Wherever he looks in the darkness, the light of his headlamp reveals only debris on the concrete floor.
“Give me a minute,” the guide says. “There’s a command post up there. I’ll switch on the lights.”
Alarmed, Cougar tries to grab him. “Hey! Wait!”
But the guide is already at the steel door. Before the Stalkers could stop him, he disappears outside and slams the door shut.
Cursing, Cougar and three Stalkers jump at the door and try to ply it open. No matter how hard they try, it wouldn’t move.
Fear makes the skin of even the most daring Stalker creep.
“No…” mumbles Pasha then shouts out, “no!”
“Calm down!” Cougar shouts, trying to sound reassuring. “Let’s follow the walls. There must be another way out of here!”
There is none. The Stalkers are lost in darkness. No matter where they look, no door, no exit appears in the weakening light of their headlamps. Only tubes and electrical fittings leading from the wall toward the center of the hall.
The Stalkers can hear their own hearts beating. The only other noise comes from water slowly dripping from the rusted tubes above. The concrete walls echo every step they make. It sounds fearsome and Cougar has to take a deep breath before he starts walking deeper into the darkness, following one of the pipes.
“Come with me,” he whispers. “Watch my back.”
“What the hell is this place?” Willow asks in a low voice.”
“Let’s hope it’s like X-16 was,” a Stalker behind them says, nervously peering left and right and holding his AKS-74U ready to shoot. “Been there once. Huge vault, just like this, and something weird with a staircase in the middle leading up.”
“Halt!”
They all obey Cougar’s command. The veteran points forward. If the Stalker who mentioned X-16 has hoped for something weird, he got it — but it is not a staircase leading out of here.
The pipe leads into a stasis tube, one of twelve arranged in a circle. The electric fittings are torn out or rotten away; the glass in the tubes is broken; and the tubes themselves appear like massive cages where the captive inside had bended the bars and escaped.
“Oh my God,” Pashka mutters.
“There he is!” a Stalker shouts, pointing upwards. “You bastard!”
Cougar yells at the shadowy figure appearing on the command post high above them. “Let us out of here, now! Let us out or I kill you, you fucking son of a bitch!”
The Stalker with the carbine aims at the guide and fires a burst. Several more join the fire before Cougar can make himself be heard.
“Don’t shoot him, idiots! Only he can open that goddamned door!”
But the trapped Stalkers cease their fire when they see that their shots barely do any damage to the bullet-proof glass. Faint laughter sounds at the command post.
“What are you doing to us?” Cougar yells. “Why did you bring us here?”
The guide appears busy. They can see him through the cracked, but still solid glass plates tampering with the gauges and valves fitted to the wall.
“You bastard!” Willow screams in horror, “I curse you! You traitor, you damn traitor!”
Whatever the guide is doing, he stops for a moment to shout back.
“Just call me Skinner, brothers!”
“We are not your brothers, motherfucker!” Cougar yells.
Skinner’s reply ends with an evil laugh. “Soon you will be, hahaha!”
Then he disappears.
The horrified Stalkers start shooting at the command post. Then, with ammunition wasted in vain and the bitter smell of gunpowder lingering in the darkness, they look at each other in terror.
Cougar swallows hard. “Okay, guys. I want every second of you switch off the headlamps. Let’s save battery power. Place all your grenades at that steel door. We’re gonna blast it open!”
The Stalker in Duty armor tears the gas mask off his face. “It opens to the inside, you idiot! We need a fucking RPG!”
The veteran is not easily intimidated. “Do you see any?” he shouts back at his despaired mate. “No? Why? Because we haven’t any! Put your damned grenades at the door, now!”
“That’s never gonna work,” another Stalker says. “There must be another way out of here!”
Chewing his lips, Cougar looks around. “You see any other exit? Whatever this bloody place was, it was made anyone from escaping and now it’s us trapped here. Move!”
After a minute, two dozen F-1 fragmentation grenades are piled up next to the steel door. “Stand back!” Cougar yells as he grabs a grenade of his own, pulls the safety pin’s pull ring with his index finger and tosses it at a low arc toward the others.
The splinters of the detonating grenade penetrate the steel casing of the others, pass through the explosive filler and strike the detonators. A series of blasts follow.
When Cougar looks up from his cover and sees the steel door blackened by the blasts but standing as firm as before, only one thing comes to his mind.
We’re doomed.
20
“Where’s Nooria gone? Oh, there she is,” Tarasov says waving his hand.
Appearing among the crowd in front of the tax free shops at Los Angeles International, a big, ear-to-ear smile is on her face and two heavily loaded bags in her hands.
“Jesus, woman! What’s all that?”
“I have been shopping for perfumes.”
“You could open up a perfume shop with all that! Couldn’t you make up your mind over which one to buy?”
“They don’t smell very good. I took a few and will mix them together. My own perfume will be much better.”
“Oh gosh,” Pete exclaims covering his nose, “I was supposed to sit next to you but that smell on you makes me sick… no offense, but how many did you try?”
“All.”
“Holy Mother of Jesus Christ — all?” Hartman asks with not entirely feigned horror on his face. “The only thing I love about airports is the smell of kerosene. Second best only to napalm. Now I won’t be able to feel a single molecule of it!”
“I am sorry, Top.”
“Pity that our gas masks are in the checked-in duffels… I could use one of those M40s right now.”
“I’ll need a full NBC suit once you start smoking those cigarettes,” Tarasov says looking at Hartman’s own bag, holding several cartons of non-filter Lucky Strike cigarettes.
“Those ain’t for me but the big man. It’s his favorite brand.”
Tarasov walks down the gangway with mixed feelings. He cannot suppress a certain excitement over flying back to his homeland and the Exclusion Zone, but he also regrets to leave America, this big and intriguing country he had never hoped to see one day, so soon and after barely seeing any of it.
Keeping in mind that they might have lots to discuss during the long-haul flight, Tarasov and Hartman pick two neighboring berths while Pete and Nooria make themselves comfortable in berths behind them. Meanwhile a middle aged woman, wearing lots of heavy golden jewelry, courteously helps Nooria to store her coat. Her smile vanishes when she sees the scar on Nooria’s face.
“Glad to fly business,” the Top says storing a tax-free bag with an oversized bottle of whiskey inside. “I’d hate to spend six hours squeezed in economy class.”
“That female officer in your secret base,” Tarasov says making himself comfortable in the berth, ”she’s quite a character.”
“Who? Oh, you must mean Katie. Katie Stone. Sure as hell she is.”
“Why don’t you let her join your combat units? She seems extremely committed to your case.”
“For that alone? We all are. No, Major, we need no females in the line of fire.”
“I bet she’d do as well as any male warrior.”