"Yeah, but relax. You don't have to show it. Guy said, what was the point? Nobody came unless it was their day."

Ryan pulled the freezie nearer to him. "Listen, Rick and listen hard. You don't ask that kind of question unless I tell you."

"Sure. But it's all right."

"Mebbe. Mebbe not. We keep as quiet as we can. Don't draw attention. Right?"

Rick nodded. "Sure. Read you loud and clear, boss. From now on it's low-profile city."

 

MAJOR-COMMISSAR ZIMYANIN had been allocated one of the better wags run by Internal Security. It had once been a Mercedes saloon, but the rear end had been crushed in an accident. The rebuilding had been done by various hands at various times and now little remained of the original auto. But it ran well and the heater worked.

Zimyanin was on his way to talk personally to one or two of the witnesses who'd seen the trio of strangers. The letter to the marshal had worked even more dramatically than he'd hoped.

The call had come through direct on Zimyanin's personal sec line. He'd picked up the cracked Bakelite receiver and held it to his ear without saying anything, guessing who his caller might be.

"Are you there?"

"Yes, Comrade Marshal?"

"Your letter! Have you lost your mind, Major?"

Zimyanin didn't reply for several seconds. Then, "No."

"No! Is that all you have to say?"

Again a careful pause. "Yes."

"But, but-- You can't-- Do you realize what a letter like this means?"

"It means I believe we may have a full condition red."

"Americans! There hasn't been any proved evidenced of Americans within our country for more years than I can recall."

"I think they are here now."

"Proof?"

Zimyanin smiled. It was the concession, the sign of weakening that he had guessed would eventually appear. Siraksi couldn't take the chance, however remote, that the suspicion might prove correct.

"Once I take them, you will have the proof, Comrade Marshal."

"If you do not take them?" The senior officer was slowly recovering his control. "Then what?"

"Then you'll be correct and I will not, Comrade Marshal."

There was a long, hanging silence. "You think you know them?"

For the first time, Zimyanin hesitated for a moment before replying. "I think it is possible that I have once met that one-eyed man and the woman."

"Your adventure in the Kamchatka? The same man, Comrade Major-Commissar? Could they have invaded us from the far northeast and trekked all the way to Moscow?" The voice was considering its own question. "Yes, yes, it is possible. You have my authority to go to condition orange and put any sec forces you need on red standby. Where are you going to search for them?"

Zimyanin was going to play a hunch. "Their trail leads directly to the heart of the ville, Comrade Marshal. Through Govorovo and Nikulino, into Ramenki and up to the river. I suddenly thought what lay in their path, what they might not be able to resist. You know?"

"What?"

"Pamyatnik," Zimyanin told him,

"Of course. Yes, of course. Brilliant, my dear boy. Brilliant! The Museum of the Peoples' Struggle Against the Oppressors of the United States! Yes, I'm sure you're right."

"I'm going there myself."

 

RYAN, KRYSTY AND RICK had finally reached the front of the seemingly endless lineup, enduring the biting cold and the flurries of fresh snow, as well as the hectoring and bullying of the patrolling female sec guards.

Just as he passed under the portico of the building, Ryan glanced out into the wide street. A maroon passenger wag drove by and slowed down. The passenger was speaking to the driver, a uniformed man, bare-headed, totally bald, with a long drooping mustache.

Ryan was struck by the man's close resemblance to the Russian they'd met in Alaska, though the name eluded him.

"Zimyanin," Ryan finally whispered.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

 

 

 IT WAS one of the most amazing buildings that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

Over the years he'd watched a number of scratched old vids, and some of them had been set in big churches and huge, stately edifices, the like of which no longer existed in the Deathlands. The anti-American memorial was that kind of building. Though it did show some evidence of the sky-blackening nuking the ville had suffered, it was still in incredibly good shape.

The entrance hall soared several stories high, with a vaulted roof, one corner patched and marred with a tangle of metal scaffolding. Several of the windows on the northern flank had been destroyed, but some of the others remained intact. Panes of colored glass were bound about with lead strips. Despite the dull weather outside, the stained glass glowed with the richness of the huesazures and scarlets, deep cobalts and pale greens.

The pictures were what Ryan recognized as being religious subjects, though he'd always believed that the Russians had been a godless people. Here were old men with snowy beards and circles of golden light around their heads, little babies in white robes, tiny silver wings sprouting from between their shoulders.

The sound of the villagers' shuffling feet echoed through the hollow mausoleum, like the faint clapping of an immeasurably distant host. Once they were inside, the pressure from the sec forces eased. The maroon uniforms were replaced by a dull green, worn by a number of elderly men and women who seemed to function as both ushers and guides. They shepherded the throng along the winding corridor, following the route marked out by a sequence of black arrows.

Overhead was a booming, crackling voice, so distorted by the echo that it was barely possible to make out any words. Ryan looked inquiringly at Rick, who shrugged his shoulders. He put his head to one side and tried to concentrate, listening to the message repeating itself several times before he moved in close to Ryan and whispered in his ear.

"Yeah. It just welcomes us to the Memorial Exhibition, tells us to keep to the left and keep moving, not block corridors, where toilets are and all that kind of stuff."

Krysty had been listening to Rick. "Where are they?" she asked.

"What?"

"The toilets, you stupe!"

"Oh. I think he said they were on this level, at the bottom of the main flight of stairs up into the first exhibition hall. Yeah. Look, there they are. See the signs?"

That was something that hadn't changed at all since before the long grayness.

Ryan and Rick waited together in the main hall while Krysty picked her way between the lines of people, vanishing into the doorway marked with a childlike drawing of a female figure.

"What kind of stuff's going to be in here?" Rick asked.

It was Ryan's turn to shrug. "Who knows? I guess there would have been a kind of American... what's the word I want?"

"Embassy?"

"Yeah. That's it. There'd have been one of them in the ville. Russkies could've raided things from there."

Rick nodded. "Guess so. Mebbe some propaganda movies and posters as well. It seems to me as if this place is almost like a shrine. There's sort of a religious feel to it."

"Like a church, you mean?"

"Yeah. But instead of being dedicated to love and humanity, this looks like it's probably devoted to keeping the flame of hatred still burning bright and hot."

They were talking quietly, trying to keep out of people's way. But one of the old men came up to them and said something sharply, pointing to the flight of stairs and the first of the arrows.

Rick nodded and pointed to the sign for the ladies' rest room, grinning at the usher and making a, "Women! What can you do about them?" sort of gesture with his hands. The Russian's face cracked into an understanding smile and he walked away, leaving them alone.

At the top of the stairs Ryan could just make out some huge black-and-white portraits, at least thirty feet high. They'd been daubed with great smears of bright vermilion paint, looking like fresh blood.

"Who're they? I recognize that one in the middle. Kennedy, isn't it?"

The freezie peered up. "My eyes aren't so good today, Ryan. Yeah, that's Jack. And there's Teddy, Harry, Dwight, Richard and and all of 'em."

"Who's that fat, ugly one at the end? With the kind of scar on his cheek?"

"You're kidding me, Ryan."

"No. So much red paint I can't recognize it at all."

Rick shook his head. "Him of all men! So soon you forget! After the nineties and all the political in-fighting you know who suddenly came popping out of the closet like the old wooden nickel, don't you?"

Ryan looked again at the seamed face, the hanging jowls and the hunted, darting eyes. "You don't mean that!"

"Yeah, who else?"

"But I thought there was some kind of..."

"Scandal?" The freezie grinned like a hungry wolf.

"Sure. Didn't he--?"

One of the elderly men in green uniforms was wandering toward them again and Ryan closed his mouth, pretending a sudden interest in the vaulted stucco of the high ceiling.

Krysty chose that moment to reappear, flashing a smile at him. "Hi, lover," she whispered. "Ready to go check out the show?" Arm in arm they moved slowly up the massive staircase, Rick panting at their heels, hanging on to the wide brass balustrade.

The arrows led them along the corridors, a part of the silent, shuffling throng of patient Russians. When they reached an exhibit, Rick would pause and gather his breath, translating what the captions and slogans said in a low voice.

It was a confusing blur of fact and fantasy. Ryan's own knowledge of the years immediately preceding sky-dark was limited to some old vids and a few crumbling tabloids that he'd seen among the ruins. Krysty was a little better informed, but Rick had lived it all and he was able to distinguish for them what was true and what was not.

Much of the exhibit was in the form of posters, some of them running all the way from floor to ceiling. And there were whole rooms covered in painted slogans. Rick read them silently, occasionally reciting some part to the other two.

Once he shook his head and sighed. "Something's happening here, but I don't know what it is, do you?"

In the center of the building was a huge atrium, with patched and broken skylights, and balconies ringing it at every level. Here they had a chance to snatch a breath and relax a moment. Most of the locals around them took the opportunity to smoke roll-ups, plucking them from pockets in their ragged furs and cupping them in their hands, like children breaking school rules.

"It's amazing," Rick said, glancing around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear their conversation.

"Yeah. Figure we should be out and looking for the tools we want."

"Patience is the greatest of all virtues, Ryan, my friend. This is a once in a lifetime chance for me." He paused, continuing ruefully, "And you gotta remember I don't have all that much lifetime left."

"Is it just a way of keeping the old fires of hatred glowing?" Krysty asked. Ryan noticed that her sentient hair had curled in, tight and defensive, against her nape.

Rick sniffed. His face was pallid and there were dark rings around his eyes. "Yeah. The way they tell it, it was us that started the nuking. Sneak attack, like Pearl Harbor. Posters say that the whole of the North American continent was vaporized and sank without a trace, no survivors, hundred percent chill. Zero. Zilch. All gone."

"But if their barons claim that everyone got chilled, why bother with all this shit?" Ryan waved his hand around the echoing hall. "What's the point of it, Rick?"

"The Party says remember. Says to remember is never to make the same mistakes again."

"What mistakes?" Krysty asked.

"Posters say that they tried for friendship in the eighties and into the nineties."

"True?" Ryan asked.

"Sure. Called glasnost. But peace is a two-way street. We went along it, then the guys running the store on Mockba Boulevard began to get cold feet. Folks in equivalent positions in the Pentagon got to feeling the same way. All downhill from there. Wrongs on both sides. Men with the guns had the loudest voices. I marched and demonstrated and all that stuff. It didn't make a hoot or a holler of difference. Cold got colder. Shutters fell and frontiers closed. Hell, you guys know the story. I guess we could open a place like this in the ruins of Washington and tell the same twisted truths and torn lies."

It was one of the longest speeches they'd ever heard Richard Neal Ginsberg make.

Ryan noticed that a slender woman in a green uniform was looking at them, head on one side, as if something about them rang some kind of bell for her. It was enough.

"Let's go," he said quietly, hand dropping automatically to the butt of the SIG-Sauer blaster.

They trailed on into the depths of the vast, rambling building.

 

OUTSIDE, Zimyanin had left his wag and walked briskly through the watery spring sunshine, up the stairs to the entrance of the museum. He showed his sec pass to the woman on the doors and explained his mission to her. She switched on her lapel voice-trans and passed the message about the three outlanders the sec force was to look for.

"One-eyed man, red-haired woman, one other male. Orders from--" Zimyanin interrupted her, and she altered what she'd been about to say. "Do not apprehend. Notify main sec control at front entrance."

