Van Horn folded her arms. “And you’ve got a solution for that?”

  “I do,” Flynn said with a sigh. “But I don’t like it much.” He indicated the lightweight orange barricade in front of their wrecked van. “I figure we make use of what the Syndicate has provided and run our own unofficial traffic stop on the next big vehicle, preferably a tractor-trailer truck, that comes along.”

  She whistled softly. “You know we’ll have to bring the driver along with us? At least until we can safely drop him off somewhere he won’t be found for a while.”

  “Yeah, which means we’ll be adding kidnapping and carjacking to our list of felonies,” Flynn admitted. “On the other hand, I don’t imagine that’ll make much real difference if the Russians grab us before we can break across the frontier.”

  Van Horn’s eyes roved around the site of their recent battle. Then she smiled crookedly. “I guess not. Because between this shootout and the mess we made back at Voronin’s estate, I figure we’re already at the top of the Kremlin’s Most Wanted List.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  republic of karelia, russia

  late evening

  Nick Flynn moved warily through the ancient pine woods—on the lookout for dead tree branches and slippery, half-buried rocks among the ferns and thick green moss carpeting the forest floor’s shallow ledges and hollows. Van Horn followed him, with Hynes and Vucovich carrying Kossak on their portable stretcher, and Cooke bringing up the rear. They were all being cautious, both to avoid making excessive noise and to reduce the chances of someone twisting an ankle. Heavily burdened as they were by one wounded teammate, they couldn’t risk any further injuries.

  They’d ditched the tractor-trailer truck they’d hijacked several hours before, abandoning it on a deserted side road, along with its bound and gagged driver. If necessary, Flynn figured an anonymous phone call to the Russian authorities once they were safely in Finland would ensure that the poor guy was retrieved.

  Coming to a place where the forest gradually sloped away to the west, Flynn paused for a moment to check his bearings. Squinting, he peered through the trees, ignoring the whirling swarms of mosquitos and biting flies whining through the sweltering gloom. Off across a stretch of lower ground just ahead, he spotted the red-tinged glint of fading sunlight on water. They were getting close to the eastern shores of Lake Kamennoye. He glanced down at his watch. Although it was almost ten at night, the sun was just now sliding below the horizon. Long black shadows stretched eastward.

  Laura Van Horn moved up beside him. She nodded toward the faint glimpse of water. “That it?” she asked, pitching her voice low so that it couldn’t be heard more than a few feet away.

  “Should be,” Flynn said. The hint of a smile twitched at the side of his mouth. “Unless I got us turned around somehow and this is one of the other sixty-some-odd thousand lakes in Russian Karelia.”

  “Not funny, Nick,” Van Horn growled quietly. She thumped his ribs with her elbow. “Might not be safe to piss me off just now. I’m hot and sweaty, and not in a good way.”

  “Affirmative on that,” he acknowledged. Then, before she could elbow him again, he led the way down the gentle slope. Following him, the team pushed across the level ground, skirting trees and boulders and denser patches of underbrush. Closer to the lake, the woods were even thicker and more tangled.

  After a few minutes, Flynn reached the edge of a rutted dirt road. According to the maps he’d studied, it ran parallel to the lake shore for several miles. He felt the tension tightening his shoulder blades ease up a little. Reaching this landmark meant they were getting close to their planned rendezvous point.

  But then, just as he was about to cross the narrow road, he picked up the unmistakable sound of a vehicle moving somewhere not that far off. It was getting closer fast.

  A Russian patrol, Flynn realized. Reacting fast, he dropped into the nearest cover—a clump of ferns growing around a fallen log. Van Horn went prone near a tree. So did Cooke. Vucovich and Hynes carefully lowered Kossak’s stretcher and went to ground behind a group of moss-covered boulders.

  The engine noise grew even louder.

  Flynn lay still with his eyes narrowed to slits, observing the road through a slight gap in the ferns. Suddenly, a UAZ-469 utility jeep appeared from the north, driving into sight around a shallow curve. It carried a pair of armed Border Guard soldiers in forest-pattern camouflage and soft-billed caps. Accompanied by the grinding sound of shifting gears and the crackling hiss of a radio, the small four-wheeled vehicle bumped along the rutted dirt road, heading south. The heads of both the driver and his passenger were on constant swivel—meticulously scanning the forest around them in all directions.

