Fyodor clears his throat. “Roman, they could be useful.”
“No.”
He presses his hat brim once as if to hold back a thought and lets it go. I know he’s aggravated by my answer, but I don’t employ hoodlums. I keep a certain amount of class in my operations. It’s the only way to keep the government off our backs.
Fyodor isn’t a quitter. “The oldest one is a crack shot?—”
The windshield pops. A white star appears left of center, small as a coin, bright as a fuse.
One shot could be a drunk hunter.
Marcus doesn’t flinch. He speeds up. “Windshield,” he says, quiet, to mark the moment. He looks past the beam of the headlights into the trees. Nothing to see.
My window takes a hit and sings. The new laminate earns its price. No hole. Just a sheet of spiderweb that throws the dashboard glow back at me.
“Left side,” Fyodor says. He already has his jacket open, his old-man hands faster than most boys. His eyes are clear. The lines around them hold a history I owe him for.
“Hold steady,” I tell Marcus. “No brake. If you kill the speed, you kill us.”
“Yes, sir.” He threads us through a bend. The trailing motorcycle stays back, hunting for angles that don’t exist on this road.
Another impact, higher, then one on the passenger side. Whoever is out there has patience. A man who wants to scare you shoots too much, too fast. This one is taking his time.
“Far tree line,” Marcus says. “No muzzle flash.”
My gaze goes to the shoulder. Ditch, brush, then trunks. No guardrail. Plenty of roots.
The glass in this SUV is new. I replaced every panel in the fleet last quarter after a rooftop lesson I did not ask for. Laminated fronts. Composite side panes. My other trucks too. It was a line item that made my accountant frown and helped me sleep.
“Two percent off the gas. Not more.” I reach under my seat for the case. The Desert Eagle has the weight I like. I check the chamber and magazine even though I checked them in the garage. Fyodor glances at the gun and gives me the smallest lift of his chin and his pistol. Ready.
“You want the shoulder?” he asks.
“Not yet. It’s?—”
The world lifts.
It’s a clean, wrong sensation—like stepping for a stair and finding air. Then the slam. Metal screaming, plastic popping. The flash. Light where the road should be. Treetops where the horizon should sit. We tilt and spin. The belt yanks me across the ribs. Glass sparkles in the air.
We roll. The nose whacks into a tree, sending us spinning faster. The third hit is a slide—a rush of brush and dirt and bark under our side. We hit another tree and stop with a long, sick groan. My window is now the roof. The dashboard ticks and settles like a stove cooling.
“Answer me,” I say. My voice is calm. It always is after the world tries to take it from me.
“Here,” Marcus says. Cough. “Belt jammed. Legs okay.”
“Present,” Fyodor answers. He inhales slow, like a doctor checking the dark. “Shoulder angry. Nothing broken. Shit. My arm might be broken. Head ringing.”
“Do not move.”
He starts to anyway. “Are you?—”
I stop him. “No.”
He knows why before I say it. He still wants to argue. “If they planted a mine?—”
“Then they want bodies,” I say. “They want to see them, they want to make sure we’re dead. Doors will be their targets. We are loud if we open anything.” I close one eye and leave the other slitted, the way a man plays dead without surrendering. “Play dead. Both of you.”
Marcus understands and makes himself heavy in the harness. Fyodor goes limp, slowing his breaths. He angles his pistol up and away from me and Marcus, ready for whatever comes next. He mutters something that could be a prayer.
