”But if he’s missing, how will you know where to go?” Shari protested.

”It’s more than that,” Rasche said. “It’s not just that he’s missing ...” He stopped, unsure how to explain.

Schaefer was his friend, and more than just a friend; he was Rasche’s partner, and that held true even if they weren’t working together anymore. Schaefer was someone who’d always been there for Rasche whenever he needed him, no matter what, and Rasche had tried to do the same, to always be there when Schaefer needed him.

And if General Philips had turned up again, then Schaefer damn well might need Rasche’s help.

If Philips was involved, then two things were certain-Schaefer was in trouble, and it had something to do with those things, those murderous monsters from outer space that had been haunting Rasche’s nightmares for the past six months. Those were Philips’s special province.

Schaefer being in trouble was nothing new; Schaefer lived and breathed trouble, and was a match for just about anything he ran into.

If there was anything on Earth that Schaefer wasn’t a match for, though, it was those damned alien creatures-and General Philips.

”I have to go to New York,” Rasche said.

”But how ...” Shari stared at him. “I mean ...”

”I have to,” Rasche said simply.

Shari sighed. She’d lived with Rasche long enough to know not to argue. Usually he was a good husband, a thoughtful man, a loving father-but sometimes something would come along that made him suddenly push all that aside, and when that happened there wasn’t any point in argument. His sense of duty, of responsibility, was stronger than anything she could say-and that sense of responsibility was part of what made him the man she loved.

”If you’re sure,” she said.

Rasche pulled on his coat. “Call the mayor for me, would you? Tell him it’s a family emergency,” he said. “Tell him whatever it takes. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He headed for the garage.

Shari watched him go.

”I hope so,” she said quietly.

 

Chapter 18

The plane was a modified B-2 “Stealth” bomber, modified to carry paratroops rather than bombs.

It hadn’t been modified enough to be comfortable, though-the seats were small and hard, the air was dry and cold, and there wasn’t anything to drink but water and fruit juice. Wilcox and Lassen had complained about that for most of the last few hours, making the same stupid wisecracks over and over before they finally ran out of steam and shut up.

Schaefer didn’t care whether the seats were comfortable or not; the only thing that had been bothering him had been Wilcox and Lassen bitching about it, so he couldn’t get some sleep.

Now that they had stopped, he had been enjoying the silence, up until Philips emerged from the forward hatch and said, “Well, that’s it we’ve crossed over into Russian airspace, and the pilot’s taking us down low and slow for the drop. ETA at the dropsite is three minutes.”

Schaefer stretched and stood up. “You sound pretty damn nonchalant about it,” he remarked. “I thought we spent all those billions on defense because we were worried about stuff like Russian radar.”

Philips snorted. “They can’t even make a good copying machine, and you think we can’t beat their radar net? This plane’s part of what we spent those billions on, and we got our money’s worth.”

”You think we got our money’s worth,” Schaefer corrected him. “We won’t know for sure until we see whether they shoot it down.”

Philips ignored him and gestured to Captain Lynch.

Lynch got to his feet. “All right, you crybabies,” he said to Wilcox and the others, “time to earn some of that exorbitant salary we’ve been paying you. Make your final equipment check and let’s boogie.” He tripped the switch and the hatch slid open.

Wind howled; nothing but gray darkness showed through the opening, though. Schaefer stepped up closer.

”Looks like a long drop,” Lynch said. “Getting nervous, cop?”

Schaefer smiled a tight little smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I forgot to set my VCR to record this week’s Melrose Place. Maybe you’ll let me watch yours when we get back.”

Lynch glared at him for a moment, then turned away in disgust. “All right, boys,” he said. “Do it!”

One by one, the seven men leapt from the plane-first the four enlisted men, then Schaefer, then Lynch, and finally Philips.

Frigid air screamed up around Schaefer; his goggles protected his eyes, and his high-tech snowsuit protected his body, but the rest of his face stung fiercely, then went numb as he plummeted through space. He jerked at the handle on his chest.

Schaefer’s chute opened just the way it was supposed to when he pulled the cord, blossoming into a big off-white rectangle above his head and jerking him suddenly upward, turning his downward plunge into a gentle glide-but the cold didn’t go away. He grimaced, then tugged experimentally on the lines, and discovered that yes, it steered exactly as it should. So far, so good.

He looked down, trying to pick out a good landing spot, but all he could see was blank grayness. At first he thought his goggles had fogged up, but he could still see the other men and their parachutes clearly; there wasn’t anything wrong with his vision, there just wasn’t anything to see in the frozen wasteland below.

Well, one patch of snow was as good as another, he thought. He adjusted his lines slightly to keep from drifting too far away from the rest of the team, then just waited for his feet to touch down.

As he descended, he looked around at the others: Philips had really come all this way with them, which surprised Schaefer; the general had to be in his sixties, which was pretty damn old to be jumping out of airplanes over enemy territory or hunting alien monsters.

Philips had guts, anyway.

Schaefer looked down again. The ground was coming up surprisingly fast. His feet were mere yards above the surface, and Schaefer concentrated on turning his controlled fall into a run, getting out from under his chute before it collapsed onto the ice.

Then he was down on one knee in a puff of powder, the chute spread out behind him. He stood up, dropped the harness, and began reeling the whole thing in. He could tell that the chute was scraping up several pounds of snow, but he didn’t worry about it.

The others were landing around him; because of his size, Schaefer had been the first to strike ground. Captain Lynch came down less than fifteen feet from where Schaefer stood.

Lynch threw Schaefer a glance, then looked around for the others.

He spotted one of them helping another up.

”Lassen!” he called. “What happened to Wilcox?”

”I think he landed on his head,” Lassen shouted back.

”Guess he didn’t want to injure something important,” Schaefer said.

Lassen whirled and charged toward the detective, fists clenched. “We’re through taking shit from you, Schaefer!”

Lynch grabbed Lassen, restraining him.

Schaefer didn’t move. He said, “That’s funny, I figured you were up for a lot more yet.”

”All right, that’s enough!” Philips shouted from atop a snowbank. “We’ve got a job to do here!”

Lassen calmed enough that Lynch released him; the whole party turned to face Philips.

”There’s an oil pipeline that runs just west of here, the Assyma Pipeline,” he said. “Whatever it was we spotted landed right near it, north of here. There’s a pumping station just two klicks from here, with a small garrison, some workmen, and maybe a couple of geologists stationed there-that’s the closest thing to civilization anywhere in the area. We’ll take a look there, see what the Russians have been up to-if they’ve been doing anything with our visitors, they’ll have been working out of that station, because it’s all they’ve got. Keep your mouths shut and your eyes open, and move it!”

Philips turned and began marching, leading them toward the pumping station. No one bothered to say anything as they followed.

For one thing, Schaefer thought, it was too damn cold to talk. The spiffy electric underwear really worked, and from the neck down he was as toasty warm as if he were home in bed, but the suit didn’t cover his hands or feet or head, and his gloves and boots were plain old heavy-duty winter wear, with nothing particularly fancy or high tech about them. He wore a thick woolen hood over his head, with a strapped-on helmet and his goggles on top of that, but most of his face was still bare, exposed to the Siberian wind, and it wasn’t much better down here than it had been a mile up.

It was like having his face stuck in a deep freeze. His body was warm, but his face was already just about frozen. His skin was dry and hard, the sweat and oil whipped away by the wind; when he opened his mouth it was like gulping dry ice, burning cold searing his tongue and throat. His eyebrows felt brittle; his nostrils felt scorched.

Odd, how intense cold burned like fire, he thought.

He wondered how the hell Philips could find his way through this frigid gloom. The night wasn’t totally dark; a faint gray glow seemed to pervade everything, reflecting back and forth between the clouds and the snow, though Schaefer had no idea where it came from. Still, everything Schaefer could see looked alike, an endless rolling expanse of ice and snow; how did Philips know exactly where they’d landed or which way the pipeline lay?

Schaefer supposed the general had his compass and some Boy Scout tricks. He seemed pretty confident.

And he had good reason to be confident, Schaefer saw a few minutes later when the radio tower of the pumping station came into view.

Without a word, the soldiers spread out into scouting formation, the men on either end watching for Russian patrols or sentries, all of them moving forward in a stealthy crouch. Schaefer didn’t bother-there wasn’t any place to hide out here. If they were spotted, they were spotted.

They weren’t spotted, though, so far as Schaefer could see. They crested the final ridge and got a good long look at the pumping station.

Gray blocky buildings stood half-buried in the drifting snow, arranged around the central line of the pipeline. All were dark; no lights shone anywhere. Nothing moved.

The place looked dead.

Of course, in the middle of a Siberian winter Schaefer didn’t exactly expect to see anyone playing volleyball or sunbathing on the roof, but this place had that indefinable something, that special air that marked abandoned, empty buildings.

”Check out the door, sir,” Lassen said, pointing.

Lynch and Philips both lifted pairs of binoculars and looked where Lassen indicated; Schaefer squinted.

He frowned and started marching down the slope, his M16 ready in his hands.

”Hey, Schaefer!” Wilcox shouted. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

”Down to take a good look at that door,” Schaefer shouted back.

”He’s right,” Philips said, sliding his binoculars back in their case on his belt. “Come on.” Together, the seven Americans moved cautiously down the slope and up to the ruined east door.

Schaefer didn’t hurry; it was Lassen who reached the empty doorway first. “I’d knock, man,” he said, “but I don’t think anybody’s home.”

Schaefer didn’t respond; he’d turned aside to look at something, at a spot of color in this dreary gray and white landscape.

A drainpipe emerged from the base of a wall beneath the pipeline itself. The frozen puddle beneath the drain was dark red-the color of dried blood.

Or in this case, Schaefer thought, frozen blood.

”Schaefer, over here,” Philips called.

Schaefer turned and joined the others at the door.

Jagged strips and fragments of steel lay on the snow; only the hinges were still attached to the frame. Schaefer looked at those hinges, at the way they were twisted out of shape, and at the rough edges of the scattered pieces.

”This was cut with a blade,” he said. “It’s steel, though you don’t chop through that with a pocketknife. And the way these hinges are bent, whatever punched through here went from the outside in.” He glanced at the bloody drainpipe. “They’ve been here,” he said. “I can smell it.”

”Lynch, get some light in here,” Philips said. “We’ll take a look inside.”

Lynch stepped forward with a high-powered flashlight. Cautiously the party inched into the corridor.

This took them out of the wind, but Schaefer noticed that inside the building didn’t really seem much warmer than outside. The heat was off. Whatever might be the case elsewhere in the complex, this one building was dead and deserted, you didn’t stay in an unheated building in weather like this.

The power was off, too-flipping light switches didn’t do anything.

Lynch shone the light around, and almost immediately they spotted the blood on the wall and the floor it would have been hard to miss, really, there was so much of it. They glanced uneasily at each other, but no one said anything; what was there to say?

”Down that way,” Schaefer said, pointing to a side tunnel.

Lynch glanced at Philips for confirmation; the general nodded, and Lynch led the way around the corner, into the side passage.

”Gennaro, you wait here,” Philips ordered one man, pointing at the corner. “You watch our rear.”

Gennaro nodded and took up a position at the T of the intersection; he stood and watched as his companions marched on down the corridor they had chosen.

The six men emerged into the maintenance area, and Lynch shone the light around-then stopped, pointing the beam at a drying puddle of something reddish-brown. Slowly he swung the light upward.

”Oh, my God,” he said.

Schaefer frowned. “Looks as if those bastards found some time to play,” he said.

Lynch moved the light along the row of corpses. To the men below it seemed to go on forever, three, five, eight ...

Twelve dead bodies hung there-twelve human bodies, and to one side, two dead dogs. Crooked lines of something sparkled here and there on their sides, and hung from their heads and dangling fingertips, giving them a surreal appearance-icicles of frozen blood and sweat.

”Hsst!” Gennaro called.

Schaefer whirled; the others, fascinated by the grisly sight overhead, were slower to react.

Gennaro was in the corridor, pointing back toward the demolished external door.

”Something’s moving out there!” he whispered. “I heard engines.”

”Damn,” Philips said. He glanced around, clearly trying to decide who to station where.

”We need to stay together, General,” Schaefer said. “If it’s those things, they’re experts at picking off sentries or stragglers.”

Philips nodded. “Come on then, all of you,” he said, leading the party back up the passage.

A moment later they were in the outer corridor, grouped along the walls; Schaefer peered out into the dim grayness of the outside world.

”I don’t see anything,” he said.

”I’m sure,” Gennaro said. “Over that way.” He pointed toward the pipeline.

”Come on,” Philips said.

Together, the party moved back out into the wind and cold, inching along the building’s exterior wall in the direction Gennaro had indicated.

A sharp crack sounded, and then the singing whine of a ricochet; a puff of powdered concrete sprinkled down over Schaefer’s modified M-16.

”Drop your weapons immediately, all of you!” someone shouted in heavily accented, high-pitched English. “You’re under arrest!”

Schaefer turned and saw the line of soldiers crouching at the top of the slope, rifles trained on the Americans. The Russians were used to winter conditions; they had been able to move into position undetected, and they now had the Americans trapped against a blank wall, completely unsheltered and vulnerable. And there was no telling how many of them there were; they could have an entire division behind that little ridge.

Schaefer put down his weapon, slowly and gently. At least, he thought, these were human enemies.

They might have a common foe.

 

Chapter 19

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

”You are under arrest,” she repeated.

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

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

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

The lieutenant jerked her head at the door.

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

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

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

He backed off a step.

”Look for yourself,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Lynch demanded, “Why should I?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ligacheva stared up at them.

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

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

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

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

Steshin saluted and headed for the door.

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

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

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

Had it come looking for her, perhaps?

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

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

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

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

Yashin grumbled, but he went.

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

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

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

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

”You expect me to believe that?”

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

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

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

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

Schaefer grimaced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Who?” Schaefer asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Where ...”

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

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

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

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

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

”Sobchak, what happened?”

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

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

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

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

”I understand, Sobchak,” Ligacheva said.

”I drew a map,” Sobchak said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chapter 20

Sergeant Yashin stood by impassively, listening as Lieutenant Ligacheva argued with her superior. The two of them were alone in the cramped little radio room, the lieutenant operating the equipment while Yashin watched the door.

”General, you don’t understand,” Ligacheva said desperately. “Yes, we have Sobchak’s map, we know where their base is-their ship, or whatever it is. But we can’t attack it yet-it’s impossible!”

”Nothing is impossible,” Ponomarenko replied.

”We’ve just arrived, sir,” Ligacheva insisted. “We haven’t even secured the Assyma complex, haven’t even cut down the bodies, let alone done any reconnaissance. We don’t know anything about what’s out there ...”

”You do not need to know,” Ponomarenko interrupted. “Soldiers are often faced with the unknown, my dear. The arrival of these Americans necessitates an immediate attack-we must have firsthand information on whatever is out there before the site is further compromised. We have no way to be certain you have captured all the Americans.”

”General, if we go out there now, it may well be a repeat of what happened to my previous squad. I cannot accept the responsibility ...”

Ponomarenko cut her off. “Is that your final word, Lieutenant?”

”I ...” Ligacheva hesitated, then straightened up. “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s my final word.”

”In that case, Lieutenant,” Ponomarenko said, “you may remain at the pumping station with the prisoners.” Ligacheva began to relax, then snapped to attention as the general continued, “Sergeant Yashin will lead the attack.”

”Sergeant Yashin?” Ligacheva turned and watched as a wolfish grin spread over Yashin’s face.

”Yes. Is he there?”

”Yes, he’s here, sir,” Ligacheva said slowly.

”You heard your orders, Sergeant?” Ponomarenko asked.

”Yes, sir,” Yashin replied happily.

”That will be all, then, Lieutenant.”

”Yes, sir,” Ligacheva said. She put down the microphone and stared at Yashin.

”You planned this, didn’t you?” she demanded.

”I thought an opportunity might arise,” Yashin said calmly, hands clasped behind his back. “I let the general know that he could put his faith in me.”

”Just in case he had any doubt of it,” Ligacheva said bitterly.

”Indeed,” Yashin said, rocking gently on his heels. “You may be content with your present rank and status, Lieutenant, but I am not-I have hopes for advancement. One can scarcely live on a sergeant’s pay these days, and they do not give commissioned rank to men who simply do as they’re told and show no initiative.”

”Your initiative may get you killed out there,” Ligacheva pointed out.

”I do not think it will,” Yashin sneered. “I am no mere woman, frightened of the cold and the dark and caught unawares. I will confront our enemy boldly, as you could not. While you’re here tending the Americans, let real soldiers take the field, Lieutenant-we’ll show you how it should be done, so we can finish this matter and return home to our warm beds, our women, and our drink.”

