Schaefer smiled and opened the pack. He handed her another clip, then started pulling out blocks of C-4 and plugging in wires.
”If we wire this all into a single charge and put it back down inside there, it ought to tear their ship up just fine,” he remarked as he worked.
”And we can scavenge the wreckage, and our governments can fight over it,” Ligacheva said.
Schaefer shrugged as he wired a detonator into the series of charges. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he said. “I just want to make it plain to these bastards once and for all that Earth isn’t a safe place to play.”
Ligacheva didn’t answer; she watched thoughtfully as Schaefer finished assembling his bomb and stuffed it back into his pack.
”Perhaps we should think about this a little further,” she said at last as he strapped an electronic timer into place on top.
He looked up at her.
”I want them to pay for their crimes, too,” Ligacheva said. “But I do not want American missiles to make sure my country does not use this starship to restore us to our former place as a world power.”
”Washington hasn’t got the guts to nuke anyone,” Schaefer said. “We’ll just steal it from you, and then everybody’ll have it.”
”And would that be a good thing?”
Schaefer started to answer, then froze. He was crouched on the boulder, the pack-turned-satchel-charge in one hand, facing the opening into the ship’s interior.
Ligacheva whirled.
One of the alien monsters stood in the opening, looking out at them. It was visible and unmasked, it hadn’t come out to fight, Ligacheva realized, but only to see what the hell was going on.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t kill them both, given half a chance. It must know that they had killed its companions; she was suddenly horribly aware of the AK-47 she still held in her hands, the very gun that had blown the other monsters’ heads apart.
If she shifted her grip to firing position and swung the weapon around, she might be able to shoot the alien-or it might take her own head off first. She had seen how fast those things could move, how fast they could kill.
She didn’t try. She kept the gun pointed away. She looked at Schaefer to see whether he, too, was still frozen.
He wasn’t. He was still working on his bomb.
”That’s right,” Schaefer called to the creature. “Come out and play! This C-4 will turn you into hamburger faster than UPN canceled Legend!”
Ligacheva turned to stare at Schaefer’s fingers as he punched codes into his electronic detonator.
”But if you set it off now to kill that thing, the explosion will take us down with it!” she exclaimed.
Schaefer didn’t look at her; he was staring at the alien, his attention focused entirely on his foe. “I’m tired of your games,” he said. “I’m tired of all this crap! This time we’re going to finish it ...”
Ligacheva realized that he meant it, that he was ready and willing to die-he wanted only to give his death meaning, the meaning he seemed unable to find in life, by taking his foe with him.
She wanted to stop him, but he was too far away for her to reach the detonator in time, and even if she had been able to think of the words to shout, she knew he wouldn’t have listened to her.
Then a shot rang out, and a bullet smacked off the starship’s hull inches away from Schaefer’s feet. Ligacheva, Schaefer, and the alien all turned simultaneously, looking for the source.
Five men in tan snowsuits stood on the rim of the ravine, looking down at them. A sixth man knelt, holding a smoking rifle.
”Drop it, cop, or the next one’s right between your eyes! And drop your gun, too, Russkie!” the kneeling man called in English.
Chapter 31
Schaefer stared at the man with the rifle. “Wilcox,” he said. He lowered the pack gently to the boulder; it slid down onto the ship’s hull.
”I’m sorry about this, son,” General Philips shouted. “It’s over! “
Ligacheva dropped her AK-47 and stared up at the men on the canyon rim. The Americans had tracked them from the pumping station, but they had not come to help against the monsters; instead they were preventing Schaefer from ending the alien threat.
It wasn’t that they cared about Schaefer’s life or Ligacheva’s - the words of that man Wilcox had made that plain. It was ... what? They wanted the alien alive? They wanted the ship?
Perhaps they simply didn’t want the Rodina, the Motherland, to have the ship. They preferred that the alien fly away safely, to return and slaughter at whim.
Ligacheva began to understand just how Schaefer, the pampered American, had become as bitter as any Russian survivor of wars and revolutions and endless dark winters.
And what of the alien? Did it want to just fly away in its jury-rigged ship? She glanced at it.
It stood watching the men on the rim, watching and waiting, its hideously inhuman face unreadable. She wondered what it was thinking.
It hated the cold; it probably did want nothing but to leave.
”What’s the story, General?” Schaefer called.
”You aren’t going to like it,” Philips called back. “And I don’t like it any more than you do, but we’ve been ordered to let them lift off without interference. So back away, nice and easy.”
Ligacheva wondered what the alien thought of all this. Did it understand the words? Was it confused? Did it think this was all some sort of trap?
Or was it just fascinated-or amused-by the spectacle of its prey fighting among itself?
”I’ve been dancing to your tune since this whole thing began, General,” Schaefer said. “What the hell has it ever gotten me, listening to you? You people have taken everything that ever meant anything to me-my job, my home, my brother. What’ll I get if I do what you tell me now-a bullet in the head? Screw it!”
Schaefer dove for the pack.
On the canyon rim Wilcox smiled coldly as he squeezed the trigger. “Been looking forward to this since that day on the firing range,” he said as the rifle bucked in his hands. “Adios, cop!”
