by Greig Beck
“Got him,” he said, and his friend’s head snapped around.
“Sturgeon?” Sergei asked while quickly reeling his own line in to ensure they didn’t get snagged up on each other’s equipment.
“I think so.” Golkin pulled the line in that now felt like he had a sack of sand on the end. There was no intermittent tugging or swerving around that he usually felt from a large fish. Sturgeon weren’t great fighters and came up slowly but gently, but they swam in circles, swinging the line. This just felt … dead.
After another 10 minutes, Golkin had a large pile of line at his feet, and he estimated the fish must have now been only another few dozen feet or so below him.
“Better get the gaff, I think it is of good size.” He leaned over, straining to pull the last few feet in, but still not seeing any shape or hint of color.
Sergei grabbed the seven-foot pole with the wicked-looking steel hook on the end and leaned over. He rolled up his sleeve and laid both his hands and the gaff in on the water’s surface, ready.
The fish must have been right under them, but as Golkin stared, there seemed to be a green glow or light. Suddenly from behind him, his friend screamed and that was followed by a loud splash.
“What?” He whipped his head around just in time to see Sergei’s legs disappear over the side. “Sergei!”
He let the line go, the fish forgotten, and rumbled forward in the boat. But his old friend never came back to the surface. “Sergei,” he yelled, the words echoing back at him over the expanse of pitch-dark water. “Sergei.”
Golkin stood up in the boat, legs wide and braced, snatched the lamp up, and then held it out over the side. The water had returned to its glass-calm. He looked back to where he sat and saw that his fishing line wasn’t feeding back out. Oddly, whatever he’d caught was staying just under the boat and not trying to retreat back to the depths.
Golkin stood, holding the lantern higher. “Sergei!” The calm and silence were unnerving now, and he held the lantern down over the water and looked into it. He frowned. Was something there? Could it be Sergei?
The small bobbing boat seemed to become glued in place as though he’d run aground. Then, to his confusion, something started to rise over the gunwale. It could have been a long, wet length of rope that quested in the air like a glistening, dark worm. Others quickly followed it, all along both sides of the boat.
“Stop!” The boat began to sink lower in the water, as if it was suddenly filled with a great weight—or a great weight was pulling it under. “Stop it!” he yelled again.
He picked up the net and whipped it down on one of the long slimy things, but it bounced off as if they were made of rubber. The boat sank another few inches lower.
Golkin tried to keep his balance as the wooden gunwales began to creak and strain as the things held on. The boat went down another few inches and was only just above the waterline now. He started to panic and tried to gauge how far it was to shore.
Could he swim it? Did he have a choice?
A green luminescence surrounded the boat and then water started to spill over the side. It told him his time was up.
“What are you?” he yelled as the boat began to submerge.
Golkin knew he had to be away from the boat when it went down or the suction would drag him with it. The last thing he wanted was to be in the water with that thing, but he had no choice now. Maybe, he prayed, it only wanted the boat.
Golkin drew in a deep, shuddering breath and simply stepped out into the freezing water.
He never made it more than six feet.
CHAPTER 21
Summer ended and autumn hit with the first snow flurries. Though a Siberian winter wasn’t something to desire and in fact, in many aspects, to be feared, Carter looked forward to the ice returning in great thick sheets, as once the pens were submerged below the ice, then other than feeding the fish through ice holes, they’d be sealed in and be one less thing for him to worry about.
The days and weeks rolled on, and with no more contact from Tushino or his goons, his veiled threats receded into a back room of the mill house residents’ memories—all except for Carter’s.
Carter dropped the packages on his bed. He sat down next to it and rubbed hands up through his short, blond hair. He guessed he should be thinking that having the weapons was enough and he hoped he never had to use them. But the fact was, his thirst for vengeance hadn’t been fully slaked, and he itched to use them now that he knew who to use them against.
Every time he thought of his little brother being murdered, his anger near overwhelmed him. Carter Stenson breathed in and out slowly, calming himself. He was a professional, and he knew that emotions made you reckless. And recklessness could make you dead, and there might come a time he’d need to be ice cool.
He turned to unroll the blanket and checked over the new rifle—it was an AK-101, a new-type Kalashnikov that could be fired in either semi-automatic or fully automatic mode. It had a huge optical scope on top, an effective range of 500 yards, and a 30-round capacity.
He held it to his shoulder and sighted along it. For a locally sourced rifle, it was a damned good one and he couldn’t have hoped for better—Yuri had really come through on the quality.
The other package included the whiteout fatigues—a combat uniform in a speckled white to blend into snowbound environments. He was satisfied and rolled the clothing and the gun into the blanket, placing them in the back of his closet and in behind the false back. He hung his clothing back in front of the false back of his closet, closed it, and stepped outside.
He had a chair pulled up on the small porch of his cabin and had a blanket pulled around his broad shoulders. The evening was quiet and had been like this for weeks. Things were progressing well, and he even dared to believe that the bratva might have decided to give them some space after all.
