by James Axler
Ryan didn't know where Kate was, or what she might be trying to do to help. Or, whether there was anything at all that she could do to help.
KATE'S UNDERCOVER .38 was buried in the middle of her straw mattress. The best plan she'd been able to think up meant that the blaster wouldn't be much use, and would certainly get discovered.
It was the middle of the evening when the slim young woman crept from her hut and picked her way through the drifts of fresh snow, moving quietly toward the part of the complex where both Ryan Cawdor and his son were being held.
DEAN COULDN'T SEE out of his left eye. There was a jagged cut just on the brow, and heavy bruising above and below the socket. The flesh was so puffy that the eye had swollen shut.
The woman who'd cleaned him had clucked sympathetically at the sight, shaking her head at the deep purple bruises that mottled the boy's upper body.
"Poor chicken. Lucky to be living."
"How was I saved?"
"Someone off your shift dug you out, then a shit-eating guard clubbed him down."
"Where is my… Where is he now?"
"In the river, like as not." The woman had paused. "Though I believe someone said he was took and chained up. For the Russkie to see him."
"The Russkie seen me?"
"Only for a moment, chuckie. But he might come back anytime, so's we'd best fix you as good as possible. Got some black cloth here. Make you a patch for that left eye of yours. Like that?"
The boy smiled. "Yeah. Be double good."
ZIMYANIN PAUSED halfway down the trembling ladder. The opening to the tunnel above him was ringed with the anxious faces of a group of his sec men.
He smiled at them. "I trust the water is not too inclement to facilitate bathing," he said.
The circle of pale watchers vanished.
He carried on down to the bottom, standing with one hand on the ladder, ready to move fast, sniffing the cold, damp air.
The danger was there.
The Russian could almost taste it.
All around him, the sides of the shaft seemed to be flowing, the earth like sticky honey, slow-moving. He could hear water running, somewhere farther down the passage. His boots were covered in rippling slime, almost to his knees.
He looked up and shouted. The faces of a couple of his sec men reappeared.
"Buckets and ropes. It must be drained first. Then send the older men from the day shift down here to dig it clear. Shoot the first one who draws back and hesitates. And the second and the third. In time, you will find a man who will be content to dig rather than die."
As he began the wearisome climb up to the fresh air and the falling snow, Gregori Zimyanin was conscious of an overwhelming need to possess a woman. But first he might revisit the young boy who'd been injured and the man who'd been beaten after he'd rescued him.
Then a woman.
When lust came to the powerful Russian, it became almost impossible to resist. He was halfway up the third of the series of greasy ladders and he had to pause, adjusting his breeches to accommodate the sudden, thrusting erection.
KATE HAD FOUND a guard who'd promised to let her in to see the prisoner. All she had to do was be nice to him for a few minutes.
"Then you'll let me see him?"
"He your husband or what?"
"Sort of."
"Come around back here, out of sight of the Russkie."
She followed him, hunching her shoulders against the fine, driven snow. The sec man stopped in an alcove that had once been a side door but was now barred off. He beckoned to her.
"On your knees."
"What? Don't you want to go somewhere inside so we can do it properly?"
"Just get down and get it out for me. Open your mouth and stop talking. Quick." He slapped her hard across her frozen cheek, his fingers leaving a flaring, livid mark on her skin.
She cupped her hand inside his trousers, squeezing gently, trying to make it end more quickly. But he held back, thrusting between her frozen lips, almost choking her. When he finally came, Kate attempted to pull away but he grabbed her by the back of her neck, pressing her against him, so that her senses were swamped with the rancid smell and bitter taste of his sweating body.
She stood up, gagging, as the guard zipped himself and pushed her aside, before taking up his position again.
"Can I go in now?" She hawked and spit into the snow, stooping and taking a mouthful of the clean whiteness.
"No."
"What?"
"I said 'no' didn't I? Just fuck off, or I'll cut your throat."
Kate stared at him. "You promised."