He had misjudged Schaefer’s speed; the bullet tore through the flesh of Schaefer’s outer thigh, nowhere near any vital organs.
It was enough to send Schaefer rolling out of control across the scorching-hot hull of the alien spaceship, though; he tumbled down past the pack and sprawled at the creature’s feet, a yard from the open doorway.
He looked up at the thing, at the twitching mouth parts. He took a deep breath and smelled his own flesh starting to burn from the heat of the ship.
”Yeah, come on,” he said to the creature. “Let’s finish it!”
The monster looked down at him, its eyes narrowing, then glanced up at the canyon rim.
Then it turned and ran down into its ship, leaving Schaefer lying on the hull.
”No, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted after it. “You alien son of a bitch! Better I die fighting you than let that asshole Wilcox get me!” He tried to struggle to his feet and succeeded only in falling and rolling, this time tumbling clear off the side of the ship, landing in the gravel and mud that surrounded it.
”First shot was for God and country,” Wilcox said, sighting in on Schaefer’s head. “This one’s for me!”
Beside him, General Philips clenched his teeth.
A rifle shot sounded, echoing from the walls of the ravine
And Wilcox suddenly tumbled forward, blood running freely from the fresh wound where a bullet had punched through his shoulder.
Philips spun and looked uphill.
”And that one was for me,” a voice called-a familiar voice with a bit of a Brooklyn twang.
Philips spotted the man with the smoking rifle-an overweight man in a Russian Army overcoat and furlined cap, carrying an AK-47. Somehow, despite the equipment, Philips had no doubt that the man was American.
”Howdy, General,” the rifleman said. “Meet the other general.” He waved with his free hand, and Philips saw anot
her twenty or thirty men in Russian uniforms approaching, their rifles trained on the small band of Americans. One of them, a big man in an officer’s coat, did not have a visible weapon, and the speaker gestured at him. “General Ponomarenko, of the Russian Army.”
Ponomarenko stepped forward. “You men are trespassing!” he shouted in heavily accented English.
Below, standing on the boulder, Ligacheva listened and watched what little she could see from her place in the pit. She recognized Ponomarenko’s voice and knew she ought to feel relieved that her people had come to the rescue, but instead she felt a wave of despair, the same sort of bitter despair that she thought the American detective must have felt. Right and wrong were being lost here; all that mattered was who had the drop on the other side, who had the weapons and where they were pointed. No one up there cared about the good men those things from the stars had slaughtered; all they cared about was political advantage. They didn’t see the aliens as monsters, but as a potential technological treasure.
Her people-which is to say, all humanity, not merely Russians-were fighting among themselves while their true enemy killed with impunity and was allowed to escape.
What had so many died for? What had they suffered for? When this was over, what would anyone truly have gained?
Not justice, certainly.
She was suddenly distracted from the drama being played out above. The stone beneath her feet was starting to vibrate, and something was whining, a sound almost like a jet engine warming up.
She knew immediately what was happening and dove for the side, trying to get off the ship before it could launch. On her way she snatched up Schaefer’s explosive-filled backpack-she didn’t know why, but acted out of instinct.
The whining grew louder as she slid down beside Schaefer. He was struggling, trying to get to his feet, but his wounded leg wouldn’t support him, and his burned flesh made any movement painful.
”They’re getting ready to launch,” he said.
”You think I don’t know that?” she replied angrily. “Come on, we have to get clear!” She grabbed Schaefer’s arm and threw it across her shoulders, and tried to heave them both up out of the pit the ship lay in.
She couldn’t do it; Schaefer was too big, too heavy.
”Need a hand?” a voice said in English.
Ligacheva looked up and grasped the offered hand. Together, she and the stranger hauled Schaefer up across the rocks.
Schaefer, weak from burns and blood loss, looked up at their savior and said, “Rasche?”
”Yeah, it’s me,” Rasche replied. Ligacheva thought he sounded as if he were on the verge of tears. “For cryin’ out loud, Schaef,” the American said, “we’ve got to quit meeting like this!”
”Christ, Rasche,” Schaefer asked, “how the hell did you get here?”
”I heard a few things and thought maybe you could use some help,” Rasche said as he and Ligacheva pulled Schaefer farther up the side of the ravine. “Good friends are hard to find, y’know?”
Schaefer didn’t answer. Ligacheva stared at him for a moment, then up at this Rasche.
Schaefer evidently wasn’t as alone in the world as he had thought.
Ligacheva suddenly felt that she was intruding; once the three of them were safely off the steepest part of the slope, she left the American to his friend as the two men sought shelter in the rocky side of the canyon. They had found their peace for the moment, she thought. Schaefer had had his friend come for him, halfway around the world and through competing armies; even he could not find the universe completely bleak and without value in the face of such devotion.
For her own part Ligacheva had never doubted the existence of human warmth, even in the Siberian wastes. It was justice that she sought and that seemed so elusive, justice for the workers of Assyma who had been butchered by those things simply because they were in the way. She heaved Schaefer’s backpack up and looked at the electronic detonator.
