Chapter 41
The Siberian night had gone hard as iron, the stars sharp enough to cut.
Pav had counted eleven cigarette glows from the treeline before Fox and Zak arrived.
He’d been there since dusk, crawling close enough to the compound’s eastern wall to smell the diesel from their generator and hear the static bleed from a radio left on in the guardhouse.
He’d mapped the sentry rotation and identified two of the guards by gait alone.
One dragged his left foot, the other paused mid-circuit to piss against the same stretch of wall.
Routine made people careless.
The compound was an old school. Main building, two auxiliary blocks, all inside a brick perimeter topped with razor wire. One vehicle gate. One rear pedestrian entrance.
Both guarded.
He'd memorized every window and door. He'd walked the perimeter three times already and sketched the compound from memory, even though he no longer needed to.
If he stopped moving, he’d think. And thinking was where things started breaking apart.
Now he stood at the hood of Katya’s van. A red-filtered flashlight washed the hood in dim light as he studied the layout.
He crushed two painkillers between his teeth and swallowed them dry. Chalk coated his tongue. The tablets hit his empty stomach like grit. Not relief yet. Just the promise of a narrower pain signal if they had enough time to work.
Headlights vanished fifty feet out, the vehicle slowing immediately as it picked its way through the trees in the darkness.
Fox.
Pav exhaled. For the first time since Harper and Katya had been taken, he wasn’t alone with the rage. The Land Cruiser rolled to a stop twenty feet away. Two doors opened. Fox emerged first. His gaze found Pav and held for two full seconds without blinking.
Fox crossed the clearing fast, eyes moving over Pav—chest, shoulder, stance, the blood staining his clothes.
“You look like shit,” he said evenly. “Sitrep?”
Pav flattened the map against the hood. His shoulder pulsed with every heartbeat.
He kept his hand flat on the hood because if he let it hang, it trembled.
“Old school compound. Main building plus two secondary structures. Brick perimeter wall, razor wire, one vehicle gate, one rear pedestrian access.”
Zak came around the vehicle, tablet already in hand.
“My friend Katya’s alive. They took her too.”
“Bastards.” Fox shook his head.
Zak’s gaze dropped to Pav’s boots. “What the fuck is with the socks?”
Pav looked down briefly, as if noticing them for the first time himself. “Katya.”
Fox slid the satellite image across the hood. “Guard count?”
“Eight confirmed. More inside.” Pav tapped the eastern side of the map. “Rotating sentries every twenty minutes. Generator here. Guard post here. Blind spots beneath the guard towers here, where the lights don’t overlap.”
Zak cross-referenced the satellite feed against Pav’s hand-drawn map, fingers moving fast over the tablet screen.
Fox blew out a breath. “How’d they find you?”
Pav kept his eyes on the map. “The UAZ. Had to be. Katya hid it, but someone in the town saw us arrive and made a call.”
“Us.” One word. Fox let it sit.
Pav looked up and met Fox’s gaze across the hood of the vehicle.
A flicker crossed Fox’s expression. Enough. He knew.
“We’ll get her back. Both of them.”
Pav nodded. Speaking felt dangerous.
Fox pointed at the service road on Zak’s tablet. “Supply trucks come through here every three days.”
“We intercepted an earlier run a mile back.” Zak zoomed in.
“Truck gets waved through after inspection,” Fox said. “There’s a maintenance crawl space behind the auxiliary tank. Tight fit, but it gets us inside the perimeter.”
“I already hate this plan,” Zak muttered. “How anal are they?”
“They don’t inspect underneath,” Pav said. “Gate guard checks the cab and the manifest. That’s it.”
“You’ll be wedged between the chassis and the tank. Don’t fall asleep under there.” Fox tapped the map. “Rear breach here.”
“I’ll take point.”
“No.” Fox didn’t look up. “You’re hurt. I need you alive long enough to reach her.”
Pav’s hand spread against the hood. “Understood.”
“If they split the hostages?” Zak asked.
“Safest to assume they have,” Pav said.
The plan consolidated fast. Rear entry. Quiet breach. Main building first. Contain the auxiliary blocks unless the intel shifted. Satellite imagery put the holding rooms in the central block—old classrooms converted to storage, offices on the upper floor.
Pav shrugged into his jacket against the cold. The one Harper had worn for four days through snow and forest and helicopter wreckage. He pulled the collar up and caught the faint trace of her scent trapped in the lining.
His throat tightened hard enough to hurt.
His hands stilled, and for a few seconds, he just stood there with the collar against his mouth. Then he zipped the jacket and went back to work.
Zak sat against the Land Cruiser’s front tire with an earpiece in, tablet balanced on one knee as he monitored the compound frequency. Guard chatter. Shift changes. Complaints about the cold. Men settling deeper into routine because nothing bad had ever happened to them at three in the morning.
Fox caught his arm before Pav moved off. “Hold still.” He peeled back the bandage on his chest, then spotted the bruising from the dislocation. “Jesus Christ.”
Pav looked toward the trees. “I’m functional.”
Fox checked the wound, then rotated Pav’s shoulder carefully through its range of movement. The rotation caught halfway. Pain bit deep enough to wipe the edges of the clearing for a second. Pav breathed through it.
Fox noticed anyway, his eyes narrowing.
Pav met his gaze, unblinking.
Fox snorted softly. “That word’s doing a lot of work tonight.”
“Only has to work till morning.” Pav buttoned his shirt back up.
Fox looked at him for a long moment. Concern sat openly beneath the operational calm. Understanding too—that Pav would walk into that compound bleeding out if Harper was inside.
“You good to go?”
“Yes.”
The answer had been yes since the moment Harper was taken. They both knew it.
Three years ago, he’d made the choice the mission required.
Alexei had died anyway.
He wasn’t failing her too.
They moved out at 02:30, disappearing through the frozen forest toward the supply road where the truck would pass at 02:45, their route and timing confirmed through Zak’s intercepts.
Ahead, the compound lights burned through the trees.
Harper was in there. And he wasn’t. Every minute she spent inside that compound was another minute he wasn’t between her and them.
He adjusted his grip on his rifle as Fox’s voice came low over comms. “Ready?”
“Copy,” Zak said.
Pav looked at Alexei’s watch one final time. Cold steel against his pulse. The second hand swept on.
Still moving. So was he.
The compound was ahead.
“Go.”