He grinned. "Yeah, I did, didn't I? So what? Changed my mind." He laughed. "Tell you what."
"What?"
"Some of my mates might like you to do it for them. Later tonight. You come around again and get that little tongue and lips ready. And then I'll definitely take you in to see that one-eyed bastard."
Kate half turned away, then suddenly changed her mind, putting on a slack-faced grin. "Honestly and truly?"
"Sure. Cross my cock and hope to die."
"I'll be back," she promised, as she turned toward her dormitory hut, intent on retrieving her revolver.
THERE WAS only a small light bulb in the room where Ryan was being held. Zimyanin was preoccupied with his sexual needs, as well as the worry about the way parts of the mine were becoming unworkable.
The Russian stood in the doorway, staring at the chained man on the floor.
"You displayed courage, I am informed." Ryan didn't answer him. "But also stupidity. The one is set against the other, so you are both lucky and unlucky. You understand me?"
"No, Major-Commissar, I don't."
Once again, there was the faint stirring of the layers of thick gray dust in the far-off rooms of distant memory.
"If you had not been stupid, I might have allowed you to go free. So, you are unlucky." Zimyanin laughed. "But there is, the, how do you say it? The other side of the coin. To resist a guard would have resulted in severe unhappiness and a cessation of breath. So, you are also lucky. Tomorrow you will work again. You agree with that?" Ryan didn't answer. "Well, you do not disagree."
The door slammed and the key turned in the lock, leaving Ryan alone once more.
DEAN WAS in one of the cleanest beds he'd ever seen, with relatively white sheets and three blankets. A small fire smoldered in the grate, though the inside of the windows was still coated with a rainbow sheet of ice.
The woman had left after giving him a bowl of thick fish stew, with sliced mushrooms, all heavily salted. The boy had devoured it to the last drop, wiping the inside of the dish with the remains of the three generous slices of fresh bread.
There had been a small shot glass of colorless home brew, which brought tears to the boy's eyes. The woman had whispered that it had been sent, special like, on the orders of Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin himself.
Now Dean was dozing, lying on his back, one arm thrown up across his face, covering the worst of his visible injuries.
The door opened slowly, the movement disturbing the sleeping boy. He squinted out, seeing the pockmarked face of the squat Russian peering at him. Dean started to sit up, but the man waved a gloved hand at him.
"Lie still and rest, young Master Goode. I have just come to—"
There was a voice from outside the room, a sec man, muttering something to Zimyanin. Dean could only catch a few words, something about a pair of girls being ready in the rooms.
The major-commissar nodded impatiently, throwing the boy a snatched smile. "Duty calls and I needs must go." Dean sat up, blinking from under the black patch over his left eye.
For a moment the Russian stared at him, face blank of emotion. His mouth opened as though he were on the verge of saying something, then the invisible sec man spoke and Zimyanin turned quickly away, slamming the door shut behind him.
ONE OF THE GIRLS lay unconscious in a corner of the bedroom. She had ragged blond hair, though most of it
was missing from the right side of her scaly, infected scalp. Blood oozed from between her thighs, and there were savage bite marks across her belly and breasts. A dark bruise covered most of her right cheek, and blood seeped from nose and mouth.
At her side was a piece of ragged black material that had once been her blouse.
Her friend was moaning, kneeling on the bed, face pressed to the blankets. Zimyanin was standing on the floor behind her, ramming himself into her from behind, enjoying her panting and cries. He was holding the girl by the back of the neck with his iron fingers, squeezing harder at each thrust.
This was good. So good, taking away all his worries about the earth falls, about the mysterious deaths that kept occurring around the mine and about the identity of the young Will Goode and his captive rescuer.
Everything would be resolved once his passion was spent and his mind clear again.
He was muttering to himself in Russian, breathing obscenities as he drove harder and harder into the woman. The bed rocked back and forth, rattling against the outer wall of the hut.
