Resistance (Nomad Book 3)

by Matthew Mather

  They dug through half-frozen sand for two hours until Giovanni hit metal. A steel manhole cover with a handle in the center. They brushed away the dirt. It took some time, and a little stern persuasion with shovels, but eventually it opened. Sand shifted and seeped into the hole beyond. Jess shone a flashlight inside. A ladder bolted to a drain wall led downward into darkness.

  “In we go,” Ufuk said.

  Jess let him climb down first.

  Somewhere a generator hummed. Jess felt it vibrate through each step as she descended. The others followed and, when she halfway down, light flooded the area below to reveal a wide-open cavern cut into the earth, bolstered by steel reinforced pillars. Shelving lined one of the walls, stacked with wooden crates. In the center, organized by type, were rows of what appeared to be modern agricultural equipment. Beyond them, Jess’s eyes were drawn to something else. Two battered Toyota pickup trucks stood in pools of bright light that caught the thin veneer of dust that coated each.

  Of course they would be Toyota pickups.

  Ubiquitous, easy to fix, and used as weapons of both war and revolution for years, perhaps even decades. Neither would draw a second glance in this region. Both would be able to cross the desert as capably as any other vehicle and carry as much of their equipment as they needed.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “There has long been a belief that Libya has sponsored extremist paramilitary groups who have had training camps in the Libyan Desert, in particular the IRA and Al Quaeda. US satellites have surveyed this area for decades. Anything that occurs aboveground can be seen and is recorded. We work below ground, away from scrutiny.”

  Giovanni jumped off the ladder and scoffed, “So you funded terrorist camps?”

  “Not terrorists, survivalists.” Ufuk deflected the criticism. “After the civil war here, I purchased the Sahl Oil Field through shell companies. The political situation allowed me a favorable bargaining position with the new Libyan government over Western business interests. My intention was to give myself a base of operations for a project examining agricultural innovations that were suited to the climate in this region, experiment with the irrigation techniques already developed to deal with Libya’s harsh climates.”

  “Why did we need to dig?” Jess said. “Surely you didn’t do this every time you needed to come down here?”

  “This was…how do you say…a bolt hole? I knew Nomad was coming—“ He winced slightly. “—and many of my installations I attempted to hide. The main entrance was in the building destroyed by explosives. It was reported to the Libyan authorities as a machinery accident. There is an exit that we can open to drive the jeeps and equipment out, but we can only open this from the inside.”

  As he spoke, Jess noticed something else in the vast hangar. In one far corner, covered by long, tall tarpaulin shelters the same color as the walls, and camouflaged by gathered dust and sand. She walked toward them, curious.

  Ufuk followed. “It is what you think it is.”

  She pulled aside the canvas. Strip lights illuminated the high-framed walls. There were differences, but the similarities were unmistakable. “Predator drones? Are these military?”

  “Similar, but not identical. We can call them Predators.”

  “How did you get them?”

  “How does it matter?”

  “Any weapons systems?”

  “Only communications and surveillance.”

  “And you know how to get them airborne?”

  “Not difficult at all. Without payloads, they can fly thousands of kilometers, and at the right cruising speed stay aloft for as much as forty-eight hours. Or at least, they could without all the ash in the air. These are air-breathers, unlike our other trusty little friends, but at least we can refuel them.”

  Chapter 4

  Siberian Steppes, near Ulan Battor

  The Russian soldiers sat huddled around a small fire, grateful for what small respite their shelter offered from the bitter Siberian wind. Heavy canvas, now bowed by ash, had been strung from the rigging of the old Czilim and pegged as tight as the frozen ground would allow. Somewhere it still flapped monotonously in the gale, but Zasekin couldn’t find the resolve to leave the warmth of the fire and tend to whatever had worked loose. He supposed they had all grown used to the noise by now.

  Beyond, somewhere out in the darkness, the ash still fell, eddying in the savage wind. Thick tape along the edges of the shelter kept the ash from being swept inside, but Zasekin could still taste it in his mouth. He spat phlegm thick and dark onto the frozen ground.

