Predator Cold War

by Nathan Archer

  ”Twelve of them,” she said, counting quickly. “Twelve workers, Galyshev and his men but there was Sobchak!”

  ”Who?” Schaefer asked.

  ”Come on,” Ligacheva told him, striding down the passage toward the scientific station.

  Schaefer hesitated, glanced around at the Russian soldiers standing on all sides with weapons held ready, and then followed the lieutenant through corridors that gleamed white with hoarfrost in the unsteady glow of the bare lightbulbs. Icicles hung in glittering lines from the overhead pipes; Schaefer had to smash them away with one gloved hand to avoid ducking his head, and his progress was plainly audible as ice rattled to the floor and crunched underfoot.

  The final tunnel opened into a bare concrete room, the floor slick with a thin layer of black ice. A soldier was standing at an open door on the far side of the room-a mere kid, Schaefer thought, cold and scared despite the machine gun he held and the uniform he wore. He might be eighteen, Schaefer supposed, but he didn’t look a day over sixteen.

  ”Lieutenant,” the soldier said, his voice unsteady but relieved at the appearance of a superior. “He was lying there, he wouldn’t let me touch him-he wouldn’t even tell me his name...”

  ”Sobchak,” Ligacheva said. “Oh, God. His name is Sobchak.” She pushed past the soldier and stared into the room, expecting a scene of blood and devastation, expecting to see that the monster had attacked Sobchak.

  Nothing was out of place; nothing had been disturbed. Many of the metal surfaces were white with frost, instead of their normal gray, but the equipment was all in place. Most of the meters and screens were dark-apparently someone had shut many of the devices down, or the cold had ruined them, or perhaps the restored power Steshin had provided was not sufficient to power everything. Certainly, the lighting throughout the station seemed dimmer than usual.

  And the air in this laboratory was far, far colder than the rest of the station, almost as cold as outside. Ligacheva frowned.

  ”Where ...”

  The soldier pointed, and Ligacheva saw Sobchak, lying on his back on the floor, his hands and feet bare-and horribly discolored, red and purple and black.

  Severe frostbite. Ligacheva had seen frostbite a few times before, though never a case this bad, and she recognized it instantly.

  ”So tired of white,” Sobchak muttered, holding one of his ruined hands above his face. His voice was scratchy and thin-the cold had damaged something, Ligacheva was sure, his lungs or his throat. “So tired of the cold and the white,” he said. “Isn’t it pretty?” He waved his arm, and his dead hand flopped limply. “See? Isn’t it pretty?”

  Ligacheva hurried to the scientist’s side and knelt. “Sobchak, it’s me-Ligacheva,” she said. “What happened? You’ve got to tell us what happened.”

  Sobchak turned his head to look at her, struggling to refocus his eyes. She saw that his left ear was black with frostbite, too. “Ligacheva?” he said. “Yes, yes, yes. I remember you.”

  ”Sobchak, what happened?”

  ”I hid,” Sobchak replied. “I was scared-I heard the screams, and the door was locked, and I didn’t dare ... My boots were outside, but I ... and the cold, the heat stopped and I still didn’t dare...”

  ”Yes, I see,” Ligacheva said. “I see completely, but you’re safe now. We’ll get you to a doctor.”

  She knew it was probably far too late for that; Sobchak was almost certainly dying, and even if he lived he would lose both his hands and feet, which might be a fate worse than death for the little scientist.

  ”They left,” he said. “I charted them with the equipment, the seismographs ... but I was still scared. And I didn’t know how to fix the heat anyway.”

  ”I understand, Sobchak,” Ligacheva said.

  ”I drew a map,” Sobchak said.

  ”Here,” Schaefer said, spotting the one piece of paper that had not been touched by the frost that had condensed from the once-moist air. He picked it up and turned it to catch the light.

  ”You,” Ligacheva said, pointing at the soldier at the door. “I want a medical crew up here on the double!”

  The kid saluted and hurried away. Schaefer watched him go, then said, “Our friends seem to be based in or near a canyon or ravine about eighteen or twenty kilometers from the station.” He added, “That’s assuming your pal here was better at drawing maps than he was at keeping his socks on, anyway.”

