”There’s an entrenching tool in my pack,” Ligacheva replied. “I hear the Spetznaz use them like axes when they need to.”
Schaefer nodded. “That’ll do,” he said. “Give.”
Ligacheva tore open her pack, trying to ignore the high-pitched screams coming from the other side of the sheltering boulder. Schaefer snatched the entrenching tool from her before she could pull it completely out, and an instant later he was gone.
She blinked. Schaefer had seemed to move almost as fast as that thing.
He wasn’t invisible, though, and the monster usually was; how could he hope to find it? She stared into the darkness, trying to see.
Schaefer didn’t worry about finding the creature; he knew where to look. Those creatures didn’t just kill and move on; they liked to play with their prey even after it was dead. All he had to do was watch the corpses ...
There.
Even in the dim arctic gloom he could see the faint rippling in the air above one of the dying Russians. Most people would have missed it entirely, or dismissed it as some sort of optical illusion, but Schaefer knew what to look for, and he had good eyes.
What he did worry about was how to make his attack. The entrenching tool was strong, all in one piece, not like the folding ones American forces used, and one side was sharpened to a razor edge, but the creature’s back was mostly bone, and those bones weren’t necessarily arranged like human ones. If he got a shot at the thing’s belly he’d have a better chance of doing some real damage-but of course, he couldn’t sneak up on it from the front.
He wasn’t sure he could sneak up on it in any case. His only hope was if it was too busy with its victim to notice his approach.
All the screaming had stopped. Schaefer wondered if any of the Russians were still alive.
The body the thing knelt over flipped over suddenly, and Schaefer didn’t think that movement was the Russian’s doing-the creature was getting ready to cut out the man’s spine for a trophy.
Something flickered blue, and the creature was visible, kneeling over the corpse; Schaefer wasn’t sure whether it had turned off its screen deliberately, or if something had given out in the cold. At any rate, this was clearly his chance-or at least the best he was going to get.
”Hey!” Schaefer shouted, charging at the monster with the entrenching tool raised. “Remember me?”
The alien turned, startled, just as a man would, and Schaefer swung his improvised weapon.
The sharpened edge skidded across the creature’s chest, drawing glowing yellow-green blood, but the blade didn’t bite deeply.
Schaefer took another swing, backhanded, and reached his free hand out to grab the thing’s mask. He’d tried that trick before, last summer in New York, and it had worked pretty well then ...
The monster was still half-crouched, off-balance, trying to rise. It grabbed at the entrenching tool and caught it, stopping it dead in midswing - but it had caught the tool by the blade, and the razor edge sliced into the palm of the thing’s hand. Luminescent yellow-green blood dribbled slowly onto the snow underfoot.
Schaefer grabbed the edge of the creature’s mask and twisted, trying to blind it; at the same time he tried to pull the entrenching tool free.
The tool didn’t move; it was like pulling at a steel post. The mask, though, shifted awkwardly.
The thing staggered, confused. It pulled the entrenching tool from Schaefer’s hand and flung it away, then reached both hands up to straighten its mask, but before it could recover, Schaefer threw his full weight against it. It tripped over a dead Russian’s leg and toppled backward into the snow, its mask coming off in Schaefer’s hand.
Gas hissed, and the creature roared deafeningly.
Schaefer threw himself on top of the thing’s chest, his knees on its arms, pinning it. Then he raised the mask over his head in both hands and brought it slamming down edge first on the monster’s face.
”Hell, New York wasn’t so bad,” Schaefer said as he raised the mask for a second blow and saw yellow-green ooze dribbling from the thing’s hideous, multifanged mouth. “At least I could grab a hot dog when you bastards weren’t in sight.” He swung the mask again. “Siberia, though-Siberia sucks. I’m freezing my fucking ass off out here!” He drove the yellow-smeared edge of the mask down onto the thing’s eyes for his third blow and felt the creature twitch beneath him. “What the hell did you want to come here for, anyway? Go home, why don’t you?”
