across her chest and shoulders where she’d been hurled forward and held. The engines coughed like the airplane’s death rattle.
Thick branches skewered the fuselage. A spear of wood had been driven straight through the windshield, inches from her face. A bit to the left and she’d have lost her head. Instead Billi bore minute scratches from the twigs that had caught her.
Ivan was slumped in his seat, amida tangle of cables and wires. Sparks jumped from the shattered control panel and there was a faint whiff of fuel mixed in with the cold air. One cable, still humming with electricity, hung perilously close over the hydraulic oil that pooled at their feet.
“Ivan?” Billi unclipped the harness and checked his neck for a pulse. She couldn’t see any blood, but that didn’t rule out internal injuries.
“Ivan, are you okay?”
“Are we there yet?” he muttered. He had a fat new bruise on his forehead. He moaned and went pale as he tried to free himself. His right trouser leg was blood-soaked, and Billi gasped when she saw the deep gash through his thigh.
“It’s pretty bad,” she said.
“As they say in your language, No shit, Sherlock.”
Billi raised an eyebrow-she obviously hadn’t lost him quite yet. She pulled out a length of cable and wrapped a tourniquet around his leg as tightly as she dared.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked Ivan, through gritted teeth.
“Yes,” Billi lied. She knew enough first aid to make a sling and deliver a baby-in principle. But major surgery hadn’t been covered in the course. “The tourniquet will cut down the blood loss, but we’ve got to keep an eye on it and loosen the knot occasionally, otherwise you’ll get blood poisoning.” Billi kicked open the crumpled door. “Once we’re out we’ll put together a splint.”
“Then what?”
Billi sniffed: the acrid smell of melting plastic was filling the cockpit. The puddles of oil erupted into clusters of flames. “We’ll make you comfortable.” But first things first: they needed to get out. “This is going to hurt. A lot.”
Ivan bit down hard as Billi dragged him out of the cabin, hissing through his clenched teeth. Gaping holes punctured the fuselage, and the rear of the plane had been torn away. Billi half climbed out-using the aluminium frame and dense tree branches as a ladder. Unfortunately, Ivan ended up bumping almost every branch on his way out.
“You did that on purpose,” was about all he could say as they reached the ground. She dragged Ivan away from the wreck, then clambered back up as flames began to spread across the seats.
Scrabbling in the rear among the thickening, stinking smoke, she tossed out weapons and supplies before the heat became unbearable. Flames enveloped the front seats, and Billi shoved herself out of the wreck. Dangling from one of the branches, she dropped the last few feet into the snow, just as the fire consumed the plane. It rose up the tree, setting alight the higher branches until the tree itself was a burning torch.
Stepping away, Billi paused to properly examine their surroundings. They were deep in a forest, but it was unlike any forest she’d ever seen. The smell of decay was thick and pungent, even where dampened by the snow. The trees around her were thick-barked, their diameter wider than she could put her arms around. Despite the burning plane a dozen yards away, the sense of nature’s domination was overpowering. The old plane seemed like a toy next to the ancient strength of the huge trees.
“Where are we?” she asked as she cut a branch down with her kukri. Trimmed, it would serve as a crude crutch.
“On the Russian-Ukrainian border. There or thereabouts.”
“So this is it?”
Ivan nodded. “The eastern tip of the Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The primeval forest.”
Billi pressed her hand into the moss hanging from a giant oak trunk. “It’s beautiful.” She was awestruck, humbled by her surroundings. The earth around her was alive. Like a dragon slumbering in winter, but huge, ancient, and powerful.
Ivan continued. “Once upon a time, all of Europe was like this. From Ireland to Siberia.” He sighed as he leaned against the trunk. “This was the world before man came along. This is what it’ll return to, once we’ve gone.”
This is what Baba Yaga wants. A beautiful, empty planet. Billi could almost understand it. She gazed up into the dark canopy. “We’re not gone yet.”
Billi set up camp by a cave under a rocky outcrop. It was a house-sized boulder, all split by roots and covered in vines. She spread out a lattice of twigs so they were slightly off the ground, then added a layer of pine needles taken from the nearby conifers before covering it all with a plastic sheet she’d found in the plane.
She chopped down four straight sticks, which she bound together on either side of Ivan’s leg. But walking was agony even with the splint, and Ivan, leaning heavily on the crutch, ended up hopping to alleviate the worst of it.
“How does it feel?” Billi asked. She was starting to regret sending Elaine back. She’d have patched Ivan up, no worries.
“I’m…fine.”
“You’re such a liar.” Billi, kneeling in front of him, took a corner of the blanket and dabbed his face, wiping the sweat. She smoothed the cloth over his forehead and softly over each eye. Her hand moved down his face, touching his bruised cheek.
“Ouch,” he whispered. He looked up at her. “Now that I’m not flying…”
“A kiss right now would probably kill you,” Billi said as she drew the cloth over his lips, slowly down his jawline to his neck. She could feel his pulse beating strongly now. “There. All done.”
“Thank you.”
They sat facing one another, not speaking. She’d never thought she’d find anyone after Kay. Billi had buried her love under training and combat, and now, with the end so near, here he was.
“There was so much I wanted to do,” Billi said, rocking back onto her heels. She raised her eyes to the stars.
“Funny, but you think it’s all so endless.”
“Life is not measured in length, but in deeds.”
Billi laughed. “More Chekhov?”
“My father.”
Billi shook out her hair. She must look a total bomb site. “Not that I had any big plans, mind you.” She peeked at him from under the loose locks. “Not like you.”
Ivan shrugged. “Things didn’t turn out that badly.”
“Glad you’re so stoic about it. Last night you were sleeping in a four-poster bed with silk sheets; tonight you’ve got pine needles and snow.”
“But with you,
Billi scraped her hair back into a bun. “I’m sure I would have. When you’d run out of your supermodels.”
Billi saw Ivan try to smile back, but all he could do was shake. He’d lost a lot of blood, and was weak.
“We need to warm you up some more.” She picked up her kukri.
Billi quickly cut down some of the lower, drier branches and built up a fire at the mouth of the cave. It wasn’t quite Davy Crockett, but it would do.
“We’ll rest here tonight,” she said. She threw some more branches onto the fire.
She picked up her satellite phone and called her father.
The reception was awful, but she could just hear his voice. He sounded like he was down a mine shaft, shouting up.
“Billi? Where are you?”
“We’ve been delayed. Badly.”
“You okay?”
Billi looked at Ivan. His face was bloodless and his mouth drawn into a tight grimace.
