Jen leans toward Maksym, who is ahead of her. “You looking for a gunfight?”

  “We’re about a mile from the mine’s elevator shaft. I’m guessing the Russians are using it as their access point,” Maksym replies. “Don’t worry … it’s not our exit point.”

  “Heat.”

  The entire team freezes at Jen’s warning.

  “Yuriy, step aside.” Maksym hugs the wall of the tunnel beside Yuriy. “Jen, see if you can get a decent look.”

  “Don’t go too far,” Yuriy whispers as she passes him. “There is another trap ahead.”

  Jen squints through the lenses of her night vision, trying to force the orange pixels into an image that makes sense. There’s a warm object on the ground about a hundred yards in the distance. She reaches for her infrared light, prepares to activate it, but a hideous scream causes her to freeze. And shudder.

  “Pomogite!”

  The scream has a tone of desperation that Jen isn’t sure she’s heard in another human being. But she recognizes the word. It’s Russian. Help me!

  “Jen?” Maksym asks.

  Jen advances, driven by her instinct to help. The other is out of necessity—the need to analyze the situation. The mound of orange pixels gets clearer as she moves. When she’s around fifty yards from the person, she kneels. She senses Maksym behind her but doesn’t turn to address him. “He’s lying flat. Uh—” she shakes her head, unable to fully process the image. “But it looks like he’s bending over …”

  “Stuck in one of our traps,” Maksym replies. “Anything in his hands?”

  “No, but I see a radio lying by his right hand.”

  “They left him alive to call out enemy movements,” Maksym says. “He’s wired … guarantee it.”

  Jen raises her rifle. Drops her reticle onto the Russian’s head. “I’m ending it. We can’t let him keep suffering.”

  “Wait.”

  Jen feels Maksym grip her shoulder. It’s firm, serious. She looks back at him.

  “He might be a Ukrainian citizen. We need to talk to him. Find out his name, for his family’s sake,” Maksym says. “Either way, his suffering won’t last much longer.”

  Twenty-Six

  Jen lowers her rifle. Takes a second look at the Russian—or whoever he is. He is moaning, his head resting in the dirt. His energy is fading after his last plea for help. “Now’s your chance,” she says, pressing her body to the side of the wall.

  “Yuriy, Danylo, get on top of him and take control of his hands,” Maksym says. “Don’t let him get hold of that radio.”

  Without a word, the two men advance down the tunnel. Slow at first. Maximizing their concealment in the darkness. When they can no longer hide the sound of their movements, they break into a sprint.

  The man’s head rises as they move. He searches the darkness, confused at first. He reaches for the radio—first checking in front of him, then groping in the darkness in search of it. His left hand grips something on his kit.

  Jen’s breath stops. It looks like a button to activate an explosive, but it’s a flashlight.

  White light fills the tunnel. The man finds his radio—after Danylo and Yuriy grab his arms. They pull his arms out wide to prevent him from activating a bomb. As Danylo and Yuriy hold him, he cries out in pain.

  “C’mon,” Maksym says. “It doesn’t look like we’ve got much time.”

  Jen raises her night vision goggles as she runs after Maksym. As she draws closer, it’s clear he is only a boy. He’s wearing the uniform of a Russian soldier, which is covered in dry blood. By the time she and Maksym kneel in front of him, he’s in tears. The reason is obvious: the trap that ensnared him is horrifying.

  It’s two wooden cylinders covered in metal nails. They’re set side by side, leaving enough space for the cylinders to turn as a person falls between them. As the boy fell, the nails shredded his legs. His weight cut off the circulation to his lower extremities, keeping him alive.

  But it’s not the worst part.

  Whoever left the boy in the tunnel left him with only the radio, flashlight, and a canteen full of water. But it wasn’t an act of mercy. As the boy suffered, he sought comfort in the water—which only prolonged his agony.

  “There’s an explosive on his back,” Yuriy says. “It’s connected to a manual detonator. The line is running toward the elevator—the surface.”

  “Leave it for now.” Maksym switches to Russian to address the boy.

  Jen watches the exchange take place, but as they talk, the boy’s attention shifts to her.

