“If something happens, Peter, then that means that things have gone horribly wrong, and we will have the whole group at risk.” Cole knew enough to appeal to Peter’s leadership feelings and his responsibilities. “I know you would admit that, in a worst case scenario, you would rather lose one unimportant member rather than the whole group. Be reasonable. You have Natasha and Lang to think about. I need to go alone.”
Lang chimed in with his agreement. He also believed that it was a bad plan to travel back as a group. They were more likely to be seen with four of them trying to make it back into the tunnel, he suggested. Peter considered the case and saw the reasonableness of this conclusion.
“I see your logic, Cole, but please do not say that you are unimportant. I don’t think that you are unimportant to your sister, and you are certainly not unimportant to me or Lang. I’ll allow it, but you should at least wait until tomorrow. It’s late in the day now, and it’ll be getting dark soon.”
“Ok, Peter,” Cole said, smiling.
“And if you don’t make it back, I’ll be very upset with you—and with myself for giving in to you.”
“You’ll see me again, Peter. Never you worry. In the end, you’ll see that this is much ado about nothing.”
“Yes, well, let’s hope. So far it seems more like a comedy of errors, with very little to laugh about.”
Cole smiled at this, and gave his friend a thankful squeeze on the shoulder. He looked at him and suddenly felt overwhelmed with the warmth of emotion.
In short order, it was arranged, and on mid-morning the next day, Cole started off on his retreat back to the tunnel.
Wednesday — Morning
Mikail stood by the door in the darkness and waited, staring single-mindedly out of the glass window. He’d not said many words to Sergei through the night, and when Vladimir finally came to and began to stir, there’d been an unspoken agreement that the issue had finally been settled once and for all. It is common with violent men like Vladimir that, like chickens or dogs or wolves, once they are put in their place, they become loyal followers pretty quickly. It is the bully that is the pose in such men. The truth of the bully lies in their cowardice.
As the silence built up, piling upon itself in the cool of the early morning, Mikail’s certainty and resolve grew. He turned to his comrades and barked out orders.
“When I make my move, you’ll know what to do,” he said, brusquely and without emotion.
“Yes, Mikail,” the other two men replied as one.
Although he was not there when the traveler named Clay, Lev Volkhov, and Vasily had broken out of this same cell, he imagined that their planning had gone much differently--and their plan had failed. He was assured in his own mind that his plan would not fail.
“I will expect you to move quickly. I will not…” he paused, to let the implication of that word sink in, “…tolerate failure.”
The two larger men looked at him and nodded their understanding.
About thirty minutes later, there was a rattling of keys and the door slowly opened. A young man, one of Mikail’s recent Youth Revolutionary Forces, stepped into the room with a tray of food. Before he could even say a word, Mikail pounced, raising his hands quickly to knock the food trays upwards, throwing hot soup into the youth’s startled face. There was only a short squawk from the young man as Mikail took his pistol from its holster and clubbed the boy unconscious with it. He fell like a noodle to the floor.
Mikail walked calmly out into the day room, ignoring the two armed Spetznaz soldiers who were lounging somewhat carelessly near the front door of the cluster. They saw him, but his calm demeanor and the purpose in his gait threw them off for a few beats. In that interval, Mikail grabbed a cushion from the sofa and, turning quickly and gracefully, he shot the first soldier through the cushion and in the face. The second soldier began to lift his machine pistol but it was too late, and Mikail’s second shot burst through the soft padding and hit the man in the temple. Both soldiers, professional and experienced special force operators, hit the ground without firing a shot.
By the time Vladimir and Sergei came peeking out of the cell, Mikail was already taking the uniform off the smaller of the two Spetznaz men.
“Vladimir, this other one, he’s big like you. Put on his uniform. We’re going to escort Sergei out of the prison like he’s one of our prisoners.”
“But… what if we’re stopped, Mikail?” Vladimir asked, as he began to undress the larger man.
“We won’t be. Not if we walk with purpose. But if we are, we’ve got to fight our way to Pyotr Bolkonsky’s house. That is our destination and we have to make it there no matter what.” He looked at the two larger men to make sure they understood. Then he could not help the boast that was welling up in his heart as he saw in their eyes a new servile feeling growing in theirs.
“I don’t think we’ll be stopped. I just disarmed three armed men by myself, and two of them were highly trained specialists. I assume that you fellows can keep up with me, can hold your own in a fight, if the need arises.”
God in heaven, looking down, would have seen three school boys on the playground, two larger bullies, all muscle and violence, and another, smaller young man full of ruthless intelligence. The pendulum had swung back and forth during the course of these men’s lives, and the weight of fists and sinew of muscle had never been far behind those shifts as they’d bullied their way across the streets of Warwick.
Now as they stood and made their plans to escape, Mikail turned away from his threatening physicality which had surprised his larger friends in the night, and now he turned to attack their pride in the way that only he, among the three of them, had ever been able to do. He called on their masculine brutality because he knew that they might need it for a fight, and he served as brain to their brawn, and focus for their force.
Mikail looked at the two of them, all potential and potency without direction. He spoke with an urgency that allowed no contradiction.
“We have to get to Pyotr Bolkonsky’s house.”
And with that, he turned the dialectical force of common sense inside out and gave the point to ideology when used in the hands of capable leaders. He wielded his intelligence like a pen to the awful sword of their brutality.
Words… speak louder… than action.
Mikail placed the handcuffs on Sergei, loosely, so he could slip free if need be, and the three of them stepped out into the corridor.
Friday — Morning
Now Peter was in a very bad mood. Two days had passed, and Cole had not returned. They had every reason to believe that he’d been captured, and, if he’d been captured, then he’d probably been either shot or taken back into the village by the guards.
The two days living in the metal shed at the water plant hoping for Cole’s return had passed like weeks.
The three friends had no news from the outside world except the gossip heard on the shortwave radio the night before, and now, on Friday morning, the day of their planned departure, they faced the fact that Cole might be lost to them.
Natasha was distraught, as might be expected, but she was stoic nonetheless, and only occasionally broke down in whimpers, or felt the hot track of a tear as it escaped from her eye and dampened her cheek. Silly sibling rivalries aside, she loved her brother very much, and she still hoped that, by some miracle, he was still okay.
While they waited, they worked. They’d practiced making fires and sharpening knives and building shelters, and over the past forty-eight hours, Peter had spoken to them of tactics to be used while traveling. Between anxious moments when he’d looked out the door of the shed and back into the woods towards Warwick, he’d shown them hand signals they could use to communicate with one another without words. He’d talked to them over and over again about the horrors they would likely run across, and how they must stick together and constantly be focused on their survival.