"How many other exits, Comrade Sister?" he asked her.

She pointed them out to him on a faded map, beneath a worn sheet of clear plastic. Zimyanin looked carefully at it and nodded, snapping out orders to have all the exits covered.

"It will take several minutes, Comrade Major-Commissar," she replied.

"Quick as you can. I do not think a few seconds one way or the other will make very much difference."

Which was one of the rare mistakes made by the stocky, pockmarked sec man.

 

ABOUT A HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, Ryan and the other two were staring disbelievingly at some glass cases in one of the halls.

Rick glanced around them, but nobody seemed very interested. Dust lay thick on the shelves, smudging the outlines of what was on them.

"Tools," Rick breathed. "Hell's bloody bells! Everything we could need."

"What's the notice say?" Krysty asked.

"Just that these were found in the imperialist's dacha in the country, and that they were used for purposes of espionage."

"Espionage?"

"Spying, Ryan. But they're mat-trans tools, just what we need to fix the doors. That movable wrench and those there, and that and that."

"Wouldn't like them all, would you?" Ryan whispered sarcastically.

"No. Just those five I pointed at."

"Attracting some attention, friends," Krysty whispered. "And I'm getting a bad feeling. Better move on. We could come back and lift this after dark. No sec locks anywhere."

"Who'd want to steal this old junk?" Rick asked, eyes wide with delight. "Just us."

They were near the end of the unguided tour, and they could actually taste fresh air after the humidity and stink of sweat and damp clothes. There seemed to be just one more room to visit. It had a large notice at its entrance, and they had become aware of a new liveliness among the Russians, all wearing smiles of anticipation.

"What's it say, Rick?" Ryan asked.

"Don't know."

"Guess?"

"It's something about a place where feelings can be shown, and patriotic anger demonstrated for the Party."

"Oh, Gaia!" Krysty breathed, first in line into the vast room, which displayed only a single glass case at its center.

The sides of the glass were slick with a torrent of human spittle, almost obscuring what rested inside the case--a tattered Stars and Stripes.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

 

 THE SCENE HAD NO REALITY. Ryan recalled a dreadful nightmare that the Trader had once shared with him.

"When I was a knee-high brat, I was in this shack in some frontier pest-hole ville. Looked out the window and I saw myself. But I was a real old man, stooped over and bent. White hair. Lined face. Dribbling eyes. What was so bad was that I had this vision that one day I'd be an old man, just like that. And I'd be outside a house in some frontier pest-hole ville. I'd look at the shack and see someone at the window. A young kid's face, scared and horrified beyond any believing. And it'd be me."

Ryan had never forgotten that story, with its frightening and bitter flavor of unreality. That moment in the Moscow museum had that same appalling taste.

There was an armed guard at each corner of the case, watching each man and woman as they filed past. The line ran between faded crimson ropes that were hooked over metal stands, but it was moving fast and eager, jostling in the push and hurry to get to the front and have the moment.

One by one they would pause in front of the scorched and ragged flag, hawking up saliva as they got ready, then spitting it out so that it splattered against the filthy glass, hanging there before sliding toward the shallow metal trough that ran all around the case.

"No," Rick said quietly, looking around for some means of escape.

"Yes," Ryan hissed. "Us getting chilled won't help Old Glory."

"Can't," the freezie insisted.

The one-eyed man reached out and gripped him by the arm very casually, fingers tightening like chromed steel clamps.

Rick whimpered, legs weakening, and he nearly fell. Only Ryan's hand held him upright. "Please," he begged.

"We go and we do it. Do it good. Then we get out. And we think of some way of getting back in here, Rick. Understand?"

"Yes, yes. Just let go of-- Oh, that was real shitty."

"Saved three lives, friend. And one of them was mine."

"But not the flag," the freezie muttered. "That's the bottom of the fucking tube, Ryan."

"When we come back after the tools, lover," Krysty suggested, "mebbe we could collect the flag at the same time."

"Could be." Ryan nodded.

With the narrowed eyes of the guards scanning everyone's face, there was no way of cheating. Ryan swallowed hard as he neared the head of the line, feeling the dryness in his mouth. He eased Krysty ahead of him, staying close to Rick in case the freezie lost his nerve at the last moment. If that happened, he'd already decided to push him aside, grab Krysty and make a run for it.

But the line moved so fast that the moment had come and gone almost before they realized it.

Ryan concentrated on looking at the flag. There was a large card notice, barely readable, which he assumed told the Russians where the Stars and Stripes had come from. By the burn marks along one ragged edge he guessed it could have been from the ruins of the U.S. Embassy in the ville.

Ahead of him, Krysty snarled, hawked and spit vigorously.

Rick hesitated for a cold fraction of a second, then managed a creditable amount of spittle. Ryan performed blankly and unemotionally, moving to follow the others across the hall toward what he guessed must be an exit.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed one of the guards take the small black voice-trans from his lapel and press it against his ear, obviously finding some difficulty in hearing what was said in the center of the echoing building and speaking urgently into it. He listened again, then snapped his head around, eyes raking the crowd.

Ryan knew.

One of the reasons he'd lived as long as he had in the Deathlands, on the sharp edge, was that he never ignored a hair-prickling feeling.

He moved a few steps ahead, collecting Rick with one hand, bumping into Krysty, brushing aside the angry mumbles from the people in the line.

"Think they got an ace on the line at us," he whispered. "'Out. Fast."

 

ZIMYANIN TAPPED his gloved fingers gently against the edge of the desk, his voice deceptively soft as he talked to the quivering official in charge of the museum.

"One minute, you say?"

"No more, Comrade Major-Commissar. I promise you of that."

Zimyanin nodded. "And your people are sure? Sure of these three?"

"Oh, yes. Yes indeed. Yes, there is no doubt of it, Comrade Major-Commissar."

"My own patrols were on the streets. Threw up blocks. But no sign. Perhaps they are still in here? No?"

"No, Comrade Major-Commissar. We closed it immediately and it has been searched from top to bottom and from bottom to top and from side to side and from...." His voice faded and died as he realized he'd run out of options.

"I believe you, Comrade."

The official was more terrified than he'd ever been of this bald man with the long mustache and eyes like chips of river ice who strutted in his office, his voice caressing like a silken whip. The room seemed too small, the air too thick and choking. The man wanted desperately to go to the rest room, but didn't dare to mention it.

Zimyanin ticked off the points. "Tough-seeming outlander. One eye. Tall woman with very red hair. A third man. Nobody noticed much about him. One woman said she thought he nearly fell over, and two of the visitors said they thought they heard the outlanders talking in..." he glanced down at his notes, "ah, yes. Talking in a strange way. And they've vanished like smoke. Such a shame your communication system worked so slowly and so badly, Comrade. Such a great shame."

"Indeed, yes, Comrade Major-Commissar. I shall make sure it's improved."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"But it is not good and you...." The words again drifted into stillness. The pressure on the official's bladder was becoming intolerable.

"You have good furs, Comrade?"

Was this a trick question? "I think so, Comrade Major-Commissar," he replied cautiously.

"Good. The winters out on the Kamchatka Peninsula are cold, Comrade. The summers are also cold. But the winters ah, they are very cold."

"Why would-- you don't-- surely...?"

"It's bleak work scraping frozen shit out of the middens of the mutie camps, Comrade."

"But--"

Zimyanin rarely indulged himself in anything approaching a joke, but he was feeling good, certain now that his intuition had been correct. There were Americans in the ville. He would find them and capture them.

"Yes, Comrade, the middens. But you must look to the bright future."

"The future? Bright, Comrade Major-Commissar?"

"Yes. After ten years of good behavior they will allow you to use a brush."

It was only as the sec officer walked from the room that the official realized he had pissed himself.

 

"CLOSE ISN'T THE WORD, Ryan." The freezie panted, doubled over against a tumbled brick wall, fighting for breath.

"Then what is the word?" Ryan replied. "Don't see your problem, Rick. We got away with six or seven seconds to spare. Roadblocks came down and we were at least ten yards up the highway from them."

"How'd they get on the trail, lover?" Krysty asked, pushing back an errant fiery curl from over her right eye.

"I don't...." Ryan rubbed his finger along the side of his nose. "I just saw, when we were outside the main entrance I could have sworn on heart's blood that I saw that Russkie again."

"Who?"

"His name was Zimyanin, Gregori Zimyanin. Mean-eyed son of a bitch. Met him once. I'll tell you about it, Rick. Put you in the picture. If it was him, then it could mean trouble. He knows me, and he was some kind of sec officer. Best hide up till dark. Make us some plans. Then move at night."

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

 

 

 "BALD-HEADED CRETIN!"

"True, dear Comrade Sister Anya. I can't deny it."

"Pock-faced imbecile!"

"No doubt at all, Comrade Sister Anya. Your vision is as sharp as ever."

"And stop agreeing with me!" Her voice was so shrill that Gregori Zimyanin feared that the window panes in their apartment would shatter.

"Whatever you say, Comrade Sister"

The cheap mug his wife held, crudely painted with the words A Happy Memory of Leningrad, shattered against the wall a few inches from his head, splinters showering him. He winced away from his wife's raging fury.

"That was a gift from old Uncle Fyodor," he protested. "He would be so upset to think that we didn't treasure his kind present to us."

"Fuck Uncle Fyodor!" she screamed.

"If you wish me to, Comrade Sister Anya, though I think the old man might vigorously resist my advances."

For a wonderful moment he thought that his wife was going to fall stricken to the threadbare carpet. A vein throbbed at her temple, and she actually slapped herself on the forehead in her anger.

With a valiant effort of will Anya controlled herself. She stood staring him down, hands on her heavy, peasant's hips, eyes narrowed deep in the sweating slabs of her face.

"Gregori Zimyanin."

"Good." He gently clapped the tips of his fingers together. "After barely six weeks you have mastered my name."

"Six of the worst weeks of any woman's life. They have worn me to a shadow."

Despite the cold anger that surged through his body, Zimyanin couldn't help smiling at his wife's words.

"A shadow. A shadow that weighs the same as a loaded sec wag, wouldn't you say, Comrade Sister Anya? Huh?"

"My mother warned me."

"Ah, yes, your mother. The prize sow of Terechevo! You should have heeded her warnings, my dear wife, should you not?"

Anya Zimyanin owned a polished .32-caliber blaster, thrown together in one of the small industrial units around the back of the Museum of the Peoples' Struggle. And he'd even taught her how to use it. His own 9 mm Makarov was in its holster, which hung on the back of the door. But he had a slim-bladed skinning knife sheathed at the small of his back.

The woman made an obscene gesture to her husband, using the little finger of her left hand, curving it as an indication of what she thought of his sexual prowess.

He replied in kind, carefully placing the tips of his middle fingers together as well as the tips of his thumbs, creating a large circle.

"Like a tunnel, dear Comrade Sister," he mocked.

"Better than a peeled shrimp, Comrade Brother Gregori."

It was stalemate, a Kiev Standoff as they called it in Russia.

He shook his head and turned away, intending to take a shower--if there was any warm water in their heater--when his wife delivered her parting salvo.

