concrete floor instead of snow; the sound faded gradually as he advanced into the darkness of the corridors.
”Along the tunnel to the right!” Schaefer called after him in Russian.
”The lights don’t work, Lieutenant,” Steshin shouted back. “I see blood on the floor.”
”Lynch,” Schaefer said in English, “give them your flashlight.”
Lynch demanded, “Why should I?”
The lieutenant swung her AK-47 to point at Lynch. “Because you will very regrettably be shot while attempting to escape if you do not give Sergeant Yashin that light,” she said in clear but accented English. “We have lights in the vehicles, but yours is closer.”
Lynch glowered, but handed over his hand lamp. The sergeant who accepted it followed Steshin into the station, and Schaefer could hear two sets of footsteps moving off into the building’s interior.
For a long moment the Americans and their captors simply stood, waiting, while the cold soaked into their faces. Schaefer wondered whether those heavy woolen greatcoats the Russians wore kept out the arctic chill as well as the fancy plastic suits, probably not, he thought, but that might not be a bad thing. The contrast between his warm body and his frozen face was not pleasant.
Then one set of footsteps returned-uneven footsteps. Schaefer turned to see Steshin stagger out of the doorway, his face almost as white as the snowy ground.
”Lieutenant,” Steshin said, “they’re all dead, as he said. And worse. They’re hanging like butchered sheep. Blood everywhere.”
The lieutenant glanced from Schaefer to Steshin and back, obviously torn; then she ordered, “Guard them carefully. Shoot anyone who reaches for a weapon or takes a single step. I’m going to see.”
”Don’t move,” Schaefer translated for the other Americans. “She just told them to blow our heads off if anyone moves.” He put his own hands on his head, just to be safe.
The lieutenant nodded an acknowledgment, then lowered her weapon and strode to the door.
Steshin followed as Lieutenant Ligacheva marched down the east corridor and turned right into the passage to the central maintenance area; the route was dark except for the faint glow of the American’s torch ahead and the arctic sky behind, but she knew every centimeter of the pumping station.
She found Sergeant Yashin standing in the doorway to the maintenance area, AK-47 aimed into empty darkness; the light was on the floor at his feet, pointed upward at an angle, up toward the pipeline.
She followed the beam of light and saw the corpses hanging from the girders, brown icicles of frozen blood glittering.
”I saw spent cartridges on the floor,” Yashin reported. “No other sign of whoever did this.”
”Shaporin,” Ligacheva said, recognizing a face under its coating of ice and gore. “And Leskov, Vesnin…”
”All of them, Lieutenant. Twelve workers on the crew, twelve corpses. Even Salnikov’s dogs.”
Ligacheva stared up at them.
She remembered when she had first arrived at Assyma the previous summer. She remembered how both the soldiers and the workers had made fun of her, the only woman at the station; how most of them, sooner or later, had tried to talk her into bed-even the married ones, whose wives were somewhere back in Moscow or St. Petersburg. She had refused their advances and resigned herself to a life of lonely isolation-but it hadn’t happened Her rebuffs were accepted gracefully; her silence in the face of derision was silently acknowledged as a sign of strength. The abuse had faded away.
In the brief Siberian summer the major form of recreation had been soccer games between the soldiers and the workers, played in the muddy open area south of the station. She had played, perversely, on the side of the workers, as an officer could not be expected to take orders from an enlisted man even if he were team captain, and as a woman she was not thought a good enough player to claim the role of captain herself. When she’d demonstrated that she could hold her own on the soccer field, she had been accepted by most of the workers as a worthy companion. And with time, she became more than a companion; some of these workers had been her friends.
She tried to remember the smiling, sweaty faces she had seen then, in the slanting orange sunlight after the games. She tried to hold those images in her mind, to not let them be replaced by the frozen horrors trapped in the cold light of the American lamp.
”Steshin,” she called. “Take two of the men to the furnace room it’s directly across there.” She pointed. “See if you can restore heat to the complex.”
Steshin saluted and headed for the door.
”Filthy Americans,” Yashin growled. “They slaughtered these oil workers like cattle!”
”These men were slaughtered,” Ligacheva agreed, “but not by the Americans. Why would the Americans hack them apart? Why would they hang them up there in plain sight? Do those look like bullet wounds? And why are there no American corpses?” She stooped, picked up the light, and shone it across the floor, picking out a blood spattered AK-47. “Our men were armed and fired many rounds-why were no Americans harmed?” She shook her head. “Something else did this. Go out there, bring everyone inside, start searching the complex for any sign of who or what might have done this. Bring the big American to me; put the others in the workers’ barracks under guard, but bring the big one here. I want to talk to him before whatever did this decides to come back.”
She did not mention anything about monsters, about the creature that had butchered her squad out there on the ice-Yashin would not have believed her. She knew, though, that that thing had come here.
Had it come looking for her, perhaps?
”The Americans did this, Lieutenant!” Yashin insisted. “Barbarians!”
”I don’t believe it, Yashin,” she said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Yashin glowered at her, frustrated-she was the officer; he couldn’t defy her openly. Still, he had another objection to her orders. “Then if the Americans did not do it, how do you know that whatever is responsible is not still here, elsewhere in the complex?”
”I don’t,” Ligacheva replied. “That’s why I want it searched. Now, go get the men in here and bring me the American!”
Yashin grumbled, but he went.
Not long after, Schaefer and Ligacheva stood side by side in the maintenance area, looking up at the corpses. The other Americans were being led past, under guard, on their way to captivity in the workers’ quarters.
”I wondered how long it would take you to figure out that we weren’t responsible for these Christmas decorations,” he said in Russian. “Now maybe you’ll listen to reason.”
“Perhaps,” Ligacheva said as she began to amble across toward the boiler room. Schaefer followed. “Perhaps you know who did kill these men?”
”Monsters,” Schaefer said seriously. “Boogeymen from outer space.”
”You expect me to believe that?”
”No,” Schaefer admitted without hesitation. “But I hope you’ll admit that you don’t have a better explanation, and you’ll play along until I can prove it to you.”
”Then perhaps I have a surprise for you, American,” Ligacheva said. “Perhaps I do believe in your monsters from the stars. Perhaps I know more about them than you think.”
”And maybe you don’t,” Schaefer said. “What you think you know can get you killed. These things mean business, sweetheart.”
”Yes, I’m sure they do,” Ligacheva retorted. “Thank God the brave Americans have come to save us, with their fancy guns and gaudy suits!”
Schaefer grimaced.
”And of course, the Americans have only come to help,” Ligacheva went on. “Your intentions surely couldn’t be less than honorable! You flew here secretly and without permission only to save time, I am certain.”
Before Schaefer could compose a reply-he spoke Russian fluently, but not as quickly as English-the two of them were interrupted by a thump, a whir, and then a low rumble from the far side of the pipeline. Overhead the lightbulbs flickered dim orange for a moment, then brightened.
”It would seem Steshin has restored power,” Ligacheva remarked. “Let us hope heat will follow.” They had crossed the maintenance area under the pipeline; now she knocked on the door and called out, “Steshin, will we have heat now?”
”Not immediately, Lieutenant,” Steshin called back apologetically. “Someone ripped out pieces here and there-flow control valves for the oil pumps, capacitors… it makes no sense what they took. Nothing seems to have
