“No, but they may be on to something. Let’s go. We need to dump the goons here. Let’s make damn sure they’re hidden well.”
Prague’s lights grew dimmer and dimmer as Cal drove the little Volkswagen down the darkened road away from the city. Homes were getting fewer and far between, and they’d stopped passing streetlamps about five minutes before. After stowing the four Czech agents — bound and gagged — in a variety of junked-out vehicles, they resumed their journey west, this time with Frank and Ellis’s car taking the lead, leaving Cal to look out for tails — and to think about what he’d done back there in Prague.
Those men who had tried to catch Yushchenko weren’t the good guys — of course, Cal knew that. They represented a Godless regime trying to keep a man with important knowledge away from America, where that man could live free for the first time in his life. But those four men were still men, and they probably had families too. Cal didn’t hurt them too badly — he only drained just enough life out of them to render them unconscious. But he figured he’d scraped a few days off their lives. And that was something that he’d have to live with. He could only pray that those days would matter somehow — either by keeping them from doing more evil, or by keeping Cal alive longer to try to do some good in the middle of this spy game.
As they drove, Maggie tried to use her powers on Yushchenko, trying to get him to open up. But there was too much going on and Cal figured she just couldn’t get her mind to focus. After about twenty minutes, she’d given up. Now, every time Cal looked in the rearview, he saw the colonel’s eyes looking right at him.
“You all right back there, Colonel, sir?” Cal asked, trying to sound friendly.
“I have never seen an African man like you up close before,” Yushchenko replied bluntly.
“Well, hope it don’t disappoint you to learn I’m just the same as you. Two arms, two legs, whatever brains God gives us.”
“They tell us in Moscow that the Africans in America, they are slaves to European people and treated poorly. Is this true?”
Cal cleared his throat and glanced at Maggie before answering. “Well, we ain’t been slaves for more than eighty years now, sir. Are we treated bad? Depends on where you are. Lots of Negroes up North, out West, they’re doing fine. Still got a lot of problems in the South. And yeah, many of us are poor. We’re working at it. We got faith the Lord will see us through, make things better for us and our children.”
Cal watched as Yushchenko took this in. “We also were slaves, not so long ago,” he said finally. “Slaves to the tsars, the tyrants who ruled Russia until Lenin freed us. But yes, it took time to overcome this. Too many of us still want to be ruled, and too many of us wish to rule as the tsars did.”
“Is that why you want out so badly?” Maggie asked, and Cal thought she was perhaps trying another tack to get the MGB man to open up.
“No, miss. They say there is no class, now, just the proletariat, but I am one of the people who rule in the Soviet Union, and it is not a bad thing to rule. I am leaving because of what I know, and what you are doing, and what must be done together. And that is all I will say.”
Cal and Maggie traded a look but didn’t press further, preferring to ride in silence for a while as the road ahead grew darker still, to the point where only the taillights of the other car were visible.
Then the handheld radio crackled to life. “Checkpoint ahead,” Ellis reported.
Maggie lifted the bulky radio from the floor in front of her. “We’ll pass you. I’ll take care of it.”
Frank’s voice came back a moment later. “Negative. You have INSIGHT. We’ll manage.”
Ahead, Cal could make out a couple of bright lights along the side of the road and, a moment later, a wooden barrier hanging across it. There was also an army truck and maybe three… no, four guards. Soldiers, armed with rifles.
“How close do you need to be, Miss Maggie?”
She smiled that smile of hers that, to Cal’s eyes, made her look like a hunter. “Get them up there, close as you can,” she said.
Cal nodded. They’d been given orders not to talk about their Enhancements with Yushchenko present, but they could still be subtle. So, Cal shifted gears and sped up until he was right up behind the other Volkswagen. Meanwhile, Maggie clambered into the backseat with Yushchenko — no mean feat, given the size of the car.
“What are you doing?” the Ukrainian asked.
“You get up front,” Maggie said. “There’s a hatch there by your feet that’ll get you into the trunk. Don’t worry — if they open it, it’ll look like there’s a bunch of boxes and stuff in there. You’ll hide in there until we pass the checkpoint.”
Yushchenko looked pretty put out, but he did as he was told. Yet a minute later, he was safe inside the hideout Ellis had created with his Enhancement, and Maggie was back in the front seat.
“You know, this ain’t gonna be easy,” Cal said quietly as he pulled up right behind the others at the checkpoint. The guards had already approached the first car. “Ain’t no Negroes out here, and they’ll be curious.”
Maggie gave him a sidelong look. “Don’t think it’ll be a problem, Cal. Even if — oh, shit!”
Startled by her sudden outburst — he never quite got used to a lady swearing like a man — Cal looked forward to see one of the guards dragging Ellis out of the back seat by the arm, and another aiming his rifle at Ellis’s head. The two other guards were standing directly in front of their VW, weapons pointed at the front windshield.
“Miss Maggie…”
“I got ’em,” she said, closing her eyes. “I… wait. Wait. What the hell?”
Cal gripped the steering wheel tightly. “What? What is it?”
Maggie opened her eyes and quickly pulled her gun out of her handbag. “It’s not working. My Enhancement isn’t working. At all.”
“How do you know?” Cal asked, wide-eyed.
“I can’t sense the people around me,” she replied, her voice quick and tense. “I can’t sense anything.”
Cal threw the car into gear and jerked the wheel to the right. “Suppose that’s why they trained us. Hang on.”
Maggie cocked the pistol as Cal sped forward. Thankfully, Ellis had noticed the engine revving and threw himself out of the way just as Cal’s VW surged ahead, sending the guards leaping away in the other direction — where a shot from Maggie caught one of them in the chest.
Cal wheeled around to the left, just as the other two guards were aiming their rifles at him. One went down immediately — probably a shot from Frank’s car, but it was too chaotic to tell.
The other guard fired, and a searing pain tore through Cal’s left shoulder before he even realized the windshield had shattered. With a cry of surprise and anger, he swerved into the guard at speed and watched as the man bounced off the hood and tumbled away before he finally hit the brakes.
Maggie was out of the car before it even finished coming to a halt, her gun out to cover the downed men from across the roof of the VW. “Cal’s hit!” she shouted.
From the driver’s seat, Cal could see Frank already out of the car, his gun trained on one of the guards moaning and groaning on the ground. Ellis, meanwhile, staggered to his feet; the Southerner seemed unharmed but spared Cal a withering look anyway. Cal couldn’t help but smile a bit, but that quickly turned into a wince as he felt his shoulder throb. The Lord’s little reminders, he thought.
Frank then dashed over to Cal. “How bad?”
“Hurts something fierce. I ain’t never been shot before,” Cal said, gritting his teeth. “Gonna need another goat or something.”
“No time,” Frank said, pulling Cal’s door open. “Ellis! Anybody…”