"You're a failure, husband, a failure and a shit-stinking coward." He turned to face her, eyes blank and emotionless. Anya took a clumsy, stumbling step away from him, holding up a hand to ward off a blow that hadn't even been threatened.

"Slut," he whispered, his voice so quiet it barely disturbed the dusty air of the apartment. "Slattern. Whore. Bitch. There are many things that your tongue can slide to that I can ignore. But not coward . No, not that, dear Anya."

"I did not-- Please, husband...." Her mouth was working in terror, her face becoming distorted with her own fear. Anya had been pleased enough when the sec officer had appeared in her social circle, less than two months earlier, with a reputation for bravery against undesirable social elements in the far, far east. Despite his slightly odd appearance, he had a definite charisma, an aura of something different in the safe world of Moscow petty officialdom. She had set out to bed him and then wed him.

It had seemed a good idea at the time.

Not now.

A thin-bladed knife glittered in Zimyanin's long, strong fingers, held point upward.

"Not coward, wife."

"I beseech you, husband."

He nodded. "I have had many men--and women--beg to me." His eyes were gazing into some far-off time and place. Anya Zimyanin was more terrified than she had ever believed possible, knowing with an utter certainty that he was going to kill her.

"Anything?" she whispered, throat dry.

He paused. "What?"

"Anything."

"I don't hear you, Comrade Sister Anya. Say it again."

"Anything, Comrade Brother Gregori. I'll do anything if you don't cut me."

"I've been offered a lot of things, wife. But I've never been offered anything. Let's stand a while and think about that."

The dusk gathered strength outside their windows. Inside the apartment the husband and wife stood, six feet apart, time crawling past them. Zimyanin was calmer now, completely in control of himself and his surging tide of anger. He was certain now that he wouldn't butcher the large, ungainly woman in front of him.

Anya felt the tension slipping away and her breathing began to return to normal. But her husband checked it once more when he took a half step toward her and spoke.

"Anything?" She nodded cautiously, fearful that her neck might snap if she moved too vigorously.

"Good. My men will call here if there's any news of our three visitors, so we have plenty of time. You and I have all the time in the world, my dear Anya. We can make a start now."

"A start, husband?"

Gregori Zimyanin smiled at her, very patiently. "Go into the kitchen, Anya. Put a large pan of water on to boil. Bring me the potato peeler, the roll of strong cord, your best darning needles, the short scissors with the serrated edge. I have my own knife."

"Then?" Tears bunched at the corners of her eyes.

"Then you may come in here. Remove all of your clothes." He paused. "And kneel down just in front of me. And then we shall begin."

For Anya Zimyanin, the night was both long and memorable.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

 

 

 FOR RYAN CAWDOR, the night was both busy and memorable. After their razor-edged escape from the museum, their flight had taken the companions around the rear of one of the single-story industrial units only a couple of blocks away. With the wails of sirens already ripping at the air, Ryan hadn't hesitated in setting his shoulder to the bolted door, springing the lock and knocking it back on rusting hinges.

It had only taken moments for all three of them to slip inside, wedging the door closed again. There, in the cold, damp darkness, they waited until they were sure the search had passed them by.

"Move at around one in the morning. Lift the tools and then--"

"And the flag."

"Sure, Rick. And the flag. If we can get away with it. Return here. They'll be looking for us to make a clean break. Might not search this close. Best plan I got. Then a couple of days later we lift a wag and head out for the gateway. You fix the door, Rick, and we all make the jump. How's that sound to you two? Good?"

"Better than good, lover," Krysty agreed. "If it works it sounds miraculous. If it doesn't, we all get to buy the farm together."

 

RICK FELL ASLEEP quickly, lying on one side, curled up like a young child, arms wrapped around himself. The streetlights outside the building came on with the night, and they cast a feeble glow through the cobwebbed glass. Krysty stood looking down at the slumbering man.

"Gaia! He's so ill, Ryan."

"I know it. Can you feel how bad he is?"

She knelt and touched him very softly on the forehead, her long gray fur coat sweeping the floor.

Krysty looked up at Ryan. "I think the shadow is closing in fast," she said quietly.

Rick stirred in his sleep, swallowing hard. His lips moved, but neither Ryan nor Krysty could make out any words.

"Soon?" Ryan asked.

She straightened, shaking her head. "Depends on what 'soon' means, lover. If you mean in the next hour or if you mean in the next week or so."

"Let's take the next week or so."

She nodded. "Think so. Could be his sickness might go into remission again. But it looks to me like he's near the wire."

"If he loses the race before we get the door of the gateway fixed...." He didn't need to complete the sentence.

"Then we get to live what's left here in Moscow. I know that. So we best get those tools tonight and try and make sure Rick's fit enough for the journey back."

"And the flag," Ryan added.

"Oh yeah." Krysty smiled. "And the flag."

 

RICK HAD A KIND of fit around midnight. He began to moan loudly, until Ryan found a length of cotton rag and jammed it between his jaws to silence him. This time they'd been able to distinguish words. Sentences. Rick had been babbling about his parents who had lived in the ville of New York, on what had been known as the Lower East Side.

"Jack can't bring home the beef and Naomi hates the street gangs. Fears, all fears. The subway and Central Park, mugging and dark places and being alone among millions, and shadows and sudden noises. Rats and roaches and Republicans. Porn houses and there goes the neighborhood. Serial butchers and men who pulled out...."

That was when Ryan finally shut him up, fearful that his echoing screams would penetrate into the dark ville beyond.

But Rick wasn't done.

His body suddenly flexed and tensed, his legs jerking spasmodically, heels beating a rattling tattoo on the concrete floor.

"Hold him!" Ryan called. "Fireblast! Keep him quiet, Krysty!"

Despite Ryan's great strength and the freezie's exhausted frailty, the man was still proving too much of a handful. His arms thrashed, catching Ryan a glancing blow on the side of the face, making his teeth ring. Another punch hit him on the upper arm, numbing the muscle.

Rick's eyes were wide open, seeming to float in blood-filled pits, staring up sightlessly at the damp-stained ceiling. He kept rolling his head, trying to dislodge the gag. Bubbling, muffled screams tried to burst from his throat.

Ryan clung to him, keeping him pinned, coughing as their struggle kicked up clouds of acrid dust. Krysty stood for a moment, looking down at the two thrashing, tangled figures, trying to work out how best to help Ryan.

"What can--?" she began.

"Put him out," Ryan panted. "Quick. Out!"

Krysty didn't hesitate. She balanced on her left foot and swung back the right, kicking with a careful aim and considered force at the freezie. The toe of her dark blue leather boot hit him just behind the ear with a soft, dull thud.

He immediately went limp, allowing Ryan to roll away from him. "Thanks." He eased the unconscious freezie onto his right side and removed the hunk of cotton from his mouth so that the man wouldn't choke. "Hope you haven't chilled him, lover."

"Little poke with my toe? He'll be fine. Well, I don't suppose he'll be fine." She bent down and began to run her hands along Rick's arms and legs, probing at the layers of sinew that coursed beneath his pale skin. Krysty shook her head as she straightened. "Tone's real bad. Seems like the muscles are plain giving up. I can feel fluttering under--kind of like everything going into spasm. Bad."

Rick blinked and his eyes twitched open. He looked from face to face, unfocused. A thin trickle of blood dripped out of a corner of his mouth. He blinked again.

"Oh, hi guys," he said. "What happened?" His fingers explored the lump behind his ear. "Ow! Did I fall?"

"I kicked you in the head," Krysty told him. "You went jolt-wild. Couldn't hold you, and you were making a lot of noise."

"I see. I recall the doctors saying that I might lose some control when it came to--you know. Sorry, guys. I'm fine now. Truly. We ready to rescue Old Glory?"

"Not 'we,' Rick," Ryan corrected. "I am and Krysty is. You pointed out the tools we have to get."

"But--" the freezie began, until Krysty stopped him with an angry stare.

"You got an excuse for being sick," she said. "Doesn't give you a reason for being double-stupe, does it?"

With an effort he managed to heave himself to his feet, sniffing and wiping away the blood with his sleeve. He finally met Krysty's eyes. "No. Guess it doesn't, does it? Gimp like me'd slow you and Ryan down."

"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "So you stay here. Keep outta sight and wait for us. If we don't make it back by sunset tomorrow, you're on your own. Try for the ruined house, southwest of here."

"Keep outta sight. Sure. Outta sight, man. Right on. Too much." He turned away, voice breaking. "Too fucking much."

 

THE GUARD WAS an old man, closing in toward sixty, married with three children and eleven grandchildren. The youngest had been keeping him awake for the past week, and he was desperately tired.

Dmitri Olgarchev, the senior museum orderly, had passed by on his rounds an hour ago, with his usual admonition to keep a careful watch on everything, in case the Americans came in to thieve. Every night for the past twenty-three years he'd said that. Sometimes Sergei wanted to strangle him. But this particular night, with the whole ville a seething nest of rumors about American spies, Dmitri hadn't said it. He'd just nodded curtly and gone on his way.

Sergei didn't believe anyone would ever break in. Nobody had ever broken in, in all the years he'd worked there. As far as he knew, nobody in the history of the world had ever broken in.

Why should they?

He'd found his usual spot in the corner of the narrow gallery that had dummies hanging from sets of gallows--each was dressed like some hero revered by the Americans. There was an alcove beneath a window that opened onto a rusting iron flight of steps. Sergei had been told that it had been built to help people escape if there was a fire. Now it was so corroded and fragile that it would probably collapse if three men got on it at once. Under the window was a pile of material, drapes that had long fallen from the wooden poles.

Sergei curled up and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

 

THE LADDER HAD CREAKED alarmingly as Ryan led Krysty up the rungs, but the main securing bolts seemed solid enough under the red lace of thick rust. Heckler & Koch in hand, the one-eyed man had darted from shadow to shadow, around the back of the towering mausoleum to the place he'd spotted during their propaganda toura vulnerable window above a quiet alcove, filled with a bundle of material.

Ryan had figured it would provide them with a soft, quiet landing when they jumped down off the windowsill. He landed like a cat on the pile of discarded drapes, but his nostrils suddenly filled with the stink of sweat and stale tobacco. As he began to move down to the floor he tripped over the old man, and dropped his pistol.

It was too quick to be called a fight, more like a fumbling scuffle. Ryan knew immediately that he was up against a frail old man whose heart had leaped into his throat with terror, nearly choking him.

In some predark vids, Ryan and his friends had been amused to see the way that enemies were treated. Regardless of what kind of threat they might pose, they were generally left unconscious or tied up. Either way, they often escaped.

Things usually didn't happen that way in the Deathlands.

The old man was an enemy whose muffled yell could be enough to put a noose around Ryan's and Krysty's necks.

As Sergei fought for survival, breath rattling in his throat like water down a drain, Ryan clubbed him on the side of the head with his forearm, stunning him. He locked the scrawny throat into the angle of his arm and used his other hand to apply the strangling pressure. After thirty seconds he felt the body jerk to stillness, the pulse that fluttered against his wrist halting, starting again for a handful of beats, and stopping.

"Ryan? You all right, lover?"

"Yeah. Got us another Russkie."

"Can't hear anyone else," she whispered, picking her way through the darkness to stand beside Ryan. "You?"

