from the war movies that the Russian film industry turned out like cigarette packs.
He was wearing a parka, loose enough for a sweater underneath, and he walked up to the boat with a smile. So, yes, maybe he did have a bonus for him. People usually smiled before giving money over.
“Good morning, Captain,” he called, coming into the wheelhouse. He looked around. Not much activity to be seen, except over at the big-ship pier, where they were on-loading cargo boxes, half a kilometer away. “Where is your mate?”
“Below, tinkering with the motors.”
“Nobody else around?” he asked with some surprise.
“No, we maintain our own craft,” Vitaliy said, reaching for his cup of tea. He didn’t make it. The 9-millimeter round went into his back without warning and transited his heart, back to front, before exiting the chest and his coat. He dropped to the steel deck, hardly grasping what had happened, before he lost consciousness for the last time.
Then the leader of the erstwhile charter party walked down the ladder to the engine room, where Vanya, as reported, was working on the manifold for the starboard engine. He hardly looked up from his tools and never saw the gun come up and fire. Two shots this time, right into the chest, from a range of three meters. When he became certain that his target was dead, Musa pocketed the pistol and walked back up. Vitaliy’s body was facedown on the deck. Musa checked the carotid pulse, and there was nothing, and with his mission completed, he walked out of the wheelhouse and down the ladder, pausing to turn and wave to the body in the wheelhouse in case anyone saw him alight, then forward and down the ramp to where his rented car was waiting for him. He had a map to guide him to the local airport, and soon enough his time in this infidel country would be at an end.
56
THEY WERE UP SHORTLY after six the next day, gathering their equipment on deck while the grizzled old Salychev sipped his coffee and looked on. The previous day’s wind had died away, leaving the bay flat and calm, save a soft lapping against the rocks half a kilometer away. The sky hadn’t changed from the day before, however, remaining the same leaden color it had been since they’d arrived in Russia.
When all the gear was assembled, Adnan double-checked it against his mental list, then ordered everything packed into four large external-frame backpacks. Next came their two rafts, inflated. They were black and looked ancient, but the transom-mounted trolling motors were in good repair and there were neither patches nor leaks, of this Adnan had made sure when he’d purchased them. Once the rafts were up to full pressure, the men began inserting the deck planks into their notches.
“Wait, wait,” Salychev said. “That’s the wrong way.” He walked over and removed one of the planks and flipped it around, matching its end curve with the raft’s deck flange. “Like that, see?”
“Thank you,” Adnan said. “Does it make a difference?”
“Depends on whether you want to live or die, I suppose,” the captain replied. “The way you had it, the bottoms would’ve folded up on you like a clam. You would’ve been in the water before you knew it.”
“Oh.”
Five minutes later, the rafts were fully assembled. The men dropped them over the side, then tied off the bow painters to the Halmatic’s stern cleats. Next came the motors, then the equipment bags, then the men. Adnan climbed over gunwale last. “We’ll be back before dark,” he told Salychev.
“And if you’re not?”
“We will.”
Salychev shrugged. “Don’t want to get caught out there at night—not unless you got arctic gear hidden away in those bags.”
“We’ll be back,” Adnan repeated. “Make sure you’re here.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.”
If not for the drifting growlers and barely submerged pancake ice, the trip to shore would have taken ten minutes, but it was nearly forty minutes before the nose of the lead raft scraped on the pebble-strewn beach. The rafts were pulled onto higher ground and the backpacks unloaded. In turn, Adnan helped each man don his pack, then shouldered his own.
“Inhospitable,” one of the men said, looking around.
Aside from a line of smooth brown cliffs four kilometers to the east, the ground was flat, covered in stones, clumps of brown grass, and a thin crust of snow that crunched under their boots.
“What about the rafts?” another man asked.
“We’ll tow them,” Adnan said. “The stones are smooth enough.”
“How far