Cold War

Predator Book Two

Nathan Archer

 

Chapter 1

Pale emptiness stretched from horizon to horizon before him. Despite the night and the heavy overcast, the world was dimly lit by reflected glow, trapped between clouds and snow; the sun would not be seen here again until the approach of spring, but there was still a faint light.

A strong wind was blowing down from the north, howling like a living thing, as if the air itself were in pain from the cold. Fine powdered snow, frozen as hard and sharp as ground glass, whipped across the icy gray desolation in bitter swirls and eddies.

Taro kept his head bent, shielding his face from the wind and cold, as he trudged across the wasteland. He didn’t need to see very far to know where he was going; despite the drifting, blowing snow and the dim light, he could see the tracks of his runaway.

The snow was packed down by wind and frozen into ice, so that Taro walked on a surface as solid as bare ground, and his prey’s tiny hooves hadn’t pierced it any more than his own heavy boots did. The sharp tips, though, which had evolved to keep reindeer from skidding on the ice, had chipped at the surface here and there, and the tiny marks had caught the snow as it blew across. Miniature drifts had formed in shifting chevrons a few centimeters across, growing from the chips like crystals growing in a supersaturated solution.

At the end of the trail Taro knew he would find his missing reindeer. He suspected that he would not find it alive-a healthy animal would not have wandered off aimlessly into the taiga, leaving the herd behind, and Taro expected to find this one dead or dying.

Still, it was his duty to find it and to retrieve whatever might still be of use. If the meat was unfit to eat there would still be the hide and bone.

If he lost the trail he would turn back, and hope to stumble across the carcass on some other, warmer day.

Another man, accustomed to a warmer climate, might have worried about spoilage ruining the meat, or about pilferage, if he left the carcass for a week or two, but Taro had grown up in this Siberian wasteland, had spent his life here; nothing ever spoiled here, nothing rotted, and there was no one, no thief or predator, to steal anything. The dead could lie untouched for millennia. Mammoths found in the ice near here had still been fit to eat.

He glanced up as something caught his eye, a glimpse of movement, a flicker across the ice. He blinked and peered upward.

Something was moving across the sky above the clouds, something that glowed brightly enough to be seen faintly even through the gray overcast.

A new American plane, perhaps, testing the borders? There had been rumors for years of a craft the Americans called “Aurora” that could evade every Russian defense-but that was supposed to be invisible from the ground, flying too high and too fast to be seen.

The glow was brightening steadily, descending through the clouds and moving nearer at a fantastic speed.

It had to be Aurora, Taro thought; what else could move so fast? He had seen Russian planes many times, on patrol, on maneuvers, bringing in the men and equipment for the pipeline and the drilling sites and the pumping stations all along the Assyma section of the Yamal oil fields, and none of them had ever moved anywhere near so fast as this.

And then the thing burst out of the clouds in a ball of brilliant orange flame, washing the pale landscape in vivid color. It roared overhead before Taro could see it clearly; the air itself rippled visibly with the ferocity of the thing’s passage.

It was huge, and made a sound louder than anything Taro had ever before heard, far louder than the howl of the worst storm he could remember. In its wake the air seemed warmer-but what sort of craft could warm the Siberian winter itself? That had to be an illusion, Taro told himself.

And then the thing crashed, with a boom that made the roar of its passage seem a mere whisper.

Taro turned and stared after it.

The horizon glowed orange, and again he thought he could feel heat, as if from an immense fire.

That had been unmistakably a crash, not a mere landing. If that had been the American Aurora spy plane, then it was down, and the authorities in Moscow would want to know-the long Cold War might be over, but that didn’t mean the Russian authorities would pass up a chance to get a good close look at some top-secret American technology. The Russian government wouldn’t mind a chance to score a few moral points against the Americans, either-a polite complaint about Americans spying on peace-loving post-Communist Russia might coax a few face-saving trade concessions out of somebody.

There might even be survivors, and a heroic rescue could be very good not just for Russia, but for Taro. He might be famous, might be taken to Moscow and given a medal or something. While he was reasonably content as a reindeer herder, he wouldn’t mind a taste of city life, or at least a chance to pick up a few modern comforts.

If he headed back to the village and the radio there was working, he could contact the army squad stationed at the Assyma pumping station, and they could send out a truck or helicopter-but that would take three hours back, and at least an hour for the truck or copter to find the crash site.

If he headed for the site directly, though, he judged that he could reach it in an hour and a half to two hours. If there were injured survivors that extra hour or two might be crucial. If there were valuables to be salvaged, he wouldn’t mind getting to them first rather than merely guiding in a bunch of soldiers.

He set out across the ice, walking straight toward the orange glow and abandoning his hunt. His lost reindeer would keep.

In the Siberian cold anything would keep.

After he had been walking for a little over an hour Taro began to notice the warmth more than ever. At first he still told himself it was his imagination, that he was dreaming that cookfire heat; after all, the glow had faded away, and he was steering now by more ordinary landmarks. He couldn’t really be feeling any heat from the downed aircraft, not when he was still, so far as he could judge, about two kilometers away, and when the craft had been down for so long.

Ten minutes later, though, he could no longer deny it; he was sweating in his heavy furs. He threw back his hood, and meltwater dripped down his brow.

He blinked it away and stopped in his tracks.

He was still a kilometer or so from the long, crooked ravine that cut across the icy plain, but he could see it ahead. That wasn’t what troubled him; he had known the ravine was there. No, he stopped because the ice between himself and the ravine didn’t look right; it glistened, not with the hard crystalline glitter it ought to have, but with a slick wet gleam.

Taro frowned, took several steps, then carefully knelt down. He put a gloved finger to the ground, then picked it up and looked at it.

The tanned leather of his glove had darkened with moisture. The ice was wet.

He wasn’t dreaming the heat. It was real.

He didn’t like that at all. A thaw in the Siberian winter? Something melting the permafrost? Even the American Aurora superplane surely couldn’t generate that much heat!

The rifle he carried on his back was rarely used. He had it not because he really needed it, but as a mark of status among his people, a reminder that his grandfather had fought the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War. There were few predators to defend against out here on the ice, either human or beast; the stories of wolves prowling the vicinity dated mostly from his grandfather’s time and might just be the lies of old men who wanted to reaffirm their own claims to manhood when they could no longer act as men.

Taro had on occasion fired the rifle in celebration, he had fired it several times in target practice, and twice to put injured reindeer out of their suffering, but he had never used it in self-defense. He had never had any need to defend himself with anything more than words or fists.

Now, though, he pulled the weapon from its fur-lined sheath and checked it over carefully. It seemed to be, as always, in perfect condition.

With the rifle ready in his arms, he advanced cautiously toward the ravine, careful of his footing on the melt-slicked ice.

The thing that had fallen from the sky in a fireball had landed inside the ravine ahead, he realized. He frowned. He knew that crevasse; he had lost a yearling there once. It was a long, narrow, rocky canyon; in the summer thaws it carried a trickle of meltwater north to the sea. In winter it was as dry and frozen as anywhere else, but too wide and deep for the snow to bury it completely.

The edges of the canyon were treacherous-drifted snow and built-up ice would extend out beyond the supporting rock, and a man or reindeer who got too close might well tumble in and be unable to climb back up the icy sides.

If the fallen object was down there, any investigation would be difficult. Taro frowned and slowed his pace.

Something flickered, just at the edge of his vision. He turned, startled, and brought the rifle to bear...

On nothing. There was nothing there, just the empty plain of ice.

Taro blinked and thought he saw a shimmer in the air somewhere to one side. He jerked the rifle over a few centimeters, thinking he must have caught a reflection on the ice-but a reflection of what?

Then a light sparkled, three moving dots of red that skittered across the ice almost too fast to follow, then skimmed up his body and settled onto his forehead, the three of them wavering about until they settled into a tidy little triangle. Taro could feel them as tiny spots of warmth, could see the red beams, but he could not make out where they were coming from, could not think what they could be. They seemed to be coming from a patch of empty air.

Then something flared blue-white, lighting the snow on all sides, and Taro knew no more.

 

Chapter 2

Lieutenant Ligacheva was six months into her first command, and felt that she had settled in nicely. She was the lone officer in charge of the enlisted men of the little guard detachment at Pumping Station #12 on the Assyma Pipeline on the eastern fringe of the Yamal oil fields, and as such, she was responsible for making sure that the dozen pipeline workers at the station didn’t go on strike, that the local reindeer herders didn’t get into fights with anyone at the station, and that the Americans weren’t going to invade across the polar ice. If anyone tried to sabotage the pipeline, it was her duty to make sure the attempt failed.

The men weren’t interested in striking, though, nor were there any terrorists or invading Americans to be seen, and the villagers were more concerned with cadging liquor off the workers than in fighting with anyone.

Her job therefore was not particularly demanding-but then, she was a newly promoted lieutenant, and she couldn’t expect anything more. She hadn’t yet proven herself capable of handling duties beyond the drudgery of a routine guard post on the northern frontier.

The easy job didn’t mean that she hadn’t had any trouble at all, though. She was the only woman in the entire place, and when she first arrived, she had feared that that might cause problems-the old Soviet Union had paid lip service to equality of the sexes, but modern Russia didn’t even do that much. A woman alone among so many men, a woman in a position of authority, could expect to encounter a certain amount of unpleasantness.

Her sex had indeed made a few difficulties at first, but she had handled them, and they were past and done. She had avoided being raped, which she had seen as the most basic part of establishing herself; she had managed it by maintaining a fierce, asexual front. To do so she had had to give up any hint of romance and remain strictly celibate, of course, but that was a price she was willing to pay for her career.

The facade had worked. As they had before her arrival, the men took any opportunity they could get to visit the accommodating, if expensive, widows in the nearby village of aboriginal reindeer herders; they left Ligacheva alone-or at any rate, they left her alone sexually. She wasn’t socially isolated, thank heavens. Loneliness would be far worse than mere sexual abstinence.

She dealt with the men, both workers and soldiers, as if she were one of them-as much as they and her rank would allow her to. There had been a few incidents, but her refusal to be offended by coarse behavior, her calm flattening of the occasional rowdy drunk, and her prowess on the soccer field behind the motor pool had established her as deserving of respect.

She was fitting in, and was pleased by it. No one tried to go around her or subvert her authority; anytime a military matter came up, she was informed. When the station’s seismometers picked up a disturbance not far from the main pipe, she was summoned immediately.

She did not see at first why this disturbance concerned her-how was an earth tremor a military matter? When the messenger insisted that she had to come at once and talk to Dr. Sobchak in the little scientific station she was tempted to argue, but then she shrugged and came along; after all, now that winter had closed in and it was too cold even between storms to want to go outside, there wasn’t all that much to do at Station #12. Last summer’s soccer games were nothing but a fond and distant memory, and she had long since gone through everything of interest in the pumping station’s tiny library. Even though she didn’t like Dr. Sobchak, talking to him would at least be a break in the routine.

She did pull on her coat first, however, ignoring the messenger’s fuming at the delay, and she took a certain pleasure in keeping the annoying fellow waiting while she made sure she had everything straight, the red bars on her collar perfectly aligned.

When she was satisfied she turned and marched out immediately, almost trampling the messenger, who had been caught off guard by the sudden transition.

The coat was not merely for show. The maze of tunnels that connected the station’s buildings-the separate barracks for soldiers and workers, the pump room itself, the boiler plant, the extensive storerooms and equipment areas, the scientific station-was buried three meters below the snow, but was not heated; the corridors’ temperature, midway between buildings, could drop well below freezing.

The lieutenant walked briskly as she strode down the tunnel, partly to maintain the proper image, but partly just to keep warm.

The scientific station was at the northernmost point of the complex; Ligacheva had plenty of time, walking through the corridors, to wonder what had Sobchak so excited. “A seismic disturbance,” the messenger said-but what did that mean? Why call her? If there had been a quake, or an ice heave, or a subsidence, that might threaten the pipeline, but a threat to the pipeline didn’t call for the army; Sobchak would have called Galyshev, the crew superintendent, to send out an inspection squad or a repair team.

And if it didn’t threaten the pipeline, who cared about a seismic disturbance? Ligacheva had heard Sobchak explain that the instruments detected movement in the permafrost fairly often-usually during the summer thaw, of course, which was still an absolute minimum of two months away, but even in the dead of winter, so what made this one so special?

She stepped down a few centimeters from the tunnel entrance into the anteroom of the science center. The antechamber was a bare concrete box, empty save where small heaps of litter had accumulated in the corners, as cold and unwelcoming as the tunnels. Half a dozen steel doors opened off this room, but four of them, Ligacheva knew, were permanently locked those sections of the station were abandoned. The days when the Soviet state could afford to put a dozen scientists to work out in the middle of the Siberian wilderness were long gone; Mother Russia could not spare the resources, and only Sobchak was left. The other scientists had all, one by one, been called away-to homelands that were now independent nations, to better paid jobs in the wider world outside the old Soviet bloc, or to more important posts elsewhere in Russia, posts deserted by Ukrainians or Kazakhs or Lithuanians, or by mercenaries selling their talents abroad.

Only Sobchak was left.

The official story behind keeping Sobchak was that Russia’s oil company did need one scientist, one geologist, to remain here to monitor the equipment that watched over the pipeline, but the lieutenant suspected that the truth was that no one else wanted Sobchak. The little man with the thick glasses and ugly mustache was sloppy, pompous, vain, and aggravating, and Ligacheva wasn’t especially convinced that he had any great abilities as a scientist, either.

She opened the door to the geological monitoring station, and warm air rushed out at her Sobchak kept his tiny kingdom as warm as he could, and old orders giving the scientists priority on the steam output from the boiler plant had never been rescinded, so that was quite warm indeed.

The geologist’s workroom was good-sized, but so jammed with machinery that there was almost no space to move about. Exactly in the center sat little Sobchak, perched on his swivel chair, surrounded by his equipment-meters and displays, switches and dials on every side. He looked up at her; the fear on his face was so exaggerated that Ligacheva almost laughed. His beady little eyes, wide with terror, were magnified by his glasses; his scraggly attempt at a mustache accentuated the trembling of his upper lip. His narrow jaw and weak chin had never looked any worse.

”Lieutenant Ligacheva!” he called. “I’m glad you’re here. Come look at this!”

Ligacheva stepped down the narrow space between a file cabinet and an equipment console to see where Sobchak was pointing. It was a paper chart, unscrolling from one drum and winding onto another. A pen had drawn a graph across it, a graph that had suddenly spiked upward not long ago, and was now hovering well above where it had begun.

”This is your record of seismic activity?” Ligacheva asked, unimpressed.

Sobchak looked up at her, startled. “Seismic activity? Oh, no, no,” he said. “That’s over there.” He pointed to a large bank of machinery on the other side of the room, then turned back to the first chart and tapped it. “This chart shows radiation levels.”

Ligacheva blinked at him. “What?”

”Radiation,” Sobchak said. “Radioactivity.”

Ligacheva stared. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

”This,” Sobchak said, pointing. “This, Lieutenant. I don’t know what it is. What I do know is that something happened that made the ground shake about twenty kilometers northeast of here, and that when it did there came this burst of radioactivity. Ever since then the background radiation has been four times what it should be.”

”Four times, you say,” Ligacheva said, fingering the paper chart.

”Yes,” Sobchak said. “Four times.”

”And you want me and my men to go find out what this thing is, that’s radiating like this.”

”Yes,” Sobchak repeated.

Ligacheva stared at the chart.

It might be dangerous, whatever was out there. She didn’t know what it was, and all her guesses seemed wild-an American attack? A fallen satellite?

Whatever it was, it was not any part of the established routine.

Perhaps she should report it to Moscow and await orders, but to report it when it was still just readings from old equipment that the authorities would say could not be trusted would be asking to be ignored. Sobchak’s pay still came through, but Ligacheva knew that no one in power thought much of the little geologist, and as for Moscow’s opinion of herself-well, if you were a general in Moscow, you didn’t send a young officer out to the middle of the Yamal Peninsula because you wanted to pay close attention to her and encourage her career. General Ponomarenko, who had assigned her here, had never done anything to make her believe he respected her opinions.

If she took her men out there and they saw whatever it was with their own eyes, though, that would be harder to ignore. No one could say that the phenomenon was the result of Sobchak’s imagination or of poorly maintained monitoring equipment if she had half a dozen eyewitnesses confirming ... whatever it was out there.

She knew that no one advanced quickly in any army, let alone in the new, post-Soviet Russian Army, by staying timidly in the barracks waiting for her superiors to tell her what to do.

”Right,” she said. “Where is this mysterious radioactive disturbance, exactly?”

 

Chapter 3

“The temperature out there is thirty-four degrees below zero, and it’s snowing again,” Salnikov said as he straightened his gunbelt and reached for his hat. “That weather is just right for a pleasant little twenty-kilometer stroll, don’t you think so, Dmitri?”

Dolzhikov snorted. “Oh, yes, Pyotr, just delightful,” he said as he yanked on his second boot. “I’m so pleased we’re all being sent out on this little errand!” He stamped the boot into place. “I wonder, though, Pyotr, if perhaps our beloved Sobchak’s instruments would be just ever so slightly less sensitive if he were the one sent to investigate every little knock and tumble.”

”That’s not fair, Dmitri,” Utkin said mildly, looking up from checking the action on his AK-47. “How many times before has Sobchak sent us out now? Two, maybe three, in the past year?”

”And how many times have we found anything?” Dolzhikov retorted as he rose from his bunk and reached for his overcoat. “Last time, as I recall, a reindeer had tripped over one of Sobchak’s seismographs. How very important it must have been to investigate that and report every detail to Moscow at once!”

”Now, Dmitri,” Salnikov said, grinning. “That might have been an American reindeer, spying on us!” He clapped his gloved hands together. “Besides, is it Sobchak who sends us out, or is it the bold Lieutenant Ligacheva?”

”At least the lieutenant comes with us,” Dolzhikov muttered, fumbling with his buttons, “while Sobchak stays huddled in his little laboratory, watching all the gauges on his precious machines.”

”Watching the gauges is Sobchak’s job,” Lieutenant Ligacheva barked from the doorway. “Sometimes finding out what the readings mean is yours. Now stop your griping and move! Get out to the truck! “

Utkin and Salnikov charged out the door to the waiting snow truck while the other men hurried to get the last few straps and buttons fastened; Ligacheva watched them from the doorway, settling her snow goggles into place so the others could not read her eyes.

The men had no idea why they were going out on the ice, what made this particular tremor any more worthy of investigation than any other. They could hardly be expected not to grumble, under the circumstances.

Ligacheva knew that, and saw no reason to change the circumstances. She could live with grumbling. She hadn’t told the men anything about the radioactivity because she saw no need to frighten them. These were not experienced warriors who could put fear aside or who would be hardened by it; they were mostly children, boys of eighteen or nineteen with only a few weeks of arctic weather training among them all and with no knowledge of science at all. Better, she thought, to let them grumble than to panic them.

