Without looking back or changing his position, he unzipped his anorak, reached inside and came out with a blocky, wicked-looking short-barrelled automatic, its stubby silencer already attached. He checked the magazine, and silently eased it up again into the grip. And all of this done one-handed, with practiced ease, without pausing in the filming of the trucks in the ravine. Maybe the last couple of frames would be a bit off-centre. No big deal. Simonov was satisfied with what he'd got.
The tiny camera attached to Simonov's nite-lites clicked one last time and gave a warning whir, signalling that the sequence was complete. He undipped the camera and put it away. Then he wedged his binoculars securely in the base of a boulder, carefully cocked his pistol, squirmed about-face and got to his knees. Still concealed, he peered cautiously through the 'V formed where the tops of two rounded boulders leaned together. Nothing back there. Nothing he could see, anyway. Steep cliffs falling away for a thousand feet, with spurs extending here and there, and thinly-drifted snow lying white and gleaming on all flat surfaces. And way down there, obscured by the night, the tree-line and gentling lower slopes. Everything motionless and monochrome in dim starshine and occasional moonlight, where only the thin wind scattered little flurries of snow from the spurs and high ledges. There were plenty of places where men could hide themselves, of course — no one knew that better than Simonov, himself an expert in concealment — but on the other hand, if he'd been followed, why would they want to come up here? Easier to wait for him below, surely? Yet still the feeling persisted that he was not alone, that feeling which had grown in him increasingly over his last two or three visits to this place.
This place, this spawning ground for utterly alien monsters…
He got back down into his original position, recovered the nite-lites and brought them to his eyes. In the ravine, where the steep road hugged the face of the defile down to the towering twin walls of the dam and the curved lead surface between them, a cavernous opening in the cliff blazed with light. The last truck turned left off the road onto a level staging area, then passed in through huge, wheeled, steel-framed lead doors. A gang of yellow-clad traffic controllers flagged the truck rumblingly inside and out of sight, then followed it into the blaze of illumination under the cliff. Other men came hurrying down the road, gathering up flashing beacons. The great doors had clanged shut by the time they reached them, but a wicket-gate thick as the door of a vault had been left open, issuing a square beam of yellow light. It swallowed up the men with the traffic beacons, then was closed. The floodlights over the pass snapped out and left stark blackness in their wake. Only the dammed watercourse and the great lead shield were left to reflect the starshine.
But all of that lead down there. And these poisoned heights, a little more than mildly radioactive. And that Thing filmed by the AWACS as it did battle with the USAF jet fighters. Simonov couldn't suppress a small shudder, which this time wasn't due to the intense cold. He folded his nite-lites into a flat, leather-cased shape which he slipped inside his anorak with the strap still round his neck. Then for a moment longer he just lay there, his eyes staring into the enigmatic gulf below, his mind superimposing on the darkness the sequence of events he'd witnessed in London, recorded on that flickering AWACS film…
But even remembering it, he cringed away from it. Bad enough that he still occasionally saw it in his dreams! But could that… that… whatever it had been, could it really have come from here? A monstrous mutation? A gigantic, hideous warrior clone conjured in some crazed geneticist's incredible experiment? A 'biological' weapon outside all of man's previous experience and understanding? That was what he was here to find out. Or rather, it was what he was here to prove conclusively: that indeed this was where that Thing had been born — or made. That seething, pulsing, writhing -
Snow crunched softly, compacted by a stealthy footfall!
Simonov thrust himself to his feet, turning as he rose, and saw a head and staring eyes outlined briefly above the low jumble of rocks. His automatic was in his hand as he launched himself into a dive to the left of the boulders, his right arm outstretched, ready to target his weapon. A man in a pure white parka was crouched behind the boulders, with a gun in his hand which he even now lifted to point at Simonov. In the instant before Simonov came down on his side in the snow he snapped off two shots; the first one struck the man in the shoulder, snatching him upright, and the second slammed into his chest, flinging him backwards and down onto the patchy snow.
