He glances over his shoulder at his class, then shrugs. “Not as bad as some, sir. I’ll take them over the Ossetians.”
For the first time in an hour, Rogozhkin smiles. “That’s a low bar.” He hands over the folder. “Look into this. They’re hiding something. I want to know what.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stay around the Ops Center for the next few days. Let me know if they do anything…off. Call it training the support staff if you need to. I’ll talk to the battalion commanders.” He shoots a glance toward Mashkov’s office. “They may be trying to grow a brain. If they are, we need to stop it.”
Chapter 6
Carson leaves the chicken farm just as the militia forms up to do a sweep. She hides in one stand of trees or another for the next three hours, racking up close calls and near-disasters seemingly every five minutes until her pursuers finally pass by. She tells herself that she’s not being a coward; singlehandedly fighting two dozen soldiers with automatic weapons is just a damn stupid thing to do. It doesn’t always sink in.
It’s still daylight by the time the troops disappear into the dusty string of farmhouses passing for a village to her west. She should get going, but she’ll stick out like a horse in a herd of sheep while she tromps around the countryside. She grudgingly takes cover in a small wooded area until dusk.
She’s been going on adrenaline and momentum until now. With no visible threats, sitting in her little blind robs her of both. The constant tension left her drained. She didn’t sleep much last night—jet lag, irritation at being thrown at Stepaniak again, and the usual pre-project can’t-turn-off-her-brain thing. Holding her eyelids open is harder than bench-pressing her own weight. She catches herself drifting off. It’s the last thing she can afford with random military vehicles roaring back and forth on the gravel road a few meters in front of her.
There’s nothing but plowed fields north and south of her. A few sprout green fuzz that’ll turn into crops by fall. The dirt beneath her is almost black. Chornózem, the famous Ukrainian soil that can grow nearly anything. The same kind that belts Alberta, the reason so many Ukrainians migrated there over the past century. Like her parents.
Not that they were farmers. City people from Kharkiv, around three hundred klicks northwest of here. Her older brother Bo told her that when they washed up in a little nothing of a place called Clive in central Alberta, the neighbors suggested they raise chickens behind their trailer. Her mom was pissed that she had to ask them how. If she’d wanted to be a farmer’s wife, she’d have married a farmer, not a cop.
The first home Carson remembers is Elk Point, up by Alberta’s Cold Lake tar sands. This place reminds her of there: flat, green, lines of trees for windbreaks, an endless sky.
Get out of your fucking head. Pay attention.
Hours grind by. She’d forgotten how far north Ukraine is; Kyiv and Calgary are at roughly the same latitude (she looked it up). In May, it’s light until well past eight at night. Traffic on the road—most of it still military—keeps her head down until the clouds finally fade to black.
Two a.m.
At last, it’s only drizzling. It started raining at roughly the same time Carson started walking and stayed steady most of the time since. The farmers probably like the free irrigation. She’s soaked to the skin. Only walking keeps her warm.
There hasn’t been a moon all night; the cloud deck’s blotted out the sky. Everything’s a shade of dark gray until car headlights go by. It’s actively dangerous to walk on the broken pavement—she’s gone down a couple times after stepping in potholes or tripping on frost heaves. The muddy fields are like swamps.
She’d headed south from the chicken farm down a two-lane country road that passes several villages. She’d bet her life on the idea that farm folk everywhere turn in early. She’s winning the bet.
Cars are another thing. This semi-paved country road turns out to be officially a highway. A lot of people must want to stay away from the truck convoys and patrols on the big highway, even at night. She’s been scrambling from the blacktop into the mudholes on either side to stay out of their headlights.
Progress has come hard.
She hadn’t expected battle damage out here in the sticks, but it’s there. Even Leninske (maybe two hundred people on a good day) has shot-up or shelled-out houses and a scorched hulk of a six-wheeled truck instead of a “Welcome to…” sign.
