SOKOLOV’S IMMEDIATE REACTION to the loud bang was to shed his backpack, open it up, and begin assembling the assault rifle that Igor had taken from Peter and that he had taken from Igor. The logic of this move was far from obvious to Olivia. They were only a couple of miles away from a country in which possession of this gun would be spectacularly illegal. They had not seen another living soul today, other than the Forthrasts. But Sokolov was firm in his conviction that what they had heard was not a mining blast but the detonation of a tactical military device and that they were now in a state of open war with unseen and unknown enemies.