Carter doubted that, so he kept to his plan of bringing in backup. He half-smiled as he remembered the call through to his buddies. He’d told them he was getting the band back together, and he had a job for them, paying twice what they were earning now. The bonus being, they got to spend time with him in Siberia, mostly spending their evenings playing cards, drinking vodka, and traveling into the town to annoy the local ladies.
When the laughter had died down, he also mentioned they might have to bump chests with a few of the local Russian mafia. As he expected, that got them interested. But when he told them about Marcus, they agreed immediately.
He rocked back in his chair. The sun was setting and a sky of the palest blue was just beginning to darken. It was so peaceful; he now understood why people came all the way out here and carved out a life in this wilderness.
I could live here, he thought, and his eyes moved to the mill manager’s house, and the yellow glow of lights inside. He saw Sara’s shape move past one of the windows and he continued to stare for a moment longer.
He felt a small flame of desire flicker in his chest, and he quickly got to his feet, turning away. “Nope, nope, nope. Don’t even think about it.” He went back inside to the warmth, the whiskey, and his memories.
CHAPTER 22
It was a bitter Sunday evening when they noticed that Leonid was late coming back from one of his last fish pen checks. Night came quickly this far north, and though the air was still and calm, it could get lethally cold as soon as the weak sunlight vanished over the horizon.
All the other boats came back in around the same time—4 pm—that was the rule. But 5 pm came and went, and there was no response back from his radio or phone. There was no excuse for this, as they had a rare period of communication clarity.
Then 6 pm came and went. And now the group had gathered around a fire, deciding what to do.
“Maybe he’s had engine trouble and he’s pulled in on the shore somewhere,” Sara said. “Waiting for morning.”
“She could be right. And now that the lake is beginning to freeze, it’ll be dangerous in the dark,” Carter added. “That’s why we ha
d this curfew to begin with.”
Pavel looked up at Carter. “If it was your friend lost out there, or your brother, what would you do?”
Carter looked down and exhaled through his nose for a moment. He looked to the older Russian. “I’d go out.”
“Then we go out,” Pavel agreed. “Because if any of us was lost, that is what Leonid would do.”
The men agreed, and Carter knew that even though it would be blacker than Hades out on the water, and would be just as cold, there would be no other option even listened to now.
Yuri took control of the search and decided that Carter and Sara would stay behind, as they couldn’t leave the mill compound unguarded. And that job needed to be done by two people.
Carter and Sara complained but he knew this was a job for the Russians, and they saw it that way as well.
“Stay in constant radio contact. Leonid’s roster said he was to head out toward the far northern pen, which is five miles north-northwest. Start there,” Sara said.
“We stay in a wide line with plenty of light.” Yuri’s voice was deep and slow. “Remember, if his boat is in trouble, or sunk, then it could be laying low at the waterline, so be careful and vigilant.” His jaw clenched for a moment. “And pray he isn’t in the water.”
*****
Yuri piloted his boat north and then steered a little to the west. He could still see a pinprick of light from one of the other boats, probably Pavel’s, with Dmitry’s already lost in the distance.
Yuri had a wheelhouse top spotlight that had a handle where he could swivel the beam just using one hand. It was enormously powerful and cast a long tunnel of light out into the blackness.
He traveled slowly at around three knots, just under walking pace, and for a good reason. Already his bow was shunting aside slabs of ice, and as it sat low in the water, a big one could stave in the front of a smaller boat. He should be okay as long as he took it easy.
Soon their entire lake surface would be covered over. And if Leonid had gone down, then he would be entombed until next summer… or more likely lost forever.
He suddenly remembered the tracks on the bottom he and Carter had discovered. Maybe it wasn’t a log, but the impression from the keel of a long lost boat, sunk and then sliding along the bottom.
Or dragged by something, he thought, and quickly shook the terrible thought away. There are no monsters of the lake, there are no fish-people, there are no haunted ghosts lighting up the deepest deep areas of the lake. Forget it, they’re all just myth and legend of old Siberia, and I am modern Russian, he scolded back at himself.
His modern logical mind urged him to believe that. But his ancient Russian mind was a mixture of deep superstition and fears, and he suspected his friend was gone now, drawn down by the Devil’s Crater effect just like in the tales of old.
“There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,” he said softly and wondered who had said that. “Someone not out by themselves on this lake at night,” he replied and chuckled nervously.
Yuri shut off the engine and let the boat drift for a while. Even though sound carried for miles over the lake’s surface, this far out, there was no sound coming from the shore. There might have been the distant throb of one of the other boats, but it was more likely to just have been the blood rushing in his ears from his pounding heart.
“Blacker than witch’s broom closet out here,” he whispered.
He spun, as there came a bark or a cough a few hundred yards out over the water that he knew was probably one of the large nerpa seals. He turned the light in the direction of the sound but saw nothing. He panned it along the water’s surface for a while and then sure enough found a pair of shining pinpricks of light reflected back at him.
“Hello, little one,” he said and felt relieved that he wasn’t out here alone, even if his company was seal and not human. He wondered whether he had any bait in his icebox when the cough came again but was then followed by a harsh scream that didn’t even sound like it could have come from the throat of a seal. Yuri rushed the strong spotlight back to where he had seen the eyes. They were still there, staring back, but they were unnaturally high in the water and strangely green-tinted. The noise died away again.
