Chapter 3 #3
We're rolling forward. Slowly, carefully. I wait, heart pounding, and I see Kazimir moving again, pressing a button that opens the front gates.
I hear the sound of the guards calling out to him, asking for a pass, his identification, and where he’s going. He rolls down the window, and I wonder what excuse he’ll have for me being here, for there being a woman in the seat next to him.
He doesn’t give an excuse. I hear two quick shots, pop, pop, and heavy thuds as the gates creak open and Kazimir floors the SUV.
The car lurches forward. I jerk in the seat as cold air rushes in through the vents, carrying the scent of pine and snow. We're outside. We're actually outside.
"Stay down," Kazimir repeats, his voice tense as we speed up. I think I hear shouting from behind us as someone responds to the shots, and then the sound of more shots, but we’re ahead of them now. I feel the pavement give way to something bumpier. We’re going onto a side road, I think.
We're leaving the compound behind.
"Okay," Kazimir finally says. "You can sit up."
I push myself upright slowly, my body protesting every movement. Through the windshield, I can see trees. Endless trees, dark and towering, their branches heavy with snow. The compound is behind us, its lights growing smaller in the side mirror.
We're on a narrow road that cuts through the forest. Snow is starting to fall, light flakes that drift lazily through the headlight beams. It's beautiful, I realize. Peaceful. Nothing like the hell I've been living in.
I stare at all of it, unable to quite believe what I’m seeing.
I’ve never been in more pain in my life, but I’m outside.
I’m breathing fresh air. I can see the sky, the stars, the trees.
A rush of joy cramps my chest, making me feel for a moment like I can’t breathe as Kazimir slows the car a bit, driving more carefully as we go deeper into the forest.
"How far do we need to go?" I ask. My voice sounds strange—hoarse and rough, but also lighter somehow. Like a weight has been lifted.
“Hard to say exactly. We need to get to a spot where I can radio for a helicopter to come for us. Then we’ll have to get to where they can land.
We’ll need to not stop, if at all possible, until we’re there.
I slowed them down, but I’m willing to bet they’ll change tires on one of those vehicles before too long, and someone will come after us.
We need to stay ahead of them.” He glances at me, and in the dashboard light, I can see the concern in his eyes. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," I lie.
I'm not fine. I'm so far from fine that it’s not visible from here.
But I'm out of that cell. I'm in a vehicle that's putting distance between me and that nightmare with every second that passes. The car is warm—for the first time in days, I’m actually warm. I can feel my fingers and my toes, and even though they hurt, I’m not so cold that I can’t remember what warm feels like.
That has to be enough for now.
We drive in silence for a while. The forest presses in on both sides of the road, dark and oppressive. The trees are so thick I can't see more than a few inches into them. Anything could be hiding in there. Anyone could be following us.
I push that thought out of my head as quickly as it entered. We made it out. We're going to make it to the extraction point. We're going to be okay. I have to believe that. I have to, because if I have no hope, I might as well have stayed in that cell.
I might resent that Kazimir was the one to give me that hope, but I should cling to it regardless. It’s the only way I’m going to make it through it.
I notice the snow is falling harder now.
The flakes are bigger, more numerous. They swirl in the headlights like tiny ghosts, accumulating on the windshield faster than the wipers can clear them away.
I press my lips together, a different worry clouding my mind now, but I remind myself that Kazimir picked a vehicle that can handle snow. Even if it gets heavier, we’ll be fine.
The silence remains between us as Kazimir focuses on the road. I take a few more sips of water and a small bite out of the chocolate protein bar, but it feels hard to swallow. My throat is so tight that the dense bite doesn’t want to go down, and it hurts when I finally do swallow.
"Svetlana," Kazimir says after a while. His voice is careful, like he's testing the waters. "What happened? After you left that warehouse, what—"
"Don't." The word comes out sharp, and I turn to glare at him. "Don't ask me that. You don't get to know. You don't get to hear about what I went through because you left me there."
His hands tighten on the steering wheel, knuckles going white. "Fair enough."
