“Dammit,” Ekaterina swore in Russian. It was her turn.
Grabbing Danny by the scruff of his uniform, she jumped up — at least ten feet — and grabbed the edge of one of the broken windows. Leaving Danny hanging from the edge of the window beside her, she tore open a gaping hole in the metal hull of the train car and proceeded inside, punching the first uniformed man she saw. He didn’t get up.
Then she was hit by a fierce wave of water, one that actually staggered her back a few steps. That was impressive, she thought. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been pushed back by anything.
The water abated, and Ekaterina surged forward, wiping her eyes. She saw a thin man in the uniform of an NKVD major, and recognized him immediately, despite the five years since she’d defected. He was Alexei Ivanovich Rustov, a Variant like her, one of the first found by Beria’s Behkterev Institute. And his Enhancement seemed to have improved considerably over the years.
“Ekaterina, is that you?” Rustov asked, a flash of recognition in his eyes. “Ekaterina?”
Grimacing, Ekaterina tromped toward her former comrade, shoving a would-be tackler into the wall of the train. She grabbed Rustov by his necktie and threw him back toward Danny, who managed to crawl into the car behind her. Many of the other men were still coughing, dazed but not unconscious as planned. Moving determinedly down the car, Ekaterina pummeled and slammed her way through the officers, trying not to take a grim sort of pleasure from it. They were Beria’s men, yes, but most of them were simply doing their jobs and trying to feed their families. That was, perhaps, not a very good excuse, but for her, it was enough to show relative restraint.
That is, of course, until a wave of vertigo washed over her, one so profound that it dropped her to her knees and brought her latest meal up onto the floor of the train.
“What?” she gasped, looking around. Most of the people in the train, including Danny and Rustov and the NKVD men still conscious, were similarly indisposed.
Except for one.
A woman three rows ahead of Ekaterina simply sat there, smiling, an eyebrow raised. She was young, though older than Ekaterina — perhaps in her twenties. Ekaterina had never seen her before, but the captain’s rank on her uniform — far too high a rank for the woman’s age — was enough to tell her that this new woman had to be one of Beria’s special recruits.
Suddenly, the woman’s head jerked to the side as her eyes widened, and she collapsed into the aisle, unconscious. At that moment, the nausea and vertigo evaporated like a mist, and Ekaterina shot to her feet once more, dashing forward to grab the woman and heave her bodily through the gash in the car’s side.
“Thanks, Timoveyish,” she muttered in Russian, using her pet name for Tim Sorensen. She’d seen enough of his handiwork to know when he was around.
“Guess she can’t target what she can’t see,” the invisible man whispered in English in her ear. “Let’s go.”
Ekaterina shouted over to Danny, in Russian. “Where’s the third? The swimmer?”
“Outside, heading toward Frank,” he replied. “Let’s move.”
Jumping through the hole in the side of the train, Ekaterina took off at a dead run, passing each car in just a few strides and quickly catching up to the man ahead. She took a great leap and landed right on top of him from a height of about fifteen feet. He didn’t get up.
Tough being a Variant whose Enhancement requires being submerged in water.
“Secure!” she shouted ahead.
The stolen Red Army truck surged forward from the temporary barrier, Frank Lodge at the wheel. “Let’s go,” he called out. “We need them all in there.”
“All of them?” Ekaterina asked. That’s not the plan.
“All of them,” Frank replied.
Ekaterina took the runaway she’d landed on and hurled him into the back of the truck, then jumped on the tailgate as Frank sped back toward Danny and the other NKVD officers. Danny had already secured the two other Soviet Variants, hands tied behind their backs as they lay unconscious on the ground.
“Frank wants them all,” Ekaterina muttered as she fetched Rustov and the vertigo woman.
Danny looked over to Frank, waiting impatiently in the truck. “There’s twenty men in there. Some of them won’t stay down for long,” Danny said. He then walked over to the truck and got in next to Frank. Ekaterina couldn’t hear what was said, but she could see the two of them getting pretty animated. After a couple minutes, Danny got out again and, looking angry and pained, walked over to Ekaterina. “Let’s get them in the truck. We’ll need to gas them when they’re inside.”
With a sigh, Ekaterina jumped back into the train car and started gathering unconscious NKVD men. Well, mostly unconscious — there were a couple groggy ones who needed a bit of reinforcement, but again, she restrained herself from being too rough with them.
Ten long minutes later, Ekaterina put the last officer in the back of the truck, and Danny followed suit with a second canister of gas, quickly closing and securing the canvas flap around the top. It wasn’t ideal — Ekaterina could see gas starting to flow out from around the edges of the truck bed — but those inside wouldn’t be in a position to complain much about their destination, wherever that was.
“Tim, you and I are in the truck. Katie, you go back with Frank. Rendezvous at Point B in an hour,” Danny said tersely.
Again, not the plan, Ekaterina thought as she followed Frank back toward Mikhailov’s policemen. There would be glad-handing and Frank acting imperious and commanding, more scraping and bowing by the police chief…
… and then what?
What the hell are we going to do with two squads of NKVD officers?
Danny rode silently in the truck while Tim navigated through the darkness of the Russian countryside outside Moscow. Their operation was, technically, one of the greatest successes MAJESTIC-12 had scored to date — the capture of three Soviet Variants in the middle of the Soviet Union itself.
But the other twenty guys presented one hell of a complication. And there were no good solutions.
Tim pulled onto a dirt road that led through a thick stand of trees. Pulling to a stop, Tim shut down the truck’s headlights and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim moonlight, then started down the rutted road again, the truck bouncing and straining in protest.
“The Ruskies don’t really believe in shock absorbers, do they?” Tim said quietly. “This thing handles like a goddamn battleship. And we’re low on gas.”
Danny sighed. “Gas won’t be an issue. Truck’s staying here.”
Tim nodded and kept silent for the next several miles, finally pulling into a small clearing where a couple of burned-out farm buildings — likely casualties of the Nazi invasion during World War II — sat squat and dark in front of the trees. They were easily forty miles outside Moscow now, and a good half hour from anything remotely civilized.
It would do.
Danny got out of the truck and reached back with his senses to check on their captives. All three were unconscious. He’d seen the water Variant’s work firsthand, and felt the woman’s vertigo, of course, but he still didn’t know what the third could do, though apparently the man decided running was a better option than using his Enhancement. Maybe his abilities weren’t particularly combat-effective, or maybe he was just a rookie. Or a coward?
Still, Danny didn’t feel like finding out suddenly, so he rifled through his rucksack for a null-field generator. Mrs. Stevens had managed to get the device down to the size of a smallish ashtray without sacrificing too much range.