”Hey, Schaefer!” Wilcox shouted. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
”Down to take a good look at that door,” Schaefer shouted back.
”He’s right,” Philips said, sliding his binoculars back in their case on his belt. “Come on.” Together, the seven Americans moved cautiously down the slope and up to the ruined east door.
Schaefer didn’t hurry; it was Lassen who reached the empty doorway first. “I’d knock, man,” he said, “but I don’t think anybody’s home.”
Schaefer didn’t respond; he’d turned aside to look at something, at a spot of color in this dreary gray and white landscape.
A drainpipe emerged from the base of a wall beneath the pipeline itself. The frozen puddle beneath the drain was dark red-the color of dried blood.
Or in this case, Schaefer thought, frozen blood.
”Schaefer, over here,” Philips called.
Schaefer turned and joined the others at the door.
Jagged strips and fragments of steel lay on the snow; only the hinges were still attached to the frame. Schaefer looked at those hinges, at the way they were twisted out of shape, and at the rough edges of the scattered pieces.
”This was cut with a blade,” he said. “It’s steel, though you don’t chop through that with a pocketknife. And the way these hinges are bent, whatever punched through here went from the outside in.” He glanced at the bloody drainpipe. “They’ve been here,” he said. “I can smell it.”
”Lynch, get some light in here,” Philips said. “We’ll take a look inside.”
Lynch stepped forward with a high-powered flashlight. Cautiously the party inched into the corridor.
This took them out of the wind, but Schaefer noticed that inside the building didn’t really seem much warmer than outside. The heat was off. Whatever might be the case elsewhere in the complex, this one building was dead and deserted, you didn’t stay in an unheated building in weather like this.
The power was off, too-flipping light switches didn’t do anything.
Lynch shone the light around, and almost immediately they spotted the blood on the wall and the floor it would have been hard to miss, really, there was so much of it. They glanced uneasily at each other, but no one said anything; what was there to say?
”Down that way,” Schaefer said, pointing to a side tunnel.
Lynch glanced at Philips for confirmation; the general nodded, and Lynch led the way around the corner, into the side passage.
”Gennaro, you wait here,” Philips ordered one man, pointing at the corner. “You watch our rear.”
Gennaro nodded and took up a position at the T of the intersection; he stood and watched as his companions marched on down the corridor they had chosen.
The six men emerged into the maintenance area, and Lynch shone the light around-then stopped, pointing the beam at a drying puddle of something reddish-brown. Slowly he swung the light upward.
”Oh, my God,” he said.
Schaefer frowned. “Looks as if those bastards found some time to play,” he said.
Lynch moved the light along the row of corpses. To the men below it seemed to go on forever, three, five, eight…
Twelve dead bodies hung there-twelve human bodies, and to one side, two dead dogs. Crooked lines of something sparkled here and there on their sides, and hung from their heads and dangling fingertips, giving them a surreal appearance-icicles of frozen blood and sweat.
”Hsst!” Gennaro called.
Schaefer whirled; the others, fascinated by the grisly sight overhead, were slower to react.
Gennaro was in the corridor, pointing back toward the demolished external door.
”Something’s moving out there!” he whispered. “I heard engines.”
”Damn,” Philips said. He glanced around, clearly trying to decide who to station where.
”We need to stay together, General,” Schaefer said. “If it’s those things, they’re experts at picking off sentries or stragglers.”
Philips nodded. “Come on then, all of you,” he said, leading the party back up the passage.
A moment later they were in the outer corridor, grouped along the walls; Schaefer peered out into the dim grayness of the outside world.
”I don’t see anything,” he said.
”I’m sure,” Gennaro said. “Over that way.” He pointed toward the pipeline.
”Come on,” Philips said.
Together, the party moved back out into the wind and cold, inching along the building’s exterior wall in the direction Gennaro had indicated.
A sharp crack sounded, and then the singing whine of a ricochet; a puff of powdered concrete sprinkled down over Schaefer’s modified
M-16.
”Drop your weapons immediately, all of you!” someone shouted in heavily accented, high-pitched English. “You’re under arrest!”
Schaefer turned and saw the line of soldiers crouching at the top of the slope, rifles trained on the Americans. The Russians were used to winter conditions; they had been able to move into position undetected, and they now had the Americans trapped against a blank wall, completely unsheltered and vulnerable. And there was no telling how many of them there were; they could have an entire division behind that little ridge.
Schaefer put down his weapon, slowly and gently. At least, he thought, these were human enemies.
They might have a common foe.
Chapter 19
The lieutenant who approached the Americans with an AK-47 at the ready was small, even in the bulky Russian Army greatcoat, but it wasn’t until she lifted her snow goggles that Schaefer realized he was facing a woman.
”You are under arrest,” she repeated.
”I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Schaefer said in Russian.
”But I do,” the Russian lieutenant said, switching to her native tongue. “You speak Russian. I’m impressed. But whatever language you use, you’re still trespassing. American soldiers in full gear, here in the Motherland, tearing up our installations? It won’t do.”
”We didn’t tear up anything,” Schaefer replied.
The lieutenant jerked her head at the door.
”You didn’t tear up that door? What did you use, a grenade?”
”We didn’t do that,” Schaefer insisted. “We found it like that. Listen, your countrymen in there are all dead. We’ll all be dead if we don’t cooperate.”
”Dead?” The lieutenant’s voice caught for a moment; then she continued, “If you are telling the truth, and my friends are all dead, I’ll kill you last.” She shoved the AK-47 in Schaefer’s face.
He backed off a step.
”Look for yourself,” he said.
The lieutenant glared up at him for a moment, then said, “We will.” She shifted her grip so that she held the assault rifle with one hand while she beckoned with the other. “Steshin!” she called. “Take a look in there!”
The man she called Steshin ran up and past her, past the cornered Americans, and through the ruined door into the pumping station. Schaefer could hear the sudden heavy thudding of his boots as the soldier’s feet hit