Ligacheva stared at her sergeant for a long moment.

Maybe, she thought, Yashin was right, even if he was a traitorous bastard. Maybe he and the other men were more than a match for their enemy. Maybe they would capture whatever was out in that canyon. She hoped so.

She didn’t believe it, though.

She believed that Yashin would lead them all to their deaths.

But there was nothing she could do about it. He had his orders, and his opinions-he wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.

So she didn’t bother saying it. She turned away without another word and went to find the American, Schaefer-and the bottle of vodka that Galyshev had always kept put away in the cabinet in his office.

 

Chapter 21

Rasche had caught a cab from Kennedy to Police Plaza. He wasn’t on the force anymore, but he still had friends, and he was still in law enforcement, and law officers cooperated with each other; he had known that Police Plaza was the place to start.

He talked to Weston and to half a dozen other old friends and acquaintances and got the gory details of the bad bust that had left Baby, her two flunkies, and four good cops dead. On the basis of ballistics, Forensics had tagged one of the victims, Arturo Velasquez, with killing the four cops, but had no solid leads on who had taken out Arturo and his friends-none of the bullets matched any of Schaefer’s known personal arsenal or any of the weapons found at the scene.

Baby and Reggie had each taken a 9mm slug through the head, execution style; no 9mm guns were involved elsewhere in the incident, however. Schaefer owned several handguns, but none of them were 9mm.

No one mentioned the fact that most federal agents carried 9mm pistols.

The crime scene had been messy, but nothing like the slaughterhouses those creatures had left behind the previous summer; this carnage was clearly all the work of human beings, not monsters from outer space.

The guys who had been working in the comics shop had been interviewed-Rasche couldn’t keep straight who was who in the statements, since they all seemed to be named John, but it didn’t matter, since their stories matched. They reported seeing men in dark suits out front, but had no useful descriptions beyond that-they’d dove for cover as soon as the shooting started, and they had stayed down, out of the field of fire, until all the shooting had stopped.

And no one had any idea what had become of Schaefer in all this chaos. When the shooting had finally stopped he was simply gone, and the men in the dark suits were gone with him. The lab said that none of the bloodstains at the scene were Schaefer’s; all of them matched neatly with one or another of the known dead. That meant that Schaefer had probably still been alive when he vanished.

Rasche was pleased to hear that-pleased, but not surprised. He wasn’t entirely sure it was possible to kill Schaefer.

He was a bit less pleased that none of the bloodstains or fibers provided any leads on the men in suits. “Feds,” Rasche muttered at the mention of the dark suits. Everyone knew that federal agents generally favored dark suits. “Philips,” Rasche said.

As soon as Weston had mentioned the name Philips, Rasche had known that somehow Schaefer was involved with those things again, those sadistic predators from outer space.

Who the hell was Smithers, though? Rasche had never heard of any fed named Smithers.

Smithers was his lead, that was who Smithers was.

Rasche didn’t have legal access to the NYPD computers anymore, but his friends did, and they were glad to “demonstrate” the system for a visiting sheriff. Military records brought up 212 entries under “Smithers” for personnel on active duty; Rasche was able to eliminate most of them at a glance.

When he got to one of them he stopped looking. The match was good enough that Rasche didn’t see the need to look any further.

Smithers, Leonard E., age thirty-four, U.S. Army colonel, involved in CIA operations dating back to the Reagan administration, present assignment classified. Commanding officer, General Eustace Philips.

Philips. Philips and Smithers. That had to be the right one.

Smithers had an office address in midtown listed-and, Rasche decided, it was time for a certain Oregon sheriff to pay that office a visit.

Getting a cab was easy-that was one thing he had missed about New York. If you wanted a cab in Bluecreek you phoned Stan’s Taxi and waited forty minutes. You didn’t just step off the curb and wave. And you could just forget about buses or subways.

On the other hand, in Bluecreek he didn’t have to listen to Greek cabdrivers talk about how everyone blamed the Serbs, when it was the Albanians who caused all the trouble. It was a relief to escape onto the sidewalk and into the nondescript office tower.

The building had a military guard in dress uniform in the lobby; Rasche flashed his badge. “Rasche, Bluecreek sheriff’s department-I’m here on police business. Colonel Smithers, please.”

”Yes, sir,” the guard said, hauling out a register bound in dirty blue vinyl. “Room 3710. Please sign in, stating the reason for this visit.”

Rasche smiled and signed in; for his reason he scrawled, “To kick some ass.”

The guard either didn’t read it or didn’t care; he didn’t say a word as Rasche stamped down the corridor and boarded an elevator.

Rasche didn’t like seeing the military involved in Schaefer’s disappearance. Schaefer’s brother Dutch had disappeared without a trace years before, when he’d been on some secret rescue mission and had run up against the alien hunters; he’d lost his squad but come out of the whole business alive, and then he’d vanished. The last thing anyone admitted seeing of him was when he’d gone in to be debriefed, for the umpteenth time, by the military.

Maybe the U.S. Army had taken a hint from the old Argentines or Salvadorans and had disappeared Dutch. And maybe now they’d done the same thing to Schaefer.

Or whatever had happened to Dutch, maybe it had happened to Schaefer.

Except that Rasche wasn’t about to let it, despite what the U.S. Army might want. Yeah, he was all in favor of a strong military, but there were limits, and he intended to point this out to Colonel Smithers.

Room 3710 was a small office located halfway down a long, drab corridor. The windowless, off white door was ajar, and Rasche pushed it open.

A big, short-haired man in a dark suit was sitting on the corner of the desk, holding the phone. “... got a tee-off time at six,” he was saying as Rasche entered. “We can...” Then he spotted Rasche and stopped in midsentence.

”Colonel Smithers?” Rasche asked.

”I’ll call you back,” Smithers said into the receiver. He hung up the phone, then turned to Rasche and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

”Concerned taxpayer,” Rasche said. “Got a minute?”

”Hell, no.” He started to say more, but Rasche cut him off.

”Think you could find one? It’s important.”

”Listen, mister, whoever you are,” Smithers said, “I’m not a recruiter or a P.R. officer. Was there something you wanted?”

”As a matter of fact, yes,” Rasche said. “My name’s Rasche, Colonel. Maybe you can guess what I’m after.”

”No, I ...” Smithers began. Then he stopped, and his tone changed abruptly from annoyance to uncertainty. “Did you say ‘Rasche’? Detective Rasche?”

”It’s Sheriff Rasche now, actually,” Rasche said, shrugging diffidently. “I don’t want any trouble, Colonel. I was just wondering whether you could tell me where my old partner has got to. Detective Schaefer.”

”Get out of here, Rasche,” Smithers said, getting up off the desk. “You don’t want to be involved.”

”Oh, now, don’t be too...” Rasche began as Smithers approached him.

Then Smithers reached to grab Rasche’s shoulder and shove him out of the office, and Rasche made his move.

In all his years on the NYPD, Rasche had always left the tough-guy stuff to his partner as much as he could. One reason he had liked being partnered with Schaefer was that Schaefer was so good at the tough-guy stuff. Schaef was about six and a half feet tall, classic buzz-cut Aryan with big broad shoulders and visible layers of muscle; he looked like he’d been carved out of stone by a sculptor with a body-building fetish. Schaefer didn’t have to hit people much because one look at him convinced most folks that they weren’t going to win if it came to blows-and they were right, too, because Schaefer was at least as tough as he looked.

Intimidating people just by looks saved everyone a lot of trouble, and Schaefer did it better than anyone else Rasche had ever met.

Rasche, though ... Rasche was about average height, with a potbelly wider than his shoulders, with bony arms and a Captain Kangaroo mustache. He looked about as intimidating as one of those inflatable clowns with the weighted bases that kids used to punch.

That had its uses, too. He couldn’t intimidate anyone with his looks, but he could catch them off guard. In fact, he’d made it his specialty. Tough guys always underestimated the fat old cop when he smiled and shrugged and talked in that polite, vague way he’d worked so hard to perfect.

Smithers was just one more. He reached out for Rasche’s shoulder and made no attempt at all to guard himself. Rasche’s hands, locked together, came up hard and fast and took Smithers in the side of the head with most of Rasche’s two hundred pounds behind them.

Smithers staggered sideways, caught off-balance, but he didn’t go down until Rasche kneed him in the groin and then rammed both fists down on the back of his head.

Rasche shook his head as he closed and locked the door; was this the best the feds could do? Smithers had recognized Rasche’s name, so he’d probably read up on some of what Schaefer and Rasche had done together. Had he thought that it was all Schaefer, with Rasche just going along for the ride? The hoods on the street had always thought so, which was just the way Schaefer and Rasche had wanted it, but the feds ought to know better.

It was almost enough to hurt his feelings, he thought as he hauled the moaning, semiconscious Smithers into the chair behind the desk. How the hell did Smithers think Rasche had ever made detective in the first place and picked up his several commendations?

Five minutes later Smithers was fully conscious again and tied securely into his chair with the cords from his phones and computers. Rasche smiled across the desk at him.

”Darn it, Colonel,” he said, “I thought this could be a friendly chat. After all, all I want to know is what happened to my friend.”

Smithers stared at him.

”You’ll go to prison for this, Rasche,” he said. “Assaulting an on-duty federal officer is a felony ...”

Rasche cut him off. “Yup,” he said, nodding. “It sure is a felony, and a serious one. But are you really going to want to go into court and testify in front of a judge and jury and your superiors about how an over-the-hill small town sheriff caught you off guard and trussed you up like a Thanksgiving turkey?” He smiled again, and that walrus mustache bristled; his eyes narrowed, and he really didn’t look a thing like Captain Kangaroo anymore.

”Besides,” he added, “I have a hunch that your boss, my old friend General Philips, really wouldn’t care for the bright lights of a civilian trial, since if it came to that I’d be doing my best to turn it into the biggest media circus since O. J. Simpson.”

Smithers frowned uncertainly.

”Anyway,” Rasche continued, “that’s all beside the point.” He reached under his jacket. “I want to know what happened to Detective Schaefer, and I want to know now.” He drew the .38 Police Special out slowly, and then, moving with careful grace, brought it out to arm’s length and aimed it directly between Smithers’s eyes.

”That gun doesn’t scare me, Rasche,” Smithers said scornfully. “I know you’re a cop; you wouldn’t dare pull that trigger.”

Rasche shook his head. “Yeah, I’m a cop,” he said. “And cops don’t go around shooting people who don’t answer questions-at least, good cops don’t.” He pulled the gun back for a moment and looked at it contemplatively. “So you know I’m a cop, Colonel, but are you ready to gamble your life that I’m a good cop? I’ve had a pretty bad time lately, you know; I left the force here in New York after that mess on Third Avenue, but that didn’t really end it. It’s still bothering me. I almost strangled my dentist the other day.” He aimed the gun again. “I’m not sure just what I’m capable of anymore. I’ve gotta say, though, that I’m pretty sure I’m not that good a cop anymore. Remember that I’m just full of surprises, Colonel-I took you down a few minutes ago, didn’t I?”

Smithers cleared his throat but didn’t speak.

Rasche leaned forward across the desk, bringing the .38’s muzzle to just an inch or two from Smithers’s face. “I’ve heard about you military guys who get assigned to the CIA for their dirty tricks,” he said conversationally. “Special training, psychological counseling-you think you can handle just about anything, right? Well, I didn’t have all that. What I had instead was a dozen years on the streets, where I learned all about what people will and won’t do. Maybe you learned some of the same things I did in those fancy classes of yours.” He leaned closer, and Smithers pulled as far away from the gun as his bonds would allow. “I want you to look into my eyes, Colonel,” Rasche said, “and I want you to use that special training to see inside me, to understand exactly what I’m feeling right now and what I’m capable of. If you read my file, I want you to think over everything it said in there-I got some commendations, yeah, I got promoted, but I also got in my share of trouble, didn’t I? Insubordination, brutality ... you think about that.”

Rasche’s voice had gradually dropped from a normal tone to a whispered growl, and Smithers had begun to sweat. “Think about all the things that make life good, Colonel,” Rasche murmured. “Oreos, moonlit nights, the laughter of friends over a few beers, the soft touch of a woman’s hand. You think about all that very carefully, Colonel, and then I want you to ask yourself a question.” Rasche paused and adjusted his grip on the .38 so that there was no chance it would jerk out of line if he pulled the trigger.

”Ask yourself,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you really want to die today?”

And Smithers started talking.

 

Chapter 22

Siberia!” Rasche said as he charged out onto the street. “Christ almighty, Siberia?” He looked both ways for a cab, didn’t see any-but when he briefly considered taking the subway the newsstand beside the subway entrance caught his eye. A stack of papers displayed the headline RUSSIANS DENY U.S. MISSILE CLAIMS.

He’d looked through a Chicago newspaper on the flight east and caught the usual snatches of news from radios and CNN and the like-it was hard to completely miss a major story in a news, saturated American city. Now the pieces fell into place.

”Shit,” Rasche said. “Siberia!”

There weren’t any illegal nukes being moved around, no Russian nationalists or separatists or terrorists threatening the U.S., he realized. That was the cover story, fabricated by someone in Washington to hide another monster hunt-and the Russians weren’t willing to counter it with the truth because they wanted to get their paws on the aliens’ high-tech goodies, too. That stuff could put their economy back on track, make them a real world power again without having to actually teach their people how to run businesses.

Half a dozen cabs finally appeared, a platoon of bright yellow Chevys charging up Sixth Avenue, vying with each other for position-they still seemed to hunt in packs, Rasche saw, the same as when he’d lived in the Big Apple. He flagged one down; it swooped in toward the curb, spraying Rasche’s pant legs with dirty slush.

”Where to?” the driver asked as Rasche climbed in.

Rasche hesitated.

The feds weren’t going to be cooperative, Smithers had made that plain. They’d shipped Schaefer off to Siberia to help out their team of monster-hunters, but they weren’t interested in Rasche, or he’d have heard from them already.

And it was a little late to volunteer, in any case-the mission had gone in. So he’d need to get to Siberia without any help from the feds.

In theory, he could go back to Kennedy and book a flight on Aeroflot to whatever commercial airfield was closest to the Yamal Peninsula, wherever the hell the Yamal Peninsula was, but what would he do from there? He didn’t speak Russian, didn’t know a thing about getting around there, didn’t know exactly where the alien ship was.

If he wanted to find this place where the alien ship had landed, he’d need a guide, someone who knew his way around, knew what was going on.

And he had an idea how to find one.

”The U.N.,” he said.

The cabbie didn’t ask any questions or start talking about Serbians; he just swung east at the next corner and headed downtown.

Rasche sat in the back of the cab, watching the familiar streets and buildings stream by, thinking over what he was getting into.

From what he’d heard on CNN and seen in the headlines, Pentagon spokesmen had been making threats, talking about a preemptive strike. The Russians had been countering with warnings of retaliation for any uninvited intrusion. Commentators talked about the sudden chill in U.S./Russian relations, and how even if this particular problem were cleared up there might be lasting damage. The whole world was closer to World War III than it had been at any time since the Soviet Union collapsed.

And all along, Rasche thought, the people in power, the people making threats and counter, threats, surely knew that there weren’t any misplaced nukes involved.

He used to wonder sometimes what had made Schaefer so bitter, what had happened to convince him that the human race was worthless, what had made it so hard for him to feel, to care about anything.

At that particular moment, Rasche thought he knew.

He didn’t give a shit about the politics involved in this mess; he was a loyal American, but that didn’t mean he had anything against Russians, or that he thought much of General Philips and company. Those clowns weren’t fighting for Rasche’s idea of freedom, democracy, or America-they were acting out of simple greed, out of a quest for power. They wanted to have the military strength to tell the rest of the world to go to hell, and they didn’t care how they got it.

Not that the Russians were much better. Somehow Rasche doubted that Moscow was going to share the alien technology with the peoples of the world, should they happen to acquire it, and if someone like that loon Zhirinovsky ever got elected president over there it could be bad news-but that wasn’t Rasche’s problem. The generals could smack each other around until doomsday for all he cared.

What he cared about was Schaefer. He was dealing with the world on a smaller, more personal scale than the generals and bureaucrats. He’d always figured that if everyone did that, if everyone minded his own affairs and lived up to his own responsibilities without getting any big ideas, the world would be a better place.

Rasche didn’t know much of anything about politics, but he did know that he wasn’t going to let anyone-not the feds, not the Russians, not the aliens-mess with his friends or family while he sat by and did nothing.

He paid the cabbie and marched into the U.N. Secretariat Building.

