Nikolai, p.1
Nikolai, page 1
Books in This Series:
Magnus, Book 1
Rogan, Book 2
Egan, Book 3
Barret, Book 4
Whalen, Book 5
Nikolai, Book 6
Teegan, Book 7
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Prologue
Day 1 Evening
Day 1 Late Evening
Day 2 Wee Morning Hours
Day 2 Morning
Day 2 Late Morning
Day 2 Dinner
Day 3 Early Morning
Day 3 After Breakfast
Day 3 Midmorning
Day 3 Evening
Day 3 Night
Day 4 Breakfast
Day 4 Afternoon
Day 4 Evening
Day 5 Early Morning
Epilogue
About Teegan
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Deep in the permafrost of the Arctic, a joint task force, comprised of over one dozen countries, comes together to level up their winter skills. A mix of personalities, nationalities, and egos bring out the best—and the worst—as these globally elite men and women work and play together. They rub elbows with hardy locals and a group of scientists gathered close by …
One fatality is almost expected with this training. A second is tough but not a surprise. However, when a third goes missing? It’s hard to not be suspicious. When the missing man is connected to one of the elite Maverick team members and is a special friend of Lieutenant Commander Mason Callister? All hell breaks loose …
Nikolai had been at the camp almost since the beginning. His friend had been one of the first to go missing. Although he’d had more specialist arctic training than anyone else in the camp, something had still gone wrong. He can’t understand what could have happened and as they slowly find out more bits and pieces, he realizes the hidden connection his friend had withheld from him all these years…
Emily wasn’t going to say no to Mason, but his request wasn’t along her normal line of duties. Still given the circumstances, she could understand him asking. Although answers were a little thin on the ground particularly when another body shows and shocks them all.
When is enough enough? What does the person behind this mess want? What is his end game? With Nikolai at her side, they need to find out… before someone decides that Nikolai knows more than he’s telling…
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Prologue
Nikolai stared down at the man he’d called a friend for many a year, a man he had already grieved as lost out in the winter wonderland, but one who he’d hoped against hope had survived somehow. And to see his body now laid out in front of him in this state—having been shot by the woman his friend had attacked in the middle of the night in the very military training center the shooter had forsaken for whatever dumb-ass reason—was completely beyond Nikolai’s understanding.
He didn’t even know what to say, yet he knew that this dead man was immediately under suspicion by everybody else. But Nikolai didn’t know anything and certainly had no explanation for the actions of his friend. He couldn’t even begin to believe that his “friend” had done this.
He looked over at the others and declared, “It’s him, no doubt about that, but, before you ask me a million questions …” He paused, shaking his head. “I don’t know why he’s done whatever he’s done. I don’t know where he’s been or how’s he’s been getting by since he disappeared. I don’t even know why he would have left in the first place,” he explained. “I don’t really know how he could possibly have been fine out there all this time.” Then he stopped and added, “Well, that part I probably could answer, at least to some degree. His family, his uncle, was from Siberia. If anybody would have winter survival skills, it would be him.”
“So why was he here then?” Magnus asked. “Why come for this training?”
“I think he wanted to see if you all had any other skills he didn’t know about. He used to laugh about it,” Nikolai shared reluctantly.
“And yet, you are part of the Russian team, so you ought to have the same skill set.”
“No, that’s incorrect,” Nikolai stated flatly. “I’m not part of the Russian team. I’m part of the Swiss team. Just like you have people from other countries here on your US team, I am from the Swiss team,” he repeated. “My family moved to Switzerland when I was very young,” he shared, as he looked back to the body of his supposed friend. “This guy,” he pointed to the cold dead corpse, “wasn’t even part of the Russian team. I don’t … He came over on a special assignment for Russia, but he was talking about leaving, about finding a way to switch his team somehow. He wanted to be somewhere else, but I don’t know that he ever did anything about it. The thing about him was that he was all talk. He had lots of plans, big plans. I… I’ve done actual missions with him. I’ve been on bases worldwide with him too. But never have I seen him do anything even remotely like he’s done this time.”
“And yet you would have considered him a friend?” Magnus asked.
“Yeah, well, apparently I don’t know what that means anymore,” Nikolai stated bitterly. He looked over to see Emily, one of the few women on the base, standing and staring at him. He looked at her and frowned. “Honestly, I don’t know anything about this,” he said to the men, not wanting this discussion to be out in the open.
Yet Emily wasn’t moving. He turned to her and asked, “Don’t you have someplace to be?”
“No, I don’t,” she snapped. “I think, at this point in time, anything that is happening in the training base needs to be something the rest of us get to hear about. Instead of us finding out through the grapevine afterward,” she said, shooting Magnus a look, which spoke volumes about the confidence she had in all of them telling the truth.
Magnus stared at her for a moment and didn’t say anything, then he turned back to Nikolai. “So, Nikolai, what can you tell me about him? Anything more?”
