“Yes.”
The answer had been yes since the moment Harper was taken. They both knew it.
Three years ago, he’d made the choice the mission required.
Alexei had died anyway.
He wasn’t failing her too.
They movedout at 02:30, disappearing through the frozen forest toward the supply road where the truck would pass at 02:45, their route and timing confirmed through Zak’s intercepts.
Ahead, the compound lights burned through the trees.
Harper was in there. And he wasn’t. Every minute she spent inside that compound was another minute he wasn’t between her and them.
He adjusted his grip on his rifle as Fox’s voice came low over comms. “Ready?”
“Copy,” Zak said.
Pav looked at Alexei’s watch one final time. Cold steel against his pulse. The second hand swept on.
Still moving. So was he.
The compound was ahead.
“Go.”
42
Freezingmetal burned Pav’s spine.
The underside of the truck was colder than the ground. Thick straps across his chest restricted his breathing and icy air knifed under the chassis every time the vehicle hit a rut. The suspension shuddered above him, driving vibration through his ribs and his healing chest wound.
Beside him, Zak was a dark shape strapped beneath the auxiliary tank, one gloved hand locked around the frame rail, his face turned away from the grit spitting up beneath the wheels.
“If I die under a potato truck,” Zak murmured over comms, voice barely more than breath, “I’m haunting both of you.”
The compound lights strobed through the trees. White glare. Darkness. White glare again.
Gate in twenty seconds.
Fifteen.
The truck slowed.
Bored male voices, rough with cold and sleep. One laughed. Another coughed, spat, then said something to Fox as he unwound the driver’s window.
Fox answered in fluent Russian, easy and irritated, the voice of a man who’d driven this road too many times and didn’t appreciate being kept from a warm room and terrible coffee.
A guard walked around the truck. Boots ground on frozen stones. A flashlight beam cut under the chassis.
Pav stopped breathing.
The light moved across the axle, washed over dried mud and rusted metal, and slid within inches of his face. Close enough to catch the edge of his glove where it gripped the rail. One shift, one breath, would end the operation before it began.
He became nothing. No breath. Just stillness under steel.
The beam tracked away.
