Mammoth Island by Russell James

Author:Russell James [James, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2021-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-three

Sgt. Petrov loved being a sniper.

He never shared this story of his youth with other soldiers, but as a child, he’d studied to play the harp. In a post-Soviet world, his mother had purchased one similar to the one she had played when young, under her own mother’s instruction. Having her son continue in that tradition meant everything to her.

But it turned out to be more than just carrying on tradition. She didn’t just teach him to play, she nurtured his inherent talent. And Petrov had as much of it as his mother. She claimed he had more.

He’d relished the harp for its simplicity and precision. Each string was one note, fine-tuned by the strength of his own touch. And unlike large percussion instruments and much of the brass, the harp could stand alone, shine without accompaniment. All it took to excel was to focus on his own actions.

Conscription had forced him into the Russian Army and required the trading of his harp for an assault rifle. Just as he’d resigned himself to enduring his compulsory military sidetrack, he had been introduced to the position of sniper. Here he could rise above the blunt-force ideology of the Russian infantry and embrace again the concepts of precision and finesse. Each target was a single harp string, each uniquely set up for the kill. He likened that process to deciding exactly how his fingers would pluck a harp string.

An infantryman followed orders and bumbled into committing manslaughter. The sniper made a plan and performed an execution.

His skill with a sniper rifle had gotten him noticed. Recruitment into the Spetsnaz, a military wing of the Russian GRU followed. There he found he wasn’t only good at his job, he loved it.

When he’d been assigned to deploy with General Vatutin, he’d assumed this mission would be no different from any other. He’d been very wrong. Hunting woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers weren’t two of the GRU’s usual tasks, and he was up for neither. Based on a mammoth’s size, his one bullet wasn’t going to even slow them down.

But when he’d gotten this current mission from General Vatutin a few hours ago, he’d relaxed. His orders were to track down some good-old-fashioned human targets.

He first figured out where the Americans would be going. They’d want to escape, and a route down the valley through ice and snow to the frozen sea would be suicide. The Americans would climb, likely to the lake first, then to the flat, open area on the mountainside below the snowline. It was the only place other than the airfield where a helicopter or a plane could land.

He mapped out the likely route a group would take to get to the lake. Then he figured out the fastest one an individual could take. Even if they had a head start, they would have rested for the night before continuing on. He could catch up.

And a few hours into his hunt, he was certain he had caught up. He’d nestled

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