  Barely five weeks ago he had been Corporal Andrei Nikolayevich Zasekin, of the Border Service of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. It had been a title that had come to mean less and less to him as the years had passed. One which he accepted as any man accepts a sad truth he once blindly craved, but which he now perceives more clearly and from which he can no longer escape.

  Five weeks ago, he had been a disillusioned servant of Putin’s new, united Russia. To a man posted in Siberia—and almost as far away from Moscow as it was possible to be in the Rodina—it seemed not so very different from the old Russia.

  "Tell me uncle," Zasekin thought as he called to mind Lermontov’s Borodin, "was it any different to the tandemocratia?" When Putin shared power with the puppet President, Medvedev, the Rodina had still been saddled with the same old soaring Soviet ambitions that went far beyond her actual capabilities. Shifting power back and forth between the two men for a decade had done little to change anything.

  Yet, if that had been five weeks ago, who was he now?

  Now he supposed he was simply Andrei Nikolayevich Zasekin again, a Buryat who had tried to leave his roots behind. A foolish young man blinded by the promise of adventure, a life away from the insular monotony of provincial Yanchukan, nestled in the mountains of Severo-Baykalsky. Serving a Russia he didn’t truly feel a part of.

  He pictured the valleys, laden with colorful flowers, that he’d played in as boy. Hills lined by pine forest that seemed always to be touched by mist. What was left of that tiny community after Lake Baikal’s conflagration?

  How much of Russia itself had even survived?

  From what they’d seen in the last few days, a great deal of damage had been done. What was left of the Rodina now and Putin’s lofty ambitions? Tell me that, uncle.

  If he was no longer a Corporal, why did they still follow him? These men who now warmed themselves by the fire, wrapped in scavenged blankets and coats they used to supplement their own military-issue clothing.

  He told himself it was a Russian’s nature to endure, and to sacrifice for the betterment of the Motherland. He knew, deep in his gut, there would always be the Rodina. He had no way to know what that meant for any of them.

  They camped away from the banks of the Selenge, the river still bloated and warm, reeking of sulfur. Zasekin might have considered a different route away from Baikal, but with Irkutsk gone, Ulan Bator was the nearest urban center.

  It lay to the south, on the fringes of the Gobi, where he hoped it might be warmer. The quickest route for their Czilim hovercraft was along the Selenge itself, where there were also settlements they could search for supplies.

  And diesel fuel.

  “Soup?”

  Zasekin took the offered bowl from Timur. “Thank you,” he said as he lifted the steaming spoon his mouth.

  “Vadim says it is no more than another day to Sükhbaatar,” Timur said. “But we will spend much of the morning performing maintenance on the Czilim. Several skirts need replacing. The ash and ice are taking their toll. We are in need of fuel too.”

  Sükhbaatar, where the Selenge branched away and they would instead take the Orhon to Ulan Bator.

  “Sükhbaatar is large enough,” Zasekin said. “There will be fuel and food there, I am sure of it. How is Semyon?”

  Timur tensed and glanced across at the man lying closest the fire, hidden beneath a mound of whatever bl
ankets they had been able to find. “Not much change. Tired, but the antibiotics are in his system now. We will know in a few days.”

  “We must all be careful. As we head south, there will more who see value in the Czilim. Many will try to take it from us. There have always been bandits and hunters in these mountains. If anyone can survive here, they can.”

  Timur nodded. “Evgeny has the first watch. He was with Semyon when they were attacked. He’ll not make that mistake again. When he sleeps, I will take over.” Evgeny was inside the Czilim then, its systems powered down and silent. Zasekin remembered just how cold it was inside that steel coffin, when there was no heat.

  “I will take the next watch,” Zasekin said, perhaps too quickly.

  “You should sleep.”

  “I’ve slept enough. I will take the watch.”

  Timur seemed about to say something, but instead he nodded and returned to his soup. Perhaps he knew Zasekin well enough now to understand that questioning him was unacceptable.

