Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist Aftermath by Peter Telep Read Free Book Online Page B

answered with three rounds, the clicks barely echoing
     as she sprang up and saw he was down, his head blossoming with blood. The other two
     rounds had struck him in the chest, but he was wearing a vest, probably an old Level
     IIIA. He was middle-aged and former military, judging from his weapon, crew cut, and
     tattoo on his wrist. She snatched up his 9mm pistol, an MP-443 Grach, the latest standard
     issue military sidearm with a seventeen-round magazine. She tucked the pistol into
     her belt and winked at the dead man. That he’d been killed by a woman had probably
     annoyed him to no end. She’d bet on it. If he would’ve known she was just the daughter
     of a simple schoolteacher and car transporter from Vladivostok—not some assassin prodigy
     raised by a military family—he’d feel even worse.
    Three to go. She raced back through the intersecting tunnel, the group’s footfalls
     unmistakable ahead. The tunnel grew narrower, the concrete support structures turning
     to wooden beams that resembled railroad ties for a long section, the floor speckled
     with rat feces.
    Nadia was wearing a strong perfume that stood out sharply, and the Snow Maiden reached
     another intersection where for a moment she thought she’d have to rely on only her
     sense of smell until a slight thump to the right set her off again toward two more
     intersections.
    They were staging another ambush. She could feel it.
    Suddenly, dead silence, only her footfalls.
    She stopped, waited, then shifted to the wall and crouched down, slipping her phone
     into her leather jacket’s inner breast pocket. She let her eyes readjust.
    With both hands, she clutched her pistol and aimed for the intersection.
    Still nothing . . .
    Back in the car, on the way here, Boris had been smoking a cigarette and asking why
     they called her the Snow Maiden. She’d never worked with him before, and it’d been
     interesting to explain it to him, even as she was plotting his death.
    Snegurochka was the Snow Maiden in Russian folklore. In one tale she was the daughter
     of Spring and Frost. She fell in love with a shepherd, but when her heart warmed,
     she melted. In another narrative, falling in love transformed her into a mortal who
     would die. In a third story she was the daughter of an old couple who created her
     from snow. She leapt over a fire and melted.
    Major Viktoria Kolosov felt a special attachment to the character that stemmed from
     something deep in her subconscious. Never warm your heart? In this business, maybe
     so.
    She was holding her breath now, thinking about the single round left in her magazine,
     the spare six-round mag still tucked in her hip pocket, and the bodyguard’s Grach
     pressing against the small of her back. She should change guns now but feared making
     even the slightest movement.
    The shadows seemed to collect on the left side of the intersection, and then she saw
     the silhouette of a head peering around the corner.
    She fired, a spark leaping off the wall, damn it. There wasn’t even time to curse.
     She was already rolling across the floor while reaching into her waistband for the
     Grach. By the time she came out of her roll, she had the pistol and was raising it
     while the bodyguard returned fire, three rounds booming and stitching across the floor,
     extending from her ghost to her current position hunkered down at the opposite wall.
    Going asymmetric in a gunfight was not a technique for amateurs or veterans turned
     bodyguards, men too often married to their conventional tactics. She proved that to
     this oaf by sensing his pause to check fire.
    She sprinted straight up the tunnel in the pitch darkness, spun right, and caught
     the whites of his eyes as he was just lifting his gun.
    Simultaneously, she grabbed his pistol and shot him in the head.
    Not a half second later, she dropped to the floor as the guy behind her, the guy whose
     curse of surprise had given him away, fired above her head.
    With her chin