“Many” doesn’t begin to describe it. There are tens of thousands of bodies of open water in this part of Siberia alone.
Nyurba trudged with the point squad, as they tried to pick their way between the mushiest patches of ground, to find spots where the footing was better. It was wearying, monotonous work, conducted always under harassment by relentless, bloodthirsty, giant mosquitoes and big horseflies. The work, the perspiration, and the insistent buzz of the insects went on all day.
Some of the puddles they passed gave off a rainbow sheen, tainted by raw petroleum or refinery spills. Other puddles, miles later, were colored bright red from iron oxide runoff.
They began to encounter another type of terrain feature unique to the tundra and taiga. Year after year of wintertime frost heave created oval-shaped ponds and bogs, each surrounded by a ring of stones and boulders. Fungi grew on these rocks, giving them a silvery or orange tint. Mushrooms sprouted around the ovals’ edges. The commandos wove between the ponds and bogs.
At some points the best route took them toward and then right along the Alazeja. Nyurba saw big logs, one after another after another, caught in pockets worn into the banks, or washed up in hordes on gravel beds at riverbends, or stranded midstream on rocks that formed small rapids. The logs obviously resulted from lumbering somewhere upriver — their ends were sliced by chainsaws and their branches had been lopped off. As the third day wore on, he must have seen thousands of these pieces of felled trees, from further south in the taiga belt. It was a sign of the chronic wastefulness of Russian fast resource extraction that they’d lose such quantities of valuable timber to begin with, and then not care.
Samples of the river showed it heavily laced with coliform germs — a marker of raw sewage — plus fertilizers, pesticides, and defoliants, even cyanide. The silt content was very high. Agricultural mismanagement on a monumental scale had putrefied millions of acres of once-fertile farm fields, turning them into poisonous dust to be washed away by thaw and rain, or blown away by the wind. Out-of-control clear-cutting made the erosion problem much worse. Nyurba detected traces of radioactive waste. He knew that underground tests had been conducted in Siberia, some military and some civilian, and fission by-products were leaching into the groundwater. The civilian tests had been for such mad purposes as mining natural gas cheaply, or digging canals. Only in the Soviet Union. Then there were the secret nuclear weapons plants, some still in operation, including underground nuclear reactors to make plutonium for warheads.
At the end of the third day, extremely thirsty and tired but on schedule, they reached their next waypoint, where the Alazeja turned west. Here they made camp on the slopes of another pingo.
Nyurba took more air measurements, and soil and water samples; coal dust and kerosene were problems. He chose a pond where the water was least bad, though acidity readings shocked him. The men drank from their filtered supplies, ate, and took more drugs. They reloaded the reverse-osmosis modules from the pond, working the foot pumps to raise the air pressure that made the things go, so they’d have more drinking water in the morning.
After he and Kurzin checked that the field latrine was properly established, that the first sentry watch was posted, and that the men were settling in with no problems that platoon leaders or medics had to report, Nyurba unrolled his ground cloth. He laid out the thin sleeping bag that provided him modest shielding from the ever-present flying, hopping, and crawling insects. He got into the bag, with his AN-94 outside on the ground cloth — keeping it clean and dry but within easy reach. He smeared his face and neck, even his hair, with insect repellent, arranging the insect net to protect his head.
He fell asleep immediately.
In the morning, everyone attached the low-power optical scopes that were a standard part of the AN-94, clipping them onto brackets to the left of the iron sights. By squad, they took turns zeroing in on the sights, firing at targets improvised from tied tufts of sedge grass. The tufts would shiver and dance when they got hit. The rifle reports were loud, but the noise here was acceptable because they were still in the middle of nowhere.
The stench of bullet propellant mingled with the natural odors and the smog. The smog was thicker than the day before, and had a different mix of chemicals; the particulate content was higher — soot from coal and fuel oil smoke from furnaces and boilers, and diesel exhaust. The men were stingy in their use of ammunition, as disciplined troops always were.
They collected all the spent brass. Then, squatting on their ground cloths, wearing gloves from now on so as not to leave fingerprints, they field-stripped and cleaned the firearms, including their pistols. The gloves were tight-fitting, flame-retardant and puncture-proof. Morale improved despite the increase in tension. Nyurba thought that using their weapons had helped to liven things up. The gunsmoke in his nostrils certainly gave him a surge of adrenaline, and of anticipation.
Kurzin addressed the squadron, in his usual curt and taciturn way. “One more day, men, fifty more miles. Then a few hours sleep, and we put in action what we’ve practiced for a year. So let’s get moving!”
The team set out, heading east. The land began to rise. The ground was drier; the men could remove their snowboard boot attachments. The swarming insects never let up. If anything, they were thicker than ever as the men neared the tree line, where the bleak tundra yielded to the heavily forested taiga.
They began to see the first tangible indications of settlement. Cloth streamers were fastened to bushes, flapping in the breeze. Wooden and metal wind chimes hung from dwarfish spruces, making tinging and clunking sounds.
Tokens of worship… Animism, and Buddhism.
By noon the land in front of them rose out of the haze, as blue-gray hills. They worked harder, gaining altitude with their weighty loads. The topsoil now was richer. They walked by jagged, crumbling outcrops of weathered slate and shale. Hummocks weren’t permafrost pingos anymore — they were granite.
At 4 P.M. the squadron climbed a last slope into the pine forest. The trees blocked the light and the sky. Their trunks interrupted lines of sight, which previously, on the tundra, had been wide open. The shadiest spots even sheltered clumps of snow. The men acclimatized to these new conditions, spreading out into a tactical formation, more alert.
Some of the tall trees leaned against their neighbors, as if they were drunk. The men were still walking on permafrost, just a few feet down. Tree roots couldn’t get much purchase before they hit the frozen-solid layer beneath the soil. Storms, or the tree’s own weight, would make the weaker root systems fail.
They came to a clearing of dozens of acres, and passed what at first appeared to be a meadow covered by wildflowers. Butterflies and bees enjoyed the nectar. But then Nyurba began to notice clues to something else. Among the wildflowers were ramshackle lines of fenceposts, half rotted. Attached to the posts were rusted, broken strands of thick barbed wire. He explored more and came to a disorderly pile of weatherbeaten planks, with what looked like old telephone poles, lying on their side by the planks. Most of the planks were splintered and loose, but some, he realized, were still nailed to a frame, like a platform or a flat roof. Finally it dawned on him. He was looking at the remains of a collapsed guard tower. This field had once been a forced-labor camp.