Red Templar by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

freight cars were easy to spot, since they weren’t padlocked. Incoming cars were chalked with the capital letter,for Bulgaria, and outgoing were marked with a, for Ukraine. Tonight it was Hero of Sevastopol outgoing and Hero of Pleven incoming.
    Viktor told them all of this on the twenty-minute drive from the Golden Sands to the outskirts of the ferry terminal, a pool of sickly yellow sodium lights in the dusky October evening. Holliday and Eddie had brought Genrikhovich a taco plate from the Happy Bar and Grill, a late-night dinner they knew might have the same kind of repercussions as the Burger King Quad Stacker, but the old man had to eat something, and an open freight car was much airier than a cramped little Moskvich.
    Viktor turned out to be a full-service guide on their “very serious” adventure, turning up at the Grifid Arabella’s parking lot right on time and bringing four sleeping bags and a knapsack full of sandwiches, apples, two pomegranates, eight bottles of Zagorka beer and two rolls of toilet paper.
    “Do they patrol the rail yard?” Holliday asked as they abandoned the rental halfway down a gravel side road.
    “Sometimes. They have dogs but I have never been caught.”
    “I do not like dogs,” said Eddie.
    “Shtaw?”
Genrikhovich said nervously.
    “Saabaka,”
translated Eddie.
“Awchen Gnevny Saabaka.”
    Genrikhovich went pale but he kept his mouth shut.
    “What did you say to him?” Holliday asked.
    “I told him there were dogs.
Very
big dogs,” said Eddie.
    “You sure that was the right thing to do?”
    “It will keep him . . .
¿paralizado por el miedo?
”
    “Paralyzed with fear?”
    “
Sí
, we will be much happier.” Eddie grinned. “Your Cuban is getting
muy bueno
.”
    “Muchas gracias, mi compañero,”
answered Holliday, bowing gravely forward.
    “¡Ay, coño!”
Eddie laughed. “Soon I take you back to my family in Habana.” He clamped a hand on Genrikhovich’s narrow shoulder as Viktor the waiter led the way down between the railway tracks. Viktor found the appropriate chalk marking on one of the cars and rolled back the door. The Bulgarian boosted himself up, then helped Holliday and Eddie up. Genrikhovich came last.
    The interior of the empty boxcar was half-solid and half-slatted. The lingering smell suggested that some kind of root vegetable like rutabagas had been the last cargo. Viktor rumbled the door shut and set up the bedrolls in one corner of the car, and they all settled in. Holliday had one of the bottles of beer Viktor offered and then lay down on his bedroll.
    Ten minutes after finishing the beer he was fast asleep. He woke once to the thumping and banging as the boxcar was loaded onto the ferry, and woke briefly again, feeling the odd, almost comforting sensation of being rocked on the sea. He fell asleep again and didn’t wake until the ship docked at the Ukrainian port city of Illichivsk at noon the following day. For the first time in twenty years Lieutenant Colonel John “Doc” Holliday, United States Army Ranger (retired), was back in what had once been enemy territory.

8
    “You will need documents,” said Viktor. He nodded toward Genrikhovich. “Even him.” They were sitting in a dive called the Celantano Pizzeria in Illichivsk, eating slices. The glass-fronted fast-food joint had square panels of fluorescent lighting, plastic brick to waist height, and lime green roughly plastered walls above.
    “What kind of documents?” Holliday asked, feeling his wallet getting thinner by the minute. They’d already visited an ATM and he’d stocked up on two hundred twenty-griven notes, which, at ten grivna to the dollar, were the equivalent of twenty bucks, and which seemed to be the most common banknote in use.
    “The Russian will need an internal passport as well as an international one and a residency card.”
    “My friend and I?”
    “New passports.
Gospodin
Eddie is too . . . obvious as a Cuban,” said Viktor.
    “What do you