“So he did die.” it sounded parts relieved parts disappointed out of the mask.
“Better this way. He wouldn’t have liked this.”
The barrel of the gun slowly unzipped her overall.
“Stop it!” she screamed and took a step back.
The glass with the candle fell onto the rail, shards flew around and darkness took over.
“Don’t you get it? Nobody returns from here.” the scarecrow looked at her indifferently out of the dark dead glasses. “Your body isn’t even enough to pay for the trip, but it may just pay for your father’s debt.”
The assault rifle swirled in his hands so that the stock of the gun pointed forward. Sasha felt a heavy blow to her forehead. Her consciousness showed pity and left her.
Since the Nachimovski prospect Hunter hadn’t left Homer out of his sight, so that he hadn’t been able to take a closer look into the notebook. Suddenly the brigadier cared, he even tried to not just to not let him fall behind any further but to match Homer’s speed. For that Hunter had to slow down a lot.
Several times he had stopped and turned around checking if somebody was following them. But the blinding light of his lamp was always pointed at Homer face so that the old man felt like he was being interrogated.
He cursed, blinked and tried to remain calm. The penetrating look of the brigadier moved over his entire body, searching for the item he had found at the Nachimovski prospect. Nonsense! Of course Hunter couldn’t have seen anything, in that moment he had been too far away. He had probably felt the change in Homers behavior. But every suspecting something. But every time their looks met he started to sweat. The few things that he had been able to read had made him question the brigadier’s intentions.
It was the diary. Parts of the pages were glued together by dried blood. Homer left those alone, his tired and numb fingers would have just ripped them apart. The entries on the first pages were confusing, as if the author no longer knew which letters meant what and his thoughts ran all over the place so that you almost couldn’t follow them.
“Passed the Nagornaya without casualties.” revealed the notebook and jumped on immediately: “Chaos at the Tulskaya. No way to the metro. Hanza isn’t letting anybody through. We can’t go back as well.”
Homer continued to read. Out of his field of vision he saw the brigadier stepping down from the kurgan and approaching him. He couldn’t let the diary fall into the brigadiers hands. Before he let the notebook disappear in his backpack he read: “Have the situation under control. The station is sealed and we have a new commander.” and then “Who dies next?”
Written over the question was the date. The yellowed pages of the notebook made him believe that what had happened in it had happened in the last century, but the entry was only a couple of days old.
Homers old brain put together the single pieces of this mosaic with almost forgotten speed: The mysterious wanderer, the pitiful homeless man at the Nagatinskaya, the seemingly familiar voice of the guard at the door and the sentence: “We can’t go back as well”. In front of his inner eye he had put it together to one picture. Maybe the pages that were stuck together had all the answers to the mysterious events?
At least one thing was sure; there had been no attack on the Tulskaya. What had happened there was far more complex and mysterious. And Hunter that had questioned the guards fifteen minutes ago knew that as well as Homer.
That was why he couldn’t show the notebook to Hunter.
And that was why he had risked disagreeing with him in Istomins office.
“No, we can’t storm the station.” he repeated. Hunter slowly turned his head, like a battleship that readied its main cannon. Istomin pushed back his chair and came out from behind the table after all.
The colonel made a tired grimace.
“We can’t blow up the door.” Homer continued, “Because there is the groundwater, we would flood the entire line. The Tulskaya is just barely holding it back, every day they hope that the ground water doesn’t break through. And you know that for ten years now the parallel tunnel has been…”
“Are we supposed to knock and wait till they open up?” the colonel interrupted.
“We can still go around.” said Istomin.
The colonel was so surprised that he started to cough. Then he argued with Istomin, accused him of wanting to make his best man into cripples, and bring them into their graves. But then the brigadier interrupted them.
“The Tulskaya has to be cleaned. This situation demands the total destruction of all that are there. Not one of your people is still there. They are all dead. If you want to prevent any more casualties this is the only way. I have all the necessary information.”
His last words were definitely aimed at Homer.
The old man felt like a small dog that had been shook so it would stop barking.
Istomin straightened his jacket: “If the way is blocked from the other side there is only one way to get to the Tulskaya. From the other side. From Hanza. But that also means that we can’t send armed men. That is out of the question.”
Hunter made a reassuring gesture with his hand: “I’ll find some.”
The colonel winced.
“But if you want to get to Hanza by going around you have to cross two stations over the Kaschovkaya line to the Kaschirskaya.” said Istomin and went silent.
The brigadier crossed his arms in front of his chest: “And?”
“There’s very high radiation in the area near the Kaschirskaya. A fragment of a warhead went down not far from there. There was no detonation but the radiation is still dangerously high. One out of two that gets a dose of radiation like that dies in about a month. Even now.”
The group went silent. Homer used the break to make an unnoticed, tactical retreat out of Istomins office.
Then Vladimir Ivanovitsch came to words again. It seemed that he feared that the uncontrollable brigadier would still try to blow up the hermetic door at the Tulskaya and said: “We have radiation suits.
Two of them. You can take one of our best fighters with you. We’ll wait.” He looked at the colonel.
“What can we do otherwise?”
Dennis Michailovitsch sighed. “Let’s go to the boys. We’ll talk about it and you can choose a companion.”
“Not necessary,” Hunter shook his head.
“I need Homer.”
CHAPTER 7
Limits
The railcar drove over the wide bright yellow stripe that ran over the ground and the ceiling. The man that controlled it could no longer act like he didn’t hear the faster and faster clicking sound of the Geiger counter. He reached for the brake and mumbled excusing: “Colonel sir, without any protection we can’t proceed…”
“Just another hundredth meters” asked Denis Michailovitsch. “Because of the high exposure you’ll get a week off. For us it is just a two minute drive but the two in the suits would take half an hour for it.”
“This here is the limit,” grumbled the helmsman but he didn’t dare to slow down.
“Stop” ordered Hunter. “We continue on foot. The radiation really is too high.”
The brakes squealed, the search light attached on the vehicles frame started to shake back and forth as the railcar came to a stop. The brigadier and Homer who had let their feet hang over the edge of the railcar jumped onto the rails. In their heavy suits made out off lead soaked material they looked like cosmonauts.
These suits were unimaginably expensive and rare; in the entire metro there were maybe a few dozen of them. At the Sevastopolskaya they had almost never been used – they had saved them for more important missions. They withstood the highest level radiation but even small movement was an arduous matter. At least for Homer.
