Suddenly, a dark spot, like a drop of ink creeping across a page, appeared at the edge of the crowd, just below the pendulum. Men in black coats were pouring into the atrium.
Peter gripped King’s shoulder, commanding his full attention. “Jack. Get your mother to safety.”
Before King could respond, or even process the statement, Peter turned and ran back into the store. “Wait…”
Another hand held him back. It was Lynn. Some of the excitement had ebbed from her face, replaced by a more appropriate anxiety. “He’s right, Jack. If we stay together, they’ll catch all of us.”
King gaped at her a moment, then turned to his sister. “Stay with him.”
Bishop needed no further prompting. She was running after Peter before King had even finished the sentence. “Meet us in Yekaterinburg!” he added, but Bishop was already gone.
17
The Ural Mountains, Russia
“In the words of the late lamented Yogi Berra,” Rook said, as he stared through the binoculars at the blank white landscape, “‘It’s déjà vu all over again.’” He gave a heavy sigh. “I am so fucking done with snow.”
Beside him, Queen said, or rather sang in an exaggerated falsetto, “Do you want to build a snowman?”
“I’m turning into a snowman,” he said. “I’ve even got testicicles.”
“You’ve been waiting all day to say that, haven’t you?”
“It’s like you’re in my head,” he said, ruefully.
He had actually come up with the joke during their misadventure in the Arctic Circle, but the battery-operated heaters in the custom-made winter combat suits they had worn on that outing had ruined the joke by keeping all his parts toasty warm. Unfortunately, high-tech winter combat suits didn’t quite jibe with their present cover as outdoorsy adventure tourists. Nor did FN-SCAR assault rifles or any of the other tactical gear they normally would have carried with them on an op. Commercially available polypro thermal underwear and The North Face parkas and bib overalls had kept the cold at bay—mostly, anyway—during the long ski trek to their initial objective, but now that they weren’t moving, the chill was setting in.
“Let it go,” Queen said. “Knight, you see anything?”
“A lot of potential snowmen,” Knight replied from his perch two hundred yards away. His voice was astonishingly clear, without any of the distortion or background noise that often accompanied radio transmissions or even mobile phone calls. “Not much else.”
“Roger. Blue, anything from your eye in the sky?”
Rook glanced up. It was a reflex action. There was little chance of spotting the lightweight micro-drone, which was not only about the size of a hummingbird but hovering high above in the darkening slate gray sky. The surveillance units, Aleman’s own design, had a service ceiling of ten thousand feet, necessary since the drones relied on line-of sight radio signals, both for operational control and data relay. When combined with advanced miniaturized high-def digital optics, it was the perfect altitude for watching a potential battlefield. The built-in solar recharging system meant they could operate non-stop during daylight hours. But once night fell, battery-life would be more of a problem.
Deep Blue had four drone units at his disposal. It took nearly two hours for a drone to reach their current location from Ivdel, the last rural town of consequence, about eighty miles away. That meant each unit could only stay on station for about an hour before making the equally long return trip for a one-hour recharge period—not nearly long enough to bring the batteries back to capacity. That would be a problem the longer they were out in the open, but since their purpose was only reconnaissance, Rook doubted they would need Deep Blue looking out for them all night long.
“I like the term ‘proto-snowmen.’” Deep Blue’s reply came through as clearly as Knight’s, even though he was stationed in his makeshift op center—his warm op center, Rook thought miserably—in a rented room in Ivdel. “Otherwise, it’s a whole lot of nothing.”
“Since we don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking for,” Rook said, “how are we going to know when we see it?”
No one had an answer for him.
King’s last order to them all had been to set up an observation post, conduct passive recon and wait for his arrival. That had been almost a full twenty-four hours ago, enough time for them to make their way from Yekaterinburg to Ivdel. That had been the last best place for Deep Blue to set up a command-and-control center from which to operate his micro-drones. The rest of them continued on as far as the unplowed roads and four-wheel drive would allow, after which they had broken out the cross-country skis and kept going. The ski trek fit nicely with their cover as globe-trotting adventure tourists, although it hardly mattered, since they had not seen another living soul since leaving Ivdel.
“I take it King is still maintaining radio-silence,” Queen said.
“Unfortunately.”
“Crap.” She sighed. “It’s going to be dark soon. Since we’re not going anywhere, we should probably set up camp.”
Rook let his head droop forward into the snow, but then pushed himself up. Queen was right about the approaching dusk. When the sun passed beyond the mountain ridge to the west, not only would they have to contend with darkness, but also plunging temperatures. Besides, a few hours of sleep, even in these miserable circumstances, would be welcome after the exhausting ordeal of skiing up the mountain passes, gaining almost a thousand vertical feet over the course of twenty miles.
“I took your advice,” he said, as he clipped into his skis.
“That’s new,” Queen replied. “About what exactly?”
“I Googled this place.”
“Russia?”
“Dead Mountain.” Rook pointed to the distant peak jutting up from the ridge of the Urals to the northwest. “That’s what Bish said the name translated to. Guess what I found out?”