Just children-with the bold Lieutenant Ligacheva to lead them across the ice, she thought bitterly. She was no child, yet she was out here, too, her career as frozen as the ground around her.

She could still remember what General Ponomarenko had said the day he assigned her to the Assyma oil field. “This is an important duty, Ligacheva,” he said. “Do well and there may be a place for you on my staff.”

She could still remember his condescending smirk as he said it. A place on his staff, indeed. And perhaps she could grow oranges in her spare time here.

Ponomarenko had known where he was sending her-out of the way, where failure could be hidden or ignored. Such faith he had in her, sending her somewhere no one would blame him if she fouled up! And all the while he was undoubtedly patting himself on the back for his enlightened policies, for not openly trying to ruin her just because she was a woman and an outspoken democrat.

”Come on,” she called to the men. “The snow won’t let up for hours, and the temperature’s still dropping. The longer you wait the worse it’ll be, and the sooner we get this over with the sooner you’ll get back to your cards and liquor.”

The men came and clambered onto the “truck”-an oversized tractor on snow treads, hauling a personnel carrier. Salnikov was in the driver’s seat, with the engine running; as soon as the last boot left the ice he put the tractor in gear, and the ungainly vehicle lurched forward.

Ligacheva sat silently beside him as they headed out of the pumping station complex, out to the pipeline. As they approached the immense pipe Salnikov looked at her for confirmation of their direction. She pointed. He nodded, and turned the vehicle northward. From that point on the tractor chugged steadily along the service road beside the pipeline-not the shortest route to their intended destination, but the path that would be least likely to get them lost in the arctic night.

There were just the two of them in the cab; the others all rode in the trailer, no doubt exchanging jokes and bawdy stories. Ligacheva would be surprised if no one had managed to smuggle in a liter of vodka; she imagined they’d be passing that around, giving no thought to their commander and the driver up front.

Ligacheva looked out at the swirling snow and the cold darkness beyond, at the looming concrete and steel barrier of the pipeline that blocked out half the world, all of it white and gray, devoid of color, just shapes picked out in the glare of the tractor’s headlights. She felt the fierce cold beginning to seep into the cab with her and Salnikov, despite the desperate blowing of the heater.

Out here on the ice the grandstanding and maneuvers of generals and bureaucrats and politicians back in Moscow all seemed a distant, stupid, pointless game. Reputation didn’t matter. Power didn’t matter. Staying warm, staying alive, that was what mattered.

”Here,” she said as the eighteen-kilometer marker came into view, the sign on the pipeline a sudden spot of red in the black, white, and gray wilderness outside. “Turn east. Four kilometers.” She tapped the map she held on her knee, then pointed to the dashboard compass. “Four kilometers,” she repeated.

Salnikov looked at the map, then at the external thermometer. He hesitated, peering out into the empty darkness to the east.

”It ... it’s getting colder, Lieutenant,” he said uncertainly. “Forty below zero, and the snow is heavier. Perhaps we should head back, try again later ...”

”It’s just four kilometers farther, Salnikov,” Ligacheva said, keeping her annoyance out of her voice. “That’s nothing. Enjoy the fresh air.”

Salnikov bit back a reply and turned the tractor, away from the comforting solidity of the pipeline and into the unrelieved gloom of the Siberian wilderness. When he had, Ligacheva reached down into her pack and pulled out something she would have preferred not to have needed.

”What’s that?” Salnikov asked, glancing at the device she held.

”Just drive,” Ligacheva said. There was no need to tell him yet that it was a Geiger counter.

It buzzed briefly when she directed the probe ahead, but the radiation level was not dangerous yet. In fact, Ligacheva judged it was only a little higher than normal. Perhaps whatever had caused that spike on Sobchak’s graph was gone now.

She glanced at the thermometer outside Salnikov’s window. Forty-two below.

In extreme cold, she had heard engine steel turned brittle and could snap like balsa wood. More than eighteen kilometers from the station, in snow and darkness and extreme cold-if they lost the tractor out here, most of them, maybe all of them, would die before they could get back to shelter.

She frowned at the thought, but said nothing. The engine temperature gauge was still in the normal operating range, despite the cold outside.

A few minutes later she glanced at the outside thermometer again. What she saw caught her gaze, and she stared intently, trying to understand it.

Twenty-eight below. But just a kilometer or two back it had been forty-two below.

How could it be so much warmer here?

She lifted the Geiger counter and aimed the probe. The machine crackled, the needle on its gauge jumping slightly before settling down. There was radioactivity here, more than normal-but far below dangerous levels. The stolen cigarettes she had smoked as a girl had probably been more of a long-term risk.

Still, why was there anything more than the usual background radiation?

”Lieutenant!” Salnikov cried, and his voice sounded strained and unnatural. Ligacheva looked up, through the windshield, as the wiper cleared away the latest smear of snow, and saw what had triggered Salnikov’s exclamation.

”Bozhe moi,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

They were nearing the top of a low ridge. Ahead of them in the headlight beams, on the ridgetop, a broad patch of snow shone a vivid red; a sprinkle of snowflakes had powdered it with white, but the red still showed up, shockingly bright. Above the red patch dangled a dark shape, swaying in the wind, speckled white with snow.

”Stop the truck!” Ligacheva ordered-unnecessarily; Salnikov had already shifted into neutral. “Keep the engine running,” she said. If the engine were shut down, they might never get it started again out here.

The cold hit her like a gigantic wave, sucking the warmth and life out of her, as she unlatched the door of the tractor and climbed out. She shivered involuntarily as her body struggled to adjust. The wind howled in her ears, as loud as the steady rumble of the tractor’s engine-no, she corrected herself, louder.

Behind her the men were jumping down from the trailer, guns in their hands.

”Wait,” she called, holding up a hand. She drew her own side arm-the heft of the 9mm was comforting.

Salnikov had climbed out the other side of the cab, inching forward into the pool of light from the headlights, his AK-47 in his hands. Ligacheva didn’t stop him; when he glanced over at her she motioned him forward.

A splintered pole rose from the ice at a steep angle, reaching a height of maybe three meters above the very peak of the rise; the dark, swaying shape was tied near the top of the pole, dangling there in the night.

The shape was a man’s body, suspended by a rope lashed around both ankles; his outstretched arms hung straight down, fingertips brushing the snow.

His head was gone. Where his head should have been was a thin, dark icicle of frozen blood. Below him lay a broad pool of the same substance.

Salnikov stared at the corpse for a moment, then down at the frozen pool, then at the snow around it.

”Footprints,” he said. “Footprints everywhere, Lieutenant. Big ones, see?” Then he looked up at the corpse again.

”What happened here?” he wailed.

Ligacheva didn’t answer directly-she couldn’t. The only answer she could give would have been “I don’t know,” and she couldn’t say that in front of her men, not yet.

”Who is it?” she asked. “Anyone know?”

”One of the villagers,” Utkin replied. “Look at his clothes.”

Ligacheva looked at the dead man’s clothes, she realized she had been staring at the frozen blood, the headlights making the pool glisten like smoldering coals on the snow, rather than at the victim. Sure enough, the corpse wore the reindeer hide garments of the local tribesmen.

”Which?” she asked. “Who is it?” She wondered whether this might be some tribal ritual she had never heard of, some frenzied rite or primitive custom, a formal vengeance, perhaps, or a sacrifice to whatever brutal arctic deities the locals might worship.

”Taro,” Salnikov said.

”How can you tell?” Dolzhikov said, his voice cracking. “His head is gone!”

”His rifle is there,” Salnikov said. He gestured.

”That’s Taro’s rifle. He was very proud of it, never let anyone else carry it.”

Sure enough, a fine old hunting rifle lay half-buried in the snow behind the corpse; Ligacheva had not seen it until Salnikov pointed it out.

That eliminated the possibility that any sane human being had done this, Ligacheva thought. No one but a madman would have left so valuable an item out there in the snow.

A madman ... then this was no tribal ritual but merely berserk slaughter.

”Footprints?” she asked Salnikov.

He nodded. “Hundreds of them.” He looked around, then said, “They go that way.” He hesitated. “And, Lieutenant,” he added, “I have never seen such footprints. They’re too big. And there are other marks, in front of every print, as if something had clawed at the snow.”

”Perhaps something did. Do you mean it was a beast that did this? A beast that ties knots?”

Salnikov shook his head. “No, these are boot marks, or shoe marks but there are claw marks with them, as if there were claws that stuck out the front of each boot.”

”More likely the killer had some sort of trained animal,” Ligacheva said. “Follow them. And be ready-whoever, or whatever, did this is dangerous.” She waved to the others. “Utkin, Vetrov, you go with him. If you see anything move, anything strange, fire twice-don’t take chances.”

Utkin and Vetrov nodded and followed Salnikov reluctantly as Ligacheva called, “The rest of you, help me cut him down. We’ll take him back to his people.”

The pole was firmly fixed in the ice, and none of the men could reach high enough to untie the ropes from its peak; instead two men held Taro’s frozen corpse to keep it still while a third sawed through the bindings with his knife.

It took longer than Ligacheva would have thought; she resisted the urge to order Kazaryan, the knife-wielder, to hurry. The blade was probably brittle with cold; hurrying might snap it. She shivered and glanced after Salnikov and the others.

They had moved on down the slope to the east, following the trail; the wind carried away their words, and Ligacheva could not hear them as they shouted to one another.

”Look how big these prints are!” Utkin said. “Whoever made them must be a giant!”

Vetrov knelt by the trail and shook his head. “Look again,” he said. “The ice melted with each step, then refroze--that’s why they’re so big.”

Utkin stared at him. “Do you have any idea what kind of heat that would take?” He looked at Salnikov, who had moved on ahead, then turned back to Vetrov. “Besides, they must have been huge even without the melting-look at them!”

Vetrov shrugged. “Maybe,” he admitted.

”The trail goes on past that next rise,” Salnikov called back to them. “Perhaps from the top we can see something. Come on!”

Reluctantly the others followed, struggling up the next slope-it wasn’t steep, or particularly high, but the wind was against them.

”We should have brought a light,” Vetrov muttered.

”Yes,” Utkin agreed. “I would like to see these footprints more clearly. I do not think anything could have melted the ice as you suppose.”

”Feel them for yourself,” Vetrov retorted. “The bottom of each print is slick ice.”

Utkin stooped and did as Vetrov suggested. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But I do not think that was what made them so large, Igor. I think it is a giant that we follow.”

”Come on, you two,” Salnikov called as he struggled up onto the top of the little rise-it wasn’t really much more than an overgrown snowdrift, but it did provide a slightly elevated vantage point.

Salnikov paused, peering out into the gloom. He did not say so, but he, like Vetrov, wished they had brought a light. The night here was not utterly black, not with the clouds and snow to reflect and multiply every slightest glimmer of light, but he still could not see far through the swirling snow and the midwinter gloom.

At least, at any distance he could not be certain what he was seeing. A jagged black gap in the snow cover ahead might be a ravine or merely a shadow; he couldn’t be sure. He stared, but still couldn’t decide whether the canyon he thought he saw was really there.

He was sweating, he realized abruptly. His face was damp with perspiration and wasn’t freezing.

He pulled off his hat and crumpled it in one hand. No ice crunched, no snow fell; instead he could see the fur was damp.

”My God,” he said. “You two, can you feel it? The heat?” He stared into the darkness. Where was the warmth coming from? He saw no lights, no fires.

He could feel the heat, though-and something else.

”Something’s out here,” he said. “Something ... I can feel it...”

His vision seemed suddenly distorted, even more than the snow, the night, and the wind could account for.

”What...” he began.

Then he screamed and fell backward, sliding down the icy slope.

Vetrov and Utkin had been crouched over the footprints as they advanced, not really listening to Salnikov; now they looked up just in time to catch him as he tumbled into their arms.

”Pyotr!” Utkin cried. “What ...” He felt something warm and wet leaking into his heavy gloves.

”Look at his face!” Vetrov said.

Utkin looked.

Two parallel slashes had cut Salnikov’s face open, slicing from cheekbone to throat, laying the flesh open right down to the bone-and in fact, Utkin could see a notch in the cheekbone itself, a notch that vanished beneath welling blood. Blood was spilling from Salnikov’s ruined face across Utkin’s hands-that was the warmth he had felt.

”What could have...” Utkin began, looking out past the top of the rise.

He saw only a flicker as the blade came down at him.

Vetrov had time to scream.

Once.

 

Chapter 4

They had Taro’s frozen body loaded halfway onto the truck when Lieutenant Ligacheva heard the scream. It was faint and distant, muffled by the wind, but there was no mistaking it for anything but the scream of pain it was.

”What in the ...” She looked up in time to see something flare blue-white in the darkness beyond the ridge. “Pyotr!” she cried.

Then she remembered where she was, who she was, and who was with her.

”All of you,” she barked, “follow me! Now!”

Dolzhikov hesitated, holding Taro’s legs.

”Forget him!” Ligacheva shouted. “We can tend to him later!”

Dolzhikov obeyed and dropped his burden; the frozen corpse teetered, then rolled slowly out of the truck and onto the ice. Dolzhikov joined the others as they charged up the ridge, past the pole.

Ligacheva was shouting orders as she ran. “As soon as we reach Salnikov and the others, take up defensive positions! Use the ridge and the drifts for cover, if you can! No firing until I give the order!” That last was an afterthought; she didn’t want anyone accidentally shooting Salnikov or Utkin or Vetrov if they were still alive out there in the dark.

She tried to imagine what could have happened, what the three men could have found, what could have left those huge footprints and the strange scratchy marks. There had only been the single trail leading away from the pole, yet she had not heard any of her men fire their weapons, and no single lunatic could have defeated them all before they could shoot-did Taro’s murderer have companions? Was there an entire company of madmen waiting for them? Was this some insane invasion by Americans, or a terrorist attack by some extremist faction-Chechens, or Georgians, or Jews? Thoughts and images tumbled through her mind too quickly to make sense of any of them, to choose any as more likely.

And then Starostin’s head blew off.

Ligacheva staggered and stared.

One moment Private Anton Mikhailovich Starostin had been running up the ridge beside her, eyes bright with excitement, with anticipation of his first taste of battle, and the next moment there was a blue-white flash and Starostin’s head was gone, just-gone. The light had flashed through tissue and bone as if they weren’t there. Starostin’s body ran another half step and then collapsed in the snow, blood spattering across the white ground.

But there was no enemy, nothing to shoot at. The white flash had come out of nowhere.

”Where are they?” Dolzhikov cried.

”Fire if you see them!” Ligacheva shouted back.

Then the white light flashed again, and Dolzhikov was gone, his chest blown apart, one arm vanished, head flung back at a hideous, broken angle.

”We can’t fight this!” someone called-Ligacheva didn’t see whom and didn’t recognize the voice over the howling of the wind and the incoherent shouting of her panicking troops. She turned to see someone running for the truck. “We’ve got to get back to the...”

And then the light blazed again, but this time it did not shear through flesh; instead it struck the tractor’s engine compartment, and the vehicle exploded into flame.

Ligacheva knew then that she was going to die, they were all going to die-but she still didn’t know why or who was responsible.

She wanted to know-but more than that, she wanted to take some of them with her. She snatched up Dolzhikov’s AK-47 and released the safety-he hadn’t even had time to do that before dying.

Ligacheva couldn’t see the enemy, couldn’t see her own men, but she knew it didn’t matter anymore. Her men were as good as dead, with the enemy out there somewhere in the Siberian night; she opened fire, spraying steel jacketed lead into the darkness, in the general direction the bluewhite fire had come from.

Fire came again as her foot slipped on the ice and she began to tumble. White light and searing heat tore through her shoulder, and the AK-47 went flying in one direction as she fell in the other.

Snow gave beneath her, and she rolled down the ridge; the world wheeled madly about her, a chaos of snow and cold and darkness and light, the hot orange flashes of guns and the cold white flare of the enemy’s weapon, until she landed hard on wind-scoured ice, her own wind knocked out of her. Snow tumbled down upon her, almost burying her; one eye peered out through her goggles, while the lens protecting the other was covered by blank whiteness.

She was dazed, stunned by impact, by the shock of her shoulder wound, by the bitter cold that seeped through her heavy coat and down the back of her neck. She lay for a moment, unable to think or move, as the violence around her died away until the only screaming was the wind, until nothing flashed or blazed. The truck was burning, there before her-she could just see it at the edge of her field of vision but it had settled down to a slow, steady glow, no more explosions or flare-ups. The fire’s glow lit the icy landscape a hellish red-orange, giving her light to see.

Only one of her squad was in sight, lying motionless on his belly on the ice near the truck she couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. Feigning death, perhaps, so as to take the enemy by surprise? Perhaps.

Most of the men were dead, she knew-but all of them? Could some have found cover? Might some be lying low, waiting for a chance?

They had no chance, not out here almost twenty kilometers from shelter in the middle of winter, obviously outgunned by an enemy they could not see. If the enemy did not kill them, the cold would.

She was still having trouble breathing, she realized; even now that she had had time to recover, she was having difficulty getting air into her lungs. Snow was blocking her nose and mouth. She was lying on one arm, while the other, the one that had been injured by the blue-white bolt, would not move; the weight of the snow held her down.

Then she heard the crunching of heavy footsteps on the slope just above her, and she stopped trying to move.

The enemy. The enemy was there, no more than a meter away, looking over his handiwork.

She held utterly still, waiting, staring out at the narrow area she could see through her one uncovered eye.

The man still lay there, and she tried to make out who it was-Mikhail Alexandrovich Barankin, was it? Yes, young Mikhail, almost certainly-a replacement, only arrived a fortnight before, the youngest boy in her command. Did he tremble at the sound of the approaching footsteps? Was he still alive, after all? She could see no mark on him, no blood anywhere.

The footsteps paused, no more than a meter or two from her head. Had she been spotted?

No, after only a second the footsteps proceeded; she watched intently, eager for a first clear look at their foe.

She didn’t get one; instead her vision seemed to distort, so that the image of Barankin and the burning truck wavered. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes, and sipped at the air, trying to force her lungs to draw.

The distortion did not vanish, but it seemed to contract, to shrink into a small, defined area that moved across the snowfield toward Barankin. She still could not see an enemy, but now she thought she saw footprints appearing from nowhere, as if the distortion were somehow causing them.

That could not be so, she told herself. She was imagining things. The fight, her wound, her fall, the cold, they were all affecting her, disorienting her, and now she was seeing things that weren’t there.

And then suddenly she saw something that she could not believe was a hallucination, that she could not accept as a trick of the cold or a smear on her goggles or anything but either reality or the onset of utter madness.

A creature appeared out of nowhere, a creature that stood upright like a man, but was clearly not human; arcs of electric fire crawled over its body for a moment as it appeared, and then vanished once it stood fully exposed. She could see its shape clearly in the firelight.

