Counterforce
Page 35
Belchenko was surprised to find that the admiral had the nerve to commandeer the Premier’s personal IL78.
As Sorokin was relaying his current location, Belchenko watched a small plastic warning light, set into the side of his telephone, begin blinking. The activation of this device could only mean that the so-called secure line over which they were talking was in the process of being monitored.
Although he had already conceded defeat, he had fought the urge to tell the admiral of the operation’s failure. Certain that he would find out soon enough, Belchenko had pleaded sickness and broken the connection.
But before Sorokin had signed off, he revealed a piece of information that cleared matters significantly for Belchenko.
Abruptly broken from his contemplations by a howling, icy gust, Belchenko ducked his head into the wind. Knifing through his woolen overcoat as if it were made of paper, the cold penetrated down to his bones. A sharp, familiar pain pierced his left side and he found himself seized by a violent fit of coughing.
While gasping for breath, he spat up a thick wad of congealed mucus. It wasn’t until he saw it land in the snow, that he caught site of the streaks of blood.
Even though the cold had intensified, his forehead was matted with sweat. Caught by a sudden wave of dizziness, Belchenko had to reach out and grab hold of a birch tree to keep from tumbling over.
It proved to be a solitary thought that diverted his mind far away from his physical ailments.
Strengthened by a shot of anger-generated adrenaline, Belchenko straightened himself up, caught his breath, and even managed to wipe the moisture from his forehead.
To his shocked dismay, it had been Viktor Rodin who had doomed Counterforce to failure! Sorokin had explained that the Premier had learned of the mutiny aboard the IL-38 relay plane, and the subsequent transmission of the Vulkan’s launch orders, from the Americans.
Belchenko had been genuinely surprised. Upon learning that Rodin had then asked for American military help in tracking down the Soviet sub, his surprise had turned to loathing.
How dare a Soviet Premier, no matter the circumstances, ask an avowed enemy to eliminate one of Russia’s own vessels. Not only was this a supreme act of treason, it was a cowardly move as well. No wonder the operation had failed!
Unable to comprehend Rodin’s motives, Belchenko trembled as he thought about what the world would soon be like. After their Premier had sold them out to the capitalists, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would be no more. For, once its character was changed by the Westerners’ decadent ways, their glorious social experiment would be over.
The snow began falling more thickly now, and the first deputy seriously considered returning to his dacha. At that moment a distant, muted growl sounded distinctly in the distance. Called by this alien noise, Belchenko continued into the forest’s depths.
After a few hundred yards, he broke into a large, brush-free clearing.
Laying in the center of this site was a fully grown black bear, one foreleg held by the jaws of a rusted steel trap. Conscious of the magnificent creature’s weakened condition, he cautiously approached it.
As he did so, his eyes fell upon a fist-sized patch of shocking white fur on the bear’s right haunch.
“Pasha!” he cried woefully.
“What have they done to you, my friend?”
Responding to his plea, the bear opened its reddened eyes and, for a second, their gazes met. With an agonized moan that touched the very pit of his visitor’s soul, the bear breathed deeply once, and finally surrendered to the pain that had been its constant companion for the last thirteen days.
Aware of his old friend’s passing, Belchenko kneeled beside the creature and stroked its soaked, matted fur. With tears of grief running down his cheeks, the first deputy pondered the message that Pasha had just given him.
Like the bear, Stanislav Sorokin, Paul Zavenyagin and he, himself, were facing extinction. When they passed, their type would be gone forever.
The absence of their wild strain would hardly be missed by the strange, alien inhabitants of the world to come. That society would be a place where the ultimate dream of the Rodina’s founding fathers would have little relevance.
Certain that such a world was not for him, Belchenko curled up beside the still-warm corpse of Pasha, oblivious to the howling winds of change that gusted around him.
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