When he woke, it was to find himself coated in sweat. His left, artificial arm was resting on the metal door handle and when he brought it up to his face he got a good whiff of scorched silicone. The inside of the cab was oppressive with heat, like it had been stuffed full of hot packing peanuts while he slept. The air was so dry it parched his throat.
He wiped the sweat away from his face — pinpricks of moisture broke out on his forehead and his nose the second he dried them off. He looked over and saw Nadia sleeping in the passenger seat, her brow wrinkled, her shirt glued to her shoulder and back with sweat.
He couldn’t take it. He grabbed the tablet and cracked open his door. The tarp that hung over the windows pushed back against him, but he struggled through it and down the ladder, onto the sand below.
Fresh air whistled into his lungs, but even through closed eyelids the sun burned his retinas. He pushed one hand against his eyes as if to wring the sunlight out and stumbled around even as the heat cooked his back.
It had been hot in Tashkent, but nothing like this. “Angel,” he called out. “Angel, are you there?”
“I’m here, sugar,” she said.
He had no idea what the time difference was between Kazakhstan and… wherever she was. She sounded well rested, though.
“What’s the temperature here?” he asked.
“You sure you want to know?” she asked him. When he didn’t reply, she said, “It’s about a hundred and twenty.”
He couldn’t believe it. “Fahrenheit?”
Angel laughed. “A hundred and twenty Celsius would kill you.”
Chapel had heard stories about heat like that from guys he knew who fought in Iraq. Afghanistan had never been that hot — in fact, up in the mountains it had been downright chilly. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever felt heat like this. He could just crack his eyelids if he forced himself. The sunlight was still blinding, but it looked like there might be a patch of shade off to his left. He hurried toward it, staggering through the loose sand — and tripped over something and went sprawling.
In the shade he could see a little better. Still not very well — and if he turned his head even slightly and looked out at the sand where the sun beat down, stabbing pain would burn through his head. He peered into the shadows and saw Bogdan sitting there, leaning back against a pile of sand. The Romanian had his knees up near his ears, having folded himself like an insect into the small patch of shade.
“Sorry,” Chapel said, because he realized that what he’d tripped over was Bogdan’s feet.
“Is okay, yes.” Bogdan lifted a heavy canteen and waggled it. “Drink. Drink or you will dehydrate and die.”
Chapel took the canteen and sucked up a thick mouthful of warm water. He forced himself to swallow it slowly, to make it last.
“Is hot enough for you, yes?” Bogdan asked.
Chapel nearly spat out all the water in his mouth. He held it in with his hand — in a land like this water wasn’t something you could waste on a spit-take.
In point of fact, now that he was in the shade, the heat felt almost bearable. He remembered that was the secret of dry heat — moist air conveyed heat much better than dry air, so people who lived in places like Arizona could stay relatively comfortable as long as they were under a roof. The tiny patch of shade under the dune in Kazakhstan was its own miniature oasis as far as he was concerned.
He sipped at the water. Bogdan, after his initial foray into conversation, seemed uninterested in talking further, and that was fine with Chapel. A few minutes after he’d arrived in the shade he saw the canvas covering the truck shimmer and shake and then Nadia came running over toward them with a whoop. She pushed Bogdan to one side to find her own patch of shelter from the sun.
“We should move the truck,” Chapel said. “It’s just soaking up heat right now. That can’t be good for our supplies or our electronics.”
“Give me one moment, please,” Nadia said. She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. Shook out her hair, sending drops of sweat flying. “You could have woken me, when you stepped out,” she said, staring daggers at him.
Chapel laughed. “All I could think about at that moment was getting away from the heat. Sorry.” He handed her the canteen. “I’ll move the truck. There has to be some more shade around here somewhere.”
While Nadia drove, coaxing the engine of the truck to move while it was still overheated from sitting in the desert all day, Chapel studied a map of Kazakhstan. “I had no idea this place was so huge.” He unfolded another section of map and sighed. Judging by the scale, you could fit all of western Europe into the borders of Kazakhstan and still have some room left over. “And all of this,” he said, moving his hand in a circle over the southern central part, more than half of the country, “is desert? I can see why, if you wanted to hide something, this would make a good spot. I’m not as clear on how we’re going to find it.”
“I have the map coordinates, and our GPS will take us there. Angel will help, will she not, if we get lost? Don’t worry.” Nadia turned and looked at him. She had been cool with him ever since he’d questioned her politics, just before they crossed the border. But the prospect of reaching Perimeter soon seemed to melt some of that ice. “We’re so very close, now. This night, and then just a bit tomorrow.”
Chapel nodded. “And then we hit Perimeter and then… it’s over,” he said. “We exfiltrate and go our separate ways. What will you do with… damn. There’s no good way to circle around this. What will you do with the time you have left?”
“I have some ideas. No point in getting ahead of myself, but I’ve thought of it. I have at least six months, I think, before the pain will get too bad. I will see my home again.”
“Back to Russia? Where they want you dead?”
“I know how to stay under their radar, so to speak,” she told him. A wan smile crossed her face. “They taught me very well how to not be seen. Anyway, if they catch me, what of it? They kill me?” She watched the dunes for a while, keeping both hands on the wheel as the truck tried to slew to one side on the downward face of a dune. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I’m sure you cannot tell me what your next mission is. I’m sure all your movements are classified. But do you have to go back to the States right away?”
Chapel hadn’t even considered it. He’d always figured he would go back and try to find Julia and talk to her, find out why she had broken things off. Find out if maybe there was a way forward. But that was seeming increasingly unlikely. Every day that passed, and she still hadn’t called, made him feel more like that chapter of his life was over. Like he should move on, as much as he didn’t want to.
Thinking that through, actually saying it to himself if only in his head, felt like tearing a bandage off a fresh wound. It hurt.
“Jim?” Nadia said.
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
Nadia was quiet for a while, her eyes staying focused on the ground ahead. “I wondered,” she said, finally, “if maybe… if you had some time before you had to go back…”
“Nadia—”
“Just. Just listen, for now. Don’t answer. If you had some time, maybe you could come with me. Come see my Siberia.”
“You don’t want to be with your family?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My father died many years ago. My mother moved away, to Vietnam. My childhood friends… they will not remember me now. I don’t want to be alone when I go back. That’s all.”
“Nadia — you don’t even know me. Not really.”
“I don’t have time for long acquaintance now,” she said, with a bittersweet smile. “I know you’re a good man. I feel it when I stand next to you. Just think on it.” She turned her face away from him as if she was watching an intersection for oncoming traffic. Not that there was likely to be another vehicle for a hundred miles in any direction. Chapel understood that she just didn’t want him to see her eyes, just then.