  “What is it?” she asks.

  “He is delirious,” Maksym replies. “He thinks you’re his girlfriend from back home.”

  “My God.” Jen pulls off her helmet. Pulls a band from her hair and allows it to fall. She looks at Yuriy. “Are you sure he’s not in control of the detonator?”

  Yuriy nods.

  “Let his hands go,” Jen says.

  The boy’s hands lock onto Jen’s, and as they connect, he talks. And cries.

  “He is confessing,” Maksym says. “He deserted two weeks ago. Didn’t get far before the Russian MPs arrested him. He says that several serious men visited him in jail. Told him they were going to take away his death benefits and send him to the front.”

  “He wouldn’t have survived,” Jen says.

  Maksym nods. Continues translating. “They told him he could volunteer for a special mission. Keep his benefits and maybe get a commendation. A few days later, he was walking through these tunnels with a gun at his back. The men who made him volunteer said that if he stopped, they’d shoot him.”

  “Who?” Jen asks. “Who made him volunteer?”

  The boy grows angry at Jen’s question. With a curse, he shakes and pulls at her hands.

  “He wants you to speak with him in Russian, like he remembers. He doesn’t understand why you won’t.” Maksym reaches for the boy. Coaxes him to calm down and answer the question. “He says they didn’t disclose the name of their unit, but notes they were from Senezh.”

  Yuriy and Danylo exchange serious looks, followed by a grin.

  Jen doesn’t share in their amusement. The KSSO, Russia’s most elite group of special forces, has a training center on the Senezh River. They’re akin to America’s SEAL Team 6, and they’re in these tunnels for a reason. “They’re after you, Maksym.”

  The boy resumes his struggle. This time, he tries to climb out of the trap.

  “The bomb.” Danylo steps behind the boy. Pushes him downward. And as Jen watches, she notices it hurts Danylo almost as much as it hurts the boy. The boy screams again, but now, there’s no strength in it. He goes limp as he breathes through his pain.

  The boy starts talking again, and Maksym translates. “He says that all of his death benefits are in your name … and that he’s sorry for leaving you alone.”

  Jen’s eyes mist as she grabs the boy’s hand and uses her other to cup his cheek. She draws on her limited Russian. “Spasibo.”

  Thank you.

  The boy settles, and for the first time, he appears peaceful. He squeezes Jen’s hand. Warm, gentle, without the panic she felt before. He slips away, and she lowers his head to the ground.

  Maksym bows his head and hides his eyes. “Danylo, would you turn out the light?”

  When Danylo turns off the flashlight, Jen expects the tunnel to go dark, but a distant light catches her attention. She looks up and finds another Russian drone buzzing toward them.

  Twenty-Seven

  “No way we’re getting past that thing!”

  “Back to the intersection!” Maksym stands and sprints toward the intersecting tunnel, a hundred yards away from the boy’s body. Jen follows him, while Yuriy and Danylo heave over the boy and take up positions behind her.

  Jen doesn’t risk a rearward glance as she sprints. Her boots skid and slip as she rounds the corner. She doesn’t fall, but she pins herself to the nearest wall, while Maksym continues running.

  “Wait!” she hisses.

  Danylo and Yuriy take the corner. They press their backs against the wall beside Jen. Maksym joins a moment later. “What is it?”

  “I want to see how sharp these guys are,” Jen replies.

  She takes several deep breaths. With Provigil in her system, her heart rate is high, and it takes longer than it should for her breathing to even out. When she’s stable, she peeks around the corner. The drone still hasn’t reached the boy’s body, and its pace is steady—a sign that its pilot didn’t detect them.

  A radio transmission echoes down the tunnel as the drone nears the boy. When the boy doesn’t respond, the drone stops. It hovers in position over the boy’s corpse.

  Jen’s pulse rises as the pilot lowers the drone. Its search for life begins at the boy’s back, and when the pilot finds that his rib cage is still, he shifts to the boy’s face. The boy’s mouth hangs open, like his eyes.

  The drone pilot continues searching the area. It remains low, examining the dirt around the boy. When it stops, Jen assumes he found fresh footprints around the boy.