“Was that you, little one?” he asked.
The luminous, unblinking eyes stayed fixed on him for a moment more and then to his surprise, they split apart and went in different directions.
“What?”
There was the sound of splashing and then both dots of light were gone. Yuri cursed and slowly moved the spotlight over the lake surface, trying to locate the eyes again.
Two seals? he wondered. He turned his boat toward where he had seen the eyes.
He switched off the engine and let the boat glide. There were a few basketball-sized chunks of ice. And then something else. Yuri came out of the cabin and stared over the side.
“Ach, no.”
He grabbed a fish net and waited until the boat glided closer and then scooped the thing out. He unfurled the mesh and lifted the thing free.
It was a pipe, homemade, and undoubtedly Leonid’s.
He lifted his chin. “Leonid!”
Yuri waited, with his head tilted.
“Leee-oniddd!”
He waited again, but there was nothing. Yuri looked at his hands. There was glistening mucus on his fingers that had come from the pipe. He reached down into a space on the gunwale and dragged out an oily rag to wipe his hands and also the pipe, and then placed it in his pocket.
He went back to the wheelhouse and started the engine, and then moved his boat in larger and larger circles out from where he had found the pipe. But after another 40 minutes, he cut the engine and came back out on deck. The lake now was a dark, endless plain, and there was nothing in any direction.
Maybe he just dropped it over the side, he thought hopefully.
Yuri lit a cigarette, dragged hard, and then exhaled the smoke in a large plume, and after another few minutes, went back into the wheelhouse again. He picked up the radio handset and opened the mic to the other boats—thankfully, both men came back immediately but reported seeing nothing.
“We give it another hour. Maybe resume again come morning.” The men agreed.
He swiveled the light once more—there was nothing, no seal eyes in the dark, no unusual shapes or anything that might resemble Leonid’s missing boat.
Yuri sighed. “Sorry, my friend. I hope you managed to get to shore and are waiting for us there somewhere. But if not, sleep well and be at peace.”
The big Russian started up the engine. They’d come back out next morning, but he already knew he’d never see Leonid or his boat again.
CHAPTER 23
Carter waited on the wharf as the old, sturdy boat chugged toward him. It struggled to push aside the blocks of ice, and he could hear the thumps against its stained bow from hundreds of yards away. It would undoubtedly be the last of the season as within weeks or even days, the ice sheets would be absolute, and no boat would travel on the water.
As per his instructions, his two buddies had taken an indirect route to the mill, traveling separately in the event the airports were being watched by the bratva. They had taken to the water at Slyudyanka, the southern-most towns on Lake Baikal, and one that should be free from scrutiny.
Carter watched a huge figure step up on deck and throw him a casual salute. He nodded in return. Just like him, both men were ex-Special Forces and he knew the guys had been looking out for some extra work, and something to keep them interested.
They’d always stayed in contact, and as far as Carter was concerned, they were family, so they always looked out for each other as well. He’d drained his savings now, as there were things he needed—expensive things—and he’d be damned if he was going to cause Sara any financial pain.
Carter’s lips quirked up when he remembered the look on Yuri’s face when he gave him the shopping list; the big Russian had visibly paled. But the man also recalled the Russian mafia intrus
ion, and he knew that if, or when, they came back, it would be with violence in their hearts.
“My black-market dealer will be driving Mercedes car and have gold teeth after this,” Yuri had said with a shake of his head.
“Good customers get good service,” Carter had replied. But then he grabbed the man’s shoulders and looked into his face. “You don’t need to be involved in this,” he had said to the man. “You have already gone above and beyond what was asked of you.”
Yuri had nodded. “I made a promise to help Marcus and his wife. That promise still stands.”
“Thank you,” Carter had said, meaning it. And good to his word, in a week, Yuri had secured the order—every bit of it.
Carter’s attention was drawn back to the wharf as the boat bumped up against it and one of the figures jumped down with a thump of boots. The other paid the boat’s captain, and then also jumped down. Immediately, the boat reversed out and chugged away.
The men picked up their packs and walked up toward where Carter stood waiting. He grinned as they got to within a dozen feet of him.
“Well, you guys don’t look a day over 25 years old.”
“Yeah, but those are dog years, boss,” the big guy with the red beard and crew cut said, grinning back.
“Smoking, drinking, and red meat is my secret.” The other guy was just as big, and had a broken side tooth.
Carter shook the redhead’s hand first. “Red, good to see you, buddy.” They pulled into a quick embrace.
Then Carter turned to the next guy. “And nice to see your big ugly mug as well, Mitch.”
Carter had known Red Bronson and Mitch Tanner ever since he had first started in Spec Ops. They were all recruited in the same week, and quickly became inseparable, all three of them sharing a love of adventure, risk, and too much booze.
From time to time, they had all put their shoulders to the wheel to help each other out. They didn’t blink at any sort of request and saw each other as brothers rather than just friends.