Afanasiev, on the floor, turned and sat up-and saw the man with the M-16. He put down his AK-47 as well.
”You boys are noisy,” General Philips remarked. “I heard you coming a hundred yards away. Took you long enough to get here.” He kicked the AK-47s away, then looked over his two prisoners. He frowned.
”Ordinarily,” he said, “I wouldn’t do this to unarmed men, but you did come in with guns blazing.” He flipped the M-16 around and smashed the butt against the standing Russian’s temple.
Kurkin dropped.
Afanasiev cringed, and Philips paused. He took pity on the man and settled for tying him up, using a rifle strap to bind his wrists and a glove held in place with the helmet’s chin strap as a makeshift gag.
Then he turned back to the radio.
”Cold War to base,” he said. “Sorry about the interruption. Please repeat last message.”
”Base to Cold War,” the radio said. “There have been major changes in the operational dynamic. NORAD has tracked a special Russian transport on approach to your position; intelligence sources place a high-ranking political official on board. Further, Moscow has threatened fullscale military retaliation if there is any incident on Russian soil that violates their national security. The secrecy of the mission has been compromised.”
”Shit,” Philips said.
”You are hereby instructed to gather your men, avoid further hostile contact with alien life-forms, and permit their vessel to depart without interference. We don’t want the Russians to get their hands on that alien technology, better both sides lose it. Understood?”
”Shit!” Philips said, more forcefully.
”Say again, Cold War?”
”Understood,” Philips said. “We pack up and get out and let the bastards go.”
”Affirmative.”
”And what if they don’t leave?” Philips muttered to himself. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.” Aloud, he said, “Acknowledged. Cold War One out.”
He shut down the transmitter, packed up the equipment, picked up the two AK-47s, then waved a farewell to the two Russians. He figured the unconscious one would wake up before too much longer, and the bound one could work his way loose, but neither one was going to be an immediate threat.
Taking a lesson from the pair of them he moved as stealthily as he could the entire distance from the radio room to the maintenance area under the pipeline where his men were being held at gunpoint-their captors hadn’t relied on walls and doors this time.
All the same, it wasn’t hard for Philips to get the drop on the Russians; the guards had been watching their captives, not their backs.
”Freeze!” he shouted as he stepped out of the shadows with the M-16 at ready.
The Russian guards probably didn’t understand the word, but they got the message and stood motionless as the Americans took their weapons. Everyone there was half-frozen already, and fighting spirit was in short supply.
Once the weapons had changed hands and it was settled who was once again in charge for the moment, Philips addressed his men.
”I’ve been in touch with Cencom,” he began. “Our mission’s been
…” He stopped, blinked, then said, “Wait a minute. Where the hell is Schaefer?”
”Who cares?” Wilcox asked. “Let’s toe-tag these alien geeks and get the hell out of here before we freeze our fucking balls off!”
”He split with that bitch lieutenant when the shit came down,” Lynch said.
”Damn him!” Philips growled. He chewed his lip, considering, for a few seconds, then announced,
”Look, we have new orders. The cat’s out of the bag, someone let the Russkies know we’re here, and we’re shifting to CYA mode. Some kind of Russian big shot is coming up here for a look-see, and Cencom doesn’t want him to find us. We’ve been instructed to abandon our mission and hightail it home without engaging either Russian or extraterrestrial fire. Well, if I know Schaefer, he’s out there kicking alien butt, and he isn’t going to quit just because we tell him to. We need to stop him before he starts World War III.”
”Who the hell’s going to fight a war over a cop killing spacemen?” Lassen protested.
”Nobody,” Philips said. “But if he leaves an abandoned starship sitting out there on Russian soil, there’ll be one hell of a war over who gets to keep it. Now, come on, all of you! We’ll leave these boys tied up to give us a lead, and then head out and see if we can stop Schaefer before he does any more damage.”
Rasche looked out at the Siberian wilderness as the snow tractor plowed on through the darkness. He reached up and touched the window glass.
It was cold as hell out there; even with the heater on full blast, stinking up the cabin with engine fumes, the glass was so cold his fingertips burned where they touched it. Rasche was no hothouse flower, no California beachboy; he’d lived through a few subzero winters when the wind tore through the concrete canyons of New York like the bite of death itself. This, though-this cold was a whole new level of intensity.
Even worse than the cold, though, was the sheer desolation. The surface of the moon couldn’t have been any deader than the landscape beyond the glass. Rasche was a city boy, born and bred; until he’d moved out to Bluecreek his idea of roughing it had been driving through a town that didn’t have a 7-Eleven. He knew he wasn’t any sort of wilderness scout, but this place… this was the end of the Earth. This was the end of life and hope and light made manifest. It was hard to imagine anything surviving out there.
Even Schaefer.
Then one of the Russians patted his shoulder and pointed, and Rasche squinted through the fog on the windows, trying to see what the man was indicating.
There was some sort of structure ahead.
”The Assyma Pipeline,” Komarinets said. “We are almost to the pumping station.”
There was a sudden burst of noise from the front seat, the two men there babbling excitedly in Russian and pointing to somewhere ahead.
”What is it?” Rasche asked, tensing. He was uncomfortably aware that he was unarmed; he had left his familiar. 38 behind at the ambassador’s request, to avoid any international incidents. If those things, those hunters from the stars, were out there somewhere…
”The driver thought he saw something moving up ahead, on the horizon,” Komarinets explained.
”The aliens?” Rasche asked.
Then he remembered. They wouldn’t see anything if the aliens were out there. The aliens were invisible when they wanted to be.
At least, assuming their gadgets worked in weather this cold, they were invisible.
Komarinets shook his head. “I think he imagined it, or perhaps some bit of scrap paper or old rag was blowing in the wind.”
That statement, intended to reassure him, made Rasche far more nervous-perhaps those things were out there, but hadn’t activated their invincibility gadgets until they noticed the approaching convoy.
”Whatever he saw, there is nothing out there now,” Komarinets said.
”I hope so,” Rasche said with heartfelt fervor. “I really hope so.”
Chapter 30
Schaefer took a cautious step onto the ship’s hull. “Warm,” he said, “but my boots seem to be holding up.”
”You told me they like the heat,” Ligacheva said.
”So I did,” Schaefer said, taking another step. “Didn’t know that included their ships. You know, the hull feels almost alive.”
”Maybe it is alive,” Ligacheva suggested. “We don’t know anything about it.”
”So if we go in there, we’d be walking down its throat?” Schaefer grimaced. “I can think of a few things I’d like to ram down their throats.”
”You want to make it warm enough for them, eh?” Ligacheva laughed nervously. “Well, why not?” She slid down off the boulder and began marching toward the opening, her AK-47 at the ready.