The chopper dropped lower and lower until both men could simply step out of the loops and duck under the wind screaming at them from the whirling blades. Borodin expected the Kamov would continue to the ground, but instead the engine’s whine increased, and once again the ungainly aircraft was shooting eastward, leaving the two men alone in a frozen wasteland. He knew that they’d both be dead of hypothermia within the next hour, if not sooner. He also knew that Juan Cabrillo hadn’t yet finished dipping into his bag of tricks.

Borodin pointed to where the helicopter had vanished around a cragged tor. “Decoy, yes.”

Juan switched from Russian, one of the four languages he spoke, but said in Russian-accented English to mock Borodin’s syntax, “Decoy, da.”

“What about the pilot? Will he be okay?”

“Why wouldn’t he be? He’s sitting at a console aboard the Oregon.”

Juan enjoyed the range of emotions that played across Yuri’s wind-chapped face as he absorbed that information. Incomprehension morphed into understanding, and then horror at the implications, and then outrage at the potential consequence.

“You mean while we were whizzing by mountains and skimming the ground, there was no pilot? He could have killed us while he sat safe and secure on your ship?”

Juan couldn’t help but taunt him a bit more. “My pilot, Gomez Adams, so nicknamed for a dalliance he had with a woman who looked remarkably like Carolyn Jones, the original Morticia, had less than a week to practice tele-flying the Kamov after we bought it and installed the remote controls.”

“You’re mad.”

“Barking,” Juan agreed with a grin. “Come on.”

He led them a short distance into the trees, where Cabrillo’s team had another surprise waiting. It was a Lynx Rave RE 800R snowmobile painted a matte white that perfectly matched the snow. With its massive caterpillar tread and double runner skis, it was the perfect machine for crossing any arctic terrain. Bundled next to it was a bag containing helmets and white snowsuits, one helmet battery-powered and the other able to jack into the Lynx’s electrical system, as well as insulated boots and gloves.

“Put these on. There’s a chopper at the prison, and they’ll soon be in pursuit.”

As they dressed Yuri said, “That was why we didn’t change direction when we flew off. You wanted them to follow the Kamov.”

“And while they head east in pursuit of an empty chopper, we go north to where the Oregon’s waiting for us.”

“How long?”

Juan threw a leg over the sled’s saddle seat and flicked the 800cc Rotax engine to life. Over the whine of the two-stroke he replied, “About an hour.”

He jacked a cord dangling from his helmet into a satellite phone that had been secreted with the rest of the gear.