Wet. Bone tired. She’s been up for nearly twenty-three hours straight. Her eyes burn like somebody’s poured coal dust into them. She stumbles on the road even when there’s nothing there to trip her up. At least the car traffic finally trailed off around one.
She staggers past a blue-and-white Cyrillic sign reading “Olhynske.” Stops to find it on the GPS. Squeezes her eyes shut to try to focus.
She’s come to several hard realizations over the past few hours.
It will never stop raining. Moss will start growing on her soon.
Her Ariat steel-toe paddock boots are soaking wet and caked with about five kilos of mud each. She grew up in paddock boots—they were the only thing she couldn’t destroy in days, and they helped her blend in with the farm and ranch girls at school—but she’d expected to have to kick men in the nuts, not hike long distances in a monsoon. Her socks are like sponges, and her feet are wet and cold and hurt almost as much as her ribs.
The painting and the briefcase full of money both weigh about the same now: a hundred kilos each. She has to set them down every few hundred meters to work the kinks out of her shoulders and hands. She would literally kill someone for a backpack.
She hasn’t eaten since noon, when Stepaniak stopped the Range Rover and stuffed a sandwich and a bottle of water into her hands. She’s been burning calories like crazy ever since. There’s nothing left in her stomach and it’s pissed off. That adds to her pounding headache.
The real potential show-stopper: Heitmann’s phone had eighty-one percent charge when she picked it up. It’s now at fourteen percent, nagging at her about “low battery charge,” like she hasn’t noticed. The phone’s her map, her light, her connection to the world…and it’ll die in way less than an hour.
She stutters to a stop at the T-intersection that defines Olhynske. Through the gloom, she can just make out the dark bulk of a stand of mature trees and underbrush at her two o’clock. It looks dense enough to shield her from the two nearest farmhouses.
Good enough.
Carson squelches into the trees, finds a semi-sheltered place, sets down the briefcase and the portfolio, then slowly eases herself onto the ground. Sitting feels better than any sex she’s had lately. She listens to water dripping on the leaves over her head.
She closes her eyes to wash out the grit. Just for a minute.
Chapter 7
THURSDAY, 12 MAY
Carson wakes up wet.
Wet’s not a surprise. The surprise is, she was asleep.
She pries open her eyes. There’s pearly gray light between the tree trunks—not a lot, but enough to see what’s around her. The trees aren’t as dense as they’d looked last night in the dark. No visible threats. She finds a clean part of a sleeve to wipe the crap out of her eyes, then sucks some moisture from the cloth. Her head hurts as much as her ribs and feet. Her mouth tastes like a baby dragon shit in it.
She’d fallen asleep hunched over, propped against a tree trunk. Someone replaced the whole left side of her body with petrified wood while she was out. She crawls up the trunk until she can more-or-less stand, swearing most of the way.
Carson starts her morning stretching routine with the hope that it’ll break loose her left side. She grits her teeth with every twist and bend. As she lets the muscle memory take her through the movements, she sizes up her situation.
She’d covered eight whole klicks overnight. Half what she’d expected, and it knocked the shit out of her. Of course, what she’d expected was based on a full night’s sleep, enough food and water, a day
pack, and a clear trail. At this rate, she’ll make it to the contact line in two weeks…if she survives that long. It’d be quicker to walk to Russia.
What’s your next bright idea?
Ten minutes of stretching starts busting up the stiffness. She stops for a moment to rotate her left shoulder, then twists left and right at her waist.
Craaack.
At first she thinks it’s her back. Too far away. It could be nothing: a dog or a pig, or just a branch snapping in the light breeze. She returns to her exercises, faster now, bigger movements as her muscles warm up.
Snap.
She stops instantly, cocks her head, and listens hard, breathing slowly through her mouth so she doesn’t have to filter out the sounds of her sinuses. She doesn’t know what she’s listening for, but her gut’s telling her pay attention, dammit.
