Chapter 117
They moved the bodies into the creek, where the current would carry evidence downstream, and covered the blood on the trail with pine duff.
It wouldn’t survive a real search, but it might buy them hours, and hours were what they needed.
The uniforms presented immediate problems. The soldiers had been grown men, broad-shouldered and tall.
Charlotte was five feet six on a good day, and Mason was a child.
The plate carriers alone would have swallowed him.
She worked with the folding knife and the patience she didn’t feel.
The larger uniform, the one from the second soldier, she cut down at the shoulders and sleeves, taking material from the seams and forcing it into a crude but workable fit.
She hemmed the trousers at the cuff and took in the waist with a cord from her pack as makeshift belt loops.
Mason’s uniform required more creativity.
She removed the plate carrier entirely because a child in military armor would draw attention no matter what story they told, then cut the jacket down to a size closer to his.
The trousers she folded and secured with the same cord, creating a fit that was obviously altered but might pass for the real thing from a distance.
The identification papers were written in Cyrillic.
Charlotte couldn’t read most of it, but she recognized the format from the radio transmissions and the compound.
She memorized the visual pattern rather than the content, but she knew that names would be a problem.
She had no reliable way to pronounce the soldier’s name from the card, and attempting to do so would expose them immediately.
They needed a story that explained why a woman and a child were traveling alone through contested mountains in SNA uniforms, without vehicles or proper gear.
She built it from fragments. Sleeper agent.
The idea existed in every conflict she’d ever read about, and it explained their presence, their isolation, and their need to move without attracting the wrong kind of attention.
Their cover had been compromised during the initial attack.
They were heading for a safe house or rendezvous point.
The boy was her son, part of the operation, raised in the role the way intelligence assets sometimes raise their children.
It was thin and wouldn’t withstand real interrogation, but it might get them past a checkpoint if delivered with enough confidence and the right Russian phrases.
The thoughts came faster than she could keep up with, but she knew it would give them a chance.
“Listen,” Charlotte said. “We’re going to say we’re SNA.
Not American, not civilians. We’re part of their military, and we’re trying to reach a safe location because something went wrong with our mission.
The words matter less than how you say them.
If they ask you something you don’t understand, don’t try to answer.
Look at me. I’ll handle it. Your job is to look like you belong, stay quiet, and let me do the talking. ”
“What if they ask about Jack?”
Charlotte had been avoiding that question. The dog sat at Mason’s feet, watching the altered uniforms with the confused attention of an animal trying to understand why his people smelled different.
“We’ll say he’s mine. A working dog. They use dogs for patrols sometimes. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.”
“What’s the Russian for ‘I don’t understand?’”
“Ya nye ponimayu.”
He repeated it. The pronunciation was cleaner than Charlotte’s.
“Good. That’s the phrase you use if you’re cornered. Nothing else. Just that.”
They rehearsed. Charlotte drilled the basic phrases from the first tape.
Greetings, identification, the word for officer, and the word for mission.
Mason’s retention was remarkable. He could recall sequences after two repetitions, and his accent showed a slight flattening.
By midday, they had altered the uniforms. They dressed in a sheltered grove where the trees broke the line of sight from the road.
The transformation was visual and psychological.
The green fabric against Charlotte’s skin carried the weight of everything the color represented.
Mason looked smaller in the cut-down jacket, the fabric still overwhelming his frame despite her alterations, but from a distance, in poor light, he might pass for a child soldier or the son of someone who had no business bringing a child to war.
Jack presented himself for inspection with the earnest confusion of a dog watching his people become strangers.
Charlotte couldn’t alter him. She could only hope his presence would be read as an asset rather than a liability.
They reached the road by mid-afternoon. It was gravel, maintenance-grade, cutting through the pine forest, with the utilitarian purpose of connecting nowhere to nowhere.
Thomas’s map was gone with the saddlebags, but Charlotte recognized the route from her father’s descriptions.
The patrol was a quarter mile ahead. She spotted it from the tree line.
“That’s our test,” Charlotte said. “Right there.”
Mason’s face had settled into the focused calm he wore when a situation required everything he had, and his hand found Charlotte’s with a grip that was steady and sure. “Ya nye ponimayu,” he said quietly.
“Good. Remember that.”
They approached the road together, walking at the measured pace of people who belonged where they were going, while the checkpoint waited ahead, its vehicles and armed men.