Free Rasputin's Bastards by David Nickle Page B

People, and arrived in those places by many conveyances; but none of those involved spending any time at all on a 641 Attack Submarine. Standing on the deck now as it pitched in the gentle ocean swells, the first thing that struck him about it was its narrowness. Two wrong steps to either side and Alexei would be sliding down the submarine’s slick black hull and into the ice-water sea.
    The same, he realized sickly, could be said for Holden Gibson, who wandered dangerously near both edges of the deck in the space of just a single step. Alexei added the possibility to his growing archive of M.O.s.
    But it was not to be. The young captain had disappeared below for the moment. But a pair of the Nike-wearing crewmen stood in too-easy reach, and three more watched them from the conning tower. One of those held a submachine gun, its barrel balanced against the bulkhead. Even Heather knew enough to stop sending her
kill-him-kill-him-now
looks Alexei’s way.
    “Now I don’t want either of you to say anything to fuck this up,” said Holden under his breath. “This is very fucking delicate work coming up and I want you to remember that.”
    Alexei opened his mouth to say that he would be sure to remember that, but Holden held up his hand to shut him up.
    “Not
anything
,” he repeated.
    Heather nodded obediently, and Alexei did the same. For that instant, he was sure the two shared the same thought:
If there is a fuck-up here, it will be Holden’s — not ours
.
    Alexei looked back at Holden’s motor yacht. It was distant enough to appear quite small, but even with the crappy visibility, Alexei could make out details: the dingy on the aft-deck, the bridge, the steel cable railings. He could see some figures against that railing.
    “Hey!”
    All three of them turned to the voice at the top of the conning tower. It was high-pitched enough to come from a girl, and first Alexei thought it was the young girl they’d seen before. But it wasn’t. It was a little black-haired boy — or rather his head, sticking up over the top of the tower like he was standing on his toes. He couldn’t have been more than six years old. He was waving at them.
    Holden squinted up at him, shading his eyes as though it were a sunny day, and waved back. His mouth twisted into something that it only took Alexei a second to recognize as a warm smile.
    “Hey there yourself, big guy!” he shouted back. “Watchya doin’ way up there?”
    The boy giggled, and Alexei shivered. It was as though, with the boy’s arrival, a different man came to inhabit Holden Gibson’s skin: a happy grandfather who always brought the best presents for birthdays, and delivered funny bedtime stories on cue. Alexei shouldn’t have been surprised — Holden had done well by his junior kindergarten magazine cult, and he couldn’t have done it being thick-thumbed with the kids. Alexei half-expected Holden to offer the boy a candy bar next.
    It wasn’t necessary, though. The boy was in Holden’s spell. “Funny man!” he shouted in Russian, and disappeared. But he was only gone for a moment, while he scrambled down the ladder rungs at the back of the conning tower. He reemerged at the tower’s base, running full tilt along the narrow deck towards them. He was going so fast that Alexei worried the kid would slip off the side of the submarine. Of course, he didn’t slip or fall or even falter — even when he tangled his way through the crowd of adult crewmen and nearly knocked one of them off as a result.
    Kids never get enough credit
, Alexei thought.
They’re smarter and faster and stronger than any of us are willing to admit
.
    Which
, he supposed,
is why adults like Holden Gibson find them so very useful
.
    Holden bent to his knees and threw his arms open to catch the kid just an instant before collision. The kid fell against Holden’s chest and Holden’s arms dropped around him in an enthusiastic bear hug. “Funny man,” said the kid again.
    Holden picked the