He laughed quietly. "You know bastard well that if you can't hear anything I'm not going to hear anything either."

To their surprise, the glass cases that held the American equipment and tools weren't even locked. The simple handle and catch opened easily at a touch.

There'd been a number of discarded sacks and bags in the abandoned workshop where they'd left Rick. Ryan had brought one of the strongest, tucking it inside his long fur-trimmed coat. Now he loaded it with the various tools that the freezie had managed to point out to them. He placed them inside the bag one at a time, trying to avoid making any noise.

"Ready?" Krysty whispered.

"Nearly. Hear something?"

"Two of them. Don't think they're coming this way. Sounds like they're mebbe a floor above us."

"Done," he said, carefully snapping the case shut.

"The flag."

"Sure. Through here. Keep to the side of the halls, in the shadows."

"I know."

"I know you know." He grinned at her in the dim light, teeth gleaming.

Ryan had an almost perfect memory for places and directions. He could recall most of the villes he'd ever visited, and what the trails were like, in and out. Despite the twisting corridors and linked rooms and stairs, he led the way with unerring skill to the huge chamber where the flag was kept.

Before moving to the center of the room, he waited with Krysty in the pools of darkness that floated beneath the overhanging balconies, studying the glass case carefully.

"Can't seen any sec men," he whispered.

"Me neither."

The glass case wasn't locked and he opened it, wincing at the unpleasant stickiness of the slimed glass on his fingers. The material on the precious banner was dry and dusty as he touched it, lifting it off its pedestal.

He heard the faint click too late, the click that triggered the lights and the klaxons.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

 

 RYAN WASN'T A MAN to stand and waste time cursing. The flag had been sec-bugged, and that was that. No point in putting it back again.

Old Glory was attached to a short length of aluminum tubing, no more than a couple of inches around. The banner itself was about five feet by three feetat least what was left of it. One edge was burned and torn and felt to Ryan like it could easily come apart in his fingers.

Folks around the Deathlands didn't fly the Stars and Stripes that much. Now and again you'd find a baron in some tear-ass raggedy ville who thought the flag might give his place a touch of class. But it appeared often enough in the books and magazines and vids of the predark days.

Ryan felt a strange pang run through him, like the hum of a live wire badly insulated under the earth, a sort of a shudder. Just touching the flag gave him the odd tremor of hidden emotion. Then the klaxons started to sound and the lights flickered on in the hall. The moment was gone.

But he still gripped Old Glory.

They were close to the farther exit of the museum, but they both knew it would be locked and guarded by the sec forces. Without a word passing between them, Ryan and Krysty turned around and raced flat out for the window that had given entry to the building.

"Give me the flag," Krysty urged, half turning as she sprinted along a narrow passage. "You got the tools."

Ryan wasn't disposed to argue. The sack rattled and banged against his hip as he ran, and carrying the scorched flag made him clumsy. He handed it over to Krysty like a sprinter passing a relay baton, seeing her grasp it firmly.

The alarm was slowly triggering the lighting system throughout the museum, the harsh ceiling strips shimmering on, seeming to pursue them. The pealing of the electronic warning signal was deafening, but it stopped as suddenly as it had started, bringing the realization that men's and women's voices were echoing from all sides, behind, above and below, in the maze of vaulted corridors.

And ahead of them.

The firefight was brief, bloody and one-sided. The sec guards were mainly elderly, and not one of them had ever had to draw a blaster in anger. Since the appearance of the terrifying Comrade Major-Commissar Zimyanin, the numbers on duty had been doubled. But nobody had warned them that they were going to get shot at--shot at and chilled.

The confrontation took place in the gallery where the rows of dummies were hanging in their hemp collars. As the first of the guards appeared at the far end, Krysty dived for cover into an alcove, drawing her H&K P7A-13, the silvered finish gleaming in the stark overhead lighting. Ryan slid across the other side of the wide passage, blaster already in his hand, squinting around the angle of the wall to judge the threat of the opposition.

There were six of them, strung out in a line, with only a couple having bothered to draw their pistols. The rest held truncheons of dark wood.

It wasn't a moment for discussion. Ryan and Krysty needed to get past the guards, and get past them quickly. Every second would make it harder to break through and escape.

Ryan didn't need to tell Krysty what she had to do. Her gun was unsilenced and its sharp crack filled the corridor. Ryan felt the satisfying thump against his wrist as he fired the silenced 9 mm blaster. Two shots from each put down four of the Russians, all dead or dying.

Krysty's first snatched shot hit a lean woman a finger's breadth above the sterno-clavicular joint, tearing her lungs to rags of tissue, chipping the spine as it exited just below the left shoulder. Her second shot caught a man immediately behind through the throat, sending him skidding sideways, drowning in a welter of bright arterial blood.

Ryan aimed carefully. The range was less than twenty paces, under good light, but that wasn't any reason to get careless. One bullet passed through the gaping mouth of a younger man with a heavy mustache. He went down spitting teeth, blood and bits of his tongue. His hands reached to his face as though there were some way that he could pluck the full-metal jacket from the ruined depths of his brain.

A fraction of a second later Ryan chilled the woman immediately behind the dying man, a small part of his mind registering the fact that she had only one eye.

The other two sec guards skidded to a halt, paralyzed by the totality of the slaughter around them. They stared unbelievingly at the four flopping, jerking, bleeding bodies strewed about their feet.

Krysty neatly killed the man on the left with a bullet between the eyes. Ryan chilled his man with a single shot that entered just below the jaw, ripping through the larnyx, emerging as a twisted hunk of lead.

The redhead was ahead of Ryan, hurdling the jumbled bodies, nearly slipping in the lake of spilled blood as she landed. She stumbled but recovered her balance and hared along the passage, Ryan at her heels. Above them, the grotesque dummies of Washington, Lincoln and Kennedy gazed blankly down at the crimson shambles.

Behind them they could hear shouts and an occasional scream. Ryan caught the distant noise of a shot being fired from a small-caliber handgun, but the bullet came nowhere near them. The body of the old man, crumpled in the pile of drapes, lay where it had fallen, beneath the broken window that opened out onto the rusting fire escape.

The flag streaming behind her like a banner of fire, Krysty jumped up and scrambled through the window, pausing on the narrow sill to grab the sack of tools from Ryan. She vanished into the night while he vaulted up behind her.

The air was black and cold, with streaks of sleet dashed across it.

A volley of shooting erupted behind Ryan as he stepped on the corroded iron steps. A pane of glass shattered at his back.

"Getting closer," he shouted, following Krysty's scarlet hair down the escape.

The retaining bolts that fixed the ladder to the outside wall of the museum groaned in noisy protest as they scrambled quickly down toward ground level. This was the point of maximum threat to their safety. Ryan knew that if the sec guards had been quick enough off the mark they'd have the perimeter covered and he and Krysty were as good as chilled.

Despite Zimyanin's warnings, life had been cozy at the establishment for far too long. The theft of the old American flag had never even been considered. Indeed, hardly anyone on the staff even knew that the banner was linked to any sort of automatic sec device. So the lights and klaxons sent everyone into a panic.

The exterior security system hadn't been tested within living memory. It was supposed to function as a part of the internal warnings, but the wiring was old and rotten. One single floodlight came on reluctantly, but it served only to illuminate a corner of the roof, effectively blinding a sec guard armed with an assault rifle.

By the time the new director of security at the museum had nervously called up Zimyanin, Ryan and Krysty had reached safety.

 

"THOUGHT YOU'D BOTH taken the last train to the coast," Rick said, greeting them with a weak smile.

"What?"

"Means chilled, lover. I heard Uncle Tyas McCann say that, back in Harmony."

A sec wag went roaring by outside, a revolving red light flashing on its roof. The three friends froze a moment, but the vehicle didn't stop.

Ryan put down the sack of tools and squatted on the floor beside Rick, letting out his breath in a long sigh of relief. Krysty laid the torn remnants of the Stars and Stripes beside him and sat, shaking her head.

"Wouldn't want to do that too often," she said quietly.

"Bad?" Rick asked, reaching out to touch the tattered hem of the flag.

"Not good. Had to do some chilling. Six, was it, lover?"

Ryan was silent for a moment, replaying the firefight. "Six with blasters, and the old man I had to throttle. Seven."

"Good Russkies are dead Russkies," the freezie said, summoning up another smile.

"Like fish in a barrel," Ryan replied. "Mostly old or feebs. Never got off a shot at us. Six rounds and we laid all six in the dirt."

Krysty opened up her fur coat and leaned against the wall. "Could do with some sleep. Make our move tomorrow night."

"Guess so. It'll be like a broken ants' nest out there for the rest of the night. Yeah, I'll close my eye for a while."

Rick touched Krysty on the arm. "Thanks for saving Old Glory. And you, Ryan. I know it was an extra risk. But you had to waste 'em."

"You figure?" Krysty slipped quickly toward sleep, vaguely aware of Rick muttering to her.

"They'd have killed you if they could've." He repeated his solo conversation with an added emphasis. "Yeah, they'd have killed you if they could've."

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

 

 "THE BEST LAID PLANS of mice and men often go wrong," Doc misquoted as the sun came hesitantly over the eastern horizon. Ryan, Krysty and Rick still hadn't reappeared.

"Why mice?" Jak asked. "Men and woman, Doc. No mice."

The old man smiled. "Figure of speech, my milky-headed young man. It's just a way of saying that it's beginning to look as though something could conceivably have gone awry with Ryan's strategies. Would you not concede that possibility?"

The albino teenager shook his head, his breath smoking out in the damp cold. "Don't get, Doc. Just say short."

"Ryan's in trouble," J.B. interrupted, walking soft-footed down the main staircase of the dacha. "Been a day too many for things to have gone well."

Doc sighed. There had been increased activity around the nearest hamlet, with sec wags buzzing along the trails of melted slush. So far nobody had bothered to come as far out into the country as the ruined mansion, but all three men knew that it could only be a matter of time. Hunting had become dangerous, and their food stocks were running low. At least the stream that flowed through the grounds meant that fresh water was no problem.

"We go after them?" Jak asked.

The Armorer took off his glasses and polished them assiduously on his sleeve, peering at the morning light to check them for smears. He considered his reply to the boy.

"Ryan said to wait. We wait. We don't have any place else to go."

Each one of them had climbed several times to the windblown attic, easing their way through the concealed door and down the steep spiral staircase to look at the ruined gateway. Each had come away again, saddened by the confirmation that the damage was beyond any of their talents to repair.

During that day it drizzled, cutting down the visibility to less than fifty yards. The three of them had to keep watch from different sides of the big house. It also became colder again, and the temperature dropped to freezing around dusk.

After dark they reverted to taking turns on guard. Doc had the shift from eight until midnight and was leaning against the sill in the main second-floor room, which commanded the best view across the land toward the tiny ville. His thoughts slurred into one another as his eyes kept fluttering shut. He was on the far edge of sliding into sleep, and his various pasts were becoming mixed and confused.

The near dreams had him under the deep blue sky of Montana, with Emily laughing on his arm, striding out through a thick pine forest, alongside a crystal waterfall. An elk bounded across their path and they both stopped to watch it. The air was heavy with the scent of sun-sodden balsam from the trees. A man was walking through the woods, staying just within sight. Doc couldn't see his face, but he knew who it wasCort Strasser, with his skull-face and sunken bloody eyes.

