Rift Zone

by Raelynn Hillhouse

  Faith gathered the dishes from the table and repacked the cooler. “I’m either starting to get used to this formaldehyde or the smell’s wearing off.”

  “You reek of vet school,” Svetlana said.

  “That could be a problem,” Zara said.

  “I’ll throw some cabbage on to boil to mask the odor.” Svetlana reached into the cabinet for a pot. “And I’ll fetch you some clothes to change into before you leave.”

  “Sveta, you don’t happen to have any fast-acting tranquilizers and one of those dart guns you use on big animals here?” Faith said.

  “Faith, this ain’t Wild Kingdom.”

  “Humor me. I have a thing against killing, and I want to be convinced it’s the only option.”

  “It is,” Zara said. “Tranquilizers take too long to work—plus, we’re dealing with a group of people.”

  “So where are we going, comrade? Your place?” Summer said.

  “Not advisable. I work for the KGB, so I have a flat in something like your base housing. But I do know one place no one would ever think to look for Faith. We’ll regroup there and plan our assault.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SEVEN

  MOSCOW

  6:41 P.M.

  Zara’s Zil sedan reminded Faith of a 1950s American gas-guzzler; if it had a pair of tail fins, it would have been an El Dorado—its ancestors certainly were. The spacious backseat gave Faith and Summer room to stay out of sight. Their bodies pressed tightly against each other and a tattered blanket concealed them from the casual viewer. Faith’s face was so close to Summer’s cheek that she couldn’t tell if it was the wool blanket or the stubble from his day-old beard that was scratching her. She comforted herself that it was him and not the filthy blanket. He put his arm around her, and for a few seconds she was back in the Ozarks, secure in her high school sweetheart’s strong arms, dreaming of the day she would escape the vicissitudes of her mother’s fanaticism. She cuddled closer against him and wished she could change history.

  “Kind of like old times, isn’t it?” Summer said. “The only difference is that it’s not your mama we’re worried about catching us back here together, but the frickin’ KGB.”

  “Frankly, I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

  “Oh, come on, Faith. I could always handle Mama Whitney and you claim you can handle the KGB, so it’s your turn.”

  “I grossly overestimated myself. We’re fucked.”

  Zara turned off the engine. “Stay down until I tell you to get up. I’m parking in a courtyard. I’m going inside first.”

  “You know, there’s a chance she’s turning us over to the KGB right now,” Summer whispered into Faith’s ear.

  “You’re just trying to make me feel good by whispering sweet nothings, aren’t you?”

  “If she has, follow my lead. We won’t resist if I don’t see an opening. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “And what about you?”

  In a few minutes, the back door clicked open. Cool air rushed inside the stuffy car. Someone flipped back the blanket.

  “Oh, my God,” Faith said.

  “Lordy, lordy, look at what the cat’s dragged in.”

  “Mama Whitney,” Summer said, springing away from Faith like a teenager caught in the act.

  Faith pulled the blanket back over her head. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Come on, child. Don’t get testy with me now. I don’t like it, either, but we’ve got to get you hid.”

  “Let’s go.” Summer threw the blanket off them and pushed Faith up onto the car seat. “Now.”

  Faith slid across the vinyl and crawled from the car feet-first. Zara reached under Faith’s arm and helped her to stand. For a moment, their eyes met. When Summer put his hand on her back to nudge her forward, Faith saw jealousy flash in Zara’s eyes.

  “Leave the keys in the front seat. Sasha will hide the car in the carport,” Mama Whitney said.

  “Grab the Coleman in the trunk,” Summer said.

  They rushed across the muddy courtyard into the orphanage. Cases of infant formula and diapers turned the hallway into a maze. Mama Whitney waddled around the stacks, leaning into each turn as if skiing a slalom course. A young woman in a white smock and cap stepped into the hallway. Mama Whitney shooed her away with a flick of the wrist. The woman jumped backwards and shut the door. Mama Whitney dug into the front pocket of her housedress and pulled out a string of skeleton keys. She opened an aging wooden door.

  The spicy smell of mold rose from the basement. Mama Whitney pawed the wall in search of the light switch and then hurried down the steps.

  Faith hesitated. She flashed back to the many spring storms when she had followed her mother down the stairs of the root cellar in search of shelter from tornadoes. As a small child, she had felt safe there as her mother comforted her with Bible stories. She grew older and the tales shifted from Noah’s Ark and Jonah and the Whale to threats of fire and brimstone. By her teenage years, Faith chose to stay in the house alone and dare the wrath of the tornado. Since lightning bolts never struck the sinner, nor did the twisters ever blow down the house, maybe the tempest of the coup wouldn’t find her, either, if she again didn’t follow her mother.

  Summer nudged her from behind and whispered, “It’s not going to collapse. Go on.”

  She gritted her teeth and descended into her mother’s basement. A lone bare lightbulb dangled on a frayed cord. Broken cribs, piles of donated clothes and stacks of wooden crates filled with baby bottles littered the area. A heap of unfinished projects nearly concealed a corner workbench. Mama Whitney plowed a path through the junk like Moses parting the Red Sea. The Israelites followed her into the wilderness.

