(no subject)
so here are some fics that got started and will probably never ever get finished, just because i have no fucking idea where to go with them? lol, and no, gay thanksgiving is not in here, although it is lumped in with these.
aik.txt or how molotov's dead dad got so dead
Amidst the sad, patriotic music and the men who were trying not to let another death get to them, Brock stood far behind the crowd, watching them load the flag-draped casket into a plane. It'd be back in the States by noon tomorrow.
Brock couldn't see the men saluting. He couldn't hear the bugles. The plane's roar as it took off didn't register. He might has well have been on another planet.
All Brock could think of was how it had happened. He and Jackson, his partner, were patrolling that night. They were on the roof, having a smoke, making crude jokes and laughing. A normal night. They both finished their cigarettes, and with a wave of his hand, Jackson signaled that they should go back in.
Brock headed for the door.
He'd only taken three steps, maybe four, when he heard the gun fire. He spun on his heel, but he was too late. The bullet ripped through Jackson's forehead, spraying tiny fragments of bone and brain as Jackson fell to the ground. The blood splattered in droplets across Brock's face and chest as he watched in horror.
There was pause, a delay in Brock's reaction, one that took only a second in reality, but forever in his memory, before he raced to Jackson, who was laying face down on gravel. Scooping up his partner, Brock could see that the man was already dead.
His head spun as he looked towards where the shot had come from. On a roof across the street, he could see a sniper rifle. He could also see the red hair of the person staring through the scope.
All he could do was watch wordlessly as Molotov stood up, grinned wolfishly at him, waggled her fingers and walked away. After a moment's delay, Brock ran down fifteen flights of stairs, but he only made it in time to watch her disappear down the road at one hundred eighty miles per hour. He knew because she took his assigned car. The tracking system lay on the ground at his feet.
--
After the plane carrying Jackson's corpse was well out of sight, Brock still could not think of much beyond red lips and boots. Men came from out of the woodwork to talk to him, their idle conversation saying that it wasn't his fault, in an indirect way.
Brock wasn't worried that he had let his partner down. He knew that, honestly, there was nothing he could have done, even had the situation been different. He wasn't even sure there was something he would have done.
He did know, however, that if Molotov Cocktease wanted someone dead, they would die.
Brock could play that game too.
Consumed with hatred and a desire for vengeance that he couldn't have, Brock took to watching surveillance footage over and over again, watching for anything, a tiny chink in her gorgeous armour, absolutely anything he could take and exploit and make her pay with.
Three months later, he found what he was looking for, though not in the way he thought he would. Every agent in the area was called in to watch newly-obtained footage of KGB activity. It was a fairly standard procedure, or at any rate, it happened often enough - the men would troop in at 0500, yawning and bleary, listen to one Captain or another yell, and then they'd watch flickering, static-filled film of known KGB agents going about one thing or another.
That morning was different. The faces in the footage were familiar enough to Brock; he only knew the names of a few of the Soviets shown, but there was something that caught his eye, something new and momentary.
The American men were always astounded at how often the Soviet agents were alone. Occasionally there would be a pair of people, partners or something similar, but generally the footage that the OSI had managed to get was of lone agents in disguise, or staring through telescopic sights in windows. Molotov would sometimes show up, usually leaving the scene of some horrible destruction - she commonly drew whispered hoots from the crowd.
That morning, however, she wasn't running down a hallway, shooting cameras, or walking calmly away from a TNT detonator. She was sitting on a rooftop with binoculars, and as the film jumped and shook, a man brought her a cup of something. She smiled just the tiniest bit, and then was replaced with a man in night-vision goggles who was aiming a grenade at a car.
Brock stared at the screen. He continued staring long after the film had stopped and the screen was white. As the men left the room, Brock remained sitting, arms crossed, deep in concentration.
Hunter approached him. "Samson! What's wrong with you? Don't you have anything to do?! Don't make me put you on kitchen duty."
"Yeah, yeah," Brock answered, looking at the raving man. He stood up, and grabbed the film from the projector. Hunter watched him. As Brock walked down the hallway, he wondered if Hunter knew what was going on.
--
Brock stormed into the Intel department, and slammed the film canister down on a desk. The secretary looked up at him, annoyed.
"I need information on one of the agents in this footage," Brock informed the secretary. "There's a man who hands a female KGB agent a cup. I need to know who the man is."
"I assure you, agent, that I do not have time to memorize every agent on every piece of film I get," the secretary answered irritably. "You're more than welcome to search through those files and figure it out for yourself." With a vague wave towards some filing cabinets, the secretary returned to typing.
