Operation Doomsday

by Paul Kenyon

  "Vana doesn't use a gun," Aslak said. "He hunts wolf the traditional way — with no other weapon than his staff and knife."

  A thrill of excitement went through Penelope. Vana was indeed living up to her expectations.

  "How is it done?" she said.

  Aslak chuffed along in silence beside her for some time before answering. Finally he spoke, again with that odd tone in his voice.

  "The trick is to hit the wolf hard on the muzzle with the staff, then finish him off with the knife. But you must not let the wolf catch the staff in his teeth. For then the wolf will quickly have the man on the ground. And if that happens, the man must kill the wolf quickly. Otherwise he will be too badly mangled to return to the camp."

  Penelope visualized Vana killing one of the big Arctic wolves with his primitive weapons. They were powerful creatures, weighing up to 175 pounds — heavier than a man like Vana. It would be impossible to keep on your feet if those big paws hit you on the chest.

  She felt a flush of excitement, warming her face despite the below-zero temperature. Vana was quite a man, not like the types you encountered in so-called civilization.

  Aslak was studying her shrewdly. "And if the wolf gets your hand in his jaws, you must not try to pull it free. If you do, you lose your fingers."

  "What do you do?"

  He attempted a careless tone. "You push your hand all the way down the wolf's throat and squeeze. And you use the knife in the other hand quickly."

  Penelope loped along, her breath making clouds in the clear air. Her mission seemed very distant. There was only this sparkling white wonderland, fringed here and there by stunted trees, stretching on in barren grandeur. Time did not exist — not when the sun shone at midnight in summer and never appeared at all in winter. Somewhere in that vast glistening expanse was her prey — wolves and man. First the wolves, with a magnificent primitive creature like Vana as her hunting partner. She resolved to do it the way Aslak had described it to her, with a knife and a stick.

  She glanced backward without breaking her stride. The two big Russian wolfhounds were bounding along happily behind the sledge, their tongues lolling. She'd give them a treat, let them do what they were made for.

  There was someone coming up from behind, overtaking them with a burst of speed. It was Vana.

  He jogged along beside them, his face showing no effort. Like the hunter he was, he could run all day, with oiled automatic strides, never out of breath.

  For that matter, so could she.

  "Mita kuuluu," she said. "Aslak's been entertaining me with wolf-hunting stories."

  "Aslak talks too much," Vana said.

  "When will we see some wolves?" she said.

  He sniffed the air like an animal. "There is a pack following the herd now. They are keeping their distance so far."

  "Are they dangerous?"

  "There is something more dangerous — for you."

  "Oh?"

  Vana said nothing. Penelope suddenly realized that Aslak had faded from sight. She hadn't noticed him drop back. There had been that flash of something obscure between him and his brother.

  Vana turned his face toward her again. "Where you are going, there is a man more savage than a wolf. The Lapps tell stories about him. Mothers use his name to frighten their children when they are bad."

  There was a click of wariness in Penelope's brain. Where you are going, Vana had said. What did he know? Or what had he guessed?

  His next words left her in no doubt. "His name is Penkin," Vana said. "Sometimes he crosses the Mezen Bay to the Kola Peninsula. When that happens, word passes among the Lapps. We stay far away from him."

  She spoke lightly. "And this Penkin? Is he on the Kola Peninsula now?"

  "No. Word has passed among the sitas that he remains on Kanin."

  Penelope digested that. "This bad man, Penkin, what does he do?"

  "He hunts Lapps, the way Lapps hunt wolves."

  "How can that be, Vana? The Soviet government wouldn't permit it. The Small Peoples, as they call them, are protected."

  He sprinted along beside her. "Lapps, Khanti, Mansi, Nenets — all of the northern tribes who follow the reindeer — here and in Russia. They know about Penkin. He is lord of a castle in the ice. Let a man get lost in a blizzard and wander too close, and Penkin hunts him."

  Penelope thought. Penkin had to be a Russian security man. And the castle in the ice must be the biological laboratory on Kanin.

  "So this Penkin hunts the reindeer people? And takes them prisoner? Shoots them?"

