Chapter 6
The helicopter’s rotors beat against frozen air, a rhythm Pav had spent three years trying to forget.
One seat short on the return trip. Some sounds never left the body.
He sat near the open door, one gloved hand braced on the frame, as black landscape scudded beneath them. Steppe and forest. Kilometers of empty terrain. Land that killed the unprepared.
His world. The one he understood better than people.
The helicopter’s interior was cramped. Fox sat across from him, checking his rifle’s optics. Zak scrolled through something on a tablet, earbuds in. Both men looked comfortable in the tight space, shoulders almost touching, existing in each other’s orbit without friction.
Pav worked his aching jaw. He’d been clenching it for the past hour.
Two days of investigation to get this far.
Fox and Zak had handled the urban work. CCTV from a pawn shop across from Harper’s apartment.
Half the footage was useless. One camera had been aimed at the sidewalk.
Another had overwritten itself after forty-eight hours.
Zak still pulled three frames clean enough to work with.
Grainy, bad angle, but enough: two men forcing Harper into a white van marked with a butcher’s logo.
Zak had run the logo. Meat supplier. Butcher’s delivery. Clean little lie. Fox’s intel contacts confirmed within hours: it was a known front for a Bratva-adjacent gang, the Severnaya Set. Smuggling, extortion, protection rackets. They controlled two remote territories near the Mongolian border.
Duke’s niece. Wealthy family. Public profile. On paper, it looked like ransom. But there’d been no demand. The fact niggled at Pav. Ransom crews made noise early. They wanted families panicking, money moving. Silence meant something else.
Except Fox wasn’t the type to wait for demands.
They’d flown to the first territory Fox’s contacts identified. Pav scouted on foot for eight hours and tracked the Severnaya to an old airfield. Flights came and went, carrying God knew what. Harper wasn’t there.
Second territory, he found it.
Fresh vehicle tracks matching the van from the CCTV footage—and no effort to hide them. Whoever drove them didn’t expect pursuit. Or didn’t care. That narrowed the field fast.
Heavy trucks too, multiple vehicles, all headed into terrain most people avoided—ground that punished anyone who didn’t already know where they were going. Gullies and scrub willow, ground that looked flat but hid ravines.
Pav eliminated three false leads—hunters, an abandoned logging operation, and homesteaders who’d packed up for winter.
The fourth location fit the pattern. Generators running. Guards on rotation. Vehicles that arrived light and left heavy. Professional setup and organized.
The pattern ended here.
“Two minutes.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the headset.
Fox looked up, met Pav’s eyes across the cabin. His face was harder than it had been back at the cabin. Harper was his family.
“You’re sure?” Fox asked.
Pav held his gaze.
Fox gave a clipped nod. “Good enough.”
They geared up. White winter combat suits over tactical layers, weapons checked and rechecked.
Zak handed Pav night-vision goggles. “Handle with care.”
Pav took the goggles, calibrated the optics.
Zak nodded approval. “Finally. Someone who respects equipment.”
Fox slung his own NVGs around his neck with significantly less care. “It’s a tool, not a bloody Fabergé egg.”
“That’s what you said about the DPV.”
“Still worked, didn’t it?”
“After I spent six hours recalibrating the guidance system you destroyed.”
Fox shot Zak the finger with a hint of a smile before switching his attention to the gray-white landscape looming under the belly of the helicopter.
Pav checked his rifle. Loaded, chambered, safety on. The helicopter banked, descending. They lost altitude fast, the pilot staying low to avoid radar detection. “One minute.”
Pav ran through everything in his head. Gloves. Rope. Weapon tight. Drop clean. The helicopter flared thirty feet above the snow.
“Go, go, go!”
Pav went first, boots locking around the rope, gloves taking the burn as he slid into darkness.
Zak followed, then Fox.
Pav’s boots hit snow, knees bending to absorb the impact. He released the rope, weapon up, scanning the perimeter. Fox moved left, Zak right, establishing a defensive triangle.
The helicopter’s rotors beat louder, pulling altitude. Then it was gone, swallowed by darkness and distance.
Silence.
Just wind through branches and the creak of snow settling. Pav breathed out, slowing his heart rate. This—empty wilderness, frozen ground, stars overhead—this he understood. The simple math of survival.
“Christ, it’s cold.” Fox’s voice was low but clear. “At least it’s not raining.”
Zak pulled out a tablet, screen brightness dimmed nearly black.
“Screen,” Pav said.
“Copy.” Zak killed it immediately and stowed the tablet.
Fox pulled out a map, studying it with a red-filtered penlight that wouldn’t ruin their night vision. Zak unwrapped an energy bar, offered one to Pav. Pav shook his head.
“You always this chatty?” Fox asked, not looking up from his map.
“Yes.”
Zak’s laugh was soft. “He’s perfect.”
Pav took point. Wind from the north, temperatures dropping, moon waning. Snow conditions told him everything—when the last storm hit, how much melt occurred during the day, what had moved through here and when.
Vehicle tracks cut through virgin snow fifty meters east. Deep treads, multiple axles. Two days old, maybe three. Wind had softened the edges, but the compressed base still held. Same pattern he’d followed from the road.
He started walking. Fox and Zak fell in behind him without question. The route led south, following the natural contours of the landscape—avoiding ridgelines, skirting gullies, anywhere that headlights would show for kilometers.
Local knowledge.
“How far?” Zak’s question was quiet, barely above a whisper.
“Ten kilometers. Maybe less.”
Fox grunted acknowledgment. “Two hours. If we don’t stop.”
Two hours. The cold seeped deeper, working through layers of advanced fabric and insulation. Pav ignored it. Cold was information—about visibility, weather fronts, and how long the tracks would last. He adjusted their pace accordingly.
Almost two hours in, the tracks converged. Multiple vehicles, all heading to the same location.
They reached the treeline. Pav went prone and low-crawled the last twenty meters to a ridge that overlooked the valley below.
The compound lay in a shallow basin, half-hidden by scrub and wind-stunted pines. From a distance it looked abandoned—corrugated sheds, a low concrete block building, a rusted perimeter fence.
From a distance.
Pav pulled out his binoculars and scanned left to right. A generator hummed somewhere out of sight. Not the erratic churn of a farmer’s backup unit, but something sized to run lights and heat for multiple structures.
Two guards at the main gate. One pacing, one stationary. Neither slouched. Rifles hung muzzle-down, hands close. No cigarette burns in the snow near the gate. Disciplined.
Tracks cut through the snow toward the compound. Wind had combed the top layer smooth, but the compressed edges of the tracks held their shape. Slow speed. No panic. The fence was topped with razor wire.
He set his jaw.
The fence wasn’t there to keep anyone out. Too high. Too much wire. Sightlines facing inward. This was containment.
Fox crawled up beside him, his own binoculars out. “Which building?” His voice was barely a breath.
“Center barrack.” Pav pointed with two fingers. “That’s where they’d keep her. This doesn’t feel like ransom.”
Fox grunted. “Doesn’t matter what it feels like. She’s in there. We’re getting her out.”
Movement at the small shed near the admin building. Pav zoomed his binoculars, adjusting the focus. Two guards emerged, dragging someone between them.
A woman.
Pav’s pulse kicked.
The guards hauled her across the yard. She wasn’t fighting, too cold or too broken.
Beside him, Fox went rigid. “Fuck.”
Pav adjusted the focus. Dark hair. Bruised face—swollen as if someone had backhanded her. She moved stiffly, favoring her left side, thinner than in the photo.
The cold disappeared. Only the compound remained. They’d put their hands on her.
Harper Fox.