by J. F. Kirwan
She clambered into the front seat, which was pretty comfortable, but just as chilly as outside, her breath misting in front of her. A matt black fibreglass suitcase sat in the seat behind them. He didn’t explain it, just drove off. The first glint of sunlight peeked through the cloud layer and bounced off the dashboard, warming her face. He pushed a small flask towards her.
‘Coffee,’ he said.
She took it, but didn’t open it. She desperately needed a coffee, but it always had a not-unusual diuretic effect on her, especially in the morning.
‘I’ll make a more civilised stop before we arrive at the exclusion zone.’
All right. She drank it. All of it. Bransk said nothing. But he kept his word. She even got eggs for breakfast.
***
They drove around the perimeter, past the normal entry gate, and skirted the thirty-kilometre exclusion zone until Bransk headed down a dirt track through tall grass into the Red Forest. Most of the pines had recovered since the accident, but there were still anomalies, some trees growing along the ground like bushes; others had branches that had exploded with growth, as if they were behind a giant magnifying glass.
She recalled what her mother had said one day; that whenever Man tried to play God, He would teach Man a lesson. Looking at the trees, seeing what the radioactivity could do to nature, she wondered what it might do to her when she went inside. She felt another chill and pulled up the hood of her suit.
They skirted the edge of the ghost town, Pripyat, and she saw the infamous deserted funfair, the big yellow wheel with its chairs like cupcakes with cocktail umbrellas, several still sturdy-looking dodgems marooned in the grass, and dilapidated houses and low buildings with walls missing, impossible to tell what they once looked like. And books, magazines, littering the floor.
It was a mausoleum. A memento frozen in time not by ice, but by invisible radiation. She knew people still scratched a living in the immediate area surrounding Chernobyl, and her father had lived here, but still – she wanted to get in, get Katya, and get out. What if Katya had already received a fatal dose? Nadia buried it for now. One step at a time.
The dirt track got even bumpier, and she had to brace herself to stop her head being whacked onto the dashboard. Eventually Bransk stopped, picked up the suitcase and headed into the trees. She’d expected no birdsong, but there it was, a cacophony, even though it was nearly lunchtime. But it receded as they reached the treeline, and Russia’s contribution to nuclear power’s scary reputation was revealed in the distance.
Through binoculars she quickly found the iconic red and white tower, still standing tall after all these years, almost dwarfed by the alien-looking shiny metallic arch recently placed over the infamous Reactor Four, where the world’s first Level Seven nuclear accident had happened back in April 1986, its reputation only recently challenged by Fukushima.
‘We have to wait another hour before the decommissioning shift workers leave,’ Bransk said, producing the same flask, refilled at the gas station. ‘Then we go in.’
He’d told her they worked a four-hour shift, to avoid the effects of radiation, as they slowly made inroads to the various hot zones, making sure the radioactivity was confined. Plus, today was National Day, a public holiday. It would soon be deserted.
‘When will the others arrive?’ she asked. The colonel. Whoever else might come. If there was even a chance the stolen nuke was here, they’d deluge the place with soldiers, probably without nice lead-lined undies.
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘We’re here for recon.’ His mouth twitched. His version of a smile? She’d have to ask Katya. But recon? With all those weapons?
Recon, my ass.
He opened the coffee, offered her some. She didn’t finish it this time. A point need only be made once. People either got it first time, or they never did. Bransk struck her as a quick study.
‘Did you ever hear the story of the divers of Chernobyl?’ he asked.
‘Are we bonding now?’
Again, that mouth-twitch.
‘Yes, I heard the story,’ she said. ‘The so-called one-way dive. After they got the reactor vaguely under control, that is buried in concrete, they realised the molten sludge –’ corium, she recalled ‘– was burning its way through the floors, and beneath was a deep pool of water intended for emergency cooling. If the corium reached it, there would be a massive steam explosion, and the way the wind had been blowing, a big plume of radioactivity would have enveloped Western Europe. So, three volunteers donned scuba gear and dived the pool, only one torch between them, which failed during the dive, but they managed to find the valve that drained all the water, though not before getting a high enough dose to shorten their lives to a matter of days.’
He nodded slowly.
‘So, what really happened?’
His eyes fixed on hers. ‘A classic Russian hero-myth. They did volunteer. They did risk their lives. But the valve itself was in a room only knee-deep in water. They opened it. Two of them are still alive, the third died some years later of a heart attack.’
‘My version’s better.’
He turned around to study the site through binoculars again.
‘What was your point, Bransk?’
He carried on his survey. ‘Russia needs heroes. Our government is corrupt. We are not the great nation we once were.’ He put down the binoculars, faced her again. ‘We seek heroes, honourable soldiers who will do what it takes, whatever the cost.’
‘Again, your point?’
‘Your father was one such man.’
Now her mouth stayed shut. She picked up her binoculars, studied the scene for a while. But the question burned inside her. ‘Why was he such a man?’
Bransk pushed the binoculars down from her face. ‘He avenged his father. Did what it takes, though it cost him his way of life.’
‘Cost his family a damn sight more!’ Her words came out harsh. ‘And what about you? Are you aiming to be a Russian hero, or is this all about revenge?’
