Americans.”
”General, if we go out there now, it may well be a repeat of what happened to my previous squad. I cannot accept the responsibility…”
Ponomarenko cut her off. “Is that your final word, Lieutenant?”
”I…” Ligacheva hesitated, then straightened up. “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s my final word.”
”In that case, Lieutenant,” Ponomarenko said, “you may remain at the pumping station with the prisoners.” Ligacheva began to relax, then snapped to attention as the general continued, “Sergeant Yashin will lead the attack.”
”Sergeant Yashin?” Ligacheva turned and watched as a wolfish grin spread over Yashin’s face.
”Yes. Is he there?”
”Yes, he’s here, sir,” Ligacheva said slowly.
”You heard your orders, Sergeant?” Ponomarenko asked.
”Yes, sir,” Yashin replied happily.
”That will be all, then, Lieutenant.”
”Yes, sir,” Ligacheva said. She put down the microphone and stared at Yashin.
”You planned this, didn’t you?” she demanded.
”I thought an opportunity might arise,” Yashin said calmly, hands clasped behind his back. “I let the general know that he could put his faith in me.”
”Just in case he had any doubt of it,” Ligacheva said bitterly.
”Indeed,” Yashin said, rocking gently on his heels. “You may be content with your present rank and status, Lieutenant, but I am not-I have hopes for advancement. One can scarcely live on a sergeant’s pay these days, and they do not give commissioned rank to men who simply do as they’re told and show no initiative.”
”Your initiative may get you killed out there,” Ligacheva pointed out.
”I do not think it will,” Yashin sneered. “I am no mere woman, frightened of the cold and the dark and caught unawares. I will confront our enemy boldly, as you could not. While you’re here tending the Americans, let real soldiers take the field, Lieutenant-we’ll show you how it should be done, so we can finish this matter and return home to our warm beds, our women, and our drink.”
Ligacheva stared at her sergeant for a long moment.
Maybe, she thought, Yashin was right, even if he was a traitorous bastard. Maybe he and the other men were more than a match for their enemy. Maybe they would capture whatever was out in that canyon. She hoped so.
She didn’t believe it, though.
She believed that Yashin would lead them all to their deaths.
But there was nothing she could do about it. He had his orders, and his opinions-he wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.
So she didn’t bother saying it. She turned away without another word and went to find the American, Schaefer-and the bottle of vodka that Galyshev had always kept put away in the cabinet in his office.
Chapter 21
Rasche had caught a cab from Kennedy to Police Plaza. He wasn’t on the force anymore, but he still had friends, and he was still in law enforcement, and law officers cooperated with each other; he had known that Police Plaza was the place to start.
He talked to Weston and to half a dozen other old friends and acquaintances and got the gory details of the bad bust that had left Baby, her two flunkies, and four good cops dead. On the basis of ballistics, Forensics had tagged one of the victims, Arturo Velasquez, with killing the four cops, but had no solid leads on who had taken out Arturo and his friends-none of the bullets matched any of Schaefer’s known personal arsenal or any of the weapons found at the scene.
Baby and Reggie had each taken a 9mm slug through the head, execution style; no 9mm guns were involved elsewhere in the incident, however. Schaefer owned several handguns, but none of them were 9mm.
No one mentioned the fact that most federal agents carried 9mm pistols.
The crime scene had been messy, but nothing like the slaughterhouses those creatures had left behind the previous summer; this carnage was clearly all the work of human beings, not monsters from outer space.
The guys who had been working in the comics shop had been interviewed-Rasche couldn’t keep straight who was who in the statements, since they all seemed to be named John, but it didn’t matter, since their stories matched. They reported seeing men in dark suits out front, but had no useful descriptions beyond that-they’d dove for cover as soon as the shooting started, and they had stayed down, out of the field of fire, until all the shooting had stopped.
And no one had any idea what had become of Schaefer in all this chaos. When the shooting had finally stopped he was simply gone, and the men in the dark suits were gone with him. The lab said that none of the bloodstains at the scene were Schaefer’s; all of them matched neatly with one or another of the known dead. That meant that Schaefer had probably still been alive when he vanished.
Rasche was pleased to hear that-pleased, but not surprised. He wasn’t entirely sure it was possible to kill Schaefer.
He was a bit less pleased that none of the bloodstains or fibers provided any leads on the men in suits. “Feds,” Rasche muttered at the mention of the dark suits. Everyone knew that federal agents generally favored dark suits. “Philips,” Rasche said.
As soon as Weston had mentioned the name Philips, Rasche had known that somehow Schaefer was involved with those things again, those sadistic predators from outer space.
Who the hell was Smithers, though? Rasche had never heard of any fed named Smithers.
Smithers was his lead, that was who Smithers was.
Rasche didn’t have legal access to the NYPD computers anymore, but his friends did, and they were glad to “demonstrate” the system for a visiting sheriff. Military records brought up 212 entries under “Smithers” for personnel on active duty; Rasche was able to eliminate most of them at a glance.
When he got to one of them he stopped looking. The match was good enough that Rasche didn’t see the need to look any further.
Smithers, Leonard E., age thirty-four, U.S. Army colonel, involved in CIA operations dating back to the Reagan administration, present assignment classified. Commanding officer, General Eustace Philips.
Philips. Philips and Smithers. That had to be the right one.
Smithers had an office address in midtown listed-and, Rasche decided, it was time for a certain Oregon sheriff to pay that office a visit.
Getting a cab was easy-that was one thing he had missed about New York. If you wanted a cab in Bluecreek you phoned Stan’s Taxi and waited forty minutes. You didn’t just step off the curb and wave. And you could just forget about buses or subways.
On the other hand, in Bluecreek he didn’t have to listen to Greek cabdrivers talk about how everyone blamed the Serbs, when it was the Albanians who caused all the trouble. It was a relief to escape onto the sidewalk and into the nondescript office tower.
The building had a military guard in dress uniform in the lobby; Rasche flashed his badge. “Rasche, Bluecreek sheriff’s department-I’m here on police business. Colonel Smithers, please.”
”Yes, sir,” the guard said, hauling out a register bound in dirty blue vinyl. “Room 3710. Please sign in, stating the reason for this visit.”
Rasche smiled and signed in; for his reason he scrawled, “To kick some ass.”
The guard either didn’t read it or didn’t care; he didn’t say a word as Rasche stamped down the corridor and boarded an elevator.
Rasche didn’t like seeing the military involved in Schaefer’s disappearance. Schaefer’s brother Dutch had disappeared without a trace years before, when he’d been on some secret rescue mission and had run up against the alien hunters; he’d lost his squad but come out of the whole business alive, and then he’d vanished. The last
