In the main station there were men milling about in the common room, unsure what to do, as Galyshev burst from the tunnel.
”Sir, what’s going on?” someone called. “What’s happening? Why the alarm?”
”Something’s broken in the east door,” Galyshev called. “We’re going to find out who it is!”
The men glanced at one another uneasily.
”But, sir…”
”We’re not soldiers…”
”We’re still men, aren’t we?” Galyshev demanded. “And there are guns in the armory, aren’t there?”
”Armory?”
The glances the men exchanged now were considerably more hopeful.
”We may not be trained soldiers,” Galyshev said, “but we can still fight when our home is invaded!” He marched down the corridor to the soldiers’ barracks, and after a brief hesitation the others followed him.
Lieutenant Ligacheva had not bothered to lock it before leading her squad out on their fatal investigation. The squad’s weapons were gone, no one had recovered them from the ice, but the reserves were still there, and moments later a dozen men were marching down the east corridor with AK-47s in their hands. Galyshev had taken a quick roll call as he handed out weapons and knew that three men were missing, Sergei Buyanov, Dmitri Veins, and Anatoli Shivering.
No one present admitted to sounding the alarm; presumably one of those three had.
”There was nothing on the radio or the teletype?” Galyshev asked as they marched. “Nothing to warn us some sort of attack might be coming?”
”Nothing at all,” Shaporin replied.
”That bothers me…” Galyshev began.
Then they turned the final corner, and a blast of icy wind from the ruined door struck them. It wasn’t the wind that made Galyshev halt dead in his tracks and stop speaking in midsentence, though.
It was the blood.
Blood was spattered all over the floor and one wall, great splashes of blood, still wet.
”What happened here?” Galyshev demanded.
There was no answer.
”Where are the bodies?” Shaporin asked from just behind. “Whose blood is it?”
”It couldn’t just be paint?” someone asked from farther back.
Galyshev shook his head. “It’s not paint.” He studied the floor, the patterns of red, the drops and smears…
”They went down there,” he said, jerking the barrel of his gun. “Toward the pipeline.” He flipped off the safety. “Come on!”
Sure enough, a thin trail of drops of blood led into the tunnel to the maintenance areas.
”What’s in there?” Rublev asked. “What did this?”
”I don’t know,” Galyshev said, “and I don’t care. Are you coming with me or not?”
Rublev still hesitated.
”Come on, Rublev,” Shaporin said. “You think it’s monsters in there?”
”More likely Chechen guerrillas,” Leskov, the practical joker in the bunch, said. “After all, it’s only what, two thousand miles from Chechnya to the Yamal Peninsula? If no one told them the war was over, it might’ve taken them this long to get here!”
A few of the men grinned, but no one laughed, that blood on the wall was too fresh.
”It’s probably American saboteurs,” Galyshev said seriously. “Whoever or whatever it is, you think these won’t handle the job?” he hefted the AK-47.
The men still hesitated.
”Well, I’m going,” Galyshev said. “There are three men missing, and maybe they aren’t all dead, and if we hurry maybe they’ll stay that way.” He turned and marched down the side tunnel.
Reluctantly, first Shaporin, then Leskov, and finally the others followed him. Rublev came last.
The little corridor ended in a large open space, a maintenance area under, the pipeline. The chamber was intended to give easy access to any part of the pipeline, from the huge valves to the immense pumping equipment at the north end; it ran some sixty meters end to end, almost the full length of the underground portion of the station, and was a good fifteen meters wide. Thick concrete pillars were spaced along the room’s length, one every ten meters or so. The oil-spattered floor was poured concrete, sloping slightly to improve drainage, while the walls on either side were concrete block to a height of about three meters. Above those walls a complex maze of steel struts and girders wove overhead, supporting and steadying the immense pipe, and Galyshev had never been sure what the walls up there, hidden behind that framework, looked like.
Regulations required that this entire area be kept clear, so in a crowded, uncomfortable station this huge open space remained virtually empty, and almost unlit. Galyshev reached for the switch at the end of the corridor and flipped it up; three dim work lights came on, but most of the cavernous chamber remained dark.
There should have been more, he knew; they must have burned out. He’d want to do something about that later, during the next round of maintenance.
He stared out into the dimness, scanning the immense chamber for his enemy, whoever it might be; the AK-47 was ready in his hands.
Nothing moved anywhere that he could see. There were no intruders, nothing out of place. He heard a faint dripping, but that wasn’t unusual; not only did the lubricant from the pumps sometimes leak, but the temperature differential between the station’s air and the pipeline itself often produced heavy condensation on the pipe.
He glanced up at the pipeline, more out of habit than concern, and froze.
”Holy Mary,” he said.
Not all of the spots on the floor, Galyshev realized, were water or oil.
Three headless corpses were dangling by their ankles from the steel framework overhead, dangling and dripping blood into puddles that were slowly oozing down across the floor into the waiting drains.
”So much for finding them alive,” Leskov said, with no trace of humor in his voice.
”But who killed them?” Shaporin asked. “And where’d the killers go?”
”There,” Galyshev said, pointing. “Rublev, you did your rounds?”
”Yes,” Rublev said, trying to see where Galyshev was pointing.
”See the boiler-room door?”
Rublev and the others looked. The boiler plant was just the other side of the maintenance area, closed off by a simple wooden door, a door that was supposed to be kept closed at all times. Whoever had the duty of making the daily security round was supposed to check that door.
”But that was closed!” Rublev protested. “I tried it myself! “
”I’m sure it was,” Galyshev said. “Come on.”
”But there aren’t any lights on in there,” Shaporin said as the group began advancing across the concrete.
”I’ve heard that the Americans use infrared goggles to see in the dark,” Leskov said. Galyshev glanced over at him, expecting the comment to be turned into a joke, but Leskov wasn’t smiling.
Galyshev remembered who had had watch duty in the boiler room that shift-Dmitri Vesnin, Leskov’s best friend. Vesnin had presumably gone to see what was happening at the east door, and now his body was one of the three dangling in the maintenance area.
”Americans?” Shaporin said. “You think Americans would hang them upside down like that?”
”Who else could it be?” Leskov asked.
”Or what else could it be,” Rublev said. “How could it be anything human? How long would it take to climb up there and hang them up like that?” He gestured with the barrel of his weapon.
”Let’s take a look in there and find out,” Leskov said, taking a step toward the boiler plant.
”Whoever did this may still be in there, or they may not,” Galyshev said, moving along with Leskov. “You wait here-cover me.”