It was taller than a man, well over two meters in height. Its face was smooth, angular metal, and for a moment Ligacheva wondered whether the Americans had devised some sort of killer robot and sent it here for testing.

The thing did not move like a machine, though, and its body was proportioned and constructed almost like that of a living being.

Then she looked at the rest of it and saw that it was no machine; the metal face was a mask. It wore a belt and some sort of shoulder harness that held equipment; black cuffs covered its forearms.

But the rest of its body was almost bare, much of it hidden only by some sort of mesh. Its skin shone an unhealthy yellow in the firelight-and she could see plenty of skin through the mesh. She marveled at that; how could anything expose bare flesh to this burning cold?

This was obviously the creature that had left those tracks in the snow; she could not see its feet clearly, but she thought she saw not boots, but sandals, and curving black claws. That explained the claw marks-but how could it stand to expose its feet to the cold? Why wasn’t it dead of frostbite?

It wasn’t; she simply had to accept that.

It stood over Barankin, then suddenly stooped down. One hand gripped the boy’s head-his entire head fit neatly in the thing’s palm.

The other hand drew back. Two jagged blades slid out of the black wrist cuff and snapped into place, protruding past the creature’s closed fist, both blades glittering red in the glow of the burning tractor.

Up until then Ligacheva had hoped Barankin was still alive and unhurt; now she prayed that he was already dead, that he would not feel what was happening.

The thing lifted Barankin’s head, and the boy shouted, “No! No!” shattering Ligacheva’s hope that he would not feel anything. Then the twin blades swept down and sliced into Barankin’s back, and the shout turned into a wordless scream of agony.

It didn’t last long, though; a second later the creature lifted up Barankin’s head, the boy’s severed spine dangling, and let the headless body fall to the ground.

A pool of blood began to spread.

Then Ligacheva fainted, and that was all she saw until strong arms pulled her half-frozen from the snow-human arms, friendly arms.

The villagers, Taro’s people, had smelled the smoke from the burning truck and followed the orange glow. They saw the bodies, the blood, the tracks; pragmatically they made no attempt to follow the tracks back to the source. If something was out there that could wipe out an entire squad of the modern Russian Army, they weren’t interested in pursuing it armed only with knives and a couple of rifles.

They didn’t see any yellow-skinned creatures. They didn’t see anything that could explain the slaughter.

They did, however, recognize some of the marks in the snow on the ridge, marks where something had fallen and been buried, and they found Ligacheva and dug her out.

She was too far gone to talk, to tell them what had happened, so they took her back to her own people at the pumping station; this all took place in what seemed like a single feverish moment as the lieutenant slipped in and out of consciousness.

She saw the familiar corridors as she was hurried inside to the infirmary. She glimpsed Galyshev’s face, red with anger and fear, as he bent over her bed and tried to coax sense out of her. And then she woke up in a different bed, looking up at a different ceiling, a cleaner, whiter, more brightly lit one, but she never remembered the trip, and it wasn’t until the doctor told her, hours later, that she realized she was in Moscow, that they had flown her out at fantastic expense in a special emergency flight.

The massacre on the windswept Siberian ice seemed like some hideous fever dream, but one she could not shake from her thoughts; the image of that jagged double blade biting into Barankin’s back, the crunching sound as the blades cut through the boy’s ribs, the sight of that creature lifting its bloody trophy high so that it gleamed in the firelight, would not go away.

When at last they put her into a clean uniform and sent her to see General Ponomarenko the vision of Mikhail Barankin hung before her, like some unholy apparition, as she answered the general’s questions.

She stood at attention during questioning; in light of her condition they did allow her to hold on to a rail for support as she spoke. She thought she understood why she was not permitted to sit. When she had finished her description of the nightmare she had watched from beneath her blanket of snow, she did not stop, but went on to say, “An entire army squad has been wiped out. Someone has to answer for it. I know that. The circumstances of my promotion and transfer just make it that much easier to hold me responsible, and I accept that. You need make no pretenses.”

Ponomarenko smiled humorlessly and leaned back in his chair. He took a long drag on the imported cigar he held, then took a moment to carefully knock the ash into an ashtray before he looked back at Ligacheva.

”I make no secret of it, lieutenant,” he said. “I did think your promotion was a mistake. Your actions in the field, and the results, only confirm my belief.” He took another puff on his cigar, then leaned forward.

”You’re wrong, though, about one thing,” he continued. “We aren’t looking for a scapegoat this time. We don’t want simple retribution. We want more than that. We want to know what really happened, and what’s out there. And whether you have told us the truth or not, Lieutenant, you know more of what happened out there than we do.” He stubbed out the cigar and pointed at her. “So, my dear,” he said, “we don’t want your blood. It’s worse than that.” He smiled coldly.

”We want you to go back.”

 

Chapter 5

“What in the hell?” the technician said as he looked at the computer display. He frowned. Then he glanced up at the technicians seated to either side of him. They were quietly scanning through data downloads from spy satellites much like the one he had been receiving.

No one else seemed to see anything out of the ordinary; no one else was making comments or even looking up. That meant that whatever was responsible for what he was seeing, it wasn’t a whole-system, network-wide problem. Whether it was accurate data or a glitch, it was local.

He looked back at the screen, considered for a moment, and typed in a command.

He studied the result, tried another command, and another, then finally switched back to what he’d started with.

The results didn’t change. The computers said that he was, indeed, seeing what he thought he was.

He stared at it for a moment longer, then pushed back his chair and picked up a phone. It buzzed once before a voice said, “Yeah?”

”General Meeters,” the tech said, “I’ve got something on my screen down here that I think you should see.”

”Talk to me,” Meeters said.

”It’s satellite infrared of the Yamal Peninsula in northern Siberia. The oil fields. A big hot spot. I think you should have a look.”

”Why?” Meeters asked. “You think it’s a well fire? We haven’t heard anything.”

”I don’t know what it is, General, but I really think you should look at this.”

Meeters frowned. “I’ll be right down.” He dropped the phone and rose from his desk.

He was a week behind on his paperwork, and this wasn’t going to help any-if he’d known how much paperwork was involved he wouldn’t have celebrated when he made brigadier six months ago. Still, he knew his people wouldn’t call him down to the surveillance room if there wasn’t something there worth checking out.

He slammed his office door on the way out; moving quietly on this particular corridor was not considered good form, as no one wanted to do anything the guards might consider stealthy or suspicious. Meeters strode boldly and openly down the corridor to the surveillance room, where the guards let him pass without a word.

Shearson was the technician who had made the call; Meeters had recognized the voice. He headed directly for Shearson’s station, where he looked over the tech’s shoulder at the readout on the screen.

”What have we got?” he asked.

Shearson glanced up, confirmed that it was indeed the general who was asking, then tapped a quick series of keys. The screen immediately displayed an outline map of the Yamal Peninsula, with the known towns and installations neatly labeled. That was all done in fine black lines superimposed on bands of vivid color.

”This is the infrared, sir,” Shearson explained. He pointed to a bar scale in the corner that explained the colors-dark green, blue, indigo, and violet were areas below freezing, and most of the screen was awash in deep, dark violet. Warmer areas were chartreuse, yellow, and so on up through orange and two shades of red.

The marked villages and pumping stations were mostly little patches of chartreuse, with a few shading to yellow. None of them showed a single pixel of orange.

However, centered on the screen, in empty wilderness a few kilometers from a greenish dot marked ASSYMA PS #12, was a fiery red spot.

”So what the hell is that?” Meeters demanded. “Is there visual?”

Shearson shook his head. “It’s night there,” he said, “and there’s heavy cloud cover. Probably snowing.”

”Anything putting out that much heat should be bright enough to see at night,” Meeters pointed out. “How long has it been there? Was it there before the clouds moved in?”

Shearson shook his head again. “We don’t know, sir. With the budget cuts and the lowered priority for that area, and with RIS-34 off-line right now, we’ve only been going over the feed for that area twice a week. Wasn’t a damn thing there except ice three days ago.”

”Gotta be a well fire, then,” Meeters said, straightening up.

”No, sir,” Shearson said. “I don’t think so. We have visual from last week-take a look.”

He tapped keys, and a new image, composed of gray shapes, superimposed itself on the existing one. Shearson pointed to the location of the red dot.

”It’s at least a couple of kilometers from the pipeline and twenty or more from the nearest well-head. The Russians didn’t sink any new wells in less than a week in the middle of an arctic winter, General.” He tapped more keys and added, “And besides, look at this.”

The grayish lines and blobs of the satellite photography vanished, then the bright colors of the infrared scan. Then a new scan appeared over the same outline map.

Again, a single bright red dot gleamed on a field of greens and blues, in that same location.

”What the hell is this one?” Meeters asked.

”Radioactivity,” Shearson said. “Whatever we’re looking at is hot in more ways than one. I haven’t seen a mix like this since Chernobyl-though this one’s different, the radiation’s dropped off quickly and the heat hasn’t ...”

”Radioactivity?”

”Yes, sir.”

”Son of a bitch,” Meeters said. He straightened up again, turned, and shouted at the guard, “Sergeant, I want this room secured, nobody in or out without emergency authorization.” Then he turned back to Shearson. “I want hard copy of all this on my desk in five minutes, and I want this wired to the White House and NORAD. Flag any intelligence reports on anything in the area military, political, anything.”

”General ... ?” Shearson asked, startled. “What’s going on? Who is it?”

”I don’t know who it is,” Meeters said, “or what they think they’re doing-might be some kind of Soviet leftovers, might be terrorists, might be Russian nationalists gone overboard, but it’s somebody out there.”

”But whatever it is, why ... ?” Shearson groped unsuccessfully for words.

Meeters looked at the tech in exasperation. “Think, Shearson--don’t you see what that is? I mean, what the hell else could it be? You said yourself you hadn’t seen anything like it since Chernobyl, and nobody builds power reactors in the middle of an oil field. Heat and radiation means that someone just cracked open a nuke and out there in the middle of nowhere that means a bomb, Shearson.” He jabbed a finger at the computer screen. “Someone’s hauling nuclear weapons around the arctic, and it’s nothing the Russians have told us about. Sure, we know they’ve got stuff they don’t tell us, selling goodies to the Third World, and we don’t like it but we live with it-but you don’t smuggle nukes from Russia to Iran or Pakistan across the fucking polar ice cap. Think a minute, Shearson-what’s straight across the ice cap from Siberia?”

”North America,” Shearson said. “But...”

”Damn right,” Meeters said, cutting him off. “We are! Maybe they’ve got missiles hidden out there, or maybe some damn fool’s hauling them over the pole by dogsled, I don’t know, but I do know that I, for one, don’t want any nukes coming into my neighborhood unannounced.”

”But, General, that’s crazy,” Shearson protested. “We aren’t giving the Russians a hard time. Why would anyone try to attack us now?”

”Why not?” Meeters said as he headed for the door. “You got a better explanation? Since when did being crazy mean it’s not happening?” He charged out of the room.

Shearson stared after him for a moment, then turned back to his console and began typing commands.

His hands shook as he typed.

General Emory Mavis, U.S. Army, frowned as he looked at the report Meeters had sent over.

Meeters thought it was a bunch of Russian crazies smuggling nukes over the pole; he didn’t see that any other explanation of the data was possible. Once upon a time Mavis might have thought so, too.

Now, though, Mavis took a broader view. He had learned that a whole slew of supposedly impossible things were possible after all. Unlikely, maybe, but possible.

That understanding was what had landed him his current position, one that existed off the books; officially he was retired. Unofficially he was, all by himself, a black-budget item, listed in what few records existed as “Esoteric Threat Assessment Capability.” Part of his job was to look at unlikely things and figure out just which unlikely possibility was fact. That was his specialty; that was why the White House kept him on call. That was why they’d called him off the golf course to look at this stuff.

Another part of his job was to advise the president on just what the hell to do about the esoteric threats that Mavis assessed, and if necessary to take charge and see that it got done.

Meeters thought it was a bunch of crazies smuggling nukes, but that was unlikely enough that the boys in the White House basement had gotten Mavis off the best run at the back nine he’d ever had at the Burning Tree Country Club to take a look at the report, apply his expertise, and come up with something to tell the president.

Heat and radiation in the middle of the Siberian wilderness-yes, Russian warheads were the obvious explanation, but were they the right one?

He reached for the phone on his desk, lifted the receiver, and tapped in a number.

When he heard someone pick up on the other end, before the other could start to speak, Mavis barked, “Mavis here. Get me Charles Westfield.”

He didn’t bother listening to the reply; he waited until he heard Westfield’s familiar voice say “Hello?”

”Dr. Westfield,” Mavis said. “I need to know what sort of heat and radiation you’d see if one of the Russians’ largest warheads cracked open. Fax me the figures ASAP.”

”Tonight?” Westfield said, startled.

”Now,” Mavis told him. “As soon as we’re done talking. You have the number?”

”I’m not sure ...”

”Got a pen?”

Ten minutes later the fax machine whirred and began extruding paper.

Mavis looked at the numbers. He wasn’t a physicist himself, but he’d worked with enough of this sort of material to be able to make sense of what he saw.

It didn’t match what the satellites showed for Assyma. It wasn’t even close:

Mavis had expected that. Five minutes later he had Westfield on the phone again.

”You’re sure of these figures?” he asked.

”Yes,” Westfield said. No hesitation, no qualifications-just “yes.”

”Suppose a Russian nuke were damaged, enough to trigger a meltdown ...”

”Warheads don’t melt down,” Westfield interrupted. “You’ve got several times critical mass of highly enriched metal there-you put it together and it’s going to explode, not just melt into slag.”

”All right, it’s not a warhead, then,” Mavis said. “Let me fax you something, and you tell me what you make of it.” He pulled out the printout of the raw satellite data, before Shearson or Meeters had added any comments or interpretation, and fed it into the fax.

”It’s not a warhead, damaged or otherwise,” Westfield told him. “And it’s not a meltdown-too much heat, not enough neutron emission for a meltdown. Might be a low-yield burst of some kind-are there any seismic reports?”

”Good question,” Mavis replied.

It took hours and dozens of calls-to seismologists, CIA analysts, and several agencies that weren’t supposed to exist-before General Mavis was satisfied.

Whatever was out there in Siberia had appeared with a shock wave that fit the profile of a fair-sized meteorite impact rather than any sort of explosion-but if something big had fallen from the sky, there was no trace of its descent. It hadn’t shown up on the tracking radar that constantly scanned the skies all over Earth. The impact profile, working from seismographic records, indicated that the object had been traveling southeast at a fairly shallow angle when it hit; if it had been a meteor, then it should have been spotted on several radar screens.

The heat of impact should have dissipated fairly quickly, but that wasn’t what the infrared showed. The radiation profile didn’t fit a meteor, either.

The CIA didn’t have much to tell him about human activity; the technical stuff was comparatively easy to get and safe to pass along, while ground-level reports were risky. However, they said that a low-ranking officer had been rushed from Assyma to Moscow just hours ago, and was debriefed by several generals. Something was going on out there, all right but the CIA didn’t know what it was. They didn’t think the Russians knew exactly what was happening, either.

Mavis nodded as he considered that.

It all fit.

Something hot had fallen from the sky, something that hadn’t shown on radar, something that didn’t act like any sort of natural object, something that the Russians seemed as puzzled by as anyone ...

A spaceship, Mavis thought.

He had dealt with spaceships before. It was something everyone kept quiet about, for several reasons, but Mavis knew about some previous visits by spaceships. None had been quite like this, though. Some parts of the profile matched, others didn’t.

Assuming that this time the ship hadn’t landed under its own power explained the mismatches perfectly.

All the other visitors had been the same species; Mavis wondered, as he looked over his own scribbled notes, whether perhaps Earth was their private preserve. Maybe there were cosmic NO TRESPASSING signs out there that kept away everyone else.

Whether there were signs or not, Mavis guessed that these were probably the same fellows, back again. And if that was the case, then Mavis knew who to call in to deal with them.

He reached for the phone.

 

Chapter 6

General Philips sat at his desk and stared at the empty shot glass, rolling it back and forth in his hands, trying to decide whether to refill it.

There was a time when he would have sworn he would never drink on duty. He snorted quietly. He’d been a naive little punk back then.

And after all, was he really on duty? Oh, sure, they said he was. They said he was on call. They gave him this little space here, his own little cubbyhole of an office, with nothing in it but a desk and a phone and the shot glass and a bottle of bourbon, and said he was on call, that he’d be getting new orders any day.

They had lied to him, of course. He wasn’t on duty here; he was just out of the way. And nobody ever said a man shouldn’t drink when he’d been shoved aside because his superiors thought he’d screwed up.

And Philips didn’t doubt that his superiors thought he’d screwed up big time six months ago, when big-game hunters from outer space had been using New York City as their private preserve.

The brass had known for years that the aliens existed. They’d known that the monsters had been hunting humans in tropical jungles for decades, and they’d kept it all quiet-but you can’t keep it all quiet when people start getting butchered in the middle of an American city!

They’d done a damn good job covering it up; Philips had started it himself, before his “transfer.” Still, there were rumors, there were people who’d seen too much, and Philips was pretty sure that his superiors thought that those rumors and witnesses were his fault.

His superiors hadn’t been there, damn it. They hadn’t been there on the streets, watching a bunch of alien monsters shooting it out with cops and hoodlums. They’d been willing to write off a couple of dozen civilians gone for trophies if it meant avoiding trouble with the aliens, but they hadn’t been there, watching it happen, seeing innocent people slaughtered.

Philips had been there, and at the end he’d come in on the human side, fighting the monsters, in defiance of his orders. He’d had to.

But it hadn’t made any difference-the creatures had left because they got bored and the weather turned cool, not because they’d lost or gotten angry.

The big brass didn’t believe that. They thought Philips and those two cops, Schaefer and Rasche, had chased the aliens away. They’d wanted a piece of the aliens’ gadgetry to play with, and they thought Philips had screwed up in not getting them something.

But they hadn’t seen how careful those damned extraterrestrials were about making sure their precious technology didn’t fall into the hands of the people they preyed upon. There hadn’t been a chance to capture anything.

The brass didn’t know what it had been like. He hadn’t screwed up, damn it-he’d been handed a disaster, and he’d done everything he could to keep it from getting any worse than it already was. No one could have done better without just shooting Schaefer and Rasche-and no one could have known to do that until it was too late.

Of course, his superiors had never told him to his face that he’d screwed up-they’d probably been afraid that he’d go to the press if they booted him out or dressed him down. No, they’d just waited a couple of weeks, transferred him, given him this office, and told him to wait here until they called with his new orders.

He’d asked about the programs he’d started, whether he’d still be training Captain Lynch’s team, whether Smithers and the rest of the New York office would still be tracking down possible incidents, whether the Pentagon team would continue checking incoming electronic intelligence for signs of the aliens, and they’d said not to worry about any of that; it would all be taken care of. He was just to wait until they called.

That was almost six months ago, and the phone hadn’t rung yet.

