What happened next Tucker would write off later as a soldier’s intuition.

Still crouched, Felice pushed backward and disappeared behind a tree.

Crap.

He kept his gun steady, waiting for a clear shot, but from the stealthy noise of retreat, Felice was on the move, heading back up the slope, using the trunks to screen herself. After five minutes she was gone, but he could guess her plan. She intended to head deeper into the trees, then back down in a flanking maneuver. She must be gambling that he and Kane hadn’t made it to the river yet, and that they didn’t know she was tracking them. She would set up an ambush down below and wait.

She would be in for a long wait, Tucker decided.

He gave Felice another frigid five minutes’ head start, then pocketed the P22, eased himself sideways out of his burrow, and began crawling toward his rucksack. He reached the tree, grabbed the bag’s strap, and pulled it down to him.

He then went dead still to listen.

Silence.

He donned the rucksack, then aimed his hand toward Kane’s last known position and signaled, trusting the shepherd had followed his training and kept Tucker in view.

Return, he motioned.

He waited, but it did not take long. A hushed footfall sounded above him. He craned his neck and found Kane crouched in the snow a few feet away. Tucker reached up, grabbed a handful of neck fur, and gave his partner a reassuring massage.

“FOLLOW,” he whispered in his partner’s ear.

Together, they began the slow climb upward, back toward the rail line.

11:50 P.M.

It took longer than he’d hoped to reach the top of the slope—only to discover that a towering, windswept drift blocked the way to the tracks, a sheer wall, three times as tall as Tucker. He would have to sidestep his way across the slope and hope to find where he had originally crashed through it so they could cross back to the railway.

Tucker took only a single step away from the tree line and out onto that treacherous, icy expanse—when he felt something shift beneath his boot. In the back of his mind he thought, log, but he had no time to react. The thigh-sized chunk of tree trunk, buried under a few inches of snow and held fast by the thinnest film of ice, broke free and started rolling downhill, taking Tucker and a swath of snow with it.

Avalanche.

Tucker pushed Kane aside, knowing the shepherd would try to latch on to him again. “EVADE!” he hissed.

The order countermanded Kane’s instinct to protect him. The shepherd hesitated only a moment before leaping sideways and back into the shelter of the tree line.

Tucker knew he was in trouble. The sliding mass of snow was bulldozing over him, propelling him faster and faster down the slope. With the rucksack preventing him from rolling over, Tucker paddled his arms and legs, trying to mount the snow wave, to ride its tumult, but it was no use. Doing his best to survive, he drove one elbow into the ground, leaning into it. He spun on his belly until he was aimed headfirst down the slope, still on his belly.

Fifty yards away, the river loomed. The surface was black and motionless. With any luck, it was frozen over. If not, he was doomed.

Tucker’s mind raced.

Where was Kane? Where was Felice?

No doubt she’d heard the miniavalanche—but was he visible within the snowy surge? He got his answer. Ahead and to his right, an orange flare spat in the night, coming from a clump of scrub bushes near the waterline.

A muzzle flash.

If nothing else, his headlong plunge had made Felice miss her first shot. The second would be closer. The third would be dead-on. Tucker reached back, freed the P22 from his pocket with a struggle, and pointed it toward the site of that flash.

He felt a sting at his neck.

Grazed by a bullet.

Ignoring the pain, he squeezed the trigger twice, wild potshots, but maybe enough to discourage the sniper.

Then he hit the river’s berm and launched into the air. His heart lurched into his throat. A heartbeat later, he belly-flopped onto the ice, bounced once, then found himself rolling, flat-spinning across the river’s surface. He slammed into a clump of trees jutting from the ice and came to an abrupt, agonizing stop.

Gasping for air, he rolled onto his side and fought the urge to curl into a painful ball.

He swept his arms across the ice, searching for his pistol. It had been knocked from his cold fingers as he struck the river.

Where—?

Then he spotted it. The P22 lay a few feet away in a tangle of dead branches. He reached toward it.

A chunk of ice exploded at his fingertips, shards stinging his face. The gunshot sounded like the muffled snap of a branch. She was using a noise suppressor.

“Not another inch!” Felice Nilsson called from somewhere to his right.

He craned his neck and spotted her. She was forty feet away, kneeling at the river’s edge, the rifle tucked to her shoulder. At this range, she could put a bullet in his ear.

Instead, she shifted her rifle ever so slightly, from a kill shot to something that would maim and hurt. The moon, reflecting off the ice, cast the scene in stark contrast.

“Tell me where you were scheduled to meet Bukolov,” she demanded.

In answer, Tucker slowly lifted his hand from the ice.

“Careful!” she barked. “I’ll take it off. Don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“I don’t,” Tucker replied, raising his palm, as if pleading for her to be calm, but instead he pointed one finger at her.

“What are you—?”

Tucker rotated his hand, fingers pointing toward the ice.

“Good-bye, Felice,” he said through chattering teeth.

From out of the forest behind her, Kane burst forth.

A moment ago, Tucker had noted the shepherd’s furtive approach, a mere shift of shadows lit by the reflected moonlight. Kane obeyed Tucker’s signal, a simple one.

Attack.

Kane races across the gap, bunching his haunches at the last moment.

He has followed the trail of the woman, catching her scent in the woods, picking it out of the spoor of deer and rabbit. He recognizes it from the train, remembers the hatred in her voice. Next came the muffled shots of the rifle and the sharper cracks of a pistol.

His other was in danger, threatened.

The last command remained etched behind his eyes.

Evade.

So he kept hidden, following the whiff of gun smoke, the musk of the hot skin, ever down toward the flow of water and creaking ice.

There, beyond the woman, he sees his partner out on the ice. He holds back a whine of concern, wanting to call out.

Then movement.

A hand raised.

A command given.

He obeys that now.

The woman turns, fear bursting from her skin. As she swings, her gun barrel dips slightly.

He sees and explodes with his hind end, springing high.

As Tucker watched, Kane slammed into Felice like a linebacker, his jaws clamping on to her arm before the pair hit the ice. Felice screamed and thrashed, but she held tight to the rifle’s stock.

A sniper to the end, Tucker thought. Lose your rifle, lose your life.

He shoved up, ready to help his partner—only to hear a sharp crack erupt beneath him. A rift snaked outward from his body and headed toward Kane and Felice. Dark, icy water gushed through the fault line.

“Felice, stop struggling!” Tucker called. “Lie still!”

Panicked, deaf to his warning, she continued to struggle, her left hand still clenched around the rifle stock.

He forced himself to his knees, then his feet. The ice shifted beneath him, dipping sideways. He leaped forward, balancing on the teetering slabs as the river broke under him. He hopscotched toward Kane and Felice.