Chapter 28

That night Kostya and Meredith lay side by side, facing each other and talking. Although that day’s operation had meant a long time sitting in a cold car, they had been successful and had a good result. There was no missile at the site. Now, the only site left to investigate was the one Kostya had found and explored before, and it was the one most likely to give them trouble. “I know we can’t do another alarm, but maybe we could think of some other distraction to draw the guards out,” Meredith suggested.

“I have a feeling that the security at this site has been escalated dramatically since I was last there. The two of us would not be safe trying something like that again.” Kostya rolled to his back and raised his hands to his forehead. “The only way I’m going to get into that silo again is if I am one of them.”

“If you’re one of them? One of who?” Meredith lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t mean attempting to join Fire of Dawn?”

“I don’t see any other way to get in there. If they are meeting in Poltava, I think I can convince them I am a friend and convince them to take me into the silo.”

“Kostya, you’re crazy.” She sat up and hit him on his side with a pillow. “You’re stupid and crazy. They’ll kill you if they find you. Petro will never believe you’re supporting their cause.”

“I won’t see Petro. He’s too far inside the organization. Besides, they’ll kill me if they find me anyway. If I join them and I get caught, I stand a chance of being able to negotiate.” He sat up and leaned against the headboard. “But Meri, I don’t plan on getting caught.”

She propped her pillow and leaned her back against the headboard so she was sitting next to him. Her knee-jerk reaction was to argue. Joining the enemy’s side contradicted everything they came here to do. But Kostya’s knowledge of the components and the fail-safe changed everything. If Fire of Dawn needed his skills to launch the missile, he might just get close enough to sabatoge their plans. She folded her legs and shifted to her hip, staring at his profile—determined, heroic, and resolute.

“Then I’m going with you.”

“Absolutely not. There’s no way…”

“Why not? Two of us will be better at scoping out the site than just one. Besides, we can cover for each other if we need to or call help for each other.”

“Meri, this isn’t a double-O spy game where the heroes come out cocky and unharmed,” Kostya said, his eyes flashing. “Fire of Dawn are terrorists. They kill people to further their goals. They killed my parents. They killed people at EuroMaidan, and they are at war in the east.”

“I can offer medical expertise that they’ll find very valuable if they are about to expand the war. I’ll probably be assigned somewhere near the action, and I can keep my ears open for information to help you.”

“I will not put you in danger for this. This isn’t your fight,” he growled.

“You’re right. This isn’t my fight. It’s our fight.” Meredith touched his cheek so he faced her. “Even if it weren’t about ideals I would die for, like freedom or democracy, I would risk doing this because this is your home, and it is the country where my heart resides.”

She took the key hanging around her neck and held it with his hand in hers. “My heart has belonged to the Ukraine since the day we locked our love on the bridge in Kiev. It has been yours, and I am helpless against it.”

Kostya studied her with his eyes, and Meredith saw flashes of fear in them as he looked at her. Silently he weighed the possibilities.” We would be safer together,” he conceded, “but I don’t have to like it, do I?” Raising his hand to the nape of her neck, he pulled her close to him.

“No. No, you don’t,” she said, as he touched her lips with his. Falling into their pillows, they held each other until they slept.

The next morning Kostya and Meredith loaded up the car and headed toward Poltava. They spent several minutes thanking the Melnyks and exchanging contact information, and assuring them that they would be all right. Olena had prepared a basket full of food and drinks for the road, and she teared up when Kostya and Meredith got in the car to leave. Serhiy made sure they knew they were welcome at any time, in any circumstances. Even though they’d only known each other a couple of days, they felt like close friends.

For Meredith, driving on the E40 highway brought back memories of her misadventures five years ago. If she had stayed on the road, she wouldn’t have gotten lost, but she wouldn’t have met Kostya. The farmlands of the area looked very different in November with winter frost covering the stubble left from the harvest. The frozen ground seemed to be dead, yet the soil beneath would support and grow their lifeblood crops in just a few months. She thought that her relationship with Kostya was a lot like the farmland. For five years it appeared to be dead, but just as the spring awakens the seeds in the ground, their reunion germinated love again.

