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Atomic Angels
Chapter 4
By Jed Jones

Plot: After 2 chapters in the States with Tracey and her family we are back in the Ukraine with Jude and Oxana. She tells Jude that the secret police are coming for them and he is convinced that they are in danger. As a result, he takes off in a snowstorm to take Oxana to her adopted family.

Characters: Jude the truck driver/photographer is being lulled into a growing mystery and perhaps danger. Oxana speaks in broken English, a mere kid, too street smart for her age, gets him to follow her instructions so she must be convincing or is Jude an adventure seeker who can't turn this offer down?

Style and Voice: This is 3rd person limited with Jude's POV

Referencing: it seems authentic

Scene/Setting: It's the Ukraine, middle of the winter, driving on snowy roads in a lorry with Russian secret service agents following in a slow boat Lada that's still faster than June's vehicle.

Grammar: no problem

Just my personal opinion: Nice tension packed story with sentences that are fun to read over a second time. I enjoy this part of the story more than the 2 chapters with Tracey. Perhaps it's the foreign aspect about it. I suspect the two girls will wind up together in Europe and not in the U.S. which would suit me just fine. Good job. This is a fun read.

My comments and suggestions are in RED. Blue is to highlight something from you.

(Note: I’m making suggestions and telling you my honest opinion---but I’m no expert.
Take what you like and trash the rest. Linggy)


An electronic xylophone played, piercing the freezing air of the truck park, startling Jude. The tune conjured an image of an angel tap dancing on ice, fragile as a wisp of mist, bold as a beam of frozen light.

Oxana reached into her coat pocket, produced a mobile phone, then glanced down at the screen. "It is Katya. Excuse me."

He made a mental note to ask her about the song as she spoke to Katya in her own language. A shrill edge of panic emerged in her voice, her eyes widening as she listened. He heard her mention his name. Optimism infused her tone and seemed to spread across her face. Her words ran into each other as she spoke at lightning speed before the next pause. Nice! You've got good tension and energy here.

"Is that Russian you're speaking?"

"Yes."

"It must be a fast language. What does this mean exactly? Some people speak fast and others more slowly. Sounded like you said a lot in a short time."

She hadn't finished yet. Half a minute later, her last word to Katya sounded like poka, and the fear returned to her face. "Mister Jude. I am sorry. We must go. Now."

She flummoxed him. "Why?" Okay. I looked the word up. Maybe in England it's popular. Its usage is correct, but do you want Americans to look this up?

"Secret police are coming. Katya told, she knows their car. And their faces. They are from Kiev."

"What? How does she know them? What do they want?"

Oxana sighed. "They busted her father's apartment. Today. When she was there. He was angry. He was crying. And got drunk again."

"What do they want with the poor guy?"

"Politics. He is against their boss." Her face crinkled, a picture of distress. "Now they are looking in places where work hookers. I don't know what they want. But they must not find me."

"I don't understand. You're scaring me. I thought the secret police went out disappeared with the Soviet Union."

Her features tightened with a look of indignation. "Try tell it to Stoichkov."

"Who the hell is he?"

Oxana hesitated. Her eyes seethed with fury, like pools of green flame. Scorn crinkled her young face as she turned her gaze from his and stared down at the ground beside him. Nice

"Who is Stoichkov?"

Her voice sank to a low pitch. "He is bastard." She spat in the snow as though Stoichkov lay at her feet begging for mercy, with no chance of getting any. "He is big Power. Oligarkh. These police, they work for him."

If he understood her right, she needed to disappear from the truck park on her own - anywhere out of sight. "You'd better run and hide, then. Give me your number. I'll call you when they've been and gone."
If her English is this weak, he's not making it easy for her to understand here.
"No. You cannot do this - make me leave you here. They don't look for you, but when they find you they think, British. Then they think, money. You want to pay them thousand dollars to get out of jail? They will be here in fifteen minutes."

Jude checked his watch. Near-as-dammit is this U.S. Damn near? five o'clock. "Call me naive, but I suppose the fact I've done nothing wrong makes no difference?"

Oxana pointed to the ground. "I don't know it in English, what you call these. Look. This. And this. And this. How are you going to explain them?"

Footprints. Next to the impressions etched by his size tens, Oxana's bootmarks looked like a small child's. Worse, their playfighting had hollowed deep trenches in the snow, suggesting a struggle. "What car are we hoping and praying we don't see?"

"Lada, blue. It is normal car, not police car. They are not militsia, not normal police. It is disguise. Like my hair. I can look like boy when I want. And ten years of ages like you told."

With little traffic on the roads, even a Lada should take less than fifteen minutes to traverse a city centre. "How can you be sure how long we've got?"

"It is guess. This is why we must go now. They are coming from docks. Train station is before here. First they will look there." Her plaintive eyes appealed to his. "I show you place to park truck. Where hookers don't go. Place where we will both be safe."

Even if they both needed to flee the scene comma it didn't follow they must escape together, in the truck. Could there be more to her agenda than she let on? "You mean, your secret home?"

