Текст книги "Revolution"

Автор книги: Dale Brown

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Be patient, he told himself, stifling the urge to punch the machine. Just be patient.

Finally the card spit out. Ignoring the Turkish words on the screen, since he had no idea what they said, Danny put the card back into the machine and typed the right PIN. A few seconds later a screen came up, again in Turkish, asking how much money he wanted.

Fortunately, the numbers were familiar. He pressed the largest denomination: a thousand liras.

Boston and Sorina started walking as soon as they saw him come out. Danny trotted to catch up. He suddenly felt cold—the vestibule had been heated.

“Look for a taxi,” he told Boston when he got close. “We’re behind on time.”

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Aboard EB-52 Johnson,

over northeastern Romania

2120

ZEN BANKED THE FLIGHTHAWK NORTHWARD, SKIRTING THE

Moldovan border by less than ten feet. There was no way to gauge where the line would have been on the ground, much less in the air, and he knew that the Moldovan air defense radar couldn’t spot the Flighthawk if it flew right in front of the dish. But Colonel Bastian would know, and the mission tapes would reveal the incursion. And that’s what counted.

The Romanian forces had just boarded their helicopters a few miles to the southeast. Zen could see them on his sitrep or God’s eye-view radar—little bumblebees starting in his direction.

“Force Bravo is en route,” he told Dog.

“Roger that.”

“Any sign of our Russian friends?”

“Negative.”

“Hopefully, they got that out of their system yesterday,”

said Zen. “Or maybe they fired the only missiles they had.”

Northeastern Romania

2130

THE SOLDIERS GAVE STONER AN AK-47 AND FOUR MAGAzine boxes of ammunition. He checked them, then sat on the bench next to Colonel Brasov as the helicopter—an Aerospatiale Puma—skimmed over the ground at treetop level toward Moldova.

The wound in his leg had been a dull, low-level pain, pushed to the back of his consciousness over the past few days. Now the pain spiked, as if provoked by the geography.

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Colonel Brasov clapped him on the back. “We are a few miles from the border, Mr. Stoner,” he said. “Now would be a good time to find out where we are going.”

Stoner glanced at his watch. “It should only be a minute or two.”

Istanbul, Turkey

2130

THERE WAS A FLOOD OF TRAFFIC AHEAD, CARS, BUSES, and people descending from the tourist area along Istiklal Caddessi. Danny, Boston, and Sorina had walked for nearly fifteen minutes without seeing a cab.

“Wait for the trolley, or go across?” asked Boston.

Danny looked at his watch. The trolleys, modern two-car trains, passed every twenty minutes or so.

“It’s time for us to call,” he told Sorina.

“Only from the station,” she insisted.

“Let’s walk across the bridge,” he said.

He took Sorina’s arm, steering her around a cement toad-stool placed to prevent cars from going up on the sidewalk.

During the day, both sides of the bridge would be crowded with fishermen, even during the winter months. At night, though, the entire bridge was relatively empty. A few tourists and a pair of aging lovers stared out at the water from the rails.

Danny hurried along, trying to remember the layout of the streets on the opposite shore. The train station was to their left, a few blocks from the ferries. They could walk, but it would be faster with a cab.

Taxis tended to congregate near the foot of the bridge, where there was a tram stop as well as nearby ferry stations and a large mosque. He saw a short line of taxis across the way, but to get there they’d have to cross a solid wall of cars zooming along the highway.

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A sign indicated an underground passage near the end of the bridge.

“This way,” he said, pointing left and nudging Sorina with him.

The stairs opened into a tunnel lined by shops. The walkway itself had been turned into a bazaar. Dealers hawked a variety of wares from blankets. Everything from baseball caps to 1970s vintage television sets was on sale.

A knot of people appeared before them. Suddenly, Danny found himself in the middle of the swarm, unable to move.

Sorina Viorica slipped from his grasp. Danny edged to the left, following her, but a river of people were descending a set of stairs nearby and the crush separated them. She turned to the left, heading up the stairs; he pushed his way through, momentarily losing her. He became more forceful, shoving to make sure he could get through.

Sorina ran up the stairs. Danny followed, barely able to see her. An elderly woman spun a few steps above him, tumbling into him. He pushed her aside as gently as he could manage, struggling upward.

Sorina was gone.

Danny cursed to himself. He reached the open air and took a step, ready to bolt as soon as he spotted her.

