The Siberian Incident 2 Read online

"When we touchdown, have those skis ready, he's not sticking around. I'm lucky I got him to stop and that we didn't have to dive out and roll," Scott said.

  Maddock looked out of the aircraft, they were flying at about 8000 feet, and the sky was clear and calm. The weather would not be a problem today, but the terrain concerned him. Beneath them, he saw nothing but trees, a forest as far as he could see. The ground beneath the green boughs of the trees was white, and probably deep rivers that crisscrossed the terrain were frozen and only identifiable as narrow ribbons of white without trees. The occasional hill was also covered in trees. Maddock looked at the cockpit instruments, the temperature gauge read -33, he wasn't sure if it was set to Celsius or Fahrenheit. Still, he knew that at 8,000 feet, the temperature at sea level was only about 28 degrees Fahrenheit warmer if the thermometer was set to Fahrenheit that would only be about -5 on the ground. If it was in Celsius, it was even colder. If anything happened to this plane, they would be lost in below zero weather, assuming they survived a crash into trees. If they went down, the lucky ones would die, the unlucky would freeze to death trapped in the wreckage of the Saratoga, or bleed to death out of compound fractures.

  Maddock scanned the pilot's instruments again. They seemed to be heading Northeast, and the Garmin portable navigation device mounted on some kind of bracket showed the Sea of Japan far to the east. They were flying roughly parallel to the coast into northern Siberia.

  Scott turned to look at the instruments and the pilot, who must have sensed eyes on him, turned and looked at them and shrugged his shoulders.

  Scott plugged in and spoke into his microphone, "Eto krasivo!" he said. Roughly, that it was beautiful, implying that they were just looking out the windows.

  "Da," was the only response from the pilot.

  Maddock occasionally looked behind his shoulder at the Garmin Nav, he saw that it was set to GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS. He saw the waypoint where their trip ended was set to the middle of a lake, about 60 minutes north of their present position. Probably the only suitable landing area for miles. There were no identifiable airports in range of the Garmin's screen map.

  The pilot once again shot a scowling look at Maddock as he looked a the instruments. He decided to just stare backward at their gear as he watched the green and white rolling ground move under the plane. He had nearly dozed off from the drone of the aircraft engine and the bright sun streaming into the plane. Then he heard the throttle of the aircraft abruptly cut and felt the plane begin to pitch forward for the descent.

  He again looked at the instruments, the plane was now on top of the lake. The pilot was too involved in his pre-landing checklist to notice that Maddock once again was looking forward.

  The plane corkscrewed into the landing, a technique usually used to avoid surface to air missiles. Maddock didn't believe that they were at risk for anti-aircraft ordinance and thought that the pilot probably did this more out of habits learned during a career in Russian military aviation.

  Maddock watched the trees approaching closer and then saw that the lake was nestled into a valley. The pilot lined himself up between two hills and began the final descent to landing on the lake. Maddock felt the skis gently touch down on the lake, spraying a cloud of snow behind the aircraft. As the plane slowed on the snow of the icy lake, the nose wheel touched down, and the Saratoga came to a stop.

  The pilot shut down the engine, then opened the cockpit door, and proceeded out to the top of the wing. The whirring sound of the gyros spinning down was a stark contrast to the overpowering noise of the engine. As the door opened, the icy wind blew in just as Maddock finished donning his jacket and gloves. He flipped up the hood of the parka and adjusted the goggles on top of his head, grabbed his skis, and then stepped out onto the snow.

  Scott and Maddock walked about 10 yards from the aircraft. Maddock was already trying to figure out how to get his US cold weather boots into the Russian ski bindings when he heard a sound reminiscent of a sci-fi laser blast. He felt a rumble and spun to see the Saratoga tipping as it broke through the ice. The pilot let out an uncharacteristically feminine scream, which was the only emotion Maddock had seen him express since they'd met him. He ran down the wing as it cracked through the ice and slipped on the slick surface made wet from the snow on his boots and fell off, plunging into the icy water.

