Six hours later, after two frustrating stops at pay phones that turned out to be broken, their luck ran out. The old van was creaking down a secondary road that headed west toward the border from Voronezh when it rounded a bend to find a pair of police SUVs, roof lights flashing, blocking the way. Yulia was driving, having taken over from Jet a few hours earlier after abandoning the Volga in a ditch near a sewage treatment plan. The area hadn’t been ideal, but there had been no more promising spots to dump it, and when the motor seized, it had been all Yulia could do to coast off the pavement and into the depression.
“Damn. You think that’s about us?” Taras whispered from the back of the van.
“Probably. Could be a routine check, but I doubt it,” Yulia said as she braked. “How do you want to handle this?” she asked Jet.
Jet’s voice was calm. “As we discussed.”
They’d come up with a plan for roadblocks. As far as they knew, the van wouldn’t be reported as stolen until business hours the next day, so any police would take at face value that they were a work crew on their way to a construction site. After all, they had the uniforms, and with a female driver, the likelihood was that lazy provincial cops would wave them through without question, especially as far from Moscow as they were. Every minute they put between themselves and the prison increased the odds that they’d gotten away clean, and everyone had begun to relax now that they were four hundred and fifty kilometers south.
Yulia downshifted, and the heavy vehicle slowed. A stoic officer stood with his palm facing them, and four other cops leaned against the SUVs, smoking, watching the van approach with faint curiosity. Jet noted that two of the smokers had submachine guns, but nobody looked particularly alert, and she suspected this roadblock might be unrelated to their escape.
The cop neared the driver’s window, and Yulia cranked it down. He peered in at her and then at Jet.
“Morning. Where you headed?” he asked.
“Kursk,” Yulia lied, naming the next large town.
“Purpose of your trip?”
“We’re part of a construction crew. Pouring a foundation today.”
The officer looked skyward. “Maybe not, if it rains again.”
“The boss said it’s forecast to clear,” Jet offered.
“Hope for your sake he’s right. Where are you coming from?” the cop asked.
“Lipetsk.”
“Your van says Moscow.”
“That’s where the company’s headquartered,” Yulia explained. “We’ve got projects all over.”
“Yeah? What do you do?”
“We’re structural engineers.”
The man nodded and looked to his comrades. Yulia dared a quiet sigh of relief, and then the silence was broken by a sneeze from the back of the van. The officer’s head swiveled back to her, his eyes suddenly wary. “Who’s back there?”
“Laborers. We’re bringing replacements for the project.”
The cop stepped away, his hand on his holstered pistol, and pointed to the side of the road. “Pull over there and let’s have a look.”
“Sure. No problem,” Yulia said, her voice relaxed but her movements tight as she put the van in gear. She rolled forward onto the gravel shoulder and whispered to Jet, “Now what?”
“Everybody stay calm. You know the story. Stick to it. We can do this,” Jet replied, but her right hand was already in her pocket, touching the pistol there.
The weapon had been another bone of contention on the trip, Mikhail and Taras annoyed that she was holding onto it, and Yulia trying to keep the peace. Jet didn’t much care what anyone thought – she wasn’t handing over the only weapon to anyone, especially not a bunch of amateurs. The Ukrainians might have seen a few firefights, but they had no training, and from what Jet could tell, precious little discipline. Throw a gun into that mix, and it was a recipe for disaster.
Two of the four police by the SUVs joined the one who’d ordered the van to the roadside, and they approached the vehicle as a group. Jet noted that the one with the submachine gun wasn’t holding it like he was ready to use it, which boded well. The cops were probably sleepy and sick of the lonely duty out in the middle of nowhere – another pointless exercise in a long career of nothing happening, she guessed.
“Step out of the van, shut the engine off, and open the back,” the cop instructed Yulia.
She frowned. “Can I leave the engine running? It might not start again. You can see how old this relic is. I don’t want to get stranded here…”
The cop looked confused and then nodded. “That’s fine. But open up the back.” He looked at Jet. “You too. Out of the van.”
“Why me?” Jet asked. “It’s freezing.”
The cop’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to say it again.”