"Everyone, hold your breath!" hollers Gunnar, sticking his head into the cockpit.
"Why, somebody fart?" I ask dryly.
"We are now..." continues Gunnar, looking at the instruments. "Officially...in Nepalese airspace."
"Yeah, yeah," Christmas says, not looking up from the letter he was writing. "And in three minutes, we'll be in Russian airspace."
"Was that a small joke?" queries Yin Yang with plausible indignation from the rear. We all laugh.
"Is everyone comfortable?" I ask in a falsetto soccer mom voice. "I can turn up the heat, if you like."
Tool snorts, and I can hear it even up in the cockpit. "What heat?"
"The only heat this thing sees," agrees Ceasar. "Is whatever flak is whizzing by."
"Thank God we don't have to worry about that, huh?" mutters Chirstmas to me. "We're riding the borders, not actually breaking international invasion laws."
"But if we defer a mile in either direction..." I trail off. Looking out the window, I can see the mountains we are soon to be traversing, rising from gentle swells covered in pointed trees to sharply chiseled angles. They stick like wrinkled razors from the earth, magnificent in their ferocity, all slate grays, the powdery pine green timberline, deep blue ice crevasses, and white, white, white everywhere else. We skim the points, seemingly closer than we are.
I am interrupted in my contemplation of nature by a bright green, split-second flash across the instrument panel. It draws my eye, quick as a muzzle flash. "What the hell...?"
Christmas catches it the second time, and repeats my sentiment.
The little green dot jerks around the cockpit, sourceless and seeking, twitching up the walls, across the instruments, and onto my chest.
"Is that a - ?" I start. I don't have time to finish, as the green laser dot sinks itself into my right eye like a knife. I convulse, my hands going to my face, and the plane starts to veer without my steady grip. "Sonofa - !" As the PBY starts to veer suddenly, the men yell out in surprise at the tilt, some of them making impact on the other side of the plane.
"Shit, Barney, the plane!" barks Christmas, taking my controls while I cradle my weeping eye, doubled over from the pain. I open it, blink, and that sends fresh stabs of pain through my head. I can't see more than blurs with the one eye, and fine with the other, and it gives me a nauseating sense of vertigo. It feels like someone took sandpaper to my cornea.
"Oh, fuck me," I grind out. "Christmas, someone just blinded me with a laser pointer."
"Who the fuck?" he replies angrily, wrestling the plane back onto track.
"What the hell was that?" says Ceasar, coming to the cockpit.
"Someone just took out one of my eyes with a laser pointer," I reply, facing away from the windows. "Find me some ducttape and something to cover this window. I can't afford to lose the other eye."
Ceasar leaves, and comes back with one of Toll's books: The Sound and The Fury, from Oprah's book list. "Keep it!" I hear Toll holler. "I hate that damn book!"
Ceasar works quickly, stretching long arms over my hunched form, and in a minute the window is covered thickly in Faulkner's masterpiece.
"Who wants to take out this plane?" queries Christmas to the plane in general. "Who knows we're doing this job, and doesn't like it?"
"Search me," Yin Yang says, appearing in Ceasar's place with a med kit. "Hold still, Barney. Let me see."
With a groan, I lean up and he hisses. "Damn. I'm going to have to patch it."
"Make it quick. I gotta land this plane in a few minutes."
Yang flushes the eye with saline, tapes it shut, and tapes a gauze patch over it. "You'll have to keep it covered for a while."
"Shit," I spit, touching the patch tenderly. The eye still feels raw, like it should be bleeding. "I don't know who the fucker is," I snarl, feeling for the controls through the blur of my weeping eyes. "But when I find him, he's dead."
"The crying should quit soon," says Yang as he departs. I hear him make solid contact with another person, and he and Gunnar trade polite insults.
Gunnar makes an appearance. After regarding me for a moment, he says wryly, "You know, there's a pirate joke in here somewhere."
"How about up your ass, Gunnar?" I snap, finding the controls finally.
The tall Swede chuckles and leaves Christmas and I to our business.
Christmas does a few quick calculations, and taps around on a soldier-grade, satellite-fed GPS. "Our landing strip is about four miles at our current bearing."
I twist my hand on the control, betraying my anxiety at my sudden disability. "I might need you to - "
"On it," says my friend neutrally. He reaches under the dash, flips a switch, and the copilot controls are activated.
"Thanks," I say. Ow, my eye. At least the crying seems to be slowing down. "Okay, guys, ETA is two minutes. Gear up, and slap on some lipstick. We're meeting our client." I sigh, run my hand through my hair, and wish for you. You, with your sweet scent and soft hair and kind eyes and killer body. You, who would take my face in your cool fingers and kiss my aching eye, then my nose, then my lips, and make it all better.
When I reopen my eyes, the ache left from the laser has transferred to my heart. I have a job to do. Looming out of the swirling white, two long lines of red flares appear on the ground.
The men rustle and kid as they pull on their heaviest snow gear, give their weapons a quick check. They don their backpacks while sitting down, roll onto their stomachs, then rise from their hands and knees under the heavy loads. We're all going to be carrying our lives with us.
Flying here on the grace of the instruments, I hardly noticed the flakes of snow. As we near the landing strip, it gets thicker. My half-rate vision weighs on me as we begin our approach.
"Steady as she goes," murmurs Christmas, caressing the controls. "There's a good girl."
