Page 128 of Stars

Pete and Blake jogged west on a quick recon, returning minutes later, doubled over and panting. “It’s abandoned,” they said. “The Spetsnaz, the Antonov. Everything is gone. The mountain is burning.”

“Fuck.” Ethan kicked at the ground and sent a rock sailing off the mountainside. “We lost him.”

He couldn’t go back to Sergey empty-handed. Fuck, he knew what it felt like when someone tried to kill the man you loved. How hard had Ethan hunted everyone who tried to harm Jack? He’d put them all away, one by one. This was no different, not for Sergey. And after everything Jack and Sergey had been through, had done for each other, Ethan owed him this much.

Bringing down Zeytsev was the only thing Sergey had ever asked of Ethan.

He wasn’t giving up.

He stared east, watching the sky darken, dusk rising from the earth and spreading her inky fingers through the watercolor orange sky. Zeytsev was out there, somewhere. Where would a man on the run go? And how—

“We need to find the Antonov. Those Spetsnaz troops came in on their helos, and they would have left the same way. But the Antonov was Zeytsev’s. It must be how he got here when Ilya ordered him to secure the bunker.” Ethan flinched as he moved. Half of his body was crispy and tight, a low pain humming across his nerves. “We have to track that plane.”

Kilaqqi smiled. “I believe I can assist you.”

“How can you track a plane? Do you see it without your eyes?” Ethan frowned. Was this more shamanic powers he didn’t understand?

“In a way.” Kilaqqi held his confused stare for a beat too long. “Tura air traffic control monitors all of Siberia and into the Far East. Most of our territory is outside the national flight corridors. Air travel stands out in Evenkiysky. If Zeytsev flew east, we will know.”

Ethan’s breath hitched. “Well, that definitely counts as seeing without your eyes. How do we contact them?”

“Our helicopters are equipped with long-range radios to communicate with the tower wherever we are. We can reach them from here, on the mountain.”

“Let’s move out.”

Night had fallen by the time they reached the helo. Their pilot leaned against the hull smoking a cigarette, hiding the glow of the ember in the palm of his hand.

Welby and Ethan followed Kilaqqi to the radio. “Tura tower,” Kilaqqi called. “Tura tower, this isO’ldatwenty-two.”

“Go ahead Njo’njoko,” a scratchy voice came back.

“Do you have any traffic crossing our skies from the Urals?”

Static, for a moment. And then, “Njo’njoko, there is one. An Antonov crossing northeast. Looks like they are headed for the Taymyr.”

“You see?” Kilaqqi winked at Ethan. The moonlight caught the curve of his smile, the light dancing in his eyes. “There is always more than one way to see.”

Ethan smiled and held out his hand to Kilaqqi. “Thank you. I’m glad you came.”

“We can refuel in Tura,” Kilaqqi said. “It’s a long flight to Taymyr.”

* * *

38

Roscosmos

Star City, Russia

“Nothing.”Dan cursed, staring at his laptop. Next to him, Viktoriya Sokolovsky, one of the young flight engineers at Roscosmos, chewed on her pencil. “We can’t raise the ISS.”

Roxanne huddled with Artem Zima, her Russian counterpart as flight director for the mission. Artem was gangly, all arms and legs with a spindly body and a head as large as a balloon, like it had been tacked on as an afterthought. He scowled at his display, at the radio signal warbling in static.

Dead air. No signal.

“It’s like they are not even there,” Zlata Kozlov said. She worked the communications station and had spent the past two hours cycling through every frequency and bouncing signals off Russian satellites as the ISS flew past their orbits. “But we can see them. We are still tracking their orbit.” On one of the two projector screens up front, the ISS arched on a sine curve over a flat display of the earth. This map centered on Russia, with America pushed to the far edges and the Atlantic Ocean chopped in half.

Sergey breathed in slowly. Mission Control washed over and around him, the furious tapping of keyboards, the steady beeps of the radio, the empty whistle and pop over the speakers. Empty air, dead air.