by Archer Mayor
The temperature, too, spoke of altitude and exposure, and I slowly realized a threat none of us had considered during our beleaguered calculations. It was nearing the start of fall, when the weather could turn capricious, and nowhere else in the state was that more likely than right here—exposed on a mountain in Vermont’s bleakest environment.
Unless we were lucky, and the elements held off, none of us had enough warm clothing to survive what was dished out so commonly in these hills. And through the open window of the car, the tang of brittle cold air told of a coming menace.
· · ·
Apart from where we’d dropped off two sentries on the way in, our first stop came about eight miles up. The road suddenly widened, the trees pulled back, and we found ourselves on a broad shelf of land—flat, overgrown, and appointed with a broad, tidy scattering of bruised and discolored Quonset huts, their rigid uniformity at odds with the raging growth crowding around them—weeds, bushes, and stunted trees had overtaken once-mowed yards and trimmed walkways, making the whole look like a long-abandoned playground.
Rarig and Corbin-Teich stood by the cars, the latter transfixed by the metamorphosis of a place he’d once known as a small but bustling military base.
I walked over to them. “Big change?”
Corbin-Teich seemed in shock. “This was the United States to me. Men in green and khaki. Everything ‘shipshape.’ It was I who mowed many of the lawns here, just so I could do something.”
“How many people lived here?” I asked, impressed at the number of buildings.
Rarig shrugged. “Two hundred, maybe, give or take fifty. I don’t know. It was a small village, really—housing, mess, dispensary, mail room, all the rest.” He jerked his thumb toward the cloud-shrouded peak above us. “The installation is another two miles up. After satellites replaced radar stations in the sixties, they sold the whole thing to a couple who tried turning it into a toy factory. They could’ve done it, too, except that the woodchucks drove ’em off the mountain—gangs on skimobiles, shooting guns, terrorizing them. In the wintertime, the snowdrifts get so deep, the huts turn into huge moguls, irresistible to the half-wit, twenty-something crowd. The locals figured since it was once government-owned, it now belonged to them. After the couple retreated back into the valley, the place was stripped clean, and what the punks couldn’t steal, they destroyed.” He shook his head. “Take a look around, assuming Prince Igor’ll let you—you won’t believe what people are capable of doing.”
I wondered at his tour-guide tone of voice, but Rarig had progressed from the nervous excitement I’d seen grip him on our trip to Middlebury. Now he seemed fatalistically resigned, as if his present situation was merely a logical, if delayed, extension of all that had gone before.
Padzhev overheard that last remark and approached us from a small conference he was having with the eight or so men he had left. “The prince has no objection. In fact, we need to find that telephone line you mentioned in the car, to see if it is connected.”
“Should be,” Rarig said. “The wardens still use it sometimes. We’ll have to tap in down here, though, ’cause the only actual phone outlet is on top of the mountain, where the radar towers are.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” I commented.
He smiled slightly. “Old man, old memories. I’ve come up here a couple of times since those days. This is one of the few old stomping grounds still available to me.”
“You did not tell me,” Corbin-Teich said.
“No. I figured your memories of the place were a little different from mine.”
Padzhev gave instructions to his men, most of whom fanned out, and then turned to us, gesturing like a nanny urging her brood to run and play. “Go, go. We don’t have much time to establish our defenses. Once Kyrov finds the map we left behind and convinces himself it isn’t a trap, he’ll be rapping on our door without much delay.”
I glanced toward the car holding Gail and the still-handcuffed Willy Kunkle. A guard stood beside it with his arms crossed.
Padzhev shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. You may have some tender moment later on—perhaps. Right now, I need you out there.” He pointed toward the overgrown compound.
With some imagination, I could still see what Lew had called home so long ago. I’d spent enough time on bases in the fifties to recognize the traces, as of dinosaurs in ancient soil. The huts were arranged like neatly placed railroad cars, among a grid of now patchy asphalt. Everything, although strictly utilitarian, had been built to last and had even endured the ravages Rarig had mentioned.