“Not really, outside of the fact that he came over on the Russian team and wanted to shift to another country. And, yeah, I’d thought we were friends, but I obviously can’t tell you much more than that.”
“Is he married? Does he have family? Would he have been coerced into doing something like this?”
“No, he would have thought it was a lark,” Nikolai declared flatly. “He always thought he was better than everybody else around him. He always knew that he was very, very good at winter survival skills, and he knew that he could live out here way easier than anybody else. Honestly he spent complete winters outside with his grandfather. This Arctic tundra is not a hardship for him because he knew how to survive out there.”
“And you didn’t think to tell anybody that?” Magnus asked.
“Tell them what? He disappeared. Besides, all that he could do and all that he was must be in his file. I didn’t know what had happened to him. After being missing all this time, I assumed he probably died out there. We just didn’t know how or why,” he noted. “And, for that, I’m sorry because, if he needed my help, I presumed he would have asked for it, and, since he didn’t, I have to presume he had plans all on his own.”
“And yet, if he wanted to move to another country, such as to the US or somewhere else, this is hardly the place to do it.”
“I know. I know, and he talked a lot about that, but I don’t know if he ever would have gone.” He looked over to Emily again, still staring at him, a hard look on her face. He frowned. “You don’t need to be here. This is my private business.”
“A man is dead,” she stated. “It is no longer your private business.”
He flushed, realizing that she wouldn’t back down, and that none of the men here seemed to want to help him in that regard. “I don’t have anything else to tell you. I don’t know what happened. It doesn’t look good for him, and I guess in your minds it doesn’t look good for me,” he stated, as he shook his head. “But I didn’t have anything to do with this, and I don’t see how you can possibly blame me for something that he’s done.”
“We aren’t blaming you,” Emily said immediately. “So take the chip off your shoulder already.”
He glared at her. “A little hard to do when everybody’s staring at me, as if this is something I’m involved in. I don’t know what he was up to. He was my friend, but he was also an arrogant know-it-all, and, if he thought this would be something he could do to mess up everything here, he would do it,” Nikolai stated, then raised both hands. “And, right about now, I want to kill him myself, but somebody else apparently already got the job done.”
“It was a fair and justified shooting,” Magnus replied.
Nikolai nodded, with a shrug. “I know that. I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to imply anything differently. This has been quite a shock for me too.” And, with that, he added, “I’ll go get a cup of coffee and find a place to sit and think about what this means—and mourn the friend I used to know—because it sure as hell couldn’t have been the same guy who did this.”
And, with that, he turned and, daring anybody to stop him, walked away.
Day 1 Evening
Nikolai Kersaf didn’t even know where to go or what to do. He stood outside, bundled up, and he had a craving worse than he ever had before. He wanted to smoke so bad, but he’d quit years ago. So even the fact that he wanted one right now revealed his elevated stress—which needed to dissipate becaus
“You say that, but you’ve received a major shock and want to be alone to deal with it. Yet this is not the place to do that.”
“Really? And who made you the expert here?”
“Nobody, but I learned from watching other people in this base die from the same foolhardy, egotistical attitude of always being right.”
Startled, he looked over at her. “I’m not egotistical, and I’m sure as hell not any of those other things you’re thinking, and I’m especially not suicidal,” he snapped. “So, you can get that idea right out of your head.”
“I’d love to,” she declared in a clipped tone, but her gaze was searching, as she studied his features, making him that much more aware of her and their surroundings. Her cheeks were quickly turning bright pink, and she was slapping her hands together to try to stay warm.
He motioned at her body. “You’ll freeze to death if you don’t go back inside.”
“I won’t,” she argued, “at least not while I try to coerce you back into the building.” She had a forced smile on her face. “Look. I know you lost a friend, and you’re bound to be really upset right now.”
“More than a friend and more than a loss,” he bit off. “It’s a betrayal. It’s a lot of things that I’m still trying to figure out, and I don’t know how to pigeonhole it yet. I’m out here trying to think, and I do that best alone,” he stated pointedly.
“I get it,” she noted, with a half smile, “but that doesn’t mean you’ll get that option right now. If you don’t want to hear it from me, one of the others will tell you the same thing.” She shook her head, as she motioned at the door behind her. “I volunteered.”
“Why would you do that? It’s obvious you don’t like me.”
She looked at him, startled. “Doesn’t matter whether I like you or not,” she noted, turning pale right before his eyes. “I don’t want to see you dead. And, besides, how would you know if I like you or not?” she asked, with a snort. “You’ve ignored me.”
“Yeah, I was leaving you and your girlfriend alone,” he explained, with a wave of his hand. “I thought you might want some privacy here, since there isn’t much to be had.”
Her gaze was equally startled, as his had been when she stared at him. “Girlfriend?” she repeated. “I hope you mean that in a platonic way.”
