In warm weather, special ops forces never made cooking fires, an unnecessary luxury whose smoke and odor could compromise stealth. All around Nyurba, men ate cold high-calorie breakfasts out of their Russian field-ration pouches. With medics supervising, they gulped down pills to prevent diseases common in Siberia, strains of which were vaccine-resistant: hepatitis, dysentery, cholera, malaria, and a long list of dreadful parasites. As Kurzin watched, they also swallowed tablets picked from a menu that Nyurba prepared, after he’d taken updated measurements of the environment. These German-made drugs included chelation agents to reduce heavy-metal poisoning, and other pharmaceuticals that suppressed the neurological and genetic damage caused by some components in the pollution.
Nyurba made a face as he drank — the filtered water tasted awful. It wasn’t any better when he added a packet of instant coffee, stirring it with a spoon from his mess kit. Like the others, he had to lift his face net, resembling ones that beekeepers wore, each time he ingested something. Aside from being bitten again, it was hard to keep from swallowing bugs, or inhaling them.
“I’d almost rather just go without,” he said to Kurzin as he stared at the bottom of his empty drinking cup.
“Nonsense. We all need to keep up our strength. There’s nothing like a rousing jolt of caffeine when you’ve slept in the field.” Kurzin smacked his lips pointedly, but Nyurba knew this was more from the need to try to clear the persisting, bitter aftertaste of the water than it was from any sincere delectation.
Done with his morning chores, Nyurba surveyed their encampment and its surroundings. Sentries had been posted while their teammates slept, and they were relieved by others to maintain perimeter security. Up to now this was mostly a precaution — while they’d walked all day and most of the night they’d met no one but the Yakut herdsmen, and no aircraft had come within miles. But each day brought them closer to their target, which they knew would be heavily guarded, the area around it patrolled. Squadron discipline could not be relaxed.
Their camp was on a type of terrain feature peculiar to this part of the tundra, called a pingo by native Siberians. It was a sort of blister in the permafrost, a conical hill rising a hundred feet about their surroundings. Pingos at this time of year were covered with coarse yellow sedge grass. Their slopes provided good drainage, so their footing was firm and dry. They also made excellent lookout points.
It was 3 A.M. local time, and the sun shone, dull red, above another pingo to the northeast. Aside from the whine of insects and the occasional chirp of a bird, the loudest natural sound came from the river, a steady rushing and gurgling; the commandos themselves were virtually silent. Patches of morning mist, on lower ground, drifted in the slight breeze. Rising much higher above the tundra was a layer of smoggy haze. Wispy clouds floated slowly in the sky way overhead, but it was too light and too hazy to see any stars between the clouds. Nyurba took a deep breath. The smell of damp earth combined with something else that irritated and clung to the back of his throat. There was a smell in the air like burning wood and burning rubber combined with chlorine and ammonia. His instruments had confirmed what his nose was telling him, and had also picked up traces of formaldehyde, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, and phenol — an industrial solvent — and coal-tar aerosol — yet one more toxic pollutant. The smog came from factory complexes many miles off.
The team geared up and set out on their route march once again. Now they wore pressure spreaders attached to their boots, based on a traditional local design of short and wide work ski, but plastic with upturned edges — like a pair of small snowboards-cum-water-skis. They were needed to cross the tundra, which was becoming increasingly soggy. The Alazeja’s banks often gave way to stagnant marshes, which the men had to skirt. This area on their maps was marked
Nyurba trudged with the point squad, as they tried to pick their way between the mushiest patches of ground, to find spots where the footing was better. It was wearying, monotonous work, conducted always under harassment by relentless, bloodthirsty, giant mosquitoes and big horseflies. The work, the perspiration, and the insistent buzz of the insects went on all day.
Some of the puddles they passed gave off a rainbow sheen, tainted by raw petroleum or refinery spills. Other puddles, miles later, were colored bright red from iron oxide runoff.
They began to encounter another type of terrain feature unique to the tundra and taiga. Year after year of wintertime frost heave created oval-shaped ponds and bogs, each surrounded by a ring of stones and boulders. Fungi grew on these rocks, giving them a silvery or orange tint. Mushrooms sprouted around the ovals’ edges. The commandos wove between the ponds and bogs.
At some points the best route took them toward and then right along the Alazeja. Nyurba saw big logs, one after another after another, caught in pockets worn into the banks, or washed up in hordes on gravel beds at riverbends, or stranded midstream on rocks that formed small rapids. The logs obviously resulted from lumbering somewhere upriver — their ends were sliced by chainsaws and their branches had been lopped off. As the third day wore on, he must have seen thousands of these pieces of felled trees, from further south in the taiga belt. It was a sign of the chronic wastefulness of Russian fast resource extraction that they’d lose such quantities of valuable timber to begin with, and then not care.
Samples of the river showed it heavily laced with coliform germs — a marker of raw sewage — plus fertilizers, pesticides, and defoliants, even cyanide. The silt content was very high. Agricultural mismanagement on a monumental scale had putrefied millions of acres of once-fertile farm fields, turning them into poisonous dust to be washed away by thaw and rain, or blown away by the wind. Out-of-control clear-cutting made the erosion problem much worse. Nyurba detected traces of radioactive waste. He knew that underground tests had been conducted in Siberia, some military and some civilian, and fission by-products were leaching into the groundwater. The civilian tests had been for such mad purposes as mining natural gas cheaply, or digging canals.
At the end of the third day, extremely thirsty and tired but on schedule, they reached their next waypoint, where the Alazeja turned west. Here they made camp on the slopes of another pingo.
Nyurba took more air measurements, and soil and water samples; coal dust and kerosene were problems. He chose a pond where the water was least bad, though acidity readings shocked him. The men drank from their filtered supplies, ate, and took more drugs. They reloaded the reverse-osmosis modules from the pond, working the foot pumps to raise the air pressure that made the things go, so they’d have more drinking water in the morning.
After he and Kurzin checked that the field latrine was properly established, that the first sentry watch was posted, and that the men were settling in with no problems that platoon leaders or medics had to report, Nyurba unrolled his ground cloth. He laid out the thin sleeping bag that provided him modest shielding from the ever- present flying, hopping, and crawling insects. He got into the bag, with his AN-94 outside on the ground cloth — keeping it clean and dry but within easy reach. He smeared his face and neck, even his hair, with insect repellent, arranging the insect net to protect his head.
He fell asleep immediately.
In the morning, everyone attached the low-power optical scopes that were a standard part of the AN-94, clipping them onto brackets to the left of the iron sights. By squad, they took turns zeroing in on the sights, firing at targets improvised from tied tufts of sedge grass. The tufts would shiver and dance when they got hit. The rifle reports were loud, but the noise here was acceptable because they were still in the middle of nowhere.
The stench of bullet propellant mingled with the natural odors and the smog. The smog was thicker than the day before, and had a different mix of chemicals; the particulate content was higher — soot from coal and fuel oil smoke from furnaces and boilers, and diesel exhaust. The men were stingy in their use of ammunition, as disciplined troops always were.
They collected all the spent brass. Then, squatting on their ground cloths, wearing gloves from now on so as not to leave fingerprints, they field-stripped and cleaned the firearms, including their pistols. The gloves were tight- fitting, flame-retardant and puncture-proof. Morale improved despite the increase in tension. Nyurba thought that using their weapons had helped to liven things up. The gunsmoke in his nostrils certainly gave him a surge of adrenaline, and of anticipation.
Kurzin addressed the squadron, in his usual curt and taciturn way. “One more day, men, fifty more miles. Then a few hours sleep, and we put in action what we’ve practiced for a year.