She was sitting on her haunches, leaning against the cement wall of the entrance to his right, breathing hard.

“I can’t take it,” she said, looking up at him. “So many people.”

“Cap?” said Boston, coming up behind him.

“Make the call,” said Danny, holding the phone out to her.

“Go ahead.”

Her face was pale, her lips thin. But she shook her head.

“The station,” she insisted.

“Here’s a taxi!” yelled Boston.

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DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Northeastern Romania

2144

EVERYONE IN THE HELICOPTER STARED AT STONER, WAITING.

They were hovering near the border, waiting to proceed.

“Where are our targets?” asked Colonel Brasov.

“I’ll find out in a minute,” Stoner told him.

“You said that fifteen minutes ago. I have no time for these games.”

Stoner didn’t reply. There was no sense saying anything until he heard from Sorina.

The colonel turned around to one of his men and began speaking in loud, fast Romanian. Stoner caught a few words, including an expression he’d been told never to use because of its vulgarity.

Had she played him? Or did she simply have second thoughts?

He hoped it was the latter. He didn’t like to think he could be fooled.

But everybody could be fooled. Everybody.

The sat phone rang.

Stoner continued to stare out the front of the helicopter’s windscreen for another second, then reached for the phone.

Istanbul, Turkey

2145

“I’M SORRY WE’RE SO LATE,” DANNY TOLD STONER WHEN

he answered the phone.

“It’s all right.”

Two trains were coming in, pulling head first into the platform. Danny stepped forward, watching Sorina punch the buttons on the automated ticket machine. She’d already bought four tickets; she was trying to make it hard for them to trace her.

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“He’s on the line.” Danny held the phone out to her.

Sorina shook her head and reached into her pocket for a piece of paper.

“You tell me now, ” said Danny.

She gave him the paper.

He took a step toward the light and opened it. They were GPS coordinates in Moldova.

“Stoner, plug these coordinates into your GPS,” said Danny.

Danny read them off. Sorina stood at the machine, buying even more tickets.

A few yards away, Boston eyed the station warily. There were about a dozen people on the platform, young people mostly, going or coming from a night out; it was impossible to say. Two women in traditional Muslim dresses, long scarves covering their heads, stood together near a small patch of bushes where the trains would stop.

Sorina looked down at her tickets, shuffling through them.

“All right, Captain, we have them,” said Stoner. “You can let her go.”

Danny held the phone out toward her.

“You want to say good-bye?” he asked.

She hesitated for just a second before shaking her head.

And with that she turned and ran to the nearby train, reaching it just as the door slapped shut to keep her out. She drew back; the doors opened again and she slipped in. Danny watched it pull from the station.

“Hey, Cap, you know what’s strange?” asked Boston.

“What’s that?” said Danny, without turning around.

“Clock has different times on each side,” said Boston. He pointed to the large disk just overhead. “You’d think they could synchronize it.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, not paying attention as he watched the train disappear around the curve.

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Over northeastern Romania

2150

STONER CHECKED THE COORDINATES AGAINST THE MAP

and satellite photos. The camp to the north was a small farm with a single large barn, an outbuilding, and a few small cottages nearby. Three-quarters of the boundary was formed by a ragged, meandering creek. The last side of the property was marked by a road that ran along the base of a long rift in the hills. The high spot provided a good area for the main landing; a field about a half mile away would allow a smaller group to land and circle around the rear of the property. The trucks, which had already crossed the border and were nearly thirty miles into Moldova, would arrive roughly ten minutes after the helicopters touched down.

The second target was a church and related buildings in the middle of a small town. A single main street zigged through the hamlet, ducking and weaving around a quartet of gentle hills. An orchard of small trees and an open field sat to one side of the church; a row of houses were on the other. A cemetery spread out behind the church. The easiest landing here would be in the field near the orchard; the geography would make it difficult to surround the building before beginning an attack. The trucks would take another twenty minutes to reach the church; they’d be reinforcements only.

The fact that the target was a church bothered Colonel Brasov a great deal.

“This will be a propaganda coup if you are wrong,” he told Stoner.

“Yes.”

“And if you are right, it is a great sacrilege.”

Stoner nodded.

“You will be with me in this group,” the colonel told him.

“Our helicopter will be the first down.”

“Right.”

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Again Stoner wondered if it was a setup, if he’d been fooled. Perhaps the charges had been set weeks before and were waiting now for the troops—waiting for him.