Not that considerable effort hadn’t been made to destroy it. Every building I entered had been mauled by the passage of violence, frustration, and pain. Room after room was gutted—holes punched in the Sheetrock, heating ducts torn from the ceilings, floors pried up. The wiring was gone, the windows broken, the doors smashed, the tile bathrooms ritualistically reduced to rubble with sledges. Graffiti was everywhere, most of it vile and raging, lashing out at a world too far away to hear—or care.
And yet it all stood, often reduced to curved metal walls and foundation only—as seemingly indomitable a monument to human engineering as any Roman ruin. I could walk its shattered byways as tourists do in Pompeii, and as easily picture the place in its heyday, all the way down to the bustling communal dining room.
Anatoly found me standing in the middle of a particularly ravaged building, its insulation streaming from the rounded ceiling like stalactites. “You come,” he ordered.
I followed him outside and across the compound to a small, nondescript building not far from the access road. Several of our group were standing around the gaping door. Beyond them, sitting in the gloom, was Sammie, the laptop balanced on her knees.
Anatoly gave an order and the group parted to let me pass. Padzhev was beside Sammie, looking unhappy.
“I’m not a phone technician,” she was saying. “I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if we just kept looking till we found a terminal point.”
Padzhev addressed me as I entered. “This is a singularly inopportune time to start dragging our heels.”
“Or to cut corners that could screw everything up,” I answered. I turned to Sam. “He want you to splice into a line?”
“Yeah. It’s stupid. Getting all this junk and running the risk of hooking it up wrong. Christ knows how many wires there are.”
Rarig spoke up from outside. “You find the line?”
Sammie answered. “Yeah, but it’s more like a cable. And there’s no connection that’ll fit the computer.”
Rarig shoved his way inside, laughing. “No kidding. All this was state-of-the-art at the time—jam-packed with stuff. I can pretty much guarantee a connection at the top, though—that’s where the few people who use this place call out from. Push comes to shove, and you still want to fight ’em off down here, you can direct things from above using a radio.”
Padzhev scowled angrily and for the first time showed his mounting impatience. “God damn it. I want to see where those bastards are, not hear about it thirdhand.” He shouted something in Russian and then said, “Get out. We’ll go up.”
We went in one car—Sammie, Padzhev, Rarig, and myself with one man driving. The others had been given orders to dig in, set up crossfire zones, and otherwise prepare for an onslaught. Nothing had changed in our status since we’d arrived here—the sentries below had reported nothing, and none of us had been given cause for alarm—but the tension was rising nevertheless, as it might have upon the approach of a hurricane on a sunny day.
The trip to the top was distinctly different from what we’d already seen. The road remained the same, but the bordering vegetation, from a hodgepodge of trees, brush, and meadow, now became a uniform stand of stunted, thick evergreens, giving the narrow road the appearance of a carefully groomed path in a tightly knit English garden maze. In contrast to the wild abandon of the compound’s woodsy jungle, this looked almost lovingly maintained.
But it also had an ominou
s undertone, for the higher we climbed—turning corner after corner, always wondering what lay ahead—the more the clouds enveloping the peak began to press down upon us, decapitating the already low treetops and making us feel we were crawling between two unmovable forces, destined to be snuffed out entirely.
And there was no relief from this menace at the top, for as the trees finally pulled away, as if dragged down by the mist, there loomed out of the pale void three gigantic, towering, steel-clad structures—vaguely defined, unfamiliar in form or function, and utterly, threateningly immense.
“My God,” murmured Padzhev, his eyes riveted outside the streaming windshield.
Instinctively, the driver stopped the car.
Only Rarig was smiling. “Impressive, huh? Those are the radar towers—five of ’em. Tallest one’s sixty-five feet. The radar dome designed for that one would’ve made it look like a kitchen stool, but the whole site was decommissioned before they got it in place.” He pointed to a sturdy shack ahead and to the right. “That’s the telephone hut over there.”
