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West yelled something back and the Red Man smiled.
“Not bad, American,” he said quietly. “You can swear like a Russian even if you can’t talk like one.”
West flashed him a grin and we headed for the bakery. He opened the double doors to reveal three Volkswagen Transporters in the large storeroom.
He got in the blue one, started the engine, and rolled into the yard.
I shut and locked the double doors then jumped in the passenger seat.
“Check the glove box,” West suggested.
I opened it to find the laminated inventory list.
“What have we got?” he asked.
“Everything,” I replied. “There’s enough artillery in this thing to launch an assault on the Kremlin.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Don’t go getting soft just because this is meant to be your vacation,” I suggested, and we both smiled.
He put the Transporter in gear, drove us out of the yard, and headed north.
CHAPTER 91
THE LAST TIME I made this journey there was thick snow everywhere and the bitter winter had covered everything in frost. This time the countryside north of Moscow was rich with color: the green of trees and grass, the white, pink, and yellow of wildflowers, and the blue of a cloudless July sky. But it might as well have been monochrome. I was impervious to it, lost in contemplation of the task that lay ahead.
My people had been taken by Valery Alekseyev, a man convinced I’d wronged him and his country. His position suggested he was powerful and his actions told me he was vindictive, which meant he was unlikely to surrender Dinara and the others without a fight. His power gave him resources that would stack the odds against us, which made our prospects grim.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked West when we were about an hour north of Moscow. He was closer to homethan to danger, and I wanted him to have the chance to turn around.
“No, I’m not sure,” he replied. “Is anyone ever sure? But I’m staying the course.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if I don’t, it’s more likely the bad guys will win. Call me sentimental, but I was raised on apple pie,Sesame Street, and the belief good triumphs over evil. You and I both know that’s a lie, but good can triumph over evil sometimes, and for that to happen, men and women like us need to stand up.”
I nodded. He glanced in my direction.
“Why are you here? You could sit stateside counting your money and pretend you’d done your part by calling the Moscow Police.”
“I was raised onSesame Streettoo,” I replied. “And these particular bad guys have my team, which makes it personal.”
“I could tell you were aSesame Streetfan,” West joked, but his smile didn’t last, and neither did mine, and we continued our journey lost in our own thoughts.
We took turns behind the wheel, switching every couple hours. I was driving when we passed the wreckage of the two vehicles which I’d seen all those months ago. This time they weren’t buried in snow, so their rusting twisted chassis were completely exposed. They made me think of the rotten, corrupt network we had exposed, linking Russia and China, and how it too was a blight on the world, polluting everything it touched.
The sun had dropped beneath the horizon and we were traveling through the glow of the last embers of the day by the time we reached Volkovo, almost ten hours after we’d set out from Moscow.
I was driving and slowed as we went through the town, past the simple houses and the bakery where Leonid Boykov, a good and kind man who had worked for Private until his untimely death, had once bought pastries for Dinara and me. I pictured him smiling, trying to push sweets on us. His loss still weighed heavily on me, but all I could do was remember and mourn him as I did so many of the departed.
I took us north and found a trail two hundred yards south of the dirt track that led to Boltino army base. I drove along this and parked behind some trees that would shield the vehicle from view.
“The base is about two miles north-east of here,” I said. “Not long now.”
CHAPTER 92
THE BACK OF the Transporter contained four flight cases full of gear and there was a secret compartment beneath the flatbed that held a cache of weapons.
