Russian Amerika (26 page)

"Where are you from?" Nathan asked the prisoners idly.

"Tet-" Bear began before Valari's bare hand slapped his cheek.

"Shut up, you fool! Information is ammunition for them."

"Major Kominskiya is correct," Nathan said. "Ah, Bear is it?"

Bear Crepov stared wonderingly at the man.

Grisha shook his head and slowly got to his feet.

"They were preparing to do us harm when we stopped them," Slayer-of-Men said. "Instead they made a very nice report about how Lieutenant Andreanoff and his men were retaking the redoubt from mutinous traitors. We don't have much time, Nathan."

"Do we have three days?"

"Probably not."

Grisha pointed at Valari. "This woman is poisonous. She has absolutely no morals and will be your death if you trust her in the slightest." He blinked heavily, so tired he felt drunk.

Nik stepped out of the shadows at the back of the room.

"I'll second that. Major Valari Kominskiya is a member of the Okhana Cossacks. She has attained two promotions in the past six months. Such speed through the ranks is unheard of."

Valari gave him a burning glance.

"I don't know about that," she snapped, "they made you a captain, didn't they?"

Grisha almost laughed. She had more scrotum than most men.

"She's one of the main architects behind the plan to infiltrate the movement," Nik continued. "She condemned Grisha to death."

Valari stared down at the floor. "Would you at least put me in a cell so I can get some sleep?" she said tiredly.

"She's hiding something," Nathan said with a rush.

"What's wrong?" Nik asked.

Valari and Bear began to unbutton their heavy parkas.

"There's something hidden. On her, I think."

Valari's hands stopped moving and she stared at Nathan. "Do you read minds?"

"Get her parka off," Nathan yelled.

Slayer-of-Men ran a knife down the front of the garment and jerked. Buttons hailed across the stone floor as he roughly pulled it off her. A small, flat-black box hung between her breasts on a cord around her neck.

"What is that?" Slayer-of-Men asked.

Nathan stood up, grabbed it and jerked, breaking the cord as well as off-balancing Valari.

_"It's a location transmitter," Nathan said and threw the box against the stone wall as hard as he could. It broke into countless pieces.

Valari laughed. "If they paid attention, there's an air strike on the way," she said through a twisted smile.

Something snapped in Grisha and he raised his machine pistol to kill her once and for all.

The walls seemed to scream. Concussion beyond sound knocked everybody off their feet. The floor sharply heaved and every light bulb in the room exploded, plunging them into darkness. They heard explosions and the roar of attacking planes.

Screams and shouts filtered through sudden smoke. The room rocked with another blast. A light pierced the stygian blackness and a voice shouted above the din.

"This way! Come this way! It leads to the lower levels."

Grisha didn't try to stand. He maintained a tight grip on his weapon and scrambled toward the light on all fours. And ran into somebody.

"Sorry, didn't see-" With a stomach-wrenching jolt, he realized the person was dead. He rolled the body over and peered at the face. Haimish stared glassily upward toward the gory cleft in his head left by a piece of concrete. Despair washed over Grisha.

He dropped Haimish and continued moving toward the flickering light. People scrambled between him and the battery lantern, semaphoring messages of terror and flight. As he got to the door another explosion smashed them down.

The light disappeared. Grisha's mind swam hard against the currents of concussion. Something tugged at him.

"Grisha," Wing said with a note of anguish. "You must help me, I can't pull your weight by myself."

The urgency in her voice spurred him into dizzy action. He moved his feet blindly, and with her tugging at him, fell down an incline littered with hard edges. Dimly he realized he sprawled on stone steps.

"Wait," he said tiredly. "I need to clear my head a little."

"Very well," she said, releasing his arm. "But there is fire up there and the smoke will get to this level soon."

"I . . . know." He gently cupped his hands over his ears. Her voice sounded like a whisper, but logic told him that she must be talking very loudly-if not shouting. His head felt stuffed with cotton.

One ear leaked blood.

Shit. Maybe I'm dying
.

Fear lifted him back to full consciousness. "I'm ready," he said loudly.

