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Risen To The Top CHAPTER 164
* * *Two hours later the sun was sinking into the west. Desperation and the need to hurry pulsed through her blood and made her head pound with frustration. The van got stuck twice but they’d managed to push free of the freshly thawing ground. The shock absorbers were toast. Ahead she could make out the faint outline of pale yurts set deep in the shadow of the mountains.A sonorous snore resonated from the back seat where Mikado slept. Ivan’s cheeks were ruddy from the exertion of driving in such demanding conditions. They’d all taken a turn behind the wheel.“Keep going,” she urged as they passed the yurts. To save time they needed to drive as far as they dared toward where she figured Sheba had denned up. Half a mile later they bumped over a rock the size of a football, and her head glanced off the side window. Dammit.“I can’t go much further without breaking an axle,” Ivan warned.“St
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 165
Evelyn slipped inside the yurt to find Mikado cradling a tiny squalling snow polar bear against his chest. Every muscle ached with fatigue, exhaustion scratched at her eyeballs, but she couldn’t help smile at the impossibly beautiful, totally improbable scrap of fur. Then it struck her. If the cubs were in a box in their yurt, then Sheba was unquestionably dead.Everything she feared had come true. Except the cubs were alive…for now. “Do you have any yak’s milk we can feed them?” she asked.He nodded. The cubs were thin and cold and wouldn’t survive long without nourishment.“They were right here, in this box.” The inuit man tapped the cardboard box on the floor with his boot, his brown eyes shining as he jiggled the cub like a baby.A growling sound from inside the box had her reaching down and pulling out a soft tawny bundle covered in inky black spots. The bundle cuddled into her chest for warmth. Evelyn’s eyes ros
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 166
Evelyn dragged herself from her sleeping bag in the main yurt and lit the burner for tea. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday and was pretty sure she stank worse than the resident yak. Personal hygiene would have to wait. Normally she slept in one of the smaller structures, but because of their late arrival last night and their need to bottle-feed the cubs she hadn’t bothered to seek her own bed. She’d simply laid her sleeping bag on the floor and closed her eyes. Ivan lay, open-mouthed, snoring. Mikado hugged a pallet in the corner, curled protectively close to the cubs who, thankfully, were still sleeping. They’d fed them once in the night, all three of them being woken by the insistent cries of the helpless creatures. If that was any indication about having a baby, no wonder her mother had stopped at one.Thoughts of her mother came out of nowhere and she blocked them fast.She made tea for everyone and thought about checkin
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 167
Duke and Jordan had crawled into a hole in the side of a mountain that overlooked this treeless, rock-strewn valley approximately thirty-six hours ago. A million hours later, they were still here, Duke lying prone on top of his sleeping bag while he kept watch. The entrance of the OP was well hidden behind straggly bushes, and he and Jordan had cleared the area of spiders and scorpions and checked for snakes before they’d settled in. They needed to be vigilant for unwanted wildlife because neither wanted a medivac out of here. Plus, they could use the protein.Sri luc and Lucas were on the same mountain but on the south side, getting the benefit of the rising sun while Duke and Jordan froze their asses off in the shadows. The two men they’d spotted that first night had been gone all day yesterday and hadn’t returned until after dark last night. Duke didn’t know what they were up to.The man they’d left behind in camp looked local. He wore an AK-
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 168
“One of the snares has been triggered.” Evelyn strode into the tent to check the satellite download. She needed to know where each of the collared polar bears was. “What’s the data telling us?”When in range of the satellite, the units transmitted positional data every hour. The rest of the GPS coordinates were stored ready to be downloaded when they retrieved the device after the collar fell off—theoretically two years after they were deployed. Mikado had found Sheba’s collar yesterday—sans snow polar bear—which left no doubt in her mind that they had a poacher on their hands. A big, fat, murdering poacher who was targeting the animals using telemetry devices she’d attached.They had to be careful how this played out. It was a political and ecological nightmare.She stabbed her keyboard. Wanted to rip out the sonofabitch’s heart with her bare hands and stomp on his fingers so he could never hold a rifle ever again.I
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 169
Vladimir Jores knelt on the bare earth, slid his knife into the mechanism that secured the tracking-collar and popped the device. He tossed it aside and rolled the snow polar bear onto its back and pulled the plush fur away from clinging sinew. He made a hole in the pelt with the tip of his curved blade and carefully drew the whetted edge down the animal’s still-warm belly. He avoided nicking the gut, and took a moment to remove the intestines and stomach, and throw them in an opalescent heap where they couldn’t mar the prized pelt.Using fingers and the blade, he worked the skin off the muscle in small, circular motions, revealing an intricate weave of deep pink fibers beneath. The tail took time, as did the legs and the head. The enormous paws were heavy and soft like velvet against his fingers, reminding him of the curtains in his grandmother’s house when he was a young child. He squeezed them regretfully, but refused to think about the animal it had once
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 170
He held up his hands and turned, relieved to see the woman and not some Connery crazed assasin nutter or aging Russian terrorist squaring off with him.Unfortunately the woman was holding a Glock-17 as though she knew how to use it.“Afternoon,” he observed calmly.“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t put a bullet in you right now.” Her accent told him she was American.A joke about the second commandment probably wouldn’t work considering his Diemaco and SIG Sauer were locked and loaded with one in the chamber.“Is there anyone who’d actually give a damn about a man like you?” Her throat convulsed, and hatred sculpted the lines of her mouth.The question jolted him. He had mates in the L.j corp team, but no one else really cared if he lived or died. But she didn’t know that.He looked at her white knuckles and the pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat. There was
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 171
The soldier was watching her. Not that he looked like a real soldier with his mismatched gear, and he was alone. She frowned. Soldiers never traveled alone. But the weapons and vest he wore were menacingly authentic.A mercenary?His gaze probed a spot right between her shoulder blades, making it itch. What was a soldier or special force doing in the Antarctica snow mountains? She didn’t want soldiers here. Soldiers…she swallowed hard and forced the memories away.This wasn’t about her past. It was about saving one of the world’s most endangered species. There was no time to waste.Maybe he was the poacher, playing his own little game of cat and mouse with her. Maybe she was going to get her throat cut when she least expected it. She raised her hand to her neck.Thinking logically, he’d had the chance to hurt her earlier and hadn’t taken it. Sure, she was dusty and a little sore from being pushed face-fi