  Mama Whitney approached the workbench and reached for the floor, her arm flailing in the air. She stood back up, panting. “Summer, help me out, son. I can’t bend over as well as I used to. You’ll have to feel around. There’s a panel in the floor that lifts up. When you get it up, reach in underneath on the bottom right-hand side and you’ll find a round light switch. Flip it on. I think you children will understand that I can’t go down there with you, but you’ll be safe enough.”

  Faith turned sideways and inhaled to give him a few added inches of clearance as he slipped past her. Summer ran his fingertips along the floor until he found the outline of the panel. He picked it up, set it aside and stood. “Good to see you again, Mama Whitney.” He leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. “I sure do appreciate your hospitality.”

  “Now, you gonna tell me what’s going on? Is someone about to bust down the doors after you-all?”

  “They’re searching for us, but we don’t believe they’re on our trail,” Zara said.

  “What kind of trouble you in? You were always such a good boy, but being that you’re with this Jezebel, I have all sorts of ideations. She always did get you into trouble.”

  Faith fought back years of anger. She opened her mouth to speak, but Zara leaned over to her and whispered into her ear.

  “Ask her about your father.”

  Faith’s confused reaction to Zara’s warm breath distracted her from her ire.

  Summer towered over Mama Whitney and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Now you two are going to have to bury the hatchet for a little while. It’s a matter of national security. I know you’ve always been a God-fearing, patriotic American, so you’re going to have to put your differences aside for the time being and give each other the benefit of the doubt for the good of the country.”

  “You’re still in those special armed forces?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then it must be something real important if you’re here behind the Iron Curtain.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and it hasn’t gone too good, but with the help of these two ladies here and your hospitality—and the good Lord willing—we’re going to get things straightened out. I’m not free to talk about it, so I hope you understand.”

  “You all stink to high hea
ven. There’s an old shower down there. I’m pretty sure there’s a dried-up bar of soap. I’ll send someone down with shampoo, towels and the like. Can I get you anything else?”

  “Mind if we help ourselves to some clothes and things laying around here? How about if you check on us in a half an hour after we’ve had a little time to regroup? I’m sure we’d all appreciate something to eat and drink then.”

  “I’ll see what I can conjure up. Wish I’d a known you were coming, I would’ve whipped up some biscuits and gravy. They always were your favorite.”

  “Nobody makes redeye gravy like you do, Mama Whitney.” Summer’s eyes sparkled in the faint light.

  Faith descended the ladder first. In contrast to the chaos of the upper basement, the dank secret room was orderly. Crates stenciled with the words INFANT FORMULA in both English and Russian were stacked along a wall beside a padlocked metal door. The heavy lock was new and shiny in contrast to the rest of the dingy room. Dust, mold and flakes of blue paint hugged the brick walls. A rusty showerhead was connected to overhead pipes and a drain was cut into the floor.

  Faith palpated her sore ribs. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Summer closed the wooden panel. “This is our war room. Time to plan out our op.”

  “Who do you think you are, bringing me here?” Faith said to Zara. “You must know tons of people in Moscow, and one of them has to have an empty garage or something.”

  “I don’t know anyone I would trust with something this sensitive—not even my father. I’ve spent most of my life abroad. My contacts are in the KGB and diplomatic corps. And no one will ever expect you to turn to your mother for assistance.”

  “Present company included,” Faith said.

  “Amen to that, but she’s not that bad and she is your mama.” Summer pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat in it backwards at the table made from two sawhorses and an old wooden door.

  “Maybe not that bad with you. You always could charm all of the Whitney women.”

  Zara’s facial muscles tightened. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have a lot of work and not much time. First, I want an inventory of our resources, then a review of the target—”

  “Hold on,” Summer said. “I think the first thing we need is to agree on our command structure.”

  “Very well. I’m in command. As I was saying—”

  “Not so fast, comrade. I command special operations all over the world and I blow things up for a living. You’re a spook. You’re used to sneaking around, kidnapping people—and I think you did a pretty crappy job at that.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? And I didn’t plan that one—my staff threw it together on short notice. Don’t forget I’m a lieutenant colonel and you’re a lieutenant commander. I outrank you.”

  “Just because the KGB has military ranks doesn’t mean you’ve got equivalent preparation, particularly for this op. I’m a twin-pin—EOD and SEAL.”

  “And I was a Girl Scout,” Faith said. “Why don’t we vote on it?”

  “No,” Summer and Zara said in unison.

  “Glad we’re not fighting for democracy.” Faith laughed, but Zara and Summer scowled.

  “Without going into my extensive operations background,” Zara said, “I do concede my work has been of a different nature, and I’ll defer to your expertise for running this op, but only this op.”

  “Fair enough. Now, the first thing I want you to do is run this meeting. Carry on.”

  Faith rolled her eyes. “This is ridiculous. Let’s get on with it.”

  “Faith, this is important. It might seem trivial to a civilian, but a clear command structure is vital to the success of any operation.”

  “Command structure? Come on, this is a pissing contest. There are three of us. We’re hardly a SEAL or Spetsnaz team.”

  “Commander Summer has a point. You’re going to have to trust both of us and go along.”

