Russian Amerika (14 page)

"Sure, most peoples are or they wouldn't have lasted long enough to become a race. My mother's people can tell by a person's name who they are related to, where they fit in the house where they live, and even where they fit into the village."

"My God, that's even more stratified than Russian life!" Nik said.

"It's more complete, I think. It's also a clan culture, not something that would work in St. Petersburg and maybe not even St. Nicholas."

"Does anybody ever pretend to be something they are not in your mother's culture?"

"Why would they bother, to make a joke? Everyone would know they weren't telling the truth."

"But you're part Russian, too, Grisha. Did your father know where he fit in Russian society?"

"Yeah. At the bottom," Grisha said, his voice revealing the bleakness he suddenly felt. "I started from the bottom and worked my way to major's flashes in the Troika Guard. Then I was sacrificed for political reasons and had to start over, got back to where I owned a boat and was master of my life."

"What happened?" Nik asked, his face rapt.

"I'm not sure, and I've thought about it a lot. I took a charter job where the customer wasn't what he said he was, went places we weren't supposed to go, and did things we weren't supposed to do."

"Sounds like smuggling to me."

"No, at first I thought that's what was going on, too. But, we picked up a woman who knew the man and on the way back they talked about the other North American countries. You know, the U.S.A, the Confederacy, all them."

Nik nodded.

"Then Karpov, the guy, got drunk and tried to snag the woman, got real direct about it. So there was a fight and we killed him."

"We?"

"Da. While he was choking me, she hit him in the back of the head with a halibut club, the spiked kind."

"So why did you end up in Tetlin Redoubt? Did they only hang her for murder?"

"She told them I did it. They were going to hang me, but then they changed their minds and sentenced me to thirty years hard labor instead."

"You wouldn't have lasted another thirty days," Nik said with professional disdain.

"I thought I was going to die that day. If the Dená had waited another minute before attacking, I'd be dead. Life is strange."

"It's getting light. We need to go."

"Nik, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me why you've turned into a moody bear."

"I don't think you'd understand."

Grisha swallowed the anger that immediately flared through him. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Why not, because I don't have enough education?"

"You wouldn't like me anymore, take my word for it." Nik strapped on his skis and pushed off down the trail, heading for the cut that dropped into the next valley.

"Nik!" Grisha yelled. "I want a real answer, a real reason!"

The Russian stopped and looked back.

"I'm a traitor. I'm a traitor and I can't stand to live with myself."

Then he skied away and Grisha scrambled to follow.

20

Near the Toklat River

Bear wasn't sure about this helicopter stuff. He didn't understand what held the damned things up. But it sure covered the distance as they raced along twenty meters above the treetops in excess of sixty exhilarating kilometers an hour.

They had flown from Tetlin Redoubt to St. Anthony Redoubt the day before and spent the night there. They left early this morning, long before the winter sun rose, so they would be in the target area during the brief subarctic day.

He noticed the captain watching him with her superior little smile that said he was only shit and she knew it. He wished he could catch her without her bodyguard corporal and his machine pistol. Today the dog of a soldier even carried a Kalashnikov.

Between the three of them they could stand off a dozen Indians. He thought them heavily armed for this mission. The captain remained adamant about only the three of them going into Indian country alone.

With Wolverine White dead, there wasn't anybody he trusted to fight at his back anyway. Now he faced the world alone.

"Ten minutes to landing zone, Captain," the pilot said in his jovial voice. He would stay with the aircraft and keep the engine warm. If the other three weren't back in exactly twenty-four hours, he would return to base without them.

The captain and the corporal rechecked their weapons and gear. Bear stifled a comment and peered out the window. A
promyshlennik
never neglected his weapons; they were ready when he walked out the door of his cabin.

The two soldiers laid their automatic rifles down and tested straps and bindings. When they finished with themselves, they glanced at each other to double-check. Bear felt certain the look they exchanged wasn't regulation.

