Another half-klick of walking later, she can finally see the checkpoint. Two rows of concrete blocks form a serpentine across the traffic lanes. There’s a BTR, a camouflaged truck for hauling troops, a couple Hunters, and a sandbagged machinegun nest. Militiamen are going through a little gray sedan with all its doors, trunk, and hood open, and stuff piled on the street.
Carson watches for a few moments, then turns and marches back to Galina’s car.
“It’s the Makiivka Brigade,” she announces once she’s in the Slavuta. “They’re not pretending. Where are we trying to go?”
Galina scowls. “Do they look for you?”
“Don’t know. They’re taking apart a car like there’s money in it for them.” Carson points out on the GPS the crossroads where she saw the militia looting the sedan.
Galina growls something Carson doesn’t try to translate. “We must go through there to here”—she moves the map with a blunt index finger—“then west to here, then north to Novozarivka. Much faster than the way the bandits went.”
“Except now it isn’t. What do we do?”
“What would you do?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be paying you. You’re the guide, so guide.”
Galina rolls the Slavuta forward a few car lengths. “We go through it.”
“You mean, let them search the car?”
“No, no. We don’t stop. We run straight through.”
In this piece of shit? Carson stares at Galina until her open mouth dries out. “You’re crazy. They’ll blow us to pieces.”
“Ah, that’s too risky for you. We can turn back and drive about seventy kilometers. It may take hours and we will have to go through at least two checkpoints. We may be able to pay to pass them. Maybe your bandits will be gone by then.”
Stepaniak may go to the West if I don’t catch up. “Safer’s nice, but that’ll waste a day.”
Galina nods. “That’s too slow for you. If you want to go fast here, you must take risks. If you want less risk, you go slow. Nothing is ‘safe.’ Now I know what’s too slow for you and what’s too fast. Give me your mobilka.” She points at Heitmann’s phone. Once Carson hands it over, Galina fiddles with it for a minute or so, then smiles. “We can go around the checkpoint here. We take this small road to the top of Kumachove, then go through the streets. The tarhany”—cockroaches—“will shoot at us when we go off this highway and chase us through the town, but if we are smart and lucky, we get away.” She returns the phone. “What you say to that tells me who you are.”
Wonderful. A test. Carson sorts through the options. It’s not a suicide run like Galina’s first plan; a beehive rather than a hornet’s nest. But avoiding being chased and shot at was the whole idea behind hiring a driver. “Thought you were worried about your car.”
“You bought my car.”
She wants you to wimp out. It’ll make her feel superior. I’m not gonna play that way. “Okay. Let’s do the third one.” Watch her try to back out…
“Good.” Galina bobs her head. “We are a kilometer from where we turn. Look at your map and learn how the roads go. You can tell me where to go.”
Huh. Maybe that’s what she wanted. Good thing I don’t play poker.
The farther the line creeps forward, the edgier Carson gets. The one thing she hates more than anything is not being in control. It’s why she stopped doing drugs. She’d have already tried to take over driving if she wasn’t so tired and hungry. And who knows how good a driver Galina is under fire? “If you want, I’ll drive. I’m not a good passenger anyway.”
Galina eventually says, “Okay. You drive. I want to see what you can do. Don’t kill us.”
It takes over thirty more minutes to move up to the place where Carson saw the checkpoint on her hike. Only the cars being ransacked have changed. Carson’s finally got the driver’s seat set so it’s not too uncomfortable and is remembering how to work a stickshift. She’s been trying to get a feel for what—if anything—the little car can do. Sloppy steering, same-day acceleration: not her first choice for running a roadblock, but it’s all she’s got.
The radio’s launched into a marathon of winning Eurovision songs from previous years. So far, she hasn’t heard any she recalls or any winning singers she’s ever heard of. Still, she needs the distraction as they creep closer to the roadblock.
Almost fifteen minutes later, Galina points to their ten o’clock. “There it is. Do you still want to do this?”
