“Comrade Lieutenant, there were ten of them. They attacked last night.”
“Which direction did they come from?” asked Zakharov.
“Northeast. They’re headed southwest now.”
Zakharov nodded then turned to Kravchenko. “Let’s get moving. We head northeast.”
“We’re not following them?” asked Kravchenko.
“No, the other teams will have to intercept them. Our assignment is to locate their hole. Signal that we’ve found evidence of an attack and they’re headed southwest.”
“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant.” Kravchenko beckoned to a private and barked an order.
The Red Army possessed relatively few radios and the team had none. Laying wire for field telephones was often impractical, so messengers and flares were usually relied upon for communication between teams. The private loaded a flare pistol according to his signal chart, pointed it at the sky, and sent a two-star purple and white flare arching high above.
The Secret War had raged on and off for almost a quarter-century, never mentioned in the Soviet press or publicly acknowledged by Soviet leaders. Matters of internal security never were.
Zakharov remembered when he returned from his first search-and-destroy operation. He had been congratulated by his superiors, decorated with the Order of the Red Star, and then bluntly informed that if he ever told anyone outside the unit what he had seen he would be sent to a corrective-labor camp.
There were lulls in the war, but then the things would return. Just exactly what they were no one knew. In the dead of winter, when the nights were longest, mysterious holes would appear in northern Siberia and the things would come forth, hungry for human flesh. They never hunted animals, only people. And Moscow would have to organize another campaign to eradicate the bloodthirsty creatures.
They had no official name, as they corresponded to no known species. Soviet scientists debated whether they were the wild men of myth — the almasty of the Caucasus, the chuchunya of Siberia, or the menk of the Urals. But legends described all of these as similar to apes or men, perhaps even surviving Neanderthals, and the terrifying creatures that attacked villagers and herders were definitely not human or simian. Unofficially they were simply referred to as upir, the generic Russian word for bloodsucking monsters such as vampires and ghouls.
Security operations within the USSR were normally handled by the internal troops of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s ruthless secret police. But these paramilitary units lacked the specialized training required. Hunting ghouls was altogether different from conducting mass arrests and deportations of alleged ‘enemies of the people’. After an entire NKVD regiment was annihilated along the Middle Tunguska River in 1936, search-and-destroy operations were taken over by the Red Army.
A unique unit of irregulars was formed: Special Group X — Spetsialnogo Gruppa X, often referred to simply as Spetsgruppa X. The X was not the Cyrillic letter but the Latin, taken from the mathematical notation for an unknown variable, since the creatures they fought were an unknown species. Composed of soldiers acclimatized and trained for winter warfare, preferably those who had been trappers or hunters in civilian life, its independent detachments were based at Siberian outposts. Whenever a ghoul incursion occurred, teams would hunt down the creatures, eliminate them, and destroy their holes.
But when reports were received in late 1942 of renewed ghoul activity they were given a low priority by the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was locked in a bloody death struggle with Nazi Germany, which had launched a massive invasion the previous year. All available troops and equipment were needed to replace the appalling losses suffered in the desperate battles for Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow. Spetsgruppa X was reduced to a token force. Before the war Zakharov’s team had been the size of a platoon; now it was a squad.
Zakharov took a sun sighting with a sextant. There were no accurate maps of this area, and he kept a log of their movements and location.
When none of the others were nearby, Kravchenko asked, “Permission to speak freely, Comrade Lieutenant?”
“Of course, Sergei Pavlovich.” Despite their difference in rank they were on familiar terms in private. Smart junior officers listened to and learned from their senior non-commissioned officers and Zakharov greatly valued Kravchenko’s experience. Almost twice as old as Zakharov, he had served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War.
“The detachment’s teams are deployed too far apart,” said Kravchenko. “We can’t support each other and coordinate patrols to sweep each sector properly. If one team encounters too many ghouls it might be overwhelmed before the others can help.”
“I raised that concern.”
“May I ask what the major’s response was?”
“He said we can cover more territory if we disperse this way. Not many ghouls were reported so he’s confident each team can handle any it finds.”
“Only a few have been detected so far, that’s true, but who’s to say there won’t be more? We have no way of knowing how many will show up each winter.”
“I know.”
Kravchenko sighed. “Why did Moscow send us a new detachment commander who has no experience in these operations? It’s bad enough we’re undermanned.”
“We have our orders.”
“Understood, Comrade Lieutenant. Did the major at least say something about the planes that were requested?”
“No, and I wouldn’t count on any either. Supporting our comrades fighting at Stalingrad is Moscow’s top priority right now.”
They returned to the forest. The dead villagers were left where they lay. Others would come later to dispose of them. The hamlet itself would be abandoned. No one would want to live here now.
Three soldiers in a nearby gully held the team’s horses, the animals’ foggy breath rising from frosted muzzles. Much of Siberia was still primordial wilderness, impassable for motorized transport. These beasts were small, shaggy Yakutians, a hardy breed that thrived in this brutal climate and subsisted largely on wild grass.
The team slung weapons, saddled up, and rode off in the direction from which the ghouls had come. Tracks led down the bank and over the flat, slate surface of the frozen river, swept by a whistling southwest breeze. This time of year the ice was thick enough to easily support horsemen. Upon reaching the opposite bank they plunged into the forest.
Okhchen scouted ahead, his dark, almond-shaped eyes picking out signs of the ghouls’ passage — broken twigs, scuffed lichen, footprints in the snow. But no droppings. Ghouls left no excrement. The team took care to ride single file alongside the trail, not over it, so as not to obliterate any clues. It was easy to follow: their quarry had made no effort to conceal it.
Zakharov considered himself lucky to be assigned to Spetsgruppa X. The nature of its operations necessitated giving commanders in the field more freedom of initiative than was usual in the Red Army. This comparative independence had increased with the recent demotion of the Communist Party political commissars. Reduced to an advisory role, they no longer held dual command with military officers.
Keeping one’s command still depended on results though. Failure was never an option in the USSR. Even if you were a marshal it could mean a sentence to a penal battalion or the Gulag, the NKVD’s network of prisons and forced-labor camps. Or a firing squad.