Our driver pulled over and we emerged into a freezing, wet, windblown environment that cut through our clothes and coated our faces with moisture. The air was a uniform gray, visibility extending to no more than one hundred and fifty feet.
Sammie looked around, her computer case held to her chest. “This is creepy—like a black-and-white sci-fi movie.”
Ahead of us, as if in response, a metallic moaning was followed by a loud thump as a wide door swung open on a long, low-slung building across the road from the towers.
Rarig’s only comment was “Old computer building, where the scope dopes number-crunched the radar data.” He pointed to the shack’s front door. “Someone’s going to have to blast that lock off.”
Padzhev nodded to the driver, who extracted a gun from under his coat, pointed it at the lock, and pulled the trigger as we all instinctively shied away. Absorbed by the mist, the shot sounded like a damp firecracker.
Padzhev pulled the door open and gestured Sammie through.
The interior was simplicity itself—four battered walls, one tiny barred window, and a shelf with a single phone line curled up on it like a garter snake, all covered with dust. Padzhev looked around, obviously baffled.
Rarig interpreted his expression. “With everyone leaving, and vandals tearing the place apart, this is all the powers-that-be want to waste money on. Even then, they have to replace the lock every once in a while. The wardens bring their own phones when they come.”
Sammie put the computer on the shelf and clipped the phone line into its back.
“Guess we better let Olivia know where we are,” I said casually.
Sammie’s sole reaction was a minute hitch in her movements as she continued setting things up.
“Who’s Olivia?” Padzhev asked.
“One of the two women at the other end of this deal,” I explained, grateful Anatoly hadn’t been chosen to join us. I glanced out the open door. “I doubt the computer’s going to like all that humidity.”
Padzhev growled at the driver, who stepped outside, closing the door behind him. One down, I thought.
Sammie looked around her. “Wish I had a chair. I can’t type on this shelf.”
Padzhev got the hint. “I’ll go find something.”
As soon as he left, Sammie turned to me. “Olivia Kidder?”
I kept my voice low. “What options have we got? This god-damn scheme of his isn’t going to work. Sooner or later, Kyrov’ll get the upper hand and eat us for lunch. We need help.”
We heard voices outside the door as Padzhev shouted something to the other man.
“Set everything up, and if you get a few seconds to yourself, send an SOS to Judy to be forwarded to Kidder.”
“Snowden’ll probably intercept it,” Sammie warned.
“Then e-mail Tony Brandt and make sure he gets briefed by Kidder. Somebody’s going to have to tell the cavalry who’s who up here.”
The door crashed open, making us both jump, and Padzhev and the driver hauled a huge, dented steel box into the room. “Will this work?” he asked, panting.
Sammie perched herself on it, placing the computer on her lap. “Great. Thanks.”
A nervous twenty minutes later, she looked up from the keyboard. “Got it.”
Padzhev sat next to her and peered at the glowing screen. Floating in its middle, like an island on a black sea, was a multihued, three-dimensional slice of map, with a mountaintop at its center. “That’s us?” he asked.
“Yup.” She touched the screen with her fingertip. “We’re right here, and that thin black line squiggling down there is the road. The Quonset village’s here.”
Padzhev stared at it as though it were a crystal ball, which we were all hoping it was. “No sign of anyone else?”
“Not yet. The two women at the other end are going to keep watching till they see a change. Then we’ll get an update—assuming the Trojan horse worked. If it didn’t,” she added grimly, “then I guess the next thing we’ll hear is a knock on the door.”
Chapter 21
WE WERE BACK IN THE VILLAGE in one of the less destroyed huts, most of us bundled into piles around the floor, trying as best we could to keep warm and catch some sleep. Outside, in the darkness, Padzhev and his men had rigged a few booby traps around a marginally defensive layout, which I knew in my gut would finally prove futile. Sammie was stuck on the mountaintop, staring at her unmoving screen and no doubt feeling like a Popsicle by now.
