Deep Black

28

When they returned to the highway, Lia and Dean went back in the direction they’d come for about ten miles, finding another highway running to the southeast. Just after turning off they stopped and refilled the truck’s gas tank, hand-pumping it. They had passed at least two gas stations, but Lia told him the gas sometimes couldn’t be trusted.

“Everybody’s out to make a ruble,” she said. “Country’s going to hell.”

With the girl out of the truck, Lia told him where they were going. All three locations they had to check were near the Kazym River, the first about a half hour’s drive. Dean looked at the map on the handheld. They were more than two hundred miles north of where they had left the Hind and well to the east; they’d followed a rather twisted route to get here.

“How do you know the helicopter’s still there?” he asked.

“May not be,” said Lia. “We’ll just scout around, see what we see. Kind of your job description, isn’t it?”

“It wouldn’t have been able to get to any of these spots without refueling,” he told her. “And if it refueled, it could have gone anywhere.”

“The Art Room coordinates all kinds of data, Charlie. Eavesdropping, signal captures, satellite pictures. Just relax.”

“Garbage in, garbage out.”

“Gee, that’s original.”

“Well, your gadgets and gizmos haven’t done too well so far.”

“Sure they have.”

Dean scoffed. “Why don’t we look for the MiG?”

“That’s not our job.”

“Somebody should.”

“Did you do this in the Marines?”

“Which?”

“Question every stinking thing.”

“All the time.”

“Good.”

Surprised by her answer, Dean pulled himself upright in the seat.

“The girl will be OK,” said Lia, as if they’d been discussing her. “Really, she’ll be OK.”

“You told her to go become a prostitute.”

“I did not.” Her face lit red. Then, in a much lower voice, a voice close to a whisper, she repeated herself. “I did not. She’ll be OK.”

As Lia shook her head, Dean noticed two very small creases near her eyes, aging marks she wasn’t old enough to have.

“It’s not my job to save people, not like that,” said Lia. “It’s not why I’m here.”

“I think it is.”

“You know, Charlie Dean, that’s the same attitude that got a lot of people killed in Vietnam,” said Lia.

“What do you know about Vietnam?” he snapped.

“My dad was there, my adopted dad,” said Lia. “He told me what it was like.”

The last thing Dean wanted to hear was warmed-over Vietnam stories. They were all well-constructed set pieces of horror. People trotted them out to show that they had been touched, moved by war. They still had nightmares. They still thought about it.

Except that most of the people who spit out the stories were full of shit.

He liked her better when she was being an asshole, he decided.

The first spot they were supposed to check out was an oil machinery plant, which dealt with companies like Petro-UK. It lay right off the highway. Lia saw the rusting fence and the sign with its Cyrillic letters as she passed, hit the brakes, and wheeled through a one-eighty, narrowly missing the only other vehicle they’d seen for the last fifteen minutes or so.

“Jesus,” said Dean as the large tractor-trailer whipped about an inch from their bumper.

“They’re not used to other drivers on the road here,” said Lia. She glanced at her watch. It was before seven, but already there were people in the building. “Here’s the deal. We’re looking for a helicopter. You’re the new accountant from Australia. I’ll do most of the talking.”

“I can’t do an Australian accent,” said Dean.

“I doubt they can, either.”

Lia parked the car in a muddy lot, then hopped from the truck. They locked it; Dean adjusted his pistol under his sweater and followed her inside.

Accountants held a more important position in Russian businesses than in most Western companies. One token of this was the fact that they were the ones who tended to be arrested when the required permits or bribes weren’t paid. So it wasn’t surprising that when Lia mentioned Dean’s cover to the man they met in the front room, he bowed deeply, put up his hands, and practically ran to the back to get the big boss. Lia’s story was that they needed a helicopter. The boss protested that they were not in the business of selling aircraft — but then he proceeded to add that they did, as a matter of fact, have several available. He led Lia and Dean outside to a small jeeplike truck and drove them out through a yard filled with rusting tractor blades to a packed gravel yard filled with large pumps, pipes, and vehicles at least twenty years old. At the center of the field sat a thick cross of asphalt that obviously functioned as a helipad. Large plastic barrels sat at the far side, half-buried in the ground — obviously a fuel farm of some kind.

