The Hydra Protocol

by David Wellington

  He touched Nadia’s shoulder and she opened one eye. In the dark cab of the truck, she stared at him as if she didn’t recognize him, as if she had no idea where she was.

  “Your turn,” he whispered.

  She sat up, one side of her face obscured by the shadow of her hair. “Chto?” she asked. Then she shook her head and sat up much straighter, looking forward through the windshield. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry. My turn.” She tried to stifle a yawn, but failed. She squeezed her eyes shut, hard, then opened them again.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I can keep driving for a while.”

  She turned to face him. “No. It is my duty. I don’t shirk.”

  He started to protest but he could see in her face she fully intended to take her shift. They switched places, which involved a certain amount of awkward crawling over each other. She said nothing and didn’t act embarrassed or uncomfortable. Chapel kept his own feelings to himself.

  She put the truck in gear and got them moving again. Chapel knew he ought to try to get some sleep, but he was still too dazed, too hypnotized by the desert outside the windows to close his eyes. He drank some more water and watched the dunes go by.

  KYZYLORDA PROVINCE, KAZAKHSTAN: JULY 19, 06:12

  Traveling during the day was just too dangerous. Besides, they were all exhausted and desperately needed some sleep. Nadia parked the truck in the lee of a tall dune that would give them shade for most of the day. Chapel jumped out with a shovel and spread some sand across the dark roof of the truck. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but any satellites or helicopters overhead would be less likely to see them. Working with Nadia, he hung tarps across the windows of the cab and then they crawled back inside. The interior of the cab was dim, lit up only by some orange light, those few sunbeams already strong enough to pierce the thick canvas. The night’s chill lingered in the air, in the metal surfaces all around Chapel. He sank down onto the seat that had been tormenting him all night and suddenly it felt very, very comfortable.

  “There’s a tent, back in the supplies,” Nadia told him. “I think I am too tired to put it up, though.”

  “I’m too tired to keep talking about this,” he replied.

  She made a noise that was something like a laugh, but required less energy.

  Bogdan was already asleep in the back, curled up in one of the seats. “He might at least have helped with the tarps,” Nadia said.

  Chapel shook his head. “He’s the talent, right? The mission specialist. We’re the grunts. When he wakes up, he’ll probably expect breakfast to be ready.”

  “There is dried fruit and some canned meat back there,” Nadia said.

  He waved a hand at her to make her stop talking.

  Whether she did or didn’t made no difference. He was out like a light.

  He dreamed of standing on the deck of a seagoing boat that rose and fell and rocked with the waves as a storm lashed its sails. A long night of going up and down and over sand dunes had left his brain still swaying, perhaps.

  When he woke, it was to find himself coated in sweat. His left, artificial arm was resting on the metal door handle and when he brought it up to his face he got a good whiff of scorched silicone. The inside of the cab was oppressive with heat, like it had been stuffed full of hot packing peanuts while he slept. The air was so dry it parched his throat.

  He wiped the sweat away from his face—pinpricks of moisture broke out on his forehead and his nose the second he dried them off. He looked over and saw Nadia sleeping in the passenger seat, her brow wrinkled, her shirt glued to her shoulder and back with sweat.

  He couldn’t take it. He grabbed the tablet and cracked open his door. The tarp that hung over the windows pushed back against him, but he struggled through it and down the ladder, onto the sand below.

  Fresh air whistled into his lungs, but even through closed eyelids the sun burned his retinas. He pushed one hand against his eyes as if to wring the sunlight out and stumbled around even as the heat cooked his back.

  It had been hot in Tashkent, but nothing like this. “Angel,” he called out. “Angel, are you there?”

  “I’m here, sugar,” she said.

  He had no idea what the time difference was between Kazakhstan and . . . wherever she was. She sounded well rested, though.

  “What’s the temperature here?” he asked.

  “You sure you want to know?” she asked him. When he didn’t reply, she said, “It’s about a hundred and twenty.”

  He couldn’t believe it. “Fahrenheit?”

