A jumpy guard let loose a long burst with his AK even though the chopper was well out of range. In response, a single rocket shot off one of the winglets and streaked toward the perimeter fence while a heavy machine gun on the opposite side roared to life, spitting a tongue of flame that shot out past the cockpit bubble. Shell casings the size of cigar tubes rained from the weapon as the newly fallen snow between the perimeter fence and the building came alive under the blistering assault of lead.

“Run!” Juan shouted over the hellish din.

To Yuri’s utter astonishment, Cabrillo charged into the maelstrom kicked up by the machine gun as though he were a member of the Light Brigade riding into the Russian guns at Balaclava.

“No matter what, follow me,” the man who called himself Chairman had said, and, to his greater amazement, Yuri let out a full-throated bellow that was unheard over the siren and chopper and still-pounding machine gun and took off after his friend.

The rocket detonated at the base of the fence, throwing up even more snow and clumps of frozen soil. Borodin expected to be cut down at any moment while geysers of snow erupted all around him, tossed high by bullets he had yet to hear cracking past.

Then he felt a small hit to the bottom of his left foot. It wasn’t enough to toss him to the ground, but it did make him stagger. It was the clue he needed to tell him he wasn’t immune to the massive amount of bullets pouring down from the chopper’s machine gun, for, in truth, there were no rounds. The Kamov was firing blanks, and the detonations of snow that created a ten-foot-high fog were small explosive charges that Cabrillo’s team had likely sown during the last snowstorm by simply tossing them over the fence.

But their luck couldn’t last forever. Bullets from autofire by the men in the guard towers began searching them out, the micro supersonic booms ripping the air near his head. Borodin wished Cabrillo wasn’t so soft. Had he planned this escape, the first missiles off the Kamov’s rails would have taken out the guards’ lofty perches. But Juan was different. Though a mercenary, as tough as any, he loathed killing when it wasn’t necessary, even if that put his own life at risk. Juan also didn’t know these men, didn’t know that they were Kenin’s private army, paid more for their loyalty to the admiral than to Mother Russia. They wore the uniforms of their country, but they were no less mercenary than Cabrillo himself.