”Where do I find the Russian ambassador?” he demanded at the lobby information desk.

The guard started to give him the standard brush-off, but Rasche pulled out his badge and went into his “serious problem” speech.

Ten minutes later he was pounding his fist on a receptionist’s desk, demanding immediate admittance to the inner office.

”You can’t barge in on the ambassador without an appointment,” she protested.

”Just tell Boris, or Ivan, or whatever the hell his name is, that I know about that thing in Siberia,” Rasche told her. “Tell him that, and he’ll see me. It’s on the Yamal Peninsula at a place called Assyma - I know all about it. I know about the American team that’s gone in...”

”Sir; I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the receptionist said. .

”But I do,” a deep voice said.

Rasche and the receptionist turned to look at the grayhaired man standing in the inner doorway.

”I heard the commotion,” the gray-haired man said.

Rasche had expected that; that had been the whole point of being loud and obnoxious in the first place.

”I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador,” the receptionist said. “He was very insistent.”

”It’s all right, my dear,” the gray-haired man said soothingly. “Send the policeman in.”

Rasche smiled.

”Oh, and please, Sheriff,” the ambassador said as he ushered Rasche inside, “my name is not Boris or Ivan. I am Grigori Komarinets.”

 

Chapter 23

Ligacheva slid the brimming shot glass across the table to Schaefer.

”Here, American,” she said bitterly. “A toast to Yashin’s success.”

Schaefer stared expressionlessly at the drink. The vodka was Stolichnaya, of course, and the glass was reasonably clean, but he didn’t pick it up right away.

Ligacheva lifted her own glass and contemplated it. “So eager to engage the enemy, my Sergeant Yashin. So eager to taste first blood,” she said.

”They’re all going to die,” Schaefer said flatly. “All those men.”

Ligacheva paused, her glass of vodka in hand, and stared at him.

”Yashin is acting just like those things,” Schaefer told her. “He lives for the fight, the thrill, the blood.” Schaefer picked up his drink and swallowed it. “Hell, maybe we all do.” He thumped the empty glass down on the table. “The thing is, they’re better at it than we are. So Yashin and the rest are all going to die.”

Ligacheva lowered her drink and set it gently on the table, still untouched. “I thought you Americans were the world’s great optimists,” she said. “You talk of freedom and peace and color television, and you go about your lives happily certain that someday you’ll all be rich...” She shook her head and stared at Schaefer. “So what happened to you?” she asked.

Schaefer reached for the bottle. “I got a look at the American dream,” he said. “Two-car garage, June Cleaver in the bedroom, one and three-fourths kids-and a Smith & Wesson in the dresser drawer, just in case things don’t quite work out.” He poured. “Except lately it seems the cars are in the shop, June’s on Prozac, the kids are on crack, and the Smith & Wesson’s getting plenty of use.”

”I don’t know this Prozac,” Ligacheva said. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

”It doesn’t matter,” Schaefer said. He bolted the second shot. “Look, you think I don’t care what happens to your men-maybe I don’t. Maybe I can’t care anymore. But that’s nothing. What matters is that nobody cares. The people who put us here sure don’t give a shit. We’re just numbers to them, an allotment, another piece of equipment; we’re low tech and easy to maintain.”

Ligacheva shook her head and gulped her own first drink. “That can’t be true,” she said. “Some don’t care, maybe-there are always bad ones.”

”Nobody cares,” Schaefer insisted. “Except those things out there. That’s why they’re going to win-because they believe in what they’re doing here. Nobody sent them. Nobody ordered them to come. Nobody screwed them out of their jobs, or their freedom, or their lives. They come here because they want to, because it’s fun.”

Ligacheva frowned. “You seem to believe you have a special understanding of these creatures. You say these things as if you know them.”

”Maybe I do,” Schaefer said. “I’ve survived dealing with them once, anyway, which most people don’t. I understand enough about them to know there’s something wrong about their being here, in this place.”

”Explain.”

”They don’t care much for the cold,” Schaefer told her. “I should know-the last time we met, the only thing that saved my ass was a half inch of summer rain. They like it hot-so what the hell are they doing here? And they come here to hunt, to kill people for fun, to collect our skulls as trophies, well, I don’t see a lot of people around here, do you? Besides, if they were here to hunt us, if they really wanted us dead, we’d have been hanging from the yardarms hours ago, like your friends down the corridor.”

”Why are they here, then?” Ligacheva asked. “Why did they butcher Galyshev and the others? My squad-they killed them, too, but maybe we were intruding, getting too close to their base. But what did the workers do? You say they hunt for fun, as we hunt animals-all right, where is the sport in such a slaughter? And why ruin our heating system?”

Schaefer shook his head. “Those workers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, would be my guess,” he said. “Whatever they were after, I don’t think the aliens were looking for those men. Hell, I don’t think those things wanted to be here at all. I think this is a detour, the wrong exit, something went wrong and landed them here, and they don’t like this shitty weather any more than we do. They’re in a bad mood, and your buddies got in the way, that’s all.”

Ligacheva shuddered.

”They took things,” she said. “Pieces from the pumps and the wiring.”

”Spare parts,” Schaefer said. “Their ship ... maybe something’s broken, and they’re trying to fix it.” He considered the bottle thoughtfully, and then put it down without pouring a third drink. “Must be like trying to repair a Porsche with whalebone and baling wire,” he said in English. He didn’t have the Russian vocabulary for it.

”Surely, these things are capable of great ingenuity,” Ligacheva said in Russian.

”Surely,” Schaefer agreed. “Aren’t we all?”

As Ligacheva and Schaefer spoke in the pumping station’s common room, the other Americans sat dejectedly in the military barracks.

”This is embarrassing,” Dobbs said. “The Russkies took us down before we could get off a shot! “

”I want to know what happened to that lousy cop,” Wilcox said. “We’re freezing our asses off in here while he’s kissing up to that butch lieutenant...”

”Shut up, Wilcox,” Lynch said. “All of you shut up.”

”Why?” Wilcox demanded.

”So we can plan how we’re going to get out of here and what we’re going to do once we’re out,”

Philips told him. “Did anyone see where they put our gear?”

”That storeroom across the hall,” Lynch said. “But, sir, I don’t see how we’re going to get out of here.”

”Our orders were to secure the alien ship,” Philips said, “and we sure as hell can’t do that from in here, now can we?” He reached down and pulled a flattened cylinder from his boot-the Russians had taken their packs and had patted them down, but the search hadn’t been very thorough. “So we grab our equipment, we secure the station, and then we head out for that ship. Now, give me a hand with those mattresses ...”

A few moments later the guard at the barracks door heard shouting and banging. He turned, startled.

He had had English in school, of course, everyone did. He hadn’t used it in years, though, and he had never actually spoken English to anyone outside a classroom. He struggled to make out words through the locked door.

One voice seemed to be doing all the shouting. “Hey!” the American called. “You out there! You speak English? Ever seen a Super Bowl? You watch X-Files? What’s the capital of Sacramento?”

The guard could not follow that. He struggled to remember the words he wanted.

”Slow,” he shouted back. “You talk slow, please!”

”The door!” the American shouted.

The guard frowned. He knew that word. It was almost like the Russian. “Door” meant dvyer. He unslung his AK-47 and stepped closer to the door. “What, door?” he asked.

”It’s got termites bozo!” the American shouted. The guard had no idea what the American was talking about, or what “termites bozo” might be. He stepped up and put a hand on the door.

It seemed solid enough. It was cold to the touch-extremely cold-so the crazy American wasn’t worried about a fire.

”What, door?” he repeated.

”C-4 termites!” the American said.

The blast smashed the door upward and outward-the lower hinge was torn from the frame instantly, since the C-4 charge had been almost at floor level, and the lock gave as well, but the upper hinge held at first, so that the upper two thirds of the door pivoted up like a gigantic pinball flipper and smashed the guard off his feet. The explosion reduced the bottom third of the door to bits and drove four-inch splinters into the guard’s legs, belly, and groin.

Inside the barracks the blast was absorbed by the stacked mattresses that had been piled on top of the little surprise package from Philips’s boot. The sound was still startling, almost deafening.

”Come on,” Philips barked, leading the way over the resulting heap of cotton stuffing, broken wood, and blood.

 

Chapter 24

Ligacheva and Schaefer both jerked upright in their seats at the sound of the explosion. “The barracks!” Ligacheva said. She called to the guard at the door, “Galan, stay here-be ready for anything. I’ll take the American with me.”

She rose, beckoned to Schaefer, and headed briskly down the passage.

Schaefer followed, noticing that Ligacheva was not bothering to keep a close eye on him. He wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult; she seemed to trust him, but when it came right down to it, she had no business doing so.

If he turned aside and lost himself somewhere in the mostly empty complex, she might never find him-but she wasn’t the enemy, despite what Lynch and company might think, despite what she herself might think.

Besides, he wanted to know what the hell had blown up. He could always slip away later.

The two of them headed down the station’s central corridor at a fast trot, then turned the corner into the passage to the workers’ barracks.

There they both stopped dead. There was no need to go any farther to see what had happened, where the explosion had been. The Russian guard lay sprawled on the floor, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and the smell of explosive and charred wood filled the passage.

No Americans were in sight.

”It would appear that your friends have escaped,” Ligacheva said. “As has my guard, in a different sense.”

”They’re soldiers, Lieutenant,” Schaefer said. “That’s their job.”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she started to step forward for a closer look at the debris.

As she did, she heard the scrape of boots on concrete. Before she could take a second step, an American appeared in the doorway of the nearby storeroom and pointed an M-16 at her-the American captain, Lynch. Ligacheva started, and realized that her hands were empty, that she held no weapon. She had left her AK-47 back in the common room.

Annoyed with herself and seeing no alternative, she raised her hands in surrender. The American captain smiled.

”They do their job better than I do mine, it would seem,” Ligacheva said.

”For the moment,” Schaefer agreed.

”Hey, cop,” Lynch said, “speak English.”

”I wasn’t talking to you,” Schaefer said.

”Fine, then. Talk if you like. I don’t know what you two are jawing about, but you know what? Right now I don’t much care. We’ve got our thermal suits and our cold-weather guns and enough ammo to take down Rhode Island, so I don’t guess it makes any difference what you’re saying.” He gestured with the M-16. “Give me a hand with some of this stuff, and we’ll go join the others.”

Schaefer stepped up to the storeroom door; Lynch tossed him a heavy backpack, which he caught one-handed.

”So Philips is running the show again?” Schaefer asked, slinging the pack on his shoulder.

”The general’s talking to the brass, and until he’s done with that, I’m in charge,” Lynch said. He hefted another pack. “You know, Schaefer, somehow, as long as we’ve got this stuff, I don’t think the Russkies will give us any more trouble. Yessir, there’s a new sheriff in town around here.”

”Your playsuits and your weapons,” Ligacheva said in Russian. “Ah, you have your precious toys back, and now you are invincible!”

Lynch glowered uncomprehendingly at her. “Shut up and move,” he barked, pointing eastward down the main corridor. “Schaefer, what’s she saying?”

”She’s admiring your aftershave, Lynch,” Schaefer said. “Shit, who cares what she’s saying? The Russians aren’t the problem, Lynch! Can’t you get that straight?” He started striding down the corridor. “Where’s Philips? He’ll tell you.

”I told you, the general’s put me in charge while he sets up our satellite uplink,” Lynch interrupted.

”So tell this Russkie lieutenant to have her boys surrender ASAP, or we’ll spam ‘em into dog food.”

Schaefer grimaced. Lynch had apparently forgotten that the lieutenant spoke good English. Somehow, given what Schaefer knew of Lynch, this did not surprise him.

”What does he say?” Ligacheva asked in Russian. “His accent is too thick, and I don’t know all those words.”

”This asshole wants me to tell you that if you and your men don’t give up, we’re all dead.” They were approaching the side passage to the pipeline maintenance area-apparently that was where Lynch was directing them.

Ligacheva didn’t reply, and Schaefer glanced at her; somehow, he didn’t believe that she was quite as resigned to capture as she appeared.

”Got any ideas?” Schaefer asked.

”Just one,” Ligacheva said in Russian. “Fuck him,” she concluded in English. She grabbed Schaefer by the shoulder and yanked him in front of Lynch’s M-16, then started running for the smashed east door.

Schaefer was caught off guard and allowed himself to be shoved between Lynch and Ligacheva. He glanced back at Lynch, then at the fleeing Russian woman, and in an instant he decided he preferred Ligacheva, and to hell with nationalities; he’d rather join her out in the snow than hang around with Lynch and the other assholes Philips had brought along. He began running himself, following Ligacheva.

Behind them Lynch hesitated, unsure whether Schaefer was chasing the Russian or fleeing with her; in either case the cop was between himself and the woman, and he didn’t think the general would be pleased if someone shot his civilian advisor in the back.

The two of them ran out into the wind and snow while Lynch was still debating with himself, and then the opportunity was gone.

The bitter wind tore at Schaefer’s face as he ran; his cheeks went numb almost instantly, while from the neck down he remained eerily warm.

”Jesus, it’s cold,” he muttered as they charged up the slope, and the moisture in his breath froze into ice on his upper lip almost as soon as the words left his mouth. His short-cropped hair provided almost no insulation, and he didn’t have his helmet-his scalp tingled with cold.

”The temperature has been falling,” Ligacheva said.

”Christ, it wasn’t cold enough? Wasn’t it about sixty below?”

”Sixty ... ?” Ligacheva glanced back at him. “Do you mean Celsius?”

”Fahrenheit,” Schaefer said as they topped the ridge. “Not that it matters much. Where are we going, anyway”

”To join Sergeant Yashin, perhaps?” Ligacheva suggested. “He, at least, fights the right foe. Sixty below zero in Fahrenheit would be minus fifty or so, wouldn’t it? That sounds close. But it’s colder now, much colder.”

Schaefer did not want to think about the fact that he was exposing bare skin to something significantly more than sixty degrees below zero. That was colder than any place in North America ever got, and this Russian seemed to be taking it right in stride. “So where’s Yashin?” he asked.

Ligacheva pointed to the tracks in the snow, then ahead, to the northeast.

”Halt!” someone called in Russian.

Ligacheva stopped dead instantly; Schaefer stumbled another few steps, then dropped flat to the snow at the crack of a rifle shot.

He got cautiously to his feet to find the lieutenant facing a young Russian soldier with a smoking AK-47.

”Kazakov,” Ligacheva demanded, “what are you doing out here?”

”The sergeant left me on guard,” the soldier explained. “Why are you here, Lieutenant?”

”The Americans have escaped and captured the station,” Ligacheva replied.

Kazakov blinked at her, and Schaefer noticed that his lashes and eyebrows were white with frost. “What should we do?” he asked unsteadily.

”You have a radio?”

”Wait a minute ...” Schaefer began, but before he could say any more, Kazakov swung the AK-47 to point at the American’s chest.

”Don’t shoot him,” Ligacheva said. “He’s our translator, and the only one of the Americans with any sense. Call Sergeant Yashin.”

”Yes, sir.” Kazakov lowered his weapon and reached for the radio in his shoulder pack.

Schaefer got slowly back up on his own feet and picked up his dropped pack, realizing as he did that he didn’t know just what Lynch had given him to carry, or whether it was worth hauling along.

This didn’t seem to be the time and place to check it out, however, with the two Russians watching him. Instead he stood and waited as Kazakov managed to make intermittent contact with Yashin’s expedition.

Schaefer couldn’t make out the conversation over the howling of the wind, and didn’t seriously try; instead he watched the ridgetop, waiting to see if Lynch or one of the others might be coming after them.

”They’re on their way back,” Kazakov reported a moment later.

”So now what?” Schaefer demanded. “You trying to work these idiots up into a pitched battle?”

Ligacheva stared up at him calmly. “You said they would all die if they went to face the monsters unprepared,” she said. “I am trying to prevent that. Perhaps we can all work together and find some way to defeat these things.”

”The best thing we can do is just leave them alone and let them go,” Schaefer said. “They don’t want to be here, and either they’re going to leave as soon as they can, or the cold’s going to kill them.”

”And you want them to simply depart?”

Schaefer smiled a vicious, tight smile. “No, I want the bastards dead,” he answered. “I never liked them much in the first place, and I saw what they did to your people back there. Nobody should do that to good men and get away with it. I don’t give a shit about their technology, though, and I don’t think we’ve got what it takes to take them all down, and I don’t want to lose more good men trying. I’m hoping the cold will get them all.”

”And if it does?”

”Then you and Philips can fight about who gets to study the shipwreck.”