  Maddock and Scott looked at each other in disbelief. The plane they had just landed in now sat half-submerged in the lake. Maddock ran to the edge of the broken ice as the pilot bobbed up and down, shouting to the two men.

  Maddock had grabbed his ski and now laid in the snow, hoping he too wouldn't break through the ice. He stretched his arm as long as it would reach and offered the ski to the man now bobbing in the water and already showing signs of hypothermia. He was barely able to grasp the ski and when he did grip it, he promptly lost grip as Maddock attempted to pull him out. Maddock knew that it was not going to be an effective means of saving him. They were losing precious seconds as the man's vital signs were quickly slipping away.

  Maddock crawled closer to the hole that had formed in the ice, he tried to spread his weight out as much as possible.

  "Get up here and pull me back when I say!" Maddock yelled to Scott.

  He inched closer, attempting to grab the man's flailing arm. The man reached for him, spraying him with the icy droplets of the water. Maddock was almost over the top of the hole now. He feared being pulled in by the man nearly as much as allowing him to drown. The thought went through his head for one second that he should just shoot the man and save him the misery of going hypothermic and then drowning, but he caught the man's hand just in time and then yelled to Scott. He felt his leg being pulled back and the man slowly emerged from the water. He was shaking, and he wasn't holding Maddock's hand. Maddock's tenuous grip was all that kept him from slipping right back in. Scott struggled, pulling Maddock by the legs, the man was entirely out of the water, but not yet out of danger.

  They dragged him about 15 meters from the spot where he had fallen in, then looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Maddock estimated the temperature was below zero. A slight wind was probably like being pressed into the ice for the man. His soaking clothes were already starting to stiffen as they froze. The only thing preventing him from already being dead was the warmth of the sun coming down on

  "Get this clothes off of him, we need to build a fire now!" Maddock shouted.

  "With what?" Scott shouted back.

  "Over there," Maddock nodded at the lake, they were surrounded by forest, and the shore of the lake was about 30 meters away.

  Maddock dragged the shivering man who was no longer speaking in any comprehensible language to the shore and began disrobing him.

  "Gather some kindling!" He shouted to Scott.

  "Scott began running into the woods while Maddock spread out the tent that he had packed, he dragged the pilot onto the spread out the canvas and began disrobing him.

  The man was naked on the canvas, and Maddock unrolled his sleeping bag and then rolled the wet man into it. He then opened the case for the Savage 99. Unscrewing the front lens of the Swarovski scope, he watched as Scott returned with some sticks, twigs, and small dry branches.

  "Go, get more branches," Maddock ordered, and Scott ran back into the woods.

  Maddock quickly arranged the sticks and then focused the sun's light through the front objective lens of the scope, which was now essentially a magnifying glass. The sticks began to smoke, and a small flame appeared in the center of the light of the magnifying glass. Soon the tinder burst into flame, and Scott returned with a few dry branches which Maddock arranged on his fire. He moved the man closer to the warmth and was careful that no embers or sparks touched the tent canvas. They had done all they could, now they just had to hope that the fire would be enough to bring the pilot back from the brink of hypothermia.

  They continued collecting wood for their fire and watched as the man's color returned to a light shade of pink from his
previous bluish hue.

  "Spasibo," the man finally said, seemingly recovered from his ordeal.

  Scott had hung his clothes on branches, which he arranged near the fire in an attempt to dry them. The man had no other clothing and wrapped the bedroll around himself as he sat upright.

  Scott had begun brewing some hot water for the pilot to drink in his metal canteen. He thought he would probably encounter some teabags in an MRE as well. Maddock, attempted to speak Russian to the pilot, asking him whether he was okay. Still, the pilot didn't seem to understand him. Maddock then nodded to Scott, indicating that he wanted to speak away from the fire.

  "We gotta abort this mission or get rid of this guy somehow," Maddock whispered to Scott.

  "You want to assassinate this guy? We just saved him," Scott said with a look of shock on his face.