Brock grabbed him by the tie. "If I knew where to look, I wouldn't need you. Now, are you gonna help me or not?"
Far from being terrified, the secretary rolled his eyes and gave a sigh. "Fine, fine, put the film on."
They watched through the quavering footage. When Molotov and the man were on screen, Brock stopped the projector.
"That man," he said, pointing to the figure. "Who is that handing Cocktease that drink?"
The secretary squinted at the screen, and then propelled his chair towards the filing cabinets. The wheels on the chair squeaked loudly.
After a few moments of groaning metal and papers being shuffled, the secretary reappeared, with a manila folder. "Cocktease, Molotov," he read. "She doesn't have any known partners, and we don't have her down as having any kind of male associates, romantic or otherwise."
Brock didn't comment.
"All we have," the secretary continued, oblivious to Brock's reaction. "In terms of any male influence directly on her, is that she was brought into the KGB by an agent Alpha India Kilo, and that she was trained by Shtolnisky, who was killed last year." He dropped the file on the desk. "You can look through the file if you want, but I think it's just someone she told to get her some coffee."
Brock returned his eyes to the screen, where Molotov was frozen in a smile, hand outstretched to take the cup.
"We don't have any intel on Alpha India Kilo?" he asked, repeating the phonetic initials, not looking away from Molotov.
The secretary reached into a much closer filing cabinet. "I have an Aleksandr India, but no full middle or last name and no picture."
Still staring at the screen, Brock examined the man. He was tall and dark-haired, with a moustache. He was vaguely familiar, though Brock could not imagine from where.
"Can you print this frame for me?" he asked softly. The secretary obliged. While his back was turned, Brock pocketed the file on Aleksandr India.
--
That night, Brock sat up in his bunk long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He read the file on Aleksandr India over and over again. It was only a half-page long, short even by the standards of the OSI's files on enemy agents, and most of it was known sightings.
There was nothing to signal that this was indeed the man that had been with Molotov, but on the other hand, there was nothing to signal that it wasn't. Brock sighed, frustrated, and picked up the printed frame from the footage.
He tried to read her eyes. He couldn't. He was terrible with emotions anyway.
Brock switched his tactics, tried to list what he could discern from the picture.This wasn't a paramour, he was sure of that; the man was much older than her, and besides, Brock wasn't certain that Molotov was even capable of maintaining a normal relationship. Could it be that she had a partner who'd never been noticed before?
Brock kept looking at her eyes, at her hand, at the quirk of smile she was wearing.
An hour later, he fell asleep with the exact same amount of answers he'd had to begin with.
--
blehh.txt or what would have been tree makeouts
It was dusk. Brock finished tying the carcass of his meal to the spit and sat down to watch it cook. Thank god for sabbatical, he thought idly, watching blood drip into the fire. The woods were quiet except for the crackling of the fire and the crickets chirping.
This was exactly what he needed: a moment away from the henchmen and the crazy situations, but also from the sheer mundane aspect of being the Ventures' bodyguard. It was hard to be the one who made sure everyone got fed everyday for so long without a break. And so, every year for one weekend, Brock left, took a break, whatever his sabbatical actually was.
An escape.
Brock was staring into the flames, thinking about nothing. There was the sound of a branch breaking to his left. Head snapping to the side, Brock took out his knife. A tiny voice in his head said that it was nothing, probably just a squirrel or a deer. The military part of his brain squashed the voice flat. He threw his knife, then followed it. A rabbit. Brock bent over and removed his weapon from the dead animal.
--
part of a part of something?.txt or fighting in minsk
Brock squinted, then tried to push his way through the crowd. It was her walk that he first noticed, such a familiar walk. He couldn't place the black hair, or the big sunglasses, but somewhere in the back of his head, Brock knew that particular saunter. He followed her for a minute or two, unable to break through the throng of people, or to place the woman.
She turned her head just enough to see him in her peripheral vision. He caught the tiniest glimpse of green in the side of her sunglasses before she took off running, breaking through the mob. Brock lost all sense of common courtesy and followed her, shoving civilians to the side.
He lost her halfway down Krasnaya Street. Stopping near an empty alleyway, Brock bent over, hands on his thighs, and tried to catch his breath. He had just stood back up, ready to go back to the street festival, when she swung out on a rusted fire escape ladder. The ladder cracked and broke off, flying over Brock's head, and she flipped in midair, landing on her feet in a krav maga stance, a weapon in each hand. She smiled darkly at him. The ladder crashed onto the pavement behind her.
