And then she wondered if Kosyk had forced her to sleep with him in exchange for information about her father.
Summer dropped a bulb into her hand. “Good thinking, Faith. We don’t need brake lights to give us away.” He gave her a single pat on the back, but she didn’t like being one of the guys-not to Summer, not now.
Zara drove back onto the main dirt road and continued onward. In a few minutes, she slowed and turned off the headlights. Lights from the dacha flickered through the trees. They crept past it and into the neighboring driveway. The nearly full moon illuminated the rutted drive between the towering birches. Zara stopped the car in front of a collapsing shell of a burnt-out dacha.
“Great intel on our base camp,” Summer said as he looked at the rubble. “Now I wish we would’ve gotten an earlier start.”
Zara backed the car to conceal it as best as possible behind the cottage’s remains. “I told you I haven’t been here for a couple of years.”
Summer smeared shoe polish on his face. “I don’t like the moon phase one bit. It’s far too bright for something like this. At least we found these dark coveralls.”
Zara turned off the motor. “I’ll go survey Stukoi’s dacha and determine who’s there.”
“We agreed earlier that I’m in command of the op. I’ll take the night scope and recon the area. You two wait here and be quiet. Comrade, you make sure Faith understands the importance of following orders.”
Faith noticed Summer checking the Makarov magazine even though he had inspected it during the ride from the city. He had eight bullets and she hoped that was eight bullets too many and not too few.
The moonlight was too bright to risk dashing from tree to tree, so Summer crawled along the damp forest floor, picking up an unintended camouflage coating of mud, sticks and leaves. No one was walking patrol; security for the meeting didn’t seem to be a priority. The closer he got to the dacha, the stronger the smell of burning wood. He paused to scan the area with the night scope. Expecting to see everything in shades of green, he was surprised to see tones of dark gray. Compared to the third-generation night-vision equipment he was accustomed to from the American military, the Red Army monocular was like looking through cheap sunglasses. What he wouldn’t give for an infrared view of the target. At least the bright moonlight had an upside: It augmented the dated technology enough to help him make out three drivers leaning against one of a half-dozen parked cars. He’d have to get closer to be sure, but none seemed to be carrying visible firearms, though one clutched a bottle.
Drink up, buddy.
Summer moved close enough to see without the scope. Just then a car pulled into the drive and parked. He froze as he watched a short man with a goatee strut to the cabin. The man ignored the guards’ greetings.
A woodpile was near an outbuilding some fifty feet behind the dacha and smoke curled above the wooden shack. No one seemed to be inside. The only voices in the still night air came from the dacha and the drivers. He sketched a precise mental map of the area and returned to the car.
Suddenly the car door opened, but before Faith could choke back an instinctive gasp, Zara’s soft hand was across her mouth and Summer was scooting into the roomy backseat with them.
“Your comrades started a while ago without you. I heard a lot of laughing and some pretty bad singing, so I’d say they’re a bit liquored up. They have to be nuts the eve of a coup, sitting in a cabin in the woods, drinking and singing about the Motherland.”
“Welcome to Russia. Stalin used to hold all-night Politburo meetings at his dacha and made his greatest decisions inebriated. Do not underestimate us: We Russians are highly functional drunks.”
“There was a building sort of like a smokehouse, but the smoke didn’t smell like hickory,” Summer said.
“The banya could be a problem,” Zara said. “Someone might be getting ready to use it.”
Summer knit his brow and made eye contact with Faith.
Faith whispered, “A Russian sauna where they steam themselves, beat each other with birch branches, then roll in the snow.”
“Now that’s a pretty picture.”
“How many are we up against?” Zara said.
“I counted three guards. A stocky man marched in while I was-”
Faith interrupted. “What did he look like?”
“Stout, late-fifties, goatee-”
“Kosyk,” the two women said simultaneously.
Faith continued, “Great. We’re about to blow up the one person who knows about my father.”
“I know the man well and we’re doing the world a favor. There are other ways to find out what you need,” Zara said.
“I thought all the documents are sealed,” Faith said.
“Don’t you think your mother knows?” Zara said.
Silence.
“Faith, hand me that paper and pencil so I can rough out a diagram of what we’re looking at.” Summer crawled under the blanket with a flashlight like a child reading under the bedcovers. A minute later he stuck his head out from under the blanket and whispered, “Okay, you two are going to have to join me under here for the briefing. I want you to see my map and I don’t want any light leaking out and giving us away.”
They gathered under the musty blanket and Summer spoke. “Three guys in some kind of military uniforms are standing here drinking. No visible weapons.” He ran his finger along the crumpled paper, leaving a dusting of dried mud. “Two cars had antenna arrays. This last one blocked everybody in and this one here, too.”
“A few generals in there. We have to take out the communications.” Zara put her arm around Faith’s lower back to steady herself in the awkward huddle. At first Faith pushed a little closer to her, but then shifted away.
“Noted. There was no sign of phone lines going into the house, only electricity.”
“I thought Stukoi would have more pull than that,” Zara said.
“The last two cars completely block in all of the others. The trees are too tight on each side for anyone to drive around them. Faith, you’re going to take the mines and place them behind the back tars of the last two cars.” His Ozark accent began to slip through even more strongly as Summer focused on the mission. “When they start to leave or chase after us if we slip up, they’ll trigger the mines and the wrecks will pin in the rest of them. Comrade, any chance the cars are armored?”
“Only Gorbachev, Shevardnadze and a couple of others have them. Not these guys.”
“Good. There’s an entrance under the house here on the side facing us. I’ll slip under there and set up the mine. There are a bunch of bricks laying around the foundation that I’ll use to trigger it. They’ll add a nice little antipersonnel aspect to the explosion. Now timing is going to be critical. Comrade, how long do you need to get what we’re after inside?”
“They’ve been drinking, so it shouldn’t be hard to get them talking. I have a long history of short appearances at social functions with Stukoi. Give me half an hour plus five minutes’ margin.”
“Remember, you can’t let yourself get delayed. I’ll set the mine for the cars nearest the guards, but Faith will do the two back ones later because I don’t want someone leaving too early before the big show and setting them off prematurely. Comrade, move your car to the main road. Faith and I will meet up back here; then we’ll catch up with you at the car.” Summer turned off the flashlight and threw the blanket back. He dipped two fingers into the shoe polish and smeared it on Faith’s cheek. “Sorry. I know how much you hate this.”