Cold War

Chapter 11

Lieutenant Ligacheva watched out the window of the military transport plane as the lights of Moscow slowly faded in the distance.

General Ponomarenko had thought he was punishing her by sending her back to Assyma, she was certain. He had almost said as much. Sending her back to the cold and the darkness and the monster that had slain her men-of course that was a punishment, was it not?

If the general thought so, then the general was a fool-at least in that regard.

This was no punishment. She was a soldier, something that Ponomarenko seemed to find impossible to believe, and a soldier’s first priority was duty. Assyma was unquestionably where her duty lay. Assyma was where the men she had worked with for the past two months were still in danger from whatever was out there on the ice.

She was a soldier, sworn to defend her people, and those people at Pumping Station #12 were her people. Moscow had sent them out there and forgotten them watching the pipeline was just another necessary but worthless job that had to be done, and the men sent to do it were nothing to their commanders back in the capital.

But they were everything to Ligacheva. Ponomarenko couldn’t have stopped her from returning if he had tried; it would merely have taken her longer.

She turned her gaze to what lay ahead of the plane. She could see nothing out there but haze and darkness. Somewhere ahead of her was Assyma. Somewhere out there were her home, her post, her duty-and whatever it was that had slaughtered her squad.

She stared into the darkness and wondered what Galyshev and the others she had left behind were doing about the killer out there in the night.

At that moment, in the science station of the complex at Assyma, Galyshev was leaning over Sobchak, once again angrily demanding answers to the questions he needed to ask, questions he couldn’t put clearly into words, questions that Sobchak understood anyway-and questions that Sobchak, much as he wanted to, couldn’t answer.

”I tell you, Galyshev, I don’t know what happened to the squad,” Sobchak repeated. “You were there when the villagers brought the lieutenant in, and when they came to pick her up-you know as much as I do.”

”NO,” Galyshev said. “You spoke to Moscow on the radio. They asked for you.”

”But they didn’t tell me anything! They just asked questions.”

”They didn’t tell you anything?”

”Only that they had flown the lieutenant straight to Moscow for questioning, they told me that much, and they said they’d send more men back with her, but that’s all they said, I swear it!”

”That’s not good enough!” Galyshev raged, slamming a gloved fist against the concrete wall. “You sent for Lieutenant Ligacheva, Sobchak! You told her about something out there, she took the squad to investigate it, and no one came back! Now, tell me what you sent her there to find! What’s out there, Sobchak?”

”I don’t know! I told you, I had seismic readings, radiation readings, and I sent her to find out what caused them! I don’t know!”

”You don’t just lose an army squad, Sobchak, not even out here,” Galyshev insisted. “They had the truck, the truck had a radio, they had plenty of weapons and fuel. What happened to them?”

”I don’t know!” Sobchak was almost weeping. “The authorities wouldn’t tell me anything! All they told me was that the whole squad was gone, and the lieutenant was on her way to Moscow!”

”Gone? How, gone? Where, gone? Are they dead, are they kidnapped?”

Sobchak turned up his empty hands and shook his head. “Ya nye znayu – I don’t know,” he said again.

Galyshev glared at him. Sobchak was sweating, but he kept it so warm in this room of his that Galyshev couldn’t be sure whether that was nervousness or just because Sobchak was overheated.

If Sobchak got really scared, he might start babbling or break down completely; that wouldn’t help. Even through his anger, Galyshev could see that. He tried to force himself to be calm and reasonable.

”Listen, Sobchak,” he said. “The men are frightened, and I can’t blame them. There’s talk of a strike, of shutting down the pumps-tell me something I can use to calm them down, to ease their fears of whatever’s out there.”

”Out there?” Sobchak asked. He laughed nervously, recovering himself somewhat, and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “I would be afraid of Moscow, and what they’ll do to whoever they choose to blame for this, not of what Ligacheva went to investigate. Yes, there was something out there, something that registered on the seismograph, something hot, something radioactive-but it’s out there, whatever it is, out in the snow, it’s not in here. The walls are concrete, the doors are steel-what are the men scared of, Galyshev, ghosts? Are they children?”

