across the Russian border. Only the rusted and broken remains of a fence had remained. Further south a post was manned, and the border fence sprung up like Cold War Berlin. There was nothing here, though and the elements were enough to put most people off.

Most people.

Natalia hadn’t marked the map with a cross or circled a point, but she had