  Suddenly worried that the gleam of his eyes might give him away in the fading light, Flynn carefully lowered his head. He held his breath as the jeep rolled on only yards away from his hiding place, waiting for the startled yell that would confirm he’d been spotted. His hand edged toward the stock of the PP-2000 submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

  The shout never came.

  Instead, the jeep just kept going until it disappeared from view around another bend in the road a hundred yards farther south.

  Flynn breathed out slowly. Russia’s territorial forces were a lot more active than he’d anticipated. This was the second patrol they’d had to avoid since starting this trek through the rugged Karelian countryside.

  He frowned. Technically, the area they were traversing was part of a nature preserve. That made it strictly off-limits to everyone, except accredited scientists and carefully guided eco-tourists. Yeah, well, he thought, it was becoming painfully evident that the Border Guards hadn’t gotten the memo. Or, more likely, they didn’t give a damn about endangered local animals and plant life. Not when Moscow must be demanding immediate action to tighten security along its frontiers with the West.

  Flynn sighed. Tempting as it was to lie hidden among these ferns for a while longer, that wasn’t an option. With Russians on high alert, he and his team needed to keep moving. He got back to his feet and stood listening for a moment, just in case the local Border Guards commander had decided to play it cute by sending out a second jeep to act as a rearguard for that last patrol.

  But except for the irritating, persistent whine of mosquitos, there was only silence. Nothing else stirred in the gathering shadows.

  Reassured, Flynn darted across the rutted dirt track and immediately dropped back into cover on the far side. As soon as he signaled that it was clear, Van Horn and the others followed him over the road.

  Once they were reunited, they moved on toward the shore—pushing through the trees and bracken. The sun was now well below the horizon, and the light around them was softening, fading into the gray melancholy of twilight.

  Suddenly, from somewhere not far ahead, they heard a low whistle.

  Flynn, Van Horne, and Cooke immediately halted and took a knee with their weapons up and ready. Vucovich and Hynes sank to the ground, still holding the stretcher between them. Kossak, pale from pain and blood loss, pulled his pistol.

  Unhurriedly, moving slowly to avoid spooking them, a camouflaged shape stood up from the undergrowth only a few yards away. To his intense relief, Flynn recognized the narrow, sharp-nosed face, keen blue eyes, and graying brown hair of Rytis Daukša. The Lithuanian was a veteran of his small nation’s most secret and elite anti-terrorist unit, Aitvaras. After joining the Quartet Directorate, he’d been recruited into a European action team like the one Flynn had formed for Four’s American station—commanded by Tony McGill, a former sergeant in the UK’s SAS. McGill, Daukša, and several others had fought beside them the previous year during a daring commando raid deep into communist Cuba.

  Flynn and the others lowered their weapons.

  Silently, the Lithuanian beckoned them to follow him through the last stretch of forest and down to the water’s edge. Lake Kamennoye stretched to the west, toward Finland. Without a trace of wind, the lake’s waters were still, reflecting the image of every tree and boulder encircling it as if in a mirror.

  Daukša jerked a thumb back toward the dirt road they’d crossed, now invisible among the trees and lengthening shadows. “Something has the orcs stirred up. That Border Guard patrol you just evaded makes three in just the past few hours,” he commented quietly. “Your doing, I presume?”

  “Could be,” Flynn admitted. “We might have pissed off a few people.”

  The Lithuanian grinned at him. “One of them being our not-so-good friend Voronin, I understand―” He broke off as the sound of clattering rotors abruptly shattered the silence of the forest.

  They all squatted down and froze in place in the shadows.

  Suddenly, a dark-and-light-green-painted Mi-8 troop transport helicopter roared low across the lake about a mile away. In its wake, the downwash from its spinning blades churned the water into a froth of rippling white foam. Red and green and white navigation lights blinking, the helicopter flew on to the north—and eventually vanished into the rapidly growing darkness. The noise of its engines and rotors faded away.

