The wind was a blade. It cut across the high pass, driving snow into Sineus’s eyes. He lay flat behind a frozen spur of rock, the cold seeping through his greatcoat. Below, the road was a thin, black scar in a world of white. His goal was simple. Seize the asset. The price was the lives of the men around him. He had made his peace with that. A commander’s arithmetic.
Zoya moved like a ghost in the swirling snow. She and two of Yusuf’s guides, mountain men with faces like carved wood, finished planting the last of the five kilograms of explosives. They worked with a quiet economy, their movements muffled by the storm. Zoya gave a sharp, downward chop of her hand. The ambush was set. The environment was now a weapon.
Sineus waited. The only sound was the howl of the wind. Then, a new sound. A low, grinding rumble that grew steadily from the east. Headlights cut weak yellow holes in the blizzard. The Directorate convoy. Three heavy trucks and a single, faster escort vehicle. The target had entered the kill zone. The trap was ready.
He raised his hand, held it for a beat, then dropped it.
From her position two hundred meters away, Zoya saw the signal. She pressed the detonator. The explosion was not a sharp crack but a deep, gut-punching thump that vibrated through the rock. The mountain groaned. A white wave of snow and stone peeled away from the cliff face above the road. It was not a slide. It was a waterfall of solid matter.
The avalanche poured down. It smashed into the lead truck, burying its front half and shoving it sideways. The road was gone. A wall of white, ten meters high, blocked the pass. The convoy was halted. The trap had worked.
Doors flew open on the remaining trucks. Twenty Directorate soldiers in heavy winter gear spilled out. They were professionals. They did not panic. They found cover behind wheels and boulders, their automatic rifles chattering. The high, thin air filled with the smell of cordite. The ambush had become a firefight.
— Now, — Sineus said into the wind.
From the ridge above, Kulagin and the remaining guides opened fire. They had the high ground. Their rifles picked off the exposed soldiers with brutal precision. The Directorate troops were pinned, caught between the avalanche ahead and the fire from above. The tactical advantage was theirs. For now.
— Sokolov, with me, — Sineus ordered.
He broke cover, running low, his boots sinking into the deep snow. The fifty meters to the lead truck was a lifetime. Bullets hissed past, kicking up plumes of white. Sokolov, the physicist, scrambled behind him. The man was a collection of sharp, terrified angles, a dead weight of intellect in a world of pure, violent physics. Sineus grabbed the back of his coat and hauled him forward.
He saw his own reflection for a second, a distorted hunter’s face in the icy metal clasp of Sokolov’s satchel. It was a fractured, broken thing. A man he was becoming.
They reached the half-buried truck. Two soldiers were using it for cover, firing up at the ridge. Sineus shot the first man through the throat. He shot the second twice in the chest. The movements were economical. Cold. He was no longer a commander defending a line. He was a raider. A thief. He kicked open the rear doors of the truck.
Inside, chained to the floor, was a heavy, steel-banded crate. The Chronos Anomaly Detector. They had it. A flicker of victory, hot and sharp.
Then a scream from the ridge. Not of anger, but of pain. Sineus looked back. One of the guides, a man who had shared his bread with him the night before, was tumbling from the rocks. A dark red flower bloomed on his chest. The price of victory. Paid in full.
— We have it! — Sineus yelled. — Pull back!
He and Sokolov unbolted the crate from the floor. It was heavy. A dead weight of forbidden science. They dragged it out of the truck and into the snow. The covering fire from the ridge faltered. Another scream, cut short by the wind. A second guide spun away from his position, a limp puppet with cut strings. The cost had just doubled.
They hauled the crate into the cover of a rock outcropping. Sineus leaned against the cold steel, his lungs burning. He saw his face reflected on the crate’s polished surface. It was still fractured, but the pieces were heavier now, the lines sharp and defined. The face of a man who had made a choice and now owned the bloody receipt.
The wind howled, a long, mournful cry across the pass. Snowflakes began to cover the dark shapes that lay still upon the white ground.