  Ligacheva jerked upright, then turned to glare at Schaefer. She rose to her feet and snatched the map out of his hands without looking at it; she stood staring angrily up at Schaefer. The top of her head didn’t quite reach his chin, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  ”A man’s dying and you talk as if it’s some petty inconvenience,” she said. “What kind of a man are you, to make a joke of this?”

  Schaefer stared down at her for a moment without speaking; then a voice from the doorway interrupted.

  ”Lieutenant, on the radio-an urgent message from Moscow. General Ponomarenko! “ The voice was Sergeant Yashin’s.

  ”Coming,” Ligacheva answered without turning. She stared at Schaefer for a second more, then pivoted on her heel and strode away.

  Schaefer silently watched her go, then nodded once to himself.

  ”Tough chick there,” he said in English. “Asks good questions.”

  Chapter 20

  Sergeant Yashin stood by impassively, listening as Lieutenant Ligacheva argued with her superior. The two of them were alone in the cramped little radio room, the lieutenant operating the equipment while Yashin watched the door.

  ”General, you don’t understand,” Ligacheva said desperately. “Yes, we have Sobchak’s map, we know where their base is-their ship, or whatever it is. But we can’t attack it yet-it’s impossible!”

  ”Nothing is impossible,” Ponomarenko replied.

  ”We’ve just arrived, sir,” Ligacheva insisted. “We haven’t even secured the Assyma complex, haven’t even cut down the bodies, let alone done any reconnaissance. We don’t know anything about what’s out there ...”

  ”You do not need to know,” Ponomarenko interrupted. “Soldiers are often faced with the unknown, my dear. The arrival of these Americans necessitates an immediate attack-we must have firsthand information on whatever is out there before the site is further compromised. We have no way to be certain you have captured all the Americans.”

  ”General, if we go out there now, it may well be a repeat of what happened to my previous squad. I cannot accept the responsibility ...”

  Ponomarenko cut her off. “Is that your final word, Lieutenant?”

  ”I ...” Ligacheva hesitated, then straightened up. “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s my final word.”

  ”In that case, Lieutenant,” Ponomarenko said, “you may remain at the pumping station with the prisoners.” Ligacheva began to relax, then snapped to attention as the general continued, “Sergeant Yashin will lead the attack.”

  ”Sergeant Yashin?” Ligacheva turned and watched as a wolfish grin spread over Yashin’s face.

  ”Yes. Is he there?”

  ”Yes, he’s here, sir,” Ligacheva said slowly.

  ”You heard your orders, Sergeant?” Ponomarenko asked.

  ”Yes, sir,” Yashin replied happily.

  ”That will be all, then, Lieutenant.”

  ”Yes, sir,” Ligacheva said. She put down the microphone and stared at Yashin.

  ”You planned this, didn’t you?” she demanded.

  ”I thought an opportunity might arise,” Yashin said calmly, hands clasped behind his back. “I let the general know that he could put his faith in me.”

  ”Just in case he had any doubt of it,” Ligacheva said bitterly.

  ”Indeed,” Yashin said, rocking gently on his heels. “You may be content with your present rank and status, Lieutenant, but I am not-I have hopes for advancement. One can scarcely live on a sergeant’s pay these days, and they do not give commissioned rank to men who simply do as they’re told and
show no initiative.”

  ”Your initiative may get you killed out there,” Ligacheva pointed out.

  ”I do not think it will,” Yashin sneered. “I am no mere woman, frightened of the cold and the dark and caught unawares. I will confront our enemy boldly, as you could not. While you’re here tending the Americans, let real soldiers take the field, Lieutenant-we’ll show you how it should be done, so we can finish this matter and return home to our warm beds, our women, and our drink.”

  Ligacheva stared at her sergeant for a long moment.

  Maybe, she thought, Yashin was right, even if he was a traitorous bastard. Maybe he and the other men were more than a match for their enemy. Maybe they would capture whatever was out in that canyon. She hoped so.

  She didn’t believe it, though.

  She believed that Yashin would lead them all to their deaths.

  But there was nothing she could do about it. He had his orders, and his opinions-he wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.