”I would prefer that we not fight at all-except, perhaps, against those creatures. Do you really think there is nothing we can do?”

”Oh, we can fight,” Schaefer said. “If they come after us I’ll fight them. But I’m not going to walk into any traps if I ...” He paused, listening.

He could hear the rumble of engines over the wind.

”Yashin,” Ligacheva said. “Come on.” She turned and led the way up to the ridgetop.

Schaefer followed.

Lynch and the others had taken up defensive positions around the east door, he saw-they had learned from their earlier mistake not to be caught out in the open. Schaefer spotted Wilcox crouched behind a huge pipe; Dobbs had dug into a hollow in the ice beneath a vent, while Lassen stood at the southeast corner of the building, and Lynch himself crouched in the doorway. Gennaro was climbing a service ladder to a post on the station’s roof.

Philips was nowhere in sight.

”What do they think they’re doing?” Ligacheva asked. “Why are they trying to keep possession of the pumping station in the first place?”

”It’s their turf now,” Schaefer said in English. “They’re challenging Yashin to a pissing contest, that’s what they’re doing.”

”‘Pissing contest’?”

Schaefer could not remember a Russian equivalent. “Never mind,” he said. “Look.”

He pointed as a Russian APV ground into sight over a snowdrift and headed for the station, its headlights throwing spotlights on Lynch and Dobbs. A second vehicle followed close behind.

”That’s Sergeant Yashin,” Ligacheva said, pointing to a man climbing out of the first vehicle. “He had not gone as far as I thought.”

As she spoke, Schaefer heard a noise behind them; he turned to find a third, much smaller vehicle pulling into the shallow valley where Kazakov had been standing guard.

Ligacheva waved to the driver; he was, Schaefer saw, alone in the vehicle.

”I was sent to fetch you, Lieutenant,” the driver called. “You and Kazakov.”

”Thank you, Maslennikov,” Ligacheva replied. “I think we had best wait a moment, however.” She turned to look down at the confrontation below.

Just then a single shot sounded, clearly audible despite the wind.

They didn’t see who had fired first, but seconds later the air was full of the rattle of automatic weapons fire and the red lines of tracers.

”Shit,” Schaefer said as he dropped to his belly to make himself a smaller target.

Ligacheva was right beside him; Kazakov stumbled back off the ridgetop, into the darkness, while Maslennikov stayed in his vehicle.

”So much for international cooperation,” Schaefer said. “Looks like we’ll kill each other before those alien bastards get the chance.”

Ligacheva nodded. “Yashin has been ready for a fight since he arrived, eager to defend the Motherland; your men seem to be happy to oblige him.”

Schaefer watched for a few seconds, then squinted. “Do you have binoculars?” he asked Ligacheva.

She turned and called into the gloom, “Kazakov! Field glasses!”

The private scrambled back up the ridge and handed the lieutenant the glasses, which she passed to Schaefer. He peered through them.

It hadn’t been his imagination; where Wilcox had leaned against the pipe something yellow was dripping from his arm. A smear of the stuff was on the pipe, too.

It wasn’t blood; Wilcox might be an asshole, but he was human, and in the light from the Russian vehicles there could be no question that that seeping fluid was yellow, not red. Then what ...

The suits. Schaefer looked down at his own arms in the brown plastic thermal suit. The suits were filled with circulating fluid, and that had to be what that yellow stuff was. Had Wilcox been hit?

He lifted the glasses and watched.

Gennaro, up on the roof, flung himself prone, and yellow goo sprayed up as if he’d belly flopped into custard. The seams along either side of the suit had burst.

Schaefer snatched off one of his gloves and prodded experimentally at his own suit with rapidly freezing bare fingers.

The plastic had gone brittle. The suit hadn’t been intended for weather this cold, for the strains of warming and cooling, for the stress of battle.

Siberia, Schaefer knew, was the second coldest place on Earth, behind only Antarctica-the North Pole itself, thanks to the Arctic Ocean, wasn’t as cold as Siberia in midwinter. Nothing in North America came close; the army could have tested the suits in the worst weather Alaska or Greenland could throw at them and never had any problem, but that didn’t mean they’d hold up here.

All the seams in Gennaro’s suit must have split open when he flopped down like that.

”Shit,” Schaefer said as he pulled the glove back on.

And then Gennaro’s gun exploded, spraying metal splinters that gouged into his face, barely missing his eyes.

More of the same, Schaefer thought, as he watched Gennaro roll onto his back, clapping his hands over his injured face. Steel goes brittle in extreme cold-that was what had done in the Titanic, he’d heard; the cold water of the North Atlantic had turned the metal brittle, so a mere brush with the iceberg had popped rivets in all directions, and the ship had snapped right in two as she went down.

Modern steel was a lot better than the crap they used for hull plates in 1912, and the M-16s were meant for cold weather, sure, but not for anything this cold.

”Minus sixty, Celsius,” Ligacheva said.

That would, Schaefer realized, be about seventy-five below zero, Fahrenheit. Lassen had said the equipment had been tested to minus fifty degrees.

Not good enough.

Dobbs’s gun blew next. After that it wasn’t more than five minutes before the Americans, disarmed by the same General Winter that had defeated Napoleon and any number of other would-be conquerors who had dared to invade Mother Russia, threw up their hands in surrender.

”If you keep the weapons warm whenever you aren’t actually firing, under your coat or in a vehicle, they’re less likely to malfunction,” Ligacheva remarked conversationally. “And you must keep them well oiled, of course-oil is a fine insulator.

When the gun feels dry to the touch it isn’t safe in weather like this.”

”The voice of experience,”- Schaefer muttered as he watched Yashin and his men round up Lynch and the others. “Too bad Philips spent so much time recruiting me, instead of someone who really knew cold weather.” He remarked aloud, “Looks like your sergeant has everything under control.”

”Yes,” Ligacheva agreed. “Yashin has wanted control all along. Let him have it.”

Schaefer looked at her. “Aren’t you going to go down there and take charge?”

”No,” she said quietly. She turned to Kazakov and called, “You and Maslennikov, go down there and tell Yashin he’s done well,” she said. “I’ll come presently. Leave the vehicle; I’ll drive it down.”

Kazakov saluted. A moment later he and the driver marched up over the ridgetop, waving and shouting so that they wouldn’t be mistaken for an enemy.

”Presently?” Schaefer asked.

”It is a word that means nothing specific,” Ligacheva said. “I will return when I’m ready.”

”And what are you planning to do now?”

Ligacheva looked him in the eye. “You came here as an advisor on these monsters, but it does not seem to me that either your people or mine have been very interested in taking your advice. I am interested, though.” She pointed to the vehicle. “I’ll use that. You said to leave the creatures alone. Well, that advice I will not take. I am going to find that ship and get a good look at these things that have killed so many of my friends, and if I can, I will destroy them. To destroy them, the more I know, the better, and I will destroy them. I would therefore be pleased if you came along as my advisor on how best to do that.”

Schaefer stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “It’s that way, yes?” he said, pointing to the northeast.

”That way,” she agreed.

Together, they headed for the waiting vehicle.

 

Chapter 25

It would have been convenient, Yashin thought as he and his men herded the prisoners through the corridors, if at least one of the Americans could speak Russian. Trying to communicate in his own miserable, half-forgotten schoolboy English was a nuisance.

Then he stopped in his tracks, thinking. When they had captured the Americans before, there had been that big American who had spoken Russian, the one the lieutenant had spoken with so freely.

What had happened to him?

For that matter, what had happened to Lieutenant Ligacheva? She should be here trying to reassert her authority, and she wasn’t.

She had spoken to Kazakov and Maslennikov outside, in the valley beyond the little eastern ridge, and then... then what? Where was she?

”What the devil is keeping the lieutenant?” he demanded of Kazakov.

”I don’t know, sir,” Kazakov said. “She was just over the ridge, talking to that American...”

”An American?” Yashin frowned. The lieutenant still had the big American with her?

What was she up to?

This would not do, Yashin thought. This would not do at all. Lieutenant Ligacheva was no fool. She was a woman, and perhaps in consequence she lacked a man’s true fighting spirit or love for the Motherland, but still, she was not stupid. She knew that Yashin was bucking for a promotion at the cost of her own standing, and she would not want to pay that cost. Whatever she was doing out there with the big American would not be in Yashin’s own best interests, he was sure-and probably, if it involved that American, would not be in the best interests of Russia, either.

”Kazakov, Kurkin, Afanasiev - you stay with the prisoners. If they try anything, kill them.” There were still half a dozen other loyal men somewhere in the station, if the Americans had not killed them; that would be enough. “The rest of you, come with me.”

He turned and headed for the vehicles.

”Something tells me this overgrown snowmobile isn’t going to make it,” Schaefer muttered to himself.

Ligacheva didn’t hear the words, but she didn’t need to. She knew what Schaefer had to be saying. The little snow tractor was dying; she wasn’t sure whether it was succumbing to the fierce cold, or whether it was simply out of fuel, but the engine was sputtering and banging.

Then it stopped completely.

She tried not to think of the eighteen or twenty kilometers they would have to walk in the unforgiving cold of the arctic night in order to get back to Pumping Station #12, once they were done with whatever they might do here. First they had to survive their investigation of the alien ship.

”Now we walk,” she said. “We’re almost there, the tractor wouldn’t have taken us much farther in any case.”

”So we walk,” Schaefer agreed. “After all, we wouldn’t want our noisy engine to bother anyone, would we?” He grabbed one of the spare blankets from the little vehicle’s storage compartment before climbing out into the darkness and wind; he had never entirely trusted the Pentagon’s spiffy little electric suits, and after seeing Gennaro’s sleeves dribbling yellow gook he wanted something more to protect him from the wind and cold. He wished he still had his helmet, which was probably back in the pumping station’s common room, but settled for pulling the blanket over his head like a hood.

It didn’t help much; his ears started stinging with cold almost immediately. He ignored that as he stepped forward into the beam of the headlights and took a good look at what lay ahead, and why they would have had to stop the tractor soon in any case.

He was able to walk another fifteen feet or so; then they were standing on the brink of a ravine, a split in the ice fifty yards across and at least twenty yards deep.

Ligacheva studied Sobchak’s map as Schaefer looked over the area.

”They’re on the other side?” he asked.

”No,” Ligacheva said. “Not according to Sobchak’s measurements.” She pointed. “Down there.”

”Perfect,” Schaefer growled as he studied the dim expanse of jagged rock and ice, the shadows and cul-de-sacs and natural ambuscades. “Perfect for them. If it was my ass on the line and this was my front walk, I’d have this hole booby-trapped with all the ordnance I could find.”

Ligacheva nodded. “As would I-and some things are, I fear, universal,” she agreed. “So-how do you Americans put it?” She smiled at him, a humorless, toothy smile, and concluded in English, “Watch your step.” She turned and started to clamber down over the canyon rim.

”Wait a minute,” Schaefer said. He jogged back to the vehicle, then reached inside and pulled out two packs-the one he had been given by Lynch, and one that had been in the vehicle’s storage bin. “Might be something useful in these,” he said as he ran back up to the rim. He tossed the pack from the little truck to Ligacheva.

She nodded and slung the knapsack on her shoulder before resuming her climb.

Ten minutes later, halfway down the canyon wall, Schaefer’s foot slipped on an icy protrusion. The sudden jar was enough to snap his handhold off the wall, so that he slid four or five feet down the slope clutching a chunk of dirty ice before catching himself on a narrow ledge.

He wasn’t injured, but the rocks left long white scratches down the front of his snowsuit, and his fingers were blackened with dirt.

They would have reached the bottom of a mere rock wall in half the time, he thought; it was the ice coating every hold and the snow hiding every weakness that made the climb so treacherous and slowed them to a mere crawl.

”And this is the easy way?” he said.

”Nothing is easy here, Detective,” Ligacheva called from below. “You should know that by now.” She laughed and lost her own hold, sliding a few centimeters, just as a sharp crack sounded.

At first Schaefer thought a larger-than-usual chunk of ice had broken somewhere, but then he heard the unmistakable whine of a ricochet and saw the puff of snow where Ligacheva’s head had been a few seconds before.

”What-?” Ligacheva turned her head, staring upward to see what was happening.

Standing on the rim of the canyon, fifty meters away, was a man with a rifle-a man in the heavy khaki overcoat of a Russian soldier.

”Yashin?” she said, astonished.

She had known that Sergeant Yashin disliked her, known he was ambitious and saw this mission and her alleged weakness as his great opportunity for promotion, but to attempt to shoot his superior officer? It was madness!

But in that case, he was clearly mad. That had not been a warning shot; she looked at the silver bullet scar in the ice above her. That shot had been meant to kill her.

Up on the rim the half-dozen men hung back and watched as Sergeant Yashin took aim again.

”Sergeant, are you certain of this?” a soldier asked uneasily. .

”Of course I’m certain!” Yashin barked. “She’s a traitor! Why else did she come out here with the American, without any of us, without telling us? They must be planning to steal the alien technology and sell it to the Americans! Or since he abandoned his companions, maybe to the highest bidder-do you want the Chinese to have it?”

”No...”

”Then she and the American must be stopped!” Yashin said, his finger tightening on the trigger. It was a fairly tricky shot; the lieutenant was half-hidden in the uneven, icy wall of the crevasse, and the light was terrible. Still, he knew he had her.

Then something bright red flicked across his vision for an instant. He blinked and glanced down.

Red dots were scanning across his chest, weaving about; then they focused into a neat triangle.

”Chto eto?” he asked. “What is this?”

Then white fire blazed, and a sound like thunder echoed from the walls of the canyon.

To the soldiers behind Yashin the light was blinding; they saw the blue-white flash, then a spray of dark red mist as what was left of the sergeant’s body was flung backward. Then they stood, blinking, eyes trying to readjust to the gloom of the arctic night.

One of them finally stepped forward to where Yashin’s corpse lay smoking on the ice.

His chest had been ripped apart, ribs bare and blackened; no more blood was flowing because the heat of the blast had cauterized the blood vessels. There was no question at all that the sergeant was dead.

”What happened?” someone demanded.

”He’s dead,” replied the soldier who had first stepped forward.

”How?”

”Ligacheva and the American,” someone else replied. “They must have killed him!”

”I don’t know...” said the man looking down at Yashin’s corpse.

”Who else could it have been?” the other demanded. He pointed down into the canyon. “Do you see anyone else down there?”

The man in the lead looked down into the ravine and could see no one but Ligacheva and Schaefer, still inching down the rocks-but it was dark down there, and there were dozens of places to hide among the rocks.

”I see no one else,” he admitted, “but this, what could they have that would do this?” He gestured at the body.

”Some secret American weapon,” another soldier replied. “The Americans love secrets.”

For a few seconds the six of them still milled about uncertainly; then Maslennikov took charge and said, “Follow them!”

Meanwhile, Schaefer and Ligacheva had completed their climb down into the darkness of the ravine. With Yashin’s shooting and subsequent death as their inspiration they had descended the last few meters a little more quickly than they had planned; Schaefer had dropped his blanket and stooped to retrieve it when he reached bottom. His now-brittle, scratched, and battered electric snowsuit had stopped working, he noticed; the power supply had scraped against something as he slid down the rocks, and wires had torn loose. Even if the current had still been flowing, Schaefer doubted the suit would have lasted much longer; yellow fluid was oozing from a crack on one knee, and yellow drops seeped from the scratches on his chest.

”Looks like Yashin got someone down here angry,” he remarked as he wrapped the blanket around his head again. “Probably one of their security guards.” In English he added, “Goddamn rent-a-cops can be somethin’ when they’re pissed.”

”Be careful where you step,” Ligacheva replied. She had pulled a flashlight from her pack and was sweeping the beam across the ice ahead of them.

”They’ll see us!” Schaefer shouted when he spotted the light. “The men up there, I mean-the creatures can probably see in the dark anyway, from what I’ve seen.”

The light stopped on something that glittered, something that wasn’t ice.

”It would appear that your ‘rent-a-cops’ have left us a souvenir,” Ligacheva said. “I would not like to step on that, whatever it is.”

”Okay, okay,” Schaefer admitted, “so maybe the light was a good idea. Now turn it off!”

Ligacheva did just as a rifle cracked and snow spat up from a bullet impact.

”Jesus!” Schaefer said. “Your boys up there are stubborn! I thought that even if seeing Yashin’s head blown off didn’t send them running home, they’d take their time about coming after us again.” He turned.

The Russians had secured ropes, Schaefer saw, and were lowering themselves down the wall of the crevasse. Judging the speed of the shadowy shapes was difficult, but it appeared to Schaefer that the climb that had taken Ligacheva and himself fifteen minutes would only keep these fellows occupied for about fifteen seconds.

