My father motions for me to follow him to the pine tree. The black center of the knot is decimated, ravaged by a clump of shiny copper bullets.
“Decent,” my father says. “Now move fifteen and hit the same target.”
Clipping in a magazine and racking another bullet, I walk fifteen paces west, aim, and fire.
While I shoot, my father asks me to recite the answers to the same questions he’s asked since I was five.
Rhythmically, I fire back answers as I unload the magazine.
“When I tell you to hide, what do you do?”
I shoot a pine tree. “I hide.”
“When I tell you to shoot?”
I hit the same target, a dead tree, from several more angles. “I shoot.”
“And when I tell you to run, what do you do?”
I check the bullets in my mag. Three left. One in the chamber.
I don’t know why he insists on this.
I fire all four bullets before answering. “I run.”
After hiking farther in, my father breaks. Eager to have the backpack’s ammunition weight off me, I drop it to the ground.
“Cuidado, mi amor,” he cautions, unzipping the bag. He unloads the contents: sausage, cheese, canned herring, and rye bread.
“That’s what I’ve been carrying?” I scowl.
Chuckling, he takes out two thermoses. He hands me a vintage thermos made of cracked taupe plastic. The bitter hot chocolate is still warm.
I look over at his nonsteaming thermos.
“Tokaji gets better with age,” he says in Hungarian.
How can he make me laugh when I remain so angry with him? Rebuking myself for giving him this satisfaction, I finish eating in silence.
“Let’s wrap up at forty meters,” he says, returning everything to the backpack. “Black pine over there with the sloped trunk.”
I spot the tree, stand, lift the gun, and pause.
“You haven’t answered my questions,” I say. “Is Aksel safe?”
“Yes. Shoot two.”
I shoot the tree forty meters away with two rounds. I drop my gun to my side.
“How long did you know that we’d be leaving Waterford?”
“Move ten left. Shoot two.”
I walk ten paces left and fire both shots. “How long?” I insist.
“The entire time, Sophia.” He hands me another magazine. “Ten left, shoot two.”
I pop another magazine into the chamber. After two shots I glare at him. “Why did we move to Waterford?”
“Sixty meters northwest. The tree with one root and two trunks. Shoot four.”
I grimace, but shoot.
He shoots a tree adjacent to my target. Then he drops his gun at his side. “Sophia, we needed you back.”
He walks to the tree to inspect our targets. I raise my gun in his direction and fire. I hit a branch above him. It breaks. Clumps of snow drop on him.
“Back?” I say.
Half smiling, he brushes the snow off his clothes. “Bekami was released weeks before we were informed. I assume that’s why you were interrogated. Bekami must have someone on the inside. ON-YX needs to find out who it is.”
“One of your people is working for Bekami?”
“There’s always someone—”
“—willing to betray you for a price,” I finish his sentence.
His smile fades. “With untraceable funds, Bekami has turned Farhad’s tiny cell of Chechen thugs into an effective team of terrorists, capable of transnational movement, and striking at will. He hasn’t forgotten I obliterated his first team.”
He picks up two pine cones from the ground. “But the problem is we can’t stay ahead of them.”
He holds the two pine cones in his right hand. “You have two remaining?”
I nod.
He throws both pine cones high into the air. They arc on different parabolas. I shoot the first, pulverizing it as it reaches the apex of its flight. The second I hit on its way down. Splinters of pine spray to the ground like brown snowflakes.
With both of our guns at our sides, we face each other. “Why did you lie and pretend it was over?”
“Sophia, after your kidnapping, it felt like we lost you.” His silver eyes glimmer. He looks younger out here in the snow and cold. In the elements. In his element.
“Everything you had learned, everything you could do … disappeared. For eighteen months, you were a shadow of your former self. So, we put our hope in Waterford, in small town American life. We hoped that if we let you believe it was over … you’d come back.”
Dusk is falling so we jog again.
“Take the lead,” my father says. You’re never safe unless you can see in the dark, he’s always said