wondered how well it would work in these conditions. Stray bits of metal debris, scattered on the bottom, forced him and the parade of divers behind to sidestep often — nothing they walked on exploded.
It took more than an hour of this, underwater, to get close to shore. As nonchalantly as they could, they proceeded along the bottom until, one by one, their heads and then their torsos broke the surface. They wiped their hood faceplates as clean as they could; Nyurba’s view was streaked by oil and worse.
Nyurba looked around, catching his first glimpse of his ancestral homeland — now to him foreign soil whose sovereignty he was violating in direct contravention of international law. After they dressed in Russian Army Spetsnaz uniforms, having come here to commit acts of war, if captured he and his men could — according to the Geneva Conventions as Moscow might choose to interpret them — be summarily executed by firing squad.
The looming threat didn’t really bother Nyurba. He and his men had arrived to kill or be killed. His rules of engagement said that lethal force was authorized to preserve the security of the operation, and no one could let themselves be taken alive. Each squadron member had a cyanide pill and a pistol; the medics were bringing enough morphine syrettes to — if need be — put all of them to sleep forever. He knew that real Spetsnaz in wartime worked the same way.
The terrain to Nyurba’s front was barren and flat, the Arctic tundra on the fringe of the Kolyma Lowland. The sound of the surf was muted by his antiradiation hood. The wind was strong, maybe fifteen knots, and blew in his face, off the land.
They pressed on, plodding through the thigh-high breaking waves that shoved and tugged at their bodies, and onto a strip of gravel that crunched beneath their swim fins and Kevlar combat bootie heels. The mine detector still hadn’t found any mines. The tidal range was modest, but the high-water line was well inland because the beach slope was so gradual. The high-water line was discolored with scum and goo in livid green, sickly pink, and clotted black. Dead fish and dead birds floated among the waves or lay decomposing on the gravel; others had been reduced by hardy bacteria to skeletons, or to nothing but scattered bleached bones and bits of feathers. Nyurba was very glad that his suit and respirator kept out the smells. He saw no sign whatsoever of seals or polar bears, and wasn’t surprised.
The team made no attempt at concealment. They didn’t remove their firearms from the waterproof equipment bags — not yet. Their radiation suits were colored blaze orange, for maximum visibility. From now on only Russian would be spoken. The intention was to hide in plain sight.
Their cover story for this mission phase, in the unlikely case that someone came along the beach and asked, was straightforward: They were Navy Spetsnaz troops on a training operation, infiltrating a simulated nuclear battlefield.
None of the men carried papers or any ID, since Spetsnaz wouldn’t do so on a practice or full-blown op — nor would rogues or terrorists, or German
Nyurba reached for his respirator mouthpiece, and grabbed it with his gloved hand through the flexible material of his hood — this way he could speak. He told the nine guys with him to rest while they had the opportunity, then inserted the respirator back between his teeth. They put down their backpacks and bags, unfastened their tethers and lanyards, and removed the Velcro straps — no longer needed — from around their suits, so they could move about more freely. Even so, their walking was slower than normal, ponderous and deliberate; out of the water, the radiation suits and respirators inside were heavy.
Nyurba glanced out to sea. He examined the lonely floe and its hummock, only four miles away. From here, the camouflage was convincing. The birds that had roosted on it earlier were gone. The horizon in that direction was hazy from mist. The sun was to his right as he gazed at the water, low in the sky, northeast. It provided a glaring, diffuse light through thin overcast.
It occurred to Nyurba that today was the Fourth of July.
Nyurba used his instruments to make and record more measurements of the water, the air, and the grit between the larger pieces of gravel. He used a sample kit to collect small portions of the different-colored goos. This information would be of great importance soon, and later.
Not only would he study it to advise the squadron on which decontamination techniques to follow, and what German-made detoxifying medications to take. Eventually, if they returned from the mission, the data would be invaluable to environmental scientists in the U.S. already planning the postwar global cleanup effort. Secretly quantifying in detail the chemical and radioactive mess in this particular climate, at this high latitude, would fill in crucial blanks, extending available data from nearer the equator, thereby bracketing the latitude range of Europe — still a potential tactical nuclear battleground. Far more realistic, efficient, and cost-effective methods could then be devised to help heal the war-maimed worldwide ecology.
He’d already heard rumors of wonderful things, such as genetically engineered pumpkins and thistles that grew in harsh climates, absorbed and retained uranium and plutonium, and were unpalatable to animals. Harvesting these plants, and disposing of them properly, cleaned the soil and made it fertile again.
Nyurba would continue his data collection, in different ways and for different reasons, throughout the squadron’s march to the missile field, their assault, the unauthorized launch of Russian ICBMs, and their attempted escape back to the water many miles away from here. As second-in-command under Kurzin, it was standard for him to be the unit’s decontamination specialist. As a Seabee Engineer Recon Team veteran, he had the expertise to assess this pollution meaningfully in the context of coastal and inland topography, soil drainage, and other factors.
He noticed a sign posted near the beach, with its back to him. Using the mine detector as a precaution, he went up the gravel toward the sign. As he got closer he saw it was made of corroded sheet metal, nailed to a weathered gray wood post. Rust from the nail heads streaked down the front of the sign. The post stood at a cockeyed angle.
He laughed out loud, almost madly, when he realized what the sign said. It was ridiculous, but it had been placed here by a government, a system that subsequent history showed was transcendentally hypocritical and outrageously absurd.
The sign, so faded and stained it was barely legible, warned labor camp escapees that the swim from here to Alaska was two thousand kilometers. It said that their labor belonged to the Soviet State. They should go back to camp and turn themselves in and they wouldn’t be punished.
He wondered what incredible idiot had ever thought to put such a notice here. He wondered if anyone it was meant for had ever, once, been by to see it. It was an emblem of personal tragedies, tens of millions of them, most of which would go forever untold.
Shaking his head in a mix of regret and disgust, he returned to his men.
Four hours after he’d first emerged by this beach in northern Siberia, the last of the eighty commandos came into sight. Nyurba knew instantly, just from the arrogant way in which the suit hood moved, and the bullish manner in which he walked through the surf, that his superior, Lieutenant Colonel Kurzin, had arrived. Kurzin immediately barked orders, muffled through his suit but clear enough.
Nyurba also issued orders. The squadron formed up into four infantry platoons, each of two squads. They moved out, crossing the beach at an angle, aiming for the nearest branch of the Alazeja’s mouth. Nyurba stayed with the lead platoon, acting as Kurzin’s deputy and monitoring for toxins from in front. Other platoons deployed to cover both flanks. Kurzin, with the headquarters platoon, brought up the rear as he had in the water.
The beach petered out. They stepped onto the Arctic tundra proper. Beneath their feet the permafrost was spongy; six feet down it became as hard as concrete, and stayed that way year-round. A mixture of compacted snow, sand, gravel, and larger stones, it was a leftover from the last ice age — excavations sometimes unearthed the remains of woolly mammoths. Permafrost’s remarkable seasonal properties dominated, even defined, the whole look and feel of the different environmental belts of Siberia, before man’s interference. In some places it reached