They were obviously a lot more stubborn than he had realized. They weren’t turning back or hesitating; instead they were already in active pursuit again.

”Back!” Ligacheva shouted at the descending soldiers, waving frantically. “Go back! It’s not safe down here!”

An AK-47 stuttered, and bullets shattered ice at the lieutenant’s feet.

”I don’t think they’re listening,” Schaefer said as he swept an arm around Ligacheva and snatched her off her feet. He slung her over one shoulder and ran.

He hadn’t forgotten the traps, though; he deliberately chose an indirect, inconvenient route, pushing himself partway up the scatter of debris along the base of the canyon wall, squeezing between outcroppings where those eight-foot hunters from space wouldn’t fit. The instant he found something approximating shelter behind a slanting slab of rock and ice he stopped, lowered Ligacheva, and turned to watch.

The first of the Russians stepped off his rope and charged forward-impaling himself almost instantly on a spearhead that seemed to appear from thin air. He gasped once, tottered, and fell forward.

For a moment the spear supported him; then the incredibly sharp spearhead cut through his spine and he slid forward down the shaft.

Blood ran down the shaft ahead of the dying Russian, and he landed facedown in a pool of his own blood, cooling quickly on the ice.

The spear was snatched from his back by a shadowy, indistinct figure, and the second man down cut loose with his AK-47, spraying bullets at the barely glimpsed spear-wielding killer.

The thing moved so fast it almost seemed to be dodging the bullets as it turned and ran back down the canyon. The Russian charged after it, bellowing.

He never saw the thing he stepped on, never saw the curving metal strips that snapped up out of the snow and drove spikes into his sides and shoulders, trapping him instantly. His AK-47 flew from his grip.

One spike had rammed through his cheek, so that he could not move his head without inflicting further injury; he was caught staring directly ahead. He could not look away as that shadowy figure stopped, turned, and came slowly toward him.

He could have closed his eyes, but he did not, he wanted to see what he faced, what it was that had trapped him.

It wasn’t quite so shadowy and indistinct now. The soldier could see that the thing he faced stood two and a half meters tall and was shaped more or less like a man, its wrists and shoulders sheathed in jagged black machinery that looked somehow barbaric, its face covered by a metal mask and ringed by black tendrils.

The spear in its hand was already red with blood.

It raised the spear very slowly as it advanced.

”Gunin!” one of the Russian’s companions called.

Gunin couldn’t turn his head to see whether help was coming; the spike would tear open his cheek if he tried.

”Shoot it!” someone barked.

”I’d hit Gunin!”

”Shoot it anyway!” the other shouted. “He’s probably dead already! “

That was Pushkov’s voice-that bastard! Gunin had never liked him. Gunin tried to open his mouth, to shout that he was still alive, but the pain stopped him-the spike was pressing against his jaw muscles.

Someone, Pushkov or someone obeying Pushkov, fired; Gunin felt burning lines of pain as bullets tore through his right sleeve and through his arm, but the pain was not bad, not enough to make him scream-the spikes had already hurt him enough to deaden his sensitivity.

The creature holding the spear seemed to sidestep the bullets easily.

Then it jabbed the spear forward, and Gunin no longer worried about spikes or bullets or anything else as the thing cut his heart out with a single quick gesture.

After that, the alien disappeared, blurring into invisibility.

The other Russians never saw what hit them, but even so, it took several long minutes for them all to die.

 

Chapter 26

Ligacheva tried to run, tried to leave the narrow gap between icy boulders that Schaefer had squeezed them both into, tried to go help her men. Schaefer grabbed her arm and held her back.

”Let me go!” she said. “Let me go! My God, Schaefer, look at what’s happening to them! I have to help my men fight that thing!”

”You can’t help,” Schaefer told her. “You’d just die like the others. Those things are doing what they do best, and we can’t stop them.”

Ligacheva tugged uselessly against his grip.

”Besides,” Schaefer added, “a few seconds ago ‘your men’ were trying to kill us.”

”They’re still my men!” Ligacheva shouted.

Schaefer stared at her for a moment as she realized the futility of struggling.

”Do you have any idea just how stupid that sounds?” he asked her.

She whirled to face him. “Do you have any idea just how cruel you sound?” she replied. “Isn’t there anything you care about?”

Schaefer frowned.

”I care about something,” she told him. “I care about my men!”

”Yeah, I care about something,” Schaefer said. “I care about the fact that when that thing’s done with your friends, it’ll probably find us. Do you have a knife?” .

She blinked up at him. “A knife?”

”Those things are fast enough to dodge bullets, if they see them coming,” Schaefer explained. “And even if you hit them, they’re damn near bulletproof. Knives, well ... they can dodge knives, too, if they have a chance, but I don’t intend to give this one a chance.”

”There’s an entrenching tool in my pack,” Ligacheva replied. “I hear the Spetznaz use them like axes when they need to.”

Schaefer nodded. “That’ll do,” he said. “Give.”

Ligacheva tore open her pack, trying to ignore the high-pitched screams coming from the other side of the sheltering boulder. Schaefer snatched the entrenching tool from her before she could pull it completely out, and an instant later he was gone.

She blinked. Schaefer had seemed to move almost as fast as that thing.

He wasn’t invisible, though, and the monster usually was; how could he hope to find it? She stared into the darkness, trying to see.

Schaefer didn’t worry about finding the creature; he knew where to look. Those creatures didn’t just kill and move on; they liked to play with their prey even after it was dead. All he had to do was watch the corpses ...

There.

Even in the dim arctic gloom he could see the faint rippling in the air above one of the dying Russians. Most people would have missed it entirely, or dismissed it as some sort of optical illusion, but Schaefer knew what to look for, and he had good eyes.

What he did worry about was how to make his attack. The entrenching tool was strong, all in one piece, not like the folding ones American forces used, and one side was sharpened to a razor edge, but the creature’s back was mostly bone, and those bones weren’t necessarily arranged like human ones. If he got a shot at the thing’s belly he’d have a better chance of doing some real damage-but of course, he couldn’t sneak up on it from the front.

He wasn’t sure he could sneak up on it in any case. His only hope was if it was too busy with its victim to notice his approach.

All the screaming had stopped. Schaefer wondered if any of the Russians were still alive.

The body the thing knelt over flipped over suddenly, and Schaefer didn’t think that movement was the Russian’s doing-the creature was getting ready to cut out the man’s spine for a trophy.

Something flickered blue, and the creature was visible, kneeling over the corpse; Schaefer wasn’t sure whether it had turned off its screen deliberately, or if something had given out in the cold. At any rate, this was clearly his chance-or at least the best he was going to get.

”Hey!” Schaefer shouted, charging at the monster with the entrenching tool raised. “Remember me?”

The alien turned, startled, just as a man would, and Schaefer swung his improvised weapon.

The sharpened edge skidded across the creature’s chest, drawing glowing yellow-green blood, but the blade didn’t bite deeply.

Schaefer took another swing, backhanded, and reached his free hand out to grab the thing’s mask. He’d tried that trick before, last summer in New York, and it had worked pretty well then ...

The monster was still half-crouched, off-balance, trying to rise. It grabbed at the entrenching tool and caught it, stopping it dead in midswing - but it had caught the tool by the blade, and the razor edge sliced into the palm of the thing’s hand. Luminescent yellow-green blood dribbled slowly onto the snow underfoot.

Schaefer grabbed the edge of the creature’s mask and twisted, trying to blind it; at the same time he tried to pull the entrenching tool free.

The tool didn’t move; it was like pulling at a steel post. The mask, though, shifted awkwardly.

The thing staggered, confused. It pulled the entrenching tool from Schaefer’s hand and flung it away, then reached both hands up to straighten its mask, but before it could recover, Schaefer threw his full weight against it. It tripped over a dead Russian’s leg and toppled backward into the snow, its mask coming off in Schaefer’s hand.

Gas hissed, and the creature roared deafeningly.

Schaefer threw himself on top of the thing’s chest, his knees on its arms, pinning it. Then he raised the mask over his head in both hands and brought it slamming down edge first on the monster’s face.

”Hell, New York wasn’t so bad,” Schaefer said as he raised the mask for a second blow and saw yellow-green ooze dribbling from the thing’s hideous, multifanged mouth. “At least I could grab a hot dog when you bastards weren’t in sight.” He swung the mask again. “Siberia, though-Siberia sucks. I’m freezing my fucking ass off out here!” He drove the yellow-smeared edge of the mask down onto the thing’s eyes for his third blow and felt the creature twitch beneath him. “What the hell did you want to come here for, anyway? Go home, why don’t you?”

The thing roared again, and something whirred.

Schaefer froze, the mask raised for a fourth blow.

”Uh-oh,” he said as the black shoulder cannon began to pivot toward him. He flung himself backward, and the blue-white fireball roared up into empty space.

”Go home!” the creature bellowed, in Schaefer’s own voice, as the detective scrambled to his feet and the cannon began to home in for a second shot.

Schaefer dove sideways, but the white fire, whatever it was, tore the skin from one side of his scalp.

”Bastard!” Schaefer said as he staggered, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes. One hand flew up to feel the wound and found hair and flesh gone. “You son of a ... That was a new haircut!”

The alien was on its feet now, and plainly in control of the situation again; the cannon stayed up and ready, but didn’t lock on or fire again. Instead, the creature advanced deliberately toward Schaefer.

It was bleeding from a gash across its chest, and one hand and its mouth were dripping greenish goo-Schaefer was able to see that much, even dazed as he was. At least he had hurt the thing.

In fact, it looked angry. It was so alien Schaefer couldn’t be sure, but he thought something about the eyes looked really seriously pissed.

”Come on, stud,” he said, struggling to stand upright and meet the thing head-on. “Give us a kiss.”

The creature didn’t say a thing as it stepped toward him; it just raised its right fist.

With a click, those double blades on the back of its wrist snapped into place.

”You!” someone shouted.

Schaefer blinked away his own blood in time to see Ligacheva leap forward as the creature turned its head. The thing had been so focused on Schaefer it hadn’t seen the Russian ...

Or her weapon. Ligacheva had an AK-47 in her hands, and when the monster turned to face her she thrust the muzzle into its open mouth and fired.

The specifications for the AK-47 say it fires six hundred rounds per minute, but the standard magazine only holds thirty rounds-three seconds at full auto. Standard use is two- or three-shot bursts, to conserve ammunition.

Ligacheva, just then, didn’t give a shit about conserving ammunition; she kept the trigger jammed down tight until the full clip was expended.

That was perhaps the longest three seconds of Schaefer’s life as Ligacheva emptied the weapon into the monster’s face. The creature didn’t budge; it stood and took it as glowing yellow blood and shredded yellow flesh and fragments of white, needle-sharp teeth sprayed out the back of its skull.

One clawed hand reached toward the heavy gauntlet on the opposite wrist, as if trying to reach some of the controls on the wristband, then fell limp. The black tube on the left shoulder rose up and began to swivel.

Then, at last, as Ligacheva’s finger clicked uselessly on the trigger of an empty weapon, before the shoulder cannon could lock on to its target, the creature tottered and fell, toppling forward onto the lieutenant, knocking her flat on her back in the snow.

The shoulder cannon jerked and fell still.

Schaefer cleared his eyes of blood as best he could and staggered over to where the two of them lay. Ligacheva, trapped beneath the thing, stared up at him with terror-filled brown eyes.

”Is it dead?” she asked unsteadily, her breath little more than a gasp due to the weight on her chest.

Schaefer bent down and heaved the thing off her, rolling it to one side.

”It’s not exactly dancing,” he said. He sat down abruptly, not caring that the action split the seams on the thighs of his snowsuit, spilling yellow goo a few shades lighter than the stuff smeared all over the dead alien.

At least the stuff from the suit didn’t glow in the dark, he thought.

Then he looked over at Ligacheva, who was sitting up now, staring down at her dead foe.

”Nice save,” he said. “Thanks.”

”Is it over?” she asked. “Was this what killed all my men and the workers at the station?”

Schaefer looked around carefully before answering, peering both ways down the canyon.

”I get the feeling that old Lunchmeat here was just a security guard,” he said. “A sentry, keeping an eye on things. If there were more right here we’d probably be dead by now, but I’d bet there are more of them down the road there, just where your scientist buddy’s map says the ship is.”

Ligacheva got to her feet, brushed glowing slime from the front of her overcoat, and looked down at the dead creature. “If it is as you say,” she said, “its friends will not be happy when they learn this one is gone.”

Schaefer smiled humorlessly and wiped blood from his face again. “I’d say you’re right, and that suits me just fine,” he said. He spotted his dropped blanket and recovered it, wrapping it around his head as much to stanch the flow of blood as for warmth.

Maybe it was the loss of blood affecting his senses, or his recent exertion, or maybe the ravine blocked the wind, or maybe it was something else, but right now he didn’t feel the cold quite as much as he had.

”Are you all right?” Ligacheva asked.

”I’m fine,” Schaefer said. “You mentioned this boy’s pals,” he said. He parodied a bow, then pointed down the canyon toward the alien ship’s location. “Shall we take a little hike and give them the bad news?”

”Yes,” Ligacheva said. “Let’s do that.”

She ejected the magazine from her AK-47, then picked up one that someone had dropped during the massacre. She rammed it into place, then looked around at the bodies of her men-or rather Yashin’s men.

She stared at the dead monster again.

”Should we strip this one?” she asked. “Its equipment might be useful.”

”If we knew how to use it,” Schaefer said. “Sure, the science boys would love to have it, but let’s pick it up on the way back, shall we? There might be booby traps, and I’d rather not worry about them until after we’ve had a look at whatever’s around the bend here.”

Ligacheva hesitated. She reached down toward the monstrous corpse.

The shoulder cannon swiveled toward her.

She froze, staring at the black tube. Carefully she pulled her hand away, preparing to fling herself sideways if the cannon fired.

The tube did not move again. She waited and watched, but it remained motionless.

She didn’t know whether that final movement had been caused by some final twitch of the creature’s body, or some unfinished task the device had been performing, or some sort of automatic protective system. She decided she didn’t care-Schaefer was right, the body might be booby-trapped, and stripping it could wait.

She straightened up slowly, watching the black tube. It never moved.

She stepped back, away from the body, then turned to face Schaefer.

”Let’s go,” she said.

 

Chapter 27

“General Mavis?” the aide said. “If I might have a word with you in private, sir?”

Mavis tore his gaze away from the video monitors and glowered at the aide, recognizing him as White House staff. He pointed down the hall. “My office,” he said.

A moment later, as the aide closed the door, Mavis demanded, “What is it?”

”They know, General,” the aide replied immediately. “The Russians know everything.”

Mavis frowned. “What do you mean, ‘everything’? Just what do they know?”

”I mean the president just received a private cable from the Russian president, telling him that they knew we’d sent in a team with orders to capture or destroy the alien ship. The Russians are pissed as hell; they’re threatening war if we don’t get our people out of there or order them to surrender.”

”War?” The general snorted. “Those bastards can barely feed their own people or keep their tanks running, and they’re going to take us on?”

”They still have most of their nuclear arsenal, sir,” the aide pointed out.

”Yeah, with an anticipated seventy percent failure-on launch rate, thanks to their manufacture and maintenance...”

”Which they allowed for in building the damn things. Even if only thirty percent get through ...”

”That’s thirty percent that launch.”

”Still, sir, the throw weight...” The aide caught himself. “Why are we arguing this? With all due respect, sir, we don’t want a war with the Russians in any case.”

”And we aren’t going to get one,” Mavis retorted. “They get excited if someone says nasty words to the Serbs, or buys a Lithuanian tractor, but we haven’t had a war yet, have we?” He sat on the edge of his desk. “So what did the president say about this cable?”

”Well, sir, he was ready to tough it out until some wonk from the DOD mentioned that it was General Philips and that cop Schaefer running the show over there. You know how he feels about Philips.”

”And?”

”And he wants the mission terminated now.”

The general stared at the aide for a long moment, then said, “Shit. Any wiggle room?”

”No, sir. Direct order.”

”He knows what we’re giving up here?”

”He knows, sir. He also remembers that crater in Central America and figures the Russians aren’t going to come out of this looking any better than we are.”

”He’s putting a lot of faith in how good these things are at covering their tracks.”

”Yes, sir, he is-but not without reason, given the past record.”

Mavis eyed the aide, but the aide didn’t say anything more, didn’t explain the statement. The lack of further comment, and the aide’s blank expression, made it plain that that was the end of that topic.

Mavis sighed. “Are we in contact with Philips at present?” he asked.

