Gates Of Hades

Chapter Forty-two

I-95, between Savannah and Charleston

22:21 EST the previous day

Eighteen-wheelers owned the interstate late at night. They rushed by with a blaze of headlights and a whoosh of air that made the old flatbed truck shiver, sometimes so hard that Rassavitch feared the single container on the back might come loose from its restraints.

The container.

When he had arrived at the Savannah bus station, a man had brushed by him, shoving a slip of paper into his hand. The paper bore what Rassavitch thought was a street address, a guess confirmed by the cabbie who had driven him away from the Greyhound terminal. In minutes, the taxi had been cruising through a seedy neighborhood where the few functioning streetlights showed houses thirsting for paint and weedy yards hosting rusted hulks of automobiles. The occasional resident strode quickly along cracked sidewalks as though in a hurry to get off the street, casting only a glare of resentment at the wealth implied by a taxi ride.

The cab slowed and the driver was scanning the few street numbers. He stopped in front of a house showing no lights but with a flatbed truck in the dirt driveway. "This looks like it." He turned his head, looking up and down the deserted street as if expecting an assault any minute. "You want, I kin wait here till you inside."

Rassavitch shook his head, peeling the fare off the wad of bills that was ever diminishing.

As the cab's taillights hastily retreated to an area where passengers were more likely, Rassavitch circled the truck. Through the slats of the sides he could see a single large box on the flatbed. He looked around. Surely someone had been watching the vehicle. In this neighborhood, it would not have still been here otherwise.

The door to the cab was unlocked. As he heaved himself into the driver's seat, he noted that the key was in the ignition and a road map of the eastern United States was taped to the dash. He cranked the engine, surprised at an even purr inconsistent with the shabby body. He made one last effort to peer into the shadows around the house before putting the gear into reverse.

So far, the ride had been uneventful, the silver-on-green mile markers slipping by rhythmically. Between eighteen-wheelers, the symphony of a late-spring night in the South flooded the cab through an open window: the constant argument of the katydids, the chirp of crickets, and an occasional shriek of some night raptor. The sounds were almost hypnotic, totally unlike the moan of the night wind across the Siberian steppes of his youth.

Another behemoth of the road roared by, drowning out the music of living things and snapping Rassavitch's attention back to the highway in his lights.

I-95 had been marked in red on the map with a small town in Virginia just south of Washington circled. On the margin, in Russian, had been the words for tomorrow night. He had torn them off and shredded the small slip of paper. He had no idea why he must deliver the truck and its cargo overnight, nor would he ask.

He would simply do it.