Predator Cold War

by Nathan Archer

  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 suit
s!”

  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.