  The pilot raises the drone and sweeps the camera lens in a three-hundred-sixty-degree circle. When it stops again, the lens is pointing toward Jen.

  “Down!”

  Successive blasts detonate before Jen hits the dirt. A concussion chases through the tunnel, pinning her to the ground and sucking the air out of her chest.

  She hears a thud, looks past Maksym, and finds a six-by-six beam stabbing from the floor to the ceiling. Clumps of dirt fall from the fresh opening and slide down the surface of the beam. Electricity surges through the mine. Light bulbs flicker to life above her head. But the wiring is old. Faulty. Sparks flash and sink like dirt. A nearby bulb pops and extinguishes.

  “They’re coming for us,” she says.

  Maksym flips up the night vision goggles on his helmet and rubs the dirt out of his eyes. “To hell with the lights. I’m worried about the elevator.”

  Jen imagines a team of KSSO operators standing on the surface as they lower a heavy weapon down the shaft. Something big, with a belt-fed machine gun attached to its frame. That’s just the first thing that leaps into her mind. But it’s also an opportunity to put an end to her problems before they start. She grins at Danylo. “I think we just found out why you brought that AT4.”

  Twenty-Eight

  After another breathless sprint, Jen is nearing the elevator shaft. She approaches an intersection, gripping her rifle, ready to make a silent engagement. And there’s plenty of noise to cover the sound of her .300 Blackout rifle. Rusty gears wail as they turn. The whir of an electric motor. High-pitched engines gurgle and spew exhaust fumes into the mine. She assumes it’s a bank of power generators—until she peeks around the corner.

  The freight elevator is descending. Six KSSO operators sit atop dirt bikes in the metal cage. The bikes are running, and the men grip their throttles with rifles across their backs. She considers it a brilliant strategy. She could never outrun them, and as they gave chase, their tires would speed over Maksym’s traps. Maybe they’d go flat, but the rider would be safe.

  Four more operators kneel in the main cavern, which reminds Jen of an atrium. It’s huge, with a turnstile for ore carts and other heavy equipment. The men provide security for the elevator as it descends. She notices a narrow, circular staircase beside the elevator and assumes they used it to access the mine ahead of the elevator.

  Jen steps back, unwilling to risk being exposed. She grins at Danylo, who is standing with his AT4 at the ready. “Lucky bastard.”

  Danylo opens the red safety hood on the tube of the launcher as he trades places with Jen. She presses her Peltors against the side of head. Kneels at a healthy distance away from the AT4. She’s already suffering head trauma, and the back blast from a man-portable rocket launcher is enough to kill. But she watches him as he steps into the tunnel leading to the atrium. His eyes widen, like his grin, a millisecond before he fires the weapon.

  A rush of energy escapes the back of the launcher as the rocket ignites. The cone moves outward and produces a thah-whump that ricochets down the corridor. Jen’s ears are ringing, despite her ear-pro, and it’s almost loud enough to disguise the impact of the rocket.

  Almost.

  The explosion is gigantic. Dirt falls from the gaps in the ceiling beams. The heat vaporizes the moisture in the dirt, and steam rises from the ground. The sound of screeching metal fills the atrium, followed by screams.

  Danylo tosses the launcher into the dirt. It’s a single-use weapon, and it’s spent. He steps to the opposing corner and transitions to his rifle.

  But Maksym is ready. He raises his rifle and drops the safety. “Time to clean up the mess! Slava Ukraini!”

  Maksym shoulders his rifle as he enters the tunnel. Delivers a burst of suppressive fire as he advances toward the Russian position. Yuriy follows and takes a position on Maksym’s right-hand side. They’re shoulder to shoulder, alternating their suppressive fire as they advance.

  Jen falls in behind Maksym, but she doesn’t raise her rifle—the tunnel is too narrow to deliver fire on the Russian position. Instead, she reaches into her kit and grabs one of her remaining Homewreckers. She removes the safety tape from around the grenade. Grips the pin but stops short of pulling it. “Grenade ready!”

  “Toss it!”

  Jen steps out of the tunnel and into the atrium. The ceiling is taller, the space wider, and it allows her to toss it over Maksym’s head. “Grenade out!”