He studied her a moment, but didn’t answer. So she turned back to the shiny new sarcophagus, longer than two Boeing 777s, taller than the Statue of Liberty. Designed to keep radiation in. A uranium pressure cooker.
And we’re going in there…
Her anger was displaced. Why hadn’t she raged at her father when she met him in Anspida, or on the plane? Because the relief at seeing him outweighed everything else? Because he had apologised? Or because when she was with him some part of her was still that fourteen-year-old girl, the age when he’d been ripped from her. She didn’t know, didn’t care. She figured their time together might be short-lived anyway.
But Bransk had no family. He was cold vengeance personified. He would take down Salamander and not care about collateral, even Katya. He wouldn’t blink. Which meant she might have to kill him. And he knew that. Not exactly the best foundation for an assault team, because despite what he’d said about recon, that was evidently what they were there for.
***
The last of the workers had left thirty minutes ago. He opened up the suitcase, which was mainly dark grey foam protecting a fragile-looking oval object with six small rotor turrets. She watched, fascinated, as Bransk carefully unpacked it and unfolded the small propeller blades one by one, snapping them into place. A drone. The other half of the suitcase held a computer tablet, which served as a monitor and control system. He touched a few buttons and the screen came to life. The drone started buzzing, its props whirring so fast they were almost invisible, and she resisted the urge to touch them to see if they were actually moving. It took off, and swooped down the escarpment towards the plant.
He didn’t seem to need to steer it. It must have pattern recognition capability and a map of the building, including its interior. She switched to binoculars as it neared the building, and watched the high-tech mosquito sail over the two metal fences topped with razor wire and go straight through a vent above one of the doors.
Putting her binoculars down she huddled next to Bransk to watch the small screen. It showed everything in shades of green and black. Of course, there were no lights on, so it was using infrared. Bransk touched a tab on the screen, and a clicking started.
‘Geiger counter,’ he said, though she’d got it already. It was slow at first, as the drone sauntered down corridors with broken ceilings, rubble and plastic sheeting scattered on the floor. The clicking was like a cricket calling to see if any others were around, but every now and again the noise ratcheted up to a machine-gun staccato buzz, the screen blazing white at the same time. Not just infrared, then.
‘What’s the drone searching for? Officially, I mean.’ She knew what Bransk was hunting, or rather, whom.
‘It’s an isotopic radionuclide sniffer.’
‘The warhead?’
He nodded. It made sense. If it was here, its signature would be washed out by the background radiation. But if they could get close enough, they might pick out its signal from all the background radiation. She wondered what would happen then. All hell would break loose, probably. The containment dome had been super-expensive and required the collaboration of dozens of countries, so dropping conventional explosives on the place to stop the bomb being activated was not an option.
Besides, there were still tonnes of highly radioactive material – the corium – in the building. That would effectively create the mother of all dirty bomb explosions. Nerve gas? Too many doors – it wouldn’t be one hundred per cent effective in time. So, men would be sent in. Lots of men, crack troops with a single mission order. Kill everyone you see. They’d be on a transport plane right now, probably landing or already landed in Kiev. Choppers on standby.
‘Can it go any faster?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer. At the bottom left of the screen was a rectangle showing the route the drone had taken through the building. About a third had been covered so far.
‘Why do you think he chose Reactor Four?’ she asked. ‘Why not one of the other, less radioactive buildings, or even Pripyat?’
‘He chooses places others fear. It is part of who he is, what he is. It gives him an advantage. And the warhead would be quickly detected anywhere else.’
It fit his name and legend. Salamanders often had poisonous skin. Or in this case, a poisonous environment around him. But he wasn’t superhuman; he would be affected as well. She tried to figure out how long Katya and Sergei – because she presumed he was being held here as well – had been captive, how much of a dose they’d had, whether it would be lethal already. She wished her father were there. He’d lived inside the exclusion zone, and was well adapted.
‘My father will come,’ she said. ‘So we should talk about ground rules again. Our top priority is to save Katya. Yours is to kill Salamander.’
‘Yours should be too. You may find it is your father’s.’
She wondered if that was possible. No.
‘Let’s just remember our respective priorities,’ she said, ‘and try not to shoot each other when bullets start flying.’
‘Agreed, with one condition.’
She didn’t like conditions. ‘Which is?’
‘If I die, you finish him.’
‘Okay.’
He stopped watching the screen, and grabbed her shoulder with one of his huge hands. He spoke through gritted teeth, and she glimpsed the long-harboured pain bottled within. ‘I mean it. Swear it, Nadia, on all you hold dear, on Katya, on your father. Do not let Salamander leave here alive. He has killed too many, but that will pale into insignificance if –’
‘I swear, Bransk. On all I hold dear. If you fail, I will end him.’
He hung his head for a moment, then he released her. ‘Thank you,’ he said, in a smaller voice, perhaps that of the twelve-year-old boy who’d just been orphaned for the second time.
They both returned to the screen. The clicking died down, almost stopped. The drone turned a corner, and the screen washed out.
‘Lighting,’ he said, touching a zone on the screen.
