It’s Galina. “Over there! Over there!” Her eyes are wild. She stabs a hand toward a lone tree, three or four meters away. Then she crawls away the way most people do—elbows and knees, torso up in the air.
Carson lunges at her and knocks her over. “Not like that! Your ass is a huge target! Like this.” She automatically starts a low crawl the way Yurik taught her: flat on her belly, arms stretched forward, swing her right knee even with her hip, push with the leg and pull with her elbows, repeat with her left knee. Bullets splash dirt and rock fragments on her. It’s slow and tiring and dirty, but she never gives the gunner more than a ten-inch-high target.
As soon as they reach the tree, it starts to dance like a clubber on meth. Leaves, branches, and wood fragments spatter them. Galina wrestles an RPG tube off her back while trying not to leave any air between her and the ground. She fiddles with sights and pins and shoot the goddamn thing already!
Whoosh. The BMP shudders. Black smoke rockets out firing ports and an open hatch on top. The AFV coasts to a stop.
Galina tosses the tube aside, then falls back next to Carson. She’s breathing like she finished an ultra-marathon.
Carson says, “Nice shot.”
“It was so close. I couldn’t miss.” She wipes her forehead with her sleeve. “I never used one of these. They trained us how, but we never had enough to actually shoot one for practice.” Galina rolls her head to look at Carson. “Did you call my dupu huge?”
Carson flops a hand across Galina’s stomach. “Girl, your dupu is perfect. Let’s get next to that wall over there.”
The concrete-block wall is part of the substation compound. The transformers buzz and crackle. Carson peeks around the corner at the field. Several Zils are out in the open, and men are disappearing into the trees to rescue more. The fires near the field’s north end—where they’d destroyed the first two trucks—are dying down. Rifle fire pops in the woods. What are they shooting at?
A whistle falls out of the night.
The first artillery shell hits fifty meters away, about ten meters short of the trees.
Finally. “Get it right, you idiots,” Carson mutters.
The next lands behind the woods near the field’s north end. Some militiamen run faster, while others drop and cover their heads. A BMP grinds into position close to the dying fire near where the road plunges into the forest.
The road…
The next rounds blast holes in the treeline, throwing dirt and plants and parts of trucks into the air. Whump. Whump. Whumpwhumpwhump. Explosions walk down the woods from north to south. Some fall short, but even those often hit something. Men who were running to save trucks turn around and sprint to save themselves. Huge blasts tell where loads of ammunition used to be.
Galina prays loudly behind her.
Carson stares at the north end of the road, waiting for Rogozhkin to drive the car through this inferno to take them home.
Rogozhkin’s driven through artillery barrages before. It’s not his favorite thing to do. Doing it in a civilian sedan is an even worse idea.
But the women are waiting for him. They’ve done the hard work so far. It’s time for him to do his part.
He shifts to take as much weight as he can off his right hip, now bandaged and bloody beneath his shredded jeans. Turns the key, backs carefully onto the road, shifts into first, rolls slowly over the railroad tracks, then stops at the clearing.
The entire eastern side of the field is fenced by flame. It’s like daylight out there. While a few BMPs and BTRs have drifted onto the field, most are still at their positions next to the road, though their turrets are turned to watch the carnage. At least ten of the beasts stand between him and the substation, where the women are (or are supposed to be). He’ll have to drive right under their guns.
Adapt and overcome.
Rogozhkin revs the engine, then pops the clutch. The Octavia leaps out of cover and bolts past a BMP. He does what he can to make the car a bad target. A dirt plume spouts a few meters behind him. Small-arms fire winks from foxholes to his right.
Fifty meters ahead, a BTR pulls across the road. Its turret swings toward him.
“He’s coming!” Carson yells. “He’s on his way!”
The silver sedan perfectly reflects the wall of fire’s intense yellow light as it slaloms across the road. Unfortunately, that same light shows how many armored fighting vehicles stand in Rogozhkin’s way. Two are already shooting at him.
Galina presses against Carson’s back and peeks over her shoulder. “Look! One’s trying to block the road.”