The dull phut, phut, of Simonov's silenced weapon had caused no echoes, but he'd scarcely caught his breath when there came a hoarse, gasping grunt from close at hand and silver glinted in a sudden flood of moonlight. The snow on Simonov's left-hand side, not eighteen inches away, erupted in a spray of frantic activity. 'Bastard!' a voice snarled in Russian as a massive hand reached out to grasp Simonov's hair and an ice-axe came arcing down, its spike impaling his gun-hand through the wrist and almost nailing it to the stony ground.
The Russian had been lying in a snow-filled depression, waiting. Now he sprawled forward, trying to hurl his bulk on top of Simonov. The agent saw a dark face, a white bar of snarling teeth framed in a beard and a ruff of white fur, and drove his left elbow into it with as much force as he could muster. Teeth and bone crunched and the Russian gave a gurgling shriek, but he didn't release his grip on Simonov's hair. Then, cursing through blood and snot, the massive Soviet drew back his ice-axe for a second swipe.
Simonov tried to bring his gun to bear. Useless — there was no feeling in his hand, which flopped like a speared fish. The Russian hunched over him, dripped blood on him, changed his grip to Simonov's throat and drew back his axe menacingly.
'Karl!' came a voice from the shadows of other boulders. 'We want him alive!'
'How much alive?' Karl choked the words out, spitting blood. But in the next moment he dropped the axe and instead drove a fist hard as iron to Simonov's forehead. The spy went out like a light, almost gladly.
A third Russian figure came out of the night, went to his knees beside Simonov's prone form. He felt the unconscious man's pulse, said: 'Are you all right, Karl? If so, please see to Boris. I think this one put a couple of bullets into him!'
'Think? Well, I was closer than you and I can assure you he did!' Karl growled. Gingerly touching his broken face with trembling fingertips, he went to where Boris lay spread-eagled.
'Dead?' the man on his knees beside Simonov enquired, his voice low.
'As a side of beef,' Karl grunted. 'Dead as that one should be,' he pointed an accusing finger at Simonov. 'He's killed Boris, messed up my face — you should let me twist his fucking head off!'
'Hardly original, Karl,' the other tut-tutted. He stood up.
He was tall, this leader, but slender as a rod even in his bulky parka. His face was pale and thin-lipped, sardonic in the moonlight, but his sunken eyes were bright as dark jewels. His name was Chingiz Khuv and he was a Major — but in his specialized branch of the KGB the wearing of uniforms and the use of titles and rank were to be avoided. Anonymity increased productivity, ensured longevity. Khuv forgot who'd said that, but he agreed wholeheartedly: anonymity did both of those things. But at the same time one must make sure it did not detract from authority.
'He's an enemy, isn't he?' Karl growled.
'Oh, yes, he's that all right — but he's only one and our enemies are many. I agree it would be very satisfying to squeeze his throat, and who knows but that you'll get your chance — but not until I've squeezed his brain.'
'I need attention.' Karl held snow tenderly to his face.
'So does he,' Khuv nodded at Simonov. 'And so does poor Boris.' He went back to his hiding place in the rocks and brought out a pocket radio. Extending its aerial, he spoke into the mouthpiece, saying: 'Zero, this is Khuv. Get the rescue chopper up here at once. We're a kilometer up-river from the Projekt, on top of the eastern ridge. The pilot will see my torch… Over.'
'Zero: at once, Comrade — out,' came back the answer, tinny and with a touch of static. Khuv took out a heavy-duty torch and switched it on, stood it upright on the ground and packed snow around its base. Then he unzipped Simonov's anorak and began to turn out his pockets. There wasn't much: the nite-lites, spare clips for the automatic, Russian cigarettes, the slightly crumpled photograph of a slim peasant girl sitting in a field of daisies, a pencil and tiny pad of paper, half a dozen loose matches, an 'official' Soviet Citizen's ID, and a curved strip of rubber half an inch thick by two inches long. Khuv stared at the block of black rubber for long moments. It had indentations that looked like -
Teeth marks!' Khuv nodded.
'Eh?' Karl mumbled. He had come to see what Khuv was doing. He spoke through a handful of bloody snow with which he staunched the wounds to his nose and lips. 'What? Did you say teeth marks?'
Khuv showed him the rubber. 'It's a makeshift gum-shield,' he informed. 'I'd guess he puts it in at night — to