If I wasn't so focused, I might have similar musings for the plane. But as it is, I am caught by the feel of our leaden drop. The plane creaks, arguing with nature and physics, as we seem to plummet from the sky faster than we actually are. Only Christmas and mine's steady hands keep the plane from straying from its course under the gusts of freezing wind that push against the windows and make the metal groan. There is a jolt as the landing gear makes contact, and we rapidly decelerate.
"Like threading a needle," continues Christmas with soft victory.
The hard part is over, so I have time to snark, "Is that your bedroom voice for Lacy?"
"Hilarious, Ross. I'll have to remember that one."
We come to a stop at the end of the runway, about a hundred feet from the two parked black SUV covered in snow sitting on ice and tarmac strip. Christmas and I quickly pull on the rest of our gear and roll under our backpacks. When Gunnar cracks the plane's door, and winter's bitch of a mother howls in bearing fat flakes of snow, the Swede inhales in a deeply satisfied way. "Just like home," he croons, jumping into the swirling white.
The rest of us suppress shivers and follow, boots and packs making for heavy landings. Yang's knees almost give out from the five foot drop, under the weight of his gear.
While we exited the plane, one SUV had opened up and four figures in thick snow gear made their way over. The snow obscured them for over half of the distance, but the shorter and smaller form of one indicated a woman. Two were exceptionally large, almost as big as Ceasar, and I guess them to be bodyguards. They stride confidently over the slick ice, even toting their guns in slings across their bodies. As the group walks closer, I can gauge the final one to be a middle-aged man. I can feel my men eyeing the small group, automatically picking targets and arranging themselves to be out of each other's line of fire. Old habits die hard.
"Mr. Kresh?" I say, loud enough to be heard over the snowstorm. For some reason, the woman stays back a few feet, her face hidden by her deep hood trimmed with fur.
"Da," replies the man, his baritone carrying easily. His piercing blue eyes stare at me like ice chips from under the fur of his hat. He extends a gloved hand. "And you are Barney Ross?"
"Yes. These are my men. We're here to work."
"Good. There are some things we must discuss in private, Mr. Ross," says the businessman, gesturing to the SUV. "Your men may enjoy a warm drink while they wait. Welcome to Mother Russia!"
One of the bodyguards produces a thermos and a few styrofoam cups, and as he pours, the rising steam is carried off by the ever-changing wind. As I follow Kresh, the woman comes along side him, and we leave the guys to a hot toddy.
The SUV is blessedly warm and dry. Barely five minutes into this, I am dreaming of Malibu and MaiTais. "Is something wrong?" I query neutrally as we close the doors.
The woman tips back her hood, and the spitting image of Kresh is revealed. She eyes me like a piece of rotten meat, snapping blue eyes not holding back her disdain.
"Nothing eez wrong," says Kresh. He pours from yet another thermos in the cup holder, and holds it out to me. I accept it out of politeness, but wait for him to take a sip from his own cup before I follow suit. Can I get a 'hell yes' for brandy and hot chocolate? "But there is a slight change in plans."
I sip, and regard him thoughtfully. I should have known if there was booze involved, he was buttering me up. "Go on."
"One of your men eez required to stay behind, in my care, for the duration of this job."
I nearly spit-take the mix. "That wasn't in our agreement."
"It eez now," says Kresh with dark firmness.
The woman finally speaks, and her tone is like the ice outside. "Father thinks I will be safer with you if he has a hostage."
"Hush, Nadia!" barks Kresh. His daughter falls silent with a look of restrained anger. "If you want dees job, Ross," he continues. "You will have to leave behind a man. Period."
I put down my cup. "I need to talk to my men."
"By all means."
I fling myself out of the SUV, and the cold wind whistles through the fabric of my eyepatch. I stomp over to the guys, who are getting cozy with the bodyguards, and ask none-too-politely for some privacy. "We gotta problem," I growl. "Kresh wants one of us to stay behind as a hostage, so that his little ice princess will be safe with us."
"Son of a bitch," mutters Christmas, shifting.
"So we have two options: one, we leave him high and dry. Or two, we go in a man down."
After a moment of quiet which is filled by the falling snow, Yin Yang speaks, "I will do it."
I eye him. "You don't have to be the one, Yang. It could be me: I have a handicap, after all," I say, pointing to my patched left eye.
Yang shrugs. "It makes most sense. I am small. I can't carry as much. I get lost in the deep snow."
"Your words, not mine," chuckles Gunnar. But he shoves the Asian's shoulder with respectful affection.
"You might not be treated like a friend," I warn. "This is Russia."
"I know. I can handle it. It's just three weeks, right?"
I have to smile at Yang's never-say-die attitude. I clap him on the shoulder. "Way to take one for the team, Yang. We'll keep Miss Kresh safe, so you can come home."
I walk back to the SUV. "We've made our choice: Yang is going to stay behind."
"Excellent," says Kresh in a pleased way that makes me want to smack him stupid. We all rejoin at the plane, and Yang walks over to stand with the Russians while Miss Kresh comes to stand behind me.
"Three weeks," Kresh says, eyeing his daughter and I with disguised leathality.
"Three weeks," I repeat.
Our groups part: one to the relative comforts of civilization, and the other to the vast, wild unknown with our hands on our weapons and a strange woman in our midst.