“You found out that ‘dead mountain’ is a very literal interpretation and that a more accurate translation for Kholat Syakhl would be ‘place with no game.’”
“No. Well, yes, I did find that, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“He means the Dyatlov Pass incident,” Deep Blue said.
Rook had nearly forgotten about the open line to their handler. “Way to steal my thunder, Comrade Buttinsky. But yes, that’s what I found.” He debated whether or not to continue relating the strange but true story of the nine hikers who had died mysteriously, not far from the very spot where they now stood.
In 1959, a group of Russian hikers, mostly college students, led by young Igor Dyatlov, set out on an expedition into the Ural Mountains. When they failed to show up at their destination two weeks later, a massive search effort was launched and eventually located the lost hikers’ frozen remains. Instead of resolving the mystery of their disappearance, though, the grisly discovery only led to more unanswerable questions.
The tent in which the nine hikers had been camping had been torn open from within, as if the victims were trying to escape from something inside the tent with them. Despite frigid winter conditions, several of the bodies were barefoot or in only socks and underwear, as if there had not even been time to get dressed. Although the bodies showed no outward signs of injury, two of the victims had fractured skulls and broken bones. One was missing her tongue, as if it had been torn out of her head. Some reports, impossible to verify or deny, said that the bodies were highly radioactive. The bizarre details of the incident had led to many outlandish theories, ranging from military-experiments-run-amok to an encounter with space aliens. The response of the Soviet government had only made matters worse. The investigation was shrouded in secrecy. Travel in the area around Kholat Syakhl had been prohibited for three years following the incident. It was as if the government was trying to cover something up, and the official finding of the investigation was that the deaths had been caused by an ‘unknown compelling force.’
“So?” Queen said. “After everything you’ve seen—
and I might add, survived—you’re worried about an old ghost story?”
“Unknown. Compelling. Force.” Rook enunciated each word succinctly in hopes of conveying just how freaky they sounded when put together. “You can’t shoot a ‘force.’”
“There’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything that happened,” Deep Blue said. “An avalanche may not be as sexy as UFOs or Abominable Snowmen, but it’s much more plausible. The hikers heard the avalanche coming and freaked out, ripped open their tent, ran out into the snow half-naked, and then froze to death.”
Rook shook his head. “Spoken like a true nay-sayer. How do you explain the broken bones with no external trauma, or the high levels of radiation on the clothes and bodies of the victims?”
“I’d be more concerned if it hadn’t been over fifty years since the incident,” Queen said. “The only incident, I might add.”
“Are you sure about that? Maybe that’s what happened to the other guys. Our replacements. Maybe the JV Chess Team also ran into an unknown compelling force.”
“When did you become such a pussy?”
“Frankly I think an avalanche is something we should be worried about,” Knight said, jumping in after a long silence. “We’ve got mountains on both sides. Nowhere to go if there’s a slide.”
“You think maybe that’s what happened to them?” Queen asked. “The JV team?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“There’s a stand of trees about a klick north of your present location,” Deep Blue said. “That would give you better shelter from the wind and some protection… That’s weird.”
“Not what we wanted to hear from you right now,” Rook said.
“What have you got, Blue?” Queen asked.
“Uh, well, I’m not sure. There’s something weird about those trees.”
“Okay, ‘weird’ is not really painting a very clear picture.”
“There’s fog rising from the trees,” Deep Blue said, still sounding uncertain. “A lot of it. Almost like a steam plume.”
“I can see it from here,” Knight said.
“The trees could have trapped heat,” Deep Blue suggested. “Now that the temperature is dropping, it could be creating a temperature inversion.”
“We’ll check it out,” Queen said. “Knight, hold where you are. We’ll link up with you there.”
By the time they reached Knight’s position, the vapor cloud had grown to near epic proportions, towering above the frozen landscape like some Biblical pillar of smoke. Knight stood with his back to them, staring at the spectacle. The treetops were just barely visible underneath the plume.
“That doesn’t look like a temperature inversion,” Rook said, leaning on his ski poles.
“No, it doesn’t,” Queen admitted. “Looks more like a steam discharge from the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant. Those trees could be camouflage to hide exhaust vents and air exchangers for an underground base.”
Rook had been thinking along the same lines. “I guess that means camping in the woods is out.”
“King told us to recon. For now, that means we watch from a distance. We’ll set up a concealed OP.”
Rook cast a skeptical eye about their surroundings. “Concealed?”
“I think she means we’re going to build an igloo,” Knight said.
Rook rolled his eyes. “Great. Where’s Nanook of the North when we need him?”
“You could be Nan-Rook.”
“Funny.”
“I’ve got movement in the trees,” Deep Blue cut in.
All eyes swung in the direction of the cloud column. Rook used his teeth to pull off his heavy ski-mittens, revealing the knit glove liners he wore underneath—warm enough to keep his fingers from freezing, but thin enough to fit in a trigger guard. Then he reached inside his jacket to find the comforting grips of his Desert Eagle pistols. Knight reacted just as quickly, unslinging the old Mosin-Nagant P91-30 rifle he had acquired before leaving Ivdel.
