Deep Black

25

The truck wasn’t as old as Dean had expected. In fact, by Russian standards, it wasn’t old at all — a 2000 Toyota 4X4 pickup that had, according to the odometer, 157,132 miles on it.

Four large drums were included in the deal, along with a hand pump, two spares, and a jack that looked half-stripped. Filling the drums with gasoline from a pump at the back of the asbestos-shingled building took nearly an hour, and left Dean’s stomach twisted on its axis, though that may have been from breakfast. The truck’s springs were looser than a mattress in a whorehouse, and Dean hit his head once or twice on the liner as they drove. The first order of business was stopping and getting some of the gear they’d cached near the chopper. The big helicopter looked a little forlorn in the fading light, its rotors drooping toward the ground.

“Stay here,” said Lia, who took the keys and jumped from the truck before Dean could say anything. He got out of the cab and walked down the road, looking for a good place to relieve himself. There wasn’t much cover beyond the rubble of whatever building the lot they’d landed on had once belonged to. Finally he decided he was so far out in the wilderness it didn’t make much difference where he took his leak. He was about halfway through when he thought he could feel someone’s eyes looking at him. He glanced around quickly, saw nothing, then glanced back and forth again, as if trying to shake the paranoia away. Something about peeing in unfamiliar territory made him feel extremely vulnerable, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling even after zipping up. He took a few steps farther from the road, then crouched down, staring in the direction of the helicopter, which was now beginning to blend in the shadows. He couldn’t see Lia.

Something moved about fifty feet from the helicopter. It was low to the ground, an animal. It began moving roughly in Lia’s direction, disappearing in the darkness.

“Hey!” yelled Dean.

Lia didn’t answer, nor did the dog or whatever it was.

Dean went back to the pickup and fished around behind the drums of spare gasoline to find the tire iron. He couldn’t see it in the dark, and when he heard something else moving in the field, decided to take the long notched pole from the jack instead. The animal was undoubtedly some sort of dog and probably harmless, but Dean’s instincts wouldn’t let him leave Lia alone. He began flanking the general area where they’d put the gear, not quite sure of where it was, debating whether to yell again. Something low and oddly shaped lay on the ground a few yards from the helicopter, in a shallow ravine.

He stared at it for a few moments before realizing it was a bicycle.

“Lia! Lia!” he shouted, trying to warn her. There was a loud growl and then an even louder explosion, the sound a cherry bomb makes in a garbage can. Dean hit the ground; when he looked up he saw Lia dragging a figure toward him, cursing.

It was a girl, fifteen or sixteen, with close-cropped hair and a bruised, dirty face, eyes closed.

“Did you kill her?” said Dean.

“Fuck you, did I kill her? Of course not. Shit.” Lia dragged the girl back to the pickup, where she dumped her on the ground. “Watch her.”

Dean crouched next to the kid. Her pants were torn at the knee and she had a fat lip, but otherwise she didn’t seem hurt. Petrified, yes.

Dean realized he still had the metal jack piece in his hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

“She doesn’t speak English,” said Lia, returning with two knapsacks and a long metal box. The box held one of the assault guns. Lia ripped off something in Russian to the girl, who didn’t acknowledge it.

“Put her in the cab,” said Lia.

“Why?”

“We can’t leave her here. She was trying to steal some of the gear.”

“What are we going to do with her?”

“We’ll dump her off somewhere down the road.”

“Let me get her bike,” said Dean.

“What are you, the fuckin’ Red Cross?”

Dean retrieved the bicycle. As he pulled it upward, he realized a pair of eyes were watching him. He could see the whites clearly, less than ten yards away. He picked up the bike, took a step toward them — they didn’t move.

“Rah!” he yelled, taking another two steps and holding the frame over his head. The eyes disappeared.

Another kid?

No, it was cowering — a dog, definitely a dog.

Dean bent down. “Come here,” he said, though of course the dog had even less idea than his mistress what Dean was saying. He lowered himself into a crouch, but the dog didn’t approach. Finally, he started back toward the truck and heard the animal starting to follow.

Lia had the truck running already. Dean picked up the bike and put it into the back. As he turned, the dog appeared a few yards from the helicopter, barking at him. Dean whistled, then opened the tailgate and whistled again. Maybe it was a universal dog language — the animal bounded forward, jumped into the truck, and squirmed through the barrels to bark at his mistress’s head in the back. She turned and tapped the window, smiling as Dean got in.

“The fucking dog, too?” said Lia.