  So she didn’t bother saying it. She turned away without another word and went to find the American, Schaefer-and the bottle of vodka that Galyshev had always kept put away in the cabinet in his office.

  Chapter 21

  Rasche had caught a cab from Kennedy to Police Plaza. He wasn’t on the force anymore, but he still had friends, and he was still in law enforcement, and law officers cooperated with each other; he had known that Police Plaza was the place to start.

  He talked to Weston and to half a dozen other old friends and acquaintances and got the gory details of the bad bust that had left Baby, her two flunkies, and four good cops dead. On the basis of ballistics, Forensics had tagged one of the victims, Arturo Velasquez, with killing the four cops, but had no solid leads on who had taken out Arturo and his friends-none of the bullets matched any of Schaefer’s known personal arsenal or any of the weapons found at the scene.

  Baby and Reggie had each taken a 9mm slug through the head, execution style; no 9mm guns were involved elsewhere in the incident, however. Schaefer owned several handguns, but none of them were 9mm.

  No one mentioned the fact that most federal agents carried 9mm pistols.

  The crime scene had been messy, but nothing like the slaughterhouses those creatures had left behind the previous summer; this carnage was clearly all the work of human beings, not monsters from outer space.

  The guys who had been working in the comics shop had been interviewed-Rasche couldn’t keep straight who was who in the statements, since they all seemed to be named John, but it didn’t matter, since their stories matched. They reported seeing men in dark suits out front, but had no useful descriptions beyond that-they’d dove for cover as soon as the shooting started, and they had stayed down, out of the field of fire, until all the shooting had stopped.

  And no one had any idea what had become of Schaefer in all this chaos. When the shooting had finally stopped he was simply gone, and the men in the dark suits were gone with him. The lab said that none of the bloodstains at the scene were Schaefer’s; all of them matched neatly with one or another of the known dead. That meant that Schaefer had probably still been alive when he vanished.

  Rasche was pleased to hear that-pleased, but not surprised. He wasn’t entirely sure it was possible to kill Schaefer.

  He was a bit less pleased that none of the bloodstains or fibers provided any leads on the men in suits. “Feds,” Rasche muttered at the mention of the dark suits. Everyone knew that federal agents generally favored dark suits. “Philips,” Rasche said.

  As soon as Weston had mentioned the name Philips, Rasche had known that somehow Schaefer was involved with those things again, those sadistic predators from outer space.

  Who the hell was Smithers, though? Rasche had never heard of any fed named Smithers.

  Smithers was his lead, that was who Smithers was.

  Rasche didn’t have legal access to the NYPD computers anymore, but his friends did, and they were glad to “demonstrate” the system for a visiting sheriff. Military records brought up 212 entries under “Smithers” for personnel on active duty; Rasche was able to eliminate most of them at a glance.

  When he got to one of them he stopped looking. The match was good enough that Rasche didn’t see the need to look any further.

  Smithers, Leonard E., age thirty-four, U.S. Army colonel, involved in CIA operations dating back to the Reagan administration, present assignment classified. Commanding officer, General Eustace Philips.

  Philips. Philips and Smithers. That had to be the right one.

  Smithers had an office address in midtown listed-and, Rasche decided, it was time for a certain Oregon sheriff to pay that office a visit.

  Getting a cab was easy-that was one thing he had missed about New York. If you wanted a cab in Bluecreek you phoned Stan’s Taxi and waited forty minutes. You didn’t just step off the curb and wave. And you could just forget about buses or subways.

  On the other hand, in Bluecreek he didn’t have to listen to Greek cabdrivers talk about how everyone blamed the Serbs, when it was the Albanians who caused all the trouble. It was a relief to escape onto the sidewalk and into the nondescript office tower.

  The building had a military guard in dress uniform in the lobby; Rasche flashed his badge. “Rasche, Bluecreek sheriff’s department-I’m here on police business. Colonel Smithers, please.”

  ”Yes, sir,” the guard said, hauling out a register bound in dirty blue vinyl. “Room 3710. Please sign in, stating the reason for this visit.”

  Rasche smiled and signed in; for his reason he scrawled, “To kick some ass.”

