Felix Orlov listened intently to the distant gunfire, detecting a shift beyond the significant drop in intensity. Or maybe his judgment had been impaired by his impatience. This whole thing was taking entirely too long. It was obvious that the team he’d been sent to ambush had hunkered down among the cabins, content to exchange fire with the group that had been assigned to scare them into a hasty retreat.

If the target team was as good as Pichugin’s proxy alleged, they would be able to assess what stood in their way, quickly determining the odds of pushing through—and what it would cost them. This team had clearly made the decision to slug it out at the camp, which meant there would be no ambush. Not here, at least.

More gunfire, this time definitely coming from a slightly different direction. He hit his radio button.

“Oleg. Is the direction of the gunfire moving, or am I imagining things?” asked Felix.

“It’s shifting to the right,” replied Oleg.

“Sounds like a one-sided battle,” said Lashev, the team’s sniper. “I don’t hear any more suppressed shots.”

Something was off. He removed his satellite phone and hit redial on the number that had called him at the hangar. After several ring tones, he ended the call. Ridiculous. Why wasn’t anyone passing him information?

“Moving fast, too,” added Lashev.

Felix scanned the forest ahead of them with a handheld infrared scope, finding nothing. He pointed it in the new direction of gunfire, still coming up empty. The action was too far away to detect with a portable thermal imaging device. He checked the Garmin Foretrex strapped to his wrist to get an idea of the direction of the gunfire. Almost due west, when it should be coming from the southwest. Shit.

“They’re headed for the helicopters,” he said over the radio net. “One of them must be a pilot.”

“Why would they bring a pilot on a direct-action mission?” asked Oksana.

“I don’t know, but why the fuck else would they be headed for the helicopters?” said Felix. “Valerie. Oksana. We’re headed to the helicopters. All-out sprint.”

“Our orders haven’t changed,” said Oksana.

“Our orders are to kill that team,” said Felix. “And that’s what I intend to do. Oleg. If they show up along the planned ambush route for some bizarre reason, take down as many as you can and radio me immediately. We’ll flank the survivors.”

“Understood,” said Oleg, not sounding too enthusiastic about the decision.

Felix pressed a few buttons on his wrist-mounted GPS unit to select the waypoint he’d inputted when they first landed—and took off at a full sprint. At this point, he’d be lucky if they arrived in time to stop the team from stealing one of the helicopters, but he had to try. As he ducked under branches and dodged trees, another thought hit him like a hammer. The machine guns.