  Angel laughed. “A hundred and twenty Celsius would kill you.”

  Chapel had heard stories about heat like that from guys he knew who fought in Iraq. Afghanistan had never been that hot—in fact, up in the mountains it had been downright chilly. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever felt heat like this. He could just crack his eyelids if he forced himself. The sunlight was still blinding, but it looked like there might be a patch of shade off to his left. He hurried toward it, staggering through the loose sand—and tripped over something and went sprawling.

  In the shade he could see a little better. Still not very well—and if he turned his head even slightly and looked out at the sand where the sun beat down, stabbing pain would burn through his head. He peered into the shadows and saw Bogdan sitting there, leaning back against a pile of sand. The Romanian had his knees up near his ears, having folded himself like an insect into the small patch of shade.

  “Sorry,” Chapel said, because he realized that what he’d tripped over was Bogdan’s feet.

  “Is okay, yes.” Bogdan lifted a heavy canteen and waggled it. “Drink. Drink or you will dehydrate and die.”

  Chapel took the canteen and sucked up a thick mouthful of warm water. He forced himself to swallow it slowly, to make it last.

  “Is hot enough for you, yes?” Bogdan asked.

  Chapel nearly spat out all the water in his mouth. He held it in with his hand—in a land like this water wasn’t something you could waste on a spit-take.

  In point of fact, now that he was in the shade, the heat felt almost bearable. He remembered that was the secret of dry heat—moist air conveyed heat much better than dry air, so people who lived in places like Arizona could stay relatively comfortable as long as they were under a roof. The tiny patch of shade under the dune in Kazakhstan was its own miniature oasis as far as he was concerned.

  He sipped at the water. Bogdan, after his initial foray into conversation, seemed uninterested in talking further, and that was fine with Chapel. A few minutes after he’d arrived in the shade he saw the canvas covering the truck shimmer and shake and then Nadia came running over toward them with a whoop. She pushed Bogdan to one side to find her own patch of shelter from the sun.

  “We should move the truck,” Chapel said. “It’s just soaking up heat right now. That can’t be good for our supplies or our electronics.”

  “Give me one moment, please,” Nadia said. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. Shook out her hair, sending drops of sweat flying. “You could have woken me, when you stepped out,” she said, staring daggers at him.

  Chapel laughed. “All I could think about at that moment was getting away from the heat. Sorry.” He handed her the canteen. “I’ll move the truck. There has to be some more shade around here somewhere.”

  IN TRANSIT: JULY 19, 20:30

  While Nadia drove, coaxing the engine of the truck to move while it was still overheated from sitting in the desert all day, Chapel studied a map of Kazakhstan. “I had no idea this place was so huge.” He unfolded another section of map and sighed. Judging by the scale, you could fit all of western Europe into the borders of Kazakhstan and still have some room left over. “And all of this,” he said, moving his hand in a circle over the southern central part, more than half of the country, “is desert? I can see why, if you wanted to hide something, this would make a good spot. I’m not as clear on how we’re going to find it.”
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  “I have the map coordinates, and our GPS will take us there. Angel will help, will she not, if we get lost? Don’t worry.” Nadia turned and looked at him. She had been cool with him ever since he’d questioned her politics, just before they crossed the border. But the prospect of reaching Perimeter soon seemed to melt some of that ice. “We’re so very close, now. This night, and then just a bit tomorrow.”

  Chapel nodded. “And then we hit Perimeter and then . . . it’s over,” he said. “We exfiltrate and go our separate ways. What will you do with . . . damn. There’s no good way to circle around this. What will you do with the time you have left?”

  “I have some ideas. No point in getting ahead of myself, but I’ve thought of it. I have at least six months, I think, before the pain will get too bad. I will see my home again.”

  “Back to Russia? Where they want you dead?”