  Vana's expression was unreadable. "No. The man is a troll. A monster. Some say he can turn himself into a wolf. When he catches some lost Khanti or Nenet, he stakes him out in the snow. He sprinkles blood around him. The wolves can smell the blood for miles. They come. They eat the man alive."

  Penelope shivered at the story.

  "We're heading east, Vana," she said. "Don't you fear this Penkin?"

  "I have nothing to fear, Penelope," he said. It was the first time he'd used her name. "But you do."

  * * *

  Fiona hung up the phone. "That was my greasy little friend, Gorev. He's breaking our date tonight. Something came up, he said."

  Yvette looked up quickly, concern showing on her smooth, milk-chocolate face. "What else did he say?" she said.

  "Something about winter sports. And flying to Ivalo."

  Fiona was a stunning redhead, with an abundant figure and the high cheekbones of a model. She was quick and sharp and bitchy, and she liked to sleep late. But she'd never let the Baroness down yet — either as a fashion beauty for International Models, Inc., or as an agent. She could kill a man with a nail file, or coax information out of him that he didn't realize he was giving. She didn't much care which.

  "I don't like it," Paul said. He stood up and walked over to the window. His handsome black features tightened. "This Gorev cat had the hots for you. He ain't gonna break a date for nothing. And Ivalo — that's less'n forty miles from the hunting lodge where the Baroness is meeting the Lapps. Too close for coincidence."

  Fiona said, "I guess it paid off, cultivating the resident KGB agents the way the Baroness told us to."

  "You think they have a line on the Baroness?" Yvette said.

  "It has to be. Gorev is a talkative little creep. I got the idea that the Helsinki KGB office is fat and lazy. They don't stir from their comforts easily. Desk men. And suddenly — on an hour's notice — they're getting off their asses and taking a plane for Ivalo!"

  "But how could they find out about the Baroness?"

  "I don't know. An informer."

  Yvette turned to Paul. "We'd better warn the Baroness that she might have company."

  "Right on," Paul said.

  He took Fiona's makeup case from her and opened the lid. Inside was an assortment of creams and lotions and cosmetics. They were all real, able to pass customs examinations, secret searches and chemical analysis. The components of the long-range transceiver were imbedded in the molded plastic of the case itself. There were fingernail-thin integrated circuits, and sandwiched capacitors, and four special-purpose minicomputers the size of poker chips. He pried at a rivet on the catch and pulled out twelve feet of antenna.

  "I can't believe that thing works," Fiona said.

  "Oh it works all right," Paul said. He plugged Fiona's hair dryer into the hotel current. It was the transformer. The end of the hose, with a concealed electrical contact, screwed conveniently into the round socket that had held a jar of cold cream.

  Paul twisted the handle of the case, tuning in the frequency that triggered the MESTAR satellite balanced overhead on its polar orbit. MESTAR would do the rest of the work, triggering the receiver that Tom Sumo was monitoring, more than 600 miles away.

  "What if Tommy's not on station?" Fiona said.

  "Tommy's always on station," Paul grinned. "He's got a transponder built into the fillings in his teeth. Sacrificed a couple of good teeth to do it, too. As long as he stays within
a couple of hundred yards of his receiver, he's gonna get the message."

  "That Tommy!" Yvette shook her head. "Imagine turning your head into a radio!"

  Paul was tapping out his signal now, pressing the spring catch that served as a key. He cocked his head, listening for the transponder signal that would tell him he'd made contact.

  "What's the matter, Paul?" Fiona said.

  "I don't know. I can't seem to raise Tommy's receiver."

  "Is your transmitter working all right? Or maybe MESTAR is out of range."

  Paul shook his head. "I'm getting feedback from MESTAR. Our part of the link is working fine."

  "Paul, you've got to get through. There are two KGB men on the way. And there's an informer."

  He gave her a somber look. "No way. Whatever the matter is, it's up there. The Baroness is in trouble."

  * * *

  Sumo staggered over to the growing pile of equipment and added the heavy, fur-wrapped bundle containing the laser autoclave to it. He set it down very carefully.