Cossacks were like that, he mused. The enlisted men were animals, the officers were clever at manipulation, and they all worked in tandem with the Czar's intelligence service. Bear had to keep telling himself that these people weren't really Okhana agents, merely hired mercenaries.

He didn't like them, but they paid good, steady wages and he didn't have to take their orders if he didn't want to. He could always quit.
Promyshlenniks
were known for their independent spirit.

"Are you ready, Crepov?" the captain asked.

"Am I ready for what?"

"Are you ready to take the field and find these men for us?"

"I wouldn't have entered this borscht-maker if I wasn't."

"Good." She turned to the corporal. "Crepov will lead, I will go behind him, and you will follow me."

"But, Captain, I think it's not good for you to be between him and me. What if he attempts-"

"Corporal, I
am
armed."

"
Da
." The corporal evenly regarded Crepov, then stared out at the passing scenery.

You'll pay for that one, pet
.

The engine changed pitch and they banked to the left. Crepov looked out his window and found himself staring straight down at a snow-covered meadow. A branch of the Toklat River, frozen and brittle, wound along about a kilometer away.

The craft dropped in a tight spiral and Crepov's heart tried to fly out his mouth. He swallowed in a vain effort to make it retreat. His gorge attempted to follow, but he successfully kept it down.

Just as Crepov thought the noisy machine would crash into the ground, it leveled off and gently landed. The engine died and the great blades swooshed to a stop. He slid the door open and stiffly dropped to the snowcovered ground.

After allowing his legs to know the earth for a moment, he turned and pulled his skis off the special rack on the landing skids. Mounted on the other side of the tubular skid strut was a 9mm machine gun that the pilot could fire after aiming his machine at the target.

Crepov decided there might be something to these things after all. He placed his skis, stepped into them and clamped the bindings over the toes of his boots. After stretching his legs for a minute, he struck off toward the game trail he had spotted from the air.

Where are you going?" the captain snapped. "I didn't order you to move out."

Crepov stopped and twisted to regard her.

"I'm going to do my job. I will also do as I please. You may do the same." He moved out again, setting a track for them to follow.

Not until he reached the game trail did he look back. They were methodically closing his hundred meter lead. He carefully examined the trail.

Only small game and predator tracks; no ski had passed since the last snow. From the crust on the white mantle, he would estimate the last snowfall at over a week before.

The captain slid up to him, trying not to breathe hard. Crepov pointed to the trail.

"What?" she asked, looking at it then back at him.

"No human has been by here yet. Are you sure this is where our quarry will pass?"

"Yes, as sure as I can be."

"Then let's find a good ambush site." He skied down the trail toward the tree-covered ridges.

21

Near the East Fork of the Toklat River

Grisha and Nik sat and ate a cold lunch on a pile of needles under an unusually large spruce tree. After swallowing his last bite of moose jerky, Grisha said, "I want some fresh meat."

"We don't have any."

"I know that. I want to hunt for a while. This is a game trail."

"Not now. Maybe tomorrow."

"You don't have to hunt if you don't want to, General," Grisha said.

"But I'm hungry for rabbit."

"But . . ."

Grisha abruptly stood and secured his poles to his pack before swinging it onto his shoulders. He put on his skis and finally picked up the recurve bow and his quiver.

"Grisha, please let me be in front."

"I'm a better hunter than you are," he said with a grin. "Better shot too. Besides, you've been in front all day long. It's my turn."

"Tomorrow you can be in front. Today I want to be first."

Grisha stared hard at his companion.

"I heard a saying once that they use down in the American countries.

'Go fuck yourself,' is what they say. And that's exactly what you can do." He skied away, pulling an arrow out of the quiver as he went.

The game trail wound through the woods and curved into a cut separating two ridges. He decided there could be game in the heavy brush at the cut. He nocked an arrow and skied as quietly as he could into the entrance.