Galyshev’s temper snapped. He was a big man, he’d worked his way up from the construction crews that built the pipeline; he grabbed the dirty white lapels of Sobchak’s lab coat and lifted. The scientist came up out of his seat and hung in Galyshev’s grip like a rag doll.

”Damn you to hell, Sobchak!” Galyshev growled. “Locked in here with your papers and your manuals and your meters you haven’t felt it, but the rest of us have!” He shook Sobchak as a terrier shakes a rat. “There’s something out there, Sobchak! We all know it, we’ve sensed it. It’s out there, watching and waiting. It took the squad, I know it did-dead or alive I can’t say, but it took them, whatever it is. And steel doors or not, it might try for us!”

”You’re mad,” Sobchak gasped.

Galyshev flung the scientist back into his chair. “Mad?” he said. “Maybe I am. But if I’m not, then there’s something out there, and it’s not going to stop with the soldiers. Sooner or later, it’s coming for all of us!”

”That’s ridiculous!” Sobchak said. “Ridiculous! There is something out there, Galyshev, or there was-but it’s not some arctic ghost monster come to eat us all in our beds. My best guess is that it’s an American plane or satellite, down on the ice.”

”Americans?” Galyshev straightened, startled. “What would Americans want here?”

”Who knows?” Sobchak replied. “But the impact of a downed plane, a large one, would account for the seismic disturbance. Burning fuel could have been responsible for the heat, and who knows what might have caused the radiation, eh? Isn’t something like that far more likely than your ghosts that walk through walls?”

Galyshev considered that. “And the missing soldiers?” he asked.

Sobchak shrugged. “Ambushed by the Americans, perhaps, or caught in an explosion…”

Galyshev frowned. “Was there an explosion?” He gestured at the seismographs and other equipment.

”Well… well, it’s hard to be sure,” Sobchak said, which Galyshev immediately realized meant there was no evidence of any explosion. “The storm distorted the readings. But there might have been one, I can’t tell. A small one.”

Galyshev glared at Sobchak. “You believe this?” he demanded.

Sobchak let out his breath in a deep sigh. “I told you, Galyshev, I don’t know. I am a scientist-I believe what I can see, what I can demonstrate, I take nothing on faith. This idea about downed Americans is my best hypothesis, but I have no way to test it, not until the storm stops and Lieutenant Ligacheva returns with more soldiers.”

”Very well,” Galyshev said, turning away. “I accept that you do not know what is out there, that it might be American spies. You will watch your dials and gauges then, Sobchak, and you will tell me at once anything you learn. And if you speak to the authorities again, or anyone else, you will tell me that, as well. Now, I’ll try to calm the men, to get us all back to work.”

”Very good,” Sobchak said primly as he began reconstructing his customary calm detachment. “Thank you, Galyshev.”

Galyshev marched out through the barren anteroom of the scientific station and back down the corridor toward the rest of the complex. After the damp heat of Sobchak’s hideaway the cool air of the passage was like a bracing shower, clearing away the fog.

The men wouldn’t like this, that the authorities had said nothing. They would be pleased to hear that more soldiers were coming, perhaps less pleased to hear that the cocky young Lieutenant Ligacheva was returning with them-the men liked her well enough, and Galyshev included himself in that, but they still had doubts about her abilities. She was still very young for an officer, and despite her efforts to prove herself any man’s equal, she was still a woman, though admittedly perhaps an exceptional one. The men might well have preferred a more experienced, more authoritative officer in charge, and Galyshev wouldn’t blame them for it if they did.

As for the rest of it, they might or might not accept Sobchak’s guess that it was a crew of downed Americans who were responsible for the squad’s disappearance. While it might be the most logical explanation, it didn’t feel right to him, and Galyshev knew the others would think the same.

He could feel the cold seeping into the corridor through the concrete walls as he walked. He even thought he could hear the wind howling overhead.

Why would Americans venture into this white wasteland, this frozen corner of hell? Americans were soft creatures who lived in warm, easy places like Florida and California; why would they ever leave their sunny homes to come to this cold, bleak land of months-long nights?

It was almost easier to believe in arctic ghosts.