Page 21 of King from the Sky

Chapter Nine

When they arrived in Moscow, Emily was happy to see how easily they made it through the airport without being made or noticed at all. She had expected to see mob enforcers around every corner. She wanted to probe Alex’s brain and find out more about what the Russian mob guys really wanted from them, but she decided again that he would tell her everything after the threat of danger was over. She trusted him more with her life than she would have trusted anyone else at the moment and so far he had kept her safe and sound. But she was amazed at how they were able to walk around the airport like that and not be made.

Perhaps the Russian mob had the same vested interest in keeping all of this on the down low that the American government did; they did not want people to see an alien doing alien things in a public space with a bunch of armed assassins trying to kill it.

But then did that mean that they were going to be waiting for them the second they were in a secluded area? Did that mean that they were going to have to travel in a very stealthy manner? Or were they going to be able to just take a car like normal?

The questions were really starting to pile up inside of Emily’s brain and they were starting to make her very nervous. Alex glanced at her warmly as if he could sense that she was feeling apprehensive about everything. He squeezed her hand gently and whispered in her ear “It’s alright,” as they exited the airport.

The car was waiting for them. There was a pale man with blond hair and a steely gaze standing beside an old SUV. The man did not appear overly friendly, but he might have been trying to keep it all low key and not attract attention. Emily followed suit as she got into the car.

The man and Alex did not speak a word the entire trip as they passed out of the hustle and bustle of Moscow and farther into the outskirts of town until the city was a small grouping of buildings that looked like little dots behind them. Emily almost wished they’d had time to do some sightseeing and walking around. From what she could see Moscow was a very old city, but still very beautiful. It was not at all what she had expected, but then again she was not sure what she had been expecting. Having never been out of the USA she really had to rely simply on what she might have gleamed from the occasional movie. Rocky IV came to mind suddenly as the movie that had shown her what Russia might actually be like, but she was sure most of that was Hollywood propaganda and staged film making. She was definitely going to put Russia on her list of places to see more of one day when she was not being chased by mobsters and secret government agencies who wanted to kill her and the man she loved.

The man she loved. She was becoming more and more familiar and at ease saying the word love when she thought about Alex. It was unfamiliar, but she discovered that she was really starting to enjoy the idea. Of course she would never go so far as to say it to him. Not yet. That would be ruining a perfectly good thing before it even really got started.

But why would that ruin it? Would he feel obligated to say it back to her? What if he didn’t feel that way? What if he said it but took it back later because he didn’t really mean it? What if she didn’t really mean it? It was true that she had never felt this close to a man, but did that mean that she was truly in love? Did that mean that she wanted to spend her life with him? Or did it mean that she was having intense feelings brought on by an intense situation that she had been thrown into. After it was all over would she feel differently towards Alex? She didn’t think so. When she asked herself these questions she did not feel that the answer to that one was “yes”. She wanted Alex with every fiber of her being and if real, true love was more intense than that then she would have rather been dead. There was no way her heart could have taken something that was stronger.

They drove on in silence for almost an hour and Emily kept looking behind them to make sure they were not being followed. If Alex noticed this, he said nothing and just let her have a field day with her paranoia. The sky was bright and the snow was not yet as thick as it would soon get. It was a nice time of year to drive in Russia.

She looked over at Alex periodically, but he stared straight ahead or looked out the window, all the while holding her close to him with his arm wrapped around her. His warmth was comforting and she had to fight to stay awake. Now that they were on the ground in a strange country with people after them she wanted to stay as alert as she could.

The traffic was rather sparse, but every time they passed by Emily felt her stomach tighten into knots and the image of a group of men hanging out a car and firing at them flashed into her mind. It was maddening, and she was starting to get really scared. What if the Russian mob had found the hiding place for the Seplika before they did and they were just waiting for them to spring a trap? Why was Alex so confident and sure about everything? She admired that quality in him and she found his self-assurance to be incredibly sexy, but she also had to admit to herself that it scared her quite a bit. If he was over confident about their safety, then it was possible that he could be leading them right into a trap. She wished that she felt comfortable enough to discuss it with him, but there was something in his way and demeanor that told her to keep her mouth shut about it. She wasn’t afraid of what he might say or of offending him, but she felt somehow that she should not be worrying about this right now. She just needed to trust Alex.

They turned down a few more roads and it became apparent that they were getting into a more mountainous region and that they were heading higher in elevation where the snow was already a lot thicker and the air even felt colder inside the heated car. Emily was glad that she had bought a warm set of clothes before they boarded the plane in America. Alex had once again thought of everything. She was surprised that it was this cold when it was still technically summer in the northern hemisphere.

