"Keep an eye on them," Demidov said. "I'm going to speak to the others. And Kristina... thanks."
Yelagin nodded once, then settled against the bulkhead behind the pilots.
Back in the cabin Demidov looked around at the others. She saw no dissent. She hadn't expected any – they'd been together as a solid core group for over four years, had seen and done many terrible things, and she knew their trust and sense of kinship went way beyond family. Yet she still felt a burning sensation behind her eyes as she met their gaze.
"You know what we've done," she said, a statement more than a question. Of course they knew.
"We're just following your orders," Zhukov said.
"I can't order you to do this."
"You don't need to," Vasnev said. "Vasily Glazkov is your friend, so he's our friend too. We all help our friends."
"There'll be repercussions."
Vasnev shrugged. Budanov examined his fingernails.
"Right," Demidov said, sighing softly. "It's only an hour's detour. Our original target isn't going anywhere, and we'll finish our mission as soon as possible."
"That's if the Major doesn't send a jet to blow us from the sky," Zhukov said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but none of them dismissed the notion. They were on dangerous, unknown ground now, and no one knew exactly what the future might hold.
We're coming for you, Vasily, Demidov thought.
Anna will come for me, Vasily Glazkov thought. She'll hear about this, put her team together, and come to find out what happened.
He could see nothing around him in the darkness. But he could feel them there, sense them, and whenever they moved he could smell them – rotting meat, and grim intent.
If only I could warn her to stay away.
"Captain, you need to see this." The pilot sounded scared, and as Demidov pushed through into the cockpit she fully expected to find them facing off against two MI-35s. That would be the end of their brief mutiny.
But the airspace around them was clear, and she saw from Yelagin's shocked expression that this was something worse.
"What is it?" Demidov asked.
"Down there." The co-pilot pointed, and the pilot swung the helicopter in a gentle circle so they could all see.
There was a hole in the valley. Hundreds of feet across, so deep that it contained only blackness, it had swallowed trees and snow, ground and rocks. Two streams flowed into it, the waters tumbling in spreading sprays before being swallowed into the dark void. It was almost perfectly circular.
It looked so out of place that Demidov had to blink several times to ensure her eyes were not deceiving her.
"What the hell is that?" Yelagin said.
"How far's the scientific station?" Demidov asked, ignoring her.
"Just over a mile, north and over the valley ridge," the pilot said.
"Take us there."
She heard his sigh, but beneath that was a groan of fear from the co-pilot.
"Don't worry," Demidov said. "We can take care of ourselves." She knew that was true. She commanded the biggest bad-asses the Russian army could produce, and they'd seen each other through many treacherous and violent situations. They had all killed people. Sometimes the people they killed were unarmed, more often than not it was a case of kill or be killed.
They could definitely look after themselves.
But none of them had ever seen anything like this.
"Get ready," she said back in the cabin. The others were all huddled at the cabin windows, looking down at the strange sight retreating behind them. "We're going in."
Where the hell are you, Vasily?
Demidov stood in the main recreational space of the research base and stared at the half-drunk cup of coffee that sat on the edge of a table. Somebody’d walked away from that cup. Maybe the coffee was shit, or maybe they’d been in a hurry.
“Captain?”
She turned to see Corporal Zhukov filling the doorway. His face told the story, but she asked anyway.
“Any sign?”
“Nothing,” he confirmed. “All three of them. Budanov and Yelagin are checking logs to see if there’s any record of what drew them out of here, but there’s no question they’re gone. Vasnev found nothing in the lab to give us any clue.”
“They went to the hole,” Demidov said, thinking of Vasily Glazkov. Not her husband, but he might as well have been. Would be, someday, if he hadn’t fallen into that fucking hole.
“Would they all have gone?” Zhukov said. “That doesn’t seem logical.”
“Scientists. Every discovery’s an adventure. They know better, and protocol demands certain procedures, but it’s easy to get carried away when something new presents itself. Like ravens seeing something shiny.”
Zhukov shifted his massive frame, his shadow withdrawing from the room. “I take it we’re going out there.”
It wasn’t a question. He didn’t have to ask, and she didn’t have to tell him.
Vasnev moaned about the cold every step of the way. To be fair, it was cold enough to kill, given time. So cold that the snow refused to fall, despite the gray sky stretching out for eternity overhead. It was as if the sun had never existed at all.
“My balls have crawled up inside my body for warmth,” Vasnev whined.
“You’re confused,” Yelagin muttered. “They never dropped to begin with.”
Demidov tried to ignore them. The wind slashed across the hard-packed snow and the bare rock and cut right down to the bone. They had heavy jackets on, thick uniforms, balaclavas and gloves. Their mission had been meant to take place an hour’s chopper flight from here, where it would still have been damned cold, but they’d never have been this exposed for this long.
“This is idiotic,” Vasnev groaned. “They kept this from us for a reason. They’ve got to be sending a team. And you know damn well the pilots have probably already called it in… probably reported us the second we set off. We should just wait for someone else to arrive, someone with better gear—“
Budanov slapped the back of his head. Vasnev whipped around to glare at him, and for the first time Demidov worried real violence might flare amongst them. They’d had their share of hostilities over the years – any team does, given time – but this moment had venom. It had teeth.
“If we wait,” Budanov sneered, “do you really think they’ll let us help look for Vasily and his science friends? We’ll be hauled out of here, original mission scrubbed and this one along with it. We’ll be slammed into a room and made to wait while they decide on our punishment, and meanwhile someone else will be looking for Vasily and we won’t know how long they’ll take or how much effort they’ll go to.”
Demidov stared at him. They were about the most words she’d ever heard Budanov say at any one time. His ugly face had twisted into something even uglier, but his eyes glinted with fierce loyalty, and she wanted to hug him. Instead, she trudged onward as if nothing had happened.
Vasnev mumbled something else as they all started walking again. Demidov did not turn when she heard the sound of a rifle being racked, but she knew it had to be Zhukov. The Mountain.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot you just for the quiet,” Zhukov said.
Vasnev kept silent for a whole four minutes after that. It was a brief but blessed miracle.
They reached the ridge above the valley and took a breather, staring down at the hole. The sky gave no hint as to the time, not up here in the frozen fuck-you end of the world, a place the world knew people had once been sent when they’d screwed up worse than anyone. Yet Vasily had been so excited to come here with his two research partners, to live in a prefabricated base smaller than a Soviet-era city apartment and freeze his ass off, all to prove what the world refused to believe. Yes, the planetary climate was changing. But Siberia was still cold enough to kill you.