The wind tickles leaves far above her head. Two branches squeak against each other. A bird twitters to her four o’clock. Pigs grunt and bicker way off her one o’clock.
Tink.
Not a natural sound. Metal on metal, a few meters to her ten o’clock. Militia? Someone freelancing for a reward?
Carson glides carefully toward her tree, sliding her feet so her toes push away the deadfall instead of stepping on it. The way her dad taught her after she’d asked, “How do you sneak up on bad guys, Daddy?” Eight-year-old her: junior crimebuster.
She hefts her Ksyukha like it’s made of blown glass and eases down the safety to its second detent. Semiautomatic mode. Wraps the sling once around her left bicep. Takes a kneeling firing position behind the tree.
The tink happens a couple more times, each a bit closer. Her right ear’s straining to pick up something other than the bird. If she hears it, she’s in the shit.
A car drives by a couple dozen meters away on her left. Not a threat, but it wrecks her sound picture.
“Dear Carson! I want to talk with you. I know you are there.” Ukrainian; Stepaniak’s voice.
Of course. Had to be that asshole. But she’s confused; his voice is coming from her three o’clock, but the metal-on-metal noises are off her eleven. Answer him? If he has any doubts where she is, that’ll give him her position. She needs to know what’s happening up ahead. “Is Stas in here with me?”
“Of course. He will not harm you if you stay in place. Before we talk, you should know that we know exactly where you are. Stas! Show our dear Carson that you’ve found her.”
A bullet thwaps into her tree. No weapon sound; it must be suppressed. She fires a couple rounds toward the muzzle flash.
Stepaniak yells, “Carson! Dear Carson, stop! Please don’t make this unpleasant.”
“It’s already unpleasant. Give me a good reason not to shoot your ass.”
He sighs loudly. “Why are you so angry with me?”
Really? “You fucking shot me, asshole!”
“I…yes, I did. I am very sorry I had to do it. Where did I shoot you?”
“Under my left tit. Hurts like hell.”
“But your vest stopped the bullet, yes? There is no extra hole in you?”
She won’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him.
“I knew you were wearing body armor. I made sure when you got out of my car.”
“When you groped me?”
“I did not. I gave you a friendly pat.” He waits, maybe for her to concede. “How can you blame me, dear Carson? You have an irresistible dupu. So solid, so—”
“Think that’s a compliment? Think that’s helping? Wrong, both counts.” Carson wants to empty a magazine in his direction. She probably wouldn’t hit him, but it would feel so good. “You killed Heitmann.”
“The German? I did not do that. That was Vadim, I think. Do you know what happened to Vadim? Was he shot?”
“Yeah.” By me. “You tell him to kill the wounded?”
“It seemed to be so important to him. I could not say no.”
This isn’t helping Carson’s headache any. “You tell him to shoot me?”
“What? Of course not. If I want you dead, I will kill you myself. I owe you that. I wanted you out of the way so no one else will hurt you. I do this because I like you, dear Carson, and I do not want any harm to come to you, yes? You see?”
Carson likes to think she has a good bullshit detector. Unfortunately, it overloads around Stepaniak. “Whatever. You fucked up the deal. Why?”
“Yes, yes, we must talk about business.” Another sigh. “Do you ever plan for the future? This work we have, it is for young people. Do you want to be doing this five years, ten years from now? No, of course not. I too have to look ahead. Do you remember the club in Kyiv? Chervonyy? Where we celebrated the end of your very first project?”
She remembers: a Eurotrash hypermart. “Where you got me drunk?”
Stepaniak laughs. “There is not enough liquor in the world to make you drunk, dear Carson!” His voice drops into vodka-and-velvet range. “You know we both wanted it. You only needed to relax just a little to let it happen.”
The hell of it is, he’s mostly right. “Always had shitty taste in men. What about the club?”
