He hadn’t checked the headlight. Burned out, probably.
Somehow he got the bike into motion.
This road led off to the northwest, he remembered, upwind, so he stayed on it. When he went by the gate to the reactor facility he got a fleeting glimpse of his watch from the light on the pole. Forty-one minutes to go.
Riding a motorcycle on a rutted dirt road on a dark night takes intense concentration and high physical effort. The colonel found that even at a slow speed he was always on the verge of losing control. Still, with every minute he gained confidence. When his eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness he could see the road easily enough, so he eased on more throttle and shifted to a higher gear. This meant he was going faster when he fell. The nose wheel hit a rut, the handlebars twisted violently and he was instantly flying through air.
The impact with the ground stunned him.
When his wits returned he levered himself upright and groped for the motorcycle. He had to put some miles between himself and that reactor. He tried to see the hands on the watch but it was impossible. He felt for the flashlight. It didn’t work. Broken by the fall.
The submachine gun on his shoulder was gouging him, so he took it off and threw it away into the darkness.
Getting the bike upright took all his strength.
Kick. No start. Kick again.
He lost count of the number of times he tried to start the motorcycle.
How long had it been? How much blood had he lost?
Flooded. He had probably flooded the damn thing.
He sat wearily on the bike gathering his strength.
Are you beaten?
No!
Throttle off. Kick, a real high arch off the bad hip so all his weight would come down on the kick lever under his right foot.
The engine caught. Slowly he twisted the throttle and brought the engine up to a fast idle. Now the shift lever.
He kept the bike at a slow pace, maybe four or five miles per hour. The wind in his face was the only bright spot. If he could just get a little distance and get behind something solid, some earth perhaps, he could survive the blast. The wind would carry the radioactivity in the other direction.
He was climbing a hill. He could tell by the amount of throttle necessary. And the sky was getting lighter to the northeast. He realized then that he could see the road and the ruts better, so he eased on more throttle.
How much time?
Couldn’t be much. If he could just get over the hill. There on the other side, with the hill between him and the reactor, there he would be safe.
Every bounce, every jolt was another second past.
How many more did he have? He took his left hand from the handlebar and tried to see the watch. The bike swerved dangerously and he grabbed the handlebar again.
How far had he come? Was he far enough…?
The shock wave almost knocked him off the motorcycle. Then intense heat. He felt intense heat on his neck, on the back of his head, even through his jacket. And he wasn’t under cover, wasn’t…
Behind him a cloud of dirt and debris blown aloft by the explosion formed in the darkness above the reactor. In seconds it began to glow. The radiation intensified. The sensation of furnace heat was the last thing the colonel felt as a virulently radioactive ball of fire rose from the melted remnants of the steel, lead and concrete shielding.
In seconds he was dying even as the motorcycle continued away from the blast, dying like the sleeping soldiers at the army base on the other side of the reactor, dying like every other mammal within four miles of the now-glowing nuclear plant. Four miles, that was how far the colonel had traveled. The motorcycle continued upright with his dying weight for a few seconds, then the front wheel kicked against a rut, and the machine and the corpse upon it skidded to a stop in the road.
The engine of the motorcycle choked to a stop as a mushroom cloud formed over the reactor and the wind on the ground strengthened markedly as air rushed toward the intense heat source.
People and animals a few miles farther away from the reactor had several minutes of life left, amounts varying depending on the amount of material shielding them from the runaway nuclear inferno. By the time the sun came up in the northeast only a few insects were still alive within seven miles of the plant. Other people were also dying as a cloud of ferociously intense radioactivity drifted southeast on the prevailing wind.
11
As Jack Yocke dressed the following morning his mood was gloomy. The euphoria he felt last night had completely evaporated. He had managed only two hours sleep and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning.
At about four in the morning the implications of being sought out by Shirley Ross finally sank in. Why Jack Yocke? He wasn’t a famous personage, not a known face. And how had she known to find him at the Metropolitan? Now the significance of her evasion of that question grew. Maybe this was a setup.
He was in way over his head, chasing an impossible story. He didn’t speak the language, he didn’t have an ongoing professional relationship with a single, solitary soul in this goddamn hopeless Slavic morass. He was a foreigner in a country deeply suspicious of all foreigners. He didn’t know the politics in a capital where politics was the staff of life, played for blood and money. Nobody would talk to him. Nobody would trust him to tell the truth. Nobody.
Except Jake Grafton, and he didn’t count. He wouldn’t know beans about the Soviet Square killings. Even if he did and were willing to share it, Yocke couldn’t print it. He needed something he could publish.
Gregor was standing beside his battered tan Lada when Yocke came out of the hotel. The sixty-degree morning air was heavy with pollution and the sky looked like rain. The best the reporter could manage in reply to Gregor’s cheerful hello was a nod. He sagged onto the passenger’s seat and stared morosely through the windshield at a beggar woman arranging herself for a day on the sidewalk while Gregor got himself situated behind the wheel and coaxed the car to life.
“Sleep well?” Gregor asked.
“Not really.”
“Where would you like to go this morning?”
Yocke sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Police headquarters.” No, on second thought, the district attorney was the place to start. What did they call the prosecutor over here? “Make it the public prosecutor’s office.”
“No interview with Yeltsin? Well, maybe tomorrow.”
“Boris will have to wait. Tomorrow we do Gorby’s proctologist.”
“Procto…?”
“Can the corn and drive.”
The foyer was crowded with reporters. Yocke’s heart sank. He looked around for Tommy Townsend, the Post’s senior correspondent, and didn’t see him. At least a dozen people from the international press crowded around the desk man, who was grunting surly Russian and scowling. A television team had lights on and a camera going. What a way to start a day!
Gregor elbowed his way to the desk, and in two minutes came back with the word. A press conference in fifteen minutes. Jack Yocke stared at the TV reporter putting the final touches on his hair and nodded. If Townsend showed up, Jack was going to have to make a critical decision since the Soviet Square Massacre was now Tommy’s story. Should he share the Shirley Ross tip with Tommy?
Thank heavens he didn’t have to. Tommy never showed, even though the press conference started late, as do most things in Russia. It went about as Yocke expected. In the glare of the television lights the prosecutor’s spokesman made a statement about the ongoing investigation — no leads yet on the identities or whereabouts of the killers that could be announced publicly, no arrests imminent, the Russians had asked for Interpol assistance. The questions from the floor were asked in a respectful tone, merely for clarification of the spokesman’s points. No one asked about anything he had not mentioned. Yocke edged toward the door behind the podium and pulled Gregor along.