”Yes, sir,” the aide said. “He’s just now got his satellite uplink in full operation in the radio room of that pumping station.”

The general nodded. “Figures. I’d hoped that maybe he’d moved on to the primary site, and we couldn’t reach him to pull the plug, but no such luck. Well, if he’s there, give him a jingle and tell him the show’s closing out of town. He knows the procedure for pickup.”

”Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

”Unless you’ve got some more bad news for me, yes, that’s it. Thank you.”

The aide turned and left, and General Mavis stared moodily at the map of the world on one wall of his office. He focused on the Yamal Peninsula, in the middle of Russia’s useless, icebound northern coast.

”Too bad,” he said to himself. “Invisibility, spaceships, energy cannons-all those toys we can’t have ... and it might have been real interesting to go toe-to-toe with the Russkies and find out once and for all who’s top dog.” He sighed and stood up. “I wonder who spilled the beans?”

Rasche ran a hand over the sleek leather upholstery.

He’d gotten over his brief feelings of disloyalty about dealing with the Russians-after all, his government was up to some pretty dirty tricks here, but he was still adjusting to the reality of being here, on the other side of the world, in the Russian heartland.

He had, up until now, bought into the usual media image of post-Soviet Russia, all those newspaper stories and TV reports about the collapsed economy, the organized crime, the hard times. He had thought that the Russians were all on the verge of starvation, begging in the streets for bread and using their worthless rubles for wallpaper to keep out their infamous winters.

Maybe some of them were hurting, he thought, but judging by this limo Ambassador Komarinets was doing just fine, and Moscow in general had looked pretty solid.

They weren’t in Moscow now, though-they were pulling through the gate of some military installation in the back end of nowhere.

”I am afraid, Mr. Rasche, that from here on our transportation will not be so comfortable,” the ambassador remarked.

Rasche resisted the temptation to remark that the fourteen-hour flight on Aeroflot hadn’t exactly been luxurious, and the military transport that got them from Moscow to wherever the hell they were now had been a flying Frigidaire. The limos, in Moscow and again here, had been a welcome change.

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

”I don’t want to sound like a whiner, Ambassador,” he said, “but are we almost there?”

Komarinets smiled. “You don’t sound like a whiner, Mr. Rasche,” he said. “You just sound like an American-spoiled and impatient. At least you Americans understand long distances, not like most of the Europeans, all jammed together in their little countries.” He offered a cigarette, which Rasche refused with a gesture.

”To answer your question,” the ambassador said as he snapped his cigarette case closed and tucked it back into his coat, “yes, we are almost there. From here, though, there are no roads open at this time of year, so we must take a vehicle that can travel on snow.” He waved at the tinted car window behind him, and Rasche saw a line of ugly military-green vehicles standing beside the limo as it slowed to a stop.

They looked like a god-awful hybrid of snowmobile and semi, but Rasche supposed they’d do the job. A group of soldiers was standing, waiting, beside one of the tractor things; from their attitudes, Rasche guessed that the plump one in the middle was some sort of big shot.

A soldier opened the limo door and Rasche climbed out; the ambassador was doing the same on the other side. Komarinets spoke to the plump officer, but Rasche couldn’t make out a word; he’d never had any gift for languages, and had never tried learning Russian in the first place. He remembered a few words of high school French and some choice phrases of gutter Spanish he’d picked up on the streets of the Big Apple, but that was about the full extent of his linguistic prowess outside his native English.

He stood and shivered while the Russians talked.

After a moment’s conversation the ambassador turned to Rasche.

”This is General Ponomarenko,” he said. “This entire military district is under his command, and he personally selected the officer in charge of operations at the site, a Lieutenant Ligacheva.”

”I regret to say that that is correct,” the general added, speaking slowly and with a heavy accent. “Her performance has been a disappointment. I look forward to relieving her of her command as soon as we locate her.” He gestured at one of the snow tractors; as he did the engine started with a roar, making further conversation impractical.

”Come, we board now,” Ponomarenko shouted, holding open the tractor door.

Rasche shrugged and climbed aboard.

 

Chapter 28

Schaefer paused, balanced atop a ten-foot slab of rock, and looked back at Ligacheva, with his “borrowed” AK-47 held easily in one hand. She was moving slowly, creeping across the rocks. “We have to keep moving,” he called. “As soon as those things figure out that we killed their sentry, they’ll be coming after us!”

”Keep moving,” Ligacheva repeated, nodding as she shifted her own weapon to the other hand so that she could better steady herself against the rock wall. “Ah. This must be what you Americans call a ‘strategy.’ Very good.”

Schaefer smiled slightly, then looked around at the icy walls of the canyon.

Another reason he had wanted to keep moving was so he wouldn’t freeze to death; his fancy plastic suit was less and less usefull with each step, as more of the insulating fluid leaked out, and he’d lost more blood than he liked. The blanket wrapped around his head was stiff with blood; he was pretty sure the flow had stopped, but if he’d been safe at home he knew he’d be in bed-or a hospital!-resting and recovering.

He sure wouldn’t be out here in subzero weather.

Ligacheva had her heavy overcoat and fur hat, so maybe the cold wasn’t such a problem for her.

He paused, noticing something.

Was it really a problem for either of them? The air didn’t have the same vicious numbing bite to it that it had had before. True, the canyon walls shut out the wind,

but ...

”Is it my imagination, or is it warming up out here?” he said.

Ligacheva glanced at him. “Why do you ask?”

”Because the ice ahead looks like it’s melting,” Schaefer said. “And unless I’m hallucinating from loss of blood, I hear water dripping somewhere. It’s midwinter, this is Siberia-ice melting?”

“Indeed,” Ligacheva said, staring. “And beyond that, the ground is bare.” She pointed.

Schaefer looked at the area the Russian indicated and saw earth that was not just uncovered, but torn up and raw. “Something tells me that’s not shown on your friend’s map,” he said.

”Your something speaks the truth,” Ligacheva agreed. She watched as the American trudged ahead.

Schaefer was an enigma to her. He was endlessly bitter and cynical, constantly mocking any sort of authority, loyalty, trust, even simple humanity yet he was here, pushing on into the unknown against a fearsome foe. He had fought the alien sentry with little more than his bare hands-and for what? He professed no love for his fellow man, no devotion to his homeland. The other Americans plainly hated him, he had mentioned no family or friends ...

Perhaps his life was so empty that he had no fear of losing it. He seemed to exist in a friendless world of pain and death; perhaps those devils from the stars were all he had left to give his existence meaning or purpose.

”It’s warm,” Ligacheva said; removing her hat and shoving it into a pocket.

”It’s more than warm,” Schaefer replied, unclipping the collar of his plastic suit. “Something’s got the temperature way up-it must be pushing sixty degrees ...”

”Sixty?” Ligacheva exclaimed. Then she realized that the American must be using the foolish, archaic Fahrenheit scale, and quickly worked the conversion in her head. Fifteen or sixteen degrees Celsius-yes, that was about right. She unbuttoned her coat as Schaefer unzipped.

They were walking on bare, moist stone now, without even lingering traces of ice. Something had not just melted the ice and snow, but had boiled most of it away, heating the canyon air in the process.

”What could possibly produce so much heat?” she wondered aloud.

Schaefer, in the lead and scrambling up onto a boulder just at a bend in the ravine, stopped in his tracks and pointed around the corner.

”How about that?” he asked.

She stepped up on the boulder beside him, to where she could see around the corner, and she, too, stopped dead.

They had, beyond question, found the alien ship. It lay in a pit ahead of them; the heat it radiated had melted the permafrost, and its weight had let it sink down into the formerly frozen mud that lined the bottom of the canyon. It was half-buried in dirt, mud, and gravel.

It was gigantic. It was an immense mass of something, but neither Ligacheva nor Schaefer could decide, upon looking at it, whether it was metal or some other material entirely-to Ligacheva it looked almost like bone. Its shape was curving, organic, impossible to describe. Large parts of its surface were an eerie red that seemed to glow dully in the darkness of the arctic night; the rest was lost in shadows, black against that luminescent crimson.

And one arched area, roughly the size and shape of a large door, glowed a brighter red and appeared to be an opening into the ship’s interior.

”I think it’s a different model from the ones I saw in New York,” Schaefer said. “Can’t be sure, as I didn’t get a look at those from above like this.”

”Is that ... that opening, there ...” Ligacheva struggled to phrase the question she wanted to ask.

”Looks like the welcome mat’s out,” the American said, answering her.

”Should we go in?” Ligacheva asked.

Schaefer hesitated, considering his answer, and saw the air shimmer slightly just beside the opening. The shimmer seemed to move away, across the hull-then the rock blocked his view and he lost sight of it.

It could have been that dizziness from loss of blood had made him imagine it, but Schaefer didn’t think so. He thought it was real.

”No need to hurry,” he said, stepping back down off the boulder. He ducked back out of sight and settled comfortably onto a rock.

If that shimmer had been an alien, and it had already seen him, they were as good as dead-but he was hoping it hadn’t seen him.

Ligacheva joined him behind the bend in the canyon wall and looked at him, puzzled.

”Now what?” she asked.

”Quiet,” he said. “And try not to move. I thought I spotted one of those things.”

Ligacheva tensed; the two of them sat motionless in their sheltered corner for a long moment.

Schaefer was just beginning to decide that he had imagined that shimmer after all when he saw it again, moving along the far wall of the canyon. He watched.

Ligacheva saw the American’s eyes focus on something across the ravine; she turned her own head and searched, but couldn’t spot it.

Then it was gone, and Schaefer relaxed.

”I think our boy’s gone to check on his buddy up the canyon,” he said.

”The sentry we killed?”

Schaefer nodded.

”Then it will know we are in the area,” Ligacheva said. “What will it do?”

”That’s a very good question,” Schaefer said. “And figuring out an equally good answer is why I’m sitting here trying to think.”

He looked around, studying their surroundings-which were almost entirely bare rock. This entire stretch of the ravine had been cooked free of ice. “That thing’s radiating an unbelievable amount of heat,” he said. “That would explain why the satellites picked it up on infrared.”

Ligacheva nodded. “We knew this,” she said.

”But when those boys stopped by the Big Apple to play last year, we couldn’t spot them with infrared,” Schaefer pointed out. “We couldn’t spot them with much of anything. They’ve got stealth technology that makes a B-2 bomber look like a fucking Goodyear blimp wrapped in neon.”

”Then I would say that something must be broken in there,” Ligacheva said. “This ship is hardly invisible.”

”That’s another thing,” Schaefer said. “The ships that cruised Third Avenue were invisible, but we can see this baby just fine. I’d say a lot of things must be pretty broken up in there.”

Ligacheva nodded. She gestured at the sides of the ravine, where the rock had been broken and scarred by some recent impact. “As you said earlier, I do not think they intended to land here at all, and from the appearance of this place, I do not think they landed well.”

Schaefer nodded. “That’s right-it’s pretty clear that this wasn’t a planned visit. That might explain part of their attitude problem-it must have been a rough ride bouncing down this canyon.”

”Understanding their ill temper does not tell us how to deal with it.”

”Oh, I don’t know,” Schaefer said. “Knowing that they’re pissed at the whole damned universe gives us a clue that they aren’t going to want to listen when we ask them nicely to surrender.”

Ligacheva frowned. “If you actually saw one of them just now...” she began.

”Oh, I saw it, Schaefer said. “And I’m glad it didn’t see us.”

”When it finds its dead companion, it will return here,” Ligacheva pointed out. “It will then be angry at us, as well as the universe, no?”

”Could be,” Schaefer conceded.

”And while it did not detect us this time, we cannot count on being so fortunate a second time.”

”Yeah, I’d thought of that.”

”We must act quickly then, before it returns.”

”Act how? What would you suggest we do?”

Ligacheva’s mouth opened, then closed again.

”I don’t know,” she admitted.

”Neither do I,” Schaefer said. He dumped the pack from his shoulder. “I think it’s time to check out just what General Philips and his high-tech boys packed us for lunch; maybe there’s something here that will give us an idea. After all, the general got all this fancy equipment to deal with that ship down there-maybe some of it’ll actually work. I’ve lugged this stuff all this way on the off chance we’ll need it, so let’s see what Lynch handed me to carry.” He opened the pack’s top flap and reached in.

Most of the pack was filled with solid chunks of something heavy. Schaefer pulled out a few and inspected them, then poked at the gadgets underneath.

”C-4,” Schaefer said. “Demolitions grade. And detonators, timers, impact fuses ... we’ve got a whole wrecking crew here. Tasty stuff.”

”Useful against that?” Ligacheva said, pointing at the alien ship.

”If it were detonated in the right place, yes,” Schaefer said thoughtfully. “At least, if their vehicles are anything like ours, and not completely invulnerable.” He reached into the pack again and brought out several ammo clips. He hefted them, feeling their weight, and read the label on one.

”Teflon-coated,” he said. “Depleted uranium shells, magnum charge. These things ought to punch through steel plate as if it were cheese.” He fitted one magazine to the AK-47. “And interchangeable,” he said. “Smithers and Lynch and the rest may be a bunch of assholes, but the general’s tech boys think of everything.”

”The Kalashnikov Design Bureau, you mean,” Ligacheva said. “The AK-47 was designed to accept almost any standard light round.”

”These things may be small caliber, but they aren’t light,” Schaefer said. “We’ll let everyone share the credit, shall we?” He turned the pack over to be sure he hadn’t missed anything, then looked at the booty he had, spread on the rock. “Now, what can we do with it all?”

Ligacheva looked around.

”The permafrost is melting,” she said. “That’s what holds this place together-the ice. If you planted some of your explosives in the canyon wall, you might be able to bring the whole thing down on top of them.”

Schaefer looked up and around at the rocks. He stuffed the explosives back into the pack, slipped the AK-47 onto his shoulder, then stepped back up on the boulder overlooking the downed ship.

Ligacheva stepped up beside him.

”You think the rocks are ...” Schaefer began, leaning forward for a better view.

He didn’t finish the sentence. The boulder abruptly gave way beneath them.

Together, man, woman, and rock tumbled down the side of the pit and slammed heavily onto the top of the spaceship, landing with a resounding crash. A full-blown avalanche followed them immediately, showering stone and debris onto the hot surface of the ship.

Schaefer landed flat on his back, then slowly sat up. His plastic jumpsuit pulled away from the hot metal only reluctantly, leaving an oval of sizzling goo-the outer layer of the plastic had melted away.

Ligacheva had landed on her side and had climbed quickly back atop the fallen boulder, burning the palm of one hand in the process and scorching a long streak of black onto her overcoat. The ship was hot.

Schaefer joined her atop the rock. before the rest of his suit could melt away, and the two of them crouched there, staring at the opening into the ship’s interior, scarcely a dozen meters away.

”Do you think anyone heard that?” Ligacheva asked.

”You could have been front row center at a Who concert and heard that,” Schaefer said. “If there’s anyone still aboard, let’s just hope they’re too damn busy with repairing everything that’s busted in there to come check out another rockslide.” He pointed at a few scattered rocks that had apparently fallen onto the ship earlier as the ice had melted. Then he hefted the pack that he had somehow managed to hang on to and scanned the sides of the ravine.

He didn’t see any suspicious shimmer, but that didn’t mean much-it was dark up there.

It was light inside the ship, though-the red glow was almost alluring from this angle. And if that one he had spotted was the only one left, if there had only been two aboard this ship, then right now the ship was deserted.

Even if there were others aboard, they might be too busy with repairs to notice intruders. They certainly wouldn’t expect intruders-walking straight into the enemy’s home would surely seem insane to them.

Hell, it probably was insane, but that didn’t bother Schaefer at all.

”As long as we’re on their front porch,” he said, “let’s drop in.”

Ligacheva turned to stare at him. Schaefer hefted the pack full of C-4.

”And while we’re in there,” he said, “we’ll give them a little something to remember us by.”

 

Chapter 29

He must be here someplace,” Kurkin said as he peered down an empty corridor, his AK-47 at the ready. His breath formed a thick cloud in the cold air, and he suppressed a shiver. “He wasn’t with the others, and we didn’t find any tacks in the snow...”

”This is mad,” Afanasiev said as he swung his own weapon about warily. “He could be anywhere in the entire complex! How can so few of us hope to search it all without letting him slip past us? Especially when one of us must guard the other Americans!”

”And what would you have us do instead?” Kurkin asked sarcastically.

”Let him go!” Afanasiev said. “He is only one old man, what can he do?”

”One man with a weapon can do quite enough ...” Kurkin began. Then he stopped. “Listen!” he whispered.

Afanasiev stopped and listened. “Voices,” he said. “But ... do I hear two voices?”

