“Sloppy,” Frank chided when Maggie reached the ridge.
She shrugged and gave him a winning smile. “Panicked. My power went bye-bye again and I freaked out. But I think you may have solved that.”
“Oh?”
“When you made your shot, my power came back in a blink. I think you hit whoever was dampening us.”
Frank frowned. “And that means everyone else’s power is back too. Move out!”
It was Frank’s turn to march double-time. Whoever was out there, it was more important to get back to Yushchenko and get him squared. And so, he ran. At one point, a bullet whizzed behind him, but he left that to Maggie, who continued to relish having her powers back a bit too much. One problem at a time, he reminded himself.
Frank burst into the clearing to find Yushchenko holding a soldier’s coat to Ellis’s abdomen. “He is losing blood. We need to help him.”
Kneeling down, Frank peeked under the coat. “Severe internal injuries. From the angle and what he’s coughed up, looks like ruptured stomach, some colon, maybe a bit of the lung if he’s really unlucky today,” the doctor said. “Do not move the patient. Field surgery needed.”
“That’s a lot of goddamn field surgery, Doc,” Frank muttered.
“Either that or he dies in minutes.”
“I don’t have minutes,” Frank replied, a little louder than he cared to.
“Are you communicating with someone?” Yushchenko asked, surprised and now looking at him suspiciously.
Shaking his head, Frank shoved the Czech rifle he borrowed into Yushchenko’s hands. “If it ain’t one of us, shoot it,” Frank said. “I gotta get him stable so we can move him.”
Yushchenko took up a position behind a rock on the trail, while Frank ripped open Ellis’s shirt, prompting a sharp intake of breath from the Southerner, followed by a few choice words.
“Didn’t realize you were awake,” Frank said, drawing a knife, also borrowed, from his belt.
“I wasn’t,” Ellis replied weakly. “Where’s Cal? I need Cal.”
“No Cal right now,” Frank said. “Just me and my ghost-doctor.”
“Need Cal,” Ellis repeated. “Need to go home.”
Frank started cleaning the skin around the entry wound. “What? Don’t want to take one for the team?” he asked.
“God, no. Find Cal,” Ellis croaked as his eyelids fluttered and his body tensed.
“Going into shock. Get that bullet out and staunch that bleeding. You’ll need to cauterize everything before he bleeds out.”
Frank went to work, cutting away blood-soaked clothing, using the tip of the knife to try to dig in and find the bullet. It was horrible, horrible going, and Ellis’s breath was becoming shallower.
Then Yushchenko swore and cocked his rifle, prompting Frank to tense up and reach for his pistol. A voice came from the woods. “It’s me!” Maggie cried out. “I have Cal!”
Maggie came up onto the trail, half-carrying, half-dragging a nearly unconscious Cal behind her. Frank had hoped Cal would be up for a miracle, but he looked ashen, and his hand weakly clutched his side. Frank ran up and took him off Maggie’s hands, laying the man gently down onto the ground next to the trail. “He needs donors. Now.”
Maggie shook her head. “You can’t stay. Their tracker will have them on you at any moment!”
As if he needed confirmation, Frank began to hear the voices of soldiers coming from below. “Can you send them all off?” he asked her.
Maggie closed her eyes a second. “No, they’re learning. Coming in from different directions, staggering their approach. I hit one group, another one comes up behind.”
Frank looked up at Yushchenko, who was still focused on the perimeter of the trail but had undoubtedly heard every word. Cal, meanwhile, was breathing shallowly but steadily, and Ellis was slipping fast.
“You have only one option to get your team out,” General Davis said. “You just don’t want to take it.”
Frank stood up and went over to Cal. “You awake, Cal?”
He got a half-lidded, weak smile in return. “Kinda. You found someone I can borrow from?”
Shit. Shut up, General. “Yeah, Cal, I think I do. But you gotta promise me to take it.”
“Not sure… I have a choice… now, do I?”
“Nope.”
Get the team home.
Frank stood up and turned to Yushchenko. Like Anderson said, it was time to make the hard choice. “Sorry.” Frank lifted his gun.
But the Ukrainian already had his rifle trained directly on Frank. “I think it is time for you to drop your weapon.”
26
Maggie pointed her gun at Yushchenko as Frank let his pistol fall to the ground. “Drop it or you’ll never see your family again,” she said, and by God, she meant it.
But Yushchenko merely smiled. “Why don’t you stop me? Is it because you can’t?”
She reached out again with her mind but once again found the threads of his emotions incredibly elusive — she could barely fuel his already-present nervousness.
She pulled the trigger — and the gun merely clicked.
“God damn it,” she spat. Out of ammo. Rookie mistake. We’re fucked.
Yushchenko turned his weapon on her. “If you use your ability, I will kill you. Do you understand?” He didn’t bother waiting for an answer, instead turning his head and shouting loudly in Russian.
“You weren’t defecting,” she said quietly, her head spinning, her heart sinking. “You were drawing us out.”
Yushchenko smiled. “Of course. It took great effort, too.”
Maggie altered her stance somewhat, preparing to lash out in whatever direction she could — part of a plan that came to her in the moment. “So, what do we do now, comrade?”
“Now we wait for my comrades to join us,” he said, smiling at the word.
She sighed at this, then theatrically relaxed and leaned against a tree. She could hear the voices of Yushchenko’s backup off in the distance. Slowly, with her eyes locked on Yushchenko, she used one hand to rustle around in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Then I need a smoke to get through this. You mind?” The MGB man merely smirked at her, so she carefully picked one out of her pack and lit it, then waited.
The cigarette disintegrated as the dart flew out and into Yushchenko’s neck. His eyes grew wide as he turned… and fell to the ground before he could get a shot off.
“That makes everything a lot easier,” Frank muttered as he picked up his gun. “Nice play.”
Maggie tossed the butt aside. “Now what?”
“This.”
Frank fired two shots into Yushchenko’s chest.
Maggie watched in shock as Frank quickly dragged Yushchenko’s body away from the trail. “INSIGHT was our whole mission!” she said. She had to deliberately stop herself from raising her gun at him.
“Tough choices,” Frank said as he put Yushchenko down next to Cal and placed the injured man’s hand on the Russian’s chest. “Cal, he’s going fast. You gotta get everything you can outta him. Right now, you hear me?”
Cal managed a slight nod — he probably didn’t even know who he was about to drain — as Frank put a hand on Yushchenko’s forehead and started whispering.
“You know, I’m trying hard to feel bad about this, but I don’t,” Frank said quietly. “Our mission was to get what’s in your head back to the States, one way or another. Turns out we don’t really need you around for that.”
Then Frank stiffened — Maggie figured Yushchenko was far enough along to start the transfer of information. Not knowing what else to do, she assumed Yushchenko’s position overlooking the trail and kept an eye out with the scope of the Czech rifle she’d found there.