Carson can just make out a semi-gravel track branching off from the highway about a hundred fifty meters ahead. It’s not on the GPS, but it crosses the road that is. Neither is guarded. Bright spots in the overcast reflect off puddles scattered across the area. She can’t tell how deep the ruts are, only that they look like veins in an old woman’s leg. “Any better ideas?”
A hundred meters. Carson opens a gap with the cars ahead. She and Galina watch two militiamen at the checkpoint hustle a man into the back of a cargo truck. That could be us next.
Fifty meters. She revs the engine. The track looks even worse now than it did; it’s more dirt than gravel. A long mud slick, not a road.
Twenty meters. A militia Hunter slowly rolls by northbound. Its driver peers into every car. Galina crosses herself the Orthodox way.
Five meters. Carson yanks the steering wheel to the left and floors it. The Slavuta’s engine screams like a terrified little girl. They churn across the gravel shoulder.
Carson swings onto the eastbound road leading to a long line of farmhouses. There’s absolutely no cover for the next hundred forty meters—no trees, no walls, nothing. Once the militia sees what she’s doing, they’ll have no excuse for missing when they shoot at her. She risks a glance to the highway. “They haven’t noticed yet.”
Galina clutches the grab bar above her door. “They will.”
Suddenly, even the pretense of gravel is gone. The path’s not dirt anymore—it’s a chocolate shake. There’s hardly any tread on the tires. When they get stuck, they’ll be an easy target.
Mud spouts to their right, ahead of the Slavuta. Troops scramble up the highway.
Carson’s whole body works hard, wrenching the wheel back and forth, trying to absorb the car’s leaps and lurches while zig-zagging to throw off the militia’s aim. Maybe eighty meters to the houses.
“The BTR just started.” Galina points toward the checkpoint. “The turret’s moving.”
Sixty meters. A line of mud geysers walks across the track ahead as tracers jet past them. Every tenth round is usually a tracer. A serious wall of lead is coming their way. Carson yells, “Hold on!” then swerves to their right.
“What—?”
More eruptions, this time to their left. The gunners are aiming at where the car was, not where it is. Carson slews across a mudhole. Thirty meters.
“A Hunter’s going into town.” Once again, Galina points out her window, not that Carson can actually look. “They will try to cut us off.”
“One thing at a time.”
The first clang from a solid hit makes Galina scream. Then a crunching sound: a ragged hole appears in the rear window. They’re almost to the houses, but their speed’s gone down by over half—not that it was all that fast to begin with—and the militia’s finding its range. Carson swerves the car wildly. Her ribs scream at the abuse. She keeps her mouth clamped shut so she doesn’t bite her tongue.
Then…gravel. They slew onto the southbound road. The Slavuta slowly throws the mud off its tires and picks up speed. It’s like drag-racing a snail.
Carson yells, “Where are we going?”
Galina peers at the GPS. “Straight, then left!”
Trees and raggedy houses fly by. A dog bolts across the road. The car’s getting dangerously close to eighty (kph); the engine whines, the front end shimmies like a belly dancer, and the steering’s sloppier than a three-day drunk. The road’s end grows larger by the second.
“Left! Left!”
Carson tries to drift the turn, but the tires aren’t up to it. The car spins, skidding onto someone’s scraggly front yard. They’re facing west instead of east.
A Hunter lurches to a halt in front of them. The driver’s jaw drops.
“Hold on.” Carson shifts into reverse, hits the gas. The Slavuta leaps back. Still, there’s no way they’ll lose the Hunter driving backward. The moment the trees disappear from the roadside, Carson stomps the clutch, yanks the handbrake, and cranks the wheel all the way to the right. They’re facing east again. Second gear; gun it.
The rear window disappears. Automatic gunfire breaks through the music. A quick glimpse in the rear-view: troops hanging out the Hunter’s side windows, shooting. “Crossroads!”
“Right! Go right!”
The car bombs down the narrow road, swerving to avoid the barrage of fire coming from the Hunter close behind it. The passenger’s side-view mirror explodes. Bullets clang into the bodywork. Galina can duck, but Carson can’t and keep the Slavuta on the road at the same time. A tractor abruptly backs out from a farm; Carson just barely keeps control as she caroms around it, narrowly missing a tree.
