White Hell (A Tanner Novel Book 17) Read online

  WHITE HELL

  A Tanner Novel

  Remington Kane

  Year Zero Publishing

  Contents

  1. Nowhere To Run, No Place To Hide

  2. Polina

  3. No Worries, Mate

  4. What Do You Mean They’re Dead?

  5. Why Aren’t You Wearing Masks?

  6. Half A Brain Between Them

  7. To The Rescue

  8. Lolita

  9. I Am Not A Monkey!

  10. Hole Up

  11. What The Mind Hears, The Heart Ignores

  12. Senseless Violence

  13. Someone Kidnapped My Kidnap Victim

  14. Lone Wolf

  15. Mush!

  16. Peeping Tom

  17. Pay Attention

  18. Not Exactly What I’d Call First-Aid

  19. Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth

  20. Good For The Soul

  21. Whiteout!

  22. Storm’s End

  23. A Case Of Mistaken Identity

  24. Signs Of Life

  25. Tanner At Twelve

  26. Vive La Revolution—Not!

  27. Hero?

  Also by Remington Kane

  About the Author

  1

  Nowhere To Run, No Place To Hide

  Tanner had been lost in an old memory when the trouble began, a pleasant remembrance of childhood.

  He was with Sara Blake and flying over the rugged landscape of Siberia in a single-engine plane. But, in his mind, Tanner had been a boy again, and traveling with his grandfather, Walter Parker, as the two of them flew above the Delaware mountains of Texas.

  He’d been only twelve at the time and looking forward to hunting for deer. He’d gone on similar deer hunting trips with both his father and grandfather, but had been too young to join in the actual hunting.

  However, on this occasion, he wouldn’t just tag along and learn what to do. No, young Cody had paid his dues, had been patient, and would be allowed to participate in the hunt.

  Normally, his father would have left Cody’s twin sisters, Jill and Jessie, with a family friend who was also one of Cody’s teachers, a Mrs. Jennings.

  The twins were best friends with Mrs. Jennings’ daughter, Tonya, but the twins both had the flu. Cody’s father had stayed home to care for Jill and Jessie, and yet, he hadn’t wanted to cancel the planned hunt, and so Cody and his grandfather went on the trip without him.

  They were flying on a large ranch in the Texas panhandle that gave hunting tours on its property. The ranch was known for its mule deer, and many a trophy buck had been shot on the land. The twelve-passenger aircraft was loud, but they would only be in the air for a few minutes as they flew up to a higher altitude.

  “Are you excited?” his grandfather asked. Walter Parker was a tall, lean man with a weathered, yet still handsome face. He looked younger than his age and had been widowed for over a year, after Cody’s grandmother had passed away in a car accident.

  Cody answered his grandfather by smiling and pointing down at the snow-covered landscape. His excitement and joy over the upcoming adventure were plain to see. Although, there was another reason for his smile, it was a girl, and the young blond was the most beautiful thing Cody had ever seen.

  His grandfather saw that Cody had trouble keeping his eyes off the girl, who was on the trip with her mother. Walter Parker had been eyeing the mother. She was blond as well, mid-forties and, according to the grapevine at the lodge, divorced and available.

  “You like that girl, don’t you?”

  Cody was surprised his interest had been so obvious, but he nodded, that yes, he sure liked the way the girl looked.

  “Her name is Genevieve and she’s fifteen.”

  “Fifteen?” Cody said.

  “Yep, and that might be a little old for you, seeing as how you’re only twelve, but my, she is a beauty.”

  Cody smiled.

  “I’m gonna talk to her when we land.”

  “That’s a good idea. You never know, she might have a thing for younger men.”

  “Why the smile?” Sara asked. She had to speak loudly to be heard over the small plane’s rumbling engine.

  Tanner came out of his memory and pointed at the terrain below, which was thick with trees and coated with a layer of snow, much like the Texas hills had been in his memory.