Out of the corner of his eye, Zimyanin noticed that the young woman on the floor had recovered consciousness, sitting up, touching her various injuries with trembling fingers, reaching for the scraps of material that lay beside her.
But he was nearing his third climax of the evening, feeling his stomach muscles fluttering, closing his eyes.
He gave a great roar of pleasure, fingers tighter, leaning on top of the shaking, weeping woman.
The Russian opened his eyes.
Inches away from him was the face of the other girl, a wad of black cotton covering her left eye, like an eye patch.
Like the eye patch over the left eye of Will Goode.
Like the one the American, Ryan Cawdor, had been wearing.
Over the left eye, like that of the prisoner who'd rescued Will Goode.
"Fucking father and fucking son!" Zimyanin screamed, snapping the woman's neck in a spasm of blind rage.
Chapter Forty
KRYSTY WATCHED THE pillar of dust as it moved steadily toward them across the flat New Mexico desert. The others were all back at the homestead for the evening meal.
Christina Lauren had been baking, the clay oven in the yard servicing a constant flow of bread and blueberry muffins. Jak had slit the throats of a brace of chickens, plucking and gutting them, then jointing them for a rich stew with sweet potatoes.
Now they all sat out on the porch, looking toward the sky-toppling column of gray-brown.
Krysty shaded her eyes as she stared at the dust cloud.
"Lot of people," she observed.
Jak blinked. His white hair was splashed with red from the western sun. He narrowed his pale eyes, but his vision was always poor in good light. "Could be maybe some Mescalero with cattle or horses?" he suggested.
"Moving slow," J.B. offered. "Doesn't tell us anything."
"Get us some trains every now and again. Like the old times when the settlers came through in big ox wags." Christina moved toward the door. "Anyone want some coffee?"
"A mug of your best Java would be most welcome," Doc said.
J.B. and Mildred also took up the offer, but Jak and Krysty turned it down.
"Your hair looks just about ready to burst into flame," Mildred said, smiling.
Krysty nodded. "It's the sun does it."
"You all right?"
"Sure, thanks. Just worried about Ryan. Where he is. What he's doing."
The black woman stood and joined her. "If Ryan can't make it, then nobody can. He's just about the most surviving man I ever met."
"I try to see, but all I get is cold, black and wet. And danger all over."
From the low hills behind the house, they all heard the distant crackle of lightning. Most evenings there was a spectacular chem storm, with the lightning ripping apart the pink-purple clouds, while the thunder made the earth shake.
"He'll make it."
She looked across at the Armorer, who was staring toward the west. The light flared off his spectacles, making it impossible to see his eyes.
"Sure. When?"
"We agreed, Krysty. If he's not back in time, then we go after him. One way or another, we'll bring him here."
"One way or another? You mean breathing or cold, J.B.? That it?"
"You know he'll return."
Christina came back out on the veranda, holding an old telescope that was covered in light brown leather and had a small brass focusing screw on the side.
"Been watching from the bedroom," she said. "That dust."
Jak looked at her. "What?"
"Lot of people coming this way. Wags. Moving slow. Won't get here until first light tomorrow. Unless they come in the night."
Krysty sensed the disquiet in the woman's voice. "We'd best get ready for them," she said. "One way or the other."
Chapter Forty-One
ZIMYANIN HAD HIS MAKAROV pistol in his hand, cocked and ready. He stormed out into the blizzard with his favorite Dragunov sniper's rifle strapped across his broad shoulders.
He bellowed for sec men to accompany him, without giving them any explanation of where they were going or what was happening. By the time he reached the hut where Ryan was held prisoner, he had eight of his guards trailing after him.
The snow was already lying way over the ankles, piled higher in drifts, three and four feet deep against exposed walls.
Visibility was down to less than twenty feet, and Zimyanin wasn't surprised not to be challenged.
But when he saw the open doorway, swinging in the strong wind, the black hall with inches of snow lying inside it, the Russian halted, holding up his hand as a warning to the others.
