The Red Horseman (19 page)

Safe in his refuge, he looked across the
enclosure at the guard kiosk at the main gate,
where he could just see his friend Leonid under the light
pointing with one hand and covering his mouth with the other.
Leonid would laugh and tease him; he must have looked
like a frightened rabbit running from the helicopter.

And now it was there in front of him, roaring like an
enraged bear and stirring up a hurricane
as it settled onto the grass.

The engines died immediately. The pilot obviously
had no fuel to waste.

Five men climbed out. One of them, wearing a
dark suit and dark tie, came toward him. Sergi
straightened to attention.

“Where is the manager?”

“I don’t know. No one said you were coming.”

“I’m accustomed to being met by the manager of the
facility.”

“The telephone from the outside is out of order.
It has not worked all night.”

“Well, tell the manager I am here.”

Sergi was at a loss for words. Who was here? Should
he ask for identification? The panic must have shown
on his face, for the man’s expression softened and he
growled, “Just get him out here.”

There was a telephone in his guardshack, a little
wooden building that looked as if it had been added as
an afterthought right by the concrete wall of the reactor
building.

It was a rotary dial instrument. Sergi wiped his
hands on his trousers before he picked up the handset and
checked the list of telephone numbers taped to the
wall. The list was so dirty as to be almost
unreadable. Control room, number 32. That was the
only place in the complex where there would be people this time of
night.

The first time Sergi dialed nothing happened. No
ringing earpiece. The equipment was old and the
electrical switches were worn out, like every other
telephone system in the former Soviet empire.
Still, the only telephone on Sergi’s
collective farm had belonged to the manager, an
important person, and Sergi had never used it.
Having a telephone waiting for him to pick up
to call someone-just within the facility, this instrument could not
be used to call elsewhere-made Sergi proud.
To complain about the quirks of the instrument was an
impulse that had never crossed his mind.

Now he used his thumb on the hook to break the
circuit, then lifted it and listened for the dial tone.
There it was.

He carefully dialed the number again. This time he
heard the ringing.

As he waited he turned and looked at the
helicopter and the big red star on the fuselage.
One of the passengers was over at the kiosk at the
main gate talking to Leonid: Sergi could see them
standing together under the light.

A man’s voice answered the telephone.

“This is the main door guard,” Sergi
Pavlenko said loudly into the mouthpiece. “A
helicopter has arrived. An important person
wishes to see the manager.”

“The manager is home in bed. I’m the watch
officer.”

“Yes, yes. He is waiting here to talk
to someone in authority. It is a big helicopter with
many rotor blades.” This fact impressed
Sergi; it should impress the man inside too.

Apparently it did. “I’ll be right out,” the
voice told him.

Sergi Pavlenko hung up the telephone and
turned to report to the man from the helicopter. As
he did so the man used a silenced pistol to shoot
him once in the head, killing him instantly.

The five men worked fast. The main door had a
lock that worked only from the inside. When the watch
officer opened it they herded Leonid from the main
gate, the watch officer and everyone in the building
into an empty office and gunned them down with silenced
submachine guns.

They didn’t bother to pick up the empty brass
cartridge cases strewn about.

They blocked the front door open with a piece of
wood and carried in bags from the helicopter.

The reactor was operating at 50 percent power.
The man who had shot Sergi examined the control
panel carefully, then led the way through the lead-lined
door that led to the reactor space.

A nuclear reactor is, when explained
to schoolchildren a very simple piece of machinery-a
large tea kettle is the common analogy.
True, the first reactor, Enrico Fermi’s pile
under the University of Chicago’s football
stadium, was indeed simple. But there was nothing
simple about the Serdobsk reactor, a
liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder. The core was
made up of five tons of metallic oxides of
uraniumblebce, plutonium-239, and
uranium-238, the breeding material that would be
converted into plutonium during the course of the
reaction. This material was fashioned into twelve
thousand long pins, each less than six
millimeters in diameter and arranged with
extraordinary precision inside a small core,
a hexagonal container only three feet across each
face.

The core sat in a cylindrical
stainless-steel pot filled with molten, liquid
sodium that was cycled through the core by three pumps.

Unavoidably the sodium flowing through the core
absorbed some neutrons and was converted
into sodium-24, a highly radioactive gamma
ray emitter, so the radioactive sodium was run
through an exchanger where it gave up some of its heat
to the secondary cooling system, also liquid
sodium. The unpressurized stainless-steel vat that
contained the core and the primary and secondary cooling
systems was forty feet high and forty feet in
diameter.

Between the surface of the liquid sodium and the top
of the vat was a cloud of argon, an inert gas. Lead
shielding surrounded the entire vat.

Surrounding the lead was a concrete vault with
walls about three feet thick.

Pipes brought the secondary sodium out of the vat
near the top and took it to a second heat
exchanger, where it was used to boil water for steam
to turn turbines, then returned it to the vat. The
pipe holes in the vat and the lead and concrete
shields were all above the level of the liquid
sodium.

The nuclear reaction itself was controlled
by dozens of graphite rods that absorbed radiation.
These rods were withdrawn from the core to start the reaction
and pushed into it to kill it. ds. Stand The men from the
helicopter began with the ro planted a series of ing
on top of the concrete vault, they mecha small
explosive charges designed to shatter the rod hance
to slide down into the core.

nisms before they had a c This job took about
half an hour. Still on top of the concrete
biological shield, they used tape measures and
chalk while the man in charge consulted a sheet of
paper in his hand. When the chalk marks were precisely
where he wanted them, he personally began placing
six shaped charges that would vent their explosive force
down into the vat. While he was at it several of the men
climbed up the ladder and wandered out into the hallway for a
smoke.

One of them came running back. “Colonel, the
helicopter is starting!”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Yes, he could faintly hear the whine as the engines
spooled up, He stumbled and almost fell running for the
d along the catwalk toward ladder. He hurried
up and race the control room. He arrived
outside just in time to see the helicopter transition
into forward flight and move away into the darkness. aimed
his Two of the men came out behind him and one submachine
gun at the departing machine.

“Nyet,” the colonel cried. “That won’t do
any good.”

The fool! If he successfully shot down the
helicopter the noise of the crash would bring everyone in
the army camp over here. And it would be damned hard
to fly out of here in a crashed helicopter.

The colonel stood listening to the noise of the
machine as it faded.

When all he could hear were the night noises of
frogs and insects, he still stood undecided. He
had expected problems, but not this-to be abandoned by the
helicopter pilot! Betrayed!

The pilot was a Ukrainian. He should have demanded
a Russian pilot. The colonel choked back his
rage and frustration and wondered what to do. He had,
he well knew, miserably few options.

“What do we do now, Colonel?” one of the men
asked.

The query decided him.

“Let’s set the charges.” He was surprised
at his own voice. It sounded calm, in
control, which wasn’t the way he felt at all.
Usually when he was enraged his voice became a
hoarse croak.

“if we hadn’t cut the telephone lines we could