Cold War

Chapter 19

The lieutenant who approached the Americans with an AK-47 at the ready was small, even in the bulky Russian Army greatcoat, but it wasn’t until she lifted her snow goggles that Schaefer realized he was facing a woman.

”You are under arrest,” she repeated.

”I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Schaefer said in Russian.

”But I do,” the Russian lieutenant said, switching to her native tongue. “You speak Russian. I’m impressed. But whatever language you use, you’re still trespassing. American soldiers in full gear, here in the Motherland, tearing up our installations? It won’t do.”

”We didn’t tear up anything,” Schaefer replied.

The lieutenant jerked her head at the door.

”You didn’t tear up that door? What did you use, a grenade?”

”We didn’t do that,” Schaefer insisted. “We found it like that. Listen, your countrymen in there are all dead. We’ll all be dead if we don’t cooperate.”

”Dead?” The lieutenant’s voice caught for a moment; then she continued, “If you are telling the truth, and my friends are all dead, I’ll kill you last.” She shoved the AK-47 in Schaefer’s face.

He backed off a step.

”Look for yourself,” he said.

The lieutenant glared up at him for a moment, then said, “We will.” She shifted her grip so that she held the assault rifle with one hand while she beckoned with the other. “Steshin!” she called. “Take a look in there!”

The man she called Steshin ran up and past her, past the cornered Americans, and through the ruined door into the pumping station. Schaefer could hear the sudden heavy thudding of his boots as the soldier’s feet hit concrete floor instead of snow; the sound faded gradually as he advanced into the darkness of the corridors.

”Along the tunnel to the right!” Schaefer called after him in Russian.

”The lights don’t work, Lieutenant,” Steshin shouted back. “I see blood on the floor.”

”Lynch,” Schaefer said in English, “give them your flashlight.”

Lynch demanded, “Why should I?”

The lieutenant swung her AK-47 to point at Lynch. “Because you will very regrettably be shot while attempting to escape if you do not give Sergeant Yashin that light,” she said in clear but accented English. “We have lights in the vehicles, but yours is closer.”

Lynch glowered, but handed over his hand lamp. The sergeant who accepted it followed Steshin into the station, and Schaefer could hear two sets of footsteps moving off into the building’s interior.

For a long moment the Americans and their captors simply stood, waiting, while the cold soaked into their faces. Schaefer wondered whether those heavy woolen greatcoats the Russians wore kept out the arctic chill as well as the fancy plastic suits, probably not, he thought, but that might not be a bad thing. The contrast between his warm body and his frozen face was not pleasant.

Then one set of footsteps returned-uneven footsteps. Schaefer turned to see Steshin stagger out of the doorway, his face almost as white as the snowy ground.

”Lieutenant,” Steshin said, “they’re all dead, as he said. And worse. They’re hanging like butchered sheep. Blood everywhere.”

The lieutenant glanced from Schaefer to Steshin and back, obviously torn; then she ordered, “Guard them carefully. Shoot anyone who reaches for a weapon or takes a single step. I’m going to see.”

”Don’t move,” Schaefer translated for the other Americans. “She just told them to blow our heads off if anyone moves.” He put his own hands on his head, just to be safe.

The lieutenant nodded an acknowledgment, then lowered her weapon and strode to the door.

Steshin followed as Lieutenant Ligacheva marched down the east corridor and turned right into the passage to the central maintenance area; the route was dark except for the faint glow of the American’s torch ahead and the arctic sky behind, but she knew every centimeter of the pumping station.

She found Sergeant Yashin standing in the doorway to the maintenance area, AK-47 aimed into empty darkness; the light was on the floor at his feet, pointed upward at an angle, up toward the pipeline.

She followed the beam of light and saw the corpses hanging from the girders, brown icicles of frozen blood glittering.

”I saw spent cartridges on the floor,” Yashin reported. “No other sign of whoever did this.”

”Shaporin,” Ligacheva said, recognizing a face under its coating of ice and gore. “And Leskov, Vesnin…”

”All of them, Lieutenant. Twelve workers on the crew, twelve corpses. Even Salnikov’s dogs.”

Ligacheva stared up at them.

She remembered when she had first arrived at Assyma the previous summer. She remembered how both the soldiers and the workers had made fun of her, the only woman at the station; how most of them, sooner or later, had tried to talk her into bed-even the married ones, whose wives were somewhere back in Moscow or St. Petersburg. She had refused their advances and resigned herself to a life of lonely isolation-but it hadn’t happened Her rebuffs were accepted gracefully; her silence in the face of derision was silently acknowledged as a sign of strength. The abuse had faded away.

In the brief Siberian summer the major form of recreation had been soccer games between the soldiers and the workers, played in the muddy open area south of the station. She had played, perversely, on the side of the workers, as an officer could not be expected to take orders from an enlisted man even if he were team captain, and as a woman she was not thought a good enough player to claim the role of captain herself. When she’d demonstrated that she could hold her own on the soccer field, she had been accepted by most of the workers as a worthy companion. And with time, she became more than a companion; some of these workers had been her friends.