"You don't gotta scream at me," Wing snapped.

"Oh, I thought I was deafened."

"Come on." She turned and moved carefully down steps outlined by a glow of light from around a distant corner.

43

Inside the Ruins of Chena Redoubt

Bear's mind went from stunned grayness to the alert certainty he was alone in a burning room. He peered around. Numerous bodies reflected firelight.

Valari crossed his mind for less than an instant before he sought escape. He scuttled across the carnage of the shattered chamber. Fire licked at the logs supporting the damaged roof.

She hadn't told him about the transmitter. But then he hadn't asked, either. A huge explosion outside the building sent him burrowing under two corpses.

Smoke curled around his nose and he pushed his way over the bodies. The head on one flopped over and he beheld the face of Slayer-of-Men. Bear relieved the dead man of his automatic weapon.

Valari had been standing directly in front of this man. What had killed him?

Pieces of burning wood fell from the ceiling, landing next to Bear. He lost all curiosity about anything other than self-preservation. A door yawned open, emitting a slight glow of welcome and offering solid walls leading downward. He stumbled through and braced himself against the rough wall.

He'd been in this passageway before, years ago. The Cossacks had tortured an Indian to death in an attempt to make him confess to pilfering supplies. A frightened Bear had witnessed both the pilferage and the torture.

The Indian died insisting he was innocent. Bear was pretty sure the Indian was the guilty party, but then he had been drunk at the time. He was drunk for the torture, too.

With a roar the burning roof collapsed behind him. No turning back now. Was there a back way out of the interrogation block?

There had to be, he decided, because bodies never came out the front of the building. Heat intensified on his back and he eased down the steps toward the bend in the passage.

Voices rose out of the dimness ahead of him and he stopped. For a long anguished moment he thought someone was coming back up the steps. But the voices receded and he moved downward again.

By the time he got to where the stairway made an abrupt right angle, the mild concussion eased to nothing. Dank air flowed past him, feeding oxygen to the burning debris above. He squatted and edged the top of his head around the corner.

A kerosene lantern hung in the passageway, splashing red light across the cold, icy stones. He saw no sign of a guard. That's because they believed everybody but them to be dead, he thought smugly.

Emboldened, he rose to his feet and moved purposefully around the corner and down the steps. Just as he remembered, the steps bisected a passageway where one had to turn right or left. His brow furrowed.

Which way had they turned that long ago day? He had been drunk on vodka and nearly blind with fear. The Cossacks had insisted he watch the interrogation as an object lesson.

At the time he hadn't been all that sure they weren't going to kill him, too. Rarely did he let those memories surface. But the catharsis worked and he distinctly remembered turning left.

So, on that day he had turned left. What about now? Did the torture chamber have a door that led outside the redoubt?

Suddenly the steps beneath his feet lurched and he fell heavily on the stones. A muffled explosion sounded from above as the stone basement shuddered and jerked. A more immediate noise caught his attention and he looked back up the stairs to see burning rubble pouring down like molten lava.

He pushed himself to his feet and staggered quickly down the passageway to the left. Behind him a wall of smelly, smoking debris firmly blocked the passageway. One less choice to agonize over, he decided.

He tightened his grip on the weapon and moved carefully toward the torture chamber.

44

In the Bowels of Chena Redoubt

Even though his body ached and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep, Grisha forced himself to follow Wing. Ahead of them, Nathan's large-bore revolver prodded a bruised and stumbling Valari.

The ice-sheathed stone walls glistened redly from two kerosene lanterns carried by the small band of survivors. Out of thirty-odd people who had been in the room above, nine now crept through the dim depths of the redoubt. Iron-barred cells, some containing frozen corpses, testified to the malignant nature of this level.

"Do you think they have recaptured the redoubt?" Grisha asked.

"I think they have leveled the redoubt," Wing said shortly, "thanks to that bitch's transmitter."

"They didn't care if they killed her," Grisha said wonderingly.

"You of all people should know how cheap life is in the Czar's Amerikan possession," Nathan said over his shoulder. "Weren't they going to use you as a Judas goat? Didn't they kill a Cossack officer and blame you?"

