Siberius (3 page)

He removed his cap to let cool air wash over his glistening forehead. Barkov studied the stark, gray room. He hated Yenisey, hated everything about it.
So cold,
he thought. He wasn’t thinking of the weather, although he hated that too.
The facility was part of post-war Soviet reconstruction, which Barkov was proud be involved with. A permanent assignment at Yenisey, however, was not something he had expected or desired. There was nothing there for him to do.

Invasion,
he thought.
Preposterous.
Barkov was not convinced, as others in the Red Army were, that an invasion by the United States was imminent. He could not conceive that after four years of war, America had any fight left. There was no doubt in his mind that the new early warning radar systems such as Yenisey were important. He just thought assigning a colonel and two dozen troops to be excessive and a waste of resources. They were in the middle of nowhere, and a handful of soldiers and a corporal would be enough to run the place. If special situations arose, such as the one they were now involved in, a quick response team could be dispatched. Were he in charge of military staffing, Barkov reasoned, that’s how he would handle it.

Captain Radchek entered the control room and found Barkov staring at a blank radar screen. He cleared his throat, and Barkov turned around. “The men are ready, sir,” Radchek said.

Outside the main building, Barkov slipped his hands into leather gloves. It had begun to snow and the temperature was dropping. Although not yet official by the calendar, Siberia’s winter held to its own timetable. Barkov made his way toward the barracks and stopped at an armored half-track. Vukarin helped half a dozen soldiers load blankets and supplies into the cargo bed. “Where are the rest?” the colonel said.

“
Sir?” Radchek asked.

“
Captain, I do not want six men. I want the entire squad.” He grabbed a soldier’s single shot rifle, threw it at Radchek. “I want them fully armed. I want a convoy of all the vehicles this facility has available to it.”

Radchek’s nostrils flared as he returned the gun to the soldier. In the one month they’d been at Yenisey, Barkov had reached a level of condescension Radchek thought impossible for an officer. Or a mature adult. “Of course, colonel,” he said. “I simply thought you’d want the facility guarded.”

“Guarded?” said Barkov, his head cocked in another arrogant gesture. “Captain Radchek, a spy, a
Western
spy, evaded capture and stole a reconnaissance plane-”

“
Of course, sir,” Radchek paused, took a deep breath. “But as your second in command it’s my duty to remind you that this is a brand-new facility and that regulations stipulate its protection to be a priority.”

At the half-track, meanwhile, Vukarin went through the motions of loading supplies, but his eyes and ears were locked on the exchange between the two senior officers. He liked Barkov even less than Radchek did. On more than one occasion, Vukarin had caught the colonel holding flamboyant conversations with himself.

“Fine, captain,” Barkov said in his most compromising voice. “I want a squad of 20. The best 20. You can leave four here with a staff car.” Barkov headed for his own private barracks. “Be ready to go in 15 minutes.”

As Barkov trudged off through the snow, Radchek contemplated, for the briefest moment, going over the colonel’s head. True, the man’s actions during the last half hour were nothing new to Radchek. He had known the colonel a month, the length of time Yenisey Radar Installation Number One had been operational, but within a day of Barkov’s assignment to the station Radchek felt that there was something wrong with him.

Compared to the soldier’s barracks, the inside of Barkov’s quarters was opulent. There were three rooms: a main living room with a kitchenette and propane stove, a bedroom with a queen-sized coil spring mattress, and a private bath with hot running water. Barkov had made it as comfortable as possible, with a large oriental area rug in the center of the living room. Plush furniture of gold embroidery and oak trim surrounded the rug and faced a fireplace. A modest chandelier hung from the cross beams in the ceiling. The windows were double paned and dressed with hand-sewn curtains.

Aleksei Barkov hated it as much as any prisoner hated his cell.

He crossed the living room and sat at a handsome dark cherry desk. Before him was a collection of framed photographs of his family. He stared at them and sighed.

His sons at the Moscow zoo.

His daughter at play in the back garden.

Birthday parties.

Family picnics.

Barkov took the picture of his wife in hand. He missed her most of all. “Karina,” he said, then ran his fingers over her face. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember the velvet of her skin, the perfume of her hair. It had been a long time since he touched her. A long time since he touched anyone.

His mind snapped back to Siberia, and he set the photograph on the desk. He hadn’t seen his family in three years.
I’m coming home,
he thought. He could say that now with confidence, for capturing a spy, especially an
American
spy, would prove once and for all that he was an officer of some worth.

Nick Somerset steered the MiG-3 out of the flat West Siberian Plain and over the more rugged Central Plateau. From the continuous briefings in Yorkshire throughout the past month he knew quite a bit about Siberia, at least from a geographic standpoint. The region varied in height from sea level to 7,000 feet, with volcanic Mt. Klyuchevskaya the highest point at over 15,000 feet . The plane was 100 feet off the ground now, and any change in topography could send him slamming into a cliff face or a hilltop.
Not a chance
, he thought confidently. Nighttime or not, his eyes were better than 20/20.

The prop clipped a treetop with a gunshot-like bang, and Nick held his breath. He pulled back on the stick and gained a little altitude. “Twenty-twenty, huh?” he admonished himself out loud. “Asshole.”

For the past 15 minutes, he had been searching for a clearing, but the forest was as endless as Nick’s desire to get home. The fuel gauge was hovering near empty, and he knew he was running out of time.

Out of the darkness ahead, something caught his eye. He banked hard right at the sight of a flat white expanse. The engine sputtered once, twice. Nick estimated the field to be almost ten0 yards square. In the shape of a rough circle, it looked barren. His initial thought was that it was a frozen lake. If that was the case, he hoped it was cold enough to make the ice nice and thick.

