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The Americans had logically projected that Tomashenko would tighten his security perimeter around the main cave entrance in preparation for his assault. They had simply waited for his screen to contract past their concealed escape hatch; then they had slipped away, leaving a series of delays and diversions behind to buy them ru
“Sergeant! Get that tu
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the Yakut noncom replied, stoically snapping open his entrenching tool. “You, Private Amaha, get your ass up here and help me!”
In seconds, the two Spetsnaz troopers were assaulting the snow plug. Tomashenko turned and started to double-time the remainder of his force back the way they had come.
Tomashenko abruptly hesitated as the thought caught at him. The American bastards were clever. What if…
Private Amaha plunged his entrenching tool into the mass of loose snow blocking the route to the outside. As he scooped the burden aside, he felt a resisting tug. Glancing down in the flarelight, he saw a thin cord hooked over the blade of his shovel. He stared at it for an uncomprehending instant; then he understood and screamed.
The plastique-augmented hand grenade Private Uluh had attempted to drop into the cave entrance earlier that day fulfilled its destiny.
Concentrated by the confines of the tu
The passage to the outside had been blasted open, and the bodies of Sergeant Vilyayskiy and Private Amana had been hurled against the far wall of the lava tube and plastered there, like bedbugs smashed under the thumb of an a
There was no curse potent enough to be worthy of the sight.
Tomashenko staggered back down the tube and clambered up to the blackened fissure in the stone revealed and emptied by the explosion.
He looked out into the storming night and couldn’t believe what he found. The cave exit opened into the same cove in the mountainside he had used as his command post for all that afternoon. This man Smith must have crouched within twenty feet of him, watching and listening, and Tomashenko had never realized it! There had never been a hint!
This was a shame his career could never survive! “Get after them!” he raged. “They die tonight!”
Chapter Thirty-five
Wednesday Island Base
Randi Russell lay on her back in the lower of the two bunks in the women’s quarters, her wrists over her head and cuffed around the bunk’s vertical stanchion. A swath of light cut through the darkened room from the open door, issuing from the gas lantern in the main room. Intermittently the armed guard seated at the mess table glanced in her direction.
To the guard, she lay apparently unmoving, possibly even asleep. He couldn’t see into the shadows at the head of the bunk, where Randi’s fingers flexed and clenched slowly and continuously like a cat kneading its claws. She must not allow her hands to swell and get stiff.
Even as she had been prodded and shoved back to the bunk room that afternoon, she had been making her plans. When her captors had handcuffed her into the bunk, she had seemingly resisted for a moment, earning herself another impatient slap across the face. But in a deft bit of positional legerdemain she had also managed to ensure that when the handcuff had been resnapped around her right wrist it had closed over both the sleeve of her sweater and the heavy thermal long johns she wore underneath it.
She had worked the fabric out from under the cuff, loosening it. She had also made sure that her fists had been tightly clinched when the cuffs had been locked on, gaining herself yet another precious fraction of an inch of play.
She rolled a little on the bunk, as if hunting for a more comfortable spot. Under the cover of the movement she again found the joint in the bunk stanchion and practiced wedging the co
Her eyes sca
In her hours of imprisoned waiting she had made every mental and physical preparation she could. For the rest she must trust to patience, luck, and Slavic sexual propensities.
The smell of cooking rations filled the bunk room, and a growing number of shadows moved across the bar of light streaming through the door. The chief smuggler-Kretek, she had heard him called-was feeding his crew in shifts. The scent of hot food pointedly reminded Randi she hadn’t eaten since a very sketchy breakfast. A meal would be a very good thing to have just now, but she didn’t dare ask for anything to eat, for fear of disrupting the scenario she had built.
She recognized the voices of Kretek and Kropodkin. They were in the bunkhouse, having di
They also discussed Jon, Professor Metrace, and Major Smyslov. From what Randi could gather, there had been no contact with her teammates so far. Plans were being proposed for hunting them down.
The clink and rattle of eating utensils trailed off. She smelled pipes and acrid Balkan cigarettes being lit. The conversation grew more genial, the laughter more frequent. The men were relaxing after di
It wouldn’t be long now.
Randi heard Kretek’s bull’s-bellow voice say, “Well, Stefan, you’d best get on with it. You have a lot of men standing in line for their rations here.”
So it would be Kropodkin.
She heard the ex-student laugh sheepishly, followed by a bellow of humor from around the table and a barrage of coarse suggestions and advice.
“Just don’t mark up that pretty face of hers, lad.”
“Why do you worry about her face, Belinkov? What are you going to do? Draw her picture?”
“What can I say? I have a romantic soul.”
A shadow occulted the light. He was in the doorway, looking at her. She could hear his rasping breath, still hampered by the nose she had broken. She could hear the scuffle of his booted feet on the floor, smell the rancidity of his body.
Kropodkin stepped into the women’s quarters…and drew the accordion door closed behind him, plunging the little room and the two of them into darkness.