He turns to stare at where his partner is hidden among the trees and keeps motionless, signaling the lack of danger.

It is understood.

“MOVE OUT. QUIET SCOUT AGAIN.”

He swings away, angling around the corner. He checks each side, spies through another window, and sniffs intently at the closed door. He ends where he started.

“GOOD BOY. RETURN.”

He disobeys, instead dropping again to his belly by the rotten log.

A low growl rumbles in his chest, barely heard with his own ears.

A warning.

Tucker watched the video feed jostle as Kane lowered to his belly, his nose at the snow line. He heard the growl through the radio and noted the pointed stare of the shepherd toward the deeper forest to the right of the shack.

He studied the video feed on his phone. Even with the camera, his eyesight was no match for Kane’s. He squinted at the screen, trying to pick out what had seized Kane’s attention. After ten long seconds, he spotted movement, fifty yards away.

A lone figure, hunched over, moved through the trees, heading toward the shack.

Tucker swore silently and dropped quietly to his chest. He shifted the sniper rifle to his shoulder, flicking off the safety.

The trespasser was also carrying a gun—an assault weapon from its shape and angles. The figure moved through thick shadows, hard to make out, camouflaged from head to toe in a woodland winter suit. He moved deftly, someone well familiar with hunting in a forest, every cautious step cementing Tucker’s certainty that this was one of the Spetsnaz soldiers, not a local hunter.

Thank God for Kane’s keen perception.

But why only one?

If there had been others, Kane would have alerted him.

It made no sense. If the Spetsnaz knew he and Kane were here, they would have come in force. This had to be a lone scout. He remembered the Havoc helo circling the perimeter of the air base. Apparently the unit commander must have sent a man or two to do the same on foot.

He raised the sniper rifle to his shoulder and peered through its scope, getting a sight picture. Once fixed, he subvocalized into the radio mike taped to his throat, passing on yet another command to his partner.

“TARGET. QUIET CLOSE.”

It was an order Kane knew all too well from their time together in Afghanistan: get as close to the enemy as possible and be ready.

Kane began creeping toward the man.

With his partner on the move, Tucker laid his cheek against the rifle’s stock and peered through the scope. The target was forty yards off, moving with practiced economy. He never paused in the open, only when behind a tree. His current line of approach would take him straight to Kane’s position.

Thirty yards.

Given the angle of the man’s body, Tucker knew a head shot would be tricky, so he adjusted the rifle’s crosshairs and focused on a point a few inches below the man’s left nipple.

The soldier stepped behind a tree and paused, ever cautious. Two seconds passed. The man emerged again from cover, ready to close in on the cabin.

It was Tucker’s best chance. He squeezed the trigger ever so slightly, took a breath, let it out—and fired.

In the last millisecond, the soldier’s arm shifted forward. The bullet tore through the man’s elbow, shattering bone and cartilage, but veering wide from a kill shot.

The man spun counterclockwise and disappeared behind the trunk of a spruce.

“TAKEDOWN!” he called out to Kane.

He didn’t wait to track his partner. Instead, he dropped the sniper rifle and charged forward, drawing his P22 pistol on the run.

Ahead and to his left, Kane leaped through the air and disappeared behind the spruce. A scream burst out, followed by a spatter of automatic fire that shred needles from the tree.

Tucker reached the spruce, grabbed a passing branch, and whipped himself around with his pistol raised. The soldier struggled on the ground, on his back. Kane straddled him, his jaws clamped on his right wrist. The assault rifle lay nearby, but the soldier had a Makarov pistol gripped in his free hand.

Time seemed to slow for Tucker. The man’s gun hand turned, straining to bring the weapon to bear on Kane. Then the Makarov bucked. Kane was strobe-lit by orange muzzle flash but unharmed. In his panic and pain, the man had shot too soon.

Tucker refused to give him another chance.

Stepping sideways, he took aim and fired once. The bullet drilled a neat hole in the soldier’s right temple. His body went slack.

“RELEASE,” Tucker rasped out.

Kane obeyed and backed away a few steps.

Tucker placed his boot on the Makarov, which lay half buried in the snow. There was no sense in checking the man’s pulse; he was dead. His mind switched to their next worry. The gunfire would have carried through the trees.

But how far? Who might have heard?

Tucker took a moment to double-check Kane for injuries. Finding none, he gave the shepherd a quick neck ruffle, then pointed in the direction the man had come.

“QUIETSCOUT.”

He had to know if reinforcements were on their way.

As Kane moved off, he pocketed the Makarov, stripped off the man’s camouflage suit, and stuffed it into his own pack. Though pressed for time, he spent a minute hand-shoveling snow over the corpse. The grave wouldn’t stand close scrutiny, but it might buy him precious seconds.

Finally, Tucker retrieved his rifle and moved deeper into the trees, where he found a tangle of fallen logs. If necessary, it would serve as a good sniper’s roost.

He checked Kane’s camera, but all seemed quiet out there. Satisfied for the moment, he radioed to his partner.

“RETURN.”

Thirty seconds later, Kane crouched next to him, panting.

“Good work, pal.”

Kane licked Tucker’s cheek.

Using the momentary lull, Tucker pulled on the camouflage suit.

“Now we wait.”

4:39 P.M.

After several long minutes, the snap of branches alerted Tucker. Someone was approaching from his eight o’clock position. As he listened, the plod of footsteps grew louder, distinctly different from the soldier’s cautious approach.

Not Spetsnaz.

A moment later, Dimitry appeared, lumbering through the forest.

Still, Tucker stayed hidden, waiting, suspicion ringing through him.

When Dimitry was ten feet away, seemingly alone, Tucker called out to him.

“Stop!”

Dimitry jumped, genuinely startled. He lifted both arms, showing empty hands. “Is that you, my friend?”

Tucker kept hidden. “You’re making a lot of noise.”

“Intentionally,” Dimitry replied with a half smile. “I didn’t feel like getting shot, da? I heard the gunfire.”

“We had a visitor,” Tucker admitted, relaxing somewhat. “Spetsnaz.”

“Is he—?”

“Dead. Dimitry, did you turn us in?”

“Nyet. But you are smart to ask. I swear I have told no one about you.”

“And Fedor?”

The old man shook his head. “He has his flaws, but he has never betrayed me or a customer. Besides, you must trust someone or you’ll never get out of here.”

Tucker both believed him and knew he was right. Even Kane wagged his tail, wanting to greet Dimitry. He finally stood up out of his blind.

Dimitry joined him, eyeing his winter suit. “New clothes, I see.”

“Someone no longer needed them.” Tucker pointed toward the air base. “Is Fedor ready to fly? Matters are getting a little tense out here.”

“I think so. When I called him, he had just finished making some adjustments to the plane’s propeller. Fine-tuning, he called it.”

Tucker smiled, remembering the crude hammering. “I saw.”

Together, they headed past the cabin and across the air base. Dimitry took him along a circuitous path that mostly kept them hidden, working their way toward the hangar.