The image blanked, then returned to a normal view. Some kind of flooring had been laid there, and there were stand-up lights and a small generator. Thick plastic covering had been meticulously taped to the walls. Shielding. Bransk took manual control and slowed the drone down, checking the empty room thoroughly. It had three exits in addition to the opening they had just come through.
‘This thing have sound?’ she asked.
He touched the tablet again and they heard something, muffled, then clearer above the whine of the propellers. Voices. A man’s voice, calling out. Then a woman’s. Katya’s. Nadia’s fists balled. ‘Which way?’
But they had no idea in which direction to search, and Bransk had to fly the drone through two doorways, hearing the voices diminish, then backtrack, before he could find the correct one.
And then, there they both were, Katya and Sergei. Each chained to a wall, like some kitsch horror movie. But they were intact. Sergei had been beaten badly, his face bruised, one eye almost closed from swelling. Katya looked untouched. They both pulled at their chains, a useless reflex when it came to steel, but it was good to see that their spirits weren’t broken.
‘Can we speak to them?’
Bransk shook his head.
Dammit!
Sergei was speaking, though, and fast. ‘Salamander is here. I don’t know how many men. But it’s a trap, a lure. You should flood the place with gas.’
No way.
Sergei and Katya both shifted to look at something – or someone – behind the drone. And in that instant, Nadia watched the blood drain from Katya’s face, while Sergei’s burned red with rage.
Bransk made the drone swivel, and the room briefly spun around.
A man stood in one of the entrances. He was in darkness, a silhouette, motionless. A hulk of a man, not what Nadia had been expecting.
Bransk switched to infrared, and the figure was suddenly lit up in ghostly green and black relief, making him look like the devil, his eyes glowing, his face hard, an expression of cold loathing chiselled into his features. His right wrist flicked, and the image suddenly spun wildly, bounced a couple of times, and then all they could see was the floor, and Katya at a crazy angle. The sound was gone.
Bransk quickly readjusted to normal view. Katya was shouting, pulling against the chains. Salamander walked towards her slowly – like a dancer gliding across the floor, despite his massive size – a serrated knife in his right hand. He glanced towards the camera, then back to Katya, and then slid the knife slowly into her left side. She screamed and pulled against the chains. Nadia couldn’t breathe, as if it was her being stabbed.
Salamander struck Katya’s face and she hung limp from the shackles, the knife hilt hanging from her side, blood running down her leg onto the floor. Salamander walked towards the camera. His boot appeared close. It lifted. The screen blanked.
Nadia was on her feet, breathing hard.
‘It’s a trap,’ Bransk said.
‘I know.’ She pulled out her Beretta.
‘We should wait for reinforcements; they’ll be here in fifteen minutes,’ Bransk said, getting to his feet.
‘I know,’ she said, and began descending the bank towards the power plant, towards her sister who would bleed out in half an hour.
She heard a loud sigh, followed by the expletive blyad, which she didn’t take personally as it more generally meant fuck rather than whore, and then she heard the sound of his heavy boots running to catch up with her.
Chapter Fifteen
Nadia hit the deck as a white minibus trundled into view, ‘Kiev Tours’ in bright purple letters painted on its side in English and Russian. It bounced along the makeshift road, crammed full of tourists. Dammit, they weren’t allowed to get this close, and she had no real cover, her forest camouflage barely masking her against the wide open space littered with chunks of concrete and discarded machinery, all smothered in w
hite dust, as if it had snowed cement powder.
The bus stopped with a jerk, and tourists poured out, cameras dangling from their necks, guys in baseball caps, a couple of girls with hair tied back in ponytails, the whole group mid-twenties. None wore any protective clothing or masks, just jeans, T-shirts and jackets. They pointed, gesticulated and took photos, some with old-style video cameras.
She was tempted to think ‘bad timing’, which was the same as ‘bad luck’. Her father had always said there was no such thing, neither luck nor coincidence. Only patterns. Master the pattern, or it will master you. Salamander had set a trap. It was logical to assume the trap was inside the reactor complex. But the drone had picked up nothing. Also, the more she watched, the more something wasn’t right with this group. They were behaving too exactly like tourists, yet they were young. Why did they have all these old-style video cameras, with their pistol-grip handles and long lenses?
Not cameras.
Bransk strode past her, his long leather coat open. He stopped about twenty metres from the pack, ten metres in front of her. He glanced over his shoulder to her, then let a magazine of fresh bullets for her Beretta drop to the ground. Why there? Because she was out of decent range with her pistol. Which meant she would have to run forward, rather than retreat. She was grudgingly beginning to like Bransk. Her father would like him for sure.
Nadia eased out her pistol. Nine bullets. Behind her, fifty metres of no-cover to the forest. They’d pick her off if they had a rifle. Bransk was right. Long ago, back in Kadinsky’s training camp, the instructor known as the Chef had taught her one of the five golden rules of battle, whether for large battalions or single hand-to-hand combat. When the enemy moves forward, move towards him faster. Not away. Never away. Forward. Upsets their psychology. Messes with their brains. Not the smart brain, but the instinctive one, the so-called reptile brain. Triggers a mental flinch, a split second of indecision. Which was all you needed. She fixed her eye on the magazine.