  "No! I don't mean assassinate him, we need to find a way to get him away from us, or we'll need to abort. He could have been sent to spy on us and figure out what we're really doing. What if he's been hired to confirm the kill of Colin Crossfield? Then we're fucked if we try to lie about what happened."

  "We're supposed to do that, we're supposed to confirm the kill," Scott said, solely looking down at the snow.

  "How?"

  "Send his fingers to Dimitry. Um, and Dimitry wants us to send his…um," Scott stuttered.

  "His what?" Maddock asked, already both irritated and concerned about what Scott's answer would be.

  "His penis and testicles, we're supposed to send them to Dimitry."

  "Jesus Christ! These are your friends? We'll just need to get this pilot guy a ride out of here."

  "There's no ride, he'd have to come with us to the extraction point. Dimitry isn't giving us a ride. Remember, I told him I'd made arrangements? Those arrangements are with the agency, they aren't going to extract some unknown Russian pilot."

  "So, do we have to kill him?"

  "I don't really think that is the right thing to do."

  "Jesus, this is already a clusterfuck. Just like all of my CIA missions, man, can you guys plan something right for once?"

  "What happened to the ice?" Scott questioned, looking in the direction of the plane, "It's freezing and look, where it broke it is almost a foot thick. It should have been more than enough to hold the airplane."

  "I don't know, there must have been a spring or some other type of disturbance under the ice," Maddock reckoned.

  "Its really fucking weird, why would he choose to land there?"

  "I'm sure he just doesn't know the lake, it's probably got a spring under it."

  "You're right," Scott said, looking back at the man warming himself by the fire.

  After a long pause, Maddock spoke up again, "How does his dick identify Colin, why would they need that? I get fingers, but how do they know you're not just sending them any old dick and balls you found somewhere?"

  "I don't know, the fingers are for identification, I think the cock and balls are more of a…"

  "More of a what?"

  "I don't know, a trophy?"

  "Jesus Scott, what does this guy have like a wall full of taxidermied dicks? This is who we're working for?"

  "I always pictured it as a room with jars of dicks in formaldehyde, and no. We work for the CIA, remember? Dimitry is just a means to get us information and a plausible reason to be in this country. We need someone to help us here."

  "I'm not sure who's worse actually, the CIA or a dick collector."

  "Dude, what's your problem with us. I get it you got sent on some missions with bad intel, but come on, you really think we're here to drum up some fake intel and send soldiers on fake missions? No, I do this because I love America, I want to stop people like Colin from hurting it."

  Maddock paused. Scott was right, he'd allowed some of his past experiences with the agency to cloud his judgment. Just like the Army, every organization had its bad seeds. The problem was that Maddock had friends who had been killed by these bad actors. The stakes were much higher than a boss who made inappropriate comments in an office or a company that skimped on materials and produced shoddy products. The missteps in this organization started wars and got entire groups of people slaughtered and their grudges and prejudices caused incalculable problems that did not serve the country well. Scott was a bright-eyed, idealistic and energetic kid, he reminded Maddock of himself before he'd been through the grinder and become jaded with the way the world worked. Once again, Maddock thought, he had put himself in this place. If he didn't want to work with an organization like the CIA, he should have signed up for pickleball at the YMCA.

  "Alright, sorry, I'll keep my opinions to myself," Maddock said.

  Maddock looked into the sky, the sun was setting, and the temperature had already begun to drop. The lake was in a valley, and Maddock scanned the hills after reassembling the Swarovski scope. As he swept over the trees, he came back to an area where he swore he saw something. He swept the scope over the hill again, trying to replicate what he'd seen the first time. It had disappeared, but he wasn't sure he'd seen it the first time. Was it a bear standing up? Was it? It couldn't be.

  "Where do Siberian tigers live?" He asked Scott.

  "I think we're too far north, the area around Vladivostok has them but if we are where I think we are. You shouldn't need to worry about them, why?"

  "I think I saw one," Maddock continued to sweep the scope.

  Then he gasped as he saw something else. It was a man, he swore it was a man. A massive man in a ghillie suit or a giant fur coat. Was it? It couldn't be. He shook the thought out of his head.