The thing roared again, and something whirred.
Schaefer froze, the mask raised for a fourth blow.
”Uh-oh,” he said as the black shoulder cannon began to pivot toward him. He flung himself backward, and the blue-white fireball roared up into empty space.
”Go home!” the creature bellowed, in Schaefer’s own voice, as the detective scrambled to his feet and the cannon began to home in for a second shot.
Schaefer dove sideways, but the white fire, whatever it was, tore the skin from one side of his scalp.
”Bastard!” Schaefer said as he staggered, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes. One hand flew up to feel the wound and found hair and flesh gone. “You son of a ... That was a new haircut!”
The alien was on its feet now, and plainly in control of the situation again; the cannon stayed up and ready, but didn’t lock on or fire again. Instead, the creature advanced deliberately toward Schaefer.
It was bleeding from a gash across its chest, and one hand and its mouth were dripping greenish goo-Schaefer was able to see that much, even dazed as he was. At least he had hurt the thing.
In fact, it looked angry. It was so alien Schaefer couldn’t be sure, but he thought something about the eyes looked really seriously pissed.
”Come on, stud,” he said, struggling to stand upright and meet the thing head-on. “Give us a kiss.”
The creature didn’t say a thing as it stepped toward him; it just raised its right fist.
With a click, those double blades on the back of its wrist snapped into place.
”You!” someone shouted.
Schaefer blinked away his own blood in time to see Ligacheva leap forward as the creature turned its head. The thing had been so focused on Schaefer it hadn’t seen the Russian ...
Or her weapon. Ligacheva had an AK-47 in her hands, and when the monster turned to face her she thrust the muzzle into its open mouth and fired.
The specifications for the AK-47 say it fires six hundred rounds per minute, but the standard magazine only holds thirty rounds-three seconds at full auto. Standard use is two- or three-shot bursts, to conserve ammunition.
Ligacheva, just then, didn’t give a shit about conserving ammunition; she kept the trigger jammed down tight until the full clip was expended.
That was perhaps the longest three seconds of Schaefer’s life as Ligacheva emptied the weapon into the monster’s face. The creature didn’t budge; it stood and took it as glowing yellow blood and shredded yellow flesh and fragments of white, needle-sharp teeth sprayed out the back of its skull.
One clawed hand reached toward the heavy gauntlet on the opposite wrist, as if trying to reach some of the controls on the wristband, then fell limp. The black tube on the left shoulder rose up and began to swivel.
Then, at last, as Ligacheva’s finger clicked uselessly on the trigger of an empty weapon, before the shoulder cannon could lock on to its target, the creature tottered and fell, toppling forward onto the lieutenant, knocking her flat on her back in the snow.
The shoulder cannon jerked and fell still.
Schaefer cleared his eyes of blood as best he could and staggered over to where the two of them lay. Ligacheva, trapped beneath the thing, stared up at him with terror-filled brown eyes.
”Is it dead?” she asked unsteadily, her breath little more than a gasp due to the weight on her chest.
Schaefer bent down and heaved the thing off her, rolling it to one side.
”It’s not exactly dancing,” he said. He sat down abruptly, not cari
ng that the action split the seams on the thighs of his snowsuit, spilling yellow goo a few shades lighter than the stuff smeared all over the dead alien.
At least the stuff from the suit didn’t glow in the dark, he thought.
Then he looked over at Ligacheva, who was sitting up now, staring down at her dead foe.
”Nice save,” he said. “Thanks.”
”Is it over?” she asked. “Was this what killed all my men and the workers at the station?”
Schaefer looked around carefully before answering, peering both ways down the canyon.
”I get the feeling that old Lunchmeat here was just a security guard,” he said. “A sentry, keeping an eye on things. If there were more right here we’d probably be dead by now, but I’d bet there are more of them down the road there, just where your scientist buddy’s map says the ship is.”