  “I was thinking about a hunting trip I took when I was a boy, and about a girl I met there.”

  “She must have been pretty if you’re still thinking about her.”

  “My grandfather said she, ‘Made grown men wish they were younger and young boys wish they were older.’”

  “It sounds like the girl was a knockout,” Sara said.

  “Oh yeah, and she wanted nothing to do with a twelve-year-old boy, which is what I was back—”

  Tanner had glanced out the window again as he spoke, and what he saw perplexed him. He looked right, left, then, out the plane’s small rear window.

  “We’re going the wrong way. I studied a map before the trip. There should be several towns visible, except there’s nothing down there but trees.”

  Their pilot was an amiable older man named Yaromir. They had hired him to fly them to the city of Novosibirsk, from where they’d been staying in Barnaul, Siberia. It was a short plane ride, covering a little more than a hundred miles.

  There was a famed zoo in Novosibirsk that had polar bears and a liger. A liger was the hybrid of a tiger and a lioness. Sara had been looking forward to the trip and was eager to see the polar bears.

  “Yaromir, you’re going the wrong way,” Tanner said.

  “I know sir, but I don’t have a choice. They said they would hurt my daughter.”

  Sara didn’t speak Russian, so Tanner explained what Yaromir had relayed to him. Afterward, he spoke to the pilot again.

  “Who is ‘They?’”

  “Five large men, all Australian, and an American too, but he was normal sized, and older.”

  “Did you get any names?”

  “I heard one of the Australians call the American man, Smith.”

  “What did Smith, look like?”

  Yaromir gave a description of Smith that could have fit any number of men, leaving Tanner no closer to knowing who was after him and Sara. However, when Tanner repeated the description to Sara in English, a flash of intuition gave her the answer.

  “I’ll bet you Smith is Dan Matthews,” Sara said. “Matthews speaks Russian and must have fled here to hide from the authorities.”

  “Where did Smith tell you to take us?” Tanner asked the pilot.

  “They said to head south into the wilderness. Once there, I’m to land in the first large clearing I see and wait for them.”

  Tanner cursed under his breath, looked out the rear window again, and saw what appeared to be a helicopter. It was closing in fast.

  Sara saw it too, and understood what was happening.

  “They’re following us, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” Tanner said, then, he spoke to the pilot in Russian. “Yaromir, the men who threatened your daughter are behind us.”

  “Yes sir, in a helicopter, and I’m so sorry sir, madam. But… maybe they just want to speak with you, da?”

  “Land at the first spot you see. They don’t want to talk. They’re planning on shooting us down.”

  The old man shook his head in disbelief.

  “That would be insane.”

  Tanner stared out the back window once more and saw that the chopper was closer. Although he couldn’t be certain, the helicopter appeared to have no door attached on one side. That would be about right if they were planning to shoot at them.
r />   “Yaromir, take us down now. Land in a field, atop a frozen lake, anything, but do it now or they’ll make us crash.”

  “What? Oh, hold on, we’ll go down in a great rush.”

  The nose of the plane dipped and the rest of the small craft followed. Tanner and Sara felt their safety belts tighten as they were made to lean forward. Up ahead was a frozen lake that looked long enough to land on, but the gunfire began when they were still a thousand feet above it.

  Yaromir issued forth a prayer in Russian as he fought to land the plane. The chopper flew past while spitting more bullets. Tanner only glimpsed a large blond man who smiled a huge grin. He was holding a semi-auto and firing at them.

  Yaromir let out a yelp as blood sprayed the windshield, but the old man stayed with the controls and gave it his best.

  However, his best wasn’t good enough.

  The aircraft came down hard atop the frozen lake. The plane’s propeller took a chunk out of the ice, leaving a hole behind. Then, the craft bounced on its bent wheels. After traveling nearly fifty feet, it came down again and shoved its mangled nose through the ice, and as it did so, Sara screamed in pain.