"Why does anyone work for them, then?"

"Ask the major," Wing muttered.

Nik, in the lead and carrying one of the lanterns, suddenly stopped.

"There's no way out."

"Yes, there is, but it was always heavily guarded," Nathan said with authority. "I've been down here before . . ." He audibly swallowed, and there was a catch in his voice when he continued. ". . . when I watched them torture my twin brother to death."

"They killed your brother in here and you escaped?" Grisha asked.

"I . . . did. He died in this place, and . . . and I was with him when it happened."

"My God," Nik said quietly.

The group fell quiet, staring at Nathan, whose face shone with reddish tears. Grisha's ears reached out in the sudden silence, searching for something he hadn't been aware of until just now. They were being followed.

"Nik," he said quietly and crooked an index finger.

The tall Russian handed his lantern to a soot-streaked figure whom Grisha finally recognized as Karin. Her eyes blazed defiantly as she grasped the bail.

"Which way, Nathan?" she asked.

"Over, there-" he pointed. "I think." The band shuffled onward while Nik and Grisha hung back in the shadows.

Nik stepped next to Grisha, his eyes large and hollow-looking.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Someone's behind us."

"One of ours, maybe?"

"They haven't identified themselves," Grisha said flatly.

Nik peered back into the gloomy distance, his jaw muscles tightening.

"Good point," he murmured, easing off the safety on his weapon.

They pulled apart in mutual understanding, taking up station across the dark cavernous space from each other. Grisha leaned against the icy wall and willed his breathing to relax. Only an occasional murmur from the group, now thirty meters away, broke the silence.

Exhaustion tugged at him, seductively whispering how sweet it would be to let his eyes close for a few moments. Lassitude slowly washed over him and he felt as if he were floating above all the strife, carnage, and death he had witnessed in the past two-my God, only two-days.

Out in the darkness boot leather scuffed against stone. Grisha's senses prickled to full awareness and he pointed his machine pistol toward the spot from where the sound had emanated.

He strained to hear where the next step would fall, wondering what would happen then.

From across the space something bumped woodenly.

Gunfire filled the chamber.

45

Bear Crepov finally caught sight of the group ahead of him. Only nine. He smiled, feeling the scar on his face sting as it pulled tight. The clip in his weapon held fifteen rounds-this would be almost too easy!

He eased forward as silently as a hunting lynx. The light from their lanterns provided him ample illumination for his stalk. Before he fired a shot he wanted them all in plain sight.

His step lightened as adrenaline surged through his veins. Confidence suffused him and he recalled that just a short time ago these people had pushed him about as if he were a
Creole
. They would pay.

They would pay dearly.

His foot touched a loose stone on the floor, and even as he froze all motion, it rolled over with the smallest possible sound of protest. To Bear it seemed an avalanche. His mouth went dry and his eyes flicked about madly, searching for motion, seeking reaction to his self-betrayal.

Nothing. Mutters and louder bursts of sound came to him from the rabble ahead. They heard nothing. He smiled tightly in the darkness.

A good
promyshlennik
could outsmart an Indian any day of the week and twice on Sunday. His confidence returned and he moved forward with a touch more caution. Stone pillars blocked some of his view of the group.

He edged ahead, eyes jumping from floor to light to floor again. There they were. He allowed himself a cat smile that suddenly froze on his face.

Only seven forms stood around the two lanterns. His heart accelerated, thudding in his ears like the shoes of peasant dancers on a wooden floor. Clenching his machine pistol more tightly in his suddenly sweaty hands, he eased toward the wall on his left.

Maybe a pillar blocked two of them? Had they stepped into the darkness to relieve their bladders? His ears detected no careless splatter of urine.

His breathing sped up, puffing into small clouds of condensation that drifted off sideways. Where were they? He bit his tongue slightly to keep from screaming the question at the dark corners.

His elbow gently found the wall. He stopped and stared away from the light-trying to force his irises to maximum diameter. His senses expanded outward seeking information.