Kazakov saluted. A moment later he and the driver marched up over the ridgetop, waving and shouting so that they wouldn’t be mistaken for an enemy.
”Presently?” Schaefer asked.
”It is a word that means nothing specific,” Ligacheva said. “I will return when I’m ready.”
”And what are you planning to do now?”
Ligacheva looked him in the eye. “You came here as an advisor on these monsters, but it does not seem to me that either your people or mine have been very interested in taking your advice. I am interested, though.” She pointed to the vehicle. “I’ll use that. You said to leave the creatures alone. Well, that advice I will not take. I am going to find that ship and get a good look at these things that have killed so many of my friends, and if I can, I will destroy them. To destroy them, the more I know, the better, and I will destroy them. I would therefore be pleased if you came along as my advisor on how best to do that.”
Schaefer stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “It’s that way, yes?” he said, pointing to the northeast.
”That way,” she agreed.
Together, they headed for the waiting vehicle.
Chapter 25
It would have been convenient, Yashin thought as he and his men herded the prisoners through the corridors, if at least one of the Americans could speak Russian. Trying to communicate in his own miserable, half-forgotten schoolboy English was a nuisance.
Then he stopped in his tracks, thinking. When they had captured the Americans before, there had been that big American who had spoken Russian, the one the lieutenant had spoken with so freely.
What had happened to him?
For that matter, what had happened to Lieutenant Ligacheva? She should be here trying to reassert her authority, and she wasn’t.
She had spoken to Kazakov and Maslennikov outside, in the valley beyond the little eastern ridge, and then… then what? Where was she?
”What the devil is keeping the lieutenant?” he demanded of Kazakov.
”I don’t know, sir,” Kazakov said. “She was just over the ridge, talking to that American…”
”An American?” Yashin frowned. The lieutenant still had the big American with her?
What was she up to?
This would not do, Yashin thought. This would not do at all. Lieutenant Ligacheva was no fool. She was a woman, and perhaps in consequence she lacked a man’s true fighting spirit or love for the Motherland, but still, she was not stupid. She knew that Yashin was bucking for a promotion at the cost of her own standing, and she would not want to pay that cost. Whatever she was doing out there with the big American would not be in Yashin’s own best interests, he was sure-and probably, if it involved that American, would not be in the best interests of Russia, either.
”Kazakov, Kurkin, Afanasiev – you stay with the prisoners. If they try anything, kill them.” There were still half a dozen other loyal men somewhere in the station, if the Americans had not killed them; that would be enough. “The rest of you, come with me.”
He turned and headed for the vehicles.
”Something tells me this overgrown snowmobile isn’t going to make it,” Schaefer muttered to himself.
Ligacheva didn’t hear the words, but she didn’t need to. She knew what Schaefer had to be saying. The little snow tractor was dying; she wasn’t sure whether it was succumbing to the fierce cold, or whether it was simply out of fuel, but the engine was sputtering and banging.
Then it stopped completely.
She tried not to think of the eighteen or twenty kilometers they would have to walk in the unforgiving cold of the arctic night in order to get back to Pumping Station #12, once they were done with whatever they might do here. First they had to survive their investigation of the alien ship.
”Now we walk,” she said. “We’re almost there, the tractor wouldn’t have taken us much farther in any case.”
”So we walk,” Schaefer agreed. “After all, we wouldn’t want our noisy engine to bother anyone, would we?” He grabbed one of the spare blankets from the little vehicle’s storage compartment before climbing out into the darkness and wind; he had never entirely trusted the Pentagon’s spiffy little electric suits, and after seeing Gennaro’s sleeves dribbling yellow gook he wanted something more to protect him from the wind and cold. He wished he still had his helmet, which was probably back in the pumping station’s common room, but settled for pulling the blanket over his head like a hood.
It didn’t help much; his ears started stinging with cold almost immediately. He ignored that as he stepped forward into the beam of the headlights and took a good look at what lay ahead, and why they would have had to stop the tractor soon in any case.
He was able to walk another fifteen feet or so; then they were standing on the brink of a ravine, a split in the ice fifty yards across and at least twenty yards deep.
Ligacheva studied Sobchak’s map as Schaefer looked over the area.
”They’re on the other side?” he asked.
”No,” Ligacheva said. “Not according to Sobchak’s measurements.” She pointed. “Down there.”
”Perfect,” Schaefer growled as he studied the dim expanse of jagged rock and ice, the shadows and cul-de-sacs and natural ambuscades. “Perfect for them. If it was my ass on the line and this was my front walk, I’d have this hole booby-trapped with all the ordnance I could find.”
Ligacheva nodded. “As would I-and some things are, I fear, universal,” she agreed. “So-how do you Americans put it?” She smiled at him, a humorless, toothy smile, and concluded in English, “Watch your step.” She turned and started to clamber down over the canyon rim.
”Wait a minute,” Schaefer said. He jogged back to the vehicle, then reached inside and pulled out two packs-the one he had been given by Lynch, and one that had been in the vehicle’s storage bin. “Might be something useful in these,” he said as he ran back up to the rim. He tossed the pack from the little truck to Ligacheva.
She nodded and slung the knapsack on her shoulder before resuming her climb.
Ten minutes later, halfway down the canyon wall, Schaefer’s foot slipped on an icy protrusion. The sudden jar was enough to snap his handhold off the wall, so that he slid four or five feet down the slope clutching a chunk of dirty ice before catching himself on a narrow ledge.
He wasn’t injured, but the rocks left long white scratches down the front of his snowsuit, and his fingers were blackened with dirt.
They would have reached the bottom of a mere rock wall in half the time, he thought; it was the ice coating every hold and the snow hiding every weakness that made the climb so treacherous and slowed them to a mere crawl.
”And this is the easy way?” he said.
”Nothing is easy here, Detective,” Ligacheva called from below. “You should know that by now.” She laughed and lost her own hold, sliding a few centimeters, just as a sharp crack sounded.
At first Schaefer thought a larger-than-usual chunk of ice had broken somewhere, but then he heard the unmistakable whine of a ricochet and saw the puff of snow where Ligacheva’s head had been a few seconds before.
”What-?” Ligacheva turned her head, staring upward to see what was happening.
Standing on the rim of the canyon, fifty meters away, was a man with a rifle-a man in the heavy khaki overcoat of a Russian soldier.
”Yashin?” she said, astonished.
She had known that Sergeant Yashin disliked her, known he was ambitious and saw this mission and her alleged weakness as his great opportunity for promotion, but to attempt to shoot his superior officer? It was madness!