And faces came swimming up to the dozing man, sepia faces from ancient photographs. Whatever happened to the faces in the old photographs?

For some oblique, unguessable reason, Doc found himself thinking back to the boys who stood knee-deep in the Johnstown Flood.

"Boys! Hell, they were men," he cried, the sound of his own voice waking him up.

He squinted out across the sleeping land, shaking his head at the continued realization that he was in Mother Russia, land of Tolstoy and Chekhov, the land that had been for so long the traditional enemy of the United States of America. Now he was within a few miles of the heartland, of Moscow. And he, with just five friends, was bitterly alone.

The rain had stopped, but the earth was covered by ghostly shreds of fine white mist that seemed to lurch across the sparse fields, between the clumps of stunted trees. Doc watched the night, feeling an iron depression settle across his soul. If only Lori hadn't died. She'd have cheered him up. The blond girl could always do that for him.

"Hey," he said quietly. "What's that?"

One of the pockets of gray fog had suddenly become more solid, and it was moving slowly toward the house. Doc's sight wasn't that keen, and he rubbed his eyes, managing to make out that it was something with silvery fur, like a hunting wolf. Yet somehow not quite like a wolf. It was definitely heading toward the dacha.

Doc stood upright, his knee joints cracking like muted pistol shots, staggering a little as sensation came back to his legs. He stumbled down the stairs, hanging on to the remnants of the banister, calling out to J.B. and Jak in a low, urgent voice.

"Something coming this way."

By the time he'd reached the main hall, both the Armorer and the boy were there, blasters drawn, fully alert.

"What?" J.B. asked, managing to appear both tense and relaxed at the same time.

"Wolf? I confess that my vision in darkness is far from the best."

Jak eased the front door open an inch and flattened his face against it. Then he looked back at the other two men.

"No," he said.

"No what?" Doc asked, puzzled.

"Not wolf."

J.B. edged him out of the way and looked for himself. "It's not a wolf."

"Then, what is?"

"It's Krysty, and she's alone."

The woman was beat. They helped her in and laid her on the floor of the back room. She didn't wait for them to ask the obvious question. Fighting exhaustion, she panted out the pertinent details.

"Got tools. Rick's triple-sick. Can't make it out here."

"You and Ryan couldn't bring him?" J.B. asked.

"Whole ville's on sec-red. Takes two to help the freezie and one to scout. Ryan slipped out after food and nearly got trapped by street patrols. He wants you and Jak to go in. I'll tell you where. Me and Doc'll hold the fort here."

"An old man can't be trusted when the chips are down," Doc said bitterly.

"Don't be stupe." Krysty licked her lips and sighed. "Too blown to argue, Doc. You know J.B. and Jak can do the job better."

He nodded. "My heartfelt apologies, my dear Krysty. You are, as ever, completely correct. I shall bring you back to the freshness of full health by the time the others return safely. And then we can all flee this bleak land."

Krysty dozed, and woke sometime later with a start.

Something wet and slimy was touching her, smearing her with some foul liquid.

"Zorro! Heel, you naughty pup," Doc called, urging the little dog away from Krysty, stopping it from licking her face.

"Where's Jak and J.B.?" she asked, bone-weary.

"Gone while you slept. John Barrymore Dix carried the map you'd sketched for them. Both had their firearms primed and ready." He hesitated, kneeling to pat the wiry little dog as it rolled happily on its back at his feet. "I fear that this dreadful place will be the ending of us, my dear. The good Lord knows that Deathlands is bleak enough. But this Russia is tainted with blood and with dying, layered with far too much hatred."

"Ryan'll be all right. Takes more than a handful of Russkies to chill him."

Doc sighed. "I do agree, Krysty, my dear young lady. But the sad truth is that they are up against far more than a handful of the enemy. Ah, yes. Far, far more."

Krysty tried to keep her interest going, but sleep was too pressing.

She closed her eyes.

 

KRYSTY'S DISTINCTIVE red hair had been spotted twice on her journey out of the center of the ville. Zimyanin had three separate reports on his desk by the time she reached the dacha. With the flimsy sheets of recycled paper in his hand, he walked across his office and looked again at the map. He touched the small flags that Clerk Second Class Alicia Andreyinichna had supplied not even a week ago and saw that the redheaded woman seemed to be moving back in the same directionsouthwest.

"Peredelkino," he said, tugging pensively at his mustache.

"Did you call, Comrade Major-Commissar?" the young blond woman asked nervously, sticking her head around the door. In the past few days life had become unbearably tense in the offices of Internal Security, Moscow. There were too many messages and too many senior officers coming and going. And there was whispered gossip about her boss, about Gregori.

"Nothing, Alicia. Nothing. Thank you for responding so quickly."

She nodded her head and withdrew, finding she was trembling with nerves. A friend of hers shared an apartment with a man whose sister worked in the offices of Pensions and Internal Debts. Anya Zimyanin hadn't been seen for three days, and there were stories of a closed car and a suspicious bundle in a black plastic body bag being toted away from a certain door at five in the morning. That had been the day that Gregori had been in such a good mood, though he'd jerked away from Alicia's fingers when she had tried to point out some small marks on his face, near the hairline, dark brown spots that indicated he'd been splashed with some sticky liquid.

Behind her, the sec officer was in the best of spirits. Gradually the pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to come together three spies, one who must be wounded or sick; the robbery of tools and the flag. Proof if ever any was needed that they were Americans. Now the woman had fled the ville.

"Alone," he muttered, not wanting the clerk to appear again.

Which meant that the one-eyed man and his other companion were still around. Close to the museum was Zimyanin's personal guess, waiting a chance to escape. Or waiting for other American spies to join them. Extra patrols had been posted on all roads to the southwest to watch for strangers coming out of or into the area.

He unlocked his desk drawer and took out the dog-eared copy of  The English Tongue for the Benefit of the Russian Gentleman Abroad.

"Having heard so much about you from mutual friends, it will be a great pleasure for me to finally make your acquaintance," he said.

Zimyanin nodded to himself, pleased with what he had just learned. He put the book carefully back in the desk drawer and locked it. For many weeks he'd worked hard at trying to master the complexities of the American tongue. Soon, very soon, he hoped to have the chance to practice what he had learned.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

 

 

 

 RYAN WAS AWAKENED by a soft, whispering sound. Someone was easing open the broken door at the side of the warehouse where he and Rick were hiding.

He lay in the midnight darkness with his finger on the trigger of the SIG-Sauer and waited.

There were two intruders. One was trying to press himself through the narrow gap at the side of the door. The rudimentary gas lighting outside cast enough of a golden glow for Ryan to see the shadow--a man, small-built, with the darting reflection off the metal of a handgun.

The other man was already somewhere inside the concrete vault. Whoever he was, he was good. Ryan had checked out the building a dozen times and had thought that all of the windows were secure. Now he knew that one of them wasn't.

The intruder near the door was short, lightly built and had long blond hair. Ryan still couldn't precisely locate the other man. It was difficult to concentrate, with Rick breathing heavily and moving restlessly in his sleep.

If there were only two of them, Ryan thought he should be able to take them out. But if they were part of a larger gang, then he figured it might be time to abandon the freezie and make his own getaway.

Also, if they were merely a couple of local killers trying their chances, it would be dangerous to use the powerful blaster.

Reluctantly Ryan holstered the pistol and drew the long panga from its soft leather sheath on his hip. Hand-to-hand fighting in almost total darkness wasn't among Ryan's favorite occupations. He wished that Jak was with him. The white-haired teenager was the best at close-contact butchery that Ryan had ever seen.

It crossed Ryan's mind that the two men who had crept in on him in the small hours of the morning could, possibly, be J.B. and Jak. The one he'd glimpsed near the door was the right kind of height, as well as having light hair.

Ryan edged away from the pile of rags that he'd been using for a bed. He'd calculated that Krysty's best speed through hostile country wouldn't have been good enough for anyone to have returned from the dacha. So, logically, it wasn't Jak and J.B.

The wooden haft of the panga was warming in his fingers. Ryan held the long blade down at his side to try to avoid the steel catching and reflecting the street light.

He deliberately slowed his breathing and controlled his heartbeat, moving only with infinite patience. The two men didn't seem in any hurry to get to him, and Ryan wasn't in any great hurry to get to them. Rick's mumbling and snoring were the only sounds audible in the large building.

Though he had a nagging doubt that Jak and J.B. might have crept in and were checking the place out, Ryan was ninety-five percent sure it wasn't them. The Armorer had known him long enough not to play triple-stupe by creeping up on him in the dark.

He heard a shuffle of feet toward the rear of the building, where there had been rows of empty closets and shelves. The floor was sprinkled with a number of rusted nails and screws, and the intruder had disturbed one of them.

Ryan waited.

"Patience never killed anyone," the Trader used to say. And the converse was equally true. The man who rushed blind into a fight often finished looking up at the sky.

Ryan waited.

Rick had a coughing fit and muttered under his breath. Ryan listened, hoping that the freezie wouldn't wake up and call out for him. The light in the part of the room where they'd been sleeping wasn't good enough to reveal how many lay there. As long as the two men didn't know that Ryan was up and ready, the advantage of surprise rested with him.

The other danger in Rick's mumbling and restlessness was that it could drown out the sound of someone moving in the darkness. Ryan wished that his fighting sense of hearing was better. If Krysty had been there she'd have pinned down the intruders like a ruby laser.

He waited.

There!

The nerves of one of the men had finally given way and he made his move, coming up out of a crouch against the rear wall, holding what looked like a sawed-off 10-gauge at his hip. The guy was silhouetted for a half second against the yellow light of the front window.

That was all Ryan needed.

He covered the distance between them in eighteen short steps, balanced on the balls of his feet, moving like a graveyard wraith.

He took the intruder from behind, when he was still several yards from the sleeping freezie. It wasn't like trying to take out a sentry without any alarm being raised. In a quiet room, there was absolutely no possibility of chilling the one intruder without the other man hearing the death. The best bet was to take him down fast, and move away into the deeper shadows.

When Ryan had obtained the panga from a 285-pound mutie woman who didn't need it anymore, the weapon had a round, blunt end to it. He'd honed it down so that both sides of the blade were sharp, and it tapered to a strong, needle point. It could be used equally well for either cutting or thrusting work.

The blow was a straight thrust from behind, delivered with all of his strength. The tip of the heavy panga penetrated the man's flesh, slicing it open like a razor through silk. Ryan felt hot blood spurt over his right hand and wrist and felt the shocked jerk of the body.

The blade was eighteen inches long, and the point erupted a handbreadth out of doomed man's chest, tearing through his heart on the way. Blood pattered onto the stone floor.

Oddly Ryan's victim didn't cry out. He merely inhaled sharply, strangely like a sigh of sexual pleasure.

The blaster rattled on the concrete, followed by the slow tumble of the corpse. By the time the body lay still, Ryan was on the far side of the building, kneeling against the wall with the window. He guessed he wasn't far from where the lightly built blonde was lurking.

