Of all the stupid things he'd done in his life, this might take the cake. He didn't even know for sure that she was still alive.All he had to go by was a partial sentence in a two-page report he wasn't supposed to have seen: "team was unable to recover the second body." Not exactly a beacon of hope, considering that the other researcher had been found half-eaten by bears.

Mike McNair crept across the snow, each step placed with care. He didn't want to crunch the icy mess underfoot. The sled dogs were upwind so they couldn't smell him. He had to make sure they didn't hear him, either, now that the squalls had died down and the afternoon was shrouded in the absolute silence that existed only in the farthest reaches of the world.

The enemy was inside, all six of the men. He hoped Tessa was with them.

A gun would have come in handy under the circumstances, but his rifle lay in the snow on the bottom of an inaccessible ravine, next to his backpack of supplies. It could have been worse — he could have been killed when the ledge gave way under him.

He hadn't been. He'd made it, and he would get Tessa back, no matter what it took. Then he would do the best damn fast-talking he'd ever done in his life and convince the Colonel to overlook this little adventure.

Fat chance of that. Wake up, buddy, and smell the court- martial.

People didn't go AWOL from the SDDU every day. The Special Designation Defense Unit, a top-secret military team founded only five years ago, consisted of elite soldiers, the best of the best.

Mike moved forward in a crouch, inch by inch until he reached the silvery white, steel-reinforced mobile research vehicle that was designed to house two scientists and their lab equipment and was strong enough to withstand a polar bear attack. Snow partially obscured the CRREL logo on the side — Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.

The bitter cold made his eyes water. Couldn't be more than twenty degrees this morning. The pilot who had dropped him in three days ago told him it was the best weather they'd seen at this time of the year in a long time. He hoped Tessa and he would be out of here before the temperature dropped.

He blinked as he turned and walked back to the edge of the Alaskan alders where he'd trampled the snow into an unrecognizable array of tracks earlier. Careful to place his boots exactly in the first set of prints that led to the vehicle, he returned to it and looked back to examine his handiwork — footwork, really. It looked good.

To anyone but the most trained observer, the two sets of tracks looked like someone had come over to the trailer, then gone back to the woods. He counted on the element of surprise, that the men would focus on finding out who was out there spying on them, and wouldn't notice that the tracks leading to the vehicle were a millimeter or two deeper than the ones leading away.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the greasy paper he had collected that afternoon, along with a handful of other garbage the wind had blown from the trailer into the grove of trees. He rolled everything together then lit the end with one of his few remaining waterproof matches and held the smoking mess up to the vent hole.

No sound came from inside.

If Tessa was alive and unharmed, he would be content to take her and leave the men to the CIA. If she'd been hurt in any way, all bets were off.

A couple of minutes passed before he heard the door slam open on the other side. Play time. He leaped around the corner and dove under the vehicle, rolled to the middle. Four pairs of legs came around in fur boots.

"Where's the fire?"

"Ja nye znau." The response came in Russian. I don't know.

The boots stopped at his tracks. "What the hell is this?"

The Russian called something back to the men in the trailer, then the four headed off toward the woods.

Mike ducked out on the other side, pulled his white parka over as much of his face as he could and banged on the door.

"Pahchemu tu —"

The door opened, and his mind registered the two men inside, Tessa tied up on the floor in the corner. She had a dark bruise on her face. And just like that, his plan of not doing more damage than necessary to her captors was forgotten.

The man standing in the doorway didn't have a chance to finish his sentence.

Mike crushed the guy's windpipe with one well-aimed strike a split second before the other man went for his gun and he had to jump him. He brought the guy down, shoved his index finger behind the trigger to make sure the weapon couldn't be discharged. He didn't want the others coming back in a hurry.

"Who the hell are you?" The man was gasping for air, his voice hoarse but recognizably American.

At least one of the four outside was a local boy, too. A joint operation? None of it made any sense. The man pulled a knife from somewhere with his free hand, but Mike finally got a good grip on the guy's head and heaved. The neck broke with a small pop, like cracking knuckles.

He paused to listen for anyone coming from outside, then a second later he was pulling the rags out of Tessa's mouth. She swallowed, ran her tongue over her dry lips, pushing her bound hands toward him.

"I should have gotten here sooner, honey. Are you all right?" He crushed her to his chest for a heart-stopping moment. She was alive. He hadn't been too late. She was alive.

He set her away to look at her and free her from the ropes. They had to get out of here fast.

"You bastard," was the first thing she said to him, her voice as hard as her eyes.

He stared at her for a second, a little hurt by the obvious anger on her face. Hell, she wasn't still mad at him, was she?

"Good to see you, too, hon. If I get these ropes off, you're not gonna hit me, are you?" He was cutting as he spoke. They didn't have any time to waste.

Tessa didn't seem to realize that. The second her hands were free, she socked him in the jaw with full force.

He teetered back. "Damn. What was that for?" But she was already collecting the two rifles from the dead men and shrugging into a parka. Then she was out the door.

The woman moved fast.

He rushed after her, scanning the woods, but saw no sign of the men. They were probably searching for him farther in the forest. With a little luck, they'd keep at it for a while.

He caught up with Tessa by the pair of sleds — one metal, one wood — two crates on each. He figured explosives, from what he'd seen in that report. The dogs were harnessed and ready to go, jumping and yipping as they greeted her, but she silenced them quickly. She got on the metal sled, and he went to cut the leather harness on the other.

What the hell?

Her dogs were moving, leaning into the work. The sled broke loose of its snow bed with a jerk then slid forward smoothly. She meant to leave without him.

He had to run to jump on. "Come on, you can't still be mad at me." He shoved off one of the crates to make room for himself, and almost tipped the sled, sending the dogs into momentary disarray.

"Haa!" She snapped the whip above the animals' heads, her ice-blue eyes locked onto his face.

She looked exactly as he'd remembered her — magnificent with her generous lips and all that red hair escaping from her hood. The sight of her was like a sharp elbow in the chest.

Damn, he should have looked her up sooner. "I went past mad a couple of years back, McNair. I'd just as soon shoot you as look at you."

She wasn't kidding. The fierce emotion on her face would have knocked a lesser man on his ass. Where had that come from? He hung on as the dogs picked up speed.

"Could we —" The rapid gunfire coming from the woods cut him off.

She tossed him one of the rifles. "Make yourself useful."

He did, spraying the edge of the forest. A moment of silence passed before response came.

They were out in the open, no place to take cover, and if he was correct, they were sharing the sled with some serious explosives — a hell of a target. He moved to shove the second crate off, then stopped. They were going pretty fast now. If he tipped the sled, if the dogs got tangled — if they slowed at all — they were as good as dead.

They would only have to make it the next few hundred feet to be out of range. If the men were stupid enough to leave the cover of the woods and come after them, he could pick them off one by one.

"Haa!" Tessa urged the dogs faster, and they gave her everything they had as if sensing the humans' desperation.

Bullets sprayed the snow around them, sending up powdery puffs of white. Just a little more. He did his best to get the men, but it was hard to take out people he couldn't see. All he could do was aim in the general direction where he figured the men were hiding behind trees and snowdrifts.

Then he glimpsed one who stepped out too far, and took aim, squeezing off a round at the same time as the man. Mike watched him fold slowly onto the snow as he heard a loud yelp from one of the dogs and the sled jerked sharply, the huskies slowing and tangling the line.

Which dog? He was in the snow on his feet, ignoring the bullets that kept coming. It was the black female husky with the light stripe across her shoulders — red spread on her hind leg, staining the snow.