He’d finished up all his paperwork the first month. Then he’d started bringing books he’d always wanted to read. Around the third month he started bringing a bottle of bourbon along with the books.

By the fifth month he was just bringing the bourbon. Another couple of weeks and he doubted he’d bother coming in at all. It had taken a while, but he’d gotten the hint. That phone was never going to ring. Lynch was probably training antiterrorist teams somewhere, and Smithers was probably training terrorists for the CIA. The whole thing was over.

He couldn’t go to the press now. The news wasn’t hot. The people in charge had had all the time they needed to cover everything up, to get all the stories to match, all the messes cleaned up, and all the evidence neatly tucked out of sight.

He could argue with them, of course. He could complain, he could demand something to do, he could go all the way to the president if he had to.

There wasn’t any point in it, though. If he made a stink, they might give him something to do, or they might just retire him, but one thing seemed pretty sure-they weren’t going to put him back on the assignment he’d had before, the one he really wanted, dealing with those things, those killers, those monsters from outer space.

That was what he really cared about. There was so much potential there. The technology to travel between stars, all those incredible weapons the things had, their invisibility screens-if the right people had all that, it would mean a whole new world, a whole new universe. If one of the starships those things used could be captured and reverse-engineered, the Apollo flights to the moon would look like a soapbox derby by comparison-people would go to the stars. Entire worlds might well be out there for the taking-resources and wealth beyond imagining! If there were other alien civilizations besides the hunters somewhere out there in the galaxy, friendlier ones, then humanity wouldn’t be alone anymore. That would change everything.

Even if that wasn’t possible, even if human beings didn’t get a stardrive out of it, at the very least those things had weapons and technologies that could put the U.S. so far ahead of the rest of the world that dealing with bozos like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi would be no more trouble than swatting a few flies.

This was the biggest thing anyone had ever been involved in-it had been his own private playground, and they had taken it away from him.

He hoped they hadn’t just abandoned everything. Maybe they had put someone else on it, someone they trusted more. Maybe someone like Lynch was in charge.

He hoped so.

Maybe, he told himself, it wasn’t as bleak as he thought. Maybe they really did intend to call him, and those things just hadn’t been back to Earth since the New York affair, so there hadn’t been any need for him. Maybe they’d get around to calling him eventually.

Or maybe the big brass honestly thought those things were gone for good.

Hell, maybe they were gone for good-that whole mess must’ve been embarrassing for them, too. They’d come to Earth looking for a good time, or maybe to avenge the hunter Dutch had killed all those years ago, and they’d wound up getting two or three of their boys notched; if they were an outfit running the equivalent of paid safaris, that wouldn’t have looked good in the ads back home. Or if they had some sort of noninterference rules, they’d blown those out of the water when they landed their ship in the middle of Third Avenue.

Hushing all that up must’ve been a bitch, Philips thought. Even on a Sunday morning, there must have been a hundred witnesses.

Maybe the top brass thought that the trouble had all happened because people had tried to interfere. Maybe they thought there was no way to get that technology, so they just wanted to ignore the aliens now. Even when Philips had been running the show he’d usually had orders to let the hunters have their fun, kill a few people, take a few trophies-don’t make ‘em mad. The brass had always been more worried than eager, more concerned that they not get the aliens mad enough to start an actual war than with having anyone learn anything from the spacefaring bastards.

And now they weren’t giving Philips a chance to interfere and maybe piss the creatures off. The big brass was keeping him waiting here, at an empty desk, staring at a phone that never rang ...

The phone rang.

At first Philips didn’t even notice. He heard the sound, but it didn’t register. He didn’t recognize it as anything that concerned him; it was just more of the background noise that was always present.

Then it rang again, and that time it penetrated. He jerked as if he’d been shot, dropped the empty glass, and snatched up the receiver.

”Philips here,” he barked into the receiver.

He was trembling.

 

Chapter 7

Rasche awoke slowly, his mind hazy; he didn’t really remember where he was.

He lived in Bluecreek, Oregon, he remembered that much-he and his wife, Shari, and their two boys. They’d moved out here to be safe, after that mess in New York.

He wasn’t at home now, though, was he? Whatever he was lying on, it didn’t feel like an ordinary bed. He opened his eyes.

At first he saw only darkness. Then bright light, painfully bright, cut through the dark, blinding him. He closed his eyes again, still trying to collect his thoughts.

That mess back in New York ... who were those things, really? What were they? Why were they there? Would they come back?

Would they come back for him?

Schaefer had had them all figured out, but Rasche had never really understood it. Hunters from space, yeah-but why? How did they decide who to hunt? Where would he be safe-anywhere? Was Bluecreek far enough away?

He couldn’t stop thinking about them, couldn’t stop remembering the strange masks and the hideous faces underneath, their yellow flesh and black talons, the dripping blood and mutilated bodies of their victims.

He blinked. He felt as if he had been drugged, had he? He couldn’t remember. He still couldn’t remember where he was, how he had gotten there. He tried to see through the light, through the mental haze.

A mask-he saw a mask hovering over him. And long yellow fingers were reaching toward his face.

It was one of them, he realized-one of those things from outer space!

”He’s awake...” someone said.

Rasche forced himself to act, suddenly and decisively. He wasn’t a young man, he looked overweight and out of shape, but he could still move fast and hard when he needed to, and he moved now, lunging at the thing in the mask, his hands reaching for its throat as he shouted, “Not again! You won’t get away again! This time I’m taking you down with me!”

His foe went over backward and tumbled to the floor. Rasche landed on his opponent’s chest, and that unbearably bright light was behind him instead of in his eyes, so that he could see clearly again.

A woman shrieked, “Sheriff Rasche, please! Stop it!”

Rasche looked down and saw that the shadowy figure wasn’t what he had thought. The mask was white paper over gauze, not alien metal; the throat in his hands was human. The yellow fingers were rubber gloves. And Rasche knew he couldn’t have knocked over one of those alien predators anywhere near so easily. He released his hold.

Then at last the mental haze cleared, and Rasche realized he was kneeling atop his dentist.

”Dr. Krelmore,” he said, suddenly remembering the man’s name.

Krelmore made a choking noise.

”I’m sorry,” Rasche said as he got off his victim. “The gas ... I mean...”

”The gas?” Krelmore said as his hygienist helped him up off the floor.

”I was imagining things that weren’t there,” Rasche said. “Hallucinating, I guess.”

”Hallucinating?” Krelmore brushed himself off. “I’m just a dentist, Sheriff, but I never saw anyone react like that just to the gas.” He coughed. “Your filling’s all done, but maybe ... maybe you’d be better off consulting, you know, a psychiatrist or something.”

Rasche shook his head. “I’ve seen enough psychiatrists to diagnose the entire state of Florida,” he said. More to himself than the others, he added, “Jesus, I really thought I was over it.” He looked at Dr. Krelmore. “I had this real bad time...” he began.

Then he caught himself. Telling his dentist that he’d been involved in a secret war against alien monsters on the streets of New York was not exactly a good career move.

”Look, Doc,” he said, “I’m really sorry for what happened. I... I’d appreciate it if you could keep this under your hat.” He managed a sickly smile.

”I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, y’know? New place, new job, I’m still getting settled in.”

”Sure,” Krelmore said, rubbing his neck-the red marks left by Rasche’s chokehold were already fading. “Sure, no problem, Sheriff. Your secret’s safe with me.” He forced a weak grin in response to Rasche’s smile. “Every time they show Marathon Man on TV, it’s the same damn thing. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

”Nobody’s ever ...” the hygienist began, then stopped as both men turned unhappily to face her, afraid she was going to say something they’d all regret.

”Well, we’ve had some upset patients before,” she said, “but I think you’re the first one to actually take Dr. Krelmore down like that.”

Krelmore’s smile reappeared. “Best two falls out of three?” he asked.

No one quite managed to laugh.

Ten minutes later Rasche was out on the streets of Bluecreek, thinking hard as he automatically scanned his surroundings, cop fashion.

He didn’t like losing control like that. Yeah, he’d been out of it from the gas, but trying to strangle a harmless tooth doctor was not a good sign, even so. He’d been the local sheriff in Bluecreek for a little over four months now, and he’d mostly thought he’d been settling in nicely. He’d thought that he’d left all the freaks and crazies behind when he quit the NYPD and went west, but now he wondered whether maybe one of the craziest hadn’t moved out west right along with him, right inside his own head.

He walked on automatically as he thought, taking in everything around him, unconsciously classifying everyone he saw into one of three categories, the traditional New York cop triage. The three categories were cops, citizens, and scum; back in the Big Apple he’d always seen a mix, but here in Bluecreek he only seemed to see citizens.

That had been the whole point of moving here, of course, but it still didn’t seem entirely natural. He’d spent almost his whole life in New York; if it hadn’t been for those monsters from Planet X, he’d undoubtedly still be there, probably still working homicide or narco with his partner Schaefer, finishing out his time until retirement.

The spaceships and the all-out firefight on Third Avenue had been too much for him, though. He’d left. He’d found the job as sheriff, gathered up Shari and the kids, and come out here where it was safe.

Or safer, anyway. He glanced at the sky. He couldn’t be sure anywhere was really safe, but Bluecreek seemed like a pretty good bet. Rasche had been pleased to get the job offer. He’d sent out his resume from the hospital, and the reply from Bluecreek had been waiting when he was released. He’d grabbed it.

He’d asked Schaef to come with him, but the big man had refused. Rasche had even offered him a job as deputy, and Schaefer had smiled so broadly Rasche thought he might actually laugh which would have been a first, Schaefer actually laughing at anything Rasche said.

Rasche had to admit that the idea of Schaefer playing Barney Fife to Rasche’s Sheriff Taylor was pretty absurd, but he’d kept asking as long as he could.

It hadn’t worked. Schaefer had stayed in New York.

It wasn’t that Schaefer loved the city all that much; he didn’t. Sometimes Rasche thought Schaefer hated the place. And it wasn’t that he’d never lived anywhere else; Schaefer wasn’t a native New Yorker. Rasche thought he’d grown up in Pennsylvania somewhere, though he wasn’t sure-Schaefer had never really said where he came from.

No, Schaefer stayed in New York because he wasn’t going to let those alien things drive him out, and he wasn’t going to let the government order him around. Rasche knew that and understood it, other people had wanted Schaefer to go away, people Schaefer didn’t like, and that was the surest way there was to get Schaef to stay put. As long as the feds wanted Schaefer out of New York, he wasn’t going to leave the city-not for Rasche, not for anyone.

Besides, Rasche thought, Schaefer was still pissed off about the government covering up the mess, still pissed off that they hadn’t told him what had happened to his brother Dutch, the covert operative, after Dutch had disappeared on a rescue mission in Central America. Staying in New York meant that Schaefer would have more people to take that anger out on.

Rasche unlocked the front door of the split level that still didn’t quite feel like home, the split level that was about three times the size of their old place in Queens, and stepped inside. As he did, a photo of Schaefer and himself, standing on an end table in the living room, caught his eye; he ambled over and picked it up.

That was right after they’d taken down a vicious little bastard who had called himself Errol G. Rasche remembered it well as he looked down at his own face. There he was, a big grin making his mustache bristle while Schaefer’s face could have been carved out of stone.

He wondered what Schaefer was doing right at that moment. He wondered whether Schaefer still had nightmares about those creatures.

He wondered whether Schaefer ever had nightmares about anything. Schaefer didn’t seem the nightmare-having type, somehow.

Nightmare-causing, yeah; Rasche could think of a few people who might have nightmares about Schaefer. He smiled at the thought.

He’d have to call Schaef, just to chat, sometime soon.

The smile vanished. He needed to talk to somebody about those things, somebody other than the psychologists who thought the aliens were stress induced hallucinations, somebody other than Shari, who, sweet as she was, never knew what to say about the grimmer aspects of Rasche’s work.

Yeah, he’d call Schaefer soon.

Very soon.

 

Chapter 8

Detective Schaefer stepped into his own office and stopped dead, staring at the man seated behind the desk.

The stranger, caught off guard, stared back, frozen there with one hand reaching out for a framed photograph. His expression was smothered surprise.

He was a man in a conservative and expensive suit, with a conservative and expensive haircut, a man who looked as if he’d be more at home on Wall Street than Police Plaza. Right now, though, he was at 1 Police Plaza, in the headquarters of the New York Police Department, sitting in Schaefer’s chair, holding a photo of Schaefer and Rasche that was the only ornament on Schaefer’s desk, and staring at Schaefer.

After a moment of utter silence, Schaefer said, “Go ahead, make yourself at home. Take a look around. Maybe you’ll find some quarters under the seat cushion.”

”Ah,” the stranger said, carefully putting down the photo he’d been looking at. “My name is Smithers, Detective Schaefer.” He rose, holding out a hand to shake as he came around the desk. “I’ve been sent ...”

Schaefer ignored the hand. He had recognized something about the other’s attitude. “You’re one of those army goons,” he interrupted. “Like Philips and the others. The ones who thought they could handle our friends on Third Avenue last summer:”

”I, ah ...” Smithers began, quickly lowering the proffered hand.

He didn’t deny the connection, which was all the confirmation Schaefer needed. Schaefer cut him off. “I’ve got work to do, Smithers,” he said. “Real work. Whatever it is you came to say, spit it out. Then leave.” He pulled off his jacket.

”Yes, I...” Smithers said. Then he saw Schaefer’s face and cut to the chase. “There’s been an incident, Detective Schaefer. An entirely new occurrence. We believe your expertise, due to your previous experience in related matters, could prove invaluable should the event develop beyond current expectations ...”

”Jesus, do you people spend your lunch hours memorizing a goddamn thesaurus?” Schaefer demanded as he turned and opened his locker. “Let me guess what you’re actually telling me, shall I? The boys are back in town and you’d like me to check it out, for old times’ sake.”

”Exactly,” Smithers said. “There are some new elements, however...”

”Fuck new elements,” Schaefer said as he hung up his jacket and slipped off his shoulder holster. “I’ve got a job to do here.”

”Of course, we would clear your status with your chief and any other applicable agencies ...”

”I’ll bet you would.” Schaefer unbuttoned his shirt, speaking as he did. “You don’t seem to get it, Smithers, so let me spell it out. The Schaefer boys have put in their time as far as Philips and the rest of you are concerned. If you and the rest of your gang of hotshot special agents, or whatever you call yourselves, want to go for another tag-team match with those ugly mothers from outer space, you go right ahead, have at it.” He pulled off the shirt and slid it onto a hanger, exposing a body that would have done Arnold Schwarzenegger proud. “But you can leave me right out of it.”

”But, Detective...” Smithers began.

Schaefer taped a wire to his chest, holding a tiny microphone in place. “No,” he said.

”I’m sure that if...”

Schaefer continued to install the surveillance equipment as he said, “What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand?”

”Damn it, Detective, will you let me finish a sentence?” Smithers shouted.

”Why should I?” Schaefer asked. “Besides, I just did.” With the wires securely in place, he reached in the locker and pulled out a gaudy pink-and-green shirt, the sort of thing the tackier pimps on Seventh Avenue wore.

Smithers fumed for a moment, then said, “I’d think you’d want a chance to get involved in this.”

Schaefer started buttoning the shirt, then looked at Smithers. “Why? Are they in New York again?”

”Well, no,” Smithers admitted.

”I knew it,” Schaefer said, looking back down at the buttons. “I’d have smelled them if they were here.” He finished buttoning the shirt, pulled a brown leather coat out of the locker, then turned to Smithers and said, “Listen up, army boy. If they aren’t in New York, I’m not interested. I don’t like those sons of bitches, but there are a lot of people in this world I don’t like, including you.” He tugged on one sleeve. “I’ve done my time, Smithers. So did my brother. He lost his entire squad to them; I got my city shot up and lost my partner. We took down a few of those ugly bastards along the way, we did our best, and I’m willing to call it even if they stay off my turf. You tell me they’re not on my turf, so you can just go to hell, and take General Philips with you.” He pulled on the other sleeve.

”Your ‘turf’ is just New York?”

”Damn right.” He straightened the coat. “I may think I’m pretty hot shit, but I’m not up to playing cop for the whole goddamned world. New York’s big enough for anyone.”

”So you won’t consider helping us?”

”I told you ‘no’ once already.”

”That’s your final word?”

”My real ‘final word’ would probably get me arrested,” Schaefer said, giving Smithers a shove toward the door. “Now get out of my office before I sprinkle you with salt and watch you melt on the sidewalk like the slug you are.” He pushed Smithers out and closed the door.

That done, he glanced at the clock. Despite that little chat he still had a few minutes to spare before he had to be in position.

He looked at the closed door. The man in the suit was making no effort to get back in, which was good-but that didn’t mean it was the end of the matter.

Even if Philips and his buddies were willing to let it drop, that didn’t mean Schaefer was. He’d been looking for Philips in his spare time for months, and hadn’t found him-but now he might have a fresh lead.

”Smithers, huh?” he muttered to himself. “If that’s a real name, I just might want to look him up later. We might have a nice little chat about Dutch.” He fished a scrap of paper from the pile on his desk, found a pen, and scribbled a quick note to himself just two names, “Smithers” and “Philips,” with an arrow connecting them.

Schaefer’s brother Dutch had disappeared years ago while working for Philips. Schaefer was certain that Dutch had run up against one of those alien big-game hunters, down there in Central America where Philips and his boys had been playing around in the local politics. Dutch and his boys had walked right into its hunting ground, and the thing had butchered Dutch’s entire team-but Dutch had apparently killed it and gotten out alive.

And then he’d vanished, and Schaefer was pretty damn sure that Philips knew more about that disappearance than he’d admitted.

And after last summer’s debacle Philips had disappeared, too-into the Pentagon somewhere, probably. Schaefer had resented that; he had wanted to have a friendly little talk with Philips.

This Smithers might be able to lead him to Philips, and maybe they could make some kind of a deal. He might just help Philips out after all, if the two of them could agree on a few details. He didn’t like those big ugly bastards from outer space, and despite what he’d told Smithers, a rematch wasn’t completely out of the question.

Any deal they might make would have to be on Schaefer’s terms, though. He wasn’t going to come running whenever Philips called. And sending Smithers here to fetch him had just pissed him off.

Schaefer would deal with Smithers and his boss when and where he chose-which wasn’t here or now. For one thing, he wasn’t going to tackle any sort of serious negotiating here at Police Plaza, with a couple of hundred cops around who might have their own ideas about what was appropriate bargaining behavior. No, they’d meet somewhere private, at a time and place of Schaefer’s choosing, when he was good and ready, and when that happened the agenda was going to start with Dutch, not with those alien freaks.

And it wouldn’t be any time all that soon, because Schaefer had a bust to attend to, one that he and his men had been setting up for weeks. Once that was out of the way, then he’d have time to worry about Dutch, General Philips, and a bunch of bloodthirsty goons from space.

He dropped the note on the desk and left.