It would have been inhuman if the second intruder hadn't been pushed into movement by the sound of the scuffle and the unmistakable noise of sudden, violent dying. There was a single hissed word. "Apasnost?" Apparently the man was asking his now-dead companion if there was danger.

It was sufficient for Ryan to locate his second target, who was more or less where he'd imagined, just to the right of the partly open door, already starting to move around the outside of the room.

Now, eye fully accustomed to the scant light, Ryan could make out the flicker of movement. Like a python sliding noiselessly from its den, Ryan went after the short figure, blood-slick blade probing the air ahead of him,

"What the fuck was that? Ryan? Ryan, are you there?"

Rick's voice, deafening in the silence, nearly put Ryan off his attack. The freezie blundered to his feet, trailing lengths of the torn cloth that he'd been using as a blanket. In the ghastly yellow light he looked like some wild-eyed corpse, dragged from its tomb, still bound with the ragged cerecloths.

"Ryan! Where--Oh, Jeeeez!"

He'd fallen over the outstretched hand of the corpse, tripping and landing facedown in the spreading lake of warm blood.

The muzzle-flash of a handgun lighted a small area by the door, and Ryan heard the whine of a bullet as it ricocheted off the far wall in a flare of sparks.

"Fireblast!" he muttered, hoping that the noise of the shot wouldn't bring some inquisitive sec guard on the run. Now, time was vital. The attacker had to be put away. Fast.

"Help me, Ryan!" Rick shouted, floundering on the floor, becoming tangled up with the body. "There's a dead man down here."

In the passing stillness Ryan caught the faint click of a blaster being cocked again. He hurled himself across the building, aiming at where he knew the small blond man was waiting for him. It wasn't a situation for a cunning and subtle approach.

The long-bladed panga made contact, a yelp of pain and shock exploded from the darkness. But the feel of the blow was enough to let Ryan know he'd delivered only a glancing wound.

He rolled over on one shoulder in a breakfall, coming up in a classic knife-fighter's crouch. His lips creased in a mirthless smile. Now he could hear his opponent clearly, quietly sobbing to himself less than a dozen feet away. Ryan's night sight was way behind Jak Lauren's, but it was still better than most men's. Now he could see the dark silhouette of the intruder.

"Ryan?" Rick whined. "I'm scared, Ryan. Help me."

Outside, Ryan heard the rumble of a convoy of large transport wags moving along the road. The lights of the first vehicle shone coldly through the frosted glass, bouncing off the far wall of the workshop, providing enough illumination for Ryan to see the wounded Russkie. He did indeed bear a passing resemblance to Jak Lauren. Slight of build with a shock of blond hair that glowed white in the reflected glow of the wags' headlights, the youth had a narrow, pinched face, with hollowed cheekbones and deep-set eyes. He was holding a crudely made zip-blaster, not much more than a .22 caliber. It was in his left hand, pointing toward the floor. Dark blood flowed down his right arm, from a deep stab wound near the elbow.

"Nyet," he said, seeing Ryan at the same moment. He shuffled a couple of steps to his left, away from the one-eyed man with the panga.

Rick saw them both at more or less the same time, opening his mouth to yell, then closing it again.

Ryan considered throwing the panga, but it was a crude weapon for accuracy. The little gun continued to hang toward the dusty concrete, almost as if the young Russian had completely forgotten that he was holding it.

"Nyet, nyet. Druk." He pointed to himself, trying to convince the terrifying specter that he was a friend, which was a real uphill battle.

But the begging tone was unmistakable. Ryan shook his head, smiling gently at the terrified boy. "Nyet," he repeated, closing in on him, never taking his eye off the blaster.

The noise of the passing line of trucks was almost deafening, and their lights made the interior of the building as bright as day.

The blood changed from black to brown to red as the lights hit it, trickling steadily down the youth's forearm, over the wrist and plopping off the tips of the trembling fingers.

"Nyet," he stammered.

"No." was one of the handful of Russian words that Ryan had learned from Rick. One of the others was "Yes."

Now he was within reach. "Da," Ryan whispered.

He opened the Russian's throat with the singing edge of the butcher's knife in a forceful backhanded cut. The gun fell, bouncing off the young man's foot, so that it landed almost soundlessly. Ryan moved back quickly to avoid being dappled by the spray of blood that gushed out of the hewed gash across the pale throat.

A voice from near the door broke the stillness in the room, rising above the noise of the passing wags. The voice of J. B. Dix.

"Knew you were a mean son of a bitch, Ryan," he said.

Ryan laughed. "Good to see you, J.B. And you, Jak. Good to see you both."

Rick stood up, very unsteady on his feet. "I'll second that, Ryan. I'll second--" And he fainted.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

 

 "SO," RYAN CONCLUDED, "that's the situation we got here. Rick's heading west. Only a matter of a few days at best."

J.B. glanced across to where the freezie now lay sleeping quietly. The fainting spell had slithered into another spasmodic fit, with Rick's fingers clenching, his arms and legs jerking convulsively. The three of them had managed to hold him still and tried to make him relax. Rick had been seized by a frightening attack of coughing and choking, as though he weren't able to swallow properly, something that Ryan figured was probably another aspect of the muscular illness running its course.

"He reckon he's closing in to the last round?" J.B. asked.

"Yeah. Needs help walking more than about a hundred yards."

"Steal wag," Jak suggested.

"Sure," Ryan agreed. "Takes firepower. Three of us might pull it off." He glanced across the empty room, past the two corpses to the window. Dawn was lightening the sky. "Not now. Tonight." He whistled between his teeth. "Don't like the waiting. The Russkies know we're around the ville. Longer we stay the better chance they got of finding us. Good tracker might find us."

"Must be ways of stealing food around a ville like this," J.B. said.

"Patrols everywhere. Gangs of murderous kids. Hard, J.B., very hard."

"You got food and drink?" Jak asked. "Need for gettin' out."

"Try this evening. There's a market spread out around the top of a big flight of steps. Must date way back before sky-dark. Hundreds of stairs. Market closes at dusk. Reckon I could get in there and try and buy us something when they're all ready to close up. Any sec men around could be relaxing then."

"Buy?" J.B. asked.

"Yeah. Got us some local jack. Whole area's on triple-alert. Could be easier to buy than steal. We'll know in a fistful of hours."

"And on the road in a few hours more," J.B. added.

As Ryan had good knowledge of the maze of side streets and alleys around the building, it was agreed that he should go out alone to buy the provisions they'd need.

The day wore on with a slug-footed weariness. At Ryan's suggestion they posted a watch in case the two dead thieves had friends. While not keeping guard, the others slept most of the day. J.B. spoke to Ryan about the risks of staying in the dacha and the problems they'd been having in stealing food. He also mentioned the sec patrols that they'd seen as they made their way through the outskirts of the ville.

"Someone's pushing in some plugs around the place," J.B. concluded.

"Remember that Russkie in the snow?"

J.B. nodded. "Sure. Pocked face, mustache, a stocky guy, well-muscled. Carried a Makarov PM blaster. His name was?"

"Zimyanin."

"Yeah. Captain in their sec regs. Looked a good man to have on your side from what I recall."

"I got a feeling he's not on our side this time around."

"You've seen him?" the Armorer asked, surprised. "Here? In the ville?"

It was Ryan's turn to nod. "Yeah. Long way from home, isn't he?"

"Thousands of miles. You sure it was him you saw? I mean he"

"Sure enough. And if it was him, it could be he remembers us. They must have dozens of eye-calls on us. Me and Krysty You see us and you remember us. Know what I mean?"

 

ZIMYANIN OPENED the window of his office, leaned out into the late-afternoon sunshine and drew several deep breaths. Having Tracker Aliev in the same room was a test for anyone's stomach. Though the officer had known the diminutive Mongolian for several years, he had never managed to get used to the stench of rotting flesh that seemed to cling to him.

At least he could now look him in what remained of his face without wincing and turning away. Aliev was very sensitive about his looks and was easily offended by any insult.

There was obviously a strong mutie strain somewhere in the background of his breeding stock. That accounted for the fact that he'd been born with no lower jaw and no nose. He habitually had a scarf wrapped around what was left of his mouth, though the material was always ragged and sodden with stinking threads of green mucus. Aliev couldn't speak, but Zimyanin had learned how to communicate with him, managing to interpret his snuffles and grunts.

"So! There was nothing left for you to track? The fools had run around and trampled any sign of the Americans?"

Aliev nodded vigorously, his slant eyes fixed on Zimyanin's face.

"Don't worry, my old friend," he said, steeling himself to move close enough to pat the man on the shoulder. "They must eat. Our young wolf packs are all on double-red watch."

The tracker clapped his gloved hands together and made a hideous gurgling sound deep in his throat, which Zimyanin knew indicated enthusiasm.

"We'll be there fast, Tracker Aliev, you and me. And then we'll see. Yes, they have to eat. Someplace, sometime."

 

THE DAY WAS nearly done.

Despite the intensive blanket nuking of the center of Moscow, a few cherished remains of the old Kremlin still stood. The smaller dome of the Archangel Cathedral glittered in the distance, its silver roof tinted crimson by the sinking sun.

Ryan had slipped out the door of the abandoned workshop, pulling the fur hood up over his tangled mane of curling black hair, trying to keep his face concealed. As he'd hoped, everyone was preoccupied with getting home before darkness closed in. They bustled along the muddied sidewalkswomen dragging bawling children, old men and women, clinging arm in arm, weighted down with loaded shopping baskets of provisions.

Ryan checked his pocket, making sure he still had the handful of silver and copper coins. It had crossed his mind to leave the SIG-Sauer with J.B. and risk being able to bluff his way through a stop-search. If they found a blaster like that, then his meager cover was instantly blown. But, on balance, he figured that his chances of passing a checkpoint were minimal. Without a handgun, they were a big zero.

The streets buzzed with sec patrols, but they were obviously bored and tired, waiting for the end of their shift. The day was over and the stalls of the raggle-taggle market were closing down. Ryan had timed it right.

To his left he saw the long descending flight of wide steps that he'd noticed on a previous recce. A few feet away, near the top of the steps was an elderly woman pushing a rickety baby carriage, with a red-faced baby nearly buried under a heap of dried, crusted turnips. The woman was deep in conversation with another old woman wearing round-rimmed glasses. A group of sec men were lounging on the steps, near the bottom, their blasters resting against their knees. It was precisely the scene that Ryan had hoped to find.

He went straight to the nearest stall, which sold smoked and preserved meats of all kinds, piled in a variety of plastic tubs that looked as if they'd been around since sky-dark. The man in charge was a cripple who hopped around on a pair of crutches, already beginning to scoop up the contents of the tubs and pour them into larger bins. He looked up as Ryan approached him, not even bothering with a smile or a word of greeting.

Ryan pointed at his own mouth and then to his ears, hoping this simple mime would indicate he was a deaf-mute. He pointed to what he thought looked like strips of jerky, cupping his hands together to try to show the sort of quantity he wanted.

The Russian looked at him suspiciously, and Ryan felt his own fingers itching for the butt of his P-226. To his dismay, his ruse had worked too well. Believing him hard of hearing, the stall-holder raised his voice in a bull-like bellow. Ryan shrugged his shoulders, aware that he was already becoming the subject of some interest. The Russkie tried again, this time rubbing thumb and forefinger together. It was a gesture that Ryan recognized, and he hastily held out his hand with the money. This time he received a grudging nod from the man.

