. . the landscape looked as wintery and uninhabited as any he’d seen in North America. He studied the Rand McNally map of Russia he’d purchased before leaving Anchorage and watched the GPS tick off the miles and coordinates, marking his position. Blindfold me, he thought, then uncover my eyes and I wouldn’t know Siberia from Alaska, because the vastness looked so much alike.Then he saw the Kolyma River and the wintertime smoke of a settlement named Balygytschan on a tributary by the same name. He estimated they were about two hundred miles north of Magadan, the old prison town on the Sea of Okhotsk.Magadan had been the cruelest of all the communist prison camps, or the gulags as most people called them, for more than sixty years. Gold had been discovered, and Stalin had ordered the KGB to work the mines with slave labor. None of the later premiers had ever felt more merciful and millions disappeared, never to be seen again. The hills around town were full of mass graves, leaving Hitler’s death camps pale in comparison. The Soviets had run Magadan with even crueler mastery than the Nazis had shown in World War Two.His memory of Russian history, combined with Sasha’s fear of her own countrymen, troubled him. In addition, he’d seen the dark side of Russia while surfing the internet back in Anchorage. The Russians had always let dictators govern them, whether it had been the Romanovs or premiers like Lenin and Stalin. Something weird made them choose bloodthirsty leaders, even at the cost of their lives. That enduring mystery meant danger for his friends and him—death would be the penalty if they were ever captured. He wished he’d more fully beaten that fact into Molly’s brain before she’d left for Moscow, and wondered why Simon hadn’t done so himself. He had the closer relationship with her. Had they thrown her to the wolves?A higher range of mountains stood ahead, called the Chrebet Tscherskogo, and he steered midway between two peaks, shown on his map as almost 2,500 meters high. Again, he was struck with the similarity of Siberia to Alaska. This was ground Simon and he could live in if they were forced to flee.Not many men and women could stay alive in the Arctic, which meant they might have the edge in an escape. They had honed their survival skills on purpose and could easily run and hide. Guerrillas had often proven superior to whole armies, and the Russians had learned that bitter lesson in Afghanistan. The Majahideen had kicked their butts for years in a wilderness just like Siberia. He believed they could do the same, though on a much smaller scale.A road flashed under his wings. Civilization. Danger. He quickly snapped his microphone button twice, warning Simon, and looked for a place to land. Now they must change their tactics. They had just crossed the primitive highway running north to the Indigirka River, which, in turn, ran north a thousand miles to the East Siberian Sea. Another road coming east from Yakutsk, then south to Magadan, was one hundred miles ahead. Seeing an alpine meadow, he glided onto the snow, and stopped.Simon landed alongside him, cut his engine, and opened his door. “I see you’ve found the Kolyma road. Damn, it’s great seeing some trees again.” His eyes beamed.They had reached the northern tree line, which roughly marked the boundary between the Far East and Siberia itself in the last hour. They could finally build a fire, presuming they kept the blaze small. He searched for a spruce tree to help break up the smoke.“Help me find somewhere to camp and let’s get some sleep. We’ll fly the next leg with our night glasses. We’re almost halfway to Baikal, and I’m worn out.”“At least no one has a clue we’re here,”
