Olga put her foot down and the powerful car leapt forward, burning rubber as it skidded around the first corner.

“Where am I going?”

“Just drive,” Vasily shouted. “Get us out of here.”

Olga sped down the street, not stopping for red lights or stop signs. It was the middle of the night and the streets were deserted, which made it easier to drive fast but would also make them easier to follow.

They whizzed passed intersections, one after the other, for about twenty blocks without stopping at a single one. At one of them, a huge tanker jammed on the horn, narrowly missing them as it swerved around them.

Olga pulled onto a highway on-ramp and then really floored it. They drove about five miles to the first exit and Lance told her to take it before the military figured out what was going on and got their helicopters organized. There was nothing so easy to track from the air as a single vehicle on an empty highway.

They were south of the compound and Lance said, “Are we close to the Empress Catherine Factory?”

Sofia looked back at him. “We can’t,” she said. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

“No they won’t,” Lance said.

Sofia turned to Olga.

“I know where it is,” Olga said.

“We don’t have any more explosives,” Vasily said. “Or even an assault rifle.”

“We won’t need them,” Lance said. “Stop here.”

There was a gas station up ahead. It was deserted but the pumps looked like they accepted credit card payment.

Olga pulled over and Lance got out and swiped a credit card at the first pump. He followed the instructions and the pump became active.

They didn’t have a jerry can but the gas station sold one-gallon containers of washer fluid. The new containers were locked up for the night but there was a pile of empties and he grabbed five. When they were full, he put them in the trunk of the car and told Olga to drive on carefully.

“What are you going to do?” Sofia said. “Burn it down?”

Lance nodded.

Olga drove them toward the industrial area and as they got closer, they saw police cars and fire trucks flashing their lights ahead. They were stopping cars and turning them back.

“It’s a roadblock,” Vasily said.

“Turn here,” Lance said.

Taking smaller side streets, they avoided the roadblock and entered the Chkalovskaya industrial district.

“Put your masks back on,” Vasily said.

As they approached the production facility, Sofia and Vasily were shocked that no soldiers were present.

“They had no clue what they were doing,” Vasily said through his mask.

“It’s criminal,” Sofia said. “I tried warning them. I swear it.”

“We’ll make it right,” Lance said.

They stopped at the fence and looked through. There was nothing stopping them. Even the fence was falling apart.