"No." She contorted her face and shook her fisted hands in the air, as though exasperated by his question. "I can go there now. I can hide, in one minute. But you cannot hide your truck there."

What if she was trying to trick him - lead him into a trap? If she had just told him the truth, and they stayed here, they would both be trapped by the secret police.

He turned, scanning the darkening landscape. Steep banks bordered the parking area on three sides. Scaling any of them would jack-knife the truck. The silver birches obscured his view of the street. By the time they caught sight of a blue Lada turning into the drive at the entrance, they'd be sitting ducks.

Oxana shot him a stare of desperate terror. Standing on end, the auburn spikes of her hair seemed to grow more rigid. "Please. I will give you good time. Best you ever have. I promise."

She cocked an eye to the truck, grabbing his lapel and tugging him towards her. "Go inside. Drive. Get us out of here."

Twin gateposts beckoned, drawing Jude's gaze to the exit from the truck park, as he pondered Oxana's appeal to help her escape. He needed more energy and a fast car to play cat-and-mouse with the secret police. Even a Lada could catch up with a lorry. They wouldn't stand a chance in a chase. Every second of their head start counted. Just after 5pm, said his watch. The overcast sky rumbled. Dusk deepened to darkness.

Oxana tugged his sleeve as though she meant to drag him up to the driver's seat. "I can explain what this is all about. But if I tell, you will be in more dangers. I show you safe place for us. And truck. Please trust me."

Why should he? What had the birthday girl planned in Russian on the phone? Her story about pursuit by secret police might prove an elaborate confidence trick - in theory - but the terror in her eyes told spoke against his suspicion. And, had she wanted to, she could have robbed him already, without so much fuss, when she karate-poked him in the neck.

He turned to face her. "Let's go."

"Yes." She flung her arms around him, pulled his head down to smack his lips with hers, then squeezed his hands like her life depended on him.

He held her gaze. Her eyes lusted with adrenaline. Even the truck and its throbbing engine sounded impatient to go. They climbed inside. Nice imagery!

The headlights guided their way past the vacant parking attendant's kiosk, between the gateposts, and on to the edge of the street, startling a babushka.

"Go left." The kid shouted her first direction. "It feels funny, to sit on wrong side. I think I must drive."

Shuffling along the pavement on the far side of the road, clutching a woven bag, as the truck passed her, the old woman turned her scarfed head to Jude and glowered at him. Would the secret police stop and question her on their way here?

Oxana leaned forward on the edge of her seat, craning her neck, scanning the world through the windows.

Jude studied the ground. Enough traffic had used the thoroughfare to conceal the tracks of the truck amongst grooves carved by other wheels in the snow.

Warm air blasted from the heater. Oxana pulled her gloves off and hood back, and unzipped her coat. "Can we go more fast?"

The sooner they reached their destination, the better, if his passenger plagued the journey with irritating questions. Did she think he tarried on purpose and wished to get caught? "I'm already racing through the half-gears. We're lucky the trailer's empty. And if it's not an impertinent question, where the hell are we going?"

"To safe place."

"So you keep saying -"

"What is impertinent?"

"You. Can you tell me nothing else about the place you're leading me to?"

Her silence prompted him to glance across the seats at her. She cast her gaze down to her feet, either in defiance or contemplation. "There is secret garden. Big hole in trees. In summer it is beautiful. I and my new family, we lived in factory. Until winter. Then it was too cold."

At last, some detail he could picture in his mind. "Was there no heating?"

"Not for us. We must pay like it is real factory and making things. Or we must go. Boss, Vitaly, he thinks we stop someone else using factory. But we have gone and still it is empty."

Did the local economy struggle? "So, nobody else can afford to rent the building?"

"People don't want to work there. Men with guns, they come and take their money. But, there is factory that cuts trees and makes wood. And now there are dogs. Bandits, they don't go there anymore."

Her words translated in his head as an industrial estate where protection rackets drove everybody out of business - except a sawmill which survived with the help of guard dogs.

"When we lived there, Katya, she came with Raisa and gave us food and clothes."

"Raisa? The psychologist? Psykolog?"

"Yes. She works at Homemakers. It is charity for street kids."

"The lady you want me to talk to about this child-modelling project?"

Oxana nodded as he stole a split-second glance in her direction.

"How far away is this place? Trucks are expensive to run, even with a tank full of cheap Ukrainian diesel." They headed south-west, facing the heart of Odessa. And Romania. The way home.

"Not far. Six or seven kilometres. Maybe nine. Or ten -."

"Whoa. Stop right there. We're heading towards the western border. That suits me. But I'm not driving more than twenty miles in any other direction. Only to double back when I go home."

Drowsiness rose through his head. He needed a drink. "My water's a few hours old but if you're thirsty you're welcome."

"Yes please."

A furtive swig soothed his throat. He passed her the litre-sized bottle.

The kid drank like she'd just trekked for three days across a desert. She lobbed the empty container into the waste bag on the floor. "If you help me, you will have blessing of Bojenya."

"Who?"

"My doll."

"A doll?"

