Page 54 of Ascendent
He shifted his gaze back to Stas. “Leave. Get as far away as you can. Never go back.”
Stas laughed. “No one leaves Norilsk,Moskal. No one.”
* * *
As they’d flown south,the snow and the ice had faded, the icy fingers of the Arctic stretching into the taiga and evaporating as Southern Siberia warmed around them. The further south they flew, the colder Sasha felt. His teeth chattered, and he curled into his jacket. His hands shook. His bones. Each breath stabbed him, like he was breathing the sub-zero air of the Arctic again. A sheen of ice seemed to grow over his skin, paper-thin, nearly translucent. A second skin. An entombment. A coffin.
The sky was spilled watercolors, pastels of liquid bleeding across the horizon, smeared with wisps of cotton clouds, as they approached Krasnoyarsk for landing. Krasnoyarsk airport was dark, the terminal empty. Planes huddled in the apron beside the twin runways. One cargo hangar was lit from within, the giant doors pushed open. Light spilled onto the pavement, a beacon for their plane. In front of the hangar, a line of trucks waited.
The runway carved through the Siberian alpine forests, a diagonal stretch of concrete appearing amidst miles of forests. Krasnoyarsk huddled kilometers away, the fitful Siberian city of a million people starting to rise. Krasnoyarsk, like its sister Siberian city, Irkutsk, was a frontier city, on the edges of the Russian wilderness, full of the strange amalgamation of humanity that all frontiers attracted. Scientists and explorers, business despots, entrepreneurs, exploiters, and gangs. Drugs. Opportunity was thick in the air, and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
Especially the gun runners emptying abandoned Siberian military bases.
Sasha fought to stay awake as they taxied toward the cargo hangar. He was so tired. He’d nodded off on the flight south, but had woken up gasping, his throat closing, feeling like snow was suffocating him. If he fell asleep again, would he die?
He stayed awake, reciting flight procedures, the preflight checks for every platform he knew, navigation routes, radio procedures for Russian and international airspace. He recited the timeline of spaceflight, both Russian and American, and then the history of SkyLab and the ISS. He was almost holding his eyelids open when the wheels skipped over the runway and the plane lurched left and right, landing.
The engines cut out as they stopped in front of the open hangar. More men in mixed black and military fatigues hopped out of the backs of waiting trucks. They shouted at the pilot, waved for the cargo ramp to be dropped. Sasha watched through the windows, trying to get a sense of who they were. They moved like they were career military, officers, not the carelessness or the brutality of conscripts or contract soldiers. Sasha had seen this kind of silent precision before, the unity of the group working in concert to unload the crates of weapons as a perfectly coordinated team.
Special Forces.
He stayed quiet near the front of the cargo hold, in the dark in his seat, pretending to fuck around on his phone. Just another gangster, a seniorBratvamember maybe, moving his cargo. Watching over the transport. He didn’t have a clue how aBratvamafioso acted. Hopefully sullen and silent.
“Zdrastvooytye,” one of the soldiers called to him as he grabbed a crate of AK-47s. “Kak vashi dila?”
The soldier was being polite. Deferential. Perhaps his ploy was working. Sasha stood and rolled his shoulders. “Harasho, spasiba,” he said, answering the soldier’s questions.Doing well, thanks.
“Kak vas zavoot?” The soldier gave a half smile as he asked for Sasha’s name. His eyes bored into Sasha’s, measuring him.
“Alexander Sergeyevich.” He lifted his chin. Stared back.
The soldier grinned. “Thank you for bringing the weapons, Alexander Sergeyevich.” Nodding, he followed the last of his soldiers off the plane with the last crate.
Sasha sagged against the bulkhead, crouching down to peer out the plane’s window as the soldiers loaded up the trucks and prepared to move out. The one who’d interrogated him was shaking hands with the pilot, leading him into the hangar. More men waited within, silhouetted by the bright lights.
He closed his eyes, pushed his forehead to the window as they moved out of sight. Why had he given that patronymic? His father’s first name, and his family name made from Sergey’s?
Sergey. Walking away from Sergey was getting harder and harder. He was trapped in Sergey’s gravity, pulled into his orbit. His escape velocity was collapsing.
He pulled out his phone. No signal. His battery was low as well. Maybe he should have brought the satellite phone. But, the last time he’d called Sergey on a sat phone, he’d been moments from death and he was telling Sergey he loved him for the first and last time.
There was no sense tempting fate like that.
Sighing, he turned his cell off. He needed to save the power.
All the trucks were pulling away. He stood, tried to steady himself, and made his way down the plane’s cargo ramp. His hands still shook. His head throbbed, and each breath felt like a knife was stabbing through his back. Like he wasn’t getting enough air.
He watched the last of the trucks drive off, repeating the license plates in his mind. He’d send the information to Ilya. They’d find whoever these soldiers were.
Sasha made his way from the plane to the tarmac and then slowly walked to the terminal as the sun broke over the forest and turned the pavement to liquid gold, shining a spotlight on his silent walk.
* * *
“Who is that?”Grisha interrupted the sergeant who’d been assigned to deliver the weapons from the plane back to their base. He held up his hand, cutting off Sergeant Gerasimov’s chatter. “Who just got off the plane?”
Gerasimov glanced back. The man in a dark jacket with a duffel slung over his shoulder was making his way toward the terminal. He moved stiffly, like something was wrong with him. “Someone who came down with the shipment.” He shrugged. “MaybeBratva? Maybe some dumb fuck who just wanted to get out of the Arctic.” He laughed. “Said his name was Alexander Sergeyevich.”
“He’s familiar…” Grisha stared at the man’s retreating back. “Do you have a scope?”