"You were a redhead when I met you," Brock said lightly, sliding into a boxing stance.
"You were a Frenchman," she replied simply. She didn't take off the wig.
"Ready?"
"Always."
Molotov threw a dagger directly at Brock's face. He caught it easily, but she used the distraction to charge at him. Her shoulder landed square in his lung. She planted her hands on his shoulders and vaulted herself into the air. He grabbed her wrist and threw her into the side of a building.
Trying to catch his breath, Brock moved to where she had landed in a heap, covered in dust. Molotov's head was down, and her legs were covered in bleeding scrapes from the brick wall. He grabbed the wig and pulled it off, tossing it behind him.
"I like your real hair better," he informed her.
Her arm shot out, and then there was a knife in his calf. Brock let out a howl of pain as Molotov swung her leg at his ankles, knocking him over. He took a breath and yanked the blade from his tibialis as she pinned him.
"Do you?"
She pulled a pistol from her cleavage and pressed it to his Adam's apple. Both were still for a moment, then Brock rolled them, putting himself on top. He held the knife's edge to her abdomen. The gun stayed at his neck.
"Yeah."
--
BUT I FEEL BAD GIVING YOU PEOPLE UNFINISHED STUFF, so here is something i wrote about molotov at borders like, months ago... i have no idea which of you have seen this, btw.
blahblah.txt or yeah, molotov has always been a stone cold bitch
There was much whispering going around the KGB training compound that November morning. Molotov had been awoken two hours early by Major Shtolnisky, who claimed she was needed, that it was the final day of her training. In the auditorium, Molotov sat grumpily, listening to the Chief Marshal's official morning address. Mere moments after he left the room, she was yanked into a closet by her father.
"Devotchka," her father started, using the closest to a term of endearment he ever had. Molotov instantly knew that the day would not be particularly pleasant. "You cannot refuse what you will be ordered to do. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Then go brush your teeth and meet me in the courtyard."
Molotov scrambled out of the closet, and back to her bunk. Down the hall, a radio was playing - a woman cheerfully singing about the joys of love. The happy tone of the music was in direct contrast with the compound's overall mood.
Molotov did not like it one bit.
After brushing her teeth and pulling her hair back, she sped to the courtyard, where her father, and all the high-ranking officials were standing in the snow. They were arranged in a circle, backs towards her. She could not see what they were surrounding.
"Here I am," she called hesitantly. All of the men turned to look at her, and a soft rumble emerged from the circle. They were excited, she could tell.
Shtolnisky stepped out of the circle and stood in front of her. Shtolnisky had personally trained Molotov, had become family to her, but his normally jovial face was set in a grim expression.
"Molotov Aleksandrovna," he said loudly. "Today is your last day as the daughter of Aleksandr Ivanovich."
She glanced at her father, his green eyes staring down at her from his place in the circle.
"If you pass your final test on this morning," Shtolnisky continued. "You will become a daughter of the party. Do you understand?"
Molotov nodded stonily.
"Then we proceed. Your final test is one of loyalty - loyalty to your country and to your government."
He handed her a gun. The circle opened. On the ground knelt three people, clearly a family: mother, father and child. They wore black hoods.
"These people have been convicted of crimes against your nation. You are to execute them."
The hoods were removed, and a soft gasp escaped her. The family was that of her former gymnastics coach. His daughter, who was looking pleadingly up at Molotov, had been a teammate.
"Molotov, on the count of three," the Major announced.
She stared at the people on the ground, people who had taken her in and treated her as one of their own.
She aimed her weapon.
"One."
The girl kneeling on the ground let out a sob behind her gag.
"Two."
The muffled pleading was growing. Molotov felt a twinge of adrenaline surge through her.
"Three."
And within seconds, there were three matching trails of scarlet staining the snow. The officers who were standing behind the family glanced at their shoes, checking to make sure that there was no blood on the shiny leather.
As Molotov lowered her weapon slowly, cheers of congratulations and happiness rose through the group of military men, who came to surround her, to pat her on the back and head and tell her how proud they all were.
Molotov stared at the holes in her friends' heads.
"Are you all right?" Shtolnisky whispered in her ear. Her father was across the courtyard, grinning at the men who were loudly telling him what a fine daughter he had.
Molotov returned her eyes to the Major. "I'm hungry," she announced calmly. "Let's go eat." Shtolnisky smiled at her, and they walked together to the cafeteria.