Smuggling in handguns was no great trick, but getting a rifle past customs would have been impossible. Before leaving for Moscow, Bishop had made contact with an arms dealer she trusted, but they had left Yekaterinburg before the requested weapons package had arrived. Since they were only doing recon and posing as tourists, they had figured the pistols were protection enough, but an old grizzled hunting guide they had met before leaving the small town had strongly suggested they take along some real firepower. The Mosin-Nagant looked like it belonged in a museum—and perhaps it had been stolen from one—but the old hunter who claimed to have used it to kill Nazis in the Great Patriotic War, had done a decent job of maintaining it. “You will need it if you run into wolves,” he had told them, before charging them a black market premium. “Or something else.”
Wolves were pretty low on Rook’s list of concerns. It was the ‘something else’ that worried him
“Talk to me, Blue,” Queen said. “What do you see?”
“Not sure. The mist is freezing over. Visibility is nil.”
“I see them,” Knight said. “Unfortunately, I think they see us, too.”
“Them?” Queen raised her binoculars and peered in the direction Knight was staring. “Holy shit. What the hell are those things?”
Rook drew his pistols and pointed them in the direction of the whiteout. He could just make out a few dark specks, silhouetted against the wall of icy mist, definitely moving toward them.
“Put ‘em away,” Queen said, lowering the field glasses. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What do you see?” Rook growled. “Do we need to have another talk about sharing?”
“Trust me.” She handed him the binoculars, as he holstered a pistol. “Those won’t do us any good.”
He pressed the lenses to his eyes and peered at the approaching shapes.
They were not men, although they were upright and bipedal. They were also not wolves, although they were covered in shaggy black fur, which made them easy to spot against the brutally white landscape. What they actually were, however, was harder to say. Rook thought they might be bears, but the body shape was wrong. Bears had long torsos and short legs, which made them top heavy, giving them a shambling gait when walking on their back legs. These things were hunched over, staying low to the ground, but running. Fast. They seemed almost to float across the snow.
Bears were also territorial creatures, rarely traveling in groups larger than two or three, and even then, usually a mother with her cubs. There were considerably more of the shaggy man-shapes headed their way. Rook stopped counting at twenty. There were at least three dozen of them.
He understood now why Queen had said what she had. While he had no doubt that a fifty-caliber Magnum round from his Desert Eagle would put any one of the advancing beasts down permanently, he didn’t have enough bullets to take them all.
18
Moscow, Russia
Bishop caught up to her father just as he was about to duck into the storeroom at the rear of the toy shop. “Batya!” Dad!
Peter glanced over his shoulder and shook his head brusquely. He didn’t stop, but as she drew alongside him, he said. “Stay with your mother.”
“King will keep her safe,” she said, confidently. “I’m with you.” Then, as if it was an afterthought, she added, “So, you have a plan, right?”
He uttered a short sharp laugh. “Keep moving. Don’t let them catch us.” He led the way back to the service corridor and into the stairwell.
“Up or down?” she asked.
Peter’s answer was to veer toward the descending stairs, but then he halted so abruptly that Bishop had to throw herself against the wall to avoid colliding with him. She slipped and would have tumbled down the steps but for Peter’s restraining hand. As she righted herself, she saw why he had stopped. Several men, probably those who had pursued them through the underground passages, were ascending the stairway below.
She made a furtive grab for the pocket where she had stowed the Makarov
King had given her earlier, but then Peter hauled her back and spun her around so that she was facing away from the men.
“Up,” he shouted. “Go!”
She went, rounding the corner on the landing and then leaping up the next flight of stairs three at a time, until the exertion began to burn in her muscles. As she reached the next landing, she glanced back and saw her father, right behind her, pointing ahead urgently.
Keep going.
It felt like the wrong choice, like they were postponing a confrontation rather than averting it. They would eventually run out of steps to climb, and then they would have to somehow make their way back down. By that time all the exits from Detsky Mir would be blocked. She told herself to trust her father, but that was easier said than done. After all, everything she had grown up believing about him was a lie.
“Get off… Next floor,” Peter called out, the words coming in gasps between breaths. It was a reminder that while he possessed the skills and instincts of a world class intelligence operative, he was a bit past his prime.
When she reached the next landing, Asya headed through the unmarked door and found herself in yet another non-descript corridor. Peter passed her by, turning right down the hallway. He took the first door he came to, not a storeroom this time, but an office occupied by more than a dozen people. Most of them did not even look up from their labors to acknowledge the odd pair running through their midst.
They emerged onto another balcony overlooking the atrium, which was now four stories below. The crowded floor looked more like a mosaic picture than a collection of people. She couldn’t make out any details or distinguish the hunters from the innocent bystanders, and she wondered if King and Lynn had already made their escape.
Peter did not give her more than a moment to look. He ran along the balcony, ignoring the looks of astonishment from the handful of people who were enjoying the relative solitude of the upper reaches of the department store. Behind them, men in black coats were spilling out of the office they had just exited. She sprinted ahead to catch up to Peter. From the corner of her eye, she could see that at least some of the men chasing them had broken off and headed out along the opposite side of the balcony to cut them off.
Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8) Page 14