Just explode, I think. Just fucking explode.
The only thing worse than a bomb is an unexploded bomb, because once an explosive fails it could go off at any time.
“Niko,” the captain says into his radio. “Eyes?”
“It’s a truck, the same kind of Soviet truck,” Niko says.
Silence.
“Bullet holes through the driver’s side window,” Niko finally says.
Shit, I think. We don’t know how the last bomber set off the bomb. We don’t know if the person inside this one is dead or alive. We’ve got no idea whether this bomb will go off or not, whether jostling the truck will hit a trigger.
We wait. I hold my breath until I can’t any more, and then let it out in a long sigh. Captain Ovechkin and I look at each other.
“There might be people on the other side,” I say. “I’m going to go check.”
“No,” he barks, and signals to two other men.
They nod, stand into a crouch, and begin making their way around the big concrete slab.
“Let someone else do something for once,” the captain growls at me.
I hear a faraway noise, and for a moment my gut tightens.
How many fucking times is this going to happen? I think.
Then I see a helicopter fly into view over a faraway gray cube.
I relax a little. The cavalry’s here.
Ovechkin stands.
“Get in,” he says, gesturing at the Humvee. “We’re heading out.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hazel
One by one, the cameras in the Humvees swing around, showing the full vista of the gray district, then drive away. For a long, long time I’m still convinced that the truck behind them is going to explode, that somehow the explosion is going to obliterate everyone even when they’re half a mile away.
It doesn’t. They just drive, and my terror slowly eases.
I put my head in my arms, on the table, and take a long, deep breath. I’m still shaking, still roiling inside, on edge, like the unexploded bomb is behind me and I don’t know it.
Niko’s still talking in Russian. Always talking in Russian, and this whole time he’s somehow managed to do it without sweating or getting a single hair out of place.
This probably isn’t the most stressful thing he’s ever done, but still.
He stands. I look up. Arkady’s gone, God knows where. Niko puts his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m going to field command,” he says.
I stand.
“No,” he says. “You’re not trained and I don’t need American fighter jets up my ass.”
I close my mouth, because as much as I hate the thought of sitting in the palace doing goddamn nothing, I know he’s right.
“But you could run our tracking software,” he goes on. “I don’t think any of these old men even know how to turn a computer on.”
“Yes,” I say. “Please, God, give me something to do.”
Thirty minutes later I’m in a different room with an array of screens and two twenty-year-old Svelorian aides who seem equal parts annoyed with and afraid of me. There’s a map on every monitor: radar, infrared, GPS, even a few satellite. Every military vehicle is marked, and I can watch them all move around.
There’s no way I should be in here. There’s no way that the movements of the entire Svelorian military isn’t the highest level of classified information, and yet, here I am. Not even a citizen, just some girl who doesn’t even speak the language.
My earpiece fuzzes to life, and I turn it down a little, making a face. I feel official as hell wearing it, but it’s weird, like there’s constantly someone standing just behind me who I can hear and not see.
“Sung,” says a man’s voice I don’t recognize.
“Yes,” I say.
“We’ve got two teams, eastern quadrant, Velchek and Orsiny. Outside a sealed factory. Anything?”
I pause for a long time, trying to find what he’s talking about. The aides are whispering to each other and not fucking helping at all.
“Sung?” the man asks.
“I’m here,” I say, and finally find what he’s talking about on the infrared map. “Looks like... one large heat signature inside. Maybe one smaller. Neither movi—no, one’s moving, a little. I don’t know what it is.”
Shit, I’m bad at this, I think.
“Thank you,” he says.
I do that for an hour. The questions back up sometimes, and the aides get more helpful, but it becomes quickly apparent that they don’t know what they’re doing either.
We all turn when the door opens, and a woman pokes her head in. I recognize her as one of the palace kitchen workers.
“Yelena Pavlovna is here,” she says softly, her voice thickly accented.
“Thank you,” I say.
“She wants to know if she can help.”
I look at the screens, all of them festooned with Cyrillic characters. As much effort as I’ve been putting into learning Russian lately, I’m still sounding out words like a three-year-old learning to read.
“Yes,” I say. “Send her here, please.”
Ten minutes later Yelena comes in. She’s wearing clean clothes, and she’s washed her face and pulled her hair back, but I don’t think she’s showered. Her eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, but she looks pissed.
I’ve never seen her look anything but sweet, happy, or slightly confused before, and I force myself not to smile.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She holds out her hands. Her wrists and forearms are bruised and purpled, and I suck a breath in through my teeth.
“They tied me, but that’s all,” she says, her voice soft. “The volki didn’t have me long before they traded me like a bargaining chip.”
She looks at me, and for the first time, there’s something fierce in her eyes.
“One tires of being used to bargain with,” she says.
Her voice has a bitter edge to it that I’ve never heard before. Both the aides are looking at us. I shoot them a glare and they turn around, acting like it was their own idea.
I hand Yelena a headset.
“We’re tracking the remnants of the volki through the gray quarter,” I say, and quickly explain what everything is. She slides her headset on over her head and tells me what everything says, and we quickly slide back into the rhythm that we developed together in the palace.
It’s slow, methodical, almost tedious work as the military works its way through the gray district, following up on all the leads. They arrest people one by one, and though I keep thinking that soon they’ll find the headquarters, the big hideout, they never do.
The volki are hiding in holes simply and by pairs. The end isn’t glamorous or exciting, it’s mundane, as angry-looking men and a few women are driven off in military police cars.
Yelena and I sit in the room and tell people what’s around the next corner. We tell one unit where another unit is, where the helicopters are, whether backup is coming. She knows the language and the city and I’m good at taking in three maps at once and describing the composite to someone on the other end of the line.