  “I know how to stay under their radar, so to speak,” she told him. A wan smile crossed her face. “They taught me very well how to not be seen. Anyway, if they catch me, what of it? They kill me?” She watched the dunes for a while, keeping both hands on the wheel as the truck tried to slew to one side on the downward face of a dune. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I’m sure you cannot tell me what your next mission is. I’m sure all your movements are classified. But do you have to go back to the States right away?”

  Chapel hadn’t even considered it. He’d always figured he would go back and try to find Julia and talk to her, find out why she had broken things off. Find out if maybe there was a way forward. But that was seeming increasingly unlikely. Every day that passed, and she still hadn’t called, made him feel more like that chapter of his life was over. Like he should move on, as much as he didn’t want to.

  Thinking that through, actually saying it to himself if only in his head, felt like tearing a bandage off a fresh wound. It hurt.

  “Jim?” Nadia said.

  “Sorry. Just thinking.”

  Nadia was quiet for a while, her eyes staying focused on the ground ahead. “I wondered,” she said, finally, “if maybe . . . if you had some time before you had to go back . . .”

  “Nadia—”

  “Just. Just listen, for now. Don’t answer. If you had some time, maybe you could come with me. Come see my Siberia.”

  “You don’t want to be with your family?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “My father died many years ago. My mother moved away, to Vietnam. My childhood friends . . . they will not remember me now. I don’t want to be alone when I go back. That’s all.”

  “Nadia—you don’t even know me. Not really.”

  “I don’t have time for long acquaintance now,” she said, with a bittersweet smile. “I know you’re a good man. I feel it when I stand next to you. Just think on it.” She turned her face away from him as if she was watching an intersection for oncoming traffic. Not that there was likely to be another vehicle for a hundred miles in any direction. Chapel understood that she just didn’t want him to see her eyes, just then.

  They drove in silence for a long time. Maybe an hour. Nadia checked the tablet occasionally, to make sure they were still on course.

  They never saw another human being, not even a light on the horizon. At one point they had to cross a major road—the local equivalent of a superhighway. Angel said it was clear in both directions, so Nadia eased the truck onto the road surface. “This is an important road. Over there,” she said, pointing through the passenger’s-side window. “About thirty kilometers, is Baikonur. The cosmodrome.”

  “Where they launch the rockets,” Chapel said. “The—the Soyuz. Soyuzes. Whatever, the rockets that go to the International Space Station.”

  “We won’t see a launch on this trip, I’m afraid,” she told him. Her smile was back, her enthusiasm.

  “That’s too bad. I’d have liked to see something like that,” Chapel told her.

  She laughed. “I’ll make a tourist of you yet. Maybe you’ll come to Siberia just for the sights.”

  Within a few minutes they had left the road behind, so that Chapel couldn’t even see it in their mirrors.

  KYZYLORDA PROVINCE, KAZAKHSTAN: JULY 20, 04:38

  “So far, sugar, your plan is working.”

  Nadia was setting up the tent in the lee of a massive boulder. Bogdan had wandered off to urinate, so Chapel had figured it was an excellent time to check in. “Did the SNB find Mirza’s body?” he asked.

  “They did,” Angel told him. “And they went nuts over it. They figured out very quickly that the other dead people were all Russians, but they seem to have assumed they were gangsters, not Russian agents. There’s a manhunt going on right now in Uzbekistan, every cop in the country looking for you and Nadia. They’re assuming you’ve already gotten away, but they aren’t taking chances.”

  “Did you spread those false sightings I asked for?” he said.

  Angel laughed. “We got lucky and I didn’t have to. Somebody blew through a border crossing into Tajikistan, just six hours after Mirza stopped reporting in. Most likely it was just smugglers, but they assumed it had to be Nadia at the wheel. They’ve got an all-points-bulletin out for you in Tajikistan, but they aren’t very hopeful. Apparently there’s no love lost between the two countries, and they don’t expect much cooperation.”

  “That’s good news. What about the Russians? Have you heard any chatter from them, about Nadia?”