  "Keep an eye on this, will you?" he said to Skytop. "I'm going back for the radio."

  Skytop grunted. He and Wharton were setting up the two reindeer skin tents the Lapps had loaned them, while Inga, like any Lapp woman, was building a fire with birch twigs and bark.

  Sumo walked through the encampment, his bones aching. The Lapps had finally called a halt. All around him they were brewing coffee, throwing dried meat and frozen cubes of reindeer blood into pots to make soup, unhitching the draft reindeer. The animals were grazing as best they could, scraping at the snow with their sharp hooves to uncover lichen.

  He found the sledge where he'd left it, near a clump of stunted birch. While he was gone, Vana had finished unhitching the reindeer and led the animal off to graze. There were four or five other sledges nearby, their empty harnesses dangling limply from their prows.

  Sumo dug into the pile of furs and felt around for the radio. It had been silent so far, thank goodness. When he had a chance, he'd have to do something about adjusting the transponder in his bridgework. Every time it went off, it gave him a toothache.

  The receiver wasn't there where he'd left it. It had been moved several inches in the pile of goods. Sumo pulled it out into the light.

  The wrappings had been disturbed. Sumo glanced around to make sure nobody was within sight He untied the leather thongs and opened the package.

  The radio receiver was still inside.

  What was left of it.

  Whoever had done it had been deliberate and thorough. The receiver was completely, hopelessly smashed.

  Chapter 7

  Penkin squinted at the sky, using an enormous gauntleted paw to shield his eyes against the Arctic dawn.

  "Naprahva," he rumbled. "Here it comes now."

  He was a giant of a man, with a skull like a bent boiler plate and a face like a crag. He wore the fur hood of his parka pushed back, heedless of the cold, showing thick blue-black hair that curled down low on his forehead.

  "I see it, Evgeny Ivanovich," Viktor said. The little hunchback shivered, his nose and cheeks blue with cold. He raised a pair of binoculars to the sky.

  There was a bright red dot high in the frozen sky. It grew larger, resolving itself into a striped parachute with a blackened something swaying beneath it.

  Together they watched it come down, a towering figure in furs and a little gnome of a man in a peaked hood, standing next to the squarish bulk of the vezdekhod, the big-tracked snow vehicle that Penkin roamed the peninsula in.

  "Look at them, Viktor," Penkin said. "Like dogs after a bone."

  A line of men and vehicles was spread across the snowy plain. They were already moving toward the probable point of impact. There was the recovery team that Moscow had transferred from the space center at Baikonur, towing a huge cushioned cradle on runners behind their tractor. Penkin's lip curled. They'd been a problem, those four dozen strangers with their Baikonur security clearances descending on his domain without warning. He was still checking them out. And crawling along beside them were the vehicles containing the biologists from the laboratory, who were going to supervise the handling of the spacecraft and its contents. Penkin could see the big yellow construction cranes mounted on tractor treads that were four feet wide; the scientists were very nervous about the transfer.

  Scientists! Penkin spat into the snow. A bunch of troublesome schoolboys who had to have their noses wiped for them! If you spoke roughly to them, they complained to Moscow!

  "Shall we go down and have a look?" Viktor said.

  The spacecraft had landed. The striped parachute was collapsing, spilling over the snow. An advance man on a snowmobile was already cutting the shrouds.

  "Let the children play with their toy," Penkin said. "I smell a Nenet."

  A malevolent joy spread over Viktor's shriveled face. "No, Evgeny Ivanovich," he whined. "No Nenet would dare approach within fifty versts of here."

  "Let's look around anyway," Penkin said.

  He swung himself up into the cabin of the vezdekhod. The little hunchback followed him, moving sideways like a crab, pulling himself through the door with mittened hands. The cabin stank of diesel fumes and grease and garlic sausage from Penkin's lunch the day before. The floor was as littered as a wild animal's den: scraps of greasy paper and empty wine bottles and, over in the corner, the remains of a gnawed bone.

  Penkin opened the twin throttles and the snow vehicle roared into life. They lurched forward. Penkin deliberately aimed it toward a group of technicians on foot, smiling as they scrambled to get out of his way.