One thing Ryan hadn't thought about was bringing something to carry the food. He took the handful of dried meat and shoved it into one of the coat pockets. Ignoring the stall-holder's attempt to convey how much he owed, he simply held out the money and allowed the man to pick what he wanted, knowing from the foxy grin that he was being robbed blind. As long as a few coins were left, he didn't mind. There wasn't much that he could do about it.

He turned on his heel and moved away, walking toward the top of the steps, eager to finish his shopping and get away from the watching eyes. Behind him he heard a shout from the man in the meat stall, and a ripple of laughter from the people around him. He guessed that the joke was aimed at him.

Ryan quickened his pace. When a hand tugged at his sleeve he glanced down, expecting to see a beggar. Instead, he was confronted by a skinny girl of about thirteen, backed by a dozen more children of similar age. All wore red berets with a single silver circle.

Ryan's stomach tightened with an unfamiliar feeling. Of fear.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

 

 

 HE REALIZED IT WASN'T the same gang that they'd watched a few days earlier butchering the limping man in the suburban side street. But they came from the same mold pinched faces and glowing, excited eyes; chapped lips and red tongues that kept flicking out like lizards'. The whole body language of the junior wolf pack was taut with the desire to maim and to kill.

The girl held Ryan by the arm and stared intently up into his face, screeching something and waving at him with her free hand. She gestured for him to throw back the hood.

Ryan hadn't the least doubt that the sec forces would have circulated his description throughout the ville. Any one-eyed man would be suspect, and once they had him

The two women by the carriage had stopped their chattering to look across at him. Ryan saw in the veiled eyes the certainty that he was dead.

The whole marketplace seemed frozen. All conversations had ceased, and the small groups gathered in the dusk watched the drama of the stranger and the children in silence.

Ryan guessed that the sec men would also be beginning to show some interest in what was happening at the top of the steps.

The girl tugged at him harder, surprising Ryan with the vicious strength of her ragged-nailed fingers. He looked down at her, seeing nothing in her sluttish blank eyes, nothing but a smoldering excitement, sure that she'd picked right.

The frozen second of time was followed by thirty seconds of desperately frenetic activity.

Ryan half turned and pulled the girl closer to himself, partly shielding what he was doing from the rest of the pack. He drew the SIG-Sauer and pressed the muzzle into the girl's neck, close under the angle of the jaw. She felt the touch of cold metal and started to recoil from it.

He squeezed the trigger.

With the built-in silencer, and with the end of the barrel rammed into the teenager's throat, the explosion of the blaster was no louder than a muffled belch.

The girl's body jerked as though she'd been kicked. The 9 mm bullet tore out the back of her neck, and exited at a slight angle, hitting a metal lamp support and whistling off the cobbles. It eventually struck one of the women by the carriage in the fleshy part of her thigh.

She screamed and fell over, knocking the brake off the carriage and allowing it to roll slowly toward the top of the steps.

Ryan pushed the dying girl away from him. As she fell limply to the stones, a small part of Ryan's brain registered what fell from her open hand--a short length of narrow, stained rope, with a knot at each end.

"Murderous bitch," he breathed.

As soon as he moved away from her body, everyone saw the pistol, and all hell broke loose.

The SIG-Sauer P-226 carried fifteen rounds. Good quality 9 mm bullets were hard to obtain in the Deathlands, and Ryan normally tried to use them sparingly.

But not this time.

He fired six spaced shots, sending everyone around diving for cover. Four of them killed members of the gang of young killers, each going down with a clean head shot. One took out a stall-holder who'd popped up holding a wire-bound scattergun. The sixth round chilled a sec guard who'd been walking near the top of the steps.

The woman with the leg wound was screaming hysterically, grabbing at the skirts of her elderly friend, preventing the woman from snatching the chromed handle of the carriage, which rolled to the brink of the wide stone steps. It paused a moment at the edge.

Eight rounds remained in the heavy blaster.

Someone threw a large green cooking apple at Ryan. The aim was good, and it dealt him a glancing blow on the left arm. He looked sideways and saw the thrower staring at him, mouth open to cheer his own skill. Ryan shot him through the open mouth, the bullet striking the young man's mother, who was hiding behind him. One round, chilling two.

Seven left.

A revving engine caught his attention and he spun around to see a small open wag roaring toward him, weaving between the abandoned stalls. A sec man hung on to the passenger seat, trying to balance and aim a Kalashnikov rifle.

Ryan paused, steadying his right wrist with his left hand. He snapped off two more bullets and watched as the windshield of the wag starred into diamond splinters. The second shot plucked the uniformed sec man out of his seat and threw him onto the cobbles behind the lurching, reeling wag. Ryan didn't wait to see the vehicle finally crash.

Five rounds remained.

Though he'd cleared the area immediately around him, Ryan had hardly moved from where the girl had snared him. It was way past time to get his legs working.

The market square held at least a hundred Russians and beyond them lay the tangled web of small streets and alleys. Normally Ryan would have tried for that, but the odds were too high against him to risk being trapped and run down.

The only other alternative was down the stairs.

As he sprinted toward them, the unwounded elderly woman tried to snatch at his legs. But he clubbed her across the ear with his pistol, smashing her glasses into her eyes.

Five bullets were left in the gun. He had another couple of mags in his capacious pockets, but to stop and reload would be to go down.

The carriage began to bounce and jolt down the steps, the baby bawling at the top of its lungs. The load of turnips skittered out at every stair.

The sec patrol on the stairs had been alerted and had formed a line across the steps, rifles ready, prepared to tackle the solitary intruder. The toppling carriage appearing over the dark skyline threw them into some confusion. One or two men began to ready themselves to try to catch it, while others were obeying the bellows of the bearded sergeant for them to stand firm and ignore it.

Ryan, gun drawn, saw the confused tableau and decided instantly to charge through. He was so far committed that retreat was impossible.

Shooting on the run, he killed the noncom and took out the two men on each side of him, leaving a gap for himself--a gap that opened directly in front of the careering baby carriage.

The SIG-Sauer held only two rounds.

Panicked, one of the sec men jerked on the trigger of his rifle. Bullets sprayed everywhere. The blaster was out of control, spitting fire across the steps, chilling the woman with the leg wound.

Before the sec men realized what was happening, Ryan was on top of them. With only two bullets left it wasn't a time to get careless. He followed the carriage, the squealing of the baby rising above the rest of the bloody cacophony.

A sec man stood in front of him, rifle at his hip, braced and ready.

Shooting from above and on the run, Ryan was pleased to see the sec man tumble backward, blood flowering from a wound in his upper chest. The dropped blaster nearly tripped the fleeing man, but he managed to vault it, keeping his balance. He overtook the rocking, rolling, jolting carriage, now three-quarters of the way down the immense flight of steps.

Ryan could see thirty or forty people near the bottom, but none seemed to be in uniform and they were all making desperate efforts to save themselves. No one seemed as though he were interested in trying to stop the one-eyed man with the smoking blaster in his fist.

Then Ryan was at the bottom of the steps, seeing his avenue of escape opening to his rightthe fringes of an ancient nuke site, broken buildings leaning and tumbling against one another. It was a place where nobody lived, a place where he could run, dodge and hide, eventually working his way back toward the row of workshops where his friends were waiting for him.

He heard a bumping, clattering sound behind him, and turned to see that the carriage had miraculously made it all the way to the bottom. It pitched over the last two stairs, the red-faced occupant still screaming its head off.

A stout sec man, with faster reflexes than the rest, was halfway down the steps, and he leveled his AK-47 in Ryan's direction.

The last round from the SIG-Sauer hit him below the left armpit and drilled through his chest, shattering ribs. Shards of edged bone sliced through the man's heart and lungs. As he fell, the sec guard's finger locked on the trigger, sending a final burst of lead fanning across the bottom of the steps.

The carriage had just bounced to a stop, a few feet clear of the last stair. The baby was still strapped in place, shocked but alive. The turnips were all gone, tumbled to the four winds.

Half a dozen of the bullets from the Kalashnikov exploded into the carriage, shattering its hood and sides, killing the child instantly.

Ryan clutched his empty blaster and sprinted away from his pursuers.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

 

 THE NEWS TOOK a half hour to reach Major-Commissar Zimyanin. He'd been working out that evening in the seedy gymnasium beneath the monolithic building that housed the ville's principal sec offices. He hadn't left word where he'd gone, as he intended to be out of his room for only a few minutes. But the weights had beckoned to him, and he'd been pushing himself harder and harder. He added more disks of iron to the polished bar, pressing greater and greater poundage, his muscular body streaming with sweat, veins throbbing at his temple.

A young clerk eventually tracked him down, peeping cautiously into the weight-lifting room.

"Comrade Major-Commissar Zimyanin?"

At that moment the officer was struggling to bench-press 120 kilos, straining to raise the heavy bar. His teeth gritted in determination, he hardly even heard the muttered, nervous query.

"Comrade Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin?" the clerk said a little louder.

"Yes!" The word was spit out with a ferocious venom that nearly sent the young man rushing off down the ill-lit passage.

"Message. There's a Sir, a message for-for you."

Zimyanin eased the bar back onto its rests and slid out from under it. He sat up and wiped himself with a clean towel. "What message? The Americans? What is it?"

"The man with one eye, Comrade Major-Commissar. He has been seen."

Zimyanin's face didn't change expression, and he kept his voice flat and neutral as he turned to look at the clerk. "How many dead, Comrade?"

"Dead?"

"Dead! How many?"

"How did you know there were people killed, Comrade Major-Commissar? The news has only just reached the office and...."

"I have met this man once before. I know that where he sets his foot, flowers die. Where he breathes, the little bird drops out of the sky. So, how many dead?"

"Nineteen, Comrade Major-Commissar."

Despite his steel self-control, Zimyanin couldn't quite conceal his surprise at the total. "Nineteen! On his own? No companions with him? Nineteen dead? With a Stechkin machine pistol? With a grenade of some? No?" The young man had shaken his head. "With a broken stick, Comrade?"

"A single-shot handgun, they said. The dead include sec men, a woman of eighty winters and an unweaned baby."

Slowly, very slowly, Zimyanin stood, stretching like a great cat until his muscles creaked. He sighed and shook his head. "And he escaped?"

"In a way, Comrade Major-Commissar."

"In a way? In a way ! What does that mean, you slavering imbecile?"

"Yes. Yes, he escaped. Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar. I am very sorry, but he escaped."

Zimyanin smiled. "You have no need to be sorry, boy. It was not your fault. If it had been I would have hung you from that beam there, taken out a very thin knife and peeled the skin from your entire body, beginning at your heels and finishing with your pretty little face." He threw the towel to the floor, suddenly impatient to be moving. "I shall be in my office in four minutes and thirty seconds. I will read the full report then."

"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar." The man vanished through the wing doors, reappearing at Zimyanin's bellow. "Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar?"

"Make sure that Tracker Aliev is ready to move immediately."