“I have an opportunity to become a co-owner. You remember what I told you, yes? I have always loved running restaurants, cafés, clubs. I love to make people happy. And now I can own part of the hottest club in Kyiv! This is…what do you say?” He switches to strongly-accented English. “Big time. Is big time for me. Like you, when you go to big city in Canada to be police. You can be police in small town on steppe, and—”
“We call it the prairie.”
“Yes, yes. You do that, maybe you are still police. But you go to big city. Be big police. Is big time for you. Same for me. We are same.”
“No, we’re not.” Again, he’s partly right. She could’ve been a community peace officer in Cold Lake. They wanted to hire her. But no, that wasn’t good enough. She wanted to be a real cop. “Let me guess—you want the money I’ve got.”
“Zvychayno.” He’s back to Ukrainian. “I need one million and a half euro for the club. The rest I need for a home, clothes—”
“Booze. Hookers.”
“No, no. Well, maybe a little. But yes, I do need that money.” Pause. “Dear Carson. Leeeesa. Do—”
“Not my name.”
“Yes, I know it is not your name.” For the first time, he sounds tetchy. “Carson is not your name. You never tell me your name. What else can I call you but ‘Carson’? Unless you prefer…” he purrs “…lyubyy.”
Darling? Hell, no. “Stick with Carson.”
She squats and massages her temples. She doesn’t care who gets the money. She wasn’t supposed to go home with it anyway (though she wouldn’t mind). She hates to hand Stepaniak a win. If things had gone the way she’d planned last night, she’d blow him off. But they didn’t, and right now she’s more interested in scraping up a win for herself than she is in making him lose. “Hey, Stepaniak.”
“Yes, dear Carson?”
“Still got that icon?”
“Of course.”
“How’s this? Give me the icon, I give you the cash, we’re done. Call it ‘me buying the icon.’ Deal?”
The ground vibrates under her. She really needs to eat something. Please say yes. Please say yes. I want this shit over with.
Stepaniak clears his throat. “You are serious about this?”
“No. I just say random shit, like you. Of course I’m fucking serious. I want to go home.” And not be a complete failure. “Yes or no?”
The vibration isn’t her imagination. There’s a mutter some distance away to the north. It doesn’t sound like artillery. Carson stands, cocks her head. A train? Tanks?
A voice behind her yells “Abram!” then rapid-fire something she doesn’t understand. Must be Stas. Stepaniak shouts back. Whatever’s happening, neither of them is happy about it.
Stepaniak shouts, “Dear Carson! Your offer interests me. We will talk lat
er. Be safe!”
“Later? What do you mean, later?”
No answer.
Car doors slam, an engine starts, then a boxy black shape blurs past the tree trunks west of her.
To the east she hears the rumble of heavy vehicles. She trots to the copse’s edge and peeks around a tree trunk.
A BTR—a giant olive-drab armored cockroach on eight wheels—rattles and squeaks toward her on the highway. Two cargo trucks follow. The BTR’s close enough that its tan-and-black camouflage reveals the rough brushstrokes of a broom. It roars past. There’s a crest on the side: a blue-and-black shield with a yellow rising sun.
The Makiivka Brigade has arrived.
Chapter 8
Stepaniak holds on for dear life as the Range Rover charges west on the dilapidated road leading away from the highway and the militia.
Was that a coincidence? He doesn’t usually believe in that. Not believing in it makes him weigh the other possibilities. He doesn’t want to believe in those, either.
“Were you seriously going to take the bitch’s deal?” Stas growls in Georgian.
“The turn is up here. Slow down.” Stepaniak uses Ukrainian. Georgian gives him a headache.
“Fuck slowing down.” Stas drifts them onto a northbound gravel road—Stepaniak grips the grab handle and armrest so hard, it hurts—then stomps the gas. The gravel scouring the underside and rocker panels sounds like hail.
“Thank you, Stas, for drawing attention to us. I love attention. When the militia gets here, they will hear all about the crazy men in the fancy black car playing Fast and Furious through their part of town.”
Stas concentrates on the place where the gravel turns into dirt, about five seconds away. Just as well.
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