She tried to remember the smiling, sweaty faces she had seen then, in the slanting orange sunlight after the games. She tried to hold those images in her mind, to not let them be replaced by the frozen horrors trapped in the cold light of the American lamp.

”Steshin,” she called. “Take two of the men to the furnace room it’s directly across there.” She pointed. “See if you can restore heat to the complex.”

Steshin saluted and headed for the door.

”Filthy Americans,” Yashin growled. “They slaughtered these oil workers like cattle!”

”These men were slaughtered,” Ligacheva agreed, “but not by the Americans. Why would the Americans hack them apart? Why would they hang them up there in plain sight? Do those look like bullet wounds? And why are there no American corpses?” She stooped, picked up the light, and shone it across the floor, picking out a blood spattered AK-47. “Our men were armed and fired many rounds-why were no Americans harmed?” She shook her head. “Something else did this. Go out there, bring everyone inside, start searching the complex for any sign of who or what might have done this. Bring the big American to me; put the others in the workers’ barracks under guard, but bring the big one here. I want to talk to him before whatever did this decides to come back.”

She did not mention anything about monsters, about the creature that had butchered her squad out there on the ice-Yashin would not have believed her. She knew, though, that that thing had come here.

Had it come looking for her, perhaps?

”The Americans did this, Lieutenant!” Yashin insisted. “Barbarians!”

”I don’t believe it, Yashin,” she said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Yashin glowered at her, frustrated-she was the officer; he couldn’t defy her openly. Still, he had another objection to her orders. “Then if the Americans did not do it, how do you know that whatever is responsible is not still here, elsewhere in the complex?”

”I don’t,” Ligacheva replied. “That’s why I want it searched. Now, go get the men in here and bring me the American!”

Yashin grumbled, but he went.

Not long after, Schaefer and Ligacheva stood side by side in the maintenance area, looking up at the corpses. The other Americans were being led past, under guard, on their way to captivity in the workers’ quarters.

”I wondered how long it would take you to figure out that we weren’t responsible for these Christmas decorations,” he said in Russian. “Now maybe you’ll listen to reason.”

“Perhaps,” Ligacheva said as she began to amble across toward the boiler room. Schaefer followed. “Perhaps you know who did kill these men?”

”Monsters,” Schaefer said seriously. “Boogeymen from outer space.”

”You expect me to believe that?”

”No,” Schaefer admitted without hesitation. “But I hope you’ll admit that you don’t have a better explanation, and you’ll play along until I can prove it to you.”

”Then perhaps I have a surprise for you, American,” Ligacheva said. “Perhaps I do believe in your monsters from the stars. Perhaps I know more about them than you think.”

”And maybe you don’t,” Schaefer said. “What you think you know can get you killed. These things mean business, sweetheart.”

”Yes, I’m sure they do,” Ligacheva retorted. “Thank God the brave Americans have come to save us, with their fancy guns and gaudy suits!”

Schaefer grimaced.

”And of course, the Americans have only come to help,” Ligacheva went on. “Your intentions surely couldn’t be less than honorable! You flew here secretly and without permission only to save time, I am certain.”

Before Schaefer could compose a reply-he spoke Russian fluently, but not as quickly as English-the two of them were interrupted by a thump, a whir, and then a low rumble from the far side of the pipeline. Overhead the lightbulbs flickered dim orange for a moment, then brightened.

”It would seem Steshin has restored power,” Ligacheva remarked. “Let us hope heat will follow.” They had crossed the maintenance area under the pipeline; now she knocked on the door and called out, “Steshin, will we have heat now?”

”Not immediately, Lieutenant,” Steshin called back apologetically. “Someone ripped out pieces here and there-flow control valves for the oil pumps, capacitors… it makes no sense what they took. Nothing seems to have been smashed deliberately, but parts were taken away.” He opened the door, allowing Ligacheva and Schaefer to peer into the boiler room-Schaefer noticed that a certain warmth still lingered here, despite the ruined external door and the fierce cold outside.

He also noticed spent cartridges scattered on the floor and sprays of dried blood on the floor and door frame. Someone had put up a fight here-not that it had done any good.

”The missing parts aren’t on the floor?” Ligacheva asked, looking around at the clutter of tools and plumbing that Steshin had strewn about in the course of his repairs.

”No, Lieutenant, they’re gone, gone without a trace,” Steshin told her. “I had to patch the emergency generator around the main board directly into the lighting circuits to get us any power. To get oil to flow to the boiler I would have to rig replacements for those missing valves, and I don’t know how-I’m a soldier, not a mechanic.”

”Well, do what you can,” Ligacheva said.

”Lieutenant!” someone called from the far side of the maintenance area. Ligacheva turned to see a figure gesturing wildly from one of the corridors. “Back there! Down the other tunnel! He’s… he’s…”

Ligacheva saw the direction the soldier was pointing, and a sudden realization struck her. She dashed forward far enough to see past the pipeline and looked up at the corpses, more hideous than ever in the restored light.

