James Axler - Red Equinox

"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar." Another crisp salute. "And good riddance, you pox-faced murderous-eyed bastard," he muttered.

Aliev hopped into the back of the wag and Zimyanin climbed into the driver's seat, shouting orders to the redheaded officer in charge of the other military wags in the convoy. The exhaust spouted plumes of blue-grey smoke as the engine revved up.

"Going," J.B. whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

Ryan watched the vehicle, hearing the gears crashing. It jumped and jerked its way along the repaired embankment for nearly a hundred yards before it stopped in a squeal of brakes.

"Sit still, may your eyes rot! Don't keep touching me like!.. What?"

Zimyanin stamped so hard on the brakes that the old autowag slewed viciously sideways and nearly slipped into the muddy river.

The tracker was out of the vehicle before it had skidded to a halt. He paused at the top of the embankment, level with Ryan and J.B., and pointed down at them with a clawed finger.

Zimyanin joined the tracker and drew his Makarov pistol, holding it negligently in his right hand. He called down to the Americans in his best English. "I should have been able to guess the truth. Too nimble to be so clumsy. That is the word? 'Clumsy'? Yes. Come and join me, gentlemen, or I shall perforce pepper you with lead."

Ryan threw down the shovel. "No need. You got us cold. Pleasure to meet you again, Zimyanin. Real pleasure."

As they picked their way up the slippery slope of the embankment, Ryan whispered a single word to his friend, which was barely audible.

"Soonest."

That was all.

But it was enough for J.B. to understand Ryan's appraisal of the situation. They were about to be locked tight in the sec cage, and once inside, it would be close to impossible to get out.

It was soonest or it was never.

Zimyanin clenched his fists in delight, so hard that the crescent nails drew tiny semicircles of blood from his palms. The squall of driving rain didn't bother him, and everything around him seemed to have receded into a gray blur. Aliev, the sec men, his wag with its engine still running, the watching workers... everything had faded away at his moment of supreme triumph.

American spies. Comrade General Josef Siraksi would come fawning around, begging for the chance to press his tongue against Zimyanin's ass. The Party would rise as one and applaud his brilliance. No decoration would be refused him, no medal with oak leaves or platinum circle would be withheld from Hero Gregori Zimyanin.

Supreme Marshal Zimyanin.

The small matter of his wife's unexplained disappearance would not be discussed. It would be something to be swept smilingly beneath the bureaucratic carpet.

First Secretary Zimyanin.

The two Americans were nearly on the road. The teeming rain washed the mud from their faces, revealing the dark pit of shadow where the taller man had lost an eye.

Party President Zimyanin.

"Nearly dawn," Jak announced, easing the stiffness from his narrow shoulders.

"Rain way off to the north, falling from the gray bellies of those low clouds. Ryan and J.B.'ll be getting wet. Again." Krysty brushed a stray tendril of curling red hair behind her ear. In the room beneath them, Doc and Rick were both sleeping — the sleep of the elderly and the sleep of the terminally ill.

"Soon be time get freezie working on broken door," Jak said.

"Leave him a while longer. He doesn't have that many more mornings left."

Jak sighed and leaned on his elbows. In the opalescent glow of the dawn, the albino teenager looked absurdly young and innocent. And in dire need of sleep.

"Wish Ryan was here," he muttered.

Krysty smiled at him. "Me too, Jak. Yeah, me too."

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance again, gentlemen. I am Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin. And you are?.." He paused as the book on conversation and etiquette had advised him, holstering the unnecessary blaster.

"I'm J.B. Dix."

"Ryan Cawdor."

"We will have so much to discuss. I trust you will be able to accept my hospitality?"

Everyone was standing around in a puzzled, frozen tableau, puzzled at the way the sec officer seemed able to communicate with these saboteurs in their own drawling, gobbling language, frozen at the ease with which the major-commissar had penetrated their cunning disguises.

The shorter of them was pulling out a pair of glasses and placing them carefully on his nose. The other was tying a patch over the socket of his missing eye. Neither looked to be very dangerous.

"Pride comes before a fall," Zimyanin stated, delighted at his own linguistic cleverness, half bowing to the man called Ryan Cawdor.

"And the man who laughs last gets to laugh the longest, Major," Ryan replied, drawing his blaster in an unflurried, undramatic way. He leveled it at the sec officer's stomach. "Get in the fucking wag, Russkie. Now!"

J.B.'s Steyr AUG filled his hand, the muzzle weaving like the head of a cobra, seeming to menace every man there. He had moved in close to Zimyanin, using the sec man's stocky body as cover. There was a still moment, such as when the crystal goblet seems to hang for an eternity between the careless hand and the implacable flagstone.

"Tell them to move away and not try anything stupid, Gregori," Ryan ordered.

"Nyet."

" Da . Tell them or we all die."

Putting it that way, Ryan removed the only card that the Russian could have played.

"They do not have the gift of the English language as we do," Zimyanin objected, keeping an icy calm that concealed the blazing oven of his rage. To have them safe and then for this to happen! He wanted to turn on them and rend the flesh from their effete American faces.

"Russian then. Tell them to back off. We three take the wag. We'll watch behind us. First sign of a chase and you get a bullet in the belly and one in each knee and elbow. Make sure your passing's the pain you deserve. Understand?"

Zimyanin understood enough. The words were fast and harsh, but he could catch the gist of it. The muzzle of the powerful, silenced SIG-Sauer pressed uncomfortably hard into the flat, muscular wall of his stomach. The American's finger was white on the narrow trigger of the blaster.

Speaking slowly, voice raised so that everyone could hear him, Zimyanin did what Ryan had told him to do. More or less.

"They can not escape for long," the Russian told his forces. "But if we take them now, many will die. I will go with them in the wag. You must not follow close or they will begin shooting. Wait until we are out of sight. Then follow. In time, we will catch them and they will pay the final price for their acts of hatred and of blood."

"He preaching a sermon, Ryan?" J.B. asked. "Best shut him up."

"Yeah." Ryan jammed the pistol harder into the stomach of the Russian sec officer, making him gasp in pain and end his flow of instructions.

"I have done everything that you wished," the Russian grunted, struggling for breath. He privately promised himself the pleasure of slowly executing the tall, curly-headed American.

"Then get in the car. Front passenger seat. I'll drive. J.B., cover from the back seat."

"Sure."

It was going to work.

The men standing knee-deep in the sludge at the river's edge were hardly likely to risk interfering. They'd already been plucked off the streets and from their nearby homes to do a filthy job for the Party, working at gunpoint. It didn't matter that much to them who was behind the gun.

The sec men out in the rain, and those who still lurked in the heavy eight-wheel wags behind, wouldn't risk doing anything that would jeopardize a senior officer such as Zimyanin. Their discipline and their lack of independence made that certain.