  Zasekin smiled thinly to himself. He hoped Timur had not picked up the brusqueness in his voice. Better that his friend didn’t know that Zasekin needed to be inside the Czilim at a specified time, and alone. While his men slept, there would be only one system powered on inside the hovercraft and, with the raging wind outside, none of them would hear the conversation he would then have. They couldn’t know, not yet. They might think him crazy for trusting a man thousands of miles away, on the other end of a radio. They might question his judgment, his ability to lead them, if they knew the deal he had struck.

  There would be confirmation at Sükhbaatar. If the man could deliver what he had promised there, Zasekin would be able to reveal to his men what he had been doing. There would be proof the man was capable of following through on his extravagant claims. It was Russian nature to be suspicious of those bearing gifts.

  Semyon gave a small moan and Zasekin resisted the urge to look over at him again. Bullet wounds were rarely to be treated lightly, but out here, in the vast wilderness so far from help, such an injury took on a new seriousness. And with the damn ash everywhere, Zasekin wondered if the infection was more serious than they had thought. Semyon had only recently begun service with the SVR. He had transferred from the re-commissioned ICBM complex at Drovyanaya in Chita Oblast in an attempt to escape that frigid, barren place, a place that Zasekin himself knew all too well, only to be billeted to the Border Guard of Lake Baikal, barely a few hours’ drive away. The irony left Zasekin bitter. Now, if Semyon became dead weight, unable to discharge his duty to the other men with whom he served, the situation might become more complicated. Men, even good men, could be overcome when their survival was threatened.

  “There is something I wanted to ask you.” Timur didn’t look up from his bowl as he spoke.

  “Then ask.”

  Timur hesitated.

  “They’re sleeping,” Zasekin said. “You may speak freely.”

  Timur looked at him. “Do you think they know what we are doing?”

  They, meaning their apparatchik FSB superiors. It had always been a Russian military man’s unspoken duty to fear his superiors, to fear the Party and its nomenklatura. “I think they have more to concern themselves with than caring about what happens to a single Border Service unit. Irkutsk is in ruins, we both saw it. We have no way of knowing what else has suffered similarly.”

  “Will they not consider it desertion? Is it any different?”

  “What is important is that we stay alive. If that means heading south, then that’s our duty. We cannot protect the Rodina if we are dead.”

  For a moment, the younger man seemed unconvinced, then he nodded. “Did you feel anything, when we crossed the border after Naushki?” Timur had not once ever left the Rodina. To him crossing the border into Mongolia would have been significant, possibly, Zasekin thought, a betrayal of its own. Who do you think you are betraying, Timur? The only person to whom you owe allegiance now is yourself, or perhaps these men here, huddled around a fire whilst one of their own slowly dies in agony.

  Zasekin hesitated before he spoke. “Something, perhaps,” he said finally. “Buryatia has always been my home. It is strange knowing it may be some time before I return.”

  He wondered what Timur might think if he knew what was really in his mind at that moment—the unshakable belief he would never in fact return, that there was very likely to be little to return to.

  “Much has changed.”

  “Not us, Timur Ivanovych. We have not changed. We are still loyal to each other. That will never change. Was that not Anapa’s most important lesson to you?”

  Timur glanced at Semyon, then said, “Perhaps loyalty is all we have.” He smiled thinly. “I hated Anapa. I was glad to graduate. You should consider yourself lucky never to have experienced it.”

  “Golitsynsky was much worse, let me assure you.”

  “I sometimes forget how much older you are.”

  Gaskin allowed himself a chuckle. “You mean wiser.”

  “We owe you our lives. Of that I am certain.”

  “Continue to trust me, and I will continue to protect you.”

  “I do trust you, comrade. I always have.”

  A noise came from outside, a soft crack that carried on the wind. Timur reached for his pistol.

  A little more slowly, Zasekin did the same and noticed that it trembled a little in his hand. Timur was right—he needed to sleep.