 

Chapter 9

Schaefer turned and looked out through the storefront, trying to appear casual or as casual as he ever did, at any rate.

He was standing in a small shop in the Village, a place called Collectors World that sold comic books, baseball cards, and other such things, all of it overpriced kid stuff, in Schaefer’s opinion. He was pretending to talk to the shop’s manager, a balding guy named Jon Cohen, but he was actually looking out the front window at the man in the driver’s seat of a brown van that had just parked illegally at the opposite sidewalk.

The van was late; Schaefer had been in here killing time for a good three minutes, waiting for it.

”Testing, one two three, testing, one two three,” he said in a conversational tone. “This wire better be working, Rawlings, because I’m going in, in about two minutes, before these clowns talk me into buying any funny books.”

The driver held up a hand, displaying thumb and forefinger in a circle-the “okay” sign. The mike was live.

”Okay, boys,” Schaefer said as he strode toward the door, pushing past a clerk who’d also given his name as John, “we’re on. Remember, nobody moves in until Baby coughs up the dope. I want her for dealing, not just for some candy-ass zoning violation.”

He marched out onto the sidewalk and across the street, headed for a kitchenware shop-a shop that, according to the dealers in the vicinity and NYPD’s own undercover operatives, happened to be the local headquarters for wholesale cocaine. A cold winter wind ripped down the street, flapping his leather coat, but Schaefer ignored it.

In the back of the brown van one of the three cops manning the monitoring equipment muttered, “Thank God Schaefer’s here to tell us our jobs, hey? For a second there I was almost feeling competent.”

His companions grinned nervously.

”Shut up,” Rawlings said from the driver’s seat. “You guys be ready.”

A bell jingled as Schaefer stepped into the kitchenware shop. He looked around at the cluttered shelves and empty aisles; the only other person in the place was the woman behind the counter, who seemed out of place amid saucepans and spatulas. She wore fishnet stockings, an elaborately teased blond wig, and makeup as thick as Tammy Faye Bakker’s, and looked as much at home among kitchenware as a coyote among kittens.

Schaefer knew her as Baby. Everyone in this neighborhood knew her as Baby.

”Glad you could make it, big man,” she said. “Could I interest you in some Fiesta ware?”

Schaefer grinned. “No way,” he replied, doing his best impression of a happy-go-lucky kid. “Coke sticks to the Teflon when you cook it down.”

The woman smiled back. “No problem. I’ll toss in a couple of cans of Pam.”

In the truck one of the cops muttered, “Asshole. Coke doesn’t stick to Teflon.”

”C’mon, Schaef,” Rawlings said, knowing Schaefer couldn’t hear him. “Don’t swap dumb jokes with the broad, just make the damn buy!”

In the back, one of the techs glanced up from the equipment, then nudged his neighbor and pointed out the back window. “Oh, great,” he said. “We’ve got company.”

A man in a ragged trench coat was approaching the van unsteadily, standing on tiptoe as if trying to peer in through the windows in the rear doors. The windows were covered with one-way foil, so he wouldn’t see anything, but still, no one involved with the operation wanted anything to draw any attention to the van.

”Some homeless geek looking for a smash and grab,” the cop nearest the door said. “Want me to get out there and shoo him away?”

Rawlings shook his head. “Not when we’re in Baby’s line of sight,” he said. “Just keep an eye on him.”

”Got it,” the man by the rear door said. He turned to look out the back window again just in time to see the derelict pull a .357 from under his trench coat.

”Oh, my God ...” the cop said, just before the bum pulled the trigger and the plastic window shattered. Half a second later, before anyone could react, a second shot took the top off the cop’s head.

The third shot punched through another cop’s throat; the fourth missed, and Rawlings actually got off a shot of his own before a slug went through his right eye.

Rawlings’s shot missed the “derelict” completely and ricocheted off the second story of an office building half a block away.

The last cop, a technician who’d never fired his gun outside the department shooting range before, was still fumbling with the flap on his holster when the “derelict’s” sixth bullet took him down.

”What the hell?” Schaefer said, whirling at the sound of gunfire.

Something had gone wrong; he knew that much instantly. He didn’t know yet what had gone wrong, but it had to be bad. He’d heard six shots, one after another, from a high-caliber handgun not anything his backup was carrying. For a moment he completely forgot about the woman he’d been trying to bust.

That was a mistake.

”You should have gone for the pans, sweetheart,” Baby said, pulling a .45 from under the counter. As she did, a big man with a shaved head, tattoos, and a pump-action shotgun stepped out of the back room. The shotgun was aimed directly at Schaefer’s head.

”Don’t you think so, Detective Schaefer?” Baby said. “If you’d just come in for a nice set of aluminum ware we might’ve avoided a whole shit load of trouble.”

Schaefer stared at Baby for a moment, considering the automatic in her hand, then turned and looked over the punk with the shotgun.

The gun was held nice and steady, not wavering at all, and Schaefer could see that finger crooked on the trigger, ready to pull. Baby’s hand was steady, too.

Reluctantly Schaefer raised his hands. He might have tried jumping one opponent, but the combination of the two was too much.

He wanted to know what the hell had just happened outside, where his backup was, whether he still had any backup, but it didn’t look as if anyone was going to answer his questions just now. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he headed for the door, he’d catch a bullet in the back.

Baby strolled around the counter, showing off those fishnets and her blood-red spike heels. She stepped up to Schaefer and shoved the .45 under his chin. “When are you cops going to learn?” she said. “Nothing goes down around here that Baby doesn’t know about.” She reached out and ran the fingers of her left hand under the leather coat and across Schaefer’s shirt while her right held the gun in place. The gesture was a mockery of eroticism; Schaefer knew she wasn’t fondling him. She was looking for something.

She found it. Her fingertips brushed the wire under Schaefer’s shirt, and she ripped the shirt open, exposing the tiny microphone.

”Cute little thing,” she said.

”You like it?” Schaefer said. “Keep going-you might find a CD player strapped to-”

”Shut up!” she said, slapping the .45 across his face. It stung, but Schaefer didn’t feel anything broken or bleeding-Baby had just been making a point. If she wanted to, he didn’t doubt she could do far worse, so he knew she hadn’t been trying to hurt him.

Not yet, anyway.

Just then, before Schaefer could reply or Baby could comment further, the ripping sound of nearby full-auto gunfire interrupted the conversation.

The three in the shop froze.

”What the fuck ...” the man with the shotgun said-the first words Schaefer had heard him speak. He had a squeaky tenor that didn’t match his broad shoulders. He kept the shotgun trained on Schaefer, glancing uneasily back and forth, as he headed for the shop’s display window.

He didn’t reach it; instead, the window reached him, bursting in a shower of shattered glass as the old man in the trench coat came flying through it amid another burst of machine-gun fire.

”Son of a bitch!” Baby said. She turned and ran for the back door, the .45 still in her hand.

Schaefer didn’t worry about that; he’d stationed a man out back, just in case, and if that cop couldn’t handle Baby, then the department was in worse shape than Schaefer thought.

The shotgunner, unaware of his boss’s sudden exit, picked himself up from the welter of broken glass and pumped two rounds into the street at random.

”Fuck!” he screamed. “Baby, it’s fucked somehow! They got Arturo!”

”What do you know, Einstein,” Schaefer said. “So they did!” He had no weapon, since he’d thought they might check him out before closing the buy, and the other man still had the shotgun, but Schaefer didn’t hesitate before launching himself in a flying tackle.

The two men landed in a clatter of kitchenware; the shotgun put another round through the shop ceiling before flying from its owner’s hands.

The man turned over in Schaefer’s grip, though, and locked his hands around the detective’s throat.

”Die, motherfucker!” he said. He squeezed.

Those shoulders weren’t just for looks, Schaefer realized. “Potty-mouth,” he grunted, forcing the words out in a harsh whisper. “And speaking of pots ...” He picked up a heavy-duty frying pan from the store’s scattered stock and slammed it down on his opponent’s head.

The grip on his neck suddenly loosened.

”Take a look,” Schaefer said as he pulled free. He held up the pan. “Drugs,” he said. Then he slammed it down on the other man’s head again, just to be sure. “That’s drugs on your brain. Your brain on drugs. Whatever.”

He climbed to his feet, tossed the pan aside, then asked his unconscious foe, “Any questions?”

”Yeah, I got a question,” Baby said from the back-room doorway. “You gonna run, or you gonna die?”

She was holding an M-16, Schaefer realized. What’s more, she was pointing it directly at him. She hadn’t been fleeing at all when she’d left; she’d just been going back for more firepower.

He dove for cover behind a rack of flour and sugar canisters as she opened fire, and then he began crawling, looking for something he could use as shelter.

Baby continued to spray bullets into the merchandise for another few seconds, until the click of an empty chamber told her she’d used up her ammunition.

”Damn it!” she shouted as she realized she had missed him. She yanked the spent clip and fumbled with a new one. “Where are you, big boy? Come out, come out wherever you are!”

This would have been Schaefer’s chance, while Baby was reloading, if he’d been somewhere he could have gotten at her. He wasn’t. He didn’t have a gun, and Baby was on the other side of two aisles of kitchen gadgets.

By the time the fresh clip was in place he had already planned his course; he slithered behind shelves full of pot holders and place mats, out of her sight, working his way behind the counter.

”Yoo hoo,” Baby called. “Come on out and play, Detective Schaefer! I know you’re in there.”

Schaefer knew that as the echoes of gunfire and falling crockery faded and Baby’s hearing recovered, she’d be able to track him by sound-there was no way he could move silently in this place, not with all the crap that had fallen off the shelves. That meant he had to move fast. He looked for a weapon.

There wasn’t any. Plenty of merchants kept a gun behind the counter, the Sullivan Act notwithstanding, but all Schaefer saw under the register here were boxes of creditcard slips and the empty shelf where the .45 had been.

An idea struck him. There weren’t any weapons under the counter ...

He kicked the wall and said, “Damn!” Then he swung himself quickly into a squatting position, braced himself, and set the heels of his hands under the edge of the counter.

”I heard that, Schaefer!” Baby called. “I know where you are-now, come on out! Don’t make me come in after you!”

Schaefer held his breath.

”All right, you son of a bitch, be like that!” she barked. “You’re just making it hard on us both. Christ, a woman’s work is never done.” She strode over to the counter and started to lean over, finger tightening on the trigger ...

And Schaefer straightened up from his squat, hard and fast, putting all the strength of his massive thighs into shoving the counter up into Baby’s face and sending it toppling over onto her.

A moment later he stood over her, kicked the M-16 aside, then reached down and yanked the .45 from her belt. He pulled the clip, then tossed that aside as well.

He glanced around quickly. The interior of the shop was a shambles; spent cartridge casings, broken glass, and battered merchandise were scattered everywhere. Cold winter air was pouring in from the street. The dead man called Arturo was sprawled just inside the remains of the main display window; the unconscious punk Schaefer had crowned with the frying pan lay nearby.

And a dazed but still conscious Baby lay right in front of, him, glaring up at him.

”You’re under arrest,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent ...”

The crunch of glass alerted him; Schaefer turned to see Smithers and three other men in black suits and overcoats standing in the shattered window.

Two of them held assault rifles of a design Schaefer didn’t recognize, and Schaefer suddenly realized who’d shot out the front window-- and Arturo.

”Come on, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “You’re coming with us.”

”The hell I am,” Schaefer replied.

”We’ve got our orders,” Smithers said. “And all the authorization we need. I tried asking nicely; now I’m telling you. You’re coming with us.”

”And I’m telling you I’m not,” Schaefer replied. “I’m taking Baby and her little playmate in, and I’m calling the meat wagon for Arturo there, and then in a day or so, when the paperwork’s all squared away, I’m going to sweat some information out of Baby.”

Smithers signaled to the man who didn’t have a rifle; that man drew a 9mm handgun from a shoulder holster, stepped over Arturo’s corpse, then neatly, unhesitatingly, put a bullet through Baby’s head.

She hadn’t had time to realize what was coming; the expression on what was left of her face was mere puzzlement, not fear.

”Christ!” Schaefer exclaimed, staring down at the body in shock.

”Him, too,” Smithers said with a nod, and the shotgunner’s brains were added to the mess on the carpet.

”Smithers, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted.

”Just one less drug-dealing bitch to worry about,” Smithers said. “We’ve got more important things to discuss.”

”Like your funeral,” Schaefer said. “You asshole, we’ve been tracking Baby for months! She could have delivered names, dates, suppliers...”

”Oh, for ...” Smithers began. Then he caught himself. “You still don’t understand, do you;

Schaefer?” he said. “We have a problem, a big problem, much bigger than any drug network. We need your help, and you’re going to give it to us, no matter what.”

”I understand well enough,” Schaefer said coldly. “I understand that I liked Baby a whole lot more than I like you, Smithers.”

”We’re up against something a lot more important than drug dealers, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “Something a lot worse.” He nodded to his men. “Take him.”

”You’re worse than the dealers!” Schaefer shouted as the men with machine guns stepped up on either side and trained their weapons on Schaefer’s head. Schaefer froze.

The other man holstered his 9mm, buttoned his jacket, then stepped forward, toward Schaefer, reaching in a pocket of his overcoat as he did.

”You’re worse than all of them,” Schaefer said as the agent pulled out a black case and snapped it open, revealing a loaded hypodermic needle. “At least the people I bust know they’ve done something wrong.”

The man in the black coat slid the needle into Schaefer’s arm and pushed down on the plunger.

”You, Smithers, and the rest of you,” Schaefer said, “you just don’t give a shit about right or wrong...”

The sedative, or whatever it was, hit fast; Schaefer stayed on his feet for several more seconds before keeling over, but was unable to get out any more words or construct a coherent thought.

Even so, he thought he heard Smithers saying, “You’re right, Schaefer. We don’t care about right or wrong, or any kind of philosophy. What we care about is the country.”

He wasn’t sure, though; he decided that he might have imagined it.

As he began to fall to the floor he was just conscious enough to notice that the callous bastards weren’t even going to catch him.

 

Chapter 10

“Looks like he’s coming around, General.”

Schaefer heard the words, but it took a few seconds before he could attach any meaning to them or to the thunderous beating sound that almost drowned out the voice.

Then his mind began to clear. He knew he was in a helicopter, that someone was talking about him, and they’d noticed he was waking up.

”There will be some initial disorientation and minor dizziness from the drug, Detective Schaefer, but that will pass,” the voice said. Schaefer blinked and saw that a man in a U.S. Army dress uniform was kneeling over him-an officer. A captain, to be exact. The man looked genuinely concerned, which Schaefer didn’t believe for a minute.

He was, he realized, lying on a stretcher aboard a military transport copter-he couldn’t be sure what kind from here, with the pilot’s compartment curtained off. The captain was probably a doctor, and Schaefer was now awake enough to spot the medical insignia-yes, an army doctor.

Schaefer turned to look to either side. Two other men were crouched nearby-more medical personnel, in whites rather than military garb. Two others, soldiers who looked like guards, sat farther back.

And at his feet sat General Philips.

Schaefer stared at the general for a moment.

He had dealt with Philips before, when those things from outer space had come prowling the Big Apple. Philips was a bastard, no question about it, but he wasn’t such a robot as Smithers or the others. Schaefer’s brother Dutch had actually liked Philips, and Schaefer himself had seen signs of humanity in the old warhorse.

”Seems like I have fewer legal rights than I thought,” Schaefer said. His voice was weak and husky at first; he paused to clear his throat. “Maybe I’m just a dumb cop, General, but isn’t kidnapping still illegal in this country? Not to mention murder.”

Philips glowered at Schaefer.

He hated dragging civilians into this, especially unwilling ones, but when he’d been called back, after those months of inaction, and had seen what they’d left him to work with, he’d known he was going to need help.

His experts had all been reassigned; research had been stopped dead. Colonel Smithers and his men had been working counterespionage and had been pulled off that and put back under Philips’s command just the night before. Captain Lynch’s team was still intact, but they’d mostly been marking time, training in marksmanship and demolitions and unarmed combat and not learning a damned thing about the enemy they were supposed to fight.

Because with the researchers gone, nobody in the government knew, really knew, anything about the aliens. They’d given him all the staff he asked for, all the authority to call in any help he wanted, and the only person Philips had been able to think of who did know anything, and who could be located on short notice, was Schaefer.

They needed Schaefer. The fate of the whole goddamn world could depend on this man.

And Schaefer wasn’t cooperating.

”Don’t talk to me about the law, Schaefer, the general retorted. “Some things transcend Man’s laws.”

Schaefer’s eyes narrowed. “And some things don’t, General, and who appointed you God’s judge and jury, anyway? Those goons of yours blew away two citizens back there!”

”Two citizens who were selling cocaine and who had just helped murder four cops, Schaefer,” Philips replied. “I didn’t authorize Smithers and his boys to kill them, but don’t try to tell me you really give a damn about what happened to Baby or Arturo or Reggie.”

Philips wasn’t happy about how Smithers had handled matters, but he didn’t want to let Schaefer know; this wasn’t the time or place to argue about it.

”You know all their names?” Schaefer said. “Hey, I’m impressed.”

Much as he hated to admit it, he was slightly impressed-he hadn’t known Reggie’s name himself, nor that Rawlings and the others were definitely dead.

Baby and her friends had had it coming, then, but still, they should have had their fair chance. Arturo had gone down shooting, but Baby and Reggie had been defenseless; they shouldn’t have died.

”I do my homework,” Philips said. In fact, he’d been cramming desperately ever since the phone call had come.

He held up a manila folder. “For example, I read up on you, Schaefer. You grew up in Pennsylvania, you’re good with languages-fluent in Russian and French, picked up some German and Spanish on the streets.” The Russian was a lucky break, Philips thought, but he didn’t say so. “Joined the NYPD in 1978, made detective in ‘86. We’ve got your military records, your department file, hell, we’ve got your marks from grade school, right back to kindergarten-I notice you got ‘needs improvement’ for ‘works and plays well with others’ for three years straight. It looks like you haven’t changed all that much since, but I guess we’ll just have to put up with you.”

”No, you won’t,” Schaefer said. “You don’t need to put up with anything. You can just land this contraption and let me off.”

”No, we can’t.” Philips leaned forward. “I thought Smithers told you, Schaefer. We need you.”

”Why?” Schaefer started to sit up, then thought better of it as a wave of dizziness from the aftereffects of the drugs swept over him. “I seem to remember you and your boys telling me to stay the hell out of it when those things came to play in New York-in my town. Now they’re making trouble somewhere else, and you want me to get involved? Why? Maybe it’s Washington this time, and you’re afraid some senator’s going to wind up as a trophy?”

”You know they’re back,” Philips said. It wasn’t a question.

”Of course I know they’re back!” Schaefer said, sitting up and ignoring the dizziness this time. “For God’s sake, General, do you really think I’m as stupid as that? What the hell else would you want me for?”