  Daukša hummed softly. “This man Voronin has a very long reach.”

  “So it seems,” Flynn agreed. “Which is why we’re in a bit of a hurry here, Rytis.”

  With a somber nod, the Lithuanian turned, brought two fingers to his mouth, and whistled softly again.

  As if by magic, another member of Four’s Europe-based action team suddenly appeared less than ten yards away down the shoreline—flipping aside the camouflage netting that had hidden him from view until that moment. Einar Haugen had served with Norway’s Special Operations Commandos before signing on with the Quartet Directorate. Tall, square-jawed, and blond-haired, he resembled the Vikings of legend, but Flynn knew the big man had hidden depths, including a quirky, dark sense of humor that left even Cole Hynes in awe.

  Flynn glanced wryly at Daukša. “Got anything else up your sleeve?”

  The other man shrugged. “Not me. But Einar does.”

  They joined the Norwegian at the water’s edge. Immediately, Flynn found his eyes pulled to four dark green inflatable rafts. Drawn up on shore, they had been concealed beneath Haugen’s camouflage netting.

  “These are packrafts,” the blond-haired man explained in fluent, but accented English. “Compact and comparatively light, they are used by backpack enthusiasts who want to combine water travel, even whitewater rafting, with hiking trips into the wilderness.” He knelt by one of the rafts and patted its resilient, polyurethane-coated nylon fabric side. “These are a marvel of design. Uninflated, each raft weighs less than fourteen of your American pounds. Plus, they can be packed down to a twenty by ten inch roll.”

  Flynn was impressed. Inflated, each of the rafts looked to be about six feet long and almost four feet wide. “What’s their carrying capacity?”

  “Two adults and up to several hundred pounds of equipment,” Haugen replied. “Plus, I have made some special modifications of my own.” He moved around the raft and waved a hand at a small assembly fixed to its stern, complete with a miniature three-bladed propeller. “See?”

  Flynn stared. “You’ve equipped these rafts with motors?”

  “Ja,” the Norwegian said with a proud look. “Very efficient, lightweight electric marine motors. They have enough battery power to carry us across this lake. Ten miles or so.” His smile grew broader seeing the American’s amazed reaction. “Much easier and quieter than trying to paddle so far, eh?”

  “Pretty slick, Einar,” Flynn acknowledged. “Pretty doggone slick.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  lake kamennoye

  a short time later

  As soon as the last traces of light faded from the western sky, they hauled their rafts off the rock-strewn shore and scrambled aboard. It took only moments to lower the outboard motors into the water and engage the propellers. Accompanied by a low, barely audible, whine, the inflatables veered out into the lake and forged ahead at nearly five miles per hour. Daukša and Haugen were in the lead boat, followed by Flynn and Van Horn. Vucovich shepherded the bandaged Tad Kossak in the third small craft, and finally, Cooke and Hynes brought up the rear. As a precaution, they stayed fairly close to shore, no more than fifty yards out. That way, if they ran into trouble, they’d at least have a shot at darting swiftly back into hiding.

  As the miles and minutes steadily unrolled, the voyage took on an eerie, almost otherworldly feel. In the darkness, each inflatable raft carved its own narrow, arrow-shaped furrow through a vast black field of tiny, brilliant lights—the stars sprinkled across the heavens above reflected in the lake’s calm, untroubled surface. And in this deceptively peaceful setting, with nothing to do but follow the dimly seen shape of the boat ahead, Flynn found it all too easy to let his mind drift.

  Over the past several days, he’d had to be laser-focused, first on trying to carry out the team’s assigned mission to kill Voronin, and afterward, when everything went wrong, on the urgent task of getting everyone safely out of Russia. Doing so had required every ounce of his tactical skill, courage, ingenuity, and determination. Now, though, he had just enough breathing space to look ahead and consider what might come next.

