Cassidy grinned. “Okay, pull your ear and let’s get out of here. I’ll hit him high and you hit him low.”
“Gawd, you’re smart enough to be a general!”
“Charge!”
They both stood. Roland pulled his ear theatrically and they walked straight toward the promyshlennik. Potempkin jerked to his feet, eyes flashing up and down between them.
“Is he the one Riordan is looking for?” He stared at Roland, who finally nodded.
“Yeah. Come on.” He nodded toward the door and charged ahead. Cassidy stayed right behind Roland but also kept an eye on the battleship at his back.
Once out in the fragrant, soft, impressionistic glow that passed for evening in the high subarctic spring, Roland abruptly stopped and turned to Potempkin. Cassidy could smell a hint of wood smoke in the clear, cool air.
“You have two choices. Go back to Riordan without me, or stay here.”
Potempkin frowned at him.
“Oh, there is another choice: die.”
Understanding thrummed through Potempkin like the strike of a cathedral bell.
Grabbing the hilt of his sheath knife, he sneered, “And who would be killing me? You or this clumsy oaf with you?”
Knives flashed in the soft light and the last thing Potempkin heard through fading pain was: “Both!”
20
55 miles south of Delta
Bodecia couldn’t rouse Rudi. Pelagian had stumbled to his feet at her bidding and crawled into the leaf-mattress bed she had made in the back of the truck. She had spent a frantic twenty minutes stripping the leaves off willows to cushion the men.
Rudi endured her increasingly heavier slaps on his face without even blinking. She stopped; her hand hurt anyway. Abruptly she rose and went to the water skin, brought it back and dumped half a gallon on his head.
“Ahhh, what, why did you do that?” Rudi’s eyes had yet to open.
“Wake up, now, Rudi. I need for you to move.”
His eyes squinted open. “So bright here. Where, oh, is you.”
He pushed himself up, groaning with the effort. Once upright he rested, breathing hard.
“Da, what do you require?”
“I want you to get in the back of that truck. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” he said through a wheeze as she helped him stand.
She led him to the truck and he crawled into the back and lay down next to Pelagian.
“Will not ask where you obtained vehicle, but grateful you did.”
She covered them with the parachute and packed more leaves in between them and the sides of the truck bed. Their gear also offered some cushioning. She glanced around the area, decided she hadn’t missed anything, and climbed into the cab with the dogs.
The engine caught on the first turn and she pulled away from their refuge in low gear. The trail proved easy to follow, but the uneven ground caused the truck to bounce and sway. She slowed even further so the truck felt more like a small boat on a medium sea.
Bodecia had hated being on the ship that took her to college in Vancouver, British Canada. The ocean seemed so alien, so unnatural, that she couldn’t sleep the entire four-day voyage out of fear they would sink. After she settled in the omnibus, which would take her to the campus, she fell so fast asleep that an emergency medical crew was called and they took her to a hospital.
She grinned at the memory. Ever after, the other students called her “Rip.” At least the truck sailed solid ground and the rolls felt gentle rather than tempestuous.
“This is a lot faster than walking,” she said to herself.
The landscape bobbed up and down in all three of the rearview mirrors. She began glancing from mirror to mirror, comparing the different views of the same thing. She held on the right mirror, and then shifted her vision to the left mirror, just in time to see it explode. Two hammer-blow reports shook her at the same time.
Stifling her involuntary flinch, she stared at the inside mirror and beheld a Russian armored car directly behind them. The gunner at the top of the small turret aimed his heavy machine gun down into the back of the truck, at Pelagian and Rudi.
She slammed on the brakes and spoke sharply to the dogs, “Home! Now!” They leaped through the open window and vanished into the ubiquitous willows and birch.
She envied them.
“Who are you?” the Russian lieutenant demanded, his hand resting on his holstered pistol. “And who are these men?” A sergeant and a corporal stood on either side of him, training their automatic weapons through the truck window at her.
“I am Bodecia,” she said in fluent Russian, “a healer of the Dená people. The large man in the back is my husband, the other is a man we found in the forest.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“The man was injured in a great fall, or so he said. He has internal injuries, which I treated. My husband was shot by unknown assailants.”
“His wounds wouldn’t have anything to do with the dead crew of one of our armored cars, would they?”
The sergeant and corporal exchanged knowing looks.
Bodecia thought fast. “I don’t think so, not unless they were wearing different uniforms.”
“The Freekorps, Lieutenant?” the sergeant blurted.
“Shut up, you idiot.” The lieutenant returned his steely gaze to Bodecia. “What kind of uniforms did they wear?”
“I wasn’t paying close attention.” She reached out with all her senses and repeated the words that came into her mind. “But they had splashes of different drab colors all over them, like that silk in the back of the truck.”
“That isn’t merely silk, it’s a parachute. Where did you get that?”
“Near a crashed plane far up on the Gakona River. The pilot had jumped out but the parachute didn’t slow him down enough. We buried him there.”
“Do you know why it crashed?”
“We heard many guns firing. I think it was shot down.”
“Exactly where on the Gakona River was this?”
“Near Rainbow Mountain.”
“Then the radio report was true—”
“Sergeant Platnikov, if you say one more word I’ll have you shot!” The lieutenant stared at Bodecia again. “And you decided you could take Imperial Russian property with impunity. Why?” He kicked the door of the truck.
“You had many; we had none. My patients couldn’t walk and I wished to get them to more medical help than I can provide. I didn’t realize there was an encampment there, too.”
“Because you didn’t bother to look, or you’re lying. We don’t leave fleets of vehicles in the wilderness unattended. Everybody knows that. The penalty for stealing the Czar’s property is instant death.”
She felt weak with sudden fear. Her hand still clutched the machine pistol at her side, but there were three surrounding the truck and one manning the heavy machine gun in the armored car. She couldn’t get all four of them before they shot her.
“Lieutenant!” the sergeant said in an urgent tone.
The lieutenant twisted to face his subordinate while pulling his pistol out. “I told you—”
“Aircraft, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Three aircraft to the north!” bellowed the gunner on the armored car.
“Get your glasses on them,” the lieutenant screamed. “Are they Yaks?”
“No, sir. They’re not Russian.”
“Can you see any identifying insignia?” Fear radiated from him.
All three men next to the truck fixated on the aircraft. Bodecia decided this was the only chance she had to get her patients out alive. She eased into second gear and popped the clutch; the truck lurched off like an Arctic hare.
She swung to the left for a hundred meters and then swung back to the right. Heavy machine gun fire blasted the willows where she would have been had she not swerved; then it started following her. Three aircraft roared over her at very low altitude and she slammed on her brakes to stare in the rearview mirror.