Juan couldn’t help but taunt him a bit more. “My pilot, Gomez Adams, so nicknamed for a dalliance he had with a woman who looked remarkably like Carolyn Jones, the original Morticia, had less than a week to practice tele-flying the Kamov after we bought it and installed the remote controls.”

“You’re mad.”

“Barking,” Juan agreed with a grin. “Come on.”

He led them a short distance into the trees, where Cabrillo’s team had another surprise waiting. It was a Lynx Rave RE 800R snowmobile painted a matte white that perfectly matched the snow. With its massive caterpillar tread and double runner skis, it was the perfect machine for crossing any arctic terrain. Bundled next to it was a bag containing helmets and white snowsuits, one helmet battery-powered and the other able to jack into the Lynx’s electrical system, as well as insulated boots and gloves.

“Put these on. There’s a chopper at the prison, and they’ll soon be in pursuit.”

As they dressed Yuri said, “That was why we didn’t change direction when we flew off. You wanted them to follow the Kamov.”

“And while they head east in pursuit of an empty chopper, we go north to where the Oregon’s waiting for us.”

“How long?”

Juan threw a leg over the sled’s saddle seat and flicked the 800cc Rotax engine to life. Over the whine of the two-stroke he replied, “About an hour.”

He jacked a cord dangling from his helmet into a satellite phone that had been secreted with the rest of the gear.

“This is Edmond Dantès calling.” His code name referenced the famous prisoner who escaped a life sentence in the Dumas masterpiece The Count of Monte Cristo. “We have gotten out of the Château d’If.”

“Edmond,” came Max Hanley’s happy reply. “Ready to go find your treasure and exact your revenge?”

“The treasure’s going to be sent to a numbered account as soon as we’re back aboard, and revenge has never been my intent.”

“How’d it go?” Max asked, dropping all pretense that he hadn’t been concerned for Juan’s safety.

“No problems as yet. The squib bombs worked better than we’d hoped, and Gomez could have thread that chopper through a needle if he’d needed to.”

“You’re on speaker here in the op center, Chairman,” George Adams drawled. “I heard that and won’t disagree for a second.”

Juan could picture the handsome Texan, with his drooping gunslinger mustache, sitting just behind and to the right of the command chair in the middle of the Oregon’s high-tech nerve center. While Cabrillo was being transported to the prison, Adams had flown the drone Kamov from the ship and pre-positioned it near the complex with another of Yuri’s loyalists waiting to fire up its engine when he received Juan’s signal.

“We’re in position and standing by,” Hanley cut in.

“Okay, Max. Yuri and I will be there in about an hour.”

“We’ll keep the light on for you.”

Juan patted the seat, and Borodin legged over to straddle the sled just behind him. Two handholds had been sewn into the back of Cabrillo’s snowsuit for him to hold on to, saving both men the ignominy of the Russian clutching Juan’s waist. Juan could have jacked Borodin’s helmet into the snow machine’s onboard communications set, but that would mean he would miss any incoming calls from the Oregon as they tracked both the drone Kamov and the prison’s big Mil chopper in hot pursuit.

The Lynx accelerated like a rocket and shot out of the pines with the swift agility of a startled hare. In minutes, they were blasting over the snowpack. Because of the sophisticated suspension and the heated suits, the ride was remarkably comfortable. The deep core chill Cabrillo had suffered was soon replaced with enough warmth that he had to dial down his heater. He barely felt the vibration of the sled cutting through the snow, and the whine of the two-stroke engine was a muted purr in his helmet.

If not for the fact an armed Russian helicopter would soon be hunting for them, he would have enjoyed the ride.

It was only fifteen minutes into their dash for the coast that Max Hanley called to report their drone helicopter had been shot down and that its cameras had survived long enough to tell them the Russians knew the aircraft was unmanned.

Cabrillo cursed silently. He’d hoped for a half hour or more. The Mil must have been kept at ready status to have caught their bird so quickly. Now it would be doubling back, and a sharp-eyed pilot would see the snowmobile’s trail like a scar across the virgin crust of snow.

Juan slowed just enough for him to open his visor and crank his head around. He shouted over the wind, “They’re onto us.”

Yuri understood the danger and gave Cabrillo a double tap on the shoulder in acknowledgment.

It was a race not only against the chopper now searching for them but also against the setting sun. The Mil doubtlessly had running lights, so once it found their spore, they could keep it lit up as they ran the fleeing pair to ground. On the other hand, Juan couldn’t switch on the Lynx’s headlamp because it would be the only source of light in the otherwise desolate plane, and the pursuing chopper could cut a vector onto them if they spotted it. He dared not back off the throttle, and he cursed the decision to go with a tinted visor. He could just barely see the white snow through the darkness.

When it got too dark, he thought he could ride with the visor popped up. He tried an experiment. The wind stung like daggers thrust deep into his eye sockets, and he quickly lowered the protective shield. For several seconds he was completely blinded by the tears. So much for that.

They’d just have to trust his reflexes as they continued screaming across the open ground.

Out here it wasn’t that big of a deal, there was very little by way of obstacles, but they had to cover several more miles of frozen ocean to reach the Oregon.

On they drove, Borodin clinging to the straps while Juan hunched over the handlebars, and the sun sank below the horizon to the west. Somewhere to the east a chopper was hunting them as surely as a hawk searches for prey.

They rapidly approached the coastline and entered a jumbled mess of icy hummocks and crushed leads in a nightmare landscape that appeared impassable. Juan was forced to slow, and no matter how badly it stung, he also had to open his visor. It was just too dark to see through its tinting, and almost too dark to see anything period.

Despite the Lynx’s superb suspension, both men were tossed about as the machine lurched and rolled over the fractured ice. Yuri was forced to loop his arms up to the elbows through the straps and clutch at the seat with his thighs as though he were trying to break an untamed stallion. But still he maintained the presence of mind to scan the sky around them so that the Chairman could concentrate on the path ahead. A particularly bright star caught his attention, and he gazed at it in exhausted wonder.

He’d been so cold for so long — his prison cell never rose above fifty degrees, making sleep nearly impossible — that the warmth of his heated suit was dulling his senses and making his mind drift to near unconsciousness. Only the jarring ride was keeping him awake. The day of his arrest, he’d been in his six-thousand-square-foot apartment in the company of a Burmese courtesan, sipping Cristal. His last real physical ordeal had been basic training when he’d joined the Navy. Brezhnev had been president.

He craved sleep the way a drunk craved alcohol.

But there was something bedazzling about this one particular star that held his attention. It didn’t have the cold aloofness of its celestial neighbors, as it straddled the razor’s edge between the earth and sky. It pulsed and seemed to grow, almost calling to him like the way the Sirens called to Odysseus when he was lashed to the mast of his ship. They had tried to draw him to the rocks.