Smith tightened his grip on Smyslov’s shoulder. “Can you order the troops outside to stand down? Or can you contact someone who has the authority to call this mess off before we take any more casualties out here?”
“I wish I could, Colonel. But the Spetsnaz have their orders from a higher authority, and I am outside their chain of command. Wednesday Island is now to be sterilized. All evidence of the Misha’s mission is to be eliminated, including the investigation team. To my government, the threat of the anthrax is lesser than the threat represented by the truth about the Misha’s mission.”
“But why?” Smith demanded. “Why all of this for something that happened over fifty years ago?”
There was a sad irony in Smyslov’s voice as he replied. “In my culture we would say ‘only fifty years ago.’ You Americans are mayflies. You forgive and forget quickly. One day you make war on a nation, and the next you are giving them foreign aid and arranging for tourist groups. It is not so in Russia and in the nations surrounding Russia. Our memories are long, and we nurse the bitter ones.
“If word got out that Russia had come within a hairsbreadth of unleashing a nuclear holocaust upon the world, even after half a century, there would be a reaction: anger, fear, retaliation-things my government does not want or need. Within your own country, there are political leaders who would remember the Cold War and would work to cut off the aid we are receiving from you. Even among our own people there would be outrage, enough perhaps to fuel further secessionism and a final collapse of our national authority.”
“And your government thinks there won’t be repercussions for killing a team of American agents and a group of innocent civilian scientists?” Smith demanded.
Smyslov shook his head. “I will not attempt to justify my nation’s actions to you, Colonel, but our leaders are afraid, and frightened men sometimes do not react sensibly.”
“Christ!” Smith rocked back on his boot heels.
“I hope you will believe me when I say this, Colonel, but I am sorry, truly sorry, you and the others were caught up in this.”
“I’m sorry, too, Major.” Smith caught up the lantern and rose to his feet. “But I’m like the bomber commander. I don’t intend to lie down and die for the convenience of the Motherland.”
“I understand. We are soldiers, the two of us. We each do what we must.”
Smith played the lantern beam in Smyslov’s face. “Could you at least tell me why the attack was launched and then recalled at the last second?”
“I cannot do that, Colonel.” Smyslov’s face was impassive as he squinted into the light. “That is a state secret even greater than that of the Misha 124.”
Smith stepped back from his prisoner. There was nothing more to be gained here, and his time was running out.
There was one possibility he had yet to fully investigate. Smith began a slow and deliberate examination of the walls of the cavern, probing with the lantern beam into the numerous crevices and fissures in the jagged lava rock. He had almost despaired of finding anything when, high up on the tumbled rear slope of the cave, beyond the cove where they had found the bodies of the aircraft commander and political officer, he spotted something that sheened palely.
Smith scrambled up the jumbled blocks of basalt to a point near the cavern roof. The paleness was a piece of doubled parachute silk, staked out and held in place by wedged chunks of stone.
A windblock.
Smith tore out the stones and pulled the cloth aside and felt the icy, dank flow of air on his face. The lava tube continued beyond the survival camp cavern! At some time in the past there had been a rockfall that had created a natural bulkhead in the tunnel. But a gap remained, large enough for a man to crawl through to another open section that lay beyond.
Smith snaked through the gap and worked his way down the slope of the inner face. Probing ahead, the beam of the lantern faded into the darkness. The tube flared out to the size of an automobile tunnel and seemed to continue for some distance. Taking a compass from his pocket, he flipped it open and checked the glowing luminescent dial. Orienting himself and making the mental correction for the nearness of the magnetic pole, Smith judged that the tunnel roughly paralleled the outer facing of the mountain.
Maybe…just maybe. It depended on how far the tube ran and if there was a second way out. With deliberation he started to work his way deeper into the tunnel, trying to gauge the angle of the slope. Was he above or below the level of the glacier?
The going was slow and treacherous. Olive-tinted puddles of slick, transparent glaze ice lay congealed around furniture-sized slabs of fallen basalt. The floor of this tube section was more broken and uneven than the camp cavern, possibly an indication that it was more unstable as well. Smith had neither the time nor the inclination to be concerned about it. A hundred yards…two hundred…
There! A ribbon of white against the black rock, a spill of snow down the tunnel wall!
Smith scrambled up the glassy slope of the miniature glacier to where the compacting snow was being forced into the lava tube. It was at a point maybe eight feet above the cave floor and took in an area the size of a coffee table. Bracing a foot on a solid stone ledge, he snapped off the lantern and let his eyes adapt. After a couple of minutes he could make out the faintest luminescence radiating through the snow plug from the outside. Daylight!
Drawing his bayonet, Smith started to dig, tunneling his way carefully toward the outside world. The luminescence grew brighter, and Smith recognized that he was digging through another of the ice-crusted snowdrifts such as they had found caking the first lava tube entrance. This was the back door he’d been seeking.
Suddenly Smith froze. Something more was leaking in from the outer world beyond the light.
Voices-faint, muffled, and not speaking English.
Smith resumed his digging, but he moved slowly, quietly, and with infinite care not to break through the drift. He eased a last knife thrust through the ice shell, creating a single blade-wide horizontal penetration to the outside. Daylight gleamed, bright to Smith even through the heavy overcast. He squinted through the narrow observation slit he had created.
This second entrance opened into a shallow notch in the cliff face. A bare forty feet away, two armed figures in snow camouflage crouched behind the shoulder of the notch, peering around the corner toward the main cave entrance.
Like a man moving on nitroglycerin-filled eggs, Smith backed out of the snow tunnel and down to the cave floor, easing each step and testing each foot and handhold. He had found an option.
Chapter Thirty-three
Wednesday Island Station
Randi saw it coming and was ready for it. The blows were delivered open-palm, but they were no mere slaps. She relaxed her neck and shoulder muscles and rode with the vicious left-right-left of the blows, minimizing their effect. Even so, stars flashed behind her eyes for a moment, and her skin burned.
There had been no reason for the assault. Randi had not spoken a word to her attacker, nor he to her. It was only the predictable start of the testing and breaking process, a testament on the part of her captors that they were not the least bit hesitant about inflicting pain and injury. Randi was already fully aware of that fact. She shook off the effects, straightened, and met her assailant’s gaze, her features defiantly neutral.
She knew from her escape-and-evasion training that this was a bad tactic. She should be keeping her eyes lowered in submissive mode. Given the animalistic psychology of the terrorist, meeting eyes was a threat act that could trigger a violent if not lethal reaction.
But what the hell, they were going to kill her anyway.
The man who had struck her was a giant in size and in dissipation, his height and bulk enhanced by his cold-weather gear. A tangled, graying ginger beard flowed over the opened collar of his parka, and narrowed pale blue eyes peered from beneath shaggy brows of the same color, bloodshot and intent.