"Got it!" said the soldier.
Dugan went on over the top of the hill. The woods were thick, with the branches almost always interlacing, but, presumably in order to forestall the fire hazard, the Russians had cleared out most of the underbrush. The result was that the going was very easy, with the floor of pine needles underneath.
The hill was only sixty or seventy meters high. Dugan soon reached the crest and started downward. He saw no glow of lights, no sign of walks — nothing but the curious dead blackness of the night, the curious lifeless quiet of the forest. Even wild animals must have been excluded. He hurried a little.
Hurrying was a mistake.
His foot slipped, he fell on his back, and the next thing he knew, he was chuting-the-chute. He had slipped into a narrow gully and was tobogganing downward on pine needles. If he had known where he was going, it would have been pleasant, but Dugan did not like the idea of being pitched into an electrified fence or a lake of radioactive water. Neither awaited him at the bottom. The floor of the gully tipped steeply. Dugan made a last wild, useless grab for a bush to arrest his fall. He missed and landed jarringly on his feet.
He was on a walk. Next to him an astounded soldier, lighted by the dim light from a tunnel entrance, stared at him open-mouthed.
"Where did you come from?" asked the soldier.
"None of your damned business," snapped Dugan, catching his breath. "Give me your name and rank."
"Private Lizunov, Special Sentry, Materials Section."
"Are you an authorized messenger?" asked Dugan sharply.
"I don't know — Captain," said the soldier. "Show me your identification," snarled Dugan.
With a practiced gesture, the soldier reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of assorted cards and tickets. He started to fumble through them, peering at them in the dim light. Dugan authoritatively took them out of the man's hand. Inner Camp. Materials Section. Main Gate. Inner Gate. Rail Gate. Atomsk Motorcycle Permit. Food card. What? thought Dugan, what? what? what? Motorcycle permit? A big golden door began to open in Dugan's imagination. He allowed himself a silent Asiatic chuckle. He wished that his old wartime friends on the Imperial Japanese General Staff could see this!
He handed the cards back to the man. The soldier was about two inches shorter than he, but on a motorcycle it would not make much difference.
Dugan waved one of the Cossack's cards in a peculiar palming gesture and said to the soldier in a nasty tone of voice, "See this?"
The soldier, just as credulous as his colleague on the other side of the hill, did not see it. But he said he did.
"Fine. Know what it means?"
"No, Captain."
"Call me Colonel, comrade," said Dugan sharply.
"No, polkovnik, I don't know what that means."
"Special Section. Special Branch of the Special Section," hissed Dugan.
"Yes, polkovnik."
"I'm going to put on a drill. Can you bring your motorcycle here?"
"But—"
"Shut up!" snarled Dugan. "I'll give you a written order later. You're relieved from sentry duty this instant. You're transferred to the Special Section. Tell no one till the drill is over. Can you bring your motorcycle here?"
"If the Colonel does not mind, it's not far away."
Dugan snarled ferociously. He had learned good snarling while living in Japan. It was enough to make any enlisted man jump in his boots. "You bring it here. Instantaneously!"
The soldier saluted and hurried away.
Dugan rushed into the tunnel. There was a blue light twenty feet in. Unlike the tunnels on the other side of the hill, this one had a right angle in it. When Dugan came to the turn, he saw a soldier standing by a red light farther in. Soldier and the door beside him were both covered by an infernal red glow. They looked like a minor scene from hell.
This soldier was tough. When Dugan approached, he pointed the machine pistol at Dugan's abdomen first and asked questions second. "Password!" he snapped.
"Can you control these men?"
"Password!" said the soldier doggedly.
Dugan pretended to be tremendously excited. "Radioactive water! It's flooding. It kills when it touches. Get yourself and these men out of here. Line them up in the woods. Do anything you please. But if you lose a single one, you'll be shot for it. How many have you got here?"
"Twenty-three. But I can't move without orders. Won't you give me orders? The password, please."
Dugan told him what he could do with the password. "My name is Ivanov," said Dugan, "and I am a Military Atomic Technician, not a fool officer. Suit yourself. I'm spreading the warning." Dugan ran out of the tunnel, stamping his feet loudly. Once outside, he crept back in. He had seen that the outside sentry was not yet back with the motorcycle.
There was a sound of bellowing from within the tunnel. The inside sentry was waking up the prisoners. Dugan wondered who they might be. Polish intellectuals? Russian Communists who had violated the Party line? Italian or German prisoners of war? Or just miscellaneous surplus personnel enticed out of the labor camps by a false gamble for life and freedom?
The sentry came around the corner, walking backward, keeping his machine pistol trained on the prisoners who followed him. Most of them were in their underwear. A few had gotten their boots and pants on. Dugan could not tell, in the. dim light, who they were.
He had to take a chance, if he was going to create the diversion which would give him a real opportunity to escape.
"Ivanov, Special Technician," he called to the prisoners. "Atomsk is being flooded with poison radioactives. The technicians have taken over. Get up into the hills. Climb trees. But stay high. We'll rescue you later. Run for it!"
The open, unguarded tunnel mouth was enough for most of the men. The inside sentry took two seconds to understand the frightful meaning of "Ivanov's" words. At that he was one and a half seconds too late. Dugan chopped him down with a blocking blow to the side of the neck and then kicked him in the head to make sure he stayed asleep for a while.
At the tunnel mouth the last of the prisoners was scrambling out and up into the night when the outside sentry arrived with a motorcycle.
The motorcyclist stared.
Dugan grinned cheerfully. "A small sample of prisoners has been let loose to create the simulated conditions of an inside mutiny. Now take me to the nearest Red Army post outside Atomsk, so I can simulate conditions of an outside attack. Exciting, isn't it, comrade?"
"Yes, Colonel," said the soldier, looking scared.
"Let's leave ordinary civilians out of it," said Dugan. "Which is the nearest regular Red Army post?"
"Not your own Special Troops, Colonel?"
"Hell, no," snarled Dugan, affable no more. "You blockhead, do you think I would use half-wits like you if I weren't simulating emergency conditions?"
The soldier was not good at talking, but he was miraculous on a motorcycle. He said the one word, "Arkhipovka," and let Dugan get on the rear saddle. Then he took off.
Dugan could not see where they were going. Neither, so far as Dugan could tell, did the soldier. That didn't slow the cyclist any. They idled along a level walk for several hundred yards. The cyclist had cut his muffler out so that the motor made plenty of noise and Dugan had the impression that the sentries and passersby, drilled in this routine, flattened themselves against the hillside when they heard the motorcycle approaching. Even at that, it was a pure miracle.
What followed was worse. The soldier said, "Hold tight, Colonel."
Dugan did. He needed no prompting. The cycle almost stopped, turned sharply, and then roared.
So far as Dugan could tell, they had gone off a precipice. Nothing like this had happened to him since he had tried to land a burning glider over Port Swettenham in 1938. It was the original ancestor of all roller coasters, made out of a Siberian hill. Dugan kept his eyes opened, with great effort, and saw that the driver was aiming his machine at two lights. They seemed to be in boxes, since they were curiously framed. While he watched, one light rushed madly up toward them, increased in size enormously, and then vanished. The cycle, ending the descent, started uphill without slackening its pace. Dugan felt his weight increase to about three gravities.