“Which leaves what, Nick?” Flynn muttered, squeezing off more shots and feeling his M4 thud back repeatedly against his shoulder. “Pray . . . and hope for luck? Real good plan there, genius.” But then again, he thought grimly, what other options did he really have?

In the narrow, brush-choked gully around the other side of the spur hill, Torvald Pedersen heard the sudden crackle of automatic-weapons fire when Flynn and the others sprang their ambush. The noise only grew in intensity as more and more rifles and machine guns joined the fray. Startled by the explosion of noise where there had been only silence and the hiss of the wind, he sat bolt upright, ignoring the stab of pain from his fractured leg. “Holy shit! You guys hear that? There’s one big, mother-humping battle going on!” He grabbed Rafael Sanchez by the shoulder. “Rafe! We’ve gotta go help the rest of the team.”

The big New Mexican nodded slowly, but then he frowned. “Yeah, but the captain told us to stay put.”

“Maybe we should call in and ask for new orders?” Boyd suggested from the other side. He’d unslung his own M4 and was crouched at the lip of the shallow gully, watching the north. Dozens of split-second flashes brightened the night sky along the crest of the hill above them.

“Can’t,” Sanchez reminded them. “The captain ordered radio silence, remember?”

Pedersen nodded. “Exactly! Which is why we need to use our initiative, just like they trained us to do. Right?” he demanded.

Boyd pulled at his jaw. “Yeah, you’re right.” But then he waved a hand out across the open expanse of snow. “Trouble is, crossing that valley right now looks a lot like suicide to me. If just one bad guy pops up and catches us out there without any cover, we’re fucking toast.”

“That’s why we stick to this streambed,” Pedersen argued. A frozen stream ran along the middle of the shallow, brush-lined depression. It snaked down into the valley and then swung north.

“The sled won’t make it through that rough ground,” Sanchez said. “And you’ve got a busted leg.”

Pedersen grinned up at him. “That’s why you’re going to sling me over your shoulder again, big guy.” He lifted his weapon. “And my rifle, too, this time.” As the team’s designated marksman, Pedersen carried an M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle—a vastly modified and improved version of the old 7.62mm weapon last used in the field by U.S. troops in South Vietnam. When equipped with a telescopic sight, it had an effective range of more than eight hundred yards.

Spetsnaz Major Gennady Korenev risked a quick look up at the hill towering above them and ducked back again. More enemy rounds snapped through the air just over his head. Little geysers of snow and frozen clumps of earth erupted behind him. He scowled. The Americans were better shots than he’d imagined. And, barricaded in their improvised fortress of stone up there on that damned spur, they had a tremendous advantage over his handful of survivors. All he and his troops could make out were the deadly flashes stabbing out of that boulder field—as their rifle and machine-gun fire swept the valley and this barren slope from end to end.