Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

then he turned his head slowly towardFlynn. “I have never betrayed my country, Captain,” he replied with a thin, tight smile on his face. “Ya russkiy, chlen sibirskogo plemeni yupikov. I am a Russian, a member of the Siberian Yupik tribe.” He shrugged. “And for what it matters, a colonel in the GRU.”

Flynn whistled softly under his breath, suddenly seeing the bigger picture they’d all missed. Along with the Inuits and Aleuts,the Yupiks were one of the three main groups of native peoples spread over the sprawling northern regions from Russia’s FarEast to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. They shared related languages and common cultures. Recruiting one of them to act asa deep-cover agent in Alaska, with a lack of family ties explained by his supposed status as an orphan fostered down in theLower Forty-Eight, was a brilliant move by Russia’s military intelligence service.

With his cover established, Takirak had been perfectly placed for years to spy on the vital oil fields and pipelines at PrudhoeBay—and, through his service with the Alaska National Guard, on U.S. military installations across the state. No doubt, inthe event of war, he would have been ordered to carry out sabotage missions against them. Flynn shook his head slightly indismay. Man, we let the fox, or rather Amaruq the Gray Wolf, saunter right into the henhouse, he thought coldly, imagining how pleased the men in Moscow must have been when Takirak wangled his way into this assignmentto guard the radars making up Alaska’s portion of the North Warning System.

Abruptly, Takirak whirled toward him—hurling his flashlight like a missile. It crashed into Flynn’s shoulder, sending him staggering back a couple of steps, partially off-balance. Before he could bring his Glock back on target, the Russian sprang to his feet, crashed into him, and chopped down hard at his right hand. Flynn’s pistol went flying, clattering away into the rocks somewhere out of his reach.

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. Takiraklunged to meet him head-on. Grunting with effort, they exchanged a flurry of short, vicious strikes aimed at vulnerable points—turningand twisting to absorb some painful blows, while parrying others. Neither gained a decisive edge. At last, almost by mutualaccord, 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 carriedon 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 hisface. Backpedaling now, he narrowly blocked a second strike, but only at the cost of a ragged gash across the outside of hisleft 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 fistinto 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 tohis 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 frighteningstrength. 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 towardFlynn, who desperately scrabbled through the snow beside him. His hand closed on his combat knife. Blindly, he stabbed upwardwith everything he had . . . and buried the blade in the Russian’s throat, all the way to the hilt. A bright scarlet fountainof blood, steaming in the freezing air, sprayed across Flynn’s face. Above him, Takirak arched backward, clawing at the knifehandle 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.

Crow Field

That Same Time

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 refueltheir snowmobiles. Several of the fuel cans had been stockpiled at one end of the camp in preparation for their escape toCanada. One side of his mouth quirked upward in an ironic grin. Never let it be said that he had allowed any of the resourcesso 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 tangof 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, apparentlydisturbed 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 theunzipped door, and rippled across the tent’s polypropylene fabric floor in an