Ligacheva got to her feet, brushed glowing slime from the front of her overcoat, and looked down at the dead creature. “If it is as you say,” she said, “its friends will not be happy when they learn this one is gone.”
Schaefer smiled humorlessly and wiped blood from his face again. “I’d say you’re right, and that suits me just fine,” he said. He spotted his dropped blanket and recovered it, wrapping it around his head as much to stanch the flow of blood as for warmth.
Maybe it was the loss of blood affecting his senses, or his recent exertion, or maybe the ravine blocked the wind, or maybe it was something else, but right now he didn’t feel the cold quite as much as he had.
”Are you all right?” Ligacheva asked.
”I’m fine,” Schaefer said. “You mentioned this boy’s pals,” he said. He parodied a bow, then pointed down the canyon toward the alien ship’s location. “Shall we take a little hike and give them the bad news?”
”Yes,” Ligacheva said. “Let’s do that.”
She ejected the magazine from her AK-47, then picked up one that someone had dropped during the massacre. She rammed it into place, then looked around at the bodies of her men-or rather Yashin’s men.
She stared at the dead monster again.
”Should we strip this one?” she asked. “Its equipment might be useful.”
”If we knew how to use it,” Schaefer said. “Sure, the science boys would love to have it, but let’s pick it up on the way back, shall we? There might be booby traps, and I’d rather not worry about them until after we’ve had a look at whatever’s around the bend here.”
Ligacheva hesitated. She reached down toward the monstrous corpse.
The shoulder cannon swiveled toward her.
She froze, staring at the black tube. Carefully she pulled her hand away, preparing to fling herself sideways if the cannon fired.
The tube did not move again. She waited and watched, but it remained motionless.
She didn’t know whether that final movement had been caused by some final twitch of the creature’s body, or some unfinished task the device had been performing, or some sort of automatic protective system. She decided she didn’t care-Schaefer was right, the body might be booby-trapped, and stripping it could wait.
She straightened up slowly, watching the black tube. It never moved.
She stepped back, away from the body, then turned to face Schaefer.
”Let’s go,” she said.
Chapter 27
“General Mavis?” the aide said. “If I might have a word with you in private, sir?”
Mavis tore his gaze away from the video monitors and glowered at the aide, recognizing him as White House staff. He pointed down the hall. “My office,” he said.
A moment later, as the aide closed the door, Mavis demanded, “What is it?”
”They know, General,” the aide replied immediately. “The Russians know everything.”
Mavis frowned. “What do you mean, ‘everything’? Just what do they know?”
”I mean the president just received a private cable from the Russian president, telling him that they knew we’d sent in a team with orders to capture or destroy the alien ship. The Russians are pissed as hell; they’re threatening war if we don’t get our people out of there or order them to surrender.”
”War?” The general snorted. “Those bastards can barely feed their own people or keep their tanks running, and they’re going to take us on?”
”They still have most of their nuclear arsenal, sir,” the aide pointed out.
”Yeah, with an anticipated seventy percent failure-on launch rate, thanks to their manufacture and maintenance...”
”Which they allowed for in building the damn things. Even if only thirty percent get through ...”
”That’s thirty percent that launch.”
”Still, sir, the throw weight...” The aide caught himself. “Why are we arguing this? With all due respect, sir, we don’t want a war with the Russians in any case.”
”And we aren’t going to get one,” Mavis retorted. “They get excited if someone says nasty words to the Serbs, or buys a Lithuanian tractor, but we haven’t had a war yet, have we?” He sat on the edge of his desk. “So what did the president say about this cable?”
”Well, sir, he was ready to tough it out until some wonk from the DOD mentioned that it was General Philips and that cop Schaefer running the show over there. You know how he feels about Philips.”
”And?”
”And he wants the mission terminated now.”
The general stared at the aide for a long moment, then said, “Shit. Any wiggle room?”
”No, sir. Direct order.”
”He knows what we’re giving up here?”
”He knows, sir. He also remembers that crater in Central America and figures the Russians aren’t going to come out of this looking any better than we are.”
