The arrival of daylight did little to improve the weather.  It was still freezing.  But if there was one thing SEALs were taught to withstand, it was the cold.

Harvath had spent more time in the frigid water of San Diego Bay than he cared to remember.  After that, he had gone to the U.S. Navy's facility in Alaska, where he endured extensive training in winter warfare and cold-weather survival.

It was no wonder to him that so many Navy SEALs moved to warm climates once they left the service.  By then, they had seen more cold than most people do in a lifetime.

Sometimes, he wondered where he'd be if he hadn't chosen a career that kept him glued to D.C.  He was a big fan of the Florida Keys and the Greek islands.  He also loved Park City, Utah, and the Swiss Alps.  He didn't have a "special" place he saw himself in.  He had even moved to Boston for a time simply to be closer to Lara and her little boy, Marco.

Just the thought of her sent a wave of remorse through his body.  He couldn't believe she was gone.  And not only was she gone, she was gone because of him.  Once again, someone he loved had been marked for death, and it had been his fault.  He vowed never to let that happen again.

Struggling through the snow, the visibility next to nothing, he made it into the trees at the edge of the clearing.  Pushing Lara from his mind, he concentrated on his most important priority - putting as much distance between himself and the crash site as possible.

When a rescue team finally did show up, and when they realized the plane was carrying a prisoner who had disappeared, someone was going to start doing some math.  Average speed per hour of a healthy adult male in snow would be multiplied by the estimated hours that had elapsed since the crash.  A circle would be drawn on a map, and the hunt would be on.

Scenes of a Russian Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive telling his men to conduct a hard-target search of every "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse" within that radius played across his mind.

He figured that at best, in the current conditions, he was making three miles an hour on his improvised snowshoes.  How long he could keep it up was the question.  At some point, he was going to have to stop to rest.

Then there was the issue of where he'd spend the night.  He needed not only someplace where he could keep warm but also someplace from which he could defend himself.  The image of the pack of hungry wolves wasn't far from his mind.  He had imagined something on his six o'clock ever since leaving the crash site.  Even in this storm, he was keeping his eyes and ears open.  The idea that they could be only feet behind him, ready to pounce, wasn't very comforting.

The upside to the weather, though, was that wind and blowing snow would help to cover his tracks.  Without a visible trail, any manhunt would be forced to spread its resources in all directions, leaving more gaps for him to slip through.  But Harvath hoped to be long gone before any search even started.

To do that, first he needed to find a road.  Then he needed to find a vehicle.  From there, everything else would work itself out.  All he had to do was get to the border.  Goals, he reminded himself.  Stay alive.  Stay ahead of the Russians.  Don't freeze.  Make it to Finland.

Being careful not to drop it in the snow, he checked his heading on the survival compass and pressed on.