“Can you hit it?”
“I don’t know. How far is that?”
The weird light and lack of landmarks gives Carson some trouble trying to estimate distance. “Couple hundred meters. What’s that thing’s range?”
“Two hundred fifty meters.”
The Octavia swerves around a fountain of dirt. Rogozhkin’s covered maybe a hundred of the four hundred meters between the field’s north end and where she and Galina are huddling, trying not to be noticed. Three football fields is a long way with so many guns aimed at him. “Better get to it, then.”
Galina points to the substation compound’s west end, a hundred meters away. “Let’s go up there.”
The shelling stopped sometime when Carson wasn’t paying attention. The militiamen who were face-down on the ground trying to be too small to die are starting to raise their heads. The fires have erased the dark. Still, when Galina runs along the wall, Carson follows. At least her balance is steady enough that she doesn’t bounce off the concrete.
Galina settles on her right knee, prepares the RPG, aims, then squeezes the trigger rod on the top of the tube. The grenade whooshes up the road. Carson tries to guide it telepathically into its target.
A cloud of dirt billows from the ground next to the BTR.
Galina hurls the empty launcher into the nearest crater. “I missed!” She swivels to Carson. “You try.”
“Me? I’ve—”
“Go on, try it. Maybe you’ll have more luck.” She holds up her hands. They shake like Jell-O in an earthquake. “I can’t hold it steady.”
Carson peels an RPG launcher off her shoulder. Galina steps her through the setup: pull the pin at the top of the housing; flip up the sights; line up the peep sight with the bottom-most range indicator on the front sight. Carson’s heart flutters almost as fast as Galina’s hands. Dark haze halos the BTR’s turret—it’s shooting at Rogozhkin. She takes a deep breath, exhales, then presses the trigger rod. A wispy smoke trail arcs toward the BTR.
It lurches. Black smoke jets out from under the turret.
The Octavia skids around the now-dead beast, bounces back onto the road, and plunges forward.
“Yes!” Galina pounds an especially sore bruise on Carson’s back. “You got it!”
Something blasts away part of the wall’s corner above their heads. Jagged chunks of concrete rain on them. Heavy machinegun rounds churn the dirt and the wall’s edge.
Whatever’s shooting at them is on the compound’s opposite side and coming their way. So much for celebrating. Carson shoves the last launcher into Galina’s hands. “Take it out!”
Mashkov can’t keep up with the torrent of radio traffic being firehosed into his ear. He’d stepped outside briefly a few minutes ago during the bombardment’s peak. It was perhaps the most terrifying experience of his life.
Now reports deluge the command net. Casualties, destroyed equipment, units forced from their positions. Mashkov, Shatilov, and the sergeant try to sort it all out with little success.
One message jumps out at Mashkov: “…silver car on the road heading south…”
What? “This is Makiivka One. Repeat that last transmission about the car.”
“Sir, there’s a silver car on the access road to the quarry. It’s heading south. Some of our units have engaged but haven’t stopped it. We have at least two vehicles hit by RP
Gs—”
“What? Not by shelling?”
“No sir. One just got hit. It’s RPGs. Maybe the banderovtsi special forces are here?”
Mashkov tries to stop the madhouse in his head so he can think. “This is Makiivka One. Identify yourself.”
“Vovchak Ops, sir.”
The Second Battalion operations center. Probably some poor sergeant swimming in bedlam in an armored vehicle that seems more like a target than protection. “Vovchak Ops, Makiivka One. Stand by.” Mashkov snaps his fingers to get Shatilov’s attention. “Have you heard anything about civilians on the field?”
“Yes.” He clamps his cigarette between his lips and flips through the pad of lined paper he’s been using for notes. “Here. About…eight minutes ago. Vovchak Logs reported two women running toward the substation. They’re seeing mermaids.”
Two women. Silver sedan. Bozhe, you truly are great. “Vovchak Ops, Makiivka One. Do not—repeat, do not—destroy the silver car. Capture and hold. There may be two civilian women in it or near it. Capture these spies if you can, but if you can’t, neutralize them. Do you copy?”
