Arctic Storm Rising
- Автор: Браун Дейл
- Серия: Nick Flynn #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 9780063015050
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Arctic Storm Rising». Краткое содержание книги:
Shit. Not good. Shaking off the stinging pain from his hand, Flynn shoved the older man back a couple of paces and then went for him. Takirak lunged to meet him head-on. Grunting with effort, they exchanged a flurry of short, vicious strikes aimed at vulnerable points — turning and twisting to absorb some painful blows, while parrying others. Neither gained a decisive edge. At last, almost by mutual accord, they separated slightly and crouched staring at each other, panting, scraped up, and bloody.
Takirak spat blood out of his mouth, without taking his cold, hard eyes off Flynn. Both men drew the combat knives they carried on their body armor and closed in again. There was no holding back now — only one of them would walk away from this.
Jesus, the Russian was fast, Flynn realized desperately, rolling away from a lightning-quick thrust that flickered right past his face. Backpedaling now, he narrowly blocked a second strike, but only at the cost of a ragged gash across the outside of his left forearm. He clenched his teeth hard against a sudden flare of white-hot pain from the wound.
Frantically, he thrust back at Takirak. Almost contemptuously, the enemy agent parried his strike. Then he hammered his fist into the inside of Flynn’s right wrist — briefly paralyzing the nerves there.
Horrified, Flynn saw his blade fall out of his numbed fingers. Inside, he knew the advantage was shifting irreversibly to his enemy. So get off your ass and fight, he growled silently to himself.
Or die.
Furious now, he lowered his head and charged. Ignoring a knife slash that glanced off his helmet, he body-slammed the Russian, driving him back against a boulder with enormous force. He heard Takirak cry out in sudden agony. They both went down again, but this time Flynn ended up on top.
Quickly, he pinned the other man’s knife hand with his left knee. Grim-faced now, Takirak heaved up against him. Flynn bore down. His fingers closed on a piece of broken rock and he smashed it across the Russian’s face. He heard bone crunch. Spatters of blood flew across the trampled snow.
Takirak’s eyes glinted fiercely above the red mask of his stone-shattered face. Again, ferociously, he heaved up with frightening strength. This time, Flynn couldn’t keep his hold. He was hurled away from the other man, and fell sprawling on his back.
Furiously muttering obscenities through his ruined mouth, Takirak rolled back upright with terrifying speed. He dove toward Flynn, who desperately scrabbled through the snow beside him. His hand closed on his combat knife. Blindly, he stabbed upward with everything he had… and buried the blade in the Russian’s throat, all the way to the hilt. A bright scarlet fountain of blood, steaming in the freezing air, sprayed across Flynn’s face. Above him, Takirak arched backward, clawing at the knife handle protruding from his neck. His eyes opened wide in horror, and then all the light went out of them. He slumped forward, shuddered once, and died.
Alexei Petrov stalked silently toward the tent where Bondarovich, the other mercenaries, and his former copilot, Oleg Bunin, were sleeping. He carried a green steel jerry can containing twenty liters of gasoline. It was one of those they used to refuel their snowmobiles. Several of the fuel cans had been stockpiled at one end of the camp in preparation for their escape to Canada. One side of his mouth quirked upward in an ironic grin. Never let it be said that he had allowed any of the resources so thoughtfully provided by Pavel Voronin and his master, Dmitri Grishin, to go to waste.
Just outside the tent, he set down the jerry can, unlatched its cap, and pulled it open, wrinkling his nose at the sharp tang of raw gasoline. Then, squatting beside the tent door, he carefully unzipped it from the bottom — not far, just a few centimeters. He heard a faint noise from inside as some of the four drowsing men bundled up in their sleeping bags stirred suddenly, apparently disturbed by the icy wind now whipping through the tiny opening.
Unhurriedly, Petrov tipped the jerry can over and watched the gasoline pour out. It sloshed out in waves, flowed through the unzipped door, and rippled across the tent’s polypropylene fabric floor in an amber tide. Satisfied, he stood up and moved back a few meters. Then he pulled out a loaded flare pistol, cocked the hammer, and fired downward through the door.
With a crackling hiss, the flare exploded. A blinding, red-tinged flash lit the inside of the tent, replaced by a flickering orange glow as burning gasoline sprayed everywhere. Coolly, Petrov dropped the spent flare gun and pulled out his pistol. He ignored the agonized screams echoing from Bondarovich and the others. They’d been abruptly jolted out of sleep… only to find themselves trapped in a hell of whirling, wind-driven fire. Already blazing like torches, burning men stumbled toward the door, frantically trying to squeeze out through the narrow opening. Methodically, Petrov shot them one by one.
When the screams finally stopped, he lowered his pistol, turned, and walked away toward the distant aircraft shelter. Behind him, dancing tongues of fire licked up into the sky.
Thirty-Seven
Flynn doubled up his thermal mask and used it to mop Takirak’s blood from his eyes, the rest of his face, and the razor-sharp blade of his combat knife. Finished, he tossed the sodden mask away in disgust. Then he took out a field dressing from his first aid kit and wrapped it around his gashed left forearm. Finally, he retrieved his pistol from the ground, brushing off the ice and snow that coated its muzzle and slide before slipping it back into his chest rig.
Off to his right, a little higher up the spur, Flynn heard the faint clatter and rattle of equipment. Six soldiers and airmen, all he had left under his direct command, were moving into position. Below the other side of this hill, his remaining men, Sanchez, Boyd, and the injured Torvald Pedersen, had gone to ground in some bushes a few hundred yards away. He would have liked to order them back to the main unit, but radioing them would be the only means of doing that. It was too risky. For all Flynn knew, their tactical frequencies and encryption systems were one of the secrets Takirak had already passed on to his fellow Russians.
Staying low, Flynn risked a quick look out across the open slope. The white-camouflaged Russian Spetsnaz commandos were still advancing along the valley. Apparently, they hadn’t heard his brutal, hand-to-hand fight with Takirak, probably thanks to the noise made by the northerly winds hissing across hard-packed snow.
Flynn watched the enemy soldiers for a few more moments. It was pretty clear that they planned to bypass this particular piece of high ground — probably intending to climb the main ridge instead, before turning to hit the unsuspecting Americans from behind. Their plan would have worked, if he hadn’t already figured out that Takirak had betrayed the ambush positions he’d first chosen. As it was, leapfrogging forward along the valley floor only exposed the Russian flank to attack from this rocky spur.
He left Takirak’s corpse crumpled in the snow and moved back around through the jumble of boulders to rejoin his troops — reclaiming his M4 carbine on the way. The first man he came to was Private First Class Cole Hynes. Hynes was crouched behind a cairn of smaller rocks that formed a natural breastwork about waist-high. His bipod-mounted M249 Para light machine gun was positioned on the pile of rock, aimed straight downhill. “You find the sarge, sir?” he asked quietly.