Doubt gripped him. He thought about the Dreamland pilots, watching from across the border. He envied them.

Their jobs were entirely physical. They could push their bodies to perform, rely on their trained reactions, their instincts. They trained and retrained for different situations, dogfights and bombing runs, missile attacks and low level escapes. But Stoner had no such luxury. There was no way to train for what he did. Knowing how to fire a gun into a skull at close range, to fake a language—these were important and helpful tools, but not the substance of his success. His test had come days before in Bucharest, when he’d stared into Sorina’s eyes, when he’d stroked her side, when he’d gauged her intent.

That moment was dark to him, lost somewhere down the gap between the ledges he was jumping between.

“We are ten minutes away,” the colonel told him.

“I’m ready,” said Stoner.

Aboard EB-52 Johnson,

over northeastern Romania

2152

ZEN NUDGED THE THROTTLE, PUSHING HAWK ONE CLOSER

to the last of the helicopters carrying the Romanian troops.

The chopper was flying just above treetop level, tail up, moving fast for a helo but slow compared to the Flighthawk.

“Border in zero-five seconds,” warned the computer.

“Thanks,” mumbled Zen. He pulled hard on the stick, banking away just before crossing the line.

“They have two targets,” Dog told Zen, relaying the information passed along by Stoner. “Sullivan is entering the coordinates. Both are a little more than fifty miles into 298

DALE BROWN’S DREAMLAND

Moldova. We won’t be able to go there, but we can see what’s going on.”

Dog meant that the radars on the Megafortress would give them a good idea of where the helicopters and the trucks were, and would also allow them to warn the Romanians if a large force of guerrillas or Moldovan soldiers suddenly appeared. But as far as Zen was concerned, they were voyeurs at the edge of battle, watching helplessly.

Bacau, Romania

2155

GENERAL LOCUSTA PUT DOWN THE SATELLITE PHONE AND

raised his head, scanning his command center at the Second Army Corps headquarters. He needed to keep his head clear, needed to be as calm as possible. It was coming together beautifully, everything going exactly as he had hoped, as he had planned.

“Colonel Brasov has touched down,” announced the captain coordinating communications from the assault teams.

“No resistance yet.”

“Yea!” yelled one of other officers.

“Who said that?” shouted Locusta.

The room fell silent. The general turned his gaze around the room.

“General, it was me,” said one of his lieutenants, rising.

The young man’s face was red.

“This is not a time for youthful exuberance,” said Locusta. The man’s forthrightness impressed him and he tried to soften his tone. “We will each of us do our duty. We have jobs to do.”

“Yes, General. I apologize.”

“Accepted. Get back to work. All of you, work now. We will capture the criminals and make them pay.”

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Moldova

2155

STONER TIGHTENED THE STRAP ON THE AK-47 AND WAITED

as the helicopter closed in on the target in the dark. The pilots had night goggles, but even without them he could see the outlines of the spire in the distance.

Someone began shouting in the back. The helicopter bucked to the side. There was a rush of air.

Now!

Go!

The dim red of the interior lights gave the men just enough light to see as they jumped into the field, the helicopter just touching down.

There was an orange flash near the dark hull of the church, then small polka dots of yellow, tiny bursts of color that glowed into red curlicues.

They’re shooting at us, he thought.

She wasn’t lying. Thank God.

Behind him, the helicopter moved backward, escaping as a flurry of slugs began sailing through the air. Stoner ran forward, then threw himself down behind the last row of headstones in the large churchyard. Bullets exploded above his head.

The Romanian soldiers began moving up along the graves, yelling directions to each other. Stoner pushed himself to his knees, still struggling to get his breath. The stone to his right exploded into shards, raked by the heavy gun. He threw himself back down, working on his elbows and belly to his right.

The machine gun was in a stairwell next to the church. A low thud shook the ground. The machine gun fire stopped.

One of the Romanians had fired a mortar point-blank into the stairwell, killing the gunner.

Someone shouted. Another person, to Stoner’s left, shouted back. A flare went off, turning the night white and black.

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Six, seven dark shadows ran to the building, jumped down the stairwell. Others came toward them from the road. The mortar fired again; this time it landed short, scattering the guerrillas but not stopping them as they flowed out of the church.

A squad of soldiers had fast-roped down onto the street.

They came up now, guns blazing, catching the guerrillas from the rear unawares. Their attack had been coordinated with the mortarman; no shells fell as they worked they way toward the basement stairs.