My mother made her just for me," said Oxana. "Before I was born. Bojenya is protecting us because I am carrying her ring from her finger."

Oxana's yawning sigh drew his attention from the road to her face again. Gazing out of the passenger window, she leaned back in her seat as though she desired sleep.

"Oh no." In a flash she slid her body down, feet-first. Her head sank below the windows.

"What's wrong?"

A shape emerged from the shadows on the far left of the road. Into the beam of a street light rode a cyclist, dressed in a dark uniform and beaked cap. He skirted the edge of a crack of collapsed tarmac, heading in the opposite direction, towards the truck park. Jude and the rider caught each other's glance as he braked to ease the truck across the pothole.

Oxana inched herself back up in her seat, peered through the passenger window, then ducked again, as though she expected to draw sniper fire. "I think he saw me."

"I think he saw me. Who is the black rider? Police? Militsia?"

"No," said the kid. "He is guard of truck park And now he knows truck is British. Or he thinks little girl drives it."

"That's only in music videos. But you know him? He recognized you?"

"Yes. But only as hooker. He does not know who I am."

What the hell did she mean by that?

"Katya knows him more. She bribes him so that we can work there. On Sunday nights he works at docks. I don't know why he is here. But he will sell information of us. We must go more fast."

Together, they must amount to quite a bounty for any corrupt official hungry for a bribe. Logic dictated he should stop the truck and jettison the girl. But the mere thought froze his heart. Her unknown fate would never spare his conscience. And she looked up at him with those big green eyes of hers, like baby Emma's.

A flurry of snowflakes peppered the windscreen as Jude caught his gaze flitting from each wing mirror to the other, checking if anything followed the truck. But the view behind revealed only an empty street and the common sense of folk to stay inside their doors on a night like this.

"There are bars at right." Oxana lay below the window level as he stole her a glance, then surveyed the buildings lining the street. When they had passed an eerie of drab warehouses with boarded windows, a terrace on the right, lit with bright lights, shifted into focus as a parade of bars and restaurants. "Go into big road, before them."

"Must I listen to you instead of my stomach? And what about yours? When did you last eat?"

"Don't worry," said Oxana. "I will fix it."

He turned the truck on to a wide road - one half of a dual carriageway. Large green signs listing place names in Cyrillic letters hinted they headed out of the city. Multiple wheel tracks intertwined and merged in the snow, disguising the truck's trail.

"I think I must call Raisa," said Oxana, "And tell her what happened."

"Why Raisa?"

"Katya told, she follows car of secret police in her car. I will ask her about food." A high pitch of panic sharpened Oxana's voice on the phone as she spoke in Russian.

She switched to English in the same tone. "Raisa told, Katya is in taxi. They will meet us at factories. There we will eat. Raisa will check roads for militsia. But she must take care. Enemy must not find out she is spy, on our side."

"You make it sound like a war."

"It is. Secret war," said Oxana. "I am sorry."

The truck picked up speed on this new road but more snow hugged the surface. "I'm sure the war isn't your fault."

They flew past several junctions on both sides. Any car that pursued them would have more chances to make wrong choices. The drag and squeak of the lofty wipers eased into a snappier zip across the windscreen as the snowstorm intensified and ice crunched under the wheels.

"I mean, I am sorry because my head, it was not down inside truck, already, on street. Raisa, she is angry about this. But now we are off street. Always, I must hide, and look like somebody else. I hate hiding. One day I will show myself and scare them back."

Oxana's frustration brought to mind the guy who seemed to lie at the root of all her troubles. The one she called a big Power. "You can't carry on like this forever. Surely? Running and hiding, I mean, from this Stoichkov character. How long has this been going on?"

"For six months. But it will not be forever. It must not be. My sister, Layla, she gets worse in head. Raisa tries to help her. So many street kids, they are mad. They take drugs. They try to kill themselves." Her voice rose, amplified by passion. "We are going to change this country, Mister Jude. Then, Stoichkov will run and hide."

Changing a country sounded like a project that took a long time. Snow flung itself against the windscreen with vengeance, forcing him to slow the truck again. His head swam. Only the roughness of the road, the weather, and the tingle of cold adrenaline running up his spine, kept him from falling asleep. His wrists ached as his sweating hands gripped the steering wheel.

They approached two more rights, close together. A sharp turning, followed by a fork.

"Take right branch. That road there."

The right branch swung north-east. Flanked by flatlands that disappeared into the darkness on either side, the surface of the road imitated the Moon. Two craters forced him to skirt the truck round them, praying the verges would support its weight, as the sky unleashed torrents of snow in its path.

Once they reached the end of a long curve, to the right, and the road straightened, the fissures disappeared, and the furlongs passed with more speed beneath their feet. "Our wheel tracks are the only ones on the road now. If your enemies were behind us, they'd know a truck drove ahead of them."

Nothing had approached from behind on their whole journey - until now. Twin specks of light pierced the pitch blackness in the left wing mirror. Headlamps emerged from the last bend in the road. They grew larger. A car swung out to the left of the truck, as though to overtake it, revealing itself through the passenger window as a dark-coloured Lada.