  He made a wide circle around the returned spacecraft. The big cradle on runners had been maneuvered into position beside it, and they were moving the yellow cranes into place. The craft was a stubby cylinder, as big around as a woodcutter's hut. It had to be, to contain the Lunokhod.

  "Think of it, Evgeny Ivanovich," Viktor said, "it has come back from the moon."

  "They're making enough of a fuss about it," Penkin growled. "Moscow's been shitting in its pants, plaguing me about tightening security here." He cave a short laugh. "Me!"

  "The moon germs," Viktor said. "The Americans are afraid. They don't want us to have them. They want to keep them for themselves."

  Penkin looked back through the narrow rear slot. Technicians in white protective garb with plastic face shields were spraying disinfectant over the burned and blackened space capsule. More technicians stood by with massive hooks to attach it to the cranes.

  "Bugger the Americans!" Penkin said. "And those learned fools back there, too!"

  His mood improved when they were out on the tundra. Here on the snowy steppes he was in his element. The red tape and the paper work were forgotten. He scanned the frozen immensity, white and bare as far as the eye could see, except for the long dawn shadows of the scraggly trees here and there. He cracked the side window and sniffed the fresh clear air. Beside him Viktor shivered.

  For an hour he moved the big-tracked vehicle in a growing spiral around the recovery site until one wide circle intersected the first security perimeter.

  He braked to an abrupt stop beside a wooden kiosk, the treads of the vezdekhod sending up a spray of snow. A fur-capped soldier came out, a submachine gun slung negligently over his shoulder.

  "Dobray ootra, Direktor," he said.

  "See anything, Lutsky?" Penkin said.

  Lutsky's face worked with the effort of speech. He wasn't very bright. But he was a good sentry. He'd shoot anything that moved.

  "I saw the parachute, Direktor," he said.

  "Anything alive, you lout!" Penkin roared.

  "No, Direktor."

  "All right, Lutsky, carry on." He patted the man on the cheek. "Good man."

  Lutsky squirmed with pleasure. He was loyal to Penkin, as all his security force were. They were loyal as dogs; he could kick them, beat them, rail at them, but they'd give their lives for a kind word from him. Lutsky was all right in the outer perimeter; he didn't have the
brains for anything more complicated. He was unshaven, unkempt and never bathed. Penkin didn't care. He enjoyed seeing the discomfiture of the scientists when they got downwind of Lutsky.

  He made several more stops, working inward through his security setup. There were the tripwires and the mines, buried under the snow; he didn't need a chart to tell him where they were; he maneuvered the vezdekhod through them by memory and blind instinct. There were the coffinlike concrete bunkers, unanchored, floating on the permafrost in slush generated by the heat of the men and stoves they contained, invisible till you tripped over them.

  Then there was the outer fence.

  Penkin pulled the vezdekhod to a stop, its twin diesels purring. The fence was twelve feet high, anchored on steel posts that sank another twelve feet into the permafrost. Even so, he had to pour new concrete every spring.

  Inside that was another fence, topped by barbed wire. And beyond that, an electrified fence.

  Between the two were the wolves.

  Penkin had used the usual Alsatians and Dobermans during his first year as security director. The visiting officials from Moscow had noted that he kept his dogs more savage than guard dogs at any similar installations they'd inspected.

  But the Soviet Arctic was full of wolves. A wasted natural resource.

  He'd pulled every wire he could to call off the helicopter wolf patrol. He'd scared hell out of the bounty hunters on the Kanin Peninsula and the adjoining shores. Crippled one of them, in fact. Nobody hunted wolves for hundreds of miles around now.

  They belonged to Penkin.

  He'd captured a few wolves alive. Killed a couple of dams and raised the cubs. He'd put the wolves in with the Alsatians and the Dobermans.

  They'd killed his guard dogs. He was overjoyed. He refused a shipment of replacements. Instead, he'd trapped more wolves.

  His own personal wolf pack numbered over a hundred now. It took a lot of reindeer meat to feed them. But there were plenty of reindeer on the Kanin Peninsula too. And herdsmen to take them from.