A loud series of booms followed as the soldiers forced their way inside. A second group, this one from the cemetery, ran up to reinforce them.

Stoner waited, watching. If it was a setup, the place would explode now, booby-trapped.

It didn’t. He started in motion again, picking his way through the headstones toward the houses on the other side of the church, guessing that the rebels would be housed there.

The graves were laid out in a haphazard pattern, some very close together, others wide apart, and it took Stoner time to weave his way forward. As he turned to go through a tight cluster, he spotted four or five shadows to the east of the church. His first thought was that he was seeing clothes fluttering in the wind. Then he saw sticks waving with the clothes.

He brought the AK-47 up and fired, screaming as he did.

“The guerrillas! They’re coming from the other side of the church!”

He shot the magazine so quickly he was surprised when the bolt clicked open. The guerrillas quickly got down and fired back.

Stoner reloaded, then began moving again, sure he would be killed if he stayed where was. He caught part of his arm on a crumpled rosebush. The thorns ripped his flesh.

He kept going, moving to the left. There was more gunfire now, not only in front of him but behind.

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Pulling himself along the ground, Stoner felt his hand scrape on cement. He’d come to the path that ran along the east side of the church and went up toward the back of the houses.

The gunfire intensified, rifles flashing back and forth, occasionally interrupted by a grenade blast. Stoner tried to sort out where the forces were. He was facing south, crouched at the corner of the cemetery. The church was in front of him and to his right, a little to the west of his position. The guerrillas had come from a yard to his left.

But the real danger, he thought, was the houses behind him. If there were guerrillas there, they could come in and attack the attackers from the rear. The colonel had detailed a squad to come through the cemetery and head in that direction, but apparently they had been pinned down somewhere along the way.

Stoner turned around so that his back was to the church.

Then he began crawling back along the cement walkway.

A line of thin bushes provided some cover to the right, throwing him in shadow. They thickened into a row of hedges after fifteen or twenty feet. Stoner hunkered next to them, trying to listen hard enough to sort the sounds of the night into some kind of sense. But he couldn’t hear much over the echoing gunfire behind him.

Stoner rose upright about halfway, just enough to see shadows moving on the other side of the hedges. Dropping to his knee, Stoner sighted the AK-47 along the row of bushes. The cold of the night froze him into position, pushing away time, pushing away fear and even adrenaline. It swathed him in its grasp, and he waited, a stone in the night.

Finally, shadows pushed through an opening thirty yards away. One, two … Stoner waited until five had come through, then pushed his finger hard on the trigger, moving across to his left, taking down the black shapes. Cries of pain and agony rose over the fierce report of the gun. The Kalashnikov clicked empty.

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Stoner cleared the mag, slammed in a fresh one, and fired in what seemed to be one motion, one moment. The cold of the night intensified, freezing his breath in his lungs as the shouts and screams crescendoed.

His rifle once more empty, Stoner stomped his right foot down and threw himself to the left, spinning amid the grave-stones.

He lay on his back, reloading. Stoner heard a rocket-propelled grenade whistle over his head; the sound was more a hush than a whistle, and the explosion a dull thud against the wall of the church.

A second grenade flew past, even closer. But there was no explosion this time; the missile was a dud.

Meanwhile, the squad that had been pinned down rallied to fight the guerrillas near the hedge. The next ninety seconds were a tumult of explosions and gunfire, tracers flashing back and forth, the darkness turning darker. The mortar began firing again, the thud-pump, thud-pump of its shells rocking the ground.

Cries of the wounded rose above the din. Finally, a pair of soldiers ran forward from Stoner’s left—Romanians, rushing the last guerrillas. Three more followed. A man ran up to Stoner and dropped next to him, putting his gun down across his body, obviously thinking he was dead.

“Hey, I’m OK,” Stoner said.

The Romanian jumped.

“It’s OK,” said Stoner. “It’s the American. I’m all right.”

The soldier said something in Romanian, then got up and followed the others surging into the other yard. Stoner rose slowly. When he saw that the soldiers wouldn’t need his help, he turned toward the church.

The trucks had finally arrived, and soldiers were now swarming into the area. The church had been secured; soldiers climbed up the stairs, boxes of documents in their arms.

Two guerrillas, bound and blindfolded, sat cross-legged a few feet from the basement entrance. The Romanian soldier REVOLUTION

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behind them raised his rifle toward Stoner as he approached, then recognized him and lowered it.