  Flynn’s jaw tightened. He was sure they’d managed to throw a serious scare into Voronin, but that wasn’t what they’d needed to accomplish. Frightened or not, everything they knew about the Russian oligarch suggested he wouldn’t abandon his efforts to destroy the United States and make his own country the world’s preeminent power.

  This left the Quartet Directorate only two real choices: Either give up any thought of going after Voronin directly or commit to a second attempt to eliminate him—a mission made inherently more complex, more dangerous, and far less likely to succeed by their first failure. Shaken though he was by the strength of Voronin’s defenses, Flynn already knew which course of action he’d be arguing for. What he didn’t know yet was how he could look his teammates in their eyes and convince them he wasn’t proposing a modern-day kamikaze mission.

  Two staccato mike clicks through his headset brought him sharply back to the present. That was one of the emergency signals Daukša had briefed them on before setting out across the lake. In response, Flynn’s hand flashed to the tiny outboard fixed to their raft’s stern. A quick button press cut battery power to the motor. The raft slowed immediately, gradually losing momentum until it barely drifted across the water.

  Quickly, he looked around. Three darkened oblong shapes bobbed silently nearby. The others had cut their own engines too.

  Crouched low in the front half of their raft, Van Horn pointed ahead. He leaned to her left to get a better line of sight on whatever had spooked Daukša and Haugen. He saw the answer right away.

  They were close to a place where a large island sat astride this arm of Lake Kamennoye, narrowing it so that only two channels—each scarcely fifty yards wide—linked to the broader expanse of water beyond. Taking advantage of this natural choke point, the Russians had built a one-lane, north–south road across the lake here, spanning both channels with the aid of a couple of small steel beam bridges supported on concrete piers.

  The Lithuanian had been leading them toward the northernmost passage, planning to glide smoothly under the span before motoring back onto the broader lake. At night, in this restricted nature preserve, and under normal circumstances, they should have been able to slip through without any trouble.

  Which made it too damned bad that the circumstances were anything but normal, Flynn thought, seeing the shape of a UAZ jeep parked on the bridge only about a hundred yards away. A reddish glow from lit cigarettes revealed two Russian Border Guards leaning on the railing while they stared across the darkened lake. One said something indistinct. The other laughed.

  Instinctively, Flynn crouched even lower in the little raft. Even at this relatively short distance, their inflatables should be virtually invisible, just black shapes riding silently on equally black water. But would their luck hold? His mouth quirked upward. Relying on luck was an amateur’s move, like figuring you could roll into Vegas with a couple of thousand bucks in your pocket and plan on coming out a millionaire. Sure, it could happen, but you certainly couldn’t count on it.

  From the set of Van Horn’s shoulders, he suspected her thoughts were running in the same direction. When she pulled out her 9mm Grach pistol and started threading a suppressor onto its muzzle, he was sure of it. He leaned forward and touched her arm.

  She glanced back with a raised eyebrow. Her ordinarily generous mouth was tight-lipped.

  Flynn shook his head slightly, indicating the weapon in her hand. She was a crack shot, as he had good reason to know. A hundred yards, though, was an extreme range for a pistol. Hitting anything at that distance would be tricky, especially with her first shot. It would be worth trying if the Russians spotted them first—but not before. For now, their best hope was to wait this out.

  Reluctantly, Van Horn nodded. She finished fitting the suppressor to her pistol but refrained from taking any other immediate action.

  Several minutes slid by, each a seeming eternity.

  Finally, one of the Russians flicked his cigarette out over the railing. It vanished into the water with a soft hiss. He straightened up and snapped an order to the other man. Obeying, the soldier dropped his own cigarette onto the bridge and ground it beneath his boot heel. Then he walked around the jeep and climbed into the passenger seat. The first Border Guard took one last look out across the water, shrugged, and slid back behind the wheel. Moments later, the jeep’s engine coughed to life, and it drove off.

  In the lead raft, Daukša keyed his mike once. That was the signal to proceed. Swiftly, Flynn and the rest restarted their outboard motors. Battery-driven propellers whirred quietly into motion, and the little convoy of small boats moved on again toward the low, overhanging bridge—heading west into the channel, and, ultimately, out onto the wider lake.