  "I don't like this place, I think we should find somewhere more secure," Maddock said.

  "Where would that be, we need shelter now, we have a lot better chance of getting killed walking around in the dark than having an animal attack us. Siberian tigers, if that was what you saw pretty rarely bother humans."

  "Do you know that?"

  "I think I heard that once," Scott said, kind of shrugging his shoulders, "Look we don't have a choice, this guy's clothes are still damp, he's going to die if we drag him around at night in this weather.

  "Alright, let's set up the tent," Maddock said reluctantly, cursing the pilot under his breath.

  Maddock began setting up the tent in the least conspicuous area he could find. The camouflage pattern of the tent was an appropriate winter design, and by burying the tent amidst some trees, it actually became difficult to see as the sun began to set.

  "We ah, only have two bedrolls, what are we going to do about that?" Maddock commented.

  "We're going to not be homophobic, and all three of us are going to sleep together, we'll need the body heat."

  "I was afraid you were going to say that," Maddock mumbled.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  First Night

  THE PILOT, WHO Scott had determined was named Sasha, had put his clothes back on. It was cold and damp, and Scott and Maddock both agreed that he should sleep between them. Scott spoke to him in Russian to explain the arrangements.

  “Might not be very pleasant now, but his clothes will dry out like that during the night,” Scott said.

  “Yes,” Maddock agreed, crawling under the bedrolls, which had been zipped together to form a large blanket. It covered the three men. Maddock held a single red-hued flashlight that could not be seen outside of the tent. It bathed the inside of the tent in an eerie red glow, and Maddock could see the copious amount of steam coming from the man’s mouth as he began to speak.

  Maddock shook his head, “My Russian is too rusty, I don’t understand him.”

  “He says he’s happy he’s in the middle,” Scott translated.

  “Oh, yeah, I guess he did, why’s that?” Maddock said, recalling a little of the language, he never spoke all that well in the first place.

  “He says his uncle had a friend who went camping in Siberia. He says they had some vodka around the fire and then had to sleep like this. Three wide. His uncle’s friend in the mi
ddle and the two other guys on his right and left. His friend Aleksander on the right, a guy named Vladimir on the left.”

  “Vladimir, bet you don’t hear that name too often outside of Russia,” Maddock commented.

  “Right, so his uncle’s friend remembers getting really sleepy before bedtime. They all comment on how tired they are, and they go to bed. When he wakes up it is the morning, he sleeps the whole night through. He has to take a serious piss, so he gets up, and as he’s pissing, he sees that their truck, all of their gear, and everything except their sleeping bags is missing. He finishes the piss and goes back to wake his friends up. As he shakes them, he realizes their heads aren’t attached. Some bandits have come in the night and not only beheaded his friends but switched their heads onto the opposite body. To this day, he does not know why they didn’t kill him and chose his friends. He thinks some guys who sold him the vodka in a nearby town had spiked it with a sedative, and he never heard his friends get murdered or knew what they did to him during the theft.”

  “Well, that’s a scary story,” Maddock said, “Spasibo, Sasha, great bedtime story, got anything else for us to enjoy?”

  “He says, yeah, have you ever heard of the Dyatlov Pass Incident?” Scott translated.

  “Yeah, actually heard that one, let’s skip that story tonight,” Maddock said.

  Scott translated, and Sasha laughed, “He says you’re a pussy,” Scott relayed.

  “Tell this guy to shut up. If there are bears or tigers, his breath is going to attract them,” Maddock said.

  “I’ll just tell him good night, I’ll take first watch, you get some sleep Maddock, I’ll wake you up in two hours,” Scott said.

  Maddock turned away from the Russian pilot, who laid in between them and cradled the M4. He looked behind him. Scott used a red flashlight to scan over maps and other information. He had something to keep him occupied, that was good, less chance he’d fall asleep. Although this secluded location was probably pretty safe and Maddock actually felt more secure here than at the dacha. He closed his eyes and cinched the strings on the hood of his parka to try to create as small an opening as he could.