  Evgeny stepped through the entrance to the shelter and stared at them. “You’re nervous.”

  Zasekin holstered his pistol. “I can’t sleep. I’ll take the next watch.”

  Evgeny took a bowl and filled it with soup. “Take an extra blanket,” he said as he settled down. “It’s damn cold out there.”

  Zasekin pulled a scarf around his face, and went outside. He squinted against the ash-veined wind that instantly swept over him and opened the hatch to the old Czilim. She had no name to the FSB other than PSKA-83. Zasekin had once called her the Water Chestnut, because that was the name the shipbuilders at Yaraslavsky had wanted to name the series, only to be denied later by the FSB apparatchik. Those who rode in her had affectionately retained the name.

  The Water Chestnut had nearly been retired a few years ago, when her sisters had been put out to pasture after two decades of loyal service, yet this particular Czilim still had much to offer. She still yearned for the challenge Baikal’s unpredictable temperament amidst Search and Rescue operations or the evacuation of stricken Russian Border Guard. Even on one quietly celebrated occasion as a hastily deployed exfiltration unit for Spetsgruppa A troops in China. Now she cared for him and his men. There was still much to love about her. He suspected that, given almost everything with a circuit was fried, the fact she was old and more mechanical than electronic offered some explanation as to why she was still running at all. Good old Soviet design.

  “Sometimes new is not always best,” he murmured.

  He ducked inside and closed the hatch behind him.

  Through the windscreen, he could barely see the mountains through the pall. Would miss his homeland? If the world was so different now, it hardly mattered. What was once his homeland was gone, to be replaced by something different. What that was, he didn’t yet know.

  A pale orange glow built in the surging sky, high above the nunataks far-off to the north. Zasekin watched, spellbound, as it pulsed and threaded a bleeding trail across the slate gray firmament. Slowly it billowed, intensified, and above the wind a sound like crackling fire came. It grew in size and brightness until almost the entire cabin was lit by its presence, and its voice had become a shuddering, sonorous bellow. In the center of that shivering glow was a tiny kernel of purest white, a searing inferno. It cut thorough the sky, a trail of fire in its wake. The nunatak summits lit up by the conflagration, and the ground shuddered as it struck. Even so far away, the impact left its mark on him, he felt it in the deepest parts of himself, and he might have sat, paralyzed like that all night, ha
d the radio not then hissed and cracked, and come to life.

  He answered.

  “Andrei Nikolayevich,” said a familiar voice. “Are you well?”

  “We are surviving. It has been some time since I last heard from you.”

  “I have had matters to attend to. How is your injured man?”

  “Much improved.” Zasekin lied. Far better that this man considered them useful to him for as long as possible, if his claims were to be believed.

  “Good. Where are you now?”

  “Better we do not broadcast our location over the radio, but we will be in Sükhbaatar within the next forty-eight hours, I am sure.”

  “The supplies I promised you will be there. I will explain precisely where after you have arrived.”

  “Can you tell us anything about the town? Are there survivors?”

  “It’s possible. There are vehicles moving around the town, mostly centered around the hospital and the Governor’s House. There is other activity, but it’s sporadic and hard to identify. We receive only limited information.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I’m sure you don’t tell me everything, Andrei Nikolayevich, separated as we are by such great distance. Trust on both sides must be earned.”

  “If you are able to offer what you claim, then you will have my trust.”

  “Fair enough. I will call again at the same time tomorrow and you can update me on your progress.”

  Zasekin turned off the radio and stared out again through the dirty glass of the windscreen, at shadows shuddering in the pale light.

  Chapter 5

  Northern Libya, Sahl Oilfield

  Jess found Massarra outside, standing over the bodies of the five deceased. The M4 still hung from a single-point harness on her chest. For a moment, she had cold, dead eyes that Jess had seen in second-tour marines in Afghanistan, calculating and emotionless, windows to a quiet understanding they were little more than ghosts drifting in the fog, waiting for death and its long, empty silence.