Stoner pulled his small flashlight from his pocket and shone it into the men’s faces, which were bruised and swollen; both looked dazed.

“You speak English?” he asked them, kneeling so his face was level with theirs. “What are your names?”

Neither man said anything.

“English?” Stoner asked again. “Tell me your names.”

Nothing.

“I can get a message to your families that you’re OK,”

Stoner said. “If I knew who you were.”

Their blank stares made it impossible to tell if they were being stubborn or just didn’t understand what he was saying.

Stoner switched to Russian, but there was no recognition.

The men were Romanian.

“It would probably be better for you if people knew you were alive,” he said in English. “There’d be less chance of accidents.”

But the men remained silent.

Two other prisoners had been taken, both of them superfi-cially wounded. Neither wanted to talk. At least thirty guerrillas were dead. The Romanians had lost only three men.

With the church and the immediate ground secured, squads of soldiers worked their way through the nearby houses, searching for rebels or anything they might have left behind. Stoner watched them move down the nearby street, surrounding a house, then rousting the inhabitants. Meanwhile, the papers and a computer that had been found in the church basement were loaded into a truck, to be transported to the helicopters and then flown back to Romania.

“Ah, Mr. Stoner,” said Brasov when the colonel found him at the front of the church. “Good information, yes. Good job, American.”

“What are you going to do with the dead guerrillas?”

asked Stoner.

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“They come back with us,” replied the colonel. “Evidence.

If needed.”

“Good. Any of these guys look Russian?”

“You want them to be Russian?”

“Not if they’re Romanian.”

The colonel shrugged.

“I have you to thank. I was not always trusting you,” said the colonel, his English breaking down either because of his fatigue or perhaps his excitement. The operation would make him look very good with the general. “I will not forget.”

The colonel went off to check with his platoon leaders, urging them to move quickly. The phone lines in and out of the hamlet had been cut, and a pair of cell phone blockers had been set up near the church at the start of the assault, but there was no way to guarantee that word of the operation wouldn’t get out. The troops were to muster on the road in ten minutes; they would ride and march back to the helicopters.

Stoner went back over to the dead men, looking at their shoes. To a man they were battered and old; most wore cheap sneakers. He took a few photos with his digital camera, then went down the steps into the church basement to see what the troops had found. The steps opened into a meeting room about thirty by twenty, punctuated by cement columns that held the ceiling up. A small kitchenette sat at the back. There were a few metal chairs scattered to one side, along with a pair of tables propped against the wall. The place looked like a bingo hall between meetings.

Things were different behind the cheap wood panel wall at the back of the kitchenette. A steel door, pockmarked with bullets, had been pushed down off its hinges to reveal a room stacked with bunk beds. At the far end, tables set up as desks with computers and other office gear had been stripped bare by the soldiers. Paper was strewn everywhere; there were stacks of cardboard boxes in the corner. A pair of REVOLUTION

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AK-47s and three crates filled with ammo lay nearby. Two steel footlockers were being guarded by a soldier. Stoner guessed they contained weapons; the letters on the top were Cyrillic.

Russian, though that didn’t prove much. He took photos anyway.

Quite a bit of blood had been splattered on the floor and walls.

By the time he came back outside, the soldiers were wrapping up, getting ready to leave. Colonel Brasov saw him and walked over, extending his hand.

“Now I hear from my men you are a hero,” said the colonel.

“How’s that?”

“You stopped an ambush.” The colonel pointed toward the back of the churchyard, where Stoner had cut off the guerrillas. “They had a second barracks in that house. You surprised them when they came to surprise my men.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

Brasov slapped him on the back. “You are a funny American. You kill two dozen men, you take no credit.”

“I don’t think it was two dozen.”

“Come on,” Brasov told him. “Time for us all to leave. I’ll buy you drinks when we are back. Come, come.”

Stoner fell in with one of the groups leaving on foot, walking back through the village. The houses were dark. He suspected that the villagers were watching now from behind the curtains and closed doors. Surely they’d known what was going on here. Maybe they were glad to be rid of the guerrillas, or maybe they sympathized with their cause. They were pawns in any event, bystanders whose deaths would not have mattered to either side.

Most of the helicopters had already taken off. The trucks were departing. It was a dangerous time. The operation wasn’t over, but it felt like it was, and the adrenaline that had pushed everyone had dissipated. Officers yelled at their men, trying to remind them of that, trying to get them to move quickly, 306

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to look alive. But they were slacking too, and the brief but intense fight had left their voices hoarse.

