“Damn,” he says, sounding resigned.
Footsteps stomp toward our meeting room, and the door flies open. Chief Minister Arkady is already shouting in Russian as he comes through it, a long string of guttural sounds and sibilants that sure sound angry.
Niko watches him, politely, as if waiting for him to finish. I realize he was expecting this.
Finally, the Chief Minister stops shouting at Niko. Niko responds with one sentence, then looks back at the screen, and the Chief Minister looks at me.
“And you,” he says. His face is bright red from all the shouting. “You Americans, you tell us one thing and then you do another, like a pack of lying weasel-snakes—”
Just take it, I tell myself. You can’t say anything to make him less angry right now, so just deal.
“—You go back on promises and then we’re left here to sweep up—”
Niko leans forward in his chair, suddenly going tense.
“What?” I ask him, ignoring Arkady.
He doesn’t say anything, just toggles through the cameras.
“—Leave a country in ruins—”
“I don’t know,” Niko says, but his voice is strained.
On the screen, Kostya’s stopped listening to Pavel, and he’s just watching the open space to his right. Something about it makes my blood run cold, my stomach clench. Niko speaks quietly into the radio, and Arkady stops shouting mid-sentence, then turns and looks at the screen.
He’s just in time to see Kostya grab Pavel by the collar of his shirt and drag him around the table.
“Chto on del—” Arkady starts.
Kostya and Pavel run toward the camera, which means toward the vehicles. Niko and I are both standing, and I don’t think either of us are breathing.
An ancient, gray-green armored truck with a faded red star on one side rolls into view and comes to a hard stop. There’s something strangely casual about it, like there’s a red light that we can’t see, and for one second, it sits there as Kostya and Pavel run hell-for-leather toward the Humvees.
Then the truck explodes. There’s no sound on the dashboard cameras, so it’s totally silent, orange blooming out, the truck bursting, flames turning to thick black smoke.
I’m frozen. There’s a layer of surreality over everything, like I’m watching an action movie and not real life, but then something heavy hits the windshield in front of the camera and a spider web splinters across it from one corner, and that’s what shakes me back.
Niko’s already shouting into the radio in Russian. Someone’s shouting back, and I grab the camera toggle and switch views, but there’s nothing that shows what’s happening behind the trucks.
Where’s Kostya, I think. Where the fuck is Kostya?
Arkady starts yelling, and then another older man comes in, takes one look, and starts yelling. It’s all in Russian, and it’s all directed at Niko, who turns his back with one hand over an ear.
I toggle the cameras again. One of them is shaking, like the truck it’s in is being rocked from side to side. I toggle. When I come back, that camera is suddenly moving backwards and then it sweeps across a long vista of gray slabs and buildings.
No Kostya.
Please, I think. My heart’s in a vice. Please. Please.
“Niko,” I say, leaning forward and touching his shoulder. Arkady keeps shouting. The other man keeps shouting. I can’t fucking believe them, and I don’t know if Kostya’s okay, and I think I’m about to tear something apart.
Niko holds up one finger. Arkady switches to shouting in English, the other man still shouting in Russian.
“—Come here and ruin everything—”
“SHUT UP!” I shout.
No one shuts up.
“How dare you—”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP OR GET THE FUCK OUT!”
They both stop for a second. A voice on Niko’s radio says something. I hope it says Kostya’s fine as I slam both hands on the table.
“You can stay here and fucking help or you can get the fuck out of here, because I swear to Christ if I see any more of your goddamn dick-waving right now I will fucking lose my shit,” I shout.
They both stare at me. Sweat rolls down the back of my neck. I’m shaking, and I already regret my outburst because I don’t have shit to back it up besides fury and sheer terror.
A voice in Russian comes through the radio. I try to listen for Kostya’s name but I don’t catch it. The camera is still moving, the car going somewhere, and I touch Niko’s shoulder again and point at it.
I want to shake Niko until he tells me that Kostya’s okay, but I don’t. He knows what he’s doing.
Arkady sits, slowly. The other man turns on his heel and leaves.
“Da, Hazel,” Niko says into the radio, then looks at me. “Pavel was badly hurt. That truck is taking him to the hospital and bringing Yelena here. Kostya’s going to have a nasty bruise but he’s fine.”
I exhale and sit again. My t-shirt sticks to my back. All the cameras show is a burning truck in the middle of a concrete slab.
Just leave, I think at the camera. My insides feels like lead.
Leave, just fucking leave.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kostya
I lean against the back of the Humvee. I’m breathing hard, adrenaline is surging through my veins, and my side hurts like hell where the explosion threw me into the truck about thirty seconds ago, but I’m okay. Bruised, but fine.
I’m better than Pavel. I watch the other truck drive away, thumping over concrete and then dirt. He’s in the back, a piece of steel the size of my hand sticking out of his leg. His blood is still pooled and dripped across the concrete in front of me, but if they drive fast enough, he might make it.
And Yelena’s fine. She’ll be at the palace in an hour. At least one good thing happened.
Everything goes still. The truck in the center is still burning, but since it’s in the middle of a concrete slab, I’m not particularly worried that anything else will catch fire.
Everyone’s still talking through my earpiece, and everything from the palace is coming through a blur of shouting, but it’s all status updates. They’re checking in that they’re okay, that by some miracle they all got behind cover in time.
Then I hear a woman’s voice over the radio. It’s in the background, but it shouts SHUT UP over the yelling.
I look over my shoulder and around the side of the vehicle, but I can’t help but smile at Hazel, even as the shouting continues.
Then I hear her again. We all hear her again, a long, curse-and-threat-filled tirade that would probably make my mother feel faint if she heard it, because in Sveloria, women do not curse.
It’s followed by silence. Crouched behind the vehicles, no one says anything.
“Was that Hazel?” Dmitri asks Niko through his radio.
“Yeah, that was Hazel,” Niko says. Everyone looks at me, and I start to shrug, but then I hear the rattle again.
Everyone freezes. I feel another jolt of adrenaline race through me, and my brain kicks over into instinct mode, the fight part of fight-or-flight.
“Down!” Captain Ovechkin shouts as another truck rolls into the square.
I brace for an explosion, but there isn’t one. I wait and wait, forcing myself not to look around the truck, because I know the moment I do my face could get blown off.