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“What if . . . What if something happens to you? What if you don’t come back?”
“That’s not going to happen, Marcus.”
“But what if it does?”
Patience wasn’t Rapp’s finest trait and what little he had was starting to fail him. “Then you’re probably going to die.”
He took off, staying in Wicker’s tracks and leaving a speechless Dumond to himself. Coleman was out of sight now, having headed southeast while McGraw went north. After a hard four-minute -effort, Rapp saw Wicker’s track disappear into a dense stand of snow-encapsulated trees. He released his bindings and covered his skis before half-crawling, half-swimming into a depression beneath trees.
He found Wicker lying partially buried with an eye to his rifle scope. The long silencer on the end of his barrel was covered in a silicone sleeve to prevent heat shimmer from interfering with the optics.
They were at the western edge of the village as planned. Its inhabitants—twenty-five or thirty in all—were in the middle of the street in various stages of undress. Most were on their knees being guarded by three armed men in white jumpsuits identical to the ones his team wore. The one exception was a child lying in the snow with half her head missing.
Of more immediate concern was the armed man running north, dragging along with him a man wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Pavel Katdsyn.
“What have we got?” Rapp whispered.
“Pakistanis,” Wicker said. “You can always tell by the mustaches.”
“Four tangos visible from our position,” Rapp said into his throat mike. “Three in the square and one running west with our potential target. Bruno, give me a sitrep.”
“I have eyes on your runners. They’re headed for the building at the end of the road and they’re going to make it before I can get an angle. No other movement. Windows look clear but it seems unlikely that they don’t have anyone up there.”
“Scott?”
“I’m at the entrance to the village. One dead local and one armed tango. Judging by the tracks coming out of a snowcat, I make it six men total.”
That left one tango unaccounted for and it wasn’t hard to guess where he was. To his left, Rapp saw the two men disappear through a door in the building at the far edge of the village. It wouldn’t take Katdsyn long to access those files. Most likely a matter of minutes.
“Scott. Do you have a shot at the man guarding the entrance?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Take it and move into a position to cover the east-facing windows.”
“Give me a minute and a half. Two at the most.”
“Bruno. How long to get into position to cover the west-facing windows?”
“The same.”
“Do it.”
Rapp pointed to the men guarding the civilians in the street. “Can you take the two on the right, Wick?”
“No problem.”
Rapp slid the rifle off his back and lined up on the head of the man to the left. He was scanning the area for anything unusual, no longer having to pay much attention to his prisoners. The intense cold was doing his job for him. A number of the children had slipped into unconsciousness and their parents looked like they were on the verge of doing the same. Another fifteen minutes and they’d all be dead.
Coleman’s voice crackled over his earpiece. “Tango’s down and I’m in position.”
A few seconds passed before McGraw came on. “I’m ready.”
“Okay, then. On three.”
Rapp counted them off and then squeezed the rifle’s trigger. His target’s head exploded along with the head of the man next to him. Rapp immediately dropped the rifle and vaulted the low snowbank. He made it to the street just as the third Pakistani was swinging his rifle into position. Rapp ignored the threat and sprinted up the road. A moment later the puff of Wicker’s silenced rifle sounded and he knew without looking back that there were no tangos left alive behind him.
Rapp retrieved his Glock from beneath his jacket and made it about a hundred yards before a cloud of snow and ice kicked up to his left. As anticipated, the Pakistani assault team had put a man in the upper floor of one of the buildings. Fortunately, the sni