 

"A CRYSTAL PRISM used to hang in the front window of my Aunt Zelda's apartment in the South Bronx. Funny the way that became the place to live in the 1990s. Just before that it'd been like Pits City. Anyway, this crystal prism used to hang there, and it would catch the sun. When I was a kid I'd sit and watch it like it was magic. The colors would all streak the white ceiling. Aunt Zelda would say it was a wizard's paintbrush." Rick smiled at the gentle memory. "God Almighty, Ryan, those were such good days. I was around twelve. I never had such good days as when I was twelve. Does anyone?"

"Twelve wasn't a happy time for me," Ryan replied. "Not with my brother."

"I'd killed a man by the time I was twelve," J.B. pondered.

"I'd killed 'bout fifteen," Jak said. "Mebbe twenty. Couldn't count good."

Rick lay back on his makeshift mattress, eyes closed.

Ryan looked at him, trying to remember how the freezie looked when they'd first seen him, trying to read the hollows around the eyes and the deep lines carved around the dry-lipped mouth. The genetic spillage from the nukings a century ago still meant a very high mortality rate from disease throughout the Deathlands. It wasn't unusual to see people dying of illness. Ryan must have seen thousands in his life. Once the Reaper laid his talons upon a shoulder, the signs were unmistakable, and Rick carried all of those signs.

J.B. caught Ryan's eye. He looked down at the dozing freezie and shook his head, motioning for Ryan to join him on the far side of the building, near where the corpses of the two thieves were already beginning to ripen and smell.

"Have to be tonight. And that could be too late for him," he said. "I never saw many a man so close to death who was still breathing." He shook his head. "But the Russkie bastards'll be as thick as flies on horse shit."

"Yeah. Gotta try for it. Least there's the chance of better food at the old house." Ryan glanced around at Rick. "No tools, no hope of mending the door. Even with him alive. We get there with the tools and Rick goes into the valleyleast we have an outside chance of repairing it. We have to go, and real soon."

 

JAK LAUREN WAS a prince of thieves. Covering his white hair with a fur hood, he sneaked out into the night, to scavenge and recce around. He returned in less than a half hour with news, good and bad.

"Seen wag. Easy steal. Two sec bastards. Chill 'em easy. Close by."

That was the good.

"Triple-hot. Sec bastards everyplace. Hundreds. Starting fucking scan-search. Roads blocked. Saw big sec man, bald and mustached. Shouting and pointing. Real grim fucker."

"Zimyanin," Ryan said quietly.

That was the bad.

Just before midnight J.B. and Ryan stood on either side of Rick, ready to support him. The Stars and Stripes had been peeled off the metal stanchion, and the freezie had insisted on carrying it himself. He wrapped it carefully around his middle, using the leather belt on his coat to keep it snug. Ryan and J.B. had divided the tools between themselves, leaving Jak free to scout on ahead of them and take out the sec men.

"Time to go," Ryan announced.

Rick looked around the empty building that had been home for a couple of days. "Goodbye to our freeway retreat," he said, lifting his hand in a mock salute. "I shall return. No way I will."

The albino teenager went out first, glanced all around and beckoned to the other three to follow him into the cool, damp night.

 

ALIEV WAS EXCITED, grunting and snuffling, on hands and knees, scampering around like a hunting dog, face to the ground, head twitching from side to side.

The rest of the sec men had drawn back into a cautious circle and watched the Mongolian tracker with a mixture of religious fear and rank disgust. Most of them were appalled and frightened by the sight of the little man.

Major-Commissar Zimyanin watched his protege with a pleased, far-off smile. Comrade Marshal Josef Siraksi would have mixed feelings at the news of the massacre. The descriptions of the one-eyed man and his unique blaster, combined with the theft of the American flag, couldn't possibly be ignored now. Nor could Gregori's suspicions be derided.

"I trust that you are now convinced of my probity in this matter," he whispered to himself. It wouldn't be long now before he could practice his hard-learned English.

Aliev looked up at the officer, rubbing his hands together in a gesture that meant he had found the trail. Despite the numbers of people who had been around the bottom of the Isenstien Steps, the track of the one-eyed man wasn't that difficult to locate. And once Aliev had the spoor, nothing would turn him from it.

Zimyanin glanced at the cheap and unreliable chron on his left wrist. It told him that the time was closing in on the middle of the night. However far and fast his prey might have run, he would still be caught and taken. Perhaps by the morning.

"By the dawn's early light." Zimyanin smiled.

 

RYAN TOUCHED HIS TONGUE to the socket where the troublesome tooth had been, finding it still felt tender. But that dreadful nagging soreness had gone.

"Gotta rest," Rick panted. "Sorry, Ryan, sorry."

"Don't keep saying 'sorry.' It's getting to be like a rad-sore you have to pick at."

The freezie looked at J.B. "I don't mean to keep saying I'm sorry, I mean. I guess I should never apologize. It's a sign of weakness." For some reason that brought a weak grin to his parchment-pale face.

"Jak's been gone a long while," J.B. said to Ryan.

"Yeah. Quarter hour. Mebbe you or me should have gone with him."

"Only two sec men, he said."

"Could be more."

"Three. Four. Still back the kid to take 'em easy."

Ryan leaned against the tumbled wall of the long-ruined house and looked up at the sky. The low clouds that had dominated the night an hour or so back had cleared. The temperature had dropped, and he could see uncounted stars glittering with a ferociously cold gleam.

"Guess so. Give him another five then I'll go see what's up."

Less than a minute later the teenager appeared out of the darkness, waving the others to move forward.

As they each put an arm around Rick's waist to help him up, they saw Jak--holding his knife--gesture toward his own throat. He repeated the motion twice more.

"Three sec men," Ryan said.

"Where?" Rick asked worriedly.

"Dead," Ryan replied, "of course."

 

THE WAG WAS PERFECT. It was impossible to tell what it might have been when it started out its life. It had been modified, customized, and chopped and altered so many times that only a few inches of metal might have been original.

The tires were worn almost down to the canvas, but the engine looked sound. Homemade armor plating had been fixed to the front and sides of the cab. The seat was wide enough to take all four of them.

And the tank was three-quarters full of gas.

"Who drives?" Jak asked.

"Can you handle it?" Ryan asked. "Don't fuck around if you can't, Jak. There isn't time. Can you manage?"

"Sure. Four front and one back gear. Easy. Where you and J.B. ride?"

Ryan considered the question. No use having them all jammed in the cab for the breakout from the dangerous center of the ville.

"We'll take the back. Watch over the sides for any sort of trap."

"What if road's blocked?"

"Over, under, around--or through," Ryan replied, amending one of the Trader's sayings. "In this case it'll be around or through."

"Wish I had a gun," Rick said, surprising everyone. "Could pull my weight. Even a dying man can squeeze a trigger."

Ryan looked at him. "You stupe! We could've brought the blasters from the chills in the workshop! Why didn't you say?"

"Didn't think at the time. Sorry. Just didn't think."

"Too late now," J.B, said. "We gotta get moving."

When they helped the freezie up into the cab, his foot slipped on the wheel hub and he nearly fell back into the dirt. Jak swung into the driver's seat, glancing once over the controls. He gestured with his thumb for J.B. and Ryan to clamber into the open bed of the armored wag.

"Ready?" he called.

Ryan tapped on the metal plate at the rear of the cab. "Let's go."

 

GREGORI ZIMYANIN DIDN'T WASTE any time with the two corpses in the abandoned workshop. He tugged Aliev by the arm to attract his attention. "How many?"

The tracker considered, finally fluttering his fingers at lightning speed in the code that Zimyanin had taught him.

"Five? Four? No, slower. I don't understand what you're--There were three. Then two. Then four? Is that it?"

The Mongolian nodded then slid a finger behind the dripping mask covering his nose and mouth to remove a stubborn lump of blood-flecked phlegm.

"The three? Two men and a woman? One man sick? Yes?"

Aliev again used the sign language, telling Zimyanin that the woman had gone a couple of days ago. The sick man and the other had stayed, and they'd now been joined by two more men. One young and light on his feet, the other older. Aliev used his hand to indicate their heights. Around five-foot-four for the young one, four or five inches taller for the other man. Now all had gone.

"I can see that for myself, you whore-spawn mutie mongrel," Zimyanin snarled. "How long ago? How long? A half hour. Then we are closing. Outside." He called to the corporal in charge of the sec detail, "Keep your blundering imbeciles away from any prints out there. We're going to get them."

 

JAK KEPT THE HEADLIGHTS dim and picked his way through the rubble of the most deserted back streets. Ryan guided him as best he could, trying to maintain a rough course to the southwest of the enormous ville.

They glimpsed sec patrols, both on foot and motorized, but none came close enough to cause any serious worries for them. Until they were well into the suburb called Nikulino.

Now the roads were better maintained, busier. As the buildings began to thin out toward the country, there were fewer options to keep the wag from being spotted.

Around two-thirty in the morning, with a steady rain beginning to fall, the inevitable happened.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Thirty

 

 

 

 THE WAG SHUDDERED to a stop, the engine ticking over quietly. Jak opened the door on the driver's side and leaned half out, looking back at Ryan and J.B., who were peering around the armor plate.

"Yeah," Ryan told him. "I see it."

The road, lined with plane trees, stretched ahead for a quarter of a mile, houses scattered at intervals on either side. Just where the pavement began to bend to the right, with the silvery gleam of water visible, was a roadblock.

Two small four-wheel wags were angled across the center of the road, with a gap between them of less than a dozen feet. Twenty or thirty heavily armed sec men had ranged themselves around the two vehicles.

"Haven't seen yet," Jak said. "Moment pull out from trees, spot us. Fucking lot."

The teenager was correct. Their wag was parked under an overhanging bushy tree, and the driving rain had already reduced visibility. But as soon as they began to drive at the roadblock, the guards would have about thirty seconds of clear shooting at them. It was much too long.

J.B. pointed to where the old houses stood a little closer together. "Good chance we could work our way down there. You and me. Hit those stupes from the side. Moment we start shooting, Jak revs up the wag and hits that gap in the middle."

Rick's voice chimed in feebly. "Then we stop and pick you guys up and head for the dacha? That the master plan?"

The silence from the other three slapped him in the face. It was Ryan who put it into words.

"No, Rick. If you get through, you keep going. We'll try and give you a good head on them. That way, there's a chance--just a chance--that you and Jak could make it. We'll try and follow you when we can. But you don't stop. Jak knows that. If we make it, we'll make it. Watch for us."

"You play mean pool, Ryan," the freezie said, pulling his head back inside.

"First shot, Jak, you lay the metal flat. Aim for the middle and keep your head down. See you later." Ryan and J.B. slipped away into the streaming darkness.

The pounding rain drowned out any possibility of the sec men hearing the cautious approach of the two men. Conversely it meant that they might not hear any sec men moving their way.

Ryan took the lead, his reloaded SIG-Sauer drawn and ready. Water streamed down his face, seeping behind the patch covering his left eye and flooding the socket. His coat was sodden and heavy, trailing around his knees.

J.B. trudged along at his heels, head down, cursing the rain for covering his glasses, making it hard for him to see where he was going.

Ryan picked a route that took them around the rear of the nearest house, then along an alley that paralleled the road. When he judged they were close to the sec block, he cut through into the overgrown, dank front garden.

"There," he said.