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THE BOY SMILED as he went for the kill.
Kira batted the knife away with one arm and brought her knee up hard against his temple. The kid dropped onto his side, stunned and groaning. Kira picked up the knife and wiped Irina’s blood off it. She took a step toward the boy and instinctively visualized his carotid artery. One quick stroke was all it would take. He looked about sixteen. She hesitated, then slipped the knife into her belt and headed for the woods. The trail she’d taken from the school last night would be too dangerous now. She’d have to make her way back cross-country. As soon as she moved through the tree line, the forest closed in around her. The tall firs formed a canopy. White birches shot up everywhere in vertical stripes, and the undergrowth was daunting. After just a few hundred yards, Kira’s hands were scraped and bloodied from pushing through the tangled brush. As she tugged aside another prickly branch, she froze. Then she tilted her head slightly and listened. She was not alone.
A twig cracked in the distance, then another. Fifty yards ahead, a line of students appeared through the trees. It was a foot patrol, moving slowly and deliberately. Younger students, Kira figured. Not yet worthy of ATVs. The automatic rifles looked incongruous against their narrow shoulders. But she had no doubt that they were deadly shooters. That skill was taught early.
Kira was in a thicket of birches. She realized that her black outfit was a poor disguise against the white trunks. She kicked herself mentally for not putting her camo net in her pocket, instead of in her backpack, which was lying somewhere at the bottom of the cliff. She ducked down as the patrol moved toward her. Suddenly, she heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction. Then, a shout.
“She’s here! I saw her!”
It was a boy’s voice, calling out from a few yards behind her. Kira pressed her face into the brush, thorns stabbing her cheek.
“Evanoff??”A voice called back from the approaching patrol. “Where the hell have you been?”
Kira heard steps behind her, coming closer. Her hand tightened around the handle of the knife. The boy passed within ten feet of her as he hurried to reunite with his squad. It was the boy from the cliff. Kira gritted her teeth. This is what I get for showing mercy, she thought.
Kira held still as the boy joined the other students. She could hear their voices, but the sentences weren’t clear. The boy pointed in the direction he came from, then turned to lead the way back. The entire squad moved with fresh intensity, spreading out in formation, with students a few yards apart.
Kira rolled slowly to the side, trying to stay low. Her hip bumped the trunk of a thick birch. She crouched behind it, searching for a path out. In every direction, she saw ground cover that would rustle and crack if she made a run for it. The patrol was getting closer.
She reached slowly into a pile of deadfall and picked up a thick branch about two feet long. She pressed herself against the backside of the birch then swung her arm in a high arc and let the branch fly. It sailed end over end and landed in the brush with a loud crunch about twenty yards away.
“Target left!” a voice called out sharply. She heard steps moving quickly in that direction. Kira grabbed the birch trunk with both hands, braced her feet against it and climbed. Fifteen feet up, she reached a section where the white bark was mottled with gray. It was the best she could do. She rested one toe on a knotty stub, hugged the trunk, and held on tight.
A half minute later, the near wing of the squad swept by underneath her. Kira’s foot was starting to slip off the tiny protrusion. The coarse bark was scraping the inside of her wrists. She adjusted her grip and tried to ignore the fire in her biceps and thighs.
Through the light scrim of birch leaves, Kira watched the patrol moving off in the direction of the cliff. When the last figure disappeared, she began to ease herself down the birch, a few inches at a time. Suddenly, she felt herself slipping down the slick bark. She scraped her left shoe wildly against the trunk, feeling for a new foothold. Her toe hit a slick patch of moss. Her weight shifted, too far to recover. She clawed at the tree with both hands, but too late.
She landed hard. Her right shoulder separated with a loud pop and she felt a blinding stab of agony—even more painful than she remembered. She jammed her mouth into the crook of her elbow and bit down on the fabric of her sleeve. She did not scream. After the initial shock passed through her, the pain came in nauseating waves. Kira folded her bad arm across her chest and rose to her knees. Then she stood up. Each shift brought a fresh blast of agony.
She staggered over to a twin birch, with two trunks that split about four feet off the ground. She slid her wrist into the V and made a fist to wedge it tight. She rotated her torso to face the tree. She took a deep breath and jerked her body backward with all her strength. She heard the snap of the ball popping back into the socket. She saw bright sparks. She fell to her knees again and pulled her hand out of the wedge. Tears of pain streamed down her cheeks. Her body was telling her to stay still and conserve her energy. But she wouldn’t listen.
As soon as the flashes in her eyes eased, Kira backed away from the thicket, found a small gap in the underbrush, and headed west.
CHAPTER 92
The Bering Sea
I SWAM FOR an hour through cold, choppy water. Even while I was doing it, I couldn’t believe my own strength. It was more than adrenaline. More than Kira’s training. I felt like I had left my old body behind, almost like I had turned into a different species.
When my feet finally touched bottom, I was still about twenty yards off the peninsula. I could see waves curling around huge rocks at the shoreline. A steep hill rose just beyond, covered in brownish grass and stubby bushes.
I sank calf-deep into cold muck as I half-walked, half-swam toward the beach.
For the last few yards, I was tripping over jagged rocks. I fell on my face in the water and crawled the rest of the way. When I finally got to shore, I crawled behind a craggy boulder and pulled my backpack under my shoulder for a cushion against the hard rocks.
The beach was just a narrow strip. It was littered with boulders, blasted from some ancient volcano. Back in the years when I was doing my doctoral research, I would have been scouring the site for signs of life, traces of lost civilizations. Now I was looking for a school of killers. And my only advantage was that they probably thought I was dead.
I heard a roar in the distance, coming from the south end of the peninsula. At first, I thought it was a chainsaw. But it kept getting louder. Then I spotted movement. It was a pack of ATVs, moving single file in the narrow space between the hillside and the beach. Four of them.
For a second, I thought about backing out into the water and waiting until they passed by. But I was tired of running. In the past two days, I’d been firebombed, shot at, and blasted out of the sky. I’d almost drowned. Twice. But Kira had taught me to survive, no matter what. She’d given me the power to fight. I decided it was time to start using it.
I reached into my soggy backpack and pulled out a roll of wire. I unspooled a few feet of it between my hands and tugged on it. It felt as strong as piano wire, but as flexible as fishing line. The ATVs were still just specks in the distance, bouncing over rises, kicking up dust. The sound of the engines rolled up the steep hill and echoed back down.
I darted from boulder to boulder until I was at the edge of the trail. I wrapped one end of the wire around a rock the size of a dumpster. Then I made a quick dash across the trail and wrapped the other end around a thick tree stump. I lay down on my belly in the low grass and waited. The sound of the machines got louder and louder. They were moving fast, and I could hear the riders yelling back and forth above the engine noise.
I ducked low as the first ATV flew by. As it passed the stump, the wire caught the front of the chassis and the whole thing flipped end over end. The rider flew out and landed hard about fifteen yards away. The other three riders jammed on their brakes, but they couldn’t stop in time. One after the other, they spun out and piled up. I heard yelps of pain and crunching metal.
I knew I had to move fast, while the riders were still in shock. I got up and made a dash for the last ATV in the pile. It was the only one still running. The kid behind the wheel had a bloody lip and his eyes were glassy. He looked startled and confused as I grabbed him.