The three-and-a-half-hour journey went quickly as they talked about their plans and what they needed to accomplish. As soon as they arrived in Poltava, they checked into a small apartment-style hotel with the owners living on site. The couple readily accepted Kostya’s cash for the room, and the wife gushed when Kostya told them it was their honeymoon.

“Why did you tell them it was our honeymoon?” Meredith whispered as they walked them up the stairs to take them to the room.

“First, they will give us plenty of privacy. Second, they won’t come running if they hear strange noises coming from the room.” Kostya grinned.

Meredith blushed. “Hmm, not to mention, they won’t care if we keep strange hours. Good thinking.”

The room was simple, but clean, and had an en suite bathroom. They thanked their hosts, who smiled at the door until it closed. Hearing their footsteps finally exit down the hallway, Meredith and Kostya laughed at their curiosity.

“We need to call Will to check in,” Kostya said pulling the satellite phone out of his bag. “He needs to know how things are going.”

“He’s not going to like our plan, you know,” she said, taking the satellite phone.

“I don’t like this either, but it’s our best chance for success.” Kostya crossed his arms. “Come on. Telling him won’t be that bad.”

Meredith grimaced and dialed the number. A few minutes later they were connected with Will in the TRUST offices.

“I had to fight Ethan to get the phone.” He laughed. “Let me put you on speaker so all of us can be involved in the conversation.” There were a few clicks and then Will called out. “Are you there?”

“Yeah, we’re here,” Meredith answered. “What’s new?”

“I’ll go first,” Ethan called. “I’ve been trying to find out all I can about the Day of Dignity and Freedom. You know it’s a new holiday, and it’s controversial, but you may not know how big the expected turnout in Kiev is for the day. Thousands of demonstrators are expected, representing a gamut of different viewpoints. If I were planning to make a terrorist statement at an event, this would be it. There are a lot of people, not enough police and security, and lots of groups to blame if it goes wrong.”

“Just judging from the amount of activity, Fire of Dawn is planning something, and during the demonstrations on November twenty-first seems like a likely time,” Meredith said.

“If missiles target other cities around the world, November twenty-first would always be remembered. A true ‘date which will live in infamy’,” Kostya said. “It would give Fire of Dawn the notoriety they want.”

“Then we’ve got to stop them,” Ethan said. “For the sake of the Ukraine and every nation that could become a target.”

“Okay, I’m next,” Ben said. “I’ve dug into Petro Vlasenko’s background. Besides being the leader of Fire of Dawn, he also has some high-level friends in Moscow, including members of the Federal Assembly and the president himself. I think his rebel cause is less about doing what he believes in and more about getting a Russian foothold to start controlling the Ukraine.”

“So Vlasenko helps the Russian Federation and the Russian leaders help Vlasenko,” Meredith said. “A case of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.”

“And it doesn’t end there. The Russian Federation has designs to take pieces of the Ukraine oblast by oblast. It’s similar to the process Germany used prior to Munich to annex Austria and Czechoslovakia. In Crimea they showed his desire and capability to expand territory, and Russia funds rebel groups with weapons and supplies to fight for Novorossiya. Fire of Dawn is just the latest, and most extreme, of these groups.”

“So I have to ask,” Will broke in. “Have you figured out a way inside the silo?”

Meredith bit her lip and raised her eyebrow at Kostya, challenging him to answer the question.

“I think we have. We’re going to join Fire of Dawn,” Kostya said.

There was coughing on the other end of the line.

“Excuse me?” Will choked out.

“Did you say join them? Awesome,” Ethan approved.

Ben waited a thoughtful moment. “Wait, it’s brilliant.”

“You can’t think for a minute this is a good idea,” Will spouted off. “They’ll be in the middle of the danger.”