”You’re right, God damn you,” Philips said. “They are back, and that’s why we want you.”

”So where are they, that you can’t just ignore them? Who are they killing this time? Why should I care?”

”I wouldn’t have brought you in if it weren’t absolutely essential to national security,” Philips said.

”Christ, it is Washington, isn’t it?” Schaefer said. “Well, if it is, you can all go fuck yourselves...”

Philips shook his head. He’d forgotten how quick Schaefer could be, that despite his looks he wasn’t just muscle, but this time he’d got it wrong.

”Not Washington,” he said, cutting Schaefer off. “It’s not body counts we’re worried about this time. It’s their technology.”

Schaefer frowned.

He didn’t get it. Sure, it would be nice to have the gadgets those creatures used, but the good ol U.S. of A. had gotten along just fine without them for a couple of centuries now. “Why is it suddenly so urgent to capture their technology?” he asked.

”No,” Philips said. “That’s not it. Not exactly. It’s not capturing anything that we need you for.”

”Then what the hell is it?”

”Making sure their technology isn’t captured.”

Schaefer stared at Philips.

Schaefer was certain that if it was Americans who captured some of the alien gadgets the general would be turning cartwheels. So it wasn’t Americans he was worried about. Who, then?

There must be a spaceship down in some hostile country somewhere. That was the only explanation that made sense.

But even that didn’t make much sense. The things only hunted in hot climates. Somehow, Schaefer couldn’t see a bunch of Iraqi or Somali camel jockeys, or Amazon tribesmen, figuring out how to copy a starship’s main drive. “Where the hell are they, this time?” he demanded.

Philips made a face, as if there were a bad taste in his mouth.

”Siberia,” he said.

 

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.

 

Chapter 12

Master pipefitter Sergei Yevgenyevich Buyanov was not at all happy to be out in the snow, walking the station’s pair of guard dogs.

Ordinarily he wasn’t supposed to handle them at all; that had been Salnikov’s job. But Salnikov hadn’t come back from Sobchak’s little errand, so someone had to take the dogs out, and Buyanov had been ordered to do it. He had made the mistake of admitting that he knew something about dogs.

The dogs didn’t seem very happy about the state of affairs, either, and it wasn’t just the cold, Buyanov was certain of that. Instead of trotting along as they usually did, sniffing at anything interesting, they hugged the station’s walls and seemed to be constantly whining, heads down, or else staring out into the icy gloom of the arctic night and making unhappy noises in their throats.

At first Buyanov had thought it was just him, that the dogs didn’t like him, that they missed Salnikov, but when they didn’t improve, and it sank in that they always both looked into the darkness in the same direction, he reconsidered.

There was something somewhere out there that they didn’t like.

But there wasn’t anything out there, Buyanov told himself. It was quiet and clear. The storm had ended, at least for the moment-everyone who had been here for more than a single winter seemed to agree that this was probably just a lull and they could expect howling winds and blinding snow to come sweeping back down on them at any time, but right now the air was calm-so cold and still that it seemed almost solid, as if all the world were encased in crystal.

Did the dogs sense a new storm coming?

That couldn’t be it-there were storms here all the time, and Buyanov had never heard of the dogs being spooked like this before.

There had been all those stories about the missing squad, about ghosts or monsters or some crazy American commando mission, but Buyanov hadn’t believed any of that-and he didn’t see anything. He stared repeatedly in the direction that seemed to worry the dogs and couldn’t make out anything but snow, ice, and the overcast sky.

”What the hell’s the matter with you?” he demanded, tugging at the leashes as the dogs crouched, staring out into the wilderness. “There’s nothing out there!”

Just then a puff of wind swept down at them from the nearby hilltop; snow swirled around Buyanov’s boots. As if that had shattered the stillness gusts and eddies began to appear everywhere.

That new storm was definitely coming, Buyanov decided, and might break any moment. The storm was coming, and he wanted to get back inside, where it was warm, where he wouldn’t have to worry about these crazy dogs, and where he wouldn’t find himself half believing children’s stories about snow demons or ghosts. Next thing you know, he told himself, I’ll start believing Baba Yaga’s out there, coming in her chicken-legged house to snatch me up for her stewpot.

”Come on!” he said angrily, giving both the leashes another Yank.

The dogs didn’t move. The big female growled, deep in her throat. This wasn’t just worry, Buyanov knew-he did know something about dogs, or he wouldn’t have spoken up and wouldn’t have been given this duty. That was a serious warning, that growl, and Buyanov knew it. That wasn’t playing, or any sort of low-level threat; that was a “back off right now or I’ll rip your throat out” growl, nothing halfhearted or playful about it. If any dog had ever growled at Buyanov like that, he’d have backed down immediately.

She wasn’t growling at him, though. She was growling at something out there.

”There’s nothing out there,” Buyanov repeated, baffled and frightened. “Just the wind.”

The dog barked angrily, once, her hot breath a dense cloud in the cold air. The wind picked up just then, and snow sprayed up from the hillside, glittering white in the light from one of the station’s few windows, like a flurry of diamond dust.

The storm was coming, no doubt about it, and coming fast. Buyanov realized suddenly that that eerie stillness must have been the calm before the storm that people spoke about. Wind roared in the distance.

”Come on,” he said, pulling at the leash.

The big dog jerked back, and the leather strap slipped from Buyanov’s glove. The dog immediately charged up the hillside, her legs churning through the drifts as she bounded away into the darkness and swirling snow.

”No!” Buyanov shouted. “Come back, damn it!”

The dog didn’t come back, and by the time the echoes of his own shout had died away Buyanov couldn’t hear her anymore over the mounting howl of the wind.

”God damn it,” Buyanov said as he dragged the other dog growling and yapping around the final corner to the door. The dog planted his feet, but Buyanov was bigger and stronger, and with just the one dog now he could rely on brute force to haul the animal to the door.

He shoved the heavy steel door open and caught a faceful of warm, damp air that felt like a foretaste of heaven; the entryway was unlit, but light spilled out from somewhere farther inside, tempting Buyanov.

He did not yield. He had to track down and recover the other dog.

”Get in there,” he said, shoving the other dog inside. Then he flung in the leash and slammed the door, shutting the dog inside and himself outside in the storm.

He would have to be careful when he returned, he reminded himself, and make sure that the stupid cur wasn’t waiting there to lunge out the instant the door opened again.

Right now, though, he intended to find the first dog and haul her back.

”I should let you freeze, you stupid bitch,” he muttered as he located the dog’s tracks and began following them up the hillside. The wind was fierce now, already approaching gale force; he shielded his eyes with one gloved hand, trying to see clearly through wind and snow and night. He would have to move quickly if he didn’t want to lose the trail-drifting snow would cover it in minutes, he was sure.

”When I find you, I’ll ...” he began, but then he stopped; he couldn’t think of any appropriate vengeance that he would dare take on Salnikov’s dogs. “By God, I’ll do something, you miserable ...” He peered into the darkness; he was over the hilltop now.

Something slammed into him, something big and soft and heavy that hit him hard. He toppled backward into the snow and felt the cold crystals spray into his boots and gloves and collar, felt the icy hardness of the ground as he landed flat on his back.

He blinked, clearing the snow from his eyes, and saw what had hit him.

His missing dog lay on his chest, her face mere centimeters from his own. Her eyes were blank and staring, and blood was trickling from her open mouth.

”What...” He sat up, enough adrenaline pumping through his veins that the dead dog’s weight might as well not even have been there. As he rose the dog rolled down to he lifelessly across his legs.

Blood was everywhere, on his coat and his boots and his leggings and thickly matted on the dog’s fur.

The dog had been gutted. Something had ripped open her belly in two long slices, side by side.

”What could have done this?” he asked, staring.

Then he realized that the dog had not jumped on him; the corpse had been flung. What could have thrown it with such force?

He looked up, and there they were, three of them, standing in the snow, watching him.

They were bigger than humans; the shortest was well over two meters. They were shaped more or less like men, but their faces were hidden by metal masks, their hands ended in claws. They wore no coats, despite the cold, and bristled with unfamiliar weaponry. Their skin was yellow, where it showed; their hair, if it was hair, was worn in long, decorated, snakelike braids that flapped eerily in the wind.

”My God,” Buyanov whispered.

They stood, motionless, watching him, for a long moment. Buyanov stared back.

Gradually sense returned. These, Buyanov realized, were undoubtedly the snow devils, the arctic ghosts, that had taken the soldiers. When he understood that, he expected to die within seconds of that first sight.

Then he saw that they weren’t approaching him. They weren’t killing him. They were just standing there.

They had gutted the dog, but she had undoubtedly attacked them. They had almost certainly killed or captured the missing soldiers, but they, too, had presumably intruded where they weren’t welcome.

Buyanov hadn’t done anything to anger them, had he? They were going to let him go, he told himself; that was why they hadn’t killed him. He hadn’t meant them any harm, so they were letting him go.

He scrambled to his feet, shoving the dead dog aside, and backed slowly away.

They didn’t move.

Buyanov bowed awkwardly. “Thank you, my lords,” he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar pre-Soviet words. He had never before in his life called anyone “lord,” had never heard the term used except in satires and historical dramas, but what else could he say to these creatures, these ice demons?

He turned, trying to decide whether to walk or run. He took two short steps, trying to maintain some trace of dignity, then glanced back.

The nearest of the demons took a step closer. It moved swiftly, with an appearance of immense power. Its face was hidden by its mask, unreadable, but Buyanov read hostility in the way it stood, the way it moved; he ran.

As he neared the station he began shouting, “Open the door! Help! Help me!” He slammed into the door, too hysterical to work the heavy hatchlock mechanism at first, and pounded on it with both fists.

A moment later the door swung open, and two worried faces peered out at him.

”Sergei!” someone said. “What happened?”

”We saw the dog roaming the corridors,” another said.

Buyanov staggered in, and the larger of the two men caught him as he fell, exhausted from his panicky run.

”Get that door closed,” the man holding Buyanov called to the other. “It must be sixty below outside!”

”Anatoli,” the other man said as he slammed the door, “look! What’s that on his coat?”

”Looks like frozen blood,” the man holding Buyanov said. “Sergei, what happened?”

”Devils,” Buyanov gasped. “Devils on the ice. I’ve seen them, Dmitri!”

The other two exchanged worried glances.

”We’ve got to warn the oth--” Buyanov began.

He was interrupted by a loud booming as something slammed into the door from outside.

”What was that?” Anatoli shouted.

Then all three men froze at the sound of tearing metal. An instant later the gleaming tip of a jagged blade punched through the door.

”But that door is steel,” Anatoli said. “Ten centimeters of steel!”

All three knew that to be true; the door was a massive slab of solid metal, designed to withstand the mightiest storm-or the explosion of the pipeline itself.

It didn’t seem to matter; the jagged blade sliced down through the door slowly, sawing back and forth, like a knife through hard cheese.

”My God!” Dmitri said.

”Warn the others!” Buyanov said. He rolled off Dmitri’s knees, caught himself against the wall with one hand, and started to get to his feet.

As he did the ruined door slammed open, and there were those things. Buyanov moaned.

”Devil!” Anatoli said.

Then, without warning, moving faster than human eyes could follow, the foremost of the three creatures rammed a spear through Anatoli’s chest. Anatoli crumpled; with his lung pierced he couldn’t even manage a dying scream.

For an instant everyone remained frozen, Anatoli hunched over the blade that had killed him, the other two staring in shock.

Then the initial shock passed.

”Bastards!” Dmitri shouted. He ran for the nearest alarm box.

One of the creatures ran after him, moving inhumanly fast, so fast Buyanov could not properly follow the motion; as Dmitri’s hand reached for the alarm handle the thing’s hand slammed down on the top of the Russian’s head.

Dmitri staggered and fell to his knees, still reaching for the alarm handle. Buyanov watched, still too astonished and terrified to move.

The thing swung its other hand back, and two curving, crooked blades snapped into place, extending from its wrist past its clenched fist.

Still holding Dmitri’s head with one hand, the creature plunged the pair of curved blades into Dmitri’s back.

Dmitri convulsed, jerking wildly, then collapsed limply into death-but in his final spasm his hand closed on the alarm handle and yanked it down.

Buyanov saw all that just before a taloned, yellow-skinned hand smashed across his face, knocking him to the floor. He looked up and screamed.

The last thing he saw was the approaching sandal as the thing set one foot on his face; then the creature leaned its full weight on Sergei Yevgenyevich Buyanov and crushed his skull as if it were the shell of an annoying beetle.

 

Chapter 13

Galyshev had decided to pay another call on Sobchak, and was just stepping into the geologist’s workroom when the alarm sounded.

The superintendent looked up, startled.

”What the hell is that?” he demanded.

”An alarm,” Sobchak said.

”Why?” Galyshev asked sharply. “Something wrong with the pipeline?”

”Nothing that shows on my equipment,” Sobchak said, looking around at the ranked gauges. “But I’ve lost the feed from the sensors at the east door.”

”Something’s breaking in over there?” Galyshev demanded, tensing.

”I don’t know,” Sobchak said, staring at the meters. “I can’t tell.”

”Well, then I’ll find out for myself!” Galyshev turned and charged out of the room, heading for the passage back to the main part of the complex.

Sobchak watched Galyshev go, then looked at the equipment again.

He didn’t have any real surveillance equipment-this was science, not the KGB-but when this monitoring station had been set up they’d had the possibility of accidents, or sabotage, in mind. There were thermo-sensors and barometers and rem-counters and even microphones scattered through the entire complex, along with the seismic monitors. The theory had been that if the pipeline burst, or a fire started, the station’s scientists would be able to track the effects through heat, pressure, radiation, and sound.

Sobchak reached over and turned on all the interior monitors, one by one. Last of all he turned on the speaker for the microphones in the east corridor.

He immediately turned the volume down; the screams were deafening.

”My God,” he said. He looked at the other readings, trying to understand.

Sobchak judged that something big and hot had come in through the east door and was moving down the corridor, deeper into the station-the temperature and barometric pressure at the sensors nearest the door were dropping steadily, as if the door was open or even gone, but at the next set the temperature was higher than before.

And the radioactivity levels in the east corridor were running about twice what they should be, still harmless, but inexplicable.

The screams, too, were inexplicable-and terrifying.

Sobchak was a man of science. He didn’t believe in arctic ghosts. All the same, he got up and closed the door of his workroom, and locked it.

”To keep in the heat,” he told himself. “That’s all, to keep in the heat.”

He looked around and noticed that he’d left his coat and boots out in the anteroom-he didn’t like to have them in the workroom; the equipment was packed in so tightly that they got in the way. He didn’t open the door to retrieve them, though. They could wait out there.

In the main station there were men milling about in the common room, unsure what to do, as Galyshev burst from the tunnel.

”Sir, what’s going on?” someone called. “What’s happening? Why the alarm?”

”Something’s broken in the east door,” Galyshev called. “We’re going to find out who it is!”

The men glanced at one another uneasily.

”But, sir.. .”

”We’re not soldiers...”

”We’re still men, aren’t we?” Galyshev demanded. “And there are guns in the armory, aren’t there?”

”Armory?”

The glances the men exchanged now were considerably more hopeful.

”We may not be trained soldiers,” Galyshev said, “but we can still fight when our home is invaded!” He marched down the corridor to the soldiers’ barracks, and after a brief hesitation the others followed him.

Lieutenant Ligacheva had not bothered to lock it before leading her squad out on their fatal investigation. The squad’s weapons were gone, no one had recovered them from the ice, but the reserves were still there, and moments later a dozen men were marching down the east corridor with AK-47s in their hands. Galyshev had taken a quick roll call as he handed out weapons and knew that three men were missing, Sergei Buyanov, Dmitri Veins, and Anatoli Shivering.

No one present admitted to sounding the alarm; presumably one of those three had.

”There was nothing on the radio or the teletype?” Galyshev asked as they marched. “Nothing to warn us some sort of attack might be coming?”

”Nothing at all,” Shaporin replied.

”That bothers me ...” Galyshev began.

Then they turned the final corner, and a blast of icy wind from the ruined door struck them. It wasn’t the wind that made Galyshev halt dead in his tracks and stop speaking in midsentence, though.

It was the blood.

Blood was spattered all over the floor and one wall, great splashes of blood, still wet.

”What happened here?” Galyshev demanded.

There was no answer.

”Where are the bodies?” Shaporin asked from just behind. “Whose blood is it?”

”It couldn’t just be paint?” someone asked from farther back.

Galyshev shook his head. “It’s not paint.” He studied the floor, the patterns of red, the drops and smears ...

”They went down there,” he said, jerking the barrel of his gun. “Toward the pipeline.” He flipped off the safety. “Come on!”

Sure enough, a thin trail of drops of blood led into the tunnel to the maintenance areas.

”What’s in there?” Rublev asked. “What did this?”

”I don’t know,” Galyshev said, “and I don’t care. Are you coming with me or not?”

Rublev still hesitated.

”Come on, Rublev,” Shaporin said. “You think it’s monsters in there?”

”More likely Chechen guerrillas,” Leskov, the practical joker in the bunch, said. “After all, it’s only what, two thousand miles from Chechnya to the Yamal Peninsula? If no one told them the war was over, it might’ve taken them this long to get here!”

A few of the men grinned, but no one laughed, that blood on the wall was too fresh.

”It’s probably American saboteurs,” Galyshev said seriously. “Whoever or whatever it is, you think these won’t handle the job?” he hefted the AK-47.

The men still hesitated.

”Well, I’m going,” Galyshev said. “There are three men missing, and maybe they aren’t all dead, and if we hurry maybe they’ll stay that way.” He turned and marched down the side tunnel.

Reluctantly, first Shaporin, then Leskov, and finally the others followed him. Rublev came last.

The little corridor ended in a large open space, a maintenance area under, the pipeline. The chamber was intended to give easy access to any part of the pipeline, from the huge valves to the immense pumping equipment at the north end; it ran some sixty meters end to end, almost the full length of the underground portion of the station, and was a good fifteen meters wide. Thick concrete pillars were spaced along the room’s length, one every ten meters or so. The oil-spattered floor was poured concrete, sloping slightly to improve drainage, while the walls on either side were concrete block to a height of about three meters. Above those walls a complex maze of steel struts and girders wove overhead, supporting and steadying the immense pipe, and Galyshev had never been sure what the walls up there, hidden behind that framework, looked like.

Regulations required that this entire area be kept clear, so in a crowded, uncomfortable station this huge open space remained virtually empty, and almost unlit. Galyshev reached for the switch at the end of the corridor and flipped it up; three dim work lights came on, but most of the cavernous chamber remained dark.

There should have been more, he knew; they must have burned out. He’d want to do something about that later, during the next round of maintenance.

He stared out into the dimness, scanning the immense chamber for his enemy, whoever it might be; the AK-47 was ready in his hands.