More silence. The snow keeps falling, heavier now. I watch it build up on the windshield between swipes of the wipers, building up faster than they can clear it away. The road ahead is becoming harder to see, the edges blurring into the forest on either side.
"It's getting worse," I observe, trying to keep my voice neutral.
"I know." Kazimir is still staring straight ahead.
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"I don't know," he admits. "The forecast didn't call for this. At least not when I looked at the weather as I was flying in. But it can change—"
As if in response to his words, the wind picks up. It hits the SUV from the side, making it shudder and sway. The snow is no longer falling—it's being driven horizontally across the road, reducing visibility to almost nothing. The headlights barely penetrate the white wall in front of us.
"Fuck," Kazimir mutters under his breath.
He slows down, leaning forward to peer through the windshield.
The wipers are working overtime now, but they're fighting a losing battle.
Snow is piling up on the glass faster than they can clear it.
The road is disappearing beneath the accumulation, the edges becoming harder and harder to distinguish from the forest floor.
"How much further?" I ask, trying to keep the fear out of my voice and failing.
“I’m not sure.” He sounds uncertain, and that uncertainty scares me more than anything else. Kazimir is always certain, always in control. "It's hard to tell in this. And I have to get a call out. With weather like this—"
The wind hits us again, harder this time. The SUV slides slightly to the right before Kazimir corrects it, steering into the skid. My hands grip the edges of the seat, my knuckles going white beneath the grime and blood.
This is wrong. This is all wrong. We were supposed to get away. We were supposed to reach the extraction point and get out. We weren't supposed to be trapped in a blizzard that came out of nowhere, that shouldn't even exist according to the forecast, according to Kazimir.
It feels like a joke. Like the universe is laughing at me.
I must have died in that warehouse. Sergei must have killed me. It’s the only explanation for the hell I’m living through.
"Can you see if you’re able to radio for help?" I ask, hearing the desperation creeping into my voice.
Kazimir steals a look at the expression on my face, then pulls out a satellite phone with one hand, keeping the other on the wheel. He checks it, and I see his jaw clench. "No signal. The storm is interfering."
"So what do we do?" My voice cracks, and my fingers dig into the sides of the seat.
"We keep going. Maybe if we find a clearing, without so much forest—." But even as he says it, I can see the doubt in his face, the way his eyes keep darting to the rearview mirror and then back to the road. Or what's left of the road.
The storm is intensifying with every minute that passes. What started as gentle snowfall has become a full-blown blizzard. The wind is howling now, sounding alive and hungry, shaking the SUV like a toy. Snow is piling up on the road faster than seems possible, drifts forming across our path.
We crawl forward at a pace that feels agonizingly slow.
Every few feet, Kazimir has to stop and wait for a gust of wind to pass, for visibility to improve just enough to see where we're going.
But it never really improves. The white wall just shifts and swirls, occasionally thinning enough to show us a few inches of road before closing in again.
I can feel the SUV struggling now. The tires are spinning, searching for traction. We're moving through drifts that are getting deeper, and I can feel the grinding as the car tries to make it without sliding.
“I think I see a space up ahead,” Kazimir says through gritted teeth. “Enough of a clearing, I might be able to get a signal. I can get out and try.”
But between us and it is a stretch of road that's rapidly becoming impassable. The snow is so deep now I can't even see where the road ends and the forest begins. It's all just white, endless white, punctuated by the dark shapes of trees that loom out of the storm like sentinels.
Kazimir presses harder on the accelerator. The SUV lurches forward, tires spinning for a moment before finding purchase. We make it maybe a few feet before the vehicle starts to slide again, fishtailing as the rear end loses traction.
"Come on," Kazimir growls, fighting with the steering wheel and cursing under his breath in Russian. "Come on, you bastard."
We slide sideways, and for a horrible moment, I think we're going to tip over. But Kazimir manages to straighten us out, and we keep moving forward. The clearing is closer now. I can see it more clearly through the swirling snow—a break in the trees, where maybe Kazimir can radio out. It’s such a thin thread of hope, but I cling to it as we inch forward. A foot. Another.
And then everything goes wrong.