After about another hour of driving with barely a word spoken by anyone in the car Emily was ready to pull her hair out. She could not believe that men could go that long without saying a word when they were in the same car. It had actually become a bit of a fun game for her to wait and see how long it took, but by the time the car actually stopped she was ready to scream. It had been a long and exhausting trip so far and she just wanted everything to be over as soon as possible. She wanted to get this done and go home safe and sound. The anticipation was starting to get to her combined with all of the stress and strain that she was being put under the past few days. Emily liked to think that she had shit together most of the time, especially when Alex was a bundle of calm and steady nerves that never got rattled. She found the impulse to yell at him and demand he get agitated about something to be overwhelming at times. But she knew that if it went on long enough than she would be forced to say something to him.

“Ok, there is a bit of rocky terrain and as much as I hate to ask you to do this I need you to stay here,” Alex said as he opened the back of the SUV and picked up the supplies the other man had brought with him.

The man still said nothing as he grabbed a few tools and merely nodded as he began to walk out into a frozen patch of flat land. Emily imagined that he suddenly slipped through the ice and began to travel backwards like she had seen on television and Alex would have to use an Axe to get him out.

“Ok. How far is it? How long do you think it will take?” Emily asked. She was sure that the nervousness in her voice was starting to show, but she was tired of hiding it. She was scared, dammit. And she didn’t care anymore if anyone else knew it.

“It’s ok. You will be able to see us. It’s only about a hundred yards across from here. It should only take a few minutes once we reach the right spot to dig the Seplika out with both of us doing it.”

“Is it not buried very deep?” Emily asked.

“Oh, it is but I have digging skills,” Alex said with a smile.

Emily just shook her head as she watched him walk away.

She continued to watch and was wondering why she couldn’t have stayed in the car with the heater running, but she was pretty sure that decision had been made by Comrade Silence who had driven them way out here. She hoped it didn’t take very long. She was used to the heat of the desert in Southern California and while the cold and ice was fun to watch from the car, she’d already taken her fill of standing outside in it.

It had only taken the men about twenty minutes to reach the spot when she saw them starting to dig. The other man was working at his fastest pace, but he was not able to remotely keep up with Alex. He wasn’t totally turning on the burn because he did not want to raise suspicion in the other man, but he was working at twice the capacity. It was really funny to watch and Emily had to stifle her laughter. She was not sure how well sound carried out here with mountains on both sides of them and she didn’t want Comrade Silence to turn into Comrade Drives Away and leave them stranded.

The sky above her was like something out of a movie or a painting she had seen somewhere. It was the perfect combination of sunny blue, with a thin layer of gray clouds hovering over a tinge of violet hazy reflections, and a tinge of pink on another lower layer of clouds. She wished that she could have captured that in a picture or a screensaver but the camera on her phone never took good enough pictures, especially when it came to sunsets.

God, the sun was already setting. It was insane how traveling to the other side of the world messed with your internal clock. The flight from San Diego had taken fifteen hours to Moscow, plus the fact that Moscow was ten hours ahead of San Diego and then the three-hour drive into the middle of nowhere and now she was staring at a sunset almost a day and a half away from where she started from. This very realization made her feel as if she had lost a lot of time in the air. But then again she had slept a good majority of the flight which made the time roll by much faster. It was all helped by the fact that she was able to lean on the amazing Alex.

The men stopped digging suddenly, and it appeared that they were actually filling the hole back in tightly. Emily was wondering how they had managed to break through the frozen ground, but she had a feeling that Alex had helped with that a bit. She was still amazed by all of the wonderful things that he could do that ordinary people could not. She was not sure if that was the teenage girl in her who wanted to marry the bionic man or if she was just impressed as anyone would be. It was getting harder to tell.

By the time the men made it back it was starting to get a little bit dark and Emily was glad that she was no longer standing out there alone freezing her britches off. Even through the heavy snow boots that she had bought she was beginning to feel the cold nipping at her toes. She wanted to get into a warm car as fast as possible.

She was never happier to see anyone then when Alex came walking up beside her. He smiled and she could see the relaxed demeanor that came over him. It had been like a line of tension around him before then and now it was gone. She could feel the weight being released off his shoulders as he wrapped her in a warm embrace and kissed her softly on the lips.

“It’s going to be ok,” Alex said as he held her close.

Just hearing those words from his sweet lips with his warm and deep voice was enough to make everything in the world align together in total peace and harmony in her eyes. It was like there was nothing that would ever be wrong ever again. It was a beautiful feeling, but she knew that it was a fantasy and that it would not last. They were not out of the woods yet; they still had psychos on their trail.