Orest Stelmach - The Boy from Reactor 4

An alarm sounded.

Her foot slipped.

She flailed forward. Her left leg sailed forward. Hit the far block of ice. Her right leg lagged behind. Would she make it?

Adam bounded forward and rammed the heel of his shoe into the ice to create a foothold.

No way she would make it. She was going down. She reached out with her hand.

Nadia’s right foot hit the water. She teetered backward.

“Help—”

Adam grabbed her hand. Braced himself against the foothold and pulled.

Nadia slid forward onto the ice beside him. Pulled her right boot out of the water as though it were fire.

Human voices shouted to one another in the distance. Startled, Nadia looked up and around. Visibility was a mere ten feet. She couldn’t see anything, but people were approaching.

The whirring noise from before started up again, multiplied by five. Helicopters, Nadia realized. Within ten seconds, they were buzzing overhead, invisible through the fog. The voices belonged to soldiers or border guards. They were searching and hunting.

For them.

“They’re here,” Nadia whispered. “They knew we were coming. They were waiting for us.”

Adam stared at her, eyes wide, looking for guidance as to what they should do next.

THE PERIPHERY OF the island was captured by strategically positioned cameras and displayed on a wall of security monitors in the observation room. Two men manned the equipment. This morning, however, the monitors were all white with fog.

Kirilo kept his eyes glued to the telescope on the southwest side of the island. He scanned from left to right and came upon three of the soldiers who had been sent out to form a human chain, twenty meters apart. There was no woman or child among them.

“Twenty meters is too far apart in this fog,” Kirilo said. “You need more men out there.”

“This is Gvozdev,” Major General Yashko snapped. “There are no more men.”

The telescope wouldn’t swing farther to the right. Kirilo began scanning backward to the left. “What are the odds someone can cross the Bering this way? Not likely, right? The ice, the water. The wind, the current. How many people have done it? Two? Three?”

“Thirty-three, excluding the Chukchis and the Inupiat,” the general said. “I say excluding the Chukchis and the Inupiat because they visit each other all the time. If you count them, thousands.”

Kirilo pulled his eye away from the telescope. “Thousands? You must be joking. The world thinks it’s two or three.”

“That’s what we want it to think. Neither we nor the Americans want the publicity, or we’ll have every thrill seeker in the world here. So we keep it quiet. But it is not as hard as the world is led to believe. It all depends on the fog and the ice. The natives know the weather and the terrain. They have it down to a science. They communicate with each other all the time. If the natives have guided the woman and the boy, then they can most certainly do this. The only question is if they’re getting such help.”

“No,” Victor said.

“No?” Krylov said. “They’re not getting help?”

Victor smiled and shook his head. “I meant no. There’s no question about it.”

Major General Yashko grabbed a radio transmitter. “Get those helicopters lower. Seventy meters. They’re useless up there.”

Kirilo resumed scanning. An empty block of ice. A soldier. Another block of ice—wait. Something dark against the white background. He swiveled the telescope back a few centimeters. Someone was emerging from the fog. Was it another soldier?

No. It was the boy.

“The boy, the boy,” Kirilo said. “There he is.”

A chorus of voices. “What? Where?”

A soldier surprised the boy.

“Wait,” Kirilo said. “He’s one of ours.”

The soldier raised his rifle. The boy dropped his bag and raised his hands.

“We’ve got him,” Kirilo said. “By God, we’ve got him.”

ADAM STARED AT the barrel of the rifle. The soldier was either going to shoot him or take him prisoner to get the locket. The first option was bad. He didn’t want to die. But the second was worse. To come this close to executing his father’s plan and then be taken without a fight was unacceptable.

The soldier had a face that could have grated potatoes. He looked as happy as the coach the morning after a vodka bender. His rifle was wedged in his armpit as he operated the radio transmitter that was attached with Velcro to his shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Standing by.”

Adam had to make a move, and he had to make it now. He had quickness and the element of surprise in his favor. Lunge, lift, wrestle. Lunge forward, lift the barrel, and wrestle it out of the guy’s hands.

“Up. Up,” the soldier shouted, stabbing the air with the point of his rifle. “Get your hands up.”

He’d let some slack develop near his elbow. It was a big mistake. Now the soldier was even further on edge. He raised the rifle to eye level and pointed it between Adam’s eyes.

“The order is shoot if necessary but don’t kill,” the soldier said. “So wounding is okay.” He lowered his aim to Adam’s right knee. “You want to live in a wheelchair the rest of your life?”

Adam raised his hands as high as he could and shook his head. No. Not the knees. If he got shot in the knees, he might never skate again. Better the heart or the head than the knees.

“Why are you staring at me, boy? You shouldn’t have stared at me, boy.” He cocked his head to the side, moved one eye to the sight, and closed the other.

A figure rushed out of the fog from the soldier’s blind side and rammed him with a shoulder. The soldier and his gun went flying. He landed hard on the ice. Didn’t move.

Adam glanced at the figure. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Nadia. Of course it was, he thought. Who else could it have been? But it was a woman. An American woman had knocked out a Russian soldier.

“Awesome,” Adam said.

A look of pride washed over Nadia’s face. Replaced with her usual intensity. “Quick, get your bags,” she said.

Adam grabbed his knapsack and satchel.

They disappeared into the fog.

“THEY’RE GETTING AWAY,” Kirilo said.

“It’s the damned fog,” the colonel said. “My men can’t see anything. The helicopters are useless.”

“Tell them to go lower,” Major General Yashko ordered.

“They’re getting away,” Kirilo said. “Lower, dammit.”

The colonel said, “Any lower and they will collide. Do you want to be the one who explains to the highest authorities why two helicopters collided in the fog over Gvozdev? Do you want to explain the nature of the mission to your superiors, Major General?”

Major General Yashko glanced alternately at Deputy Director Krylov and the fog in the observation window. The two men shrugged at each other.

“Call the choppers back,” Yashko said.

Kirilo pounded his fist on a table. “No, no, no. Are you people out of your minds? Do you know what’s at stake? Do you? Get those helicopters lower. Now.”

Yashko glared at Kirilo. No doubt he wasn’t used to being screamed at by a civilian. But Kirilo had to give him credit. He wasn’t fuming. He was thinking. He turned to the colonel.