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of the car bathed in the headlights in the middle of the frozen night. The engine was still going, the heater providing whatever inadequate warmth a Lada could. Inga began mumbling nervously to Tatiana. She didn’t like this. Not in the middle of nowhere, not with Americans, especially this unfriendly man who was driving them. Vasily had told her the story about the drunk American on one of the trips he periodically took and how the Americans think of Russians as the enemy, as—she couldn’t remember the exact words Vasily had told her the American used. “ They are the enemy,” she whispered to Tatiana. “It is they who are the dogs with no souls.”
    â€œWhere are you going, Mamma?” said Tatiana as Inga began to stir out of the back seat.
    â€œHere,” she said as she struggled to slide over the back of the forward seat, shifting into the driver’s seat. The headlights still illuminated Vasily and their driver standing in front of the car. Vasily was standing on the left, closer to and facing Inga, Their driver, was on the right, with his back to Inga and Tatiana.
    Inga, mumbling to Tatiana, to herself, that one must always be careful of Americans, silently stepped on the clutch and slipped the car into first gear. The driver’s door of the other car began to open behind Vasily. He did not see, although Inga did, that the driver of that car was holding a pistol. She also saw their own driver reach into the right hand pocket of his coat and began to withdraw a dark, shiny, metal object.
    Inga did not cough now. When the man emerging from the other car stood up behind Vasily and raised his arm with a weapon in hand, Inga, instantly, blew the horn, simultaneously, mashing the accelerator pedal to the floorboard and turning the steering wheel to the right. All three men in the road began to turn as the car lurched forward. Inga missed Vasily, hitting their American driver directly in the back of his legs, hard, sending him flying into the air. The car continued forward and pushed the man from the other car against the side of that car. They heard an agonized scream as the man’s eyes went wild with pain. He was barely four feet from them, pinned by the hood of their car, unable to move, glaring with hate and pain directly into the dark interior of their car. Inga kept her foot on the accelerator, the wheels spinning on the frozen road, grinding their car into that American dog who would shoot her husband, until she pushed the other car off the road.
    Vasily opened the rear door and jumped in beside Tatiana as Inga shifted into reverse gear. The wheels of their car spun again as the car tore backwards at the ground. The man who had been pinned to the other car, fell to the snow covered ground, rolling, screaming in blood and pain.
    Inga pushed the gear shift lever forward, ground the gears, cursed, depressed the clutch again, shifted into first gear, and stepped on the accelerator. The man who had been their driver appeared on his knees near the front of the other car, now aiming a pistol at them. Tatiana saw his thin, long face, reddish hair, hate in his eyes. Inga drove right at him. He threw himself backward, as the car lunged forward. She turned the wheel, fish tailed on the icy road several times, and sped in the direction of the border.
    Shots rang out from behind them as Inga ground the gears and up-shifted. A bullet ripped through the rear window of the car. Inga started screaming and praying as she drove, shouting to Vasily to protect Tatiana.
    â€œChange gears, change gears,” Vasily shouted from the floor of the back seat. He was laying on top of Tatiana.
    Inga shifted gears again as the car picked up speed, plunging into the night.
    â€œShift gears again,” said Vasily. He raised his head to look behind them. They were putting distance between themselves and the lights of the other vehicle that seemed to still be off the road, not moving.
    In three