  Tanner had released his seatbelt and covered Sara with his own body when the shooting began, but a piece of the wheel assembly broke through the plane’s floor and smashed into her left knee. Thankfully, the metal was blunt, not sharp, but the impact had been great.

  “Are you injured?” Tanner asked.

  When Sara looked at him, she saw that his left arm was bleeding near the shoulder from a cut caused by a broken window. In the pilot’s seat, Yaromir was dead, and his sightless eyes were staring into space.

  “I hit my knee on something, but I can walk.”

  Tanner kicked the door open.

  “We have to take cover behind the engine block. We’d never make it into the woods before they’d cut us down, and there’s nothing but a sheer rock wall the other way.”

  They tumbled out of the busted plane as, a short distance away, the chopper touched down on the ice.

  Five men jumped out and headed their way, while the chopper’s pilot stayed with his craft.

  As Yaromir said, they were large men. They were also armed with enough firepower to shred what was left of the plane to pieces.

  The most imposing one was blond and loaded with muscle. Despite the frigid temperature, he was wearing a black sleeveless T-shirt, and displayed many tattoos. When he spoke, his voice betrayed his Australian roots.

  “Hey over there, Tanner, ain’t it? Well, mate, it looks like you’ve reached the end of the line. You’ve got nowhere to run and no place to hide, so send out that good looking sheila and die like a man.”

  Tanner listened to the man with one ear, literally, as the other ear was pressed hard against his shoulder. He was straining, as he reached inside a gap that allowed access to the small storage compartment on the belly of the plane.

  The lower level of the plane was submerged in water. Tanner and Sara were perched on the lip of the jagged hole in the ice that the plane had made after it bounced. They were crouched low and staying behind the engine, as it offered their only cover.

  Tanner had removed some of their luggage, but the most important bag was difficult to reach. Its weight caused it to slide back into the far corner of the compartment.

  With a grunt of satisfaction, Tanner gripped a handle and removed what he’d been reaching for. It was the bag that held his weapons and ammo.

  After the zoo trip, they had planned to fly to Moscow on a private jet, then back to the United States, and so their luggage was with them.

  “Speak up, mate!” the blond said. “And by the way, my name is Brian. I guess you should know the name of the bloke that’s gonna kill ya.”

  “Brian?” Tanner said.

  “Yeah mate?”

  “I’ll kill all of you.”

  There was laughter from the men, followed by Brian’s command.

  “Light ‘em up!”

  Five guns blasted away. Glass shattered, metal ruptured, and ricocheting rounds buried themselves in seats and the corpse of the pilot, Yaromir.

  Other bullets chewed at the ice and sent splinters of it scattering in all directions before the gunfire ceased. If not for the bulk of the engine protecting Tanner and Sara, the barrage would have been lethal.

  Sara wanted to scream, but she kept it in. Still, she was trembling. Tanner felt her shivering as he held her, and knew it was caused by more than the frigid air that surrounded them.

  Sara gazed about, as she looked for a way to escape.

  There was a rise of stone behind them, while trees were visible in the other directions, visible, but too far away to reach. If she and Tanner made a run for it, they would be cut to pieces by Brian and his friends.

  And while they were both armed, they had to expose themselves to fire their weapons, which left them vulnerable. Then, there was the cold, which was another factor, and nothing prevented the helicopter pilot from going off to get more men, or perhaps joining the fight.

  As tears filled her eyes, Sara looked at Tanner.

  “We’re going to die.”

  He kissed her.

  “I won’t let them hurt you.”

  Sara stared at him, incredulous that he could be so calm. Then, the fear left her, and she nodded once.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot who I was with.”

  “I will kill them.”

  “Yes, although, I’ll be damned if I know how you’ll do it.”

  Tanner’s eyes narrowed as he looked in Brian’s direction.

  “It will be done with great pleasure.”

  2

  Polina

  In the city of Novosibirsk, Pavel Krasotkin approached the chauffeur of a limousine with a purposeful stride.