She was sixteen, and had just become one of the youngest full agents in the KGB.
aik.txt or how molotov's dead dad got so dead
Amidst the sad, patriotic music and the men who were trying not to let another death get to them, Brock stood far behind the crowd, watching them load the flag-draped casket into a plane. It'd be back in the States by noon tomorrow.
Brock couldn't see the men saluting. He couldn't hear the bugles. The plane's roar as it took off didn't register. He might has well have been on another planet.
All Brock could think of was how it had happened. He and Jackson, his partner, were patrolling that night. They were on the roof, having a smoke, making crude jokes and laughing. A normal night. They both finished their cigarettes, and with a wave of his hand, Jackson signaled that they should go back in.
Brock headed for the door.
He'd only taken three steps, maybe four, when he heard the gun fire. He spun on his heel, but he was too late. The bullet ripped through Jackson's forehead, spraying tiny fragments of bone and brain as Jackson fell to the ground. The blood splattered in droplets across Brock's face and chest as he watched in horror.
There was pause, a delay in Brock's reaction, one that took only a second in reality, but forever in his memory, before he raced to Jackson, who was laying face down on gravel. Scooping up his partner, Brock could see that the man was already dead.
His head spun as he looked towards where the shot had come from. On a roof across the street, he could see a sniper rifle. He could also see the red hair of the person staring through the scope.
All he could do was watch wordlessly as Molotov stood up, grinned wolfishly at him, waggled her fingers and walked away. After a moment's delay, Brock ran down fifteen flights of stairs, but he only made it in time to watch her disappear down the road at one hundred eighty miles per hour. He knew because she took his assigned car. The tracking system lay on the ground at his feet.
--
After the plane carrying Jackson's corpse was well out of sight, Brock still could not think of much beyond red lips and boots. Men came from out of the woodwork to talk to him, their idle conversation saying that it wasn't his fault, in an indirect way.
Brock wasn't worried that he had let his partner down. He knew that, honestly, there was nothing he could have done, even had the situation been different. He wasn't even sure there was something he would have done.
He did know, however, that if Molotov Cocktease wanted someone dead, they would die.
Brock could play that game too.
Consumed with hatred and a desire for vengeance that he couldn't have, Brock took to watching surveillance footage over and over again, watching for anything, a tiny chink in her gorgeous armour, absolutely anything he could take and exploit and make her pay with.
Three months later, he found what he was looking for, though not in the way he thought he would. Every agent in the area was called in to watch newly-obtained footage of KGB activity. It was a fairly standard procedure, or at any rate, it happened often enough - the men would troop in at 0500, yawning and bleary, listen to one Captain or another yell, and then they'd watch flickering, static-filled film of known KGB agents going about one thing or another.
That morning was different. The faces in the footage were familiar enough to Brock; he only knew the names of a few of the Soviets shown, but there was something that caught his eye, something new and momentary.
The American men were always astounded at how often the Soviet agents were alone. Occasionally there would be a pair of people, partners or something similar, but generally the footage that the OSI had managed to get was of lone agents in disguise, or staring through telescopic sights in windows. Molotov would sometimes show up, usually leaving the scene of some horrible destruction - she commonly drew whispered hoots from the crowd.
That morning, however, she wasn't running down a hallway, shooting cameras, or walking calmly away from a TNT detonator. She was sitting on a rooftop with binoculars, and as the film jumped and shook, a man brought her a cup of something. She smiled just the tiniest bit, and then was replaced with a man in night-vision goggles who was aiming a grenade at a car.
Brock stared at the screen. He continued staring long after the film had stopped and the screen was white. As the men left the room, Brock remained sitting, arms crossed, deep in concentration.
Hunter approached him. "Samson! What's wrong with you? Don't you have anything to do?! Don't make me put you on kitchen duty."
"Yeah, yeah," Brock answered, looking at the raving man. He stood up, and grabbed the film from the projector. Hunter watched him. As Brock walked down the hallway, he wondered if Hunter knew what was going on.
--
Brock stormed into the Intel department, and slammed the film canister down on a desk. The secretary looked up at him, annoyed.
"I need information on one of the agents in this footage," Brock informed the secretary. "There's a man who hands a female KGB agent a cup. I need to know who the man is."
"I assure you, agent, that I do not have time to memorize every agent on every piece of film I get," the secretary answered irritably. "You're more than welcome to search through those files and figure it out for yourself." With a vague wave towards some filing cabinets, the secretary returned to typing.