Nothing moved anywhere that he could see. There were no intruders, nothing out of place. He heard a faint dripping, but that wasn’t unusual; not only did the lubricant from the pumps sometimes leak, but the temperature differential between the station’s air and the pipeline itself often produced heavy condensation on the pipe.

He glanced up at the pipeline, more out of habit than concern, and froze.

”Holy Mary,” he said.

Not all of the spots on the floor, Galyshev realized, were water or oil.

Three headless corpses were dangling by their ankles from the steel framework overhead, dangling and dripping blood into puddles that were slowly oozing down across the floor into the waiting drains.

”So much for finding them alive,” Leskov said, with no trace of humor in his voice.

”But who killed them?” Shaporin asked. “And where’d the killers go?”

”There,” Galyshev said, pointing. “Rublev, you did your rounds?”

”Yes,” Rublev said, trying to see where Galyshev was pointing.

”See the boiler-room door?”

Rublev and the others looked. The boiler plant was just the other side of the maintenance area, closed off by a simple wooden door, a door that was supposed to be kept closed at all times. Whoever had the duty of making the daily security round was supposed to check that door.

”But that was closed!” Rublev protested. “I tried it myself! “

”I’m sure it was,” Galyshev said. “Come on.”

”But there aren’t any lights on in there,” Shaporin said as the group began advancing across the concrete.

”I’ve heard that the Americans use infrared goggles to see in the dark,” Leskov said. Galyshev glanced over at him, expecting the comment to be turned into a joke, but Leskov wasn’t smiling.

Galyshev remembered who had had watch duty in the boiler room that shift-Dmitri Vesnin, Leskov’s best friend. Vesnin had presumably gone to see what was happening at the east door, and now his body was one of the three dangling in the maintenance area.

”Americans?” Shaporin said. “You think Americans would hang them upside down like that?”

”Who else could it be?” Leskov asked.

”Or what else could it be,” Rublev said. “How could it be anything human? How long would it take to climb up there and hang them up like that?” He gestured with the barrel of his weapon.

”Let’s take a look in there and find out,” Leskov said, taking a step toward the boiler plant.

”Whoever did this may still be in there, or they may not,” Galyshev said, moving along with Leskov. “You wait here-cover me.”

”The others can cover us both,” Leskov said. “Those were my friends.”

”Mine, too,” Galyshev said. “Come on, then.”

Side by side, the two men advanced across the maintenance area, stalking as if the boiler room were the lair of some dangerous beast-which, Galyshev thought, it might very well be. He had talked bravely about how there were no monsters out there on the ice, but he knew they weren’t all that far from the old nuclear testing ground on Novaya Zemlya, and visions of horribly mutated polar bears were lurking somewhere in the back of his mind.

Sobchak had said something about higher-than-normal radiation levels back when all this trouble first started, Galyshev remembered that all too well. The scientists all said that the stories of radioactive mutants were nonsense, bad American science fiction-but the scientists had lied before or been wrong before.

And why would any human being hang those corpses up like that? It had to be some sort of beast!

He crept up to one side of the door, while Leskov took a position at the other. Galyshev waved to Leskov to wait, then leaned over and slid one hand through the door, groping for the light switch.

”They’d have an advantage with the light behind -me,” he whispered to Leskov. “I need to see them.”

Leskov nodded.

Galyshev’s fingers found the switch. He tensed, braced himself-then flicked the switch and burst through the door, AK-47 ready.

It took him a moment to understand what he saw.

The door opened on a short passageway, a meter or so long, that led into the main boiler room. That boiler room was not well lit, even with the four ceiling lights on; it was a shadowy place of hissing pipes, black dust, and the orange glow from the burners.

This was the heart of the heating system for the entire complex-here oil was burned to boil water into steam, which was circulated through a network of pipes and radiators to every inhabited portion of Station #12. The oil came straight from the fields, so it was heavy, dirty stuff, and despite the chimneys and blowers soot seeped out into the boiler plant, covering everything with black grit.

The room was sweltering hot, of course, despite the biting cold outside the station. The heat radiated off the main boiler in waves of rippling air. The metal sides of the boiler were too hot to touch, new workers arriving at the station sometimes put themselves in the infirmary with second-degree burns while discovering this.

Galyshev had been working in Assyma for years; he would no more have touched the boiler than he would have thrust his bare hand into live coals.

It took him a moment, therefore, to realize that he really did see three big, man-shaped creatures leaning up against the boiler, their backs pressed tight to the unbearably hot metal.

He couldn’t shoot them, he realized; his fire would hit the boiler. The metal walls were thick, but the boiler was old, and was designed to hold pressure in, not to keep bullets out. It might explode if he shot at it.

These things were unquestionably the killers, though. They held things like spears, there were jagged blades on their wrists ...

And they weren’t human at all, he realized. Not only could they press up against metal heated to 120 degrees Celsius without being burned, but they were huge, their skin was yellowish, their nails black and hard and pointed, like claws. They wore strange metal masks that hid their faces completely, while elsewhere much of their inhuman flesh was exposed.

They not only weren’t burned, they seemed to relish the heat.

”My God,” Galyshev said as it sank in just what he was seeing.

The three masked faces turned to look at him. Something moved-not one of the creatures themselves, but something on the shoulder of the one nearest Galyshev, something humped and black that lifted up and pivoted to point at him.

Three red dots roved briefly before settling onto Galyshev’s face.

A weapon, Galyshev realized, and he started to duck, to point his own weapon, but the blue-white fireball tore his head off before he had had time to fully react.

Leskov had not yet looked into the room, though he had been tempted upon seeing how Galyshev was staring; he was holding himself back, staying in reserve, letting Galyshev take the lead here. Galyshev was the superintendent, after all.

Then something flashed blue-white, momentarily blinding Leskov. Galyshev’s AK-47 stuttered briefly as the superintendent’s finger squeezed the trigger in a dying spasm, and when Leskov could see again Galyshev’s headless corpse was falling to the floor.

Leskov let out a wordless scream of rage and fear and swung himself into the doorway, firing wildly.

He never even saw them. He saw a blur, and then felt the hot shocking pain of a blade ripping through his belly, and then Leskov died, falling beside Galyshev, the AK-47 spraying bullets across the boiler-room ceiling as he toppled backward.

On the other side of the maintenance area the others watched in horror. They saw the blue-white flash, saw Galyshev and Leskov fall, but they didn’t see the enemy, didn’t see what had killed the two.

”What happened to them?” Shaporin asked. He raised his voice and shouted, “Who are you? Who’s in there? Why are you doing this?”

No one answered.

”I don’t like this,” Rublev said. “I’m no soldier.

I’m getting out of here.” He began creeping backward up the corridor.

Then there was another blue-white flash, this one tearing across the full width of the maintenance area, and Shaporin crumpled to the concrete, his chest blown apart. Rublev turned and ran.

None of the men ever got a clear look at their attackers; the things moved too fast, the light was poor. A few fired their weapons wildly into the darkness, hoping to hit something, but without effect.

Five more men died before they could even attempt to flee; Rublev was the only one to make it as far as the main corridor. He didn’t turn to see if anyone was pursuing him, didn’t turn to see what had happened to his comrades.

He didn’t see the spear until it had punched through his body. Then he glimpsed the barbed, red-coated blade for only an instant before he died.

Rublev’s body hung limply on the spear for a moment as the creature looked around, scanning the corridor for any further sign of life.

Then it flung the corpse aside and returned to the warmth of the boiler plant.

 

Chapter 14

James Theodore Ridgely, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had never trusted the Russians, hadn’t trusted them when they called themselves Soviets and preached their Communist bullshit about historic inevitability, and he didn’t trust them now when they called themselves Russians again and talked about the brotherhood of nations.

He didn’t mind if they knew it, either-in fact, he took pride in thinking he was doing his bit to let the Russkies know they weren’t fooling everybody. That might, he thought, help keep them in line.

And someone, going by the intelligence report he’d just received, was sure as hell out of line now. Four hundred percent increase in background radiation in the Assyma region on the Yamal Peninsula? Huge localized rise in temperature? That didn’t happen by itself, or because some factory worker dropped a canister.

He had had to check a map to be sure just where the hell the Yamal Peninsula was. Northwestern Siberia, on the Arctic Ocean-not that you were ever likely to see any open seawater that far north! That was hundreds of miles from the border with the Norwegian part of Lapland, thousands of miles from the Bering Strait.

The middle of fucking nowhere, that’s where the Yamal Peninsula was.

So of course this Assyma place was an oil field. One of the coldest, most barren places on Earth, colder than the North Pole itself, and the Russians were pumping thousands of barrels of high-grade oil out of the ground there.

Ridgely sometimes, in his more profanely imaginative moments, thought that God had been playing games when He decided where to put petroleum deposits. It seemed as if He had gone looking for the most miserable, useless places He could possibly put the stuff, godforsaken deserts, icy hellholes, underwater ... maybe God just didn’t like oil, so He tried to put it in places where He wouldn’t have to look at it, places that belonged to the most unpleasant people available.

So, of course, the Yamal Peninsula was just filthy with the stuff.

Oil wasn’t radioactive, though. That wasn’t any oil spill or wellhead fire that the satellites had spotted. And there weren’t supposed to be any nuclear power plants anywhere around there.

There probably weren’t any power plants. Building a nuclear plant in the middle of an oil field a thousand miles from the nearest city-now, that would be way up there on the stupidity lists. It was a safe bet even the Russians weren’t that dumb. Ridgely wouldn’t have put it past the Iranians or the French, but the Russians knew better.

The flare-up was too far inland to be a grounded submarine with reactor trouble. The Russians still had plenty of subs cruising the arctic, but there wouldn’t be any reactor leaks a hundred miles from the coast.

Not natural, not a power plant, not a sub-that left weapons.

It had to be weapons, and messing around with nuclear weapons there was definitely out of line. The Russians swore they were disassembling nukes, not building them, and that sort of radiation and heat spill could equally well have come from an accident in either assembly or disassembly, but all the official disassembly was going on in the south, not way the hell up in the arctic.

So somebody was up to something.

Ridgely wasn’t entirely convinced it was the boys in Moscow. It could just as easily have been one of the various loony factions that were causing trouble over there, the nationalists or the leftover Commies or the local mafias, but whoever it was, Moscow had to know about it, and they should have passed on a quiet word or two to someone, just so no one would get too upset.

They should have told someone, and most likely, they should have told him.

Ridgely had gotten a few sub-rosa reports from his Russian counterparts in his day, and had now and then passed them along a few little warnings of his own. Just because he didn’t trust the sneaky bastards was no reason to risk letting the whole fucking world blow up in his face over some trivial little misunderstanding.

He hadn’t gotten any word on this one, though.

He dropped the printout, picked up the phone, then hesitated.

These were nukes they were talking about. This was the big time. And on the arctic coast, the only logical place to aim nukes was over the pole at North America. If this was a bunch of Islamic terrorists or some African government trying to pick up a little atomic blackmail fodder on the cheap, those readings would have been down in the Caucasus or central Asia somewhere, not in Siberia.

It might be Zhirinovsky’s crazies or something, but by God Moscow should have told them by now; they’d had a couple of days, and Ridgely hadn’t heard a peep. A phone call just wasn’t going to do an adequate job of expressing American displeasure at that silence.

This called for a personal visit.

A public personal visit.

He picked up the phone after all and punched the button for his secretary.

”Yes, Ambassador?” she said instantly. Ridgely smiled. He appreciated competence.

”Steffie, honey,” he said, “I’m going to be paying a little visit on the Russian ambassador at..” he glanced at the clock- “at about two, I’d say.” That would be after Grigori got back from lunch, but before he got busy, and if his lunch ran late, then Ridgely could camp out and make a show of it. “I think that if some of our friends from the press happened to come by about then, they might be interested in what I’ve got to say to the old boy.”

”On or off the record?” Steffie asked.

”Oh, I think this’ll be on the record,” Ridgely said, leaning back in his chair. “Nothing official, though, just a chat we don’t mind having reported.”

”Got it, Ambassador,” Steffie said. “So is this a surprise visit, or should I tell Mr. Komarinets’s staff that you’re coming?”

Ridgely considered that. He noticed that she didn’t bother asking if she should try to make an appointment; Steffie knew her job.

”Make it a five-minute warning, maybe,” he said.

”Yes, sir.”

Ridgely hung up the phone and smiled a tight little smile of satisfaction.

Those bastards weren’t going to get away with anything on his watch!

 

Chapter 15

“My government knows nothing of any clandestine activity of any sort in that area, Mr. Ambassador,” Grigori Komarinets had repeated, speaking not to Ridgely but directly into the CNN camera.

General Mavis stood with his hands clasped behind his back as he watched the report on the big TV in the situation room. This Ambassador Komarinets was good, no question--or maybe the folks in Moscow had lied to him, and he honestly didn’t know what was going on.

”Meeters,” he said, “call someone, make sure Ridgely gets a cookie for helping us out on this-an assignment in Vienna, a shot on Larry King, whatever makes him happy.”

”Yessir, “ Meeters replied. He stood where he was; Mavis hadn’t said to call now. And there wasn’t any hurry; these things were best done discreetly, not making the connection too obvious. Mavis glanced at him.

Meeters looked uneasy, preoccupied-but then, why shouldn’t he? According to CNN, they might be working up toward World War III.

And they might be, at that, but not the way any of these people thought.

Mavis turned back to the screen and watched for a few seconds more, until CNN cut to a commercial. Then he turned and headed down the corridor toward his office.

Meeters, after an instant’s hesitation, followed; when they were out of earshot of the officers still watching the TV, he jogged a few steps to catch up and said, “Excuse me, sir-might I have a word with you?”

Mavis glanced back at the other, then led the way into his office.

”Close the door if you like,” he said as he sat down on a corner of his desk. “What’s on your mind?”

Meeters stepped in and closed the door. “Sir,” he said, “I was there when the preliminary satellite reports came in-I was the one who released that first report, and at the time I was sure someone was hauling warheads out there.

”And?” Mavis said.

”Well, sir, I was wrong,” Meeters said. “I’ve been looking at the technical reports, and I don’t think we’re seeing missiles out there. The figures don’t add up.”

Mavis nodded. “You figured that out all by yourself, did you?”

”Yessir,” Meeters said. “And if those aren’t bombs or missiles, then Ambassador Ridgely and the rest could be stirring up a hornet’s nest over a threat that doesn’t even exist. We might be ...”

Mavis held up a hand and cut him off. “Stop right there.” He stood up. “I like you, Meeters, you’re a good man, you take orders but you’re not afraid to make decisions. You’ve got a good brain. And that’s why I’m not going to have you arrested and thrown into protective custody.”

Meeters blinked. “Sir?”

”All right, that hot spot isn’t any Russian -missiles,” Mavis said. “Think it through, then. There’s something there, so if it isn’t nukes, what is it?”

Meeters looked blank.

”Think, man,” Mavis said. “What might it be?”

”I don’t know, sir.”

”Whatever it is, there’s a lot of energy being thrown around, right?”

”Yes, sir ...”

”Well, then, maybe it’s something our weapons people wouldn’t mind getting a look at.” He decided to go ahead and let Meeters in on it if he picked up the clues.

”Maybe it’s something we’ve had a shot at before and didn’t get. Something you probably heard rumors about, but couldn’t get confirmed. Maybe you thought those rumors were bullshit, well, they weren’t.”

Meeters looked baffled. “I’m not following you, sir,” he said.

”Last time we saw something like this was six months ago, in New York,” Mavis said.

Meeters looked blank; then his jaw dropped. “Oh, my God,” he said, suddenly understanding. “I thought . . yes, I heard rumors, but I thought it was a hoax or a cover-up.”

”No,” Mavis said. “It’s real.”

”But, sir-aliens? A spaceship?”

Mavis nodded. “An entire fucking fleet of spaceships, actually. At least, in New York.”

”Then ... excuse me, sir, but what do we hope to accomplish this time, when they’re in Siberia? What’s the point of blaming it all on the Russians?”

”The point is to keep the Russians busy, let ‘em know we’re watching them-and to keep our own people from figuring out what’s going on and spreading it all over the news. We don’t want anyone to know about these creatures-it’d cause panic if too much got out.”

”But these ... Doesn’t the public...” Meeters paused, not sure where to begin; the whole issue was too large, so large that he couldn’t quite believe the military had a right to keep the public ignorant.

”Listen, Meeters,” Mavis said, “I don’t know how much you heard about the operation in New York, so let me tell you a few things. These aren’t cuddly little E.T.s come to invite us to join the Galactic Brotherhood. They’re a bunch of vicious bastards. We don’t know for sure why they come here, what they want, or how they’ll react to anything we do, but we do know that they have technology that makes us look like a bunch of aborigines. If we go ahead and tell everyone yes, we’ve been visited by monsters from outer space, and yes, they are monsters, then we can guess some of the reactions we’ll get from the public; we’ll have panics and new religions popping up and crazies blaming it on the CIA and people screaming at us for covering up and others saving it’s all a hoax. Right now we can’t even prove it’s not a hoax-those things cover their tracks. All that would be bad enough, but what worries us is how they would react.”

”They?”

”The aliens.”

”Oh.”

”Because, Meeters, we see three possible outcomes if word gets out that we have these nasty visitors dropping in.” He held up one hand and ticked off fingers.

”First, they might not care-they might go on just as they always have. That’s arguably the best case all around, though since they do kill people it’s not ideal.”

He raised a second finger.

”Second, they might just pack up and leave. That means no more killings, but it also means we have no chance of learning any more about them, or about whatever else might be out there waiting for us. We don’t like that much. But it still beats the third option.”

He raised his third finger.

”Third, they might invade. They might just decide that the cat’s out of the bag and there’s no more point in subtlety. And if they do, Meeters, we’re dead meat.”

Meeters frowned. “Sir, the way I heard it,” Meeters said, “we won in New York.”

”More of a draw, at best,” Mavis said judiciously. “We didn’t capture anything, and we didn’t beat them, but they’re gone. They went away-but they left because they were done with their visit, not because we really hurt them. And that was on our own territory, with everything in our favor. Those things play rough.”

”So it’s because of that third possibility that we’re keeping quiet?”

”That, and other considerations.”

”But what if they decide to invade anyway? Shouldn’t we be doing something ... ?”

”We are, Meeters.” Mavis sat down again. “That’s what this whole operation is about. We’re trying to get our hands on some of their technology, to see if we can’t take a few jumps forward so that if they do decide to take over, we stand a fighting chance.”

”You said they cover their tracks.”

”Sure they do. But they’re not infallible. We didn’t capture anything in New York or in the other visits we know about-and yes, there have been others-but this time it’s not a whole fleet. It looks like a solo, and one that’s run into trouble.” He pointed in the general direction of the situation room. “ That landing in Siberia didn’t look planned, Meeters. We might be looking at a shipwreck rather than an invasion, so this could be the best chance we’ll ever have. We want whatever we can get that’s out there. In fact, we’re sending a team in after it, General Philips and a bunch of his boys.”