It seemed simple enough. She knew enough English to read the SET and START buttons, and of course numerals were the same in English and Russian.
Below her the rumbling and whining grew louder, rising in pitch.
She typed in 45--she couldn’t have given a reason, but somehow forty-five seconds seemed right. She glanced down at the alien ship.
Openings at the stern were glowing blue, lighting the arctic night almost bright as day. The opening she cared about, though, the entrance to the ship’s interior, was still a dull red-and still open, so far as she could tell.
She could throw the pack into it, she was sure. From where she stood, on a ledge on the canyon wall, it would be a long, difficult throw, but she could do it. She reached for the START button.
”That’s quite enough, Lieutenant,” General Ponomarenko’s voice said from above.
She looked up at the muzzles of half a dozen rifles and Ponomarenko’s unsmiling face.
”That is obviously an explosive of some sort,” he said, “and you unquestionably intended to use it against that ship.” He snorted. “I suspected your incompetence in Moscow, and now you’ve demonstrated it conclusively. You don’t destroy this kind of power! Drop that device!”
Reluctantly Ligacheva obeyed, dropping the bomb to the ledge. She half hoped the ledge would crumble beneath her as the permafrost continued to melt, and that she and the bomb would tumble back onto the ship, where she could fling it into the opening before anyone could stop her.
The ledge remained solid.
Ponomarenko announced, “We hereby claim this trespassing alien vessel in the name of the Russian people!”
Ligacheva glanced at Schaefer. He was slumped on the rocks a dozen meters away, supported by his amazing friend Rasche, but he was watching her.
She thought he might say something to her, might offer her a few words of inspiration or encouragement, but all he did was smile.
The ground was shaking as the ship powered up.
”General, I don’t think the pilot heard your claim,” she said.
”The air force is on the way,” Ponomarenko replied. “They will attempt to force it back down, should it launch. And if they fail-well, we will undoubtedly have other chances in the future.”
”You think so?” Ligacheva said. She looked down at the ship, at the pack-she couldn’t stoop down and throw it fast enough, not before those guns fired.
But she didn’t have to throw it. She was no American, raised on their silly baseball and basketball. She was a Russian, and had spent every free hour of her childhood playing soccer.
”General,” she said, “screw that!”
She turned, swung, tapped the START button with her toe as if setting a ball, then kicked hard in the most perfect, most important shot on goal she had ever made in all her years on the soccer field.
Despite the pack’s utter failure to adhere to regulations regarding the weight or shape of the ball, it sailed neatly down into the opening, exactly where she wanted it, down through the starship’s open door.
And then the whine turned into a roar and the world filled with blue-white fire as the starship finally launched itself up out of the mud and rock, out of the ravine, up into the arctic night.
Chapter 32
Ligacheva blinked dust from her eyes and sat up, unsure how she had come to be lying on her back in the first place, unsure where she was.
She looked and saw that she was still on the rocky ledge in a Siberian ravine. Below her a hundred small fires lit the alien ship’s launch trail; behind her, a dozen meters away, Schaefer and Rasche crouched amid the rocks, sheltering their heads from showering debris.
And far above, in the east, a speck of light was the departing starship.
Somehow she didn’t think that the Russian Air Force was going to be able to catch it. Scarcely thirty seconds had passed since the launch, she was certain, and yet it was almost out of sight.
Thirty seconds ...
Had the pack fallen out when the ship launched? Had it penetrate
d far enough into the ship’s interior to do any real damage?
And then the distant speck blossomed into a tiny fireball. The bomb had detonated ...
And then the fireball exploded and lit the entire sky white in a tremendous blinding flash.
That was no C-4 explosion, she knew. The ship’s power source, whatever it was, must have gone up-the C-4 must have done enough to set it off, or maybe the makeshift repairs had given way.
Whatever the cause, she was sure there would be no wreckage to analyze, no pieces to pick through and puzzle over, after such a blast.
She closed her eyes and waited for the afterimage of the explosion to fade. When she opened them again, General Ponomarenko was looking down at her.
”Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you fool?” he bellowed at her. “Your military career is finished, Ligacheva! There will be a hearing, official inquiries, questions in parliament...”
”I’m looking forward to it,” she retorted. “I welcome a chance to tell the world the way the new democratic Russia treats its soldiers and workers, and how we lied to the Americans about our visitors!”
”I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” a new voice said. An aristocratic civilian stepped up beside the general. He switched from Russian to English. “I’m Grigori Komarinets, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations. I think we can count on General Philips to cooperate in clearing up this little incident without involving parliament or the press. There’s no need to worry the public with details-is there, General?”
Ligacheva didn’t need to hear Philips’s reply or any further conversation. She turned and spat, clearing dust from her face and bile from her heart.
Neither side would want to admit how far they had been willing to go to steal alien technology-or prevent the other side from doing so. Neither side would want to discuss the farcical, homicidal behavior displayed by Yashin, Wilcox, and the rest. And neither side wanted to admit that the aliens even existed.
So they would keep everything quiet. Philips and Kornarinets would concoct a cover story, Iranian terrorists staging an incident, perhaps-and everyone would abide by it.
Predator Cold War Page 20