Brock grabbed him by the tie. "If I knew where to look, I wouldn't need you. Now, are you gonna help me or not?"
Far from being terrified, the secretary rolled his eyes and gave a sigh. "Fine, fine, put the film on."
They watched through the quavering footage. When Molotov and the man were on screen, Brock stopped the projector.
"That man," he said, pointing to the figure. "Who is that handing Cocktease that drink?"
The secretary squinted at the screen, and then propelled his chair towards the filing cabinets. The wheels on the chair squeaked loudly.
After a few moments of groaning metal and papers being shuffled, the secretary reappeared, with a manila folder. "Cocktease, Molotov," he read. "She doesn't have any known partners, and we don't have her down as having any kind of male associates, romantic or otherwise."
Brock didn't comment.
"All we have," the secretary continued, oblivious to Brock's reaction. "In terms of any male influence directly on her, is that she was brought into the KGB by an agent Alpha India Kilo, and that she was trained by Shtolnisky, who was killed last year." He dropped the file on the desk. "You can look through the file if you want, but I think it's just someone she told to get her some coffee."
Brock returned his eyes to the screen, where Molotov was frozen in a smile, hand outstretched to take the cup.
"We don't have any intel on Alpha India Kilo?" he asked, repeating the phonetic initials, not looking away from Molotov.
The secretary reached into a much closer filing cabinet. "I have an Aleksandr India, but no full middle or last name and no picture."
Still staring at the screen, Brock examined the man. He was tall and dark-haired, with a moustache. He was vaguely familiar, though Brock could not imagine from where.
"Can you print this frame for me?" he asked softly. The secretary obliged. While his back was turned, Brock pocketed the file on Aleksandr India.
--
That night, Brock sat up in his bunk long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He read the file on Aleksandr India over and over again. It was only a half-page long, short even by the standards of the OSI's files on enemy agents, and most of it was known sightings.
There was nothing to signal that this was indeed the man that had been with Molotov, but on the other hand, there was nothing to signal that it wasn't. Brock sighed, frustrated, and picked up the printed frame from the footage.
He tried to read her eyes. He couldn't. He was terrible with emotions anyway.
Brock switched his tactics, tried to list what he could discern from the picture.This wasn't a paramour, he was sure of that; the man was much older than her, and besides, Brock wasn't certain that Molotov was even capable of maintaining a normal relationship. Could it be that she had a partner who'd never been noticed before?
Brock kept looking at her eyes, at her hand, at the quirk of smile she was wearing.
An hour later, he fell asleep with the exact same amount of answers he'd had to begin with.
--
blehh.txt or what would have been tree makeouts
It was dusk. Brock finished tying the carcass of his meal to the spit and sat down to watch it cook. Thank god for sabbatical, he thought idly, watching blood drip into the fire. The woods were quiet except for the crackling of the fire and the crickets chirping.
This was exactly what he needed: a moment away from the henchmen and the crazy situations, but also from the sheer mundane aspect of being the Ventures' bodyguard. It was hard to be the one who made sure everyone got fed everyday for so long without a break. And so, every year for one weekend, Brock left, took a break, whatever his sabbatical actually was.
An escape.
Brock was staring into the flames, thinking about nothing. There was the sound of a branch breaking to his left. Head snapping to the side, Brock took out his knife. A tiny voice in his head said that it was nothing, probably just a squirrel or a deer. The military part of his brain squashed the voice flat. He threw his knife, then followed it. A rabbit. Brock bent over and removed his weapon from the dead animal.
--
part of a part of something?.txt or fighting in minsk
Brock squinted, then tried to push his way through the crowd. It was her walk that he first noticed, such a familiar walk. He couldn't place the black hair, or the big sunglasses, but somewhere in the back of his head, Brock knew that particular saunter. He followed her for a minute or two, unable to break through the throng of people, or to place the woman.
She turned her head just enough to see him in her peripheral vision. He caught the tiniest glimpse of green in the side of her sunglasses before she took off running, breaking through the mob. Brock lost all sense of common courtesy and followed her, shoving civilians to the side.
He lost her halfway down Krasnaya Street. Stopping near an empty alleyway, Brock bent over, hands on his thighs, and tried to catch his breath. He had just stood back up, ready to go back to the street festival, when she swung out on a rusted fire escape ladder. The ladder cracked and broke off, flying over Brock's head, and she flipped in midair, landing on her feet in a krav maga stance, a weapon in each hand. She smiled darkly at him. The ladder crashed onto the pavement behind her.
