Rogue Soldier

“Is there an official rescue team?” she asked when he hung up.

“Somewhere, I suppose. The CIA is handling the case.”

“Is that where Shorty is now?” Tommy Cattaro, aka Shorty, wasn’t on the top of her favorites list, but if he could get them out of here, she’d make nice with him.

“We went over from Special Forces together. We worked a few cases on the same team before I got recruited to—someplace else,” he said. “Nobody but the agency is allowed in on this one. That’s why I had to go AWOL from my own unit. What would you have wanted me to do? I couldn’t sit around waiting for—”

“AWOL? Are you crazy?” She stared at him.

He looked her in the eye. “You know how you used to blame me for not making it into Special Forces?” He blinked. “Consider us even.”

She had trouble digesting the information. He had put everything on the line for her. She didn’t know what to do with that thought, where to fit that knowledge. If he still cared that much for her— No. She wasn’t going down that road ever again.

“So where did you go AWOL from?” The best way to stop him from getting to her was to keep him on his toes about his own business.

“We’re going to have to go around that.” He pointed at the forest of alders and spruce in front of them that reached like a finger into the frozen landscape to the north.

He was ignoring her question. She’d pretty much expected him to do just that. There was nothing she could do to make the man talk, if he didn’t want to.

“Gee!” She turned the dogs to the right when they were still a good fifty yards from the trees, taking advantage of both the flat terrain and the windbreak the woods provided.

Ten minutes passed, then half an hour. She was thirsty, but not enough to stop and melt snow. Night would fall soon; darkness came by 3:00 p.m. this time of the year. They would have to stop and make camp, anyway. Had the cloud cover not built back up, the snow would have reflected enough moonlight to go by, but that was not the case.

Mike pushed off his hood and turned his head to the sky.

She did the same and heard the helicopter, slowed the dogs, fired her gun and waited. Sound carried incredible distances in the silence of the snowfields. The rumbling of the chopper weakened. Damn. The rescue team was heading away from them. Then the sound picked up again. The helicopter came over the top of the trees in a couple of minutes.

Mike was already on his feet, waving.

The Apache—CIA logo on the side—lowered between them and the trees, the noise scaring the dogs. She brought the sled to a complete halt and got off, followed Mike who was already running forward. She would have to ask the pilot to turn off the rotors or she’d never get the huskies on.

The chopper hovered in place. Mike was slowing in front of her, held up his hand as if in warning. She knew how to approach a landing helicopter, for heaven’s sake. The training they’d received together hadn’t been that long ago. She ignored him.

Snow swirled around them as the chopper’s blades stirred up the air. She put her head down and stopped, waiting for the bird to set down. The bullets that hit around her took her by surprise.

What on earth? She threw herself to the snow and looked around. Did the gun smugglers catch up? She glanced up, expecting to see the chopper covering them, but instead, the man she spotted in the open door was aiming at Mike.

Nobody else on the ground, but them. No smugglers. She scanned the area behind her. They were clearly the ones under attack from the CIA chopper.

It didn’t make any sense. This was supposed to be the rescue team. Mike had called in their location.

He seemed to have recovered from his surprise before she did and was shooting back, making the bird pull up sharply and bank to the right. Then her training and instincts finally kicked in and she sprinted for the woods.

She stopped halfway there, hesitated, looked back to the dogs. She’d left her rifle on the sled. If she could get that and the huskies… Mike was running, too, twisting now and then to squeeze off another shot, jumping over piles of snow as he went.

“Come on!” he shouted as he passed her.

They were close to the woods, twenty yards, ten, there. They didn’t stop for a while, spurred on by bullets hitting the trees behind them.

After a minute or two, the shooting stopped.

“We have to go back and get the dogs.” She was breathing so hard, she had to bend over. Sitting in a research trailer month after month, doing nothing but data analysis, had softened her.

“They’re not interested in the dogs. They made it plenty clear that they want us.”

“What’s going on?”

“Damned if I know.” Mike ducked behind a boulder and leaned against it, making room for her. He pulled the phone from his pocket, but it rang before he could dial.

“We’re under attack.”

He listened and swore alternatively, then after a couple of minutes held the cell phone away from his ear and shook it, pushed some buttons, listened again, slammed it into the snow. “Battery is dead.”

“Extreme cold will do that. What did you find out?”

“It’s classified.”

“Like hell it is.” She wanted to shake him. “Tell that to someone whose ass is not getting shot up by our own government. I already saw the warhead, Mike.”

“I don’t know everything.”

“Give me what you have.”

He still had the gall to think about it before he finally nodded. “Apparently, a cache of warheads near where your research station was parked was broken into.”

“There are no military installations anywhere around here. Roger and I have been through the area a hundred times.” She tried to think of anything that looked even remotely suspicious, but there had been no manmade structures at all, just open snowfields.

“Underground bunkers most likely. Apparently the U.S. warheads were supposed to be destroyed under the disarmament agreement after the cold war, but they somehow disappeared from the list and were forgotten.” His words were underscored with a thick tone of irony.

“How does that have anything to do with us?”

“Some gun dealer got wind of it, and a few warheads were stolen. The whole environmentalist-extremists slash Alaska-pipeline tale was a cover so the CIA could close the area for a massive manhunt.”

She stared at him as understanding dawned on her. “It would look bad for the U.S. Government if it turned out we’re hiding stockpiles of nuclear weapons that violate international agreements.”

“Right.”

“But why are they after us? You and I didn’t steal anything.”

“Looks like that’s not how the CIA interpreted things. You left with the weapons dealers. At one point your research station was almost on top of the bunkers. And I’m here against orders. They figured out that we knew each other in the past.”

Wait a minute— “Go back to the bunkers part.”

“The Colonel said—”

“That’s what the readings were about,” she blurted, interrupting him.

“What readings?”