”The radio room,” Kurkin said. “He’s in the radio room, and he has contacted his people, perhaps with his own satellite link, perhaps with our equipment. That’s the other voice you hear.”

Afanasiev frowned thoughtfully. “That room has only one door, yes?”

Kurkin nodded.

”We have him trapped, then.”

”Let us take no chances,” Kurkin said. “I have had enough of these damned Americans and their tricks. I say we go in shooting.”

Afanasiev considered that, then nodded. “I have no objection,” he said.

”On my signal, then.”

Together they crept up toward the radio-room door, AK-47s at the ready. The voice from the radio grew louder as they approached.

”... read you, Cold War One, and acknowledge your situation. We reiterate, new orders per Cencom, the mission has been scrubbed, repeat, scrubbed. Over.”

Kurkin’s rusty schoolbook English wasn’t enough to make sense of any of that he could only pick out about one word in three with any certainty.

He hoped that whatever the voice was saying wasn’t of any real importance to anyone.

The radio voice stopped, and the trapped American didn’t reply-he was undoubtedly, Kurkin thought, considering his answer.

The silence was unacceptable, though if they waited, the American might hear their breath or the rustle of clothing. Kurkin waved.

The two of them swung around the door frame, weapons firing in short bursts as they had been taught. A dozen slugs smacked the concrete walls, sending chips and dust flying in all directions.

Then they stopped shooting as they both realized they had no target. The radio room was empty. The radio was on, and a metal case stood open on a table with wires and a small dish antenna projecting from it-the American’s satellite uplink, obviously.

The American wasn’t there.

”Where is he?” Afanasiev asked, baffled. He stepped into the room.

The open door swung around hard and slammed into him, knocking him off his feet, and before Kurkin could react, he found himself staring at the muzzle of an M-16. He had lowered his own weapon and could not bring it up in time.

He couldn’t understand what the American said, but the situation was clear enough. He carefully placed his AK-47 on the floor, then stood up again, hands raised.

Afanasiev, on the floor, turned and sat up-and saw the man with the M-16. He put down his AK-47 as well.

”You boys are noisy,” General Philips remarked. “I heard you coming a hundred yards away. Took you long enough to get here.” He kicked the AK-47s away, then looked over his two prisoners. He frowned.

”Ordinarily,” he said, “I wouldn’t do this to unarmed men, but you did come in with guns blazing.” He flipped the M-16 around and smashed the butt against the standing Russian’s temple.

Kurkin dropped.

Afanasiev cringed, and Philips paused. He took pity on the man and settled for tying him up, using a rifle strap to bind his wrists and a glove held in place with the helmet’s chin strap as a makeshift gag.

Then he turned back to the radio.

”Cold War to base,” he said. “Sorry about the interruption. Please repeat last message.”

”Base to Cold War,” the radio said. “There have been major changes in the operational dynamic. NORAD has tracked a special Russian transport on approach to your position; intelligence sources place a high-ranking political official on board. Further, Moscow has threatened fullscale military retaliation if there is any incident on Russian soil that violates their national security. The secrecy of the mission has been compromised.”

”Shit,” Philips said.

”You are hereby instructed to gather your men, avoid further hostile contact with alien life-forms, and permit their vessel to depart without interference. We don’t want the Russians to get their hands on that alien technology, better both sides lose it. Understood?”

”Shit!” Philips said, more forcefully.

”Say again, Cold War?”

”Understood,” Philips said. “We pack up and get out and let the bastards go.”

”Affirmative.”

”And what if they don’t leave?” Philips muttered to himself. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” Aloud, he said, “Acknowledged. Cold War One out.”

He shut down the transmitter, packed up the equipment, picked up the two AK-47s, then waved a farewell to the two Russians. He figured the unconscious one would wake up before too much longer, and the bound one could work his way loose, but neither one was going to be an immediate threat.

Taking a lesson from the pair of them he moved as stealthily as he could the entire distance from the radio room to the maintenance area under the pipeline where his men were being held at gunpoint-their captors hadn’t relied on walls and doors this time.

All the same, it wasn’t hard for Philips to get the drop on the Russians; the guards had been watching their captives, not their backs.

”Freeze!” he shouted as he stepped out of the shadows with the M-16 at ready.

The Russian guards probably didn’t understand the word, but they got the message and stood motionless as the Americans took their weapons. Everyone there was half-frozen already, and fighting spirit was in short supply.

Once the weapons had changed hands and it was settled who was once again in charge for the moment, Philips addressed his men.

”I’ve been in touch with Cencom,” he began. “Our mission’s been ...” He stopped, blinked, then said, “Wait a minute. Where the hell is Schaefer?”

”Who cares?” Wilcox asked. “Let’s toe-tag these alien geeks and get the hell out of here before we freeze our fucking balls off!”

”He split with that bitch lieutenant when the shit came down,” Lynch said.

”Damn him!” Philips growled. He chewed his lip, considering, for a few seconds, then announced,

”Look, we have new orders. The cat’s out of the bag, someone let the Russkies know we’re here, and we’re shifting to CYA mode. Some kind of Russian big shot is coming up here for a look-see, and Cencom doesn’t want him to find us. We’ve been instructed to abandon our mission and hightail it home without engaging either Russian or extraterrestrial fire. Well, if I know Schaefer, he’s out there kicking alien butt, and he isn’t going to quit just because we tell him to. We need to stop him before he starts World War III.”

”Who the hell’s going to fight a war over a cop killing spacemen?” Lassen protested.

”Nobody,” Philips said. “But if he leaves an abandoned starship sitting out there on Russian soil, there’ll be one hell of a war over who gets to keep it. Now, come on, all of you! We’ll leave these boys tied up to give us a lead, and then head out and see if we can stop Schaefer before he does any more damage.”

Rasche looked out at the Siberian wilderness as the snow tractor plowed on through the darkness. He reached up and touched the window glass.

It was cold as hell out there; even with the heater on full blast, stinking up the cabin with engine fumes, the glass was so cold his fingertips burned where they touched it. Rasche was no hothouse flower, no California beachboy; he’d lived through a few subzero winters when the wind tore through the concrete canyons of New York like the bite of death itself. This, though-this cold was a whole new level of intensity.

Even worse than the cold, though, was the sheer desolation. The surface of the moon couldn’t have been any deader than the landscape beyond the glass. Rasche was a city boy, born and bred; until he’d moved out to Bluecreek his idea of roughing it had been driving through a town that didn’t have a 7-Eleven. He knew he wasn’t any sort of wilderness scout, but this place ... this was the end of the Earth. This was the end of life and hope and light made manifest. It was hard to imagine anything surviving out there.

Even Schaefer.

Then one of the Russians patted his shoulder and pointed, and Rasche squinted through the fog on the windows, trying to see what the man was indicating.

There was some sort of structure ahead.

”The Assyma Pipeline,” Komarinets said. “We are almost to the pumping station.”

There was a sudden burst of noise from the front seat, the two men there babbling excitedly in Russian and pointing to somewhere ahead.

”What is it?” Rasche asked, tensing. He was uncomfortably aware that he was unarmed; he had left his familiar .38 behind at the ambassador’s request, to avoid any international incidents. If those things, those hunters from the stars, were out there somewhere...

”The driver thought he saw something moving up ahead, on the horizon,” Komarinets explained.

”The aliens?” Rasche asked.

Then he remembered. They wouldn’t see anything if the aliens were out there. The aliens were invisible when they wanted to be.

At least, assuming their gadgets worked in weather this cold, they were invisible.

Komarinets shook his head. “I think he imagined it, or perhaps some bit of scrap paper or old rag was blowing in the wind.”

That statement, intended to reassure him, made Rasche far more nervous-perhaps those things were out there, but hadn’t activated their invincibility gadgets until they noticed the approaching convoy.

”Whatever he saw, there is nothing out there now,” Komarinets said.

”I hope so,” Rasche said with heartfelt fervor. “I really hope so.”

 

Chapter 30

Schaefer took a cautious step onto the ship’s hull. “Warm,” he said, “but my boots seem to be holding up.”

”You told me they like the heat,” Ligacheva said.

”So I did,” Schaefer said, taking another step. “Didn’t know that included their ships. You know, the hull feels almost alive.”

”Maybe it is alive,” Ligacheva suggested. “We don’t know anything about it.”

”So if we go in there, we’d be walking down its throat?” Schaefer grimaced. “I can think of a few things I’d like to ram down their throats.”

”You want to make it warm enough for them, eh?” Ligacheva laughed nervously. “Well, why not?” She slid down off the boulder and began marching toward the opening, her AK-47 at the ready.

Schaefer smiled after her. “Why not?” he asked no one in particular.

Together, they walked into the ship.

Schaefer had expected some sort of airlock or antechamber between the opening and the ship’s actual interior, but there didn’t seem to be any; instead, they simply walked in, as if the opening were the mouth of a cave.

Once they were inside, though, the environment abruptly changed. The air stank, a heavy, oily smell, and was thick with warm fog, reducing visibility and making it hard to breathe. The light was a dull orange-red glow that came from the red walls, walls that were completely covered in elaborate, incomprehensible patterns. Whether those patterns were machinery, or decoration, or something structural, neither Schaefer nor Ligacheva could guess.

Whatever the patterns were, they were ugly. Schaefer didn’t care to study them closely. He felt sick and dizzy enough already.

He wondered whether there were forcefields or some other device that kept the foul air in, or whether it just didn’t want to mix with Earth’s atmosphere.

”It’s FM,” he said in English, remembering something an engineer had once told him. “Fucking magic.” He looked around at the ghastly light, the oozing, roiling fog of an atmosphere, the insanely patterned walls. He peered ahead to where the curving corridor opened out into a large chamber; patterned red pillars joined floor to ceiling, while other curving passages or rounded bays opened off every side. The place was a maze, all of it awash in baleful red light and stinking mist.

”No wonder they’re such jerks,” he said. “If I spent fifteen minutes tooling around in a madhouse like this, I’d want to kill something myself.” He hefted his AK-47. “In fact, I do.”

”Wait,” Ligacheva said. “Look over there.”

”What?” Schaefer asked.

Ligacheva pointed at one of the rounded bays. Schaefer followed her as she led the way into it.

He saw, then, what had caught her eye. One section of wall here was not entirely red. It was hard to be sure, in the hideous red light, whether the pieces they were looking at were green or gray or black, but they weren’t red.

The original red wall was torn open here; to Schaefer it looked as if something had exploded, but he supposed it might simply have been ripped apart by the aliens in their efforts at repair.

And parts of the pattern had been replaced, not with more of the red substance, but with ordinary pipes and valves and circuit boards. Schaefer could see Cyrillic lettering on several of them.

”Those filthy bastards,” Ligacheva said. “The attack on the refinery, the workers slaughtered, my squad, my friends, all of them killed for this?”

”Got to give them credit,” Schaefer said calmly. “They’re resourceful. Something blew out here in the crash, or maybe caused the crash, and they needed to make an unscheduled pit stop. Your little pumping station served as their version of Trak Auto.”

”But they killed all those men for a few pieces of machinery!” Ligacheva shouted. “It’s not even anything secret, anything special just plumbing! They could have asked! They could have bartered! They could have just taken it without killing-we couldn’t have stopped them, and why would we care about junk?” She slammed the butt of her rifle against the pipes. “It’s just junk!”

Schaefer grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back. “Stop it!” he ordered. “Damn it, that’s enough!”

She struggled in his grip. “But ...”

”Just shut up! There may be more of them aboard! If you want us to have a chance to do any good here, shut up before any of those things hear us!”

Ligacheva quieted, and Schaefer released her.

”Now, I admit,” he said, “that our friends here have not been on their best behavior during their visit to your country. I agree completely that before we leave their ship, we should make sure to leave them a little something to remember us by.”

”What sort of something?” Ligacheva demanded.

Schaefer hefted the pack. “Oh, a few of these toys in the right places ought to do wonders.”

Ligacheva stared at the pack for a moment, then turned to the makeshift repair job.

”Yes,” she said. “But ...”

Before she could say any more, a blow from nowhere knocked both of them down. The choking mist seemed to be thicker down at floor level, and Schaefer was coughing even before the alien appeared out of nowhere and picked him up, one-handed, by the throat.

It was as big and ugly as any of the others Schaefer had ever seen. It wore no mask, presumably it had no need for one here aboard its own ship. Its yellow fingers and black claws closed on Schaefer’s neck, not tight enough to inflict serious damage, but tightly enough that it lifted him easily and inescapably.

Ligacheva came up out of the fog with her AK-47 in hand, but before she could squeeze -the trigger, in the second she took to be sure she wouldn’t hit Schaefer, the monster slapped her back with its free hand. She slammed against the wall and slumped, dazed, back down into the mist.

Schaefer struggled in the thing’s grip, but resisted the temptation to pry at its fingers. He knew these things were too strong for such a maneuver to do any good; strong as he was by human standards, he wouldn’t be able to free himself. He needed to find another way to fight back. Bare-handed, he couldn’t do anything; his AK-47 was out of reach; he needed some other weapon.

He reached back behind himself, stretching.

The creature growled at him, a grating, unearthly noise. The fingerlike outer fangs around its mouth flexed horribly, and the vertical slit of its mouth opened wide, revealing its inner teeth.

”Damn you to hell,” Schaefer said as his hands closed on a shard of the shattered red wall of the spaceship’s interior. He gripped it, felt the razorsharp edge where it had broken, and yanked at it.

It came away in his hand, and without a second’s hesitation he plunged it into the alien predator’s side.

The creature screamed in pain and flung him aside as if he were so much junk mail, tearing the makeshift dagger from his grasp.

Schaefer rolled when he landed and came up gasping but intact. He started for the broken section of wall, hoping to find another sharp fragment he could use.

”Just tell me,” he said as he watched the bellowing alien, looking for a chance to dodge past it toward the wreckage, “why Earth? Why is it always Earth? What’s wrong with the big game on Mars, or Jupiter, or the goddamn Dog Star, or whatever the hell is out there? It’s a big fucking galaxy, isn’t it? Why can’t you just...”

Then he saw the shadow in the fog behind his foe, and even before the new arrival turned off its invisibility shield, Schaefer knew he was facing a second enemy in addition to the wounded one.

Then the creature appeared, and Schaefer saw that it was carrying a corpse draped over its right shoulder-an alien corpse, the corpse of the sentry he and Ligacheva had killed out in the canyon.

”Oh, shit.”

He backed up against the broken section of wall, knowing that he was letting himself be cornered, but not knowing what else he could do. The wounded predator was staggering slightly, holding its side, but still upright; the new arrival was ignoring its injured companion and staring directly at Schaefer, but not yet moving to attack. It lifted its dead companion off its shoulder and lowered the body gently to the floor, all the while keeping its masked eyes directed straight at Schaefer.

Then the uninjured alien reached up and disconnected something from its mask; gas hissed for a few seconds. It lifted the metal mask away and revealed its ghastly face; those hideous mouth parts, looking like some unholy hybrid of fang, finger, and tentacle, were flexing in anticipation. It took a step closer to Schaefer as he groped unsuccessfully for another sharp piece of wreckage.

Then Ligacheva came up out of the reeking mist again, her AK-47 at her shoulder, and fired.

The aliens, Schaefer knew, could shrug off most small-caliber bullets; their hides were incredibly tough. Depleted uranium coated in Teflon, however, was something new to them; Ligacheva’s shots punched through the monsters as if they were merely human, and glowing yellow-green blood sprayed from a dozen sudden wounds.

The previously unharmed creature went down at once; the fog swirled up in clouds. The other alien, presumably already heavily dosed with whatever these things used as the equivalent of endorphins, snapped its jagged double wrist blades into place and tottered several steps toward Ligacheva before collapsing into the mist.

”They aren’t dead!” Schaefer shouted. He had seen before how tough these things were.

”I know that,” Ligacheva said, irritated. She stepped forward, pointed the AK-47 at one alien’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

Yellow gore sprayed.

She turned her attention to the other alien; it managed to roll over and raise one clawed hand as she approached, but that only meant that it took her last eight rounds directly in the face.

The echoes of the gunfire were oddly muffled in the foggy atmosphere and died away quickly.

Ligacheva stood over the three creatures-the two she had just taken down and the one she had slain earlier. She stared down at them through the mist, getting as good a look as she could at their ruined faces.

”Now they’re dead,” she said, satisfied.

”Probably,” Schaefer agreed. “Let’s not hang around to be sure, though. If there are any more of these joyboys aboard this madhouse, they could be here any minute.”

”I can reload while you make your bomb ...”