  Yuriy and Danylo break right and dive for cover behind an old equipment box.

  Jen and Maksym land side by side and press their bodies against a line of abandoned ore carts. The metal absorbs the blast and transfers it straight into Jen’s back as it vibrates. Oxygen disappears from the atrium as it fuels the blast. Her head isn’t just ringing—it’s pounding—but that won’t stop her from engaging.

  She raises her rifle, rests it on the edge of the ore cart, but finds no reason to disengage the safety. The elevator is a tangle of metal. A sizable section of the lift collapsed and fell atop the KSSO operators, crushing what the AT4 didn’t vaporize. The elevator’s metal cable swings above the mess like a silent warning: Don’t skip routine maintenance.

  The men providing cover were still reeling from the initial AT4 strike when the Homewrecker hit them. They wear the infamous Leaf camouflage suits synonymous with the KSSO. The polyester foliage smolders as they lie dead.

  She walks the muzzle of her rifle across the smoke rising in the atrium. Almost calls it a victory. Until she catches movement in the stairwell, just right of the elevator. A KSSO operator is pointing his rifle at her.

  Jen ducks into cover as bullets pound the ore cart. The fire shifts toward Maksym, giving her an opportunity to return the favor. She shifts, angles her rifle between a gap in the carts. She drops the safety and puts a double tap on the KSSO operator.

  The rounds hit. The first tags his wrist, shattering the bone. He lowers the rifle as the second bullet impacts the receiver and eviscerates his hand. The operator drops. Before she gets the chance to put another round through him, someone drags him into cover.

  “Are you sure there’s another way out of here?” Jen asks.

  Maksym nods. “Positive!”

  “Yuriy!” Jen removes the last Homewrecker from her kit. When he looks her way, she tosses it, and he snatches it out of the air. “We got your cover! Make it count!”

  Yuriy snaps out of cover. Maneuvers to the far-right side of the atrium. He advances toward the staircase, out of the KSSO operators’ field of fire. That doesn’t mean Jen and Maksym will give them a chance to use their weapons. They deliver slow, suppressive bursts into the stairwell, pinning them in position.

  When Yuriy is within five feet of the stairwell, Jen gives him a nod. “Clear!”

  Yuriy doesn’t call out the grenade. Why give the Russians a warning? He pulls the pin, surges forward, and tosses it into the stairwell. He rushes to safety as flames consume the stairwell. Smoke billows out of the opening, interrupted only by streaks of black—the shadows of rock and debris as they fall and seal the shaft.

  Jen heaves out a sigh and pitches her back against the ore cart. She grabs a bottle of water and guzzles down several sips. She looks at Maksym. “You know I’ve got a flight to catch, right?”

  Maksym stands and offers her a hand. “What the hell are you sitting around for then?”

  It’s Maksym who offers Jen another hand as she crawls out of a tunnel and into daylight. “Welcome to Russia.”

  Jen swipes the dirt off her hands. Surveys her surroundings. She’s in a lush birch forest, miles from nowhere, and there’s not a Russian in sight. She nods back at the tunnel. “Some tourist trap you got down there.”

  Twenty-Nine

  The Russian Border

  “One hundred meters.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Jen replies to Maksym.

  Jen, an American, thinks in yardage. On the modern battlefield, the two units of measure enter into frequent competition. But the engineer in her doesn’t flinch at the math. One hundred meters, roughly one hundred and ten yards. She drops into a kneeling position and raises her rifle. Only a precaution. Ready to engage a threat if it emerges.

  They’re two miles into Russia. Soldiers could be anywhere. And they’re in the middle of a sunlit birch forest.

  She lowers her night-vision goggles over her eyes and scans the forest. At first, the sunlight washes out her night vision. The unit adjusts itself. First, it reduces the night-vision setting, allowing the forest to become visible. Then, it amplifies the forest with its thermal setting.

  “There’s a vehicle up ahead. I can’t tell if it’s occupied.” Jen angles her head upward. Looks under the glowing tubes of the night-vision goggles. The vehicle is invisible. Covered in camouflage mesh. “It’s under the alder tree at your two o’clock.”