The Rock

THE RUSSIAN

The land was empty of animal life. Trees still struggled to grow, but it was obvious even they were losing the war to live. Vast splotches of dead vegetation pockmarked the area as far as the eye could see. Just off the crumbling tar road, where the Zil135 ten-ton truck was parked, a large splatter of hastily poured concrete lay barren of the blown snow that was whipping through the area. There was nothing to indicate that the concrete marked the resting place of eighteen men.

In the distance the cooling towers the men had given up their lives to cover stood under dozens of feet of concrete-concrete that had been flown in underneath the men's helicopters while the radiation had penetrated up through the thin skin of the aircraft and killed them with the slow death.

The Russian had spent eight days getting here. It was a detour he would never have allowed himself on an assigned mission, but this was different. This was personal.

He didn't consciously feel the cold wind whistling in from the Ural Mountains to the east. He was a hard man, his face leathery from years out in the weather. The mouth was set in lines that had known no laughter for many years.

His gray eyes pondered the concrete. They hadn't even put a marker up. Of course, the reasoning was, why put a marker up when no one could come here and see it anyway? The Russian knew he was the first person in years to stand here. And by doing so he had effectively condemned himself to the same slow death by radiation. That bothered him little-in fact, it gave him a feeling of connection with the men under the concrete, one of them in particular.

"For you, Gregori, I do this." His words were grabbed by the wind and spirited away among the sickly pine trees.

He saluted the grave and then turned to his truck. It was going to be a hard trip-about three days using back roads, he estimated-and he needed to start. As he clambered into the cab he glanced at the gauge on the instrument on the passenger seat. The rad count told him that he should survive and be reasonably functional for those three days. After that nothing would matter anyway.

Securely fastened in the cargo bay rode a large crate, the twin to the one that had exploded in South Africa. The Russian threw the truck into gear, and with a lurch it lumbered down the abandoned road, nose pointed southeast, away from Chernobyl.