I turn around. All three of them are looking at me then Lyosha says, slowly, like he’s trying the words out, “Your son.”
“Yes.”
“Her boy.” Dmitri sets down the magazine. “Is your?—”
“Yes.”
Mike says nothing. Then something crosses his face that he pulls back before it fully forms. “The night you sent us all away,” he says. “We came back and you were tearing the compound apart and we thought you’d failed to kill her. You’ve been looking for her ever since. Obsessively. Five years.” He pauses. “Is this why you never talked about it?”
“We’re leaving in three minutes.” I turn back to the vest. “Questions later.”
Nobody moves for exactly two seconds. Then they move.
The warehouse sits in the Khimki district, squat and grey, surrounded by industrial nothing that people choose specifically because nobody comes looking in industrial nothing. We come in from three sides, twelve men, coordinated, signals and movement and the silence of people who have done this enough that it lives in their muscles.
I take the east entry with Mike.
The door goes in on the second hit then everything happens fast. Six men inside, armed, and they respond quickly. The first thirty seconds are loud and brutal and close, the kind of fighting that happens in tight spaces where there’s no room for anything except commitment. I take the first man by the weapon arm and break it at the elbow, use him as cover for three seconds while the room reconfigures. Mike is on my left, methodical. Lyosha to the right and I can tell where he is by the sounds alone.
A bullet catches my left shoulder.
Hot. Fast. I register it, file it, keep moving. I put the man with the broken arm down. Cross the room. The next one brings his weapon up and I get inside his reach and drive my elbow into his throat and he drops.
The warehouse goes quiet.
I scan, moving through the space, past crates and wreckage, and Mike is clearing the far corner and Lyosha is somewhere to my right, I know by the sounds, then I see the door at the back, padlocked, and I don’t bother with the lock. It comes off its hinges on the kick and I’m through it and there’s a small room on the other side and in the corner of it, sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest and his arms wrapped tight around them, is a small boy.
Dark hair. Still. My eyes looking back at me from a small face.
My god.
I crouch down. My shoulder is bleeding into my sleeve, and for the first time in my adult life, my hands are shaking. I don’t know where to put them.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Are you hurt?”
He stares at me. His mouth falls open. His eyes go enormous and round and he scrambles to his feet and takes one step toward me with his small chin tipped up and he points directly at my face and shouts, “Superman!”
I blink.
“You’re Superman!” He’s bouncing on his toes now, all the terror of thirty seconds ago apparently evaporated by this conclusion, pointing at me with absolute conviction. “You came! I knew someone would come, Mama always says someone comes andyou cameand you’reso big, are you actually Superman, do you have the cape, where is the cape?—”
“I—” I look at Mike over my shoulder. Mike is pressing his fist to his mouth. “I don’t have a cape.”
He looks disappointed for exactly one second before nodding seriously. “That’s okay. I won’t tell. You can still be him without the cape.”
I have no idea what to do with this child.I reach out toward him, slowly, and he steps forward without hesitation and puts his small hand in mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Something happens in my chest that I am not going to examine in this warehouse.
“We need to move,” Mike says, from the door.
I stand, Theo’s hand still in mine, and I turn for the door and that’s when the sound comes from the main room. Not one of mine. Someone who stayed down and got up again and the shot that comes through the doorway goes wide but it goes through the space between me and Theo and I spin, putting my body between the door and the boy, weapon coming up.
Two small arms wrap around my leg from behind.
I look down.
Theo has his arms around my leg and his small body is pressed to the back of my knee and his face is turned outward toward the door, toward the threat, and his little arms are spread as wide as they go and he screams at the top of his lungs, “I won’t let them hurt you!”
The shooter goes down. Mike. Doorway. Clean.