  “Whatever.” Faith threw her arms into the air. “He’s the captain, you’re the platoon leader and I’m the troops. We’re screwed.”

  “Let’s review our resources,” Zara said.

  “Come on,” Faith said. “We all know what we’ve got and it’s not much—about ten pounds of C-4, the gun Summer took from the guard and whatever your pistol is. If I understand my recent explosives lessons correctly, we can’t do much without time fuse and a blasting cap. Speaking purely as a nonprofessional, we’re well equipped to knock off a Seven-Eleven.”

  “You’re a good pupil, but you didn’t make it to lesson two. There are ways to set off C without using a cap or fuse—if you absolutely have to. They’re just not pretty. We have enough C to do anything we need, but we’ll have to come up with an easily ignited explosive to detonate it. Give me a couple of minutes under anyone’s kitchen sink and I can come up with a crude bomb. The issue’s survivability. It’s tough to jury-rig a slow-burning fuse to set off a high-velocity explosive.”

  Faith held up her hand as if stopping traffic. “Whoa. Survivability? Forget it if you don’t think we’re going to come out of this alive.”

  “Faith.” Zara looked her in the eyes. “What we’re about to do will save countless lives—maybe even prevent another war. We have to accept there could be casualties.”

  Faith turned her gaze to Summer. He nodded.

  “I don’t like it one bit,” Faith said. “Casualties—as you so technically call one of us dying—are not acceptable.”

  “We can’t take time to debate this. If you don’t want to be a part of it, opt out now. The comrade here and I have a job to do,” Summer said.

  “Call me Zara.” Zara turned from Summer to Faith and smiled. “You could always go upstairs and visit with your mother.”

  “That was low. Speaking of my dear mother, what the hell is she doing with a secret room she can’t even squeeze her chubby self into? And why would anyone have to hide crates of infant formula?” Faith stood and walked over to the stacks of crates. “I might not be a professional spy or a SEAL, but I know the hallmark of a smuggler when I see it.” Faith picked up the corner of a crate. “This infant formula is too light. Help me get this open.”

  Summer pulled the Leatherman from his pocket and slid a blade under a metal staple, digging into the wood. With a couple of twists, an end of the staple popped out. Within moments, he pried off the lid.

  “I knew the orphanage was a front.”

  Faith studied the crate’s contents. Black rubber was stretched over a round plastic case and fastened in place with a thin metal strip. Two knobs protruded outside the casing. A ring was attached to a pin inserted into the smaller knob.

  Zara smiled. “Landmines. Problem solved, I take it.”

  “Yep.” Summer picked up one of the mines and held it by its brown Bakelite case.

  “An arms dealer,” Faith said. “A Christian arms dealer. What a hypocrite. Can you tell where it’s from? I’ve heard she’s bringing in big sums of money and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s shopping locally.”

  “I’ll be darned.” He turned it over and inspected the markings. “PMNs. Roosky. I haven’t seen one of these puppies in years. This was the first mine I ever came across in the field.”

  “We have reports of some corrupt military selling them on the black market,” Zara said.

  “Even if she bought them here in Russia, what the heck is Mama Whitney doing with anti-personnel mines?” Summer said. “There are millions and millions of these little boogers in the world. They’re cheap, easy to manufacture. If you want to get some of these to the West or to the Third World, you sure as heck don’t have to go to the trouble of smuggling them out of the Soviet Union. Hell, the Russians give those things as door prizes to Third World guerilla movements that come begging to Moscow.” He sat at the table and unscrewed the large knob on the side.

  “She’s probably not taking them out, so I’d say she’s supporting an insurgency movement here,” Zara said. “The Karabakh so-called self-defense army, maybe
some groups in Chechnya, Dagestan. I’d also venture a guess they bring them in here through an underground tunnel behind that locked door. Given that this room is much warmer and damper than I’d expect, I’d say the tunnel is part of the hot-water system.”

  “Hot water system?” Summer said.

  “Moscow uses a centralized system to pump hot water throughout the city,” Zara said.

  Faith looked at the reinforced steel door. “I totally forgot about it. In the summer they turn off the hot water for weeks at a time for entire sections of the city to clean the pipes. I remember freezing cold showers at Moscow State.”

  Summer removed the brown plastic knob, turned it and looked inside. He then rolled it across the tabletop to Faith. “Here’s the detonator.”

  “Will it work as a blasting cap?”

  “It could, but that would be the long way around, and we’d still have the problem of no time fuse or det cord. If I remember these suckers correctly, we can solve both problems and use the whole mine as a detonator and timer.” He unscrewed the smaller knob and looked inside. “Just like I remembered. It’s delay-armed. The mine’s designed so that when you pull the pin, there’s a fifteen to thirty minute delay until it’s armed. That gives you some time to plant it and get away. That means you could actually step on it after pulling the pin but before it’s armed and it won’t go off.”

  Faith turned the knob as she inspected it. “I don’t think we’re going to get the chance to plant a field of landmines around the front door.”

  “It means we can trip the mine first by piling bricks or something on it, then pull the safety pin and it’ll go off in fifteen to thirty minutes,” Summer said.