Kalina was in front of the storehouse, behind the crude cover of a few piled sandbags. Eight submachine-gun cartridge clips lay at her feet, and the hot gun barrel hissed in the snow atop the sandbags. Every time Kalina opened fire, the enemy opposite her would crouch down, the bullets splattering snow in front of them, while the enemy on the other side of the semicircular encirclement would spring up and push a little closer. Now Kalina only had three cartridge clips left. She began to fire single shots, but this tactic only announced to the enemy that she was running out of ammunition. They began to push forward more boldly. The next time Kalina reloaded, she heard a sharp squeaking sound from the thick snow on top of the sandbags. Something flew out and struck her on the right, hard. There wasn’t any pain, just a rapidly spreading numbness, and the heat of blood running down her right flank. She endured, firing the remnants of this clip wildly. When she reached for the last clip on the sandbags, a bullet cut through her forearm. The clip fell to the ground. Her forearm, connected by a last strip of skin, dangled in the air. Kalina got up and went for the storehouse door, a thin trail of blood following her steps. When she pulled open the door, another bullet pierced her left shoulder.

*

Captain Rhett Donaldson’s SEAL team approached the storehouse cautiously. Donaldson and two marines stepped over the Russian sergeant’s body, kicked open the door, and rushed in. They found a single young officer inside.

She was sitting beside their target, Flood’s remote control equipment. One broken forearm hung uselessly from the control desk, the other hand was clenched in her hair. Her blood dripped down steadily, forming little puddles at her feet. She smiled at the American intruders and the row of gun barrels pointing at her, a greeting of sorts.

Donaldson exhaled, but wouldn’t get the chance to inhale: he saw her turn her good hand from her hair to a dark green ovoid object resting on the remote control equipment. She picked it up, dangling it in midair. Donaldson instantly recognized it as a gas bomb, sized small for use on armed helicopters. It was triggered by a laser proximity signal and would explode twice at half a meter aboveground, first to disperse a gaseous explosive, second to trigger the vapor. He couldn’t escape its range now if he were an arrow in flight.

He extended a placating hand. “Calm down, Major, calm down. Let’s not get too hasty here.” He gestured around him, and the marines lowered their guns. “Listen, things aren’t as serious as you might think. You’ll get the finest medical care. You’ll be sent to the best hospitals in Germany and return in the first POW exchange.”