Olena’s truck inched up to them, leading the weary group of travelers. They’d kept moving all through the night, many walking, others catching what sleep they could in the jolting vehicles. With the truck idling, Olena opened the door and half swung out of it. She looked between the two men a moment, one eyebrow crooked. She’d been up all night as well. Marcus knew she must be exhausted, but she made a point of not showing it. “So, which way?”

Fifteen minutes later, with the whole group caught up and with vehicles and carts, people and animals, clogging the intersection, the answer came to them. It rolled in from the far horizon in the form of two Kazakh troop transports. The vehicles came on hard and fast, and didn’t slow until the last minute. The grid of the first truck pressed dangerously close to Vasel, who stood waiting for them. The driver of the first truck leaned on the horn and shouted out the window at the same time. Through the ripples of hot air billowing off the engine, Marcus saw a host of soldiers stand up in the back of the truck, all of them armed with machine guns. He muttered, “Shit.”

Out of the corner of his mouth, Vasel said, “I smell no shit. Just opportunity.”

The officer climbed down from the truck, gesticulating angrily, shouting in Kazakh and clearly telling them to move out of the way. Vasel listened for a time, face incongruously calm, as if the man was making polite small talk instead of ranting at him with a host of young, armed thugs at his back. His coin was in hand again. He placed it between his front teeth and bit down, lightly, on it. When the man paused, Vasel pulled the coin away and said something in Russian. The officer switched to that language and started up again.

Marcus had never felt more mono-lingually American. If he ever got out of this, he’d learn a second language, or three or four.

“They are going to the A-2,” Olena translated, “rushing to get to Talas.”

“My daughter is correct,” Vasel said. “Very good of them, don’t you think? Noble of them. They are going to save the day. So many noble soldiers. How many do you think there are?”

“What?”

“How many? Count them with me.” Vasel palmed his coin in his left hand. The fingers of his right, held above it, tapped on his thumb. A coin appeared and dropped to clink against the others. “As many of them as we have walkers, I think.” Another coin dropped. Clinked. And then another.

The officer shouted something, a single clipped word that brought all the soldiers’ rifles up, aimed at point randomly at the jokers.

“Vasel,” Marcus said. He moved closer, speaking low. “Come on. Let these dudes pass. Slow and steady, you know? We’ll make it.”