In the distance, a branch snapped.
The sound echoed across the night’s stillness—then faded.
Tucker froze. Where had the sound come from?
Above, he decided.
Slowly Tucker reached forward, grasped the nearest trunk, and laid himself flat. He scanned uphill, looking for movement. After ten seconds of silence, there came another distinctive sound: a muffled crunch of a footstep in the snow.
He strained as silence followed—then another crunch.
Somewhere above, a person was moving—not casually, but with purpose. Either a hunter or Felice. If so, she was even more dangerous than he’d anticipated. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since he and Kane had leaped from the train. Felice would have had to pinpoint their position, choose her own jumping-off point, then backtrack here at a running pace.
Possible, he realized, but such speed spoke to her skill as a hunter.
But was it her?
He turned his head. Twenty feet below, Kane lay on his belly, half buried in the softer snow. His eyes were fixed on Tucker, waiting for orders.
He signaled with his free hand: move deeper into the trees and hunker down.
On quiet feet, Kane moved off. Within seconds he was lost from sight.
Tucker returned his attention to their visitor. Using his elbows and knees, he burrowed himself into the powdery snowpack until only his eyes were exposed. Two minutes passed. Then five. The footsteps continued moving downhill at a stalking pace: step, pause . . . step, pause. Finally, a shadowy figure appeared from behind a tree, then stopped and crouched down.
The person’s build was slim and athletic in a form-fitting dark jacket, a cut that was too modern, too tactical. Definitely not a local rural hunter. The head turned, and from beneath a dark wool cap, a wisp of blond shone in the stark starlight.
Along with something else.
A rifle barrel poked from behind a shoulder. How had Felice smuggled a sniper rifle onto the train? As he watched, she unslung her weapon and cradled it against her chest.
She was forty feet up the slope and to his right. If she kept to her line, she would pass within feet of his trapped rucksack. Not good. He was now playing cat and mouse with a SIG-trained sniper. The solution was simple if not so easily executed: kill Felice while he still had the element of surprise.
Moving with exaggerated slowness, he reached to his belt and withdrew the stolen P22. He brought it up along his body and extended it toward Felice. He aimed the front sight on her center mass, clicked off the safety, and took up the slack on the trigger.
What happened next Tucker would write off later as a soldier’s intuition.
Still crouched, Felice pushed backward and disappeared behind a tree.
Crap.
He kept his gun steady, waiting for a clear shot, but from the stealthy noise of retreat, Felice was on the move, heading back up the slope, using the trunks to screen herself. After five minutes she was gone, but he could guess her plan. She intended to head deeper into the trees, then back down in a flanking maneuver. She must be gambling that he and Kane hadn’t made it to the river yet, and that they didn’t know she was tracking them. She would set up an ambush down below and wait.
She would be in for a long wait, Tucker decided.
He gave Felice another frigid five minutes’ head start, then pocketed the P22, eased himself sideways out of his burrow, and began crawling toward his rucksack. He reached the tree, grabbed the bag’s strap, and pulled it down to him.
He then went dead still to listen.
Silence.
He donned the rucksack, then aimed his hand toward Kane’s last known position and signaled, trusting the shepherd had followed his training and kept Tucker in view.
Return, he motioned.
He waited, but it did not take long. A hushed footfall sounded above him. He craned his neck and found Kane crouched in the snow a few feet away. Tucker reached up, grabbed a handful of neck fur, and gave his partner a reassuring massage.
“FOLLOW,” he whispered in his partner’s ear.
Together, they began the slow climb upward, back toward the rail line.
11:50 P.M.
It took longer than he’d hoped to reach the top of the slope—only to discover that a towering, windswept drift blocked the way to the tracks, a sheer wall, three times as tall as Tucker. He would have to sidestep his way across the slope and hope to find where he had originally crashed through it so they could cross back to the railway.
Tucker took only a single step away from the tree line and out onto that treacherous, icy expanse—when he felt something shift beneath his boot. In the back of his mind he thought, log, but he had no time to react. The thigh-sized chunk of tree trunk, buried under a few inches of snow and held fast by the thinnest film of ice, broke free and started rolling downhill, taking Tucker and a swath of snow with it.
Avalanche.
Tucker pushed Kane aside, knowing the shepherd would try to latch on to him again. “EVADE!” he hissed.
The order countermanded Kane’s instinct to protect him. The shepherd hesitated only a moment before leaping sideways and back into the shelter of the tree line.
Tucker knew he was in trouble. The sliding mass of snow was bulldozing over him, propelling him faster and faster down the slope. With the rucksack preventing him from rolling over, Tucker paddled his arms and legs, trying to mount the snow wave, to ride its tumult, but it was no use. Doing his best to survive, he drove one elbow into the ground, leaning into it. He spun on his belly until he was aimed headfirst down the slope, still on his belly.
Fifty yards away, the river loomed. The surface was black and motionless. With any luck, it was frozen over. If not, he was doomed.
Tucker’s mind raced.
Where was Kane? Where was Felice?
No doubt she’d heard the miniavalanche—but was he visible within the snowy surge? He got his answer. Ahead and to his right, an orange flare spat in the night, coming from a clump of scrub bushes near the waterline.
A muzzle flash.
If nothing else, his headlong plunge had made Felice miss her first shot. The second would be closer. The third would be dead-on. Tucker reached back, freed the P22 from his pocket with a struggle, and pointed it toward the site of that flash.
He felt a sting at his neck.
Grazed by a bullet.
Ignoring the pain, he squeezed the trigger twice, wild potshots, but maybe enough to discourage the sniper.
Then he hit the river’s berm and launched into the air. His heart lurched into his throat. A heartbeat later, he belly-flopped onto the ice, bounced once, then found himself rolling, flat-spinning across the river’s surface. He slammed into a clump of trees jutting from the ice and came to an abrupt, agonizing stop.