”Twelve of them,” she said, counting quickly. “Twelve workers, Galyshev and his men but there was Sobchak!”

”Who?” Schaefer asked.

”Come on,” Ligacheva told him, striding down the passage toward the scientific station.

Schaefer hesitated, glanced around at the Russian soldiers standing on all sides with weapons held ready, and then followed the lieutenant through corridors that gleamed white with hoarfrost in the unsteady glow of the bare lightbulbs. Icicles hung in glittering lines from the overhead pipes; Schaefer had to smash them away with one gloved hand to avoid ducking his head, and his progress was plainly audible as ice rattled to the floor and crunched underfoot.

The final tunnel opened into a bare concrete room, the floor slick with a thin layer of black ice. A soldier was standing at an open door on the far side of the room-a mere kid, Schaefer thought, cold and scared despite the machine gun he held and the uniform he wore. He might be eighteen, Schaefer supposed, but he didn’t look a day over sixteen.

”Lieutenant,” the soldier said, his voice unsteady but relieved at the appearance of a superior. “He was lying there, he wouldn’t let me touch him-he wouldn’t even tell me his name…”

”Sobchak,” Ligacheva said. “Oh, God. His name is Sobchak.” She pushed past the soldier and stared into the room, expecting a scene of blood and devastation, expecting to see that the monster had attacked Sobchak.

Nothing was out of place; nothing had been disturbed. Many of the metal surfaces were white with frost, instead of their normal gray, but the equipment was all in place. Most of the meters and screens were dark-apparently someone had shut many of the devices down, or the cold had ruined them, or perhaps the restored power Steshin had provided was not sufficient to power everything. Certainly, the lighting throughout the station seemed dimmer than usual.

And the air in this laboratory was far, far colder than the rest of the station, almost as cold as outside. Ligacheva frowned.

”Where…”

The soldier pointed, and Ligacheva saw Sobchak, lying on his back on the floor, his hands and feet bare-and horribly discolored, red and purple and black.

Severe frostbite. Ligacheva had seen frostbite a few times before, though never a case this bad, and she recognized it instantly.

”So tired of white,” Sobchak muttered, holding one of his ruined hands above his face. His voice was scratchy and thin-the cold had damaged something, Ligacheva was sure, his lungs or his throat. “So tired of the cold and the white,” he said. “Isn’t it pretty?” He waved his arm, and his dead hand flopped limply. “See? Isn’t it pretty?”

Ligacheva hurried to the scientist’s side and knelt. “Sobchak, it’s me-Ligacheva,” she said. “What happened? You’ve got to tell us what happened.”

Sobchak turned his head to look at her, struggling to refocus his eyes. She saw that his left ear was black with frostbite, too. “Ligacheva?” he said. “Yes, yes, yes. I remember you.”

”Sobchak, what happened?”

”I hid,” Sobchak replied. “I was scared-I heard the screams, and the door was locked, and I didn’t dare… My boots were outside, but I… and the cold, the heat stopped and I still didn’t dare…”

”Yes, I see,” Ligacheva said. “I see completely, but you’re safe now. We’ll get you to a doctor.”

She knew it was probably far too late for that; Sobchak was almost certainly dying, and even if he lived he would lose both his hands and feet, which might be a fate worse than death for the little scientist.

”They left,” he said. “I charted them with the equipment, the seismographs… but I was still scared. And I didn’t know how to fix the heat anyway.”

”I understand, Sobchak,” Ligacheva said.

”I drew a map,” Sobchak said.

”Here,” Schaefer said, spotting the one piece of paper that had not been touched by the frost that had condensed from the once-moist air. He picked it up and turned it to catch the light.

”You,” Ligacheva said, pointing at the soldier at the door. “I want a medical crew up here on the double!”

The kid saluted and hurried away. Schaefer watched him go, then said, “Our friends seem to be based in or near a canyon or ravine about eighteen or twenty kilometers from the station.” He added, “That’s assuming your pal here was better at drawing maps than he was at keeping his socks on, anyway.”

Ligacheva jerked upright, then turned to glare at Schaefer. She rose to her feet and snatched the map out of his hands without looking at it; she stood staring angrily up at Schaefer. The top of her head didn’t quite reach his chin, but that didn’t seem to matter.

”A man’s dying and you talk as if it’s some petty inconvenience,” she said. “What kind of a man are you, to make a joke of this?”

Schaefer stared down at her for a moment without speaking; then a voice from the doorway interrupted.

”Lieutenant, on the radio-an urgent message from Moscow. General Ponomarenko! “ The voice was Sergeant Yashin’s.

”Coming,” Ligacheva answered without turning. She stared at Schaefer for a second more, then pivoted on her heel and strode away.

Schaefer silently watched her go, then nodded once to himself.

”Tough chick there,” he said in English. “Asks good questions.”