The last thing he saw was the approaching sandal as the thing set one foot on his face; then the creature leaned its full weight on Sergei Yevgenyevich Buyanov and crushed his skull as if it were the shell of an annoying beetle.
Chapter 13
Galyshev had decided to pay another call on Sobchak, and was just stepping into the geologist’s workroom when the alarm sounded.
The superintendent looked up, startled.
”What the hell is that?” he demanded.
”An alarm,” Sobchak said.
”Why?” Galyshev asked sharply. “Something wrong with the pipeline?”
”Nothing that shows on my equipment,” Sobchak said, looking around at the ranked gauges. “But I’ve lost the feed from the sensors at the east door.”
”Something’s breaking in over there?” Galyshev demanded, tensing.
”I don’t know,” Sobchak said, staring at the meters. “I can’t tell.”
”Well, then I’ll find out for myself!” Galyshev turned and charged out of the room, heading for the passage back to the main part of the complex.
Sobchak watched Galyshev go, then looked at the equipment again.
He didn’t have any real surveillance equipment-this was science, not the KGB-but when this monitoring station had been set up they’d had the possibility of accidents, or sabotage, in mind. There were thermo-sensors and barometers and rem-counters and even microphones scattered through the entire complex, along with the seismic monitors. The theory had been that if the pipeline burst, or a fire started, the station’s scientists would be able to track the effects through heat, pressure, radiation, and sound.
Sobchak reached over and turned on all the interior monitors, one by one. Last of all he turned on the speaker for the microphones in the east corridor.
He immediately turned the volume down; the screams were deafening.
”My God,” he said. He looked at the other readings, trying to understand.
Sobchak judged that something big and hot had come in through the east door and was moving down the corridor, deeper into the station-the temperature and barometric pressure at the sensors nearest the door were dropping steadily, as if the door was open or even gone, but at the next set the temperature was higher than before.
And the radioactivity levels in the east corridor were running about twice what they should be, still harmless, but inexplicable.
The screams, too, were inexplicable-and terrifying.
Sobchak was a man of science. He didn’t believe in arctic ghosts. All the same, he got up and closed the door of his workroom, and locked it.
”To keep in the heat,” he told himself. “That’s all, to keep in the heat.”
He looked around and noticed that he’d left his coat and boots out in the anteroom-he didn’t like to have them in the workroom; the equipment was packed in so tightly that they got in the way. He didn’t open the door to retrieve them, though. They could wait out there.
In the main station there were men milling about in the common room, unsure what to do, as Galyshev burst from the tunnel.
”Sir, what’s going on?” someone called. “What’s happening? Why the alarm?”
”Something’s broken in the east door,” Galyshev called. “We’re going to find out who it is!”
The men glanced at one another uneasily.
”But, sir…”
”We’re not soldiers…”
”We’re still men, aren’t we?” Galyshev demanded. “And there are guns in the armory, aren’t there?”
”Armory?”
The glances the men exchanged now were considerably more hopeful.
”We may not be trained soldiers,” Galyshev said, “but we can still fight when our home is invaded!” He marched down the corridor to the soldiers’ barracks, and after a brief hesitation the others followed him.
Lieutenant Ligacheva had not bothered to lock it before leading her squad out on their fatal investigation. The squad’s weapons were gone, no one had recovered them from the ice, but the reserves were still there, and moments later a dozen men were marching down the east corridor with AK-47s in their hands. Galyshev had taken a quick roll call as he handed out weapons and knew that three men were missing, Sergei Buyanov, Dmitri Veins, and Anatoli Shivering.
No one present admitted to sounding the alarm; presumably one of those three had.
”There was nothing on the radio or the teletype?” Galyshev asked as they marched. “Nothing to warn us some sort of attack might be coming?”
”Nothing at all,” Shaporin replied.
”That bothers me…” Galyshev began.
Then they turned the final corner, and a blast of icy wind from the ruined door struck them. It wasn’t the wind that made Galyshev halt dead in his tracks and stop speaking in midsentence, though.
It was the blood.
Blood was spattered all over the floor and one wall, great splashes of blood, still wet.
”What happened here?” Galyshev demanded.
There was no answer.
”Where are the bodies?” Shaporin asked from just behind. “Whose blood is it?”
”It couldn’t just be paint?” someone asked from farther back.
Galyshev shook his head. “It’s not paint.” He studied the floor, the patterns of red, the drops and smears…
”They went down there,” he said, jerking the barrel of his gun. “Toward the pipeline.” He flipped off the safety. “Come on!”
Sure enough, a thin trail of drops of blood led into the tunnel to the maintenance areas.
”What’s in there?” Rublev asked. “What did this?”
”I don’t know,” Galyshev said, “and I don’t care. Are you coming with me or not?”
Rublev still hesitated.
”Come on, Rublev,” Shaporin said. “You think it’s monsters in there?”
”More likely Chechen guerrillas,” Leskov, the practical joker in the bunch, said. “After all, it’s only what, two thousand miles from Chechnya to the Yamal Peninsula? If no one told them the war was over, it might’ve taken them this long to get here!”
A few of the men grinned, but no one laughed, that blood on the wall was too fresh.
”It’s probably American saboteurs,” Galyshev said seriously. “Whoever or whatever it is, you think these won’t handle the job?” he hefted the AK-47.
The men still hesitated.
”Well, I’m going,” Galyshev said. “There are three men missing, and maybe they aren’t all dead, and if we hurry maybe they’ll stay that way.” He turned and marched down the side tunnel.
Reluctantly, first Shaporin, then Leskov, and finally the others followed him. Rublev came last.
The little corridor ended in a large open space, a maintenance area under, the pipeline. The chamber was intended to give easy access to any part of the pipeline, from the huge valves to the immense pumping equipment at the north end; it ran some sixty meters end to end, almost the full length of the underground portion of the station, and was a good fifteen meters wide. Thick concrete pillars were spaced along the room’s length, one every ten meters or so. The oil-spattered floor was poured concrete, sloping slightly to improve drainage, while the walls on either side were concrete block to a height of about three meters. Above those walls a complex maze of steel struts and girders wove overhead, supporting and steadying the immense pipe, and Galyshev had never been sure