  “Those communications are a lot better guarded than the internal stuff in Uzbekistan, I’m afraid. I’m not having a lot of luck intercepting their reports. But I do know they sent a new group of agents to Uzbekistan yesterday. They aren’t just going to give up—they’ll follow her wherever she tries to run.”

  Chapel sighed. “I figured as much. Hopefully we can keep one step ahead of them until this is done. It won’t be long now—tomorrow, in fact.”

  “I’ll run as much interference for you as I can,” Angel promised.

  “You’re the best, Angel.”

  “Darn right. Chapel—listen. I just want to go on the record here and say I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t like what?”

  Angel sounded more frustrated than he’d ever heard her before. “This . . . openness. This perestroika you’ve reached with Nadia. I don’t like the fact that she knows who I am.”

  “Nobody knows who you are, Angel.”

  “She shouldn’t even know I exist. How did she find out? You said she overheard you talking to me. But I know you, Chapel. You aren’t that careless. Unless you’re getting sloppy over there.”

  Chapel was glad she couldn’t see him blush. “It was my own fault. If I’d kept typing instead of talking to you out loud . . . well. Frankly, I prefer it this way. I hated having to always run to the bathroom every time I needed to talk to you.”

  “If you say so,” Angel told him. “I just wonder. She got a lot of information out of something she just happened to overhear.”

  “She’s a spy,” Chapel pointed out. “We tend to be perceptive people.”

  “Okay. The director seems semiokay with how things are, though he’s asking for constant updates. He wants to know everything that goes on over there, and most of what I can tell him is just what I can see from the satellites. Everything’s okay? You haven’t seen any sign of more Russian assassins?”

  “No, nothing,” Chapel told her.

  “And what about . . . the other thing. Fraternization. Anything to report there?”

  Now Chapel was really glad she couldn’t see him. “I’ve rejected a few advances,” he said, which was technically true. That night on the balcony of the hotel, their last night in Tashkent . . . he had, in fact, stopped himself. But not before things had already gone too far. “I’m behaving myself,” he told Angel.

  “Good. Good. I’m really glad to hear that. Because . . . there’s something I’ve been struggling with. Something I wasn’t sure I should tell you about, because I know you’r
e not going to like it. It’s about Julia.”

  Chapel felt his heart lurch in his chest. He swallowed, painfully, as a sort of electric jolt ran through his body. “Did she call?” he managed to ask.

  “She called me,” Angel said, very softly. “She . . . she was looking for you. Wanted to know if I could get a message to you. She knows she’s not supposed to call me unless it’s an emergency, but she said she couldn’t get hold of you any other way.”

  “Was it an emergency?”

  Angel seemed to have to force the words out. “No. No, it wasn’t. She called because . . . because she wanted to know if she could move back into the apartment, the one you shared in Brooklyn. She wanted to know if you had moved your stuff out yet. It’s been more than a month, after all.”

  Chapel wanted to bang his head on the dashboard. He resisted the urge. “What are you saying, Angel? She’s evicting me?” The lease was in Julia’s name, after all. Secret agents weren’t supposed to sign legal documents if they could help it.

  “It sounded like she assumed you would move out on your own,” Angel told him. “I told her you couldn’t be reached right now, and that you wouldn’t be able to move your things. She said there was no rush, but that she’d really like to move back in. Sweetie—I’m so sorry. I know how this must make you feel—”

  Anger started welling up in Chapel like his blood vessels would burst with it. “You don’t, actually. You have no idea,” he said, far more curtly than he’d meant to. “You . . . you don’t.”

  “I’m on your side,” Angel pointed out.

  Chapel felt blood surge through his head, felt like he was going to explode. He reached over and grabbed the dashboard with both hands. Clung to it until he felt like the sharp metal would cut into his fingers. He felt like he might stop breathing. He felt like he might die right then and there.

  He brought one leg up and kicked, hard, at the dashboard, not caring if he smashed the gauges and instruments there. Maybe wanting to do just that. But the Soviets had built the truck to take the occasional blow, and he didn’t even leave a dent. He lifted his leg to kick again, but then he stopped himself.