Mavis stood again. “And that’s what the cover story is about Meeters,” he said. “If the Russians scream about an intrusion on their territory, we’ll just say we were responding to a terrorist threat. Our pal Ridgely just set that up for us, and Komarinets fell right into it by claiming his bosses didn’t know anything.” He grimaced. “If we get what we’re after, great; if we don’t, and the Russians don’t, because those things get their ship flying again and get away and cover their tracks as well as usual, we’ll live with that, too. If Philips and his team get killed or captured, well, it’s an embarrassment, but they were an embarrassment anyway, and legally that whole department doesn’t even exist, it’s all black budget-we could even claim they’re freelance. The important thing here is that we don’t want to wind up with those alien toys in Russian hands, and not in ours.”

That said, he stared at Meeters, awaiting a reaction.

Meeters stared back, unable to think of a reply; finally he simply said, “Yessir.”

The helicopter pilot called back, “General Philips? We’ll be on the ground in five minutes.”

”Good,” Philips replied. “Radio ahead, tell Lynch to have the men ready.”

Schaefer snorted. “Lynch,” he said. “Good name, Wouldn’t want to let any nasty little details like the law get in the way.”

Philips turned on him angrily. “Damn it, Schaefer,” he said. “I wouldn’t have hauled your ass down here if I didn’t think we needed you, and nobody else.”

Schaefer glared silently at him. He was tempted to ask whether they’d ever considered asking Rasche-after all, Rasche had pulled his own weight last summer, same as he always did, and Rasche might still be naive enough, or altruistic enough, or something enough, to have cooperated with Philips without this much hassle.

He didn’t mention Rasche, though, because he didn’t want to give the general any ideas. Rasche had his own life out there in Oregon, and Schaefer wasn’t about to do anything that could screw it up.

”I’ve got a good team put together,” Philips said, “but they’ve never seen actual combat with those things.”

”What about all those boys you had on Third Avenue last summer?” Schaefer asked. “Whatever happened to them-they all take early retirement or get hit by the last round of ‘Reduction in Force’?”

Philips shook his head. “Firing a few rounds at a spaceship isn’t what I had in mind as actual combat. You know something about those creatures, Schaefer. You have a feel for the way they think. My men don’t.”

”Teach ‘em.”

”We’re trying.”

”So what are you doing to prepare ‘em?” Schaefer asked. “Screening old Godzilla movies?”

”Damn it,” Philips shouted, “we’re hauling you down here to teach ‘em!”

”But why should I?”

Philips gritted his teeth and glowered silently at Schaefer for a moment. Schaefer glared back.

”You want the Russians to get their hands on one of those spaceships?” Philips said at last.

”I’m not sure it’d be any worse than you getting hold of one,” Schaefer retorted.

”Even if it’s Zhirinovsky’s crew that winds up with those shoulder cannon or with spaceships? Or if some of those starving scientists of theirs sell a few tidbits to the Iranians or the Serbs?”

Schaefer frowned and didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “I’m still having a hard time buying this Siberia shit. General, you say you want me because I know something about what they’re like-well, one thing I know is that they hate the cold. So if you’re really planning to ship me out to the ass end of nowhere, to look at a spaceship somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, I’ll tell you right now that I’m not convinced it’s really the same things we’re dealing with this time as it was before. Maybe it’s some other goddamn alien tourists who dropped in on us. Maybe Earth suddenly turned into the trendy watering hole for half the galaxy, and instead of weapons we’ll just be picking up a bunch of cosmic beer cans.”

”Jesus, you really work at being a hard-ass, don’t you, Schaefer?” Philips asked. “You look for any reason you can find to make this harder on everybody. You think we’re all idiots? You think we didn’t check this out, didn’t think of the possibility that it’s somebody else? Sure, those things like it hot, but they don’t like it radioactive-the ships in New York didn’t leak neutrons when they landed. This one did. And the ones in New York weren’t spraying heat around like a fucking furnace, and this one is.”

”So it’s not the same gang,” Schaefer said. “If you can handle one species of alien showing up on our doorsteps, why not two or three?”

”Because everything else fits, Schaefer, So they were in trouble when they came down this time. Something was fucked up somewhere. It’s the same creatures; it’s just how they came down that’s different. We think it was a forced landing, Schaefer, maybe a crash. All the stories about the Roswell saucer are a bunch of bull, but this one’s real, which means we might have a good chance of getting a look at their technology-if the Russians don’t get it first.”

”And if they don’t blow it all to hell. Remember the one Dutch killed in Central America.”

”You think we could forget?” Philips eyed Schaefer thoughtfully. “You still won’t help?”

”You haven’t said anything to change my mind,” Schaefer said. “Why should I care whether we beat the Russians? We beat ‘em to the Moon, and all we got out of that was Tang.”

Philips nodded. “All right then, screw the patriotism approach,” he said. “If you won’t work with us because it’s best for the country, how about for your family? This team, these men, this whole project, they mean a lot to me. You help them, help me, and I’ll do what I can to get you some information on your brother.”

Schaefer stared silently at him for several long seconds. Then he asked, “If I go along on this little jaunt of yours, you’ll tell me what happened to Dutch?”

”I’ll try.”

Schaefer considered for another long moment, then said, “I’ll think about it.”

Philips looked at Schaefer’s face and decided not to push his luck. He sat back and waited for the chopper to land.

 

Chapter 16

The plywood targets were cut to roughly humanoid shape and painted with pictures of the alien predators, but done entirely in a dull blue that was almost invisible in the dimly lit shooting range. Schaefer guessed that this was supposed to make the targets resemble the effects of the things’ invisibility field.

It didn’t. The invisibility field had made the damn things invisible, not just hard to see; with that and how fast they moved, you were lucky to catch so much as a faint shimmer in the air before they ripped your head off.

Schaefer didn’t bother mentioning this. Instead he watched silently as the four big men with self-satisfied grins cut loose with heavy-caliber automatic weapons and reduced three of the sheets of plywood to splinters.

The fourth target had one side ripped out, but remained largely intact.

”This team is the elite, Schaefer,” Philips said. “Culled from all three services. What do you think?”

”I think you’re wasting a lot of good plywood,” Schaefer replied.

Philips didn’t respond. He had a horrible suspicion that Schaefer was right.

The six men ambled down toward the other end of the range-the shooters to inspect their handiwork, and Schaefer because it seemed to be expected. The four men who were supposed to be his students or teammates carried their weapons with them-that would be a violation of safety rules at an ordinary range, but here it seemed to be expected. Schaefer watched the way the four walked-self-assured, cocky, supremely confident.

Not good. Overconfidence got men killed, and until you’d gone up against your enemy and knew what you were facing, any sort of confidence was overconfidence.

”What’s the matter, Wilcox?” one of them asked, pointing at the surviving target. “Forget your glasses?”

Wilcox frowned. “Hell, I figured I’d leave something for the rest of you, that’s all.”

Schaefer looked at the target. It had been made with one arm raised in a threatening gesture; the artist had included the wrist blades the aliens used, though he’d gotten the shape of the curve wrong. Given that unless the artist had been there on Third Avenue last summer, he’d never seen one of the creatures, he’d done a damn good job getting as close as he did.

Wilcox had blown away the other side of the target; that hand raised to strike was still there, and Wilcox was standing directly in front of that arm, trading insults with the other men, ignoring the target, ignoring Schaefer.

Too cocky, definitely. If these bozos expected to survive an encounter with those hunters from outer space, they had to learn not to ignore anything. Schaefer reached over and gave the target a shove.

It swung around, and that upraised arm slammed into the side of Wilcox’s head. He fell sideways at the impact and landed sprawled on the floor.

Philips winced at the sound.

Wilcox didn’t drop his weapon, Schaefer noticed. That was good, anyway. The weapon wasn’t any sort of rifle or gun Schaefer recognized-he supposed it was some sort of special top-of-the-line equipment.

Schaefer stepped over toward Wilcox. “Guess you didn’t expect it to hit back,” he said. “Get used to it. These boys play for keeps and follow their own rules.”

”Who the hell are you?” Wilcox demanded, pointing his weapon at Schaefer’s chest. “And give me one good reason I shouldn’t blow your damn head off!”

Schaefer stepped forward and to the side, past the muzzle of the gun, so that Wilcox couldn’t swing it around to follow. He bent down and offered Wilcox a hand up.

”The name’s Schaefer,” he said. Wilcox gripped Schaefer’s wrist, and a second later was upright again. He transferred his weapon to his left hand and reached out to shake Schaefer’s hand ...

Schaefer had turned away. “As far as that ‘blow my head off’ business goes-well, son ...”

Wilcox glared at Schaefer’s back in disbelief, the son of a bitch had knocked him down without warning, and now he thought he was too good to shake hands and make up? He hefted the heavy-assault rifle in his left hand, then grabbed the barrel with his right and swung the weapon like a club, aiming for the back of Schaefer’s head. Let the arrogant bastard have a taste of his own medicine!

”... you wouldn’t want to do that,” Schaefer said, ducking under Wilcox’s swing-he had clearly expected it. He pivoted on the ball of one foot and brought his fist up under Wilcox’s jaw, driving upward from his crouch.

Fist met jaw with a solid thump, and Wilcox went over backward.

”Especially,” Schaefer said as he stood over the dazed trooper, “seeing as I’m unarmed.”

”All right, Schaefer,” Philips said, stepping forward. “You’ve made your point. Come on, all of you-the briefing room, right now.”

It took a moment before anyone moved, but then the group filed out of the range and down the hall.

Schaefer looked straight ahead as he walked; most of the others looked at Schaefer. Wilcox glared at him with outright hatred; the others’ expressions ranged from mild curiosity to open hostility.

Philips tried to hide his own unhappiness behind an angry frown. Lynch had done his best, but without supervision it hadn’t been enough. These men were good fighters, but still undisciplined, with no real sense of who they were, what their job was. Schaefer had picked up on it immediately, pulling that stunt with the target-the men weren’t focused on their enemy, they were focused on themselves.

That was bad-but there wasn’t time to do anything about it.

He led the group into a briefing room and gestured for Schaefer to join him up front while the others took seats on a few of the dozen folding chairs. A man wearing captain’s bars was standing at the front, hands clasped behind his back; Schaefer ignored him and lounged comfortably against the blackboard, facing the men.

Philips stood between Schaefer and the captain and announced, “All right, now listen up!”

Schaefer didn’t see any change in the seated audience, but Philips seemed satisfied and continued, “This is Detective Schaefer, NYPD. He’ll be going with us on the mission. He was directly involved in the New York incident, and he has firsthand knowledge of these creatures. He also speaks fluent Russian, which means we don’t need to worry about sending along some half-assed translator or teaching a phrase book to any of you apes.”

”Jesus, you’re bound for Siberia and you didn’t teach any of ‘em Russian?” Schaefer asked.

Philips turned and glowered at him. “You said it yourself, Schaefer-it’s cold in Russia, and those things like it hot. We’ve got Lassen there who knows Arabic, Wilcox speaks good Spanish, Dobbs has some Swahili-we thought that would probably cover it, and we couldn’t teach them every damn language on Earth!”

Schaefer nodded. “Fair enough, General.”

Philips turned back to the others. “Detective Schaefer’s got an attitude, but hell, so do the rest of you. Take it from me, he knows what he’s doing, so damn it, listen to him if he tells you something about these creatures. Have all of you got that?”

No one answered, but Philips didn’t allow himself to notice. He turned and barked, “Captain Lynch-I want Schaefer combat-briefed on all our equipment and ready to go by 0600 hours. Is that clear?”

”Crystal, sir,” Lynch replied smartly.

”Good. Carry on.” Philips took a final look around, smiled, and then marched out of the room.

”Lassen, you’re with me,” Lynch called. “The rest of you, pack up-you heard the general, 0600.”

The men rose and scattered; a moment later only Schaefer, Lynch, and Lassen remained. Lynch waited a few seconds, then leaned over close to Schaefer. He grimaced, producing what Schaefer thought might have been intended as a conspiratorial smile.

”Look, Schaefer,” he said, “this squad’s been training as a team for six months. We don’t need some second-rate gumshoe telling us our jobs. The general wants you along, you come along, and maybe we’ll use you as a translator if we need one, but otherwise, you just stay safely out of the way and everything’ll be fine, okay?”

Schaefer stared coldly at him.

”You’re a civilian,” Lynch said, trying to explain himself. “You aren’t being paid to risk your neck.”

”I’m a cop,” Schaefer replied. “You think I’m not paid to risk my neck?”

”Yeah, well,” Lynch said, “so I phrased it badly. Siberia’s still outside your jurisdiction, okay?”

Schaefer stared at him for a second longer, then said, “You know, I’ve always heard that it’s up to the officers to set the tone for the whole unit. Maybe that’s why your men are all assholes.”

It was Lynch’s turn to stare angrily, fighting to keep control of his temper. Finally he wheeled away and shouted, “Lassen! The general wants this man briefed; brief him, already!”

”This way, sir,” Lassen said quietly, pointing at a side table that held a variety of equipment cases.

Schaefer ambled over and watched as Lassen opened case after case and lifted out various items.

”Type 19D Ranger-wear snowsuit,” Lassen said, holding up a shiny light-brown jumpsuit. “Thin and practical, with none of the standard bulk to inhibit movement. Tested to fifty below zero.”

Schaefer crossed his arms over his chest.

”The suit is warmed by high-pressure, thermally charged fluid pumped through the fabric by an electrical unit worn on the belt,” Lassen explained.

”Cute,” Schaefer said. “Does it come with matching pumps and a purse? And if it’s meant for the snow, why the hell isn’t it white?”

Lassen ignored the questions and set the bodysuit aside. He picked up an automatic rifle.

”M-16S modified ice-killer,” he said. “Nice piece of work-you won’t find one of these at your local sell ‘n’ shoot! The barrel and firing mechanism have been crafted out of special alloy steel, perfect for cold-weather firing-again, down to fifty below. It’s a ...”

He stopped in midsentence; he’d lost his audience. Schaefer had turned away.

”Hey!” Lassen called. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

”Toys ‘R’ Us,” Schaefer answered. “They have a better selection of toys.” He turned at the doorway.

”Listen, I don’t blame you, Lassen,” Schaefer said, “but you’ve been brainwashed by this high-tech crap. You and the others think this stuff makes you superior to those things, ready to handle anything they throw at you. You’re wrong; you don’t know them, don’t know what they’re like. You’ve heard the stories, but deep down you don’t believe them, you still think you’re the toughest thing going, with your American know-how and guts and your fancy equipment.” He shook his head.

”That’s not how it is,” he said. “When it comes right down to it, it’s going to be you against walking death, just you. And when it gets to that point, all the fancy knickknacks in the world won’t mean shit, and how tough you think you are won’t matter. What matters is whether you’re ready to do anything to take ‘em down. I killed one of them once, Lassen, and you know how I did it?”

Lassen shook his head.

”With a big pointed stick,” Schaefer told him. “I had guns and lots of other toys, and so did it, but it was a wooden stake through its heart that punched out its lights once and for all.” He waved an arm at all the cases. “This crap won’t matter. You’ll see. It’ll probably just make you overconfident and get you all killed.”

”No, I ...” Lassen began.

Schaefer didn’t stay to hear what the soldier had been going to say; he marched out, intent on getting a hot meal and a little sleep before they shipped him off to the arctic.

 

Chapter 17

Rasche sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. The front-page headline was about the American ambassador to the U.N. publicly calling the Russian ambassador a liar and insisting that there were nukes being moved around illicitly in the arctic, but Rasche was more interested in the funnies-”For Better or For Worse” was his favorite.

He sipped coffee and looked up at the clock: 7:20. It would be three hours later in New York, the middle of the morning.

He lowered the paper. “Shaef never called back, did he?” he asked.

”No,” Shari said. She was standing at the sink, rinsing the kids’ breakfast dishes.

”That’s not like him,” Rasche said.

He’d tried calling Schaefer three or four times the night before and hadn’t gotten an answer.

He’d left a message on the machine at Schaefer’s apartment.

”Maybe he’s on a stakeout,” Shari suggested. “If he is, he could be gone for days.” She didn’t mention all the times Rasche had been gone for-days on stakeouts, or that there hadn’t been any since they had moved to Oregon.

”Maybe,” Rasche admitted. He smiled at Shari to show he wasn’t worried, that everything was fine and that he was happy to be out here in Bluecreek.

Then the smile vanished. “What the hell,” he said, ”I’ll give him another try.” He tossed the paper aside and reached for the wall phone. He knew Schaefer’s office number by heart.

Someone picked up on the fifth ring, and Rasche started to relax-but then he realized that the voice on the other end wasn’t Schaefer’s.

”Detective Schaefer’s office, Officer Weston speaking,” the voice said.

”Weston?” Rasche frowned. “This is Rasche-is Shaef around?”

”No, he.. .” Weston began. Then he recognized the name. “Rasche? My God, you haven’t heard?”

”Heard what?”

Shari looked up at the sudden change in the tone of her husband’s voice.

”Schaefer’s gone,” Weston explained. “His whole squad was wasted in a drug sting that went bad-we still don’t know what the hell went down, but we wound up with a van full of dead cops, three dead perps, a shitload of questions, and no Schaefer. Rawlings and Horshowski and a couple of techs bought the farm on this one.”

”What about Schaefer?” Rasche demanded. ”What do you mean, ‘no Schaefer’?” The possibility that Schaefer might have been included in the vanful of dead cops simply didn’t occur to Rasche. Schaefer couldn’t have died that way; it wasn’t his style.

”Schaef’s disappeared,” Weston said. “Gone without a trace. One reason I’m on his phone is in case someone calls with a lead.”

”Schaefer doesn’t just vanish,” Rasche said.

”He took off to Central America that time without telling anyone here,” Weston countered.

”Yeah, but he told me,” Rasche replied. “Look, check around his desk, will you? Appointment book, calendar, maybe he left some kind of note.”

”Jeez, Rasche, I don’t . : .” Weston didn’t finish the sentence; Rasche could hear, very faintly, the rustling of paper as Weston poked around on Schaefer’s desk.

”There’s some stuff about the sting,” Weston said at last, “and a note here on top with no explanation, just a couple of connected names ...”

”What names?” Rasche asked. He’d been Schaefer’s partner a long, time; he thought he might recognize names that had never made it into any official records.

”Philips and Smithers,” Weston said.

That first name struck Rasche like a thunderbolt. “Philips?” he said. “Philips?”

”Yeah, Philips, one L,” Weston said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Rasche hung up the phone without answering.

In New York Weston called “Hello?” into the mouthpiece a few times before he gave up and did the same.

Rasche was staring at the wall.

”Honey?” Shari asked. “What is it?”

”Schaef,” Rasche replied.

”What about him?” she asked, putting down the last cereal bowl. “Is he okay?”

”He’s missing.”

”Oh,” she said quietly, staring at him.

”I have to go, Shari,” Rasche said.