Probably the best and worst part about freezing to death is that you don't feel much. You feel cold, uncomfortably so, but you grow most steadily numb until finally, you don't feel anything. The same sort of thing happens when parts of your body are freezing to death.
Gruber got himself some frostbite, which I didn't think was so bad at first, but he warmed it up before we had really settled into a spot where we could rest for a while, and it got re-exposed, which is the worst sort of thing that can happen to frostbitten skin. His foot got all gray again, and he didn't want to go to the hospital. I can certainly understand his reluctance, but frostbite isn't the most dire of medical emergencies. If you need a heart transplant or cancer surgery, then you probably want the Mayo Clinic or Mass General, but even the cash-strapped hospitals in Russia can handle frostbite. So we insisted.
While Gruber was getting treated, we got a call from DeMartino. He'd been in Russia since October, laying the foundation for the ad hoc intelligence network to track темно паника. Turns out this real twitchy guy named Shirokov that he'd been dealing with had agreed to meet us, but only if we had a "substantial force" to back him up. Seems the guy was paranoid that people were after him, and only liked to travel in groups. Whatever. Against my better judgment the three of us left Gruber to meet with the guy at a bar on the other side of town. DeMartino worried that the place was Russian Mafia. All the better, I explained.
See, there's a difference between organized crime and disorganized crime. Ask the people in Baltimore. The mob in Baltimore was tired of people avoiding their legitimate front businesses because of street gangs, so they muscled up and cleaned the neighborhood of street gangs. When police investigated, no one said a word. Why? Well, first, because you don't snitch on the mob. And second, because the mob had cleaned up the streets. People could walk down the street without worrying about getting shot. There are no stray bullets from the mob.
With that in mind, I felt fairly certain that four strangers talking over a beer weren't going to get shot by anyone in the Russian Mafia. Wonder of wonders, I was wrong. Not so much in my reasoning, but the part about getting shot.
Halfway through a Stary Melnik, Shirokov arrives, and not ten seconds after he sits down, takes his gun out and puts it on the table. I can't even begin to describe how quickly the situation escalated. We ask him what the hell he's doing... he tells us he's not afraid to use it... we tell him to put it the hell away... he wants us to know he's serious and we shouldn't mess with him. I'm already heading to the door when the bartender breaks out a hand cannon and tells us in no uncertain terms to vamoose. Shirokov threatens the bartender with some choice words, who squeezes two off. One of them clips Abby as we're out the door, and it's back to the same hospital to handle a gunshot wound. At least it was clean.
Well, you might think that since this is Russia you can arrive at a hospital with a gunshot wound and no suspicion will be aroused. You are wrong. After trying unsuccessfully to quiet the hospital staff, I made a whole bunch of phone calls to sort things out. Not long afterwards, a Standard Issue Street Soldier drops by, asks a few questions, then leaves. Potential problem averted. Meanwhile, the word from Gruber is that they cut off his toes. I didn't take a look at his feet, and thankfully still haven't, but the doctor I talked to explained that they cut a bit off of two of his toes, but only removed the tissue that absolutely had to go. I was assured that he wouldn't have any problems regaining balance and coordination. Gruber was not so convinced.
Shortly after Abby got stitched up, the phone calls I made filtered up to higher levels, and they scratched the rest of the mission. After all that, it still took us three days to touch back down in Seattle, because of some crazy winds up in the jet stream that the military was having trouble with.
There's more, but as you may have noticed, I'm rather busy right now.