"Wait!"
The group of men, all carrying M-16s, gathered around him. It was close to midnight, and the slave-labor camp seemed to be sleeping.
"The man who saved the boy," Zimyanin shouted. "He is a most dangerous criminal element. A man who could free himself from the strongest—what is the word? Strongest gulag. He has, I think, escaped. We must find him. Must."
"Just one man, Major-Commissar?"
The cold eyes turned to the speaker, who took two stumbling steps backward, mouth closing like a steel trap.
"Two of you around the back. Four go to the room where the injured boy is kept. The rest come with me. How many men should be here?"
"Three, Major-Commissar."
"Then where…" He stopped as one of his guards suddenly reappeared around the side of the building. "What? Why haven't you gone to the back of—"
"They're just…" He pointed with his hand.
"Who?"
"Three that was on guard."
"Chilled?"
"All blasted through the back of the neck. Close up. See the burns."
Zimyanin took several rapid, short breaths. "Go on around the back."
"Want to see them?"
"No. I have seen the corpses of the stupid many times. Do as I say. The rest come with me."
But he knew what he would find in the room where Ryan Cawdor had been held prisoner.
THE DOOR HAD OPENED slowly and in the half-light Ryan had been able to see a hand, wearing a leather gauntlet, come into the cell, holding a large-caliber pistol.
It was an image of death that he'd often seen in his darkest dreams, and he tried to get to his feet, ready to take any last chance that might present itself.
Then he realized what kind of gun the hand was gripping—the .38-caliber Undercover that he'd stolen from the armory for Kate Webb.
"Ryan?" she whispered.
"Yeah."
"I got the key to let you out."
"The sec men?"
She was kneeling, fumbling with the key, dropping her gloves on the floor. "Deal was I'd suck them and they'd let me see you."
"And?"
"First time I did what he wanted and the bastard wouldn't keep his word. Said come back and do it for his friends."
Ryan could feel a cold wind blowing f
rom the open door. He tried to move around to make it easier for the young woman to free him. The only good thing was that, in the brawl and the confusion of the cave-in, nobody had thought to search him. The SIG-Sauer and the panga were still safely hidden under his heavy clothing.
"Yeah, go on telling me."
"Three dumb fucks. Stood there. I said to get their cocks out ready and line up. Stood there. Pathetic little maggots, in the cold, around the side of the hut. Drew the blaster… Got it."
He shook the chains off his wrists, freeing himself completely, drawing his own automatic.
"You reloaded your blaster?"
"No."
"Do it."
"Now?"
"Yeah. How many you fire?"
"Three."
"Chilled them all with three rounds." Ryan was impressed.
"They near shit themselves. One bullet back of the neck. I made the shits kneel in front of me."
"Didn't hear a sound."
"Blowing a blizzard outside."
"You did real well." He grabbed her and gave her a quick kiss on her cold cheek.
"Now what? Rescue Dean?"
He shook his head. "Be more guards. Zimyanin could come anytime. Best is get outside and hide up. Then save the boy when they don't expect it."
He moved past her, glancing into the deserted corridor. Since he hadn't heard the bleak execution of the three sec men, it was safe to assume that nobody else had.
The snow was whirling into the passage from the black night beyond. Ryan walked slowly and peered around the door, but it wasn't possible to make anything out more than thirty feet away.
"Shelter," he said to the young woman, who followed him into the storm with a stumbling, coltish grace.
They vanished into the blizzard.
Less than five minutes later, Gregori Zimyanin came roaring up.
"I KNOW THAT YOU ARE the son of Ryan Cawdor."
"Who's that?" The dark right eye, the left one still covered by a patch, brimmed with innocence as it stared up at the Russian.
"Listen to me, pretty youth, and listen to me very well."
Dean had seen much wickedness in his ten years of life, had very often been frightened. Though he was trying with all his might to conceal it, he'd never met anyone who scared him like the powerful, bald-headed Russian.