  Like the chauffeur, Pavel was wearing a dark suit under a black wool coat, but also had on a fake beard that was made to look like that of the chauffeur, a man named Stas. Above the beard was a pair of dark sunglasses, even though the day was overcast with ominous clouds that warned of an approaching storm.

  Stas carried a gun and was a karate and judo expert. He had finished a late lunch and was on his way to pick up his charge at the private school she attended.

  Although Stas was a limo driver, he was also a bodyguard. He had been trained in self-defense and held a black belt, while having also attained the fourth Dan level, which is called Yon Dan.

  None of that training helped him in the least when Pavel Krasotkin attacked him. Pavel was an expert in a martial art called Combat Sambo, which was an amalgam of different disciplines. He was also lightning fast, dexterous, and strong.

  Pavel took Stas down with a leg sweep that was too quick for the eye to follow. After slamming a gloved fist into the man’s throat, Pavel smashed Stas’ head against the ground.

  Stas, who was balding, but powerfully built, struggled to stay conscious while reaching for his gun. Before he could clear the weapon from its holster, Pavel ended the battle by breaking the man’s neck. He gave Stas’ head a vicious twist with one arm while immobilizing his neck with the other.

  Several patrons of the restaurant were in the parking lot, having just finished their meal. They gawked at Pavel as he calmly picked up the chauffeur’s cap, but then ran back inside the restaurant when Pavel claimed Stas’ gun.

  The keys to the limo were in Stas’ right front pocket. Pavel removed them even as the man took his last gasping breath.

  Two minutes later, Pavel was driving up to an unmanned gate at the rear of a private school.

  The limo was equipped with a sophisticated barcode that was read by a scanner, and a pair of wrought-iron gates parted and let Pavel onto the property.

  He spotted the girl easily, although the young teen was dressed the same as those around her. All of them were wearing the uniform of the Russian Girl Scout, dark blue slacks with a blouse of a lighter blue.

  They also wore ties that bore red, white, and blue stripes. The ties were held toge
ther by a brass clasp, which had the Girl Scouts’ insignia stamped upon it.

  The girl, Polina, also had many patches sewn onto her blouse, which were signs of merit and honor, and she was easily the most beautiful of the girls.

  Polina’s blond hair glistened in the sun while her pigtails made her look adorable.

  Pavel sighed, he was not happy about having to abduct the child, and would find the necessary act of killing her to be most distasteful. However, he would commit both heinous crimes, because it served a greater purpose.

  A teacher broke up the gathering by pointing to her watch and reminding the girls that they had a Girl Scout meeting to attend. Each of the girls went to their respective rides, most of which were other limousines.

  Pavel had been planning Polina’s abduction for weeks and was aware of her habits. So, he was not surprised when Polina approached with her head down as she looked at her phone.

  She was also carrying her jacket under her arm, knowing that the interior of the limo would be warm. Pavel, at her age, had rarely been warm with anything other than the heat of an open flame. He had also never ridden in any vehicle made after his birth, much less a chauffeur driven limousine.

  As was another of her habits, before getting inside the limo, Polina looked up with a bright smile at her driver.

  “Hi Stas.”

  The smile disappeared, to be replaced by a look of confusion that shown in her large green eyes.

  “You’re not Stas.”

  Pavel jabbed her in the arm with the hypodermic needle he held. Polina’s knees grew weak as her mouth went slack. He tumbled her into the rear of the limo, looked around, and saw that no one was paying him any attention.

  The teacher who had reminded the girls of their meeting had dropped a folder, and papers were floating everywhere in the day’s strong breeze. If any of those papers belonged to Polina, the teacher could let the breeze take them.

  Young Polina would never return to school.

  The beautiful girl was out cold and the drug would see that she stayed that way for some time. Pavel maneuvered the long vehicle into line behind others of its kind, many of which ferried about the future leaders of Russia.