"You were a redhead when I met you," Brock said lightly, sliding into a boxing stance.
"You were a Frenchman," she replied simply. She didn't take off the wig.
"Ready?"
"Always."
Molotov threw a dagger directly at Brock's face. He caught it easily, but she used the distraction to charge at him. Her shoulder landed square in his lung. She planted her hands on his shoulders and vaulted herself into the air. He grabbed her wrist and threw her into the side of a building.
Trying to catch his breath, Brock moved to where she had landed in a heap, covered in dust. Molotov's head was down, and her legs were covered in bleeding scrapes from the brick wall. He grabbed the wig and pulled it off, tossing it behind him.
"I like your real hair better," he informed her.
Her arm shot out, and then there was a knife in his calf. Brock let out a howl of pain as Molotov swung her leg at his ankles, knocking him over. He took a breath and yanked the blade from his tibialis as she pinned him.
"Do you?"
She pulled a pistol from her cleavage and pressed it to his Adam's apple. Both were still for a moment, then Brock rolled them, putting himself on top. He held the knife's edge to her abdomen. The gun stayed at his neck.
"Yeah."
--
BUT I FEEL BAD GIVING YOU PEOPLE UNFINISHED STUFF, so here is something i wrote about molotov at borders like, months ago... i have no idea which of you have seen this, btw.
blahblah.txt or yeah, molotov has always been a stone cold bitch
There was much whispering going around the KGB training compound that November morning. Molotov had been awoken two hours early by Major Shtolnisky, who claimed she was needed, that it was the final day of her training. In the auditorium, Molotov sat grumpily, listening to the Chief Marshal's official morning address. Mere moments after he left the room, she was yanked into a closet by her father.
"Devotchka," her father started, using the closest to a term of endearment he ever had. Molotov instantly knew that the day would not be particularly pleasant. "You cannot refuse what you will be ordered to do. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Then go brush your teeth and meet me in the courtyard."
Molotov scrambled out of the closet, and back to her bunk. Down the hall, a radio was playing - a woman cheerfully singing about the joys of love. The happy tone of the music was in direct contrast with the compound's overall mood.
Molotov did not like it one bit.
After brushing her teeth and pulling her hair back, she sped to the courtyard, where her father, and all the high-ranking officials were standing in the snow. They were arranged in a circle, backs towards her. She could not see what they were surrounding.
"Here I am," she called hesitantly. All of the men turned to look at her, and a soft rumble emerged from the circle. They were excited, she could tell.
Shtolnisky stepped out of the circle and stood in front of her. Shtolnisky had personally trained Molotov, had become family to her, but his normally jovial face was set in a grim expression.
"Molotov Aleksandrovna," he said loudly. "Today is your last day as the daughter of Aleksandr Ivanovich."
She glanced at her father, his green eyes staring down at her from his place in the circle.
"If you pass your final test on this morning," Shtolnisky continued. "You will become a daughter of the party. Do you understand?"
Molotov nodded stonily.
"Then we proceed. Your final test is one of loyalty - loyalty to your country and to your government."
He handed her a gun. The circle opened. On the ground knelt three people, clearly a family: mother, father and child. They wore black hoods.
"These people have been convicted of crimes against your nation. You are to execute them."
The hoods were removed, and a soft gasp escaped her. The family was that of her former gymnastics coach. His daughter, who was looking pleadingly up at Molotov, had been a teammate.
"Molotov, on the count of three," the Major announced.
She stared at the people on the ground, people who had taken her in and treated her as one of their own.
She aimed her weapon.
"One."
The girl kneeling on the ground let out a sob behind her gag.
"Two."
The muffled pleading was growing. Molotov felt a twinge of adrenaline surge through her.
"Three."
And within seconds, there were three matching trails of scarlet staining the snow. The officers who were standing behind the family glanced at their shoes, checking to make sure that there was no blood on the shiny leather.
As Molotov lowered her weapon slowly, cheers of congratulations and happiness rose through the group of military men, who came to surround her, to pat her on the back and head and tell her how proud they all were.
Molotov stared at the holes in her friends' heads.
"Are you all right?" Shtolnisky whispered in her ear. Her father was across the courtyard, grinning at the men who were loudly telling him what a fine daughter he had.
Molotov returned her eyes to the Major. "I'm hungry," she announced calmly. "Let's go eat." Shtolnisky smiled at her, and they walked together to the cafeteria.
She was sixteen, and had just become one of the youngest full agents in the KGB.