“How much farther?”
“Keep going!” Galina twists in her seat, raises the Ksyukha, and squeezes off a long burst into the Hunter’s front end.
Carson’s ears shut down. “Fuck! That’s loud!”
Galina cuffs her ear. “Don’t swear!”
They reach a crossroads. To their left: a huge plowed field. Ahead: another swamp of a dirt road. To the right: the BTR from the roadblock, heading straight for them. The what?
Straight ahead it is.
Fat, slow tracers arc over the little hatchback. Fountains of mud burst just meters in front of it. Carson cuts to the right between two small stands of trees, jouncing over bumps and rocks. She’s lost track of the Hunter, which is fine, because the heavy machinegun in the BTR’s turret can tear them in half if it ever hits them.
“Keep turning!” Galina thumps into her seat. “The gunner turns the BTR’s turret with a crank. Move fast and he can’t aim at us.”
They tear up a green field, slam over some washboard. The eight-wheeled monster behind them cruises over the mud like it’s asphalt, spraying a brown rooster tail high in the air. A tracer streaks by Carson’s window at head height.
And then…Celine Dion on the radio, singing a peppy love anthem. Eurovision winner in 1988. Carson remembers this one. She cranks the volume.
The big field is gone; they’re back on gravel. Carson’s sure she’ll dislocate a shoulder the way she’s twisting and heaving. Her head bounces off the side window, fuzzing her vision.
Ne partez pas sans moi, laissez-moi vous suivre…
They lurch to the left; a line of dirt-and-gravel fountains spurts just to their right. Then to the right. There’s a bang in back that sounds like a big rock hit them. More geysers to their left. A cemetery blurs past; not a good omen.
La plus belle aventure, les plus beaux voyages…
Galina yells, “Right! Right! Right!”
Chapter 13
Carson fishtails them around the corner, fighting to keep the Slavuta on all four wheels. She glimpses a large, ruined building to their right, partly screened from the road by tall weeds.
Galina thrusts her arm toward their one o’clock. “In there! Hurry!”
“In there” is a narrow, unpaved driveway crammed between two trees to the left of the ruins. Carson threads the needle, crashing over an exposed tree root.
Galina points out her window. “Go in there now! Between those trees!”
The gap looks about a meter wide. “We can’t fit—”
“Do it!”
Carson swerves into a tiny clearing in the impromptu forest growing behind the wrecked building. The little Slavuta manages to fit almost exactly between two trees, hiding it from the road.
Galina slaps the dash with both palms. “Yes!” She looks pleased with herself.
Carson has to catch her galloping breath. “Why are we stopping?”
“Come with me.”
They grab their weapons and pile out of the car. Carson follows Galina through a permanently open door into the building, which is little more than a shell with a skeletal roof and disintegrating plasterwork. They end up inside a large room, peeking out a sizable front window with no glass.
The BTR couldn’t turn as fast as the Slavuta. It backs into the intersection, then pulls even with the building. A top hatch flies open; a trooper in a black tanker’s helmet pokes his head and shoulders outside. He stares down the street through binoculars.
The Hunter stops behind the armored personnel carrier. The windshield’s pocked with bullet-sized holes and the entire front is caked with mud. The Hunter’s driver jogs to the BTR’s nose and talks with its driver. Carson hears voices but no words. The hand gestures tell the story: Where did they go? That way, I guess. You sure? Well, where else?
Both vehicles eventually take off westward down the street. The BTR leaves behind a fog of diesel exhaust and ground vibration.
Carson settles on a rusting metal chair. “Now what?”
“We wait for them to go away.”
Carson considers Galina. She knows that a BTR’s hand-cranked turret is too slow to track a fast-moving target. She knows how to hide from patrols. “You’ve done this before.”
Galina gives her a small, grim smile. “You did well. I’m impressed. You may be worth the trouble.” She stands. “We fix my car now.”
