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"We cauess you know that"

"You're telling me If he'd knoe'd sent a o, the fertilizer would have hit the windmill"

"It still ht if NUMA can't get our man out"

2

Sid Koplin was sure he was dying

His eyes were closed and the blood froht whirled around in Koplin's radually returned, and a spasm of nausea rushed over him and he retched uncontrollably Had he been shot once, or was it twice? He wasn't sure

He opened his eyes and rol

led up onto his hands and knees His head pounded like a jackhaash that split his scalp above the left temple Except for the headache, there was no exterior sensation; the pain had been dulled by the cold But there was no dulling of the agonizing burn on his left side, just below his rib cage, where the second bullet had struck, and he could feel the syrup like stickiness of the blood as it trickled under his clothing, over his thighs and down his legs

A volley of automatic weapons fire echoed down the mountain Koplin looked around, but all he could see was the swirling white snow that hipped by the vicious arctic wind Another burst tore the frigid air He guessed that it cauard h the blizzard in the randoain

All thought of escape had vanished now It was finished He knew he could never make it to the cove where he'd moored the sloop Nor was he in any condition to sail the little twenty-eight-foot craft across fiftyAraphic vessel

He sank back in the snow The bleeding had weakened him beyond further physical effort The Russians ain with Meta Section If he an scraping snow over himself Soon he would be only a small white mound on a desolate slope of Bednaya Mountain, buried forever under the constantly building ice sheet

He stopped a asps and the wind He listened harder, cupping his hands to his ears Just audible through the howling wind he heard a dog bark

"Oh God," he cried silently As long as his body was still war were sure to pick up his scent He sagged in defeat There was nothing left for him but to lie back and let his life ooze away

But a spark deep inside hiht deliriously, he couldn't just lie there waiting for the Russians to take hiy, not a trained secret agent His eared to stand up under intensive interrogation If he lived, they could tear the whole story from him in a matter of hours He closed his eyes as the sickness of failure overcaony

When he opened theain, his field of vision was filled with the head of an ihty beast standing thirty inches at the shoulder, covered by a heavy coat of ely and would have ripped Koplin's throat open if it hadn't been kept in check by the gloved hand of a Soviet soldier There was an indifferent look about the ripping the leash in his left hand while he steadied a e greatcoat that came down to booted ankles, and the pale, expressionless eyes showed no compassion for Koplin's wounds The soldier shouldered his weapon and reached down and pulled Koplin to his feet Then without a word, the Russian began drawing the wounded American toward the island's security post