Abruptly a snowshoe hare bolted out of the brush ahead and ran toward him for three lunging strides. Suddenly the animal saw Grisha and veered off to the man's right. For five seconds the hare presented an easily accessible target before disappearing in the timbered flank of the ridge.

Grisha didn't shoot. His heart thundered in his ears and he concentrated on maintaining his grip on the bowstring.

What scared the animal? Wrong time of the year for bear. Nik is behind
me. Maybe a moose? St. Nicholas, please let it be a moose
.

He crept forward a step, then hesitated. He glanced behind him. In the distance, Nik slid into his pack and took his first sliding stride toward Grisha.

He jerked his head around to face the cut again. The merest breath of a sound carried across the snow to his ears. The bow suddenly seemed like a child's toy as he recognized the protest of oiled metal against metal.

Another glance over his shoulder. Nik moved forward swiftly, craning his head to get a better look at Grisha.

Good. He knows something out of the ordinary is happening
.

Slowly, quietly, Grisha eased the skis backward. No good-he had to keep looking back to judge his steps. He bent down and rapidly unfastened his bindings.

He pulled the skis up and jammed them butt down in the snow. Watching the cut as closely as possible, he carefully retreated back down the trail. Nik slid to a stop ten meters away and waited.

Grisha got to his friend's ski tips before he allowed himself to whisper.

"There's somebody in the cut."

"How do you know?" Nik stared past Grisha, watching the cut.

He told about the snowshoe hare, hesitated.

"Then I heard someone chamber a round."

"Your hearing must be extraordinary," Nik said softly, "or else you're imagining things."

Grisha felt his jaw muscles go taut and he squinted at the man.

"I know what I heard," he hissed. "There's somebody in there."

"Well, move then, let me see."

Nik swung a ski pole up and smacked it across Grisha's left arm. Instinctively, Grisha jerked away from the pole just before it made contact and fell flat in the slightly softer snow at trail's edge.

Nik skied for the cut. Grisha stifled a roar of anger and, gripping his bow and arrow in one hand, flopped through the deep snow to the relative firmness of the trail. He scrambled to his feet as Nik passed Grisha's skis, standing like silent sentinels.

The Russian disappeared into the cut. Grisha ran to his skis, quickly dropped them on the trail and snapped down the spring-loaded clamp over the front lip of his boot soles. Then he was gliding along, smoothly, silently, swiftly, arrow nocked, adrenaline charged. He skied into the cut.

22

Near the Toklat River

As soon as Bear Crepov saw the cut in the ridgeline, he knew it perfect for an ambush site. He side stepped off the game trail and motioned for the captain to come up next to him. When she stopped beside him, the Kalashnikov lay cradled in her right arm, her finger on the trigger.

What is it?" she said loudly.

Bear winced and nearly slapped her. "Quiet, you bitch! Do you want them to kill us?"

She blinked at him, whispered, "Are they close?"

"They have to be. Get your pet corporal into the brush line over there," he pointed, "and I'll take cover on the other side of the trail. You pull back into those spruce behind that large mound, I think it's a rock."

"Are you worried for my safety?"

He quickly searched her face for signs of mockery, but found none.

"I think you can take care of yourself," he said slowly. "But if there's shooting I want you out of the way. You're the only one who knows why we're doing this." He skied ahead another thirty meters, stopped, took his skis off, and hid his equipment in the brush.

The corporal quietly disappeared on the other side of the trail. Crepov glanced back down the trail but could see nothing of the woman. He carefully pulled the slide back on his weapon and chambered a round.

The quiet of winter settled on him. No birds this time of year, they had all gone south to the Confederacy and New Spain. He must be his own sentry.

A voice broke the stillness. Bear couldn't make out the words, but he knew it for human. He tensed when he heard skis on snow, moving fast.

23

Near the Toklat River

Valari Kominskiya saw the huge
promyshlennik
stiffen and raise his weapon slightly. She pulled back a little even though it was impossible for anyone on the trail to see her. She felt a thrill of fear when close to the woodsman and had yet to decide whether she liked it or not.