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?”
“We were doing all kinds of experiments, taking dozens of readings on air, dirt and melted snow every day. We would settle into a spot, work for a week or two. When we were done with our work, we would move fifty miles to the next observation point and start over.” They drove the trailer on the tracks for the big moves, but for everyday stuff they used the sleds to get around. “Then all of a sudden, a couple of weeks ago an order came in to do a reading for radiation.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Roger thought maybe they had some intel on nuclear testing in Russia and worried about the winds. We had very strong winds out of the west at the time. The strange thing was, we were told not to put the reading in the observation log, and that there was no need to repeat it again.”
“So whoever is selling the warheads is in a high enough position to ask a favor of the U.S.A.C.E. He wanted to make sure there was no radiation leak before he sent his men in there.”
“Somebody in the army?”
He shrugged.
“And the CIA suspects us. It’s ridiculous. We can explain.”
The expression on his face was hard, the thin set of his mouth making her uneasy. “We are not going to get a chance to make explanations, Tessa,” he said. “I know the guy in charge of the operation, Brady Marshall. He’s a cleanup expert if I’ve ever seen one. He’s heavily into leaving no witnesses.”
His brown eyes burned into hers as he shook his head.
“There’s more,” she said instead of asking.
He exhaled, his breath forming a small cloud in the frozen air. “We had some disagreements when I was working for the agency. He hates my guts. I came across information that implicated him in some serious stuff. I didn’t blow the whistle, but—”
“But if he takes you out, he can stop worrying that someday you will.”
He nodded. “Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“You might have been better off taking your chances with the smugglers and working your plan.” He sounded miserable.
She took a deep breath.
“Okay, I’m only going to say this once, and first I want to emphasize how much I don’t want you to try anything like this in the future.” She held his gaze. “I’m glad that you came and got me.”
He blinked. “What? Have I gone mad from exposure already? Am I hallucinating?”
She couldn’t help cracking a smile as she punched him in the shoulder.
The sound of the chopper taking off reached them. It was coming closer. She stumbled and fell headfirst into snow when Mike shoved her under a large hemlock and dived after her.
“A small warning would have been nice.” She cleaned the snow from her face as they lay side by side without moving.
The chopper hovered for a minute or two then began circling, and after a while they heard the noise of its motor fade into the distance.
“It might be better if we stay out of the open for now.” He crawled out first.
She ignored the hand he extended to help her. “I’m not leaving the dogs,” she said, and as soon as she was on her feet, she started back the way they had come.
“That’s not