”I think we’d be smarter doing that outside,” Schaefer said. “They could be here now-remember their little invisibility trick.”

Something hissed somewhere. Ligacheva hesitated another half second, then turned and sprinted back up the corridor they had entered by.

Schaefer was right behind her.

A moment later they emerged into open air, Earth’s air. Even the cool, flavorless Siberian air, utterly devoid of any scent of life, was far better than the stuff they had been breathing aboard the alien ship, and once they had scrambled from the hot hull up onto the familiar boulder they both paused for a few seconds to savor it.

Schaefer glanced at Ligacheva. She wasn’t beautiful, but right then he was glad to be looking at her. “Pretty good shooting in there, comrade,” he said.

”Credit your American technology,” Ligacheva said. “And of course, my damned good aim.” She ejected the spent magazine from her AK-47. “And give me another clip of that technology, would you?”

Schaefer smiled and opened the pack. He handed her another clip, then started pulling out blocks of C-4 and plugging in wires.

”If we wire this all into a single charge and put it back down inside there, it ought to tear their ship up just fine,” he remarked as he worked.

”And we can scavenge the wreckage, and our governments can fight over it,” Ligacheva said.

Schaefer shrugged as he wired a detonator into the series of charges. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he said. “I just want to make it plain to these bastards once and for all that Earth isn’t a safe place to play.”

Ligacheva didn’t answer; she watched thoughtfully as Schaefer finished assembling his bomb and stuffed it back into his pack.

”Perhaps we should think about this a little further,” she said at last as he strapped an electronic timer into place on top.

He looked up at her.

”I want them to pay for their crimes, too,” Ligacheva said. “But I do not want American missiles to make sure my country does not use this starship to restore us to our former place as a world power.”

”Washington hasn’t got the guts to nuke anyone,” Schaefer said. “We’ll just steal it from you, and then everybody’ll have it.”

”And would that be a good thing?”

Schaefer started to answer, then froze. He was crouched on the boulder, the pack-turned-satchel-charge in one hand, facing the opening into the ship’s interior.

Ligacheva whirled.

One of the alien monsters stood in the opening, looking out at them. It was visible and unmasked, it hadn’t come out to fight, Ligacheva realized, but only to see what the hell was going on.

That didn’t mean it wouldn’t kill them both, given half a chance. It must know that they had killed its companions; she was suddenly horribly aware of the AK-47 she still held in her hands, the very gun that had blown the other monsters’ heads apart.

If she shifted her grip to firing position and swung the weapon around, she might be able to shoot the alien-or it might take her own head off first. She had seen how fast those things could move, how fast they could kill.

She didn’t try. She kept the gun pointed away. She looked at Schaefer to see whether he, too, was still frozen.

He wasn’t. He was still working on his bomb.

”That’s right,” Schaefer called to the creature. “Come out and play! This C-4 will turn you into hamburger faster than UPN canceled Legend!”

Ligacheva turned to stare at Schaefer’s fingers as he punched codes into his electronic detonator.

”But if you set it off now to kill that thing, the explosion will take us down with it!” she exclaimed.

Schaefer didn’t look at her; he was staring at the alien, his attention focused entirely on his foe. “I’m tired of your games,” he said. “I’m tired of all this crap! This time we’re going to finish it ...”

Ligacheva realized that he meant it, that he was ready and willing to die-he wanted only to give his death meaning, the meaning he seemed unable to find in life, by taking his foe with him.

She wanted to stop him, but he was too far away for her to reach the detonator in time, and even if she had been able to think of the words to shout, she knew he wouldn’t have listened to her.

Then a shot rang out, and a bullet smacked off the starship’s hull inches away from Schaefer’s feet. Ligacheva, Schaefer, and the alien all turned simultaneously, looking for the source.

Five men in tan snowsuits stood on the rim of the ravine, looking down at them. A sixth man knelt, holding a smoking rifle.

”Drop it, cop, or the next one’s right between your eyes! And drop your gun, too, Russkie!” the kneeling man called in English.

 

Chapter 31

Schaefer stared at the man with the rifle. “Wilcox,” he said. He lowered the pack gently to the boulder; it slid down onto the ship’s hull.

”I’m sorry about this, son,” General Philips shouted. “It’s over! “

Ligacheva dropped her AK-47 and stared up at the men on the canyon rim. The Americans had tracked them from the pumping station, but they had not come to help against the monsters; instead they were preventing Schaefer from ending the alien threat.

It wasn’t that they cared about Schaefer’s life or Ligacheva’s - the words of that man Wilcox had made that plain. It was ... what? They wanted the alien alive? They wanted the ship?

Perhaps they simply didn’t want the Rodina, the Motherland, to have the ship. They preferred that the alien fly away safely, to return and slaughter at whim.

Ligacheva began to understand just how Schaefer, the pampered American, had become as bitter as any Russian survivor of wars and revolutions and endless dark winters.

And what of the alien? Did it want to just fly away in its jury-rigged ship? She glanced at it.

It stood watching the men on the rim, watching and waiting, its hideously inhuman face unreadable. She wondered what it was thinking.

It hated the cold; it probably did want nothing but to leave.

”What’s the story, General?” Schaefer called.

”You aren’t going to like it,” Philips called back. “And I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’ve been ordered to let them lift off without interference. So back away, nice and easy.”

Ligacheva wondered what the alien thought of all this. Did it understand the words? Was it confused? Did it think this was all some sort of trap?

Or was it just fascinated-or amused-by the spectacle of its prey fighting among itself?

”I’ve been dancing to your tune since this whole thing began, General,” Schaefer said. “What the hell has it ever gotten me, listening to you? You people have taken everything that ever meant anything to me-my job, my home, my brother. What’ll I get if I do what you tell me now-a bullet in the head? Screw it!”

Schaefer dove for the pack.

On the canyon rim Wilcox smiled coldly as he squeezed the trigger. “Been looking forward to this since that day on the firing range,” he said as the rifle bucked in his hands. “Adios, cop!”

He had misjudged Schaefer’s speed; the bullet tore through the flesh of Schaefer’s outer thigh, nowhere near any vital organs.

It was enough to send Schaefer rolling out of control across the scorching-hot hull of the alien spaceship, though; he tumbled down past the pack and sprawled at the creature’s feet, a yard from the open doorway.

He looked up at the thing, at the twitching mouth parts. He took a deep breath and smelled his own flesh starting to burn from the heat of the ship.

”Yeah, come on,” he said to the creature. “Let’s finish it!”

The monster looked down at him, its eyes narrowing, then glanced up at the canyon rim.

Then it turned and ran down into its ship, leaving Schaefer lying on the hull.

”No, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted after it. “You alien son of a bitch! Better I die fighting you than let that asshole Wilcox get me!” He tried to struggle to his feet and succeeded only in falling and rolling, this time tumbling clear off the side of the ship, landing in the gravel and mud that surrounded it.

”First shot was for God and country,” Wilcox said, sighting in on Schaefer’s head. “This one’s for me!”

Beside him, General Philips clenched his teeth.

A rifle shot sounded, echoing from the walls of the ravine

And Wilcox suddenly tumbled forward, blood running freely from the fresh wound where a bullet had punched through his shoulder.

Philips spun and looked uphill.

”And that one was for me,” a voice called-a familiar voice with a bit of a Brooklyn twang.

Philips spotted the man with the smoking rifle-an overweight man in a Russian Army overcoat and furlined cap, carrying an AK-47. Somehow, despite the equipment, Philips had no doubt that the man was American.

”Howdy, General,” the rifleman said. “Meet the other general.” He waved with his free hand, and Philips saw another twenty or thirty men in Russian uniforms approaching, their rifles trained on the small band of Americans. One of them, a big man in an officer’s coat, did not have a visible weapon, and the speaker gestured at him. “General Ponomarenko, of the Russian Army.”

Ponomarenko stepped forward. “You men are trespassing!” he shouted in heavily accented English.

Below, standing on the boulder, Ligacheva listened and watched what little she could see from her place in the pit. She recognized Ponomarenko’s voice and knew she ought to feel relieved that her people had come to the rescue, but instead she felt a wave of despair, the same sort of bitter despair that she thought the American detective must have felt. Right and wrong were being lost here; all that mattered was who had the drop on the other side, who had the weapons and where they were pointed. No one up there cared about the good men those things from the stars had slaughtered; all they cared about was political advantage. They didn’t see the aliens as monsters, but as a potential technological treasure.

Her people-which is to say, all humanity, not merely Russians-were fighting among themselves while their true enemy killed with impunity and was allowed to escape.

What had so many died for? What had they suffered for? When this was over, what would anyone truly have gained?

Not justice, certainly.

She was suddenly distracted from the drama being played out above. The stone beneath her feet was starting to vibrate, and something was whining, a sound almost like a jet engine warming up.

She knew immediately what was happening and dove for the side, trying to get off the ship before it could launch. On her way she snatched up Schaefer’s explosive-filled backpack-she didn’t know why, but acted out of instinct.

The whining grew louder as she slid down beside Schaefer. He was struggling, trying to get to his feet, but his wounded leg wouldn’t support him, and his burned flesh made any movement painful.

”They’re getting ready to launch,” he said.

”You think I don’t know that?” she replied angrily. “Come on, we have to get clear!” She grabbed Schaefer’s arm and threw it across her shoulders, and tried to heave them both up out of the pit the ship lay in.

She couldn’t do it; Schaefer was too big, too heavy.

”Need a hand?” a voice said in English.

Ligacheva looked up and grasped the offered hand. Together, she and the stranger hauled Schaefer up across the rocks.

Schaefer, weak from burns and blood loss, looked up at their savior and said, “Rasche?”

”Yeah, it’s me,” Rasche replied. Ligacheva thought he sounded as if he were on the verge of tears. “For cryin’ out loud, Schaef,” the American said, “we’ve got to quit meeting like this!”

”Christ, Rasche,” Schaefer asked, “how the hell did you get here?”

”I heard a few things and thought maybe you could use some help,” Rasche said as he and Ligacheva pulled Schaefer farther up the side of the ravine. “Good friends are hard to find, y’know?”

Schaefer didn’t answer. Ligacheva stared at him for a moment, then up at this Rasche.

Schaefer evidently wasn’t as alone in the world as he had thought.

Ligacheva suddenly felt that she was intruding; once the three of them were safely off the steepest part of the slope, she left the American to his friend as the two men sought shelter in the rocky side of the canyon. They had found their peace for the moment, she thought. Schaefer had had his friend come for him, halfway around the world and through competing armies; even he could not find the universe completely bleak and without value in the face of such devotion.

For her own part Ligacheva had never doubted the existence of human warmth, even in the Siberian wastes. It was justice that she sought and that seemed so elusive, justice for the workers of Assyma who had been butchered by those things simply because they were in the way. She heaved Schaefer’s backpack up and looked at the electronic detonator.

It seemed simple enough. She knew enough English to read the SET and START buttons, and of course numerals were the same in English and Russian.

Below her the rumbling and whining grew louder, rising in pitch.

She typed in 45--she couldn’t have given a reason, but somehow forty-five seconds seemed right. She glanced down at the alien ship.

Openings at the stern were glowing blue, lighting the arctic night almost bright as day. The opening she cared about, though, the entrance to the ship’s interior, was still a dull red-and still open, so far as she could tell.

She could throw the pack into it, she was sure. From where she stood, on a ledge on the canyon wall, it would be a long, difficult throw, but she could do it. She reached for the START button.

”That’s quite enough, Lieutenant,” General Ponomarenko’s voice said from above.

She looked up at the muzzles of half a dozen rifles and Ponomarenko’s unsmiling face.

”That is obviously an explosive of some sort,” he said, “and you unquestionably intended to use it against that ship.” He snorted. “I suspected your incompetence in Moscow, and now you’ve demonstrated it conclusively. You don’t destroy this kind of power! Drop that device!”

Reluctantly Ligacheva obeyed, dropping the bomb to the ledge. She half hoped the ledge would crumble beneath her as the permafrost continued to melt, and that she and the bomb would tumble back onto the ship, where she could fling it into the opening before anyone could stop her.

The ledge remained solid.

Ponomarenko announced, “We hereby claim this trespassing alien vessel in the name of the Russian people!”

Ligacheva glanced at Schaefer. He was slumped on the rocks a dozen meters away, supported by his amazing friend Rasche, but he was watching her.

She thought he might say something to her, might offer her a few words of inspiration or encouragement, but all he did was smile.

The ground was shaking as the ship powered up.

”General, I don’t think the pilot heard your claim,” she said.

”The air force is on the way,” Ponomarenko replied. “They will attempt to force it back down, should it launch. And if they fail-well, we will undoubtedly have other chances in the future.”

”You think so?” Ligacheva said. She looked down at the ship, at the pack-she couldn’t stoop down and throw it fast enough, not before those guns fired.

But she didn’t have to throw it. She was no American, raised on their silly baseball and basketball. She was a Russian, and had spent every free hour of her childhood playing soccer.

”General,” she said, “screw that!”

She turned, swung, tapped the START button with her toe as if setting a ball, then kicked hard in the most perfect, most important shot on goal she had ever made in all her years on the soccer field.

Despite the pack’s utter failure to adhere to regulations regarding the weight or shape of the ball, it sailed neatly down into the opening, exactly where she wanted it, down through the starship’s open door.

And then the whine turned into a roar and the world filled with blue-white fire as the starship finally launched itself up out of the mud and rock, out of the ravine, up into the arctic night.

 

Chapter 32

Ligacheva blinked dust from her eyes and sat up, unsure how she had come to be lying on her back in the first place, unsure where she was.

She looked and saw that she was still on the rocky ledge in a Siberian ravine. Below her a hundred small fires lit the alien ship’s launch trail; behind her, a dozen meters away, Schaefer and Rasche crouched amid the rocks, sheltering their heads from showering debris.

And far above, in the east, a speck of light was the departing starship.

Somehow she didn’t think that the Russian Air Force was going to be able to catch it. Scarcely thirty seconds had passed since the launch, she was certain, and yet it was almost out of sight.

Thirty seconds ...

Had the pack fallen out when the ship launched? Had it penetrated far enough into the ship’s interior to do any real damage?

And then the distant speck blossomed into a tiny fireball. The bomb had detonated ...

And then the fireball exploded and lit the entire sky white in a tremendous blinding flash.

That was no C-4 explosion, she knew. The ship’s power source, whatever it was, must have gone up-the C-4 must have done enough to set it off, or maybe the makeshift repairs had given way.

Whatever the cause, she was sure there would be no wreckage to analyze, no pieces to pick through and puzzle over, after such a blast.

She closed her eyes and waited for the afterimage of the explosion to fade. When she opened them again, General Ponomarenko was looking down at her.

”Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you fool?” he bellowed at her. “Your military career is finished, Ligacheva! There will be a hearing, official inquiries, questions in parliament...”

”I’m looking forward to it,” she retorted. “I welcome a chance to tell the world the way the new democratic Russia treats its soldiers and workers, and how we lied to the Americans about our visitors!”

”I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” a new voice said. An aristocratic civilian stepped up beside the general. He switched from Russian to English. “I’m Grigori Komarinets, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations. I think we can count on General Philips to cooperate in clearing up this little incident without involving parliament or the press. There’s no need to worry the public with details-is there, General?”

Ligacheva didn’t need to hear Philips’s reply or any further conversation. She turned and spat, clearing dust from her face and bile from her heart.

Neither side would want to admit how far they had been willing to go to steal alien technology-or prevent the other side from doing so. Neither side would want to discuss the farcical, homicidal behavior displayed by Yashin, Wilcox, and the rest. And neither side wanted to admit that the aliens even existed.

So they would keep everything quiet. Philips and Kornarinets would concoct a cover story, Iranian terrorists staging an incident, perhaps-and everyone would abide by it.

She, too, would stay silent about the truth, because if she did not her military career would be over, and she might well die suddenly in an “accident,” or perhaps a “suicide” while despondent over the loss of her comrades.

And besides, no one would believe her. Alien monsters crash-landed in Siberia? Who could accept such a thing?

She smiled bitterly at Schaefer and his friend. They understood the truth; Schaefer had tried to tell her. They understood-but they carried on anyway.

A dozen yards away Rasche smiled back, then asked Schaefer, “What the hell was that all about? I heard the ambassador planning to hush it all up, but what were the girl and the general talking about?”

”He was threatening her, and she told him to go to hell,” Schaefer translated. “Kid learns fast. If the Russians don’t want her anymore, maybe we can find a place for her on the NYPD.”

Rasche snorted. “You’d do that to her? And here I thought you liked her!”

Schaefer smiled. “Funny thing, Rasche,” he said. “I think I do.”