”He’s putting a lot of faith in how good these things are at covering their tracks.”
”Yes, sir, he is-but not without reason, given the past record.”
Mavis eyed the aide, but the aide didn’t say anything more, didn’t explain the statement. The lack of further comment, and the aide’s blank expression, made it plain that that was the end of that topic.
Mavis sighed. “Are we in contact with Philips at present?” he asked.
”Yes, sir,” the aide said. “He’s just now got his satellite uplink in full operation in the radio room of that pumping station.”
The general nodded. “Figures. I’d hoped that maybe he’d moved on to the primary site, and we couldn’t reach him to pull the plug, but no such luck. Well, if he’s there, give him a jingle and tell him the show’s closing out of town. He knows the procedure for pickup.”
”Yes, sir. Will that be all?”
”Unless you’ve got some more bad news for me, yes, that’s it. Thank you.”
The aide turned and left, and General Mavis stared moodily at the map of the world on one wall of his office. He focused on the Yamal Peninsula, in the middle of Russia’s useless, icebound northern coast.
”Too bad,” he said to himself. “Invisibility, spaceships, energy cannons-all those toys we can’t have ... and it might have been real interesting to go toe-to-toe with the Russkies and find out once and for all who’s top dog.” He sighed and stood up. “I wonder who spilled the beans?”
Rasche ran a hand over the sleek leather upholstery.
He’d gotten over his brief feelings of disloyalty about dealing with the Russians-after all, his government was up to some pretty dirty tricks here, but he was still adjusting to the reality of being here, on the other side of the world, in the Russian heartland.
He had, up until now, bought into the usual media image of post-Soviet Russia, all those newspaper stories and TV reports about the collapsed economy, the organized crime, the hard times. He had thought that the Russians were all on the verge of starvation, begging in the streets for bread and using their worthless rubles for wallpaper to keep out their infamous winters.
Maybe some of them were hurting, he thought, but judging by th
is limo Ambassador Komarinets was doing just fine, and Moscow in general had looked pretty solid.
They weren’t in Moscow now, though-they were pulling through the gate of some military installation in the back end of nowhere.
”I am afraid, Mr. Rasche, that from here on our transportation will not be so comfortable,” the ambassador remarked.
Rasche resisted the temptation to remark that the fourteen-hour flight on Aeroflot hadn’t exactly been luxurious, and the military transport that got them from Moscow to wherever the hell they were now had been a flying Frigidaire. The limos, in Moscow and again here, had been a welcome change.
He should have known it wouldn’t last.
”I don’t want to sound like a whiner, Ambassador,” he said, “but are we almost there?”
Komarinets smiled. “You don’t sound like a whiner, Mr. Rasche,” he said. “You just sound like an American-spoiled and impatient. At least you Americans understand long distances, not like most of the Europeans, all jammed together in their little countries.” He offered a cigarette, which Rasche refused with a gesture.
”To answer your question,” the ambassador said as he snapped his cigarette case closed and tucked it back into his coat, “yes, we are almost there. From here, though, there are no roads open at this time of year, so we must take a vehicle that can travel on snow.” He waved at the tinted car window behind him, and Rasche saw a line of ugly military-green vehicles standing beside the limo as it slowed to a stop.
They looked like a god-awful hybrid of snowmobile and semi, but Rasche supposed they’d do the job. A group of soldiers was standing, waiting, beside one of the tractor things; from their attitudes, Rasche guessed that the plump one in the middle was some sort of big shot.
A soldier opened the limo door and Rasche climbed out; the ambassador was doing the same on the other side. Komarinets spoke to the plump officer, but Rasche couldn’t make out a word; he’d never had any gift for languages, and had never tried learning Russian in the first place. He remembered a few words of high school French and some choice phrases of gutter Spanish he’d picked up on the streets of the Big Apple, but that was about the full extent of his linguistic prowess outside his native English.
Predator Cold War Page 17