Chapter 42 - The Scent in the Whiteout
The wind down in the ravine was an arctic monster, screaming through the hemlocks at sub-zero temperatures that froze moisture on skin in seconds.
I secured Jax to my chest via a heavy-duty alpine rappelling harness, snapped my carabiner into the winch cable of the tracked carrier, and hit the descent toggle. We dropped fifty feet down the sheer rock face of the gorge, swallowed by the swirling white curtain of snow.
We hit the icy creek bed without a sound.
The roar of Denny Creek rushing beneath thick sheets of shelf ice drowned out our boots against the stone. I unhitched the dog, and Jax dropped low into the powder, his white-and-gray camouflage vest blending seamlessly into the blizzard.
Through my thermal optic, the world was a jagged canvas of deep blue and cold purple.
The four mercenaries were closing in on the rear door of the armored transit van. They wore white alpine winter suits, ballistic helmets, and carried thermite cutting torches to breach the van’s high-yield steel door.
Inside the van, I could pick up three distinct, faint heat signatures—two federal marshals and one witness, huddled together beneath ballistic blankets, their body heat rapidly dropping as the arctic water pooled around their boots.
"They have four minutes before hypothermia takes them," I whispered into my throat mic, though communications were dead, scrambled by the electronic jamming pod mounted on the lead snowmobile.
Jax didn't need a radio command.
He understood terrain better than any human operator. Instead of charging through the open, knee-deep snow of the creek bed where he would be vulnerable to suppressive fire, Jax waded into the freezing torrent of the creek itself.
The shelf ice provided a natural overhang. Moving beneath the jagged ice lip, masked by the thunder of the rushing water, Jax flanked the mercenaries’ blind side, his paws finding purchase on the slick river stones beneath the surface.
He emerged from the ice shelf ten feet behind the rear sentry like a wraith born of the frost.
The young Malinois didn't bark. He launched straight out of the snowdrift, striking the sentry square in the center of his oxygen-rebreather pack.
The impact drove the man forward into the freezing creek with a heavy splash, his carbine flying into the torrent. Before the second merc could turn his weapon light around, Jax pivoted on the ice, his jaws locking onto the man’s knee joint, twisting his massive neck with concussive force.
The sound of snapping bone was sharp and immediate, swallowed by the howling blizzard.
"Ambush! Flank left!" the third operator screamed, raising an assault rifle fitted with a high-power weapon light.
I broke from the tree line, firing three rapid, suppressed shots that shattered the light and dropped the operator into the drift.
The mercenary commander—a hulking figure carrying a heavy tactical shotgun—abandoned his thermite torch, spun on his heel, and saw the black-masked dog standing over his fallen men.
He didn't fire at the dog. He pulled an emergency detonator from his chest rig and clicked the toggle.
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A high-yield seismic charge planted on the frozen rock face fifty yards above the creek erupted with a concussive roar.
The blast fractured the massive overhanging ice wall of the gorge. Thousands of tons of blue glacier ice and packed snow gave way, crashing down into the ravine in a blinding avalanche designed to bury the transit van, the witnesses, and everyone inside it beneath a hundred feet of frozen tomb.