Lia pushed out her story, complaining that they needed a heavier helicopter than the Alouette the manager showed her. That led to two identical rather tired-looking machines parked at the farthest end of the large yard. They were squat, with two sets of rotors, one atop the other, and a double-fin tail. Dean could guess from looking at the machines that neither was what they were looking for, but Lia played through, checking the craft and even asking if one could be started up. The manager didn’t know how and the pilot wasn’t available. Perhaps they’d come back, Lia said.

As they were walking back to the truck, she stopped to tie her shoe. The manager began talking to Dean in English about the difficulties of doing business here. Dean simply shrugged. He worried that he might have to eventually say something about Australia and decided he would divert the manager with a story about being educated in America — he could bullshit plausibly about that, he thought. But Lia caught back up with them and it wasn’t necessary to say anything else.

“We have more stops,” she said, taking the manager’s card. “We will be in touch.”

“Those were Helixes we looked at?” Dean asked as they got back in their truck.

“Kamov KA-27s,” she said. “Match the pictures the Art Room gave me.”

“How do you know the Art Room’s right about what kind of chopper it was?”

“You really are a Luddite, aren’t you?”

“No. I just don’t trust everything I’m told.”

“They’re the right kind of helicopters.”

“So civilians have military helicopters?”

“Well, civilians do have military type helicopters, even in the West,” said Lia. “But here there’s a bit more flow back and forth. You have to trust us on this one, Charlie Dean.”

“If they don’t sell helicopters,” said Dean, though he knew he was being stubborn, “why do they have so many?”

“Oh, they always say that,” said Lia. “See, if they sold helicopters, they would need certain licenses. We might be from Moscow instead of spies.”

She laughed and started the engine.

By the time they reached their next site, the morning had turned almost balmy, which brought the bugs out in full force. A swarm seemed to attach itself to them as they drove into a small town. Several rows of fairly large houses sat in a staggered semicircle next to the main road; beyond them were oil fields. The town gave way to a tall fence, which at first seemed to contain empty land. Nearly a half-mile from the start of the fence it veered toward the road. A hundred feet farther down it crossed at a gated cul-de-sac. A large building sat at what would have been the middle of the road had it continued. There were other buildings behind it; the complex seemed to stretch a fair distance. A guard stood in the middle of the road; there were others beyond him. All had AK-74s, and there was at least one machine-gun post inside the gate.

“I think it’s time to turn around,” said Dean.

“Yup,” said Lia, who nonetheless drove right up to the guard and started talking to him. He didn’t buy whatever she tried to sell. He gestured sharply for them to turn around and finally showed his anger by raising his gun. Still chattering, Lia put the truck in reverse and backed down the road.

“Not much for chitchat,” she said after they had gone back through the town to the main highway.

“What’d you say to him?”

“I asked if he knew someone who wanted to get laid.”

“What’d you really say to him?”

She laughed. “Why don’t you think that’s what I said?”

“What’d you really say to him?”

“I told him I was looking for my brother. Didn’t even break the ice.”

“This has got to be the place.”

“You think, Charlie? But what if the Art Room agrees? Then what? They can’t be right.”

They refilled the truck’s gas tanks. Lia consulted the map on her handheld, then got back on the highway, heading to another town about five miles farther south. As they drove, Dean took the binoculars and looked back at the area, trying to see something beyond the forest of oil pumps and fences.

“It’s some sort of school,” said Lia. “They used to send KGB officers there for what we’d call SWAT training. That was fifteen years ago.”

“Now what do they do there?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Lia. “We’ll ask when we check in. In the meantime let’s go see what’s behind door number three.”