Shatilov stares at him, his cigarette hand turned up. “What?”
Mashkov lets himself laugh for the first time in days. “We’ve got them, Evgeniy. We’ve got Rogozhkin and the rest of that damned money.”
Rogozhkin aims the car at the two militiamen who step onto the road a few meters ahead of him. They blow holes in the windscreen. He ducks behind the dash, steering with one hand, trying to keep the accelerator pressed flat. Rounds pass through the car’s interior and leave through the rear window.
One militiaman steps back. Rogozhkin twitches the wheel and clips the other as he passes. The man pinwheels off the road into a nearby power pole.
Something’s changed. The BMPs have stopped firing their 30mm cannon at him. The BTRs aren’t using their heavy machineguns anymore, only the 7.62s. He hasn’t had to dodge a grenade for a couple of minutes. What’s going on here?
The substation’s getting closer. Two figures are clumped together at its northwest corner, one tall and one short. Tarasenko and Galina? Tarasenko made it? He’d been hoping she’d survive, but he’s surprised by the relief he feels at seeing her.
A dark shape hulks off the substation compound’s west end: a BMP on the edge of the road that leads to the quarry. Its main gun is aimed straight at him.
Carson glances at Galina. “Why did they stop shooting?”
“No idea.”
Carson peeks around the wall’s pulverized corner. The BMP’s still there, twenty meters away, sandwiched between a tree and the road’s sweeping right turn that leads to the quarry and their path out of this jungle.
Rogozhkin’s less than a hundred fifty meters from them. The heavy thumping of cannons has died out; now she hears only the chattering of machineguns and the fire’s roar.
Galina sets the RPG launcher on her knee. “Should I kill it?”
Should she? Something’s happening that Carson doesn’t understand. Maybe her brain’s still screwed up from the concussion and dizziness. For whatever reason, the BMP’s stopped being a threat. But for how long? “Not yet. We might need that for something worse.”
Carson’s watch claims it’s 4:48. They’d stepped off from the car at 4:14. All this in thirty-four minutes? Thirty-four hours she could believe.
She’s So. Damn. Tired. The pain meds Galina gave her yesterday are long gone by now. The first glimmer of dawn fringes the eastern horizon, backlighting the smoke billowing from the flaming woods. Soon enough the night will be gone and with it, their cover, such as it is.
This isn’t the best idea any of them have had.
The Octavia’s a hundred meters away. Carson taps Galina’s elbow and points toward the car. She checks the BMP—still there, still buttoned up. Then movement catches her eye.
Something’s moving in an overgrown patch about fifty meters west of the road. The fires light up a dozen militia troops crawling through the bushes, three of them packing machineguns. One by one, they settle into the weeds and face the road.
Finally, she gets it: they don’t want to blow up the car. They think the money’s in it. (It is.) Maybe they think the paintings are in it, too. (They are.) Us? They don’t care about us.
She huddles with Galina. “They’re setting up an ambush.”
“Over there?”
“Yeah. They’ll open up when Rogozhkin stops to get us. They want to kill us so they can have the car.”
Galina nods. She looks drained even in the firelight. “What do we do?”
Even if Carson can put down the men with the machineguns, the survivors will tear her apart. They have the only cover out here. As fast as Rogozhkin’s traveling, there’s not much time for a Plan B. Once he gets here, that BMP will be able to open up on him at point-blank range, and the troops in the bushes will mop up what’s left. Close enough to use aimed fire and not worry about blowing up the car.
“I don’t know what to do,” Carson mutters. Words she hates to say.
“Okay.” Galina grabs Carson’s arm. “Lara…I promised I’d get you out of here.”
“Yeah. You better keep it, too.” She gives Galina a one-armed hug. “Stay alive.”
“You, too.” Galina’s eyes get big. She almost clocks Carson when she throws her hand out to point. “Look!”
The Octavia’s off the road and bouncing over the churned-up dirt toward the substation’s east end. Here and there militiamen leap out of the way, but only a couple shoot at the car.
