sweater and the heavy thermal long johns she wore underneath it.
She had worked the fabric out from under the cuff, loosening it. She had also made sure that her fists had been tightly clinched when the cuffs had been locked on, gaining herself yet another precious fraction of an inch of play.
She rolled a little on the bunk, as if hunting for a more comfortable spot. Under the cover of the movement she again found the joint in the bunk stanchion and practiced wedging the connecting links of the handcuffs into it. Then she folded her fingers in as tightly as she could and gave an experimental tug. Given enough adrenaline, it would work. It wouldn't be very pleasant, but it would work.
Her eyes scanned the semidarkness, gauging distances, plotting positions, considering the potential assets. How big was the window in the end wall of the cabin, and how thick was the thermal glass? Remember how the big boom box tape player was positioned atop the cabinet against the far wall. How deep was the snow drifted against the cabins, and how would the snow crust bear weight? Listen to the wind and gauge what the weather was like and how the visibility would be outside. What about outer shell garments? She supposed her own cold-weather gear was still over in the lab hut. She would have to improvise when the time came.
In her hours of imprisoned waiting she had made every mental and physical preparation she could. For the rest she must trust to patience, luck, and Slavic sexual propensities.
The smell of cooking rations filled the bunk room, and a growing number of shadows moved across the bar of light streaming through the door. The chief smuggler-Kretek, she had heard him called-was feeding his crew in shifts. The scent of hot food pointedly reminded Randi she hadn't eaten since a very sketchy breakfast. A meal would be a very good thing to have just now, but she didn't dare ask for anything to eat, for fear of disrupting the scenario she had built.
She recognized the voices of Kretek and Kropodkin. They were in the bunkhouse, having dinner. Russian was the lingua franca of the group, although Randi could recognize half a dozen different Balkan dialects and accents. Over their meal the shop talk was about the coming day's operation: the blowing open of the Misha's fuselage and the sling lifting of the anthrax reservoir, and the precautions that must be taken when dealing with the deadly bioagent.
They also discussed Jon, Professor Metrace, and Major Smyslov. From what Randi could gather, there had been no contact with her teammates so far. Plans were being proposed for hunting them down.
The clink and rattle of eating utensils trailed off. She smelled pipes and acrid Balkan cigarettes being lit. The conversation grew more genial, the laughter more frequent. The men were relaxing after dinner, joking, discussing women and sex.
It wouldn't be long now.
Randi heard Kretek's bull's-bellow voice say, "Well, Stefan, you'd best get on with it. You have a lot of men standing in line for their rations here."
So it would be Kropodkin.
She heard the ex-student laugh sheepishly, followed by a bellow of humor from around the table and a barrage of coarse suggestions and advice.
"Just don't mark up that pretty face of hers, lad."
"Why do you worry about her face, Belinkov? What are you going to do? Draw her picture?"
"What can I say? I have a romantic soul."
A shadow occulted the light. He was in the doorway, looking at her. She could hear his rasping breath, still hampered by the nose she had broken. She could hear the scuffle of his booted feet on the floor, smell the rancidity of his body.
Kropodkin stepped into the women's quarters...and drew the accordion door closed behind him, plunging the little room and the two of them into darkness.
Got you, you son of a bitch!
If Kropodkin had been a show-off or if Kretek's crew had been up for a gang bang on the mess table, Randi knew she would have been in trouble. But she had been involved in sexual relationships, both romantically and professionally, with Russians before. She knew that a strong streak of inherent prudishness still ran deeply through many of the Slavic cultures. Overt sexual exhibitionism still frequently triggered a guilt-shame response. She had been counting on this.
Kropodkin was kneeling beside the bunk now and his hands were on her breasts, squeezing and kneading them with a brutal childish eagerness. "Things are different