“We are seeing how close enemy can get before we see him. This is very important in urban combat.”
“This isn’t exactly a city.”
Kuznetsov grinned. “I believe your saying is ‘Close enough for government work.’ “ He looked down the tunnel and motioned to his partner. Peering out past the edges of the light, Jerry couldn’t see him, but apparently Kuznetsov could.
“Now he comes back hiding behind cover and in shadows,” Kuznetsov said without taking his eyes off the tunnel. “The way an enemy would approach.”
By straining his eyes Jerry thought he could detect an occasional flicker of movement down the corridor. Finally, when Vasily was almost on them he caught a glimpse of him sidling along a wall and whipping into an open storeroom.
“He’s really good.”
“He was a specialist,” Kuznetsov said, and smiled as if he had made a joke.
There was an explosion of Russian from the storeroom and Vasily came charging out with no attempt to hide.
He pointed back to the room and spat out something long and complicated in Russian.
Kuznetsov whistled. “Da shto ve gavorete?”
“Po Pravda!” Vasily confirmed.
“What was that about?’ Jerry asked.
The Russian looked at Jerry strangely. “Let us say we just discovered that our paths have crossed before, indirectly. You might even say that you are the ones who got us started in our present line of work.” He waved away Jerry’s frown. “Never mind. It was another time and another country.”
The Russians were silent as they climbed the stairs from the cellar. They declined Jerry’s offer of a warming drink.
“Comrade Major, do you realize what this means?” Vasily hissed in Russian as soon as Jerry turned the corner.
“It means we have solved another mystery my friend. Now we know how the computer disappeared from the airplane.”
Kuznetsov sighed and grinned. “It takes you back, does it not, to the days when the world was young, our hearts were pure and there was no problem in human relations which could not be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of high explosive?”
He sighed once more. “Life was so much simpler then.”
“Complexity?” Bal-Simba echoed in bewilderment.
“Complexity,” Taj repeated with a satanic grin. The weakness of all centralized systems is that they cannot handle complexity beyond a certain level.”
“And you are certain of this?”
He spread his hands. “It’s inherent in the state equations. If we wanna give this boy indigestion we start by giving him a nervous breakdown.”
“What in the world are you doing?” Jerry asked as he walked into the workroom.
“Origami,” Taj said cheerfully. “Great way to relax.”
Jerry looked over the collection of cranes and other creatures scattered over the benchtop.
“Parchment’s kind of scarce. We can’t waste it on stuff like that.”
“Oh, it’s not a waste,” Taj said cheerfully. Then he held up his latest creation. “See, here’s a dragon.”
Jerry looked past the long-necked shape at the litter of parchment scraps on the table. “It’s still not a very good use for parchment.”
Taj smiled evilly. “Wanna bet?”
The rhythmic scrape-scrape-scrape told Gilligan that Vasily was sharpening something. When he got close he saw it wasn’t a knife or a sword. It was a small shovel with a two-foot handle. An entrenching tool in fact
“Where’d you find that?”
“Castle smith made it for me,” the Russian told him. He laid the stone aside and sighted down the shovel blade, turning it slightly so the light struck the edge. “Almost ready now.”
“Going to dig your way out of trouble?”
In a single cat-like motion Vasily twisted and hurled the entrenching tool overhand. It flew end-over-end and buried itself in a post twenty feet away with a twang. The shovel stuck there with its handle vibrating from the force of the impact.
“Good for digging, too,” The Russian said. Then he walked over and wrenched the blade out of the timber.
Gilligan nodded. “Where’s Kuznetsov?”
Vasily inspected the edge of the blade critically. “With the big wizard,” he said without looking up.
Gilligan himself had spent a good part of the time trying to figure out how he could get into the battle. As a pilot with nearly two thousand hours in Air Force fighters he felt supremely confident. Unfortunately, riding a dragon takes a different skill set than flying an F-15.