Carson pumps her fist. “Yes! Let’s get down there. Stay close to the wall.”
They run as fast as they can in a combat crouch along almost a hundred meters of whitewashed concrete block. Up ahead, the Octavia skids to a stop. Seconds later, a cluster of single shots cuts through the aural chaos from the car’s direction. Carson readies her rifle. Is he taking fire?
Carson and Galina at last reach the car. Rogozhkin’s crouched behind the open driver’s door, mowing down the last of five militiamen who’d been sheltering against the substation’s east wall. When Carson flops into the front passenger’s seat, he glances her way, drops the magazine from his Dragunov, reloads, then thrusts it stock-first at her. “Take this.”
There’s blood on the driver’s seat and all over Rogozhkin’s right hip. Carson rasps, “What happened to you?”
“A guard got lucky. Hold on.”
The car lurches past the substation and the five bodies splayed near it, then slews around the corner to regain the gravel road. Concrete utility poles go by like fenceposts. A scabby treeline grows large in the windshield.
Galina yells, “There’s a BMP—”
“I know!” Rogozhkin cranks the wheel to the left. They arrow past a utility pylon toward a small gap that appears between two substantial trees.
Carson fumbles her seatbelt on and closes her eyes. The last thing Rogozhkin needs right now is her screaming about dying.
The car shudders and bounces, goes briefly sideways, then passes something that scrapes the doors on her side. The Octavia stops shimmying a few seconds later as the tires settle into the reassuring crunch of rubber on gravel.
Carson opens her eyes again. The Octavia’s fighting the gravel to climb a short grade. They crest a rounded ridge and pitch downward. She peers past the bullet holes in the windshield. “Holy shit.”
An enormous crater opens in front of them, ringed with gravel roads and ramps that spiral down into the murk the dawn hasn’t yet reached. The west end fades into the darkness.
“Impressive, yes?” Rogozhkin swerves them onto a road that hugs the chasm’s north rim. “Roughly two kilometers east-west by a kilometer north-south. You should see it in full daylight.”
“No, thanks. I saw stuff like that back home, at the tar sands. They were always depressing to look at.” She turns to Galina in the back seat. “Are you okay?”
They make a matched pair:
filthy, bleary, drained. Galina tries for a smile that doesn’t quite work. “Can we not do that again?”
“Sure.”
The car slows. Rogozhkin steers it toward the road’s right edge, the one farthest away from the endless drop to the bottom. “Miss Tarasenko, can you drive?”
“You fucking kidding? Not the way my head is. Why?”
“Ehm…I may have lost more blood than I thought.” The car grinds to a halt.
Galina says, “She can’t drive. She almost passed out back there.”
Rogozhkin frowns at Carson. “Really? You weren’t going to tell me?”
“For fuck’s sake, Rogozhkin, why didn’t you say you’re bleeding out? Get out, I’m driving.”
Galina yelps, “No! If you get dizzy, we’ll end up down there!” She stabs a finger toward the massive pit on the other side of the road.
He leans his forearms on the steering wheel. “We may do that anyway if I go much farther.”
“I’ll drive!” Galina shoves open her door and bolts out. “I’m the only healthy one here. Besides, it’s my car.” She stomps to the driver’s door while Rogozhkin drags himself outside. They both look back along the road at the same time. Galina says, “Lara?”
It takes a moment for Carson to react to the name, and another few seconds to follow Galina’s pointing finger.
A BMP turns onto their road. Its tracks churn up a cloud of gravel and dust behind it.
They change seats in fast-forward, Rogozhkin in back, Galina driving, Carson next to her. The Octavia has only just restarted when flame and dirt spews up ahead of them.
Carson mumbles, “Not this shit again.”
There’s not much room to zig-zag, only a meter-wide shoulder on the right adjoining a steep upward slope, and a ragged, crumbling edge on the left that ends at what looks like a bottomless pit. Galina does what she can, jinking side to side, speeding up and slowing down.
Rogozhkin—who’s been busy with Galina’s first-aid kit—says, “You have an Aglen.”
Zrada Page 31