Confused, he frowned at her. “I thought you guys were partners.”
“No, we’re not, and, if we were, I sure as hell wouldn’t make it public on a military base,” she muttered. “Talk about suicidal.”
He shrugged. “Some countries are more liberal in their views,” he said. “I certainly am.”
“That’s nice,” she agreed, with a smirk. “Alicia and I have been friends for a very long time, and, with all the shit going on, we’re keeping a close eye on each other. She is seeing somebody here,” she shared, with a smile. “I’m facilitating their privacy.”
“Good for you,” he conceded. “Little enough of that for any of us.”
“True enough, and you’re not getting it right now either, no matter how much you snap at me.”
Her blunt response startled a laugh out of him, and he smiled.
“See? That’s not so hard.”
“Says you,” he muttered. “Nothing is easy about any of this. If I had had some idea where Eric had been all this time, I would probably feel a bit better.”
“I think we all would,” she confirmed. “With all the other deaths, and still one missing—unless you count Amelia too—then I’m sure that everybody is wondering whether he’s really missing or not.”
“Teegan,” Nikolai noted. “I knew him too, even a little before he joined the military, then rarely after that. However, once in a while, we would cross paths, but not very often. We were both doing a scuba diving training course a while back and really hit it off then. He told me how he was coming here, and I was happy to spend some time with him. Then he disappeared too.”
“Any idea if your friend Teegan would have had a hand in helping Eric go missing—or vice versa?”
He frowned at her, startled, then shook his head. “God, I hope not. However, if you’re asking me if I know for sure, then, no, of course not. Not now,” he shared, raising his hands in frustration. “We’re all confused over what’s going on. … I would have thought they were both dead, since so much time has gone by. The fact that one of them, Eric, was alive until last night, means he had some place to hole up, while the rest of us risked our lives out there looking for him. It pisses me off to no end, but I don’t have any answers for you.”
“How about helping me find some then?”
He stared at her. “What do you mean, help you find some?” he asked curiously. “Why you?”
“It’ll be all of us obviously, but Teegan was a friend of mine too. And I had walked away from any thought that he could possibly still be alive, so now I feel as if I shortchanged him,” she admitted. “I want to help—if by any chance he is alive. Get him home safely.”
“Why ask me to help?”
“Because you have a reason to sort it out,” she admitted, with an awkward glance in his direction. “You have a reason to get answers. Yet maybe you don’t care, or maybe this Eric guy pissed you off enough that you were okay when he disappeared.” He glared at her, and she shrugged. “The shit we’ve heard since we’ve been here has been pretty wild, so any number of reasons could exist as to why you wouldn’t want to help me.”
“For one thing, it’s dangerous,” he snapped. “I don’t even know what skills you have or if you’re really serious.” That clarified what he thought of her.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Everybody will be trying to figure it out. So, if you help us, I’m pretty sure that people would at least take you at your word and accept that you’re not involved.”
“Wow.” He gave her a forced smile. “I really don’t give a shit what other people think.”
“Maybe you should,” she replied. “At least right now, when everybody is trying to decide whose side you’re on.” He stared at her in shock. She shrugged. “Think about it. Eric was your friend, your buddy, and you probably knew the most about him. Yet, even though he was heavily skilled in winter survival to the point that, for him, it wasn’t even a skill but a natural part of breathing, you didn’t say anything about it. That makes everybody suspicious.”
“There really wasn’t anything to say,” he snapped, wondering at the frustration rising inside him. “I told a bunch of people. I even told Joe one time, when I was out visiting him and the dogs. I also told Yegorahn… but he’s dead now. I told …”
Nikolai frowned, as he pondered the others who he had shared this info with. “I told the rest of Eric’s Russian team and mine—the Swiss team. I mean, everybody at the training exercises knew that Eric was quite adept at surviving in winter conditions. However, after so many weeks supposedly missing out here, you don’t think anybody would have survived because there were no signs, no signals.”
Nikolai continued. “The Arctic weather here is all too much, and I had my doubts. It’s not a case of me holding back information. It’s more that I didn’t keep reiterating it because I didn’t have any hope that Eric was still out there,” he explained, his tone turning flat. “What is it you think you’ll do that nobody else is already doing?”
“I don’t know that I can do anything more than the others,” she admitted, “but I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that, if Eric survived… maybe Teegan could too.”
“I suppose you’re sweet on Teegan then?” He hoped she didn’t notice the odd tone in his voice.
“No, not at all,” she confirmed, with a snort. “However, I’m very fond of the living, and it seems as if we’re up against challenges here that none of us expected. It’s one thing to be up against the elements, and, in a worst-case scenario, you expect certain things when you’re against that enemy.” She took in a deep breath to add, “But this? … This is something I don’t recognize.” Then her voice dropped as she admitted, “And I don’t like it.”