“Why didn’t you kill it?” said Dean, guessing that the sound had come from the A-2.

“Maybe I’m a rotten shot,” she said, stomping on the gas pedal.

None of them spoke for several hours. They drove north on the highway, stopping twice to refuel and once when Lia ran into a small store and bought food while Dean watched the girl. The temperature outside was dropping steadily by four o’clock; an hour or so later it felt so cold they turned the heater on.

“There’s snow on the ground,” said Dean, looking out the window.

“Just frost,” said Lia. “You forget how far north we are. Some nights it gets cold, even in the summer.”

“We gonna freeze to death?”

“Don’t be a sissy.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

Lia scowled but didn’t answer.

“How far are we taking her?” Dean asked.

“Far enough that she can’t get back in a day,” said Lia. “If we didn’t take the bike and the dog, we could have let her go by now.”

“Pretty far to ride a bike from here.”

“You’d be surprised.” She looked at him. “You could ask, Charlie Dean. You don’t know everything.”

“I didn’t say I did.” He looked at her frown. She was pretty, but she had an attitude the size of Minnesota. “It’s my fault, huh?”

“You got that straight.”

Dean pushed his leg up against the dash. The truck’s seat was a bench and Lia had it all the way forward so she could reach the pedals. There was no way to stretch out his legs.

“Want to let me drive for a while?” he asked.

“What are you going to do when someone stops you?”

“Who’s going to stop me? We haven’t seen anybody for hours.”

Lia didn’t answer.

A while later, when she was sure the girl was sleeping, Lia explained that their cover story was an extension of the one they’d used in the town; they were trying to keep an appointment in an oil city near Nahym.

Not in Nahym, but near it.

“Did that kid really go to a hospital, or did Karr just tell me that?” said Dean.

“Tommy doesn’t lie,” said Lia.

“How do you know?”

“Jesus, Charlie Dean, you’re a pain in the ass.”

Dean took another shot at conversation. “So you were with the SEALs?”

“Do I look like a fuckin’ SEAL?”

“Special Forces.”

“Delta, asshole.”

“I thought Delta Force was part of Special Forces.”

“The problem with jarheads is that they try to think.”

Dean started to laugh. “Jarhead? What’s that from, a John Wayne movie?”

“The problem with Marines,” said Lia, “is that they think their shit doesn’t stink.”

“Mine does.”

“Tell me about it.”

Dean gave up trying to make conversation. Eyes heavy, he felt his head drooping off to the side. Finally he gave in to fatigue and fell asleep, his shoulder resting against the young girl’s.

There was a time in Dean’s life when he’d had vivid, angry dreams, dreams obviously inspired by some of the things he’d been through — sniper missions, an assassination, firefights, a hostage situation he’d become part of. It was as if his subconscious had to work some of the violence out, decipher the contradictions, and bridge the gap between what should have happened and what actually did. Dean hated the dreams when he had them; many nights he’d tried to stay up in a vain attempt to keep them away.

And then one morning he realized he didn’t have the dreams anymore. In fact, he didn’t dream anymore at all. Had he worked all that stuff out?

Truth was, Charlie Dean wasn’t the kind of guy who spent a lot of energy working things out. Not in a formal way. He liked to think of himself as a guy who went on instincts, who trained his body — and his mind — to do what had to be done without hesitation. It’s what had made him a decent, better than decent, sniper.

Maybe. Or maybe it was just that he was a pretty good shot no matter what the circumstances were. In any event, he didn’t believe in analyzing it.

So when the dreams stopped, he didn’t complain about it, nor did he celebrate. He didn’t dream now, either. But as his body jostled back and forth in the pickup, he did feel a vague sense of unease brushing around his face and hands.

When he woke, Lia and the girl were gone. It was dark out; his watch told him it was close to two in the morning. There were taillights and a large shadow just in front of them. He stared into the darkness and realized they were in the middle of a large parking area near a highway, a much different road from the one they’d been on.

Dean was freezing. He rubbed his arms and waited. Finally, Lia and the girl returned, lugging several plastic grocery bags.

“Ah, Sleeping Beauty is awake,” said Lia. She reached into one of the bags and took out a jar. “Coffee. Almost, anyway.”

The warm liquid did taste somewhat like coffee. The girl had a large loaf of bread and chewed at it ravenously, pausing every so often to smile at Dean. Lia sorted the bags, then produced a large revolver from one. It looked like a Smith & Wesson.44, though it had no markings on it. Three of the six cylinder chambers were filled; the bullets were Magnums, and the gun was indeed a very good clone of the S & W Model 29.