  The guard either didn’t read it or didn’t care; he didn’t say a word as Rasche stamped down the corridor and boarded an elevator.

  Rasche didn’t like seeing the military involved in Schaefer’s disappearance. Schaefer’s brother Dutch had disappeared without a trace years before, when he’d been on some secret rescue mission and had run up against the alien hunters; he’d lost his squad but come out of the whole business alive, and then he’d vanished. The last thing anyone admitted seeing of him was when he’d gone in to be debriefed, for the umpteenth time, by the military.

  Maybe the U.S. Army had taken a hint from the old Argentines or Salvadorans and had disappeared Dutch. And maybe now they’d done the same thing to Schaefer.

  Or whatever had happened to Dutch, maybe it had happened to Schaefer.

  Except that Rasche wasn’t about to let it, despite what the U.S. Army might want. Yeah, he was all in favor of a strong military, but there were limits, and he intended to point this out to Colonel Smithers.

  Room 3710 was a small office located halfway down a long, drab corridor. The windowless, off white door was ajar, and Rasche pushed it open.

  A big, short-haired man in a dark suit was sitting on the corner of the desk, holding the phone. “... got a tee-off time at six,” he was saying as Rasche entered. “We can...” Then he spotted Rasche and stopped in midsentence.

  ”Colonel Smithers?” Rasche asked.

  ”I’ll call you back,” Smithers said into the receiver. He hung up the phone, then turned to Rasche and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

  ”Concerned taxpayer,” Rasche said. “Got a minute?”

  ”Hell, no.” He started to say more, but Rasche cut him off.

  ”Think you could find one? It’s important.”

  ”Listen, mister, whoever you are,” Smithers said, “I’m not a recruiter or a P.R. officer. Was there something you wanted?”

  ”As a matter of fact, yes,” Rasche said. “My name’s Rasche, Colonel. Maybe you can guess what I’m after.”

  ”No, I ...” Smithers began. Then he stopped, and his tone changed abruptly from annoyance to uncertainty. “Did you say ‘Rasche’? Detective Rasche?”

  ”It’s Sheriff Rasche now, actually,” Rasche said, shrugging diffidently. “I don’t want any trouble, Colonel. I was just wondering whether you could tell me where my old partner has got to. Detecti
ve Schaefer.”

  ”Get out of here, Rasche,” Smithers said, getting up off the desk. “You don’t want to be involved.”

  ”Oh, now, don’t be too...” Rasche began as Smithers approached him.

  Then Smithers reached to grab Rasche’s shoulder and shove him out of the office, and Rasche made his move.

  In all his years on the NYPD, Rasche had always left the tough-guy stuff to his partner as much as he could. One reason he had liked being partnered with Schaefer was that Schaefer was so good at the tough-guy stuff. Schaef was about six and a half feet tall, classic buzz-cut Aryan with big broad shoulders and visible layers of muscle; he looked like he’d been carved out of stone by a sculptor with a body-building fetish. Schaefer didn’t have to hit people much because one look at him convinced most folks that they weren’t going to win if it came to blows-and they were right, too, because Schaefer was at least as tough as he looked.

  Intimidating people just by looks saved everyone a lot of trouble, and Schaefer did it better than anyone else Rasche had ever met.

  Rasche, though ... Rasche was about average height, with a potbelly wider than his shoulders, with bony arms and a Captain Kangaroo mustache. He looked about as intimidating as one of those inflatable clowns with the weighted bases that kids used to punch.

  That had its uses, too. He couldn’t intimidate anyone with his looks, but he could catch them off guard. In fact, he’d made it his specialty. Tough guys always underestimated the fat old cop when he smiled and shrugged and talked in that polite, vague way he’d worked so hard to perfect.

  Smithers was just one more. He reached out for Rasche’s shoulder and made no attempt at all to guard himself. Rasche’s hands, locked together, came up hard and fast and took Smithers in the side of the head with most of Rasche’s two hundred pounds behind them.

  Smithers staggered sideways, caught off-balance, but he didn’t go down until Rasche kneed him in the groin and then rammed both fists down on the back of his head.