“You sound like your sister when I first suggested the plan.” Kostya chuckled. “If I can convince them that I truly am benefitting from a relationship with them, they’ll let me in. They can’t afford not to.”

“What makes you think they’ll overlook everything? You’ve taken their computer parts, destroyed others, gone to the U.S. government with information, and dodged their assassin. They have no reason to trust you,” Will ranted.

“For one reason—they need me more than I need them. All the components aren’t working in the silo.”

“How do you know that?” Ben asked.

“If everything was working in the first silo, they would be preparing the second, third, or fourth silo. I know that was the plan, because I worked on four sets of everything in the lab. I destroyed three of the chips on the encoder boxes. They have secured four abandoned silo sites according to the satellite pictures, and I had four sets of coordinates for sites. If everything was going well on the first, they would have moved on.”

“Even if they need you, you’re damaged goods. You’ve gone to the U.S. government. You’ve lost your parents at their hands,” Will argued.

“So, we make it look like I was denied asylum and was deported back to the Ukraine. In the meantime, I send emails to my brothers suggesting I believe I got caught in the middle of a government conspiracy to rebuild weapons, and I need their help to return to the Ukraine for vindication. If the U.S. government didn’t believe me, which I’m sure we can make it look that way, I might seek vigilante justice. My parents’ death were a job by the corrupt Ukrainian government trying to force me to work for them. And if I, a disenchanted veteran of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, believe my country is on the wrong path to success, who is to say a group like Fire of Dawn wouldn’t meet my needs?”

“What about Meredith? Where does she fit into all this?” Will asked.

“My Ukrainian is good, but I will never pass for a native, so I can’t play that role,” Meredith explained. “I’m going to be an American socialite and doctor who fell in love and followed Kostya to the Ukraine.”

Everyone was silent for a moment.

“Fell in love?” Ethan finally said. “It’s a little cheesy, but it might work.”

“It plays on the strong-man, weak-woman image Fire of Dawn promotes,” Ben added. “Besides, her medical training would be valuable. If she plays the subservient female with Kostya, but pulls her weight at the hospitals, she may be in a position to get some really good intelligence.”

“I don’t like it,” Will said. “It is really risky.”

“Is it riskier than a nuclear missile being launched with warheads that can hit ten different targets around the globe?” Ethan offered.

“Will, it’s not any different than the work I’ve done in clinics before. I just have to be careful with what I say.” Meredith softened her voice. “It’s going to work.”

“So how are you going to do this?” Will sighed.

For the next several minutes Kostya outlined his plan, and points were fleshed out and TRUST’s role solidified. The first step would be locating where in Poltava Fire of Dawn was meeting. After that, Kostya and Meredith could attempt to join Fire of Dawn’s plans. By the time they hung up, all of them had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. Meredith slid her arms around Kostya.

“Are you sure about this? It’s a pretty scary plan. Espionage, nuclear bombs, assassins—it’s dangerous.”

“Or pretty damn heroic,” Kostya said, taking a comic superhero stance. “I’ll save the world and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“Hmm. And I guess you’ll be more powerful than a locomotive?” She kissed him, backing him up to the bed.

“Of course,” he bragged.

“And your spidey-sense will warn you of eminent danger?” She pulled at the hem of his shirt, bringing it over his head.

“It’s true of superheroes.” His hands brushed against her sides, teasing her with his touch.

“Then I don’t want you to be one.” Meredith pouted.

“What? Why not?” he asked, amused. “Don’t you like my superhuman abilities?”

“Believe me, I love all your special skills,” she whispered breathily. “Just not if you’re ‘faster than a speeding bullet’.” Meredith bit his neck playfully and wrapped her legs around his waist as he lifted her off the floor.

“No chance. I’ve also got super stamina.” They laughed as they fell into the mattress, and Kostya spent the next few hours proving, and re-proving his superpowers.