Rapp scanned back and forth, finally picking up two more men behind, both moving at a less superhuman pace. Another minute of scrutiny turned up nothing more. Whether that meant his entire opposition consisted of three men or that he was just missing the other fifty spread out under the canopy, was impossible to determine.
What he was sure of, though, was that the lead man was going to overtake Azarov before he could make it to the chopper. The former Russian assassin had softened considerably since his retirement and while Cara probably only weighed a buck fifteen soaking wet, that wasn’t trivial under the circumstances.
Coleman’s voice suddenly came to life over his earpiece. “These assholes look like they’re going to gather up their casualties and back off. You want us to make their lives miserable before we bug out?”
“Negative,” Rapp responded. He still had no idea what the hell Russians were doing there, but if they were willing to leave, he saw no reason to get in their way.
“Copy that. See you at the LZ.”
Rapp took a pull of plastic-tasting water from the CamelBak’s hose as he scanned the narrow draw he’d come down. Irene Kennedy had discovered that Maxim Krupin’s cyber warriors were responsible for collapsing Costa Rica’s power grid. What she hadn’t been able to figure out was why the president of Russia would put himself at risk in order to harass a tiny Central American country that threatened precisely no one. After her Russia experts had come up similarly empty, her mind had turned to Grisha Azarov—the only thing in Costa Rica that Krupin might be interested in.
With no way practical way to get in touch with the Russian, she’d sent Rapp and Coleman’s team for an operation that should have been easy. Extract Azarov and stash him in a safe location until the Agency could figure out what the hell was going on. As always, they’d been prepared for anything, but showing up at the same time as the Russian armada was a serious bit of bad luck.
And that bad luck seemed to be holding. The lead man burst back into view for a moment before disappearing beneath the canopy again. Rapp had hoped the men in pursuit would turn back to join their comrades, but it was obvious now that it wasn’t going to happen.
He played absently with the CamelBak hose, mentally reeling through his options. He could catch up with Azarov and significantly increase their pace by carrying Cara himself. Even at full gas, though, it was hard to do the math in a way that ended with them keeping ahead of the man chasing them. Best-case, they’d make it to the chopper and have a few additional shooters on their side when the inevitable clash came. It wasn’t like they were flying a gunship, though. One stray bullet could strand them.
Rapp let out a long breath and reluctantly started crawling sideways along the steep slope, staying ten yards above the trail. Moving through the dense foliage was a constant battle, particularly when his mind was consumed with estimating the approaching man’s progress.
All he needed to do was to find a practical place for an ambush—something high enough to keep him out of sight but not so high that he had a chance at missing his one chance. If that asshole got by him, it would be a tall order to catch him before he overtook Azarov.
Rapp reached out to push back a thick branch and saw a flash of movement at its base. He tried to draw his hand back but was a fraction too slow. The snake hit the side of his palm and hung there, its fangs trapped in the glove’s Kevlar but not fully penetrating. He’d been wondering if they were worth the added heat and loss of dexterity, but fortunately had trusted Azarov’s gear choice.
Rapp dislodged what he assumed was one of the pit vipers Claudia had warned him about and was about to kill it, but instead, threw it over the foliage and into the trail. It had been a pretty shitty day so far, but if one of the local reptiles took out Nikita Pushkin for him, it might just be salvaged.
CHAPTER 7
“MAJOR Pushkin. Do you copy?”
Pushkin slowed and moved off what barely passed for a trail. His breath was still controlled when he responded—the terrain was too complex to achieve a speed that would tax his drug-enhanced cardiovascular system.
“Go ahead.”
“The drone has made contact with your trailing target again. He’s approximately one hundred and fifty meters to the southeast. A few moments ago he took a ninety-degree turn to the west and started up a steep, open slope.”
“And now?”
“We’ve lost him again in the canopy.”
Pushkin scanned the jungle through his night-vision monocular and then took a few steps back, penetrating deeper into the vegetation. Who was this man? He’d walked knowingly into an ambush carried out by highly trained operatives and was now diverting from the path Azarov had taken with the girl. Was he concerned that he wasn’t fast enough and was now trying to escape? It was possible but Pushkin’s gut said no. He wasn’t trying to escape. He was going for high ground.
The muffled crunch of footsteps on the jungle floor became audible to the north, followed by the sound of labored breathing. Pushkin remained utterly still as his man passed and faded back into the night. After about a minute, he stepped back onto the trail and started out again. This time at three quarter speed.
? ? ?
Rapp took advantage of a rare patch of rocky terrain and managed to accelerate a bit. Still, the steepness of the slope and the fact that he had to stay beneath the canopy limited him to a slow jog. He was about to vault a massive downed tree but then stopped, sighting along it. The extensive root system had ripped up the ground around it, while its trunk had crushed the vegetation where it had landed. Combined with its elevated position, the view was surprisingly unobstructed.
Instead of moving downslope to find an ambush site, he climbed, swinging around the upended roots and scanning the shallow hole they had left. No obvious snakes and no evidence of the venomous spiders that Claudia had warned him about, so he dropped into what turned out to be a good six inches of muddy water.
Not particularly comfortable for a man accustomed to fighting in the desert, but the vantage point turned out to be even better than he’d hoped. It took less than thirty seconds to pick up the lead chaser through Azarov’s night-vision gear. He was staying to the bottom of the draw where intermittent runoff had cleared the ground cover to some extent.
The man was moving slower now, something that wasn’t surprising as the slopes on either side steepened and made an ambush more likely. As Rapp continued to watch, though, he started to rethink his assessment. The reduced pace was easy enough to explain away, but there was more. The man he’d seen earlier seemed to float over the obstacles in the jungle floor, covering ground with an effortlessness that was more professional athlete than soldier. By contrast, the man he was tracking now seemed bent on overpowering the terrain instead of using it.
Rapp adjusted his focus to a small, unavoidable clearing well behind the lead man. The second man in line appeared after about a minute, moving at a cautious pace but with the easy grace Rapp remembered from earlier.
“Clever boy,” he muttered under his breath.
His knee jerk reaction was always to handle these kinds of situations as quietly as possible. A suppressed shot to the head. A knife under the chin or snapped neck. But in this case his bias was probably wrong. The locals probably hadn’t overlooked the fact that Azarov’s house was throwing flames a hundred feet in the air. Stealth wasn’t the word that came to mind to describe this clusterfuck of an operation.
He unslung the RPG from his shoulder and hung it on a branch within easy reach. The next task was harder—finding a comfortable position in the rocky mud puddle. Once done, he found a stale energy bar in his CamelBak and waited.