She digs a can of spray paint and a roll of heavy-duty packing tape from the depths of the trunk, then shows Carson how to patch the dozen-and-some bullet holes in the car. Carson says, “You just happen to have this.”
“It’s good to be prepared.”
The paint matches the original color with enough squinting. The driver-side taillight is splintered and the rear window’s entirely gone. Still, Carson hopes it’ll be harder for the militia to spot them in traffic.
How did Galina learn to do all this? She can handle weapons, too. Carson finally asks, “Who are you?”
Galina deadpans, “Just a simple farmer.”
Bullshit. The question bouncing around Carson’s brain: how bent is she? Is Galina a bandit? A wheelman for a gang? A smuggler? Not that these are bad things in this context, but Carson would rather know now than find out the hard way.
Galina takes the wheel. She turns down the radio, then leans her seat back and closes her eyes to show she’s not interested in talking. That leaves Carson to play sentry. Love songs and dance mixes are exactly the wrong soundtrack for the situation, but she doesn’t dare change the station.
An hour later, Galina fires up the car. Starting is almost as much a cliffhanger as it was that morning in her driveway. She untangles the car from the trees and heads south to join up with the highway.
Stepaniak’s focus shuttles between the tracker app on his phone and Stas’s grumbling under the Range Rover.
“Dear Carson, what are you doing?” he mumbles to himself. The red pip on his tracker shows her going northwest toward Novozarivka. If she keeps that up… “Are you following us?”
“Somebody else after us?” Stas drags himself out from under the SUV. He sounds more sour than usual.
“Carson may be. She’s less than ten kilometers from Komsomolske.”
“Almost closer than we are.” Stas takes a big pull from Stepaniak’s late-Art Nouveau silver flask. He waves it at the Range Rover. “Can’t find a fucking thing. If they put a beacon on us, I don’t see it.”
Of course not. Stepaniak sighs and scans the ruins of the collective farm all around them. They’re parked on what was the concrete floor of some kind of storage building; now it’s just a slab surrounded by fragments of wall. The orderly grid of Petrivske takes up the Kalmius River’s east bank about three hundred meters to the east.
It had been a hard slog to get this far. They’d had tho
se militia idiots on their tail since they fled Olhynske this morning. That ridiculous technical—a Toyota Hilux pickup draped with sheet steel and sandbags—nearly ambushed them in Kultura; Stepaniak and Stas managed to dispose of the three-man crew without anyone noticing right away. They weaved around back roads until that five-kilometer-long wallow on dirt tracks to Petrivske. Stas swore and groused nonstop as he muscled the Range Rover through bogs and over rain-swollen creeks while they both expected the militia to shoot them at any moment. But they finally made it here.
Hoping the militia won’t follow.
The road running southwest-northeast through Novozarivka—where Carson’s driving— is supposed to be the western boundary of the Makiivka Brigade’s area of operations. Where did she get a car? She’s resourceful that way, but still. Is she following us? How? Is she working with the militia?
Stas hands back Stepaniak’s flask. Empty, predictably. “Well? What do you want to do?”
“Did you check inside?”
“Yes.”
“Dear Stas, please think. They are not following us with magic. There must be something.”
Stas sweeps his hand toward the SUV. Look for yourself.
“Yes, yes. It may not matter now if those militia fools stay where they belong. But Carson may be giving us an opportunity—we don’t have to look for her if she comes to us.”
“That shit deal again?”
“Perhaps.” Stepaniak’s been thinking about that ever since they left Olhynske. If Stas is satisfied with only a quarter of the money—not at all a certainty—that leaves Stepaniak with the bare minimum to buy into the club. He’ll still have expenses to set himself up in proper style in Kyiv. That means he needs to get not only the money from Carson, but also the painting she has. It’s definitely not the deal she proposed.
Stas shakes his head in disgust. “She’s just a woman. There’s plenty of those in Kyiv. Stop talking shit and kill her. You know you have to.”
Stas is being predictable again. In this case, though, the man may have a point.
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