There were less people here than Sorina had predicted. But maybe the evidence he wanted would be in the papers, or on the computer.

Stoner pulled his jacket tighter, suddenly feeling the chill of the night.

Brasov began yelling. The lieutenants started waving their arms, urging the men to board the helicopters immediately.

“What’s going on?” Stoner asked the colonel.

“The border stations have been alerted. We have to move quickly.”

Presidential villa,

near Stulpicani, Romania

2155

“LET’S PLAY SOCCER, DAD.”

“Julian, not only is it cold outside, but it’s dark.”

“I meant in the basement.”

Voda looked at his son, then glanced over at his wife, who was reading on the couch.

“I believe it is past your bedtime, young man,” Mircea said.

“Papa said I could stay up late all the weekend.”

“I did,” conceded Voda. While on most matters he considered himself strict, he could not bring himself to enforce an early bedtime, since the night was the only time he had to play with his son.

“Can we play?” asked the boy.

“All right. Let’s go.”

“Mama too.”

“I can’t play,” said Mircea.

“You can keep score.”

She rolled her eyes.

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“We can keep score ourselves,” said Voda. “Let Mama read.”

Julian had already grabbed the ball. “If I win, I get extra time to stay up.”

“Even more?” said Mircea.

“And what if I win?” said Voda.

“Nothing. Everyone knows you should win.”

Voda told the security man on duty in the hall that they would be downstairs, so he wouldn’t be alarmed by odd noises. Then he went down the hall and around to the butler’s pantry, where the single door to the basement was located.

The stairs, two hundred years old and made of rickety wood, creaked as he came down. The landing was poorly lit, and Voda paused, knowing that his son was lurking nearby, preparing to leap out from the shadows to try and scare him.

“Boo!” yelled Julian, charging at him from his left.

Even though he was expecting him, Voda was a little surprised. He jumped back, amplifying his real shock with a mock expression of horror.

The basement of the old building was a fairly scary place, or at least one that could give rise to the sort of stories common in Transylvania. It was all that was left of the first structure built there, around 1650; it had a dirt floor and very solid stone walls. The original building had burned down or perhaps simply been knocked down to make way for a replacement in the early nineteenth century. It had a footprint three times as large as the original, though it was not nearly so large as the castles and mountain palaces that still dotted the region. Most likely, the house had been built as a summer retreat for a well-to-do but not quite noble family, which is how Voda modestly thought of it now.

“The wine cask is one goal,” said Julian, leading his father into the open space behind the stairs. “The workshop is the other.”

“Whose goal is the cask?” said Voda, as if he didn’t know what the answer would be.

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“Mine. You have the door to the workshop.”

“It’s wider than the wine cask.”

“Should we put the cask on its side?”

The barrel was empty, so it would have been easy to do, but Voda declined. He knew that Julian wanted him to protect the doorway because he didn’t like to go into the dank space they called the workshop. It was actually a storage area dug out behind the old foundation. Covered with spiderwebs, it had a double wall and led to an old root cellar. There was no electricity in that part of the basement, and the bare bulbs in this part of the basement sent only dim shadows in its direction.

“First one to five wins,” said Voda.

Julian put the ball down, faked a kick left, then swatted it against the wall on his right. As it bounced back, he ran and toed it forward. Voda couldn’t quite hit it with his foot as it dribbled past him, rebounding softly off the wall near the door. Before he could scoop it up, Julian executed a sliding kick that sent the ball soaring through the open door.

“Goaaaaal!” yelled the boy.

“I do not think sliding kicks are legal in our game,” Voda teased. “The ground is too hard. You’ll rip your pants.”

“Then we can get new ones.”

“Clothes do not grow on trees,” said Voda, very serious now as he stepped into the darkness to find the ball amid the clutter of the old storeroom. His son’s sense of entitlement bothered him. He did not want him to have to suffer, of course, but still, Justin should understand the value of hard work.

There was a pile of barrels staves immediately to the left of the doorway. Their shapes confused Voda, and he thought for a moment that the ball was among them. Finally he realized it must have gone farther in, and began poking forward cautiously, his eyes still having trouble adjusting to the dark. Ducking toward a shadow in the corner that looked as if it might the ball, he found his head tangled in several long REVOLUTION