I looped my arm around Gail’s shoulders and she snuggled up closer, as much for the body heat as for the company.
“Joe?” she whispered.
Padzhev had finally left us alone together only a few minutes ago, and given the mood of our last conversation back in Brattleboro, we’d been taking our time getting reintroduced, letting body language do most of the work.
“Yeah?”
“What’s going to happen?”
I gave her shoulder a squeeze, murmuring into her ear. “Nothing good. When all hell breaks loose, I’ll do what I can to get us out of here, but it may be too late. I am sorry.”
“You were hardly in control of things,” she protested.
“I went to Middlebury.”
“Versus what? Sitting around home waiting for the inevitable?”
I had nothing to say to that. What had seemed at the time like an act of independence was now looking more like the fate of a lemming. It wasn’t something I could argue.
She sighed. “Well, I don’t want to be here, but I’m glad we ended up in the same place at the same time. When you left—when you went underground—just after our fight, I couldn’t believe how much it hurt. I hated what had been done to us. I didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again, or how it would be if we did.”
I laughed softly. “And now here we are—some romantic evening.”
She kissed my cheek. “I’ll take what I can.”
But I’d felt her lips trembling.
· · ·
I sensed it first, before I heard a sound, like the smell of a storm before the first drop of rain. I was already peering through the gloom at the hut’s front door when a shadow darkened its threshold. I quickly shook Gail awake as Padzhev began issuing orders in Russian.
“Layer up—as many clothes as you can beg, borrow, or steal. We’re headin’ up the mountain.”
I left her scrambling among the odds and ends we’d salvaged from the motel room, the car trunks and each other and stumbled across the debris-strewn floor to where Padzhev was directing his men.
“My people and I are going up the road.”
He looked at me irritably, interrupted in midsentence. “What? Why?”
“Sammie must’ve given the alert. We going to get weapons?”
He let out a sharp laugh. “That’s not very likely.”
“Then get us the hell out from under your feet.”
One of his men asked a question. Padzhev’s face contor
ted with pure rage for an instant, and I thought he might lash out. But he clamped it back down and pointed at the door instead. “One car for all of you, and one of my men goes along, with orders to kill anyone who steps out of line. Leave.”
I pointed to Kunkle, who’d spent the whole night with his one arm cuffed high above him to one of the only solid pieces of plumbing still attached to the wall. “Him, too. Give me a key.”
Padzhev swore in Russian, said something to the man next to him, and left us. The man silently handed me a handcuff key and went after his boss.
I jogged over to where Willy was sitting with his back against the wall. As I freed his hand, pale and cold to the touch, he snarled, “Fucking Russkies. If I didn’t like ’em before, I hate ’em now.”
He snatched his hand away as soon as I let go of it and buried it under his left armpit, briefly closing his eyes. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”
I hooked his elbow and dragged him to his feet. “This is about to turn into a battlefield. We’re heading for high ground. You got anything more to wear? It’s going to be even colder up there.”
He looked around, unsteady on his feet, and pointed to a ratty blanket. I threw it over his shoulders and steered him to where Gail had gathered Rarig and Corbin-Teich near the door. Our bodyguard, presumably a non-English speaker, watched us warily and gestured that we should head for the cars.
Outside, the first trickle of dawn’s light had dampened the sky with a wash just pale enough to make the horizon stand out. Overriding that faint, mountain-etched line, however, was a low ceiling of clouds, far more bruised than what had enveloped the radar site the day before. We cut across to the cars, working our way through the tall weeds and underlying trash. Around us, Russian voices rang out in short bursts, and men could be seen running from one position to another as Padzhev fine-tuned his defense. At no point had we been given any idea of the numbers rallied against us, and at no point had I been led to believe it was anything less than twice our own forces.
We were bundled into a vehicle and driven up the now-familiar tree-encroached lane to the mountaintop. Halfway there, the mists of yesterday returned, wetter this time and worsened by a strong steady wind we hadn’t felt in the village.