Red Equinox

by James Axler

  "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 was—Cort 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…

  "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 tru
th 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 direction—southwest.

  "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.