The irony of springing an automotive ambush on Illya didn't hit me until I hit him, or more precisely, until the moment I smashed the front end of my stolen 1978 Lincoln Town Car into the back of his probably-not-stolen and brand-spanking-new black-and-silver Ford Mustang. The cars connected with the unique bang that only comes from automobile accidents, the almost-hollow sound of metal and fiberglass cracking together, the sudden tinkling of glass and plastic hitting asphalt.
It was a good hit, not too fast, eleven miles an hour. Enough to rattle the bones, to snap me against my seat belt and send me back hard into the driver's seat, and, more importantly, to send the Mustang forward. The new Mustangs have crap visibility out their rear, the window too small and set too high on the tail, and I couldn't see Illya behind the wheel, but I heard the second collision as his front end met the back of Vadim's Cadillac. The Caddie, like the Town Car, was stolen, though a couple years younger, maybe an '82 or '83.
I lost a second getting the seat belt off, which isn't a long time in the concrete, but in the abstract was more than adequate for me to think about how slowly I was moving, and how badly this could turn out if I didn't speed things up. We were on a public street, and while the daylight wasn't broad due to the heavy cloud cover, it might as well have been. There was no place to hide, and certainly the sound of the crash would pull people from their beds or their breakfast tables, send them running to their windows to see what was happening on the street outside.
Then I was out of the car, the tire iron I'd found in the trunk in my hand, and running forward to the Mustang. Vadim was out of the Caddie, heading around its nose to come along the other side of the car, to the passenger side. I heard, then saw, the Pathfinder as it hopped up on the curb to my left, drawing even with the Mustang. Through the side window, I could see Illya still dazed, only now beginning to shake off the effects of three collisions in quick succession. While the first two-the Town Car and the Caddie-might have rattled his cage, it was the third, when his air bag had deployed, that had been the most crucial. For air bags to work, they have to work fast, and they have to be able to counter the force of the collision in their own right. Take one to the chest in a low-speed crash, and you'll feel it.
Illya was feeling it right now.
I reached his door and tried the handle, and wasn't at all surprised that it was locked. Inside, Illya was looking around, realizing what had happened and the trouble he was in. Opposite me, at the front passenger's door, Vadim was working with a tire iron of his own. We hit the windows almost simultaneously, and the glass shattered in concert, raining onto the wet street and into the car. In his seat, Illya started shouting at us, gabbling fear and outrage as he leaned forward, trying to reach with his right hand to the small of his back. I spun the tire iron around, jabbed the straight end hard through the now missing window and into his side, connecting with him just below the armpit.
Illya screamed in pain, jerking away from me and towards Vadim, who had the passenger's door open already. Seeing Vadim reaching in for him, Illya made another attempt to get at his gun, and I jabbed him with the tire iron a second time, just as hard, hitting him in the small of the back, above where he was wearing the weapon. Illya cried out again, lying down further across the seats, and Vadim grabbed hold of him by the back of his shirt and yanked.
Dan joined his son, and together the two of them pulled Illya free from the Mustang. Once they had him, they didn't let go, dragging him flailing to the door Dan had left open on the Pathfinder. I did a quick spin around in place, checking the street, catching Alena seated behind the Pathfinder's wheel as I did so. The traffic around us was light, not yet bloated with the morning commute, and only now really beginning to come to a stop. I didn't see any police, and I didn't see anyone who seemed to have witnessed the entirety of what we were doing, or at least, no one who had borne witness and therefore looked like they wanted to get involved.
"Let's go!" Dan shouted to me.
Tire iron still in hand, I came around the back of the Mustang, jumped onto the hood of the Town Car where the two vehicles had tried to become one, and came down again beside the Pathfinder. Inside, Vadim was holding Illya in a headlock while Dan forced him to swallow two of the Ambien we'd scored. I moved around to the front of the car, climbed in beside Alena, and we were moving before I had the door closed.
In the backseat, Illya emitted a muffled sob, finally succumbing to Dan's pressure.
"Ochen preyatna, cyka," I told him.
We caught Route 26 out of Portland, heading east, and by the time we'd hit Gresham, Illya was fast asleep, despite his best efforts. Given the dose, he'd stay down for at least the next eight hours, which would be enough to cover our transport time. As soon as he was out, Dan gave him a thorough search, coming up with a spring-action knife in addition to the pistol he'd been carrying at the small of his back. He had a couple hundred dollars in mixed bills, maybe his wages for the night's work, tucked into his pockets, as well.
We drove without speaking for most of the next hour, Alena at the wheel, myself beside her, Dan and Vadim in the back. The sky started to clear as we began climbing towards Mount Hood, and there was snow throughout the Cascade Range, and the trees were very green and very lush and very beautiful, and it reminded me of the little I'd seen of northern Georgia, where the Caucasus came down from the border with Russia. We stopped at a gas station in Welches to fill the tank, and Vadim and I took the opportunity to go inside to gather some supplies. He grabbed a six-pack of Budweiser and two bags of spicy Cheetos, and I made him put the Budweiser back.
"We do not want to be stopped for an open container in the car," I told him.
Vadim pulled a face that said that I absolutely needed to lighten up, then replaced the beer and got himself six cans of Red Bull instead. I went with two bottles of clearly-from-concentrate orange juice, and another two of water, and looked for something that wasn't purely high-fructose corn syrup. Failing that, I decided I wasn't hungry. I also grabbed a road atlas of Oregon.
Back in the car, now with Dan at the wheel and Alena seated beside him, and Vadim and I flanking the sleeping Illya at the back, we broke out the map and took a look at our options. Thus far, we'd done pretty well relying on our improvisational skills, but what we needed to do next would require seclusion and security. We had Illya; now we needed a place to button him up and do what needed to be done next.
"What are you thinking?" Dan asked. He asked it in Russian, maybe to see if I could keep up. "Take him out to the middle of the high desert, maybe?"
"It's the winter season," I said. "We want someplace quiet and discreet, and the further from Portland and the police the better."
"You think a vacation rental?" Alena asked.
"It worked for us in Georgia. We find a place that's not being used right now, maybe one that looks like it's only occupied during the summer. A fishing cabin, rather than skiing, say."
"So near a river," Vadim said. "Someplace near a river."
I checked the map. "Along the Deschutes would work. If we had access to a computer we could just do a quick search for vacation rentals, plug in the communities we like the looks of, see what's available, and see what's not being used at the moment."
"Hold on." Vadim handed me the can of Red Bull he'd been working on, then dug around in his pockets until he came out with one of the new Palm Treos, began fiddling with it. "Ah, it's going slow as shit, the coverage's no good out here. Hang on."
I looked to Dan, said, "Maybe we should keep moving while he does this."
Dan started the Pathfinder again, pulling us back onto the road. Vadim stayed bent over his Treo, occasionally muttering about how long it was taking for the pages to load.
"Okay," he said, after almost two minutes. "I've got a page here, it's got towns in Central Oregon with vacation rentals. Lots of towns. Bend, Eagle Crest, Sunriver-"
"Sunriver," I told him, checking the map.
There was another pause, this one perhaps half as long as the first, accompanied by more of his muttering about crappy connection speeds. "Got it. Lots of places. Lots of places, man, let me check availability, here…goddammit this is slow…yeah, okay, looks like about a dozen places we could use."
"Note the addresses," I told him. "We'll eyeball them when we get there, pick the one we like."
"This is amateur hour," Dan said, mostly to himself. "We should have had a location lined up before we grabbed him."
"We also should have known there was a woman and a child," I told him.
Dan didn't say anything else until we reached Sunriver.