"Can't you see, Erica? It is only way we can survive and be together!" Yuri insisted. "If we go to Canada, they will send me right back to U.S. to stand trial. Then what will happen? Prison for life, or worse, even!"
"I want to go home!" Erica sobbed, watching the Alaskan shoreline, along with her hope, slip away. "You turn this airplane around and take me back home again right this instant!"
"We are going home," Yuri said, not unkindly but firmly. "My home. It will not be so bad. You will see."
"I trusted you!" Erica's chest heaved with sobs. "And look what happened! You kidnapped me and brought me out here to the middle of bum fuck nowhere!"
"Nobody kidnapped you," Yuri said calmly. "You came with us of your own free will."
"Just look what you get for fuck American woman," Nikita said sourly.
"She's my wife! I love her!" Yuri retorted angrily, and he and Nikita began to argue loudly in Russian.
"Mommy! Mommy!" cried Toni.
"It's going to be all right, sweetheart," Erica said soothingly, holding and rocking the little girl until she stopped crying.
"I love you, Erica," said Yuri. "You will see. It will be all right. You and me and Tonika, we will be happy family, all together."
"But Toni's an American!" Erica protested. "I want her to grow up to be free! I want her to go to school and say the pledge of allegiance, to go to church and learn about God, to go to baseball games and eat apple pie, to watch fireworks on the fourth of July, to be...to be..."
"A filthy Capitalist," Yuri spat. "She is my child too, Erica. She will grow up to know that all people are equal, that everyone has right to have home, food, medical care, safety from crime. That government is here to protect and take care of her."
"And enslave her," Erica added bitterly. Yuri's face turned red with anger and he began to shout in Russian. Not even wanting to know what he was saying, Erica slumped, defeated, in her seat, wondering what the fastest and least painful method of suicide would be. Then she thought of Toni and felt ashamed for even having such thoughts.
Suddenly Erica felt a tremendous jolt, and the airplane came to an abrupt stop.
"What happened?" she shrieked.
"Airplane crashed into tree," Yuri said glumly. "Wing fell off. We are stranded."
After much discussion, it was decided that Mikhail, Denis, and Nikita would go in search of shelter, while Yuri, Erica, and Toni stayed in what was left of the damaged airplane. Erica was terrified of Toni freezing to death if they hadn't found shelter by nightfall.
The three men were gone for most of a day and returned with news that they had found an abandoned structure that had probably been used as a gulag during the Stalin years. Railroad tracks ran right beside it, and it would be a more comfortable and safer place for Yuri, Erica, and Toni to stay than in the damaged airplane. Mikhail, Denis, and Nikita would follow the train tracks in search of civilization.
Day after day, Yuri and Erica waited with no sign of their companions' return. Their meager food supply quickly ran out, and they went in search of edible nuts and berries while keeping on the lookout for bears or other wild animals.
"Mommy! Daddy! Airplane!" Toni cried one day, pointing to the sky. Yuri and Erica looked up and, sure enough, the air seemed to be swarming with Soviet helicopters.