“Best we could do,” she said. “It has to be fifty years old, and I doubt it’s been fired in the last ten. Clean it. The bullets are in the bag.”

Dean took the gun and the bag, which contained some tools and small tubes of different types of oil, Vaseline, and graphite besides the bullets. There seemed to be a whole set of burglar’s picks as well.

“Package deal,” said Lia, shrugging.

There was a knock on Lia’s window. Dean pulled the bag up, hiding the gun behind it.

Dean could smell the vodka on the man’s breath as he exchanged words with Lia. She waved him away; he seemed reluctant to go and for a second Dean thought he’d have to show the gun.

“What was that all about?”

“Wants to buy Zenya.” Lia started the truck. “Time to go.”

Zenya, the girl, turned abruptly toward the back of the pickup. Lia told her in Russian that the animal was fine, then repeated the information for Dean’s benefit.

“They buy kids?” Dean asked as they got onto the highway.

“They buy anything. These guys got more money than we do. And we have a printing press.”

Zenya and Lia talked in Russian for the next hour or so. Dean figured it was the girl’s life story, but Lia didn’t share it. Among the items Lia had bought were a wool sweater and a parka; Dean put on the sweater, though it was a bit tight, and used the parka as a pillow, leaning against the door. His brain settled into a state of half-sleep, as if his consciousness were a crocodile with only its snout peering out of the water.

Eventually Lia turned off the highway onto another well-made but narrower road. Within a mile this had given way to well-packed gravel, twisting and turning through what seemed to be a swampy forest. Rectangles of dim yellow light broke the darkness on their right; the road curved gradually to reveal a fairly large city set on what seemed to be a pile of peat moss above the surrounding terrain. Lia and the girl exchanged a few words. As soon as they came into the city, Lia took her first right and parked in front of a low-slung building made of concrete blocks. Fluorescent light flowed from the narrow casement windows at the building’s front, set about six feet high.

“Time to eat,” said Lia.

The glass door at the side of the building opened into a short hallway blocked off by a thick metal door. This led to a stairway; at the top of the six steps was another glass door. Inside was a rustic diner or restaurant, the sort that in the States used to be found near third-rate resort areas before the days of McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Ten of the twenty tables were already filled, even though it was only a few minutes past four; three-quarters of the counter stools were also occupied.

The crowd was exclusively male. Lia’s scowl did little to ward off the stares. Zenya blushed as they sat down.

Afraid that speaking English might cause trouble, Dean said nothing. His breakfast came quickly — a large order of pancakes and coffee, which was instant. There was no milk or creamer.

“They know you’re not Russian, don’t worry,” said Lia. “They’re used to foreigners. Or at least their money. That’s why they have pancakes.”

Both Lia and Zenya had ordered some sort of pastry with bits of meat in it, but whether it was ham, beef, or something more exotic, Dean couldn’t tell. The girl ate hers quickly, then, looking at Lia, asked her something. Lia nodded, and Zenya got up from the table, taking her things and going out the door.

“Bathrooms out there?” Dean asked.

“She’s hitting the road.”

“We’re far enough away?”

Lia shrugged. “She’ll probably go back to the truck stop. She was pretty impressed.”

“That’s OK with you?”

“We’re in Russia. Remember? And I’m not her mother.”

Dean got up and walked out, trying to hold himself back from running. When he got downstairs, Zenya was just getting on her bike. She’d smuggled some food out to the dog, who jumped up and snared it when she threw it to him.

“Hey!” yelled Dean, starting toward her.

Zenya looked at him, waved, then realized he wanted to stop her. She began pedaling away. The dog trotted behind, still chewing.

“Hey! Hey!” Dean took a few steps but saw it was hopeless, worse than hopeless — even the dog had trouble keeping up with her.

“Save the world yet?” asked Lia when he came back. She had her handheld computer out and was tapping on it.

“You just going to let her go back there? She’ll become a prostitute.”

“You think she’s not already?”

“She’s fifteen or sixteen.”

“You don’t know where we are,” said Lia. “It’s different out here. We’re not in Moscow, let alone the States. Think of it as the Wild West.”

“This isn’t hell,” said Dean.

“It’s close.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m glad you’re such an expert. How long have you been here now? It’s not a whole week, is it? Time just drags when we’re together.”

Dean sat back in the chair, curling his arms together in front of his chest.