“More illumination, Sergeant!” Tomashenko commanded.
The flare gun coughed once more, sending another scintillating ball of light bouncing around the interior of the cave.
“We got them, Lieutenant!” Vilyayskiy exclaimed. “The bastards are down!”
They augmented the flare with their tactical lights, playing the beams across the cluster of bodies on the cavern floor.
“We only saw the two Americans. Where did these others come from?”
“I don’t know, Sergeant. Be careful. There may be more.”
There was something strange about the way those bodies lay so rigidly. And then it hit Tomashenko. There was no blood! They had killed no one! Those men down there had died fifty years before!
Swearing, Tomashenko led his men down the lava slope to the floor of the tunnel. They had blown apart the stiff, frozen bodies of their own people! The dead crewmen of the Misha 124 had been strung up like grotesque puppets on a network of climbing rope, criss-crossed between pitons driven into the walls of the cave.
In a growing fury, Tomashenko recognized the delaying action, deftly rigged by someone who would understand the psychology and instincts of a military force in a cave-clearing operation. And he, Pavel Tomashenko, had reacted just as his enemy had hoped. Of the Americans themselves, there was no sign. Nor was there any clue to the fate of Major Smyslov.
Tomashenko became aware of an uneasy murmur passing among the enlisted men of his platoon. They were soldiers of the Russian Federation, but they were also Yakut, not far removed from the magics and superstitions of their people.
“Spread out and search!” Tomashenko roared them into action again. “There must be another exit from this cavern! Another tunnel! Find it!”
It took several minutes of searching to find the passage into the next section of tunnel. It had been blocked with chunks of basalt stacked into it from the far side.
The Americans were buying themselves time. But to what end? They were still rats trapped in a sewer pipe. Unless…
“Forward! After them! Move!”
Recklessly Tomashenko dove through the gap into the next tunnel section. He must not give them the time and opportunity to set up any more of their monkey tricks. He had the numbers and the firepower. He would use them.
“Illuminate! Light this place up!”
Volleys of flares were hurled ahead, filling the tunnel with the scarlet light of hell, the chemical vapor for their combustion tainting the air and burning the lungs. This section of lava tube was as broad as a highway and as high as a two-story building. The platoon advanced fast and dirty, snaking through the jagged jumble of rock slabs on the cave floor in a leap-frogging overwatch, half the force moving while the other half covered, ready to unleash a storm of gunfire at the first sign of life or hint of resistance.
But there was none, and as the advance continued and the tunnel lengthened, Tomashenko’s fears began to solidify. And then there it was, a thick fall of pale, compacted snow drooling down the left side of the tube. The rock floor of the tunnel was slick with clear condensation ice, but this was from the outside. Damnation, there was a second exit, and the Americans had found it!
A series of steps had been axed into the face of the icefall. Sergeant Vilvayskiy scrambled up the slope for a closer look. “There’s a snow tunnel here! They must have escaped through it, then caved it in behind them.”
The Americans had logically projected that Tomashenko would tighten his security perimeter around the main cave entrance in preparation for his assault. They had simply waited for his screen to contract past their concealed escape hatch; then they had slipped away, leaving a series of delays and diversions behind to buy them running time.
“Sergeant! Get that tunnel open immediately and get after those bastards! Keep Corporal Otosek’s section with you. I’ll take the rest of the platoon back to the main entrance! The Americans must be heading back for the science station. You trail them while we try to cut them off. Move!”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the Yakut noncom replied, stoically snapping open his entrenching tool. “You, Private Amaha, get your ass up here and help me!”
In seconds, the two Spetsnaz troopers were assaulting the snow plug. Tomashenko turned and started to double-time the remainder of his force back the way they had come.
Tomashenko abruptly hesitated as the thought caught at him. The American bastards were clever. What if…
Private Amaha plunged his entrenching tool into the mass of loose snow blocking the route to the outside. As he scooped the burden aside, he felt a resisting tug. Glancing down in the flarelight, he saw a thin cord hooked over the blade of his shovel. He stared at it for an uncomprehending instant; then he understood and screamed.
The plastique-augmented hand grenade Private Uluh had attempted to drop into the cave entrance earlier that day fulfilled its destiny.
Concentrated by the confines of the tunnel, the concussion hurled Tomashenko face-first to the cavern floor. He tasted blood, the bitterness of high explosives, and the metallic taint of basalt. Over the howling ring in his ears he faintly heard the groans and pained swearing of the other downed members of the platoon. He levered himself to his feet and peered through the rosy haze of flare-illuminated dust that filled the cavern.
The passage to the outside had been blasted open, and the bodies of Sergeant Vilyayskiy and Private Amana had been hurled against the far wall of the lava tube and plastered there, like bedbugs smashed under the thumb of an annoyed sleeper.
There was no curse potent enough to be worthy of the sight.
Tomashenko staggered back down the tube and clambered up to the blackened fissure in the stone revealed and emptied by the explosion.
He looked out into the storming night and couldn’t believe what he found. The cave exit opened into the same cove in the mountainside he had used as his command post for all that afternoon. This man Smith must have crouched within twenty feet of him, watching and listening, and Tomashenko had never realized it! There had never been a hint!
This was a shame his career could never survive! “Get after them!” he raged. “They die tonight!”
Chapter Thirty-five
Wednesday Island Base
Randi Russell lay on her back in the lower of the two bunks in the women’s quarters, her wrists over her head and cuffed around the bunk’s vertical stanchion. A swath of light cut through the darkened room from the open door, issuing from the gas lantern in the main room. Intermittently the armed guard seated at the mess table glanced in her direction.
To the guard, she lay apparently unmoving, possibly even asleep. He couldn’t see into the shadows at the head of the bunk, where Randi’s fingers flexed and clenched slowly and continuously like a cat kneading its claws. She must not allow her hands to swell and get stiff.
Even as she had been prodded and shoved back to the bunk room that afternoon, she had been making her plans. When her captors had handcuffed her into the bunk, she had seemingly resisted for a moment, earning herself another impatient slap across the face. But in a deft bit of positional legerdemain she had also managed to ensure that when the handcuff had been resnapped around her right wrist it had closed over both the sleeve of her sweater and the heavy thermal long johns she wore underneath it.
She had worked the fabric out from under the cuff, loosening it. She had also made sure that her fists had been tightly clinched when the cuffs had been locked on, gaining herself yet another precious fraction of an inch of play.
She rolled a little on the bunk, as if hunting for a more comfortable spot. Under the cover of the movement she again found the joint in the bunk stanchion and practiced wedging the connecting links of the handcuffs into it. Then she folded her fingers in as tightly as she could and gave an experimental tug. Given enough adrenaline, it would work. It wouldn’t be very pleasant, but it would work.