He eased back on the throttle and the MiG began to descend. Pushing a control panel button, Nick felt the ensuing mechanical whirr as the landing gear slid out from under the wings. As he cleared the last of the trees he saw that his estimate was wrong; the field was twice as big as he had thought. The engine sputtered again, but Nick felt that lady luck had hitched a ride.

The tires had scarcely scraped the surface when he saw it. Ahead and jutting from the ice like a giant spear was the trunk of a fallen tree.

“Shit!” Nick throttled up and pulled back on the stick with all his strength. The MiG responded and began climbing.

He heard the port landing gear strike the trunk, then rip clean from the wing. Another noise, like the sound of splintering wood and spilling hydraulic fluid came next, but Nick paid brief attention to it. The collision forced the plane to bank left, and he tried to correct it. The engine sputtered, revved, sputtered again. Ahead, the tree line rose from the ground like an impenetrable wall.

Nick yanked the stick back further. The plane didn’t respond as fast this time, climbing gradually while banking. The wall of trees grew larger through the windshield, but Nick felt the plane continue to rise as the distance narrowed. The tops of the trees were now visible against the black of night.

Another sputter from the engine followed with a cough and then silence. The fuel gauge read zero and the MiG lurched. The whoosh of metal cleaving the wind was now the lone sound.

The port wing hit first, slicing through a snow draped pine. Nick covered his face as the MiG spun left and somersaulted across the treetops.

3

              From her vantage point, Talia Markovich saw everything, even in the dark. Bundled up in heavy winter gear, she stood at the edge of a tree hide over 100 feet above the forest floor. Searching in the direction of the crash, she could not see if the plane had remained in one piece or had broken apart. But from the way it had hit, she thought the fuselage might have survived intact. She wondered if the pilot was as lucky.

Talia considered the ground far below. She studied the forest, from it’s floor to the horizon. She sat back down on a cushioned stool, took stock of the tree hide: hidden within draped pine boughs, the platform was no bigger than a twin-sized bed and built from birch saplings in a double thick cris-crossing pattern. Covering it end to end was a carpet of worn blankets. In the center was a small table with a simple candle lantern. Hanging over it all was a makeshift roof of draped green canvas and freshly-cut pine boughs.

She stood up and tried shaking the platform. It didn’t budge. She forced all her weight on one leg, then the other, then back. It still didn’t budge. It
was
strong, she concluded. Strong enough for two adults. She grabbed the knotted rope and looked over the platform edge again. A narrow shaft had been hacked through the branches, allowing unimpeded access to the ground. Except for her own footprints, the snow below was undisturbed. She scanned the area around the tree as far as her eyes would allow. To the north, the vast field the plane tried to land on remained empty of any activity. And though visual access to the woods encircling the field was limited by the density of the trees, she felt somewhat confident that there was no danger there either.

             
Talia tossed the rope over the side, double-checking the knot tied to the branch above. Grabbing another coil of rope from a hook in the trunk, she looped it over her shoulder like a bandolier. Easing over the side, she descended and made it to the ground in less than 10 seconds.

             
At the base of the tree, she froze, studying the forest. In the silent night, Talia felt vulnerable. She took a step and cringed when her boot crunched into the snow. She stopped and looked around.

Nothing.

Another, lighter step. It was quieter, but she wondered if it mattered. After all, the crashing plane had made more noise than her little feet ever could.

Talia scanned the trees again. Towering pines framed the opaque blackness of the deep forest. Silence. She was indeed alone in the wilderness. For how long, she didn’t know.

With one final deep breath, Talia took off in the direction of the downed plane.

              The dark forest surrounded her, closing in on her. She stopped, trying to catch her breath. The cold air made her wheeze, and it was disturbing that it took so long for her lungs to catch up. She ran a few more yards, then stopped again at the base of a tree and looked up. She gasped at what she saw.

Eighty feet above the forest floor, the MiG was tangled up in a single pine tree. The force of the crash had bent the tree back, hooking it into the branches of a second tree. The MiG’s forward motion had created a giant arboreal catapult, with itself as the ammunition. All it needed now was a trigger.

Talia breathed into her gloves, warmed her hands. Her rapid exhalations clouded the cold air. The crash had been loud in the still winter night. She wondered how long she had. She dreaded the thought that it may be too late already.

She grabbed a branch and began the climb upward. Dislodging the plane would either slingshot it away or send it crashing to the ground. Either way, if the pilot was still alive, she doubted he’d survive the 80 foot drop.

In a matter of minutes, Talia reached the airplane. She studied the wreck and the curve of the bowed tree. Branches from the second tree had hooked the bent engine cowling and that’s what now held both the plane and the pine tree in place. The stress on wood and metal must have been terrific. She knew there wasn’t much time.

Talia pushed herself up and over the port wing. It was cold, icy, and slanted at an uncomfortable angle. Wood and metal creaked as she inched her way toward the cockpit. Upon reaching it, she saw that the bubble had been cracked in several places, with a medium-sized chunk missing on the back curve. The canopy rail had torn loose and was wrapped around the windshield frame, locking the canopy in place.

Peeking in through the hole, Talia could see the back of the pilot’s head and the blood-splattered instrument panel. Reaching inside, she pressed her fingers against the man’s neck.

A pulse. She had not risked her life to retrieve a corpse, and Talia allowed herself to feel a moment of relief that the man in the cockpit was alive.

The loud crack of breaking wood startled her and the plane lurched back. Talia looked at the branches holding the tree in place and saw white wood where bark had been stripped away. The second tree was losing its grip on the plane. She turned her attention back to the canopy and tried to open it, but the damaged rail held firm. With her gloved hands she grabbed hold of the warped metal, tried to untwist it. It held fast.