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“Keep heading west. The highway must be close.”
Mark wrapped a steady arm around her shoulders to help her stay balanced. The pain alone revealed more than she wanted to know, and she avoided viewing the injury. Hot tears coated her cheeks, but she concentrated her waning energy on traversing the woods. Back in the cell, the plan to find the highway seemed straightforward. Escape, run, and get help—a simple plan. The reality proved infinitely more difficult than she anticipated.
The terrain leveled out, and she and Mark curved around a group of trees into another wooded patch. Realizing any tree or thicket could be hiding their captors, she grew more paranoid with every step. She peeked over her shoulder at the clearing they’d left, and she felt her heartbeat pounding inside her head.
A familiar figure carrying a raised handgun raced in their direction.
“Damn it. Alexi’s gaining on us.” Her injury limited how far and fast she could cover the rugged terrain, and given she was falling behind Mark’s pace, she feared she might need to be carried.
“Go faster.” Breathless and wheezing, Mark leveraged his arm to help drag her along.
“Crap.” Hissing, she summoned more adrenaline to power her body forward. Images of Sergey fueled enough anger to keep pushing ahead, but the burst of energy quickly drained away.
A gunshot rang out, and the bullet torpedoed a nearby tree and shattered its bark. Any remaining safety they had was vanishing. Another gunshot sounded, but this one wasn’t as loud.
“Goddamn it.” Mark grimaced and extracted Sergey’s gun from his waistband. “We’re getting shot at from multiple directions.”
Observing his awkward weapon handling and perplexed frown, Tess recognized his discomfort holding the gun. She leaned over and clicked off the gun’s safety in one decisive motion. “The international signal for help. A burst of three sounds in any form of noise. Five seconds between each shot. Do it.”
“Nothing to lose.” Pointing the gun toward the sky, Mark pulled the trigger and flinched when the first shot rang out. After five seconds, another shot. Five more seconds, then the third shot.
Each blast sounded like a bomb exploding across the sky compared to the forest's silence. With luck, someone, anyone, would rescue them.
Far across the clearing, Alexi approached within a couple of hundred yards of closing the gap on them.
Time ran out. Recalling the active-shooter safety drills her father taught her, she prioritized their remaining options: run, hide, or fight. “I can’t run faster, so we need to hide. We’ve got to avoid a firefight at all costs.” Meanwhile, she prayed more ammo remained in the bullet chamber, or else they’d have no way to defend themselves.
Mark pointed at a thick tree grove and guided her to the densest section, where they both took cover.
The wind carried the faint sound of voices coming from the opposite direction, and Tess panicked. Was Yuri in the woods, too? If all three gunmen surrounded them, no escape path remained. Given her crucified leg, she couldn’t go much farther. As the voices grew louder, the green walls of the forest seemed to shrink around her and block the gray sky.
“Hey, we heard your three shots. Does somebody need help? We’re two hunters, and I can’t see where you are. Give us a shout, eh?” The voices got louder.
“They’re Canadian.” The telltale “eh” sound sent her hopes soaring, and she beamed as she and Mark crouched in the tree thicket, listening.
“Yeah, but Alexi will shoot them if they get any closer.” He held a fist at his mouth and wheezed.
“I’ll warn them.” Behind a tree deep in the thicketed grove, Tess perched on her uninjured leg. “Be careful. There’s a sniper out here. Take cover,” she called out at the top of her lungs. Immediately, she ducked to the ground and grabbed Mark’s arm to tug him down, then covered her head to avoid stray gunfire once flat on the ground.
“We hear you. We’re on the lookout,” one of the hunters shouted back.
Tess surmised the Canadian men must be near their hiding spot and prayed Alexi hadn’t spotted them yet. She lifted her head a couple of inches above the muddy ground to search the clearing.
Alexi dashed into her view but stopped with his rifle in the air. He rotated a full circle and appeared to search the trees.
“Give me the gun,” she whispered to Mark.
Mark's lips formed the shape of a question, but he handed over Sergey’s handgun.
Without hesitation, Tess clicked the safety off and crawled forward through the underbrush, scratching her stomach and elbows. With the gun in one hand, she nestled into the dirt and double-checked to ensure the thicket obscured their location. Although she hadn’t fired a gun in years, she felt the muscle memory of shooting reactivate, a benefit earned from a decade of target practice with her dad.
Another gunshot rang out in the woods.
“Stand down and disarm at once.” Unseen, one of the hunters roared into the woods, and the sound echoed across the treetops.
“You, the man in black. Drop. Your. Gun.” A different voice shouted this time, the other hunter.
“Nyet,” the gunman shouted and marched forward with his rifle on his shoulder.
