The Taken: (A Jonathan Quinn Novel Book 16) by Brett Battles

Author:Brett Battles [Battles, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

20

8:27 AM

NARVA, ESTONIA

“Anything?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Jar said.

Up until ninety-four minutes ago, Vassily’s bug had been pinging along nicely, providing continuous data on his location. Then it was like someone had flipped a switch and the signal stopped. No warning, no weakening of the signal first. Just there one second and gone the next. Jar had been trying to reestablish contact ever since.

Up until it vanished, the signal indicated Vassily had been traveling north, along the western edge of the Ural Mountains. Its last position had been less than a hundred kilometers from the Kara Sea, off the Arctic Ocean. Based on the near-constant speed Vassily had been moving in, he must have been on a train. The only problem: there were no tracks in that area on the map.

It took Jar nearly an hour of studying spy satellite images to figure out tracks were indeed there. Whoever had built them had gone to great lengths to hide their existence, because Jar had only been able to identify small stretches, some sections no more than ten meters long. By linking the micro segments, Jar pieced together a route that branched off a known line several hundred kilometers south of where Vassily’s tracker had gone silent. The unseen sections of the route were either camouflaged or ran through tunnels.

At the point where the signal was lost, Vassily’s train had been traveling north steadily at sixty kilometers per hour. Given the approaching Arctic coastline, that was not something it would have been able to maintain much longer. Either it was nearing its stop or would soon turn east or west.

At the other end of the kitchen table, Orlando let out a triumphant “Ha!”

“Find something?” Quinn asked.

“You tell me,” she said.

He moved behind her and examined the satellite image on her screen. It featured a wide expanse of snow-covered ground, broken up by several frozen lakes with similar, roughly oval shapes but, as far as Quinn could tell, nothing unusual. “What am I looking for?”

She pointed at one of the ovals.

“It’s a lake,” he said.

“Is it?”

His brow creased and he leaned in. It certainly looked like a lake. It was the same gray-white ice color as the other lakes.

“Uh, it’s a lake.”

She gave him her patented disappointed-mother frown. “Maybe this will help.”

She clicked her mouse, and the image was replaced by another satellite picture of the same area, only this one had been taken during the summer when there was no snow.

And no lake.

“Last summer?” he asked.

“No. August, three summers ago.”

“Still not getting it. That’s plenty of time for a lake to form.”

“Perhaps, but…”

As she opened another image of the same area, Nate joined them. The new shot looked very much like the wintery first one, the only real difference being the lake in question was only about a quarter of its current size.

“This is from five months after that previous one.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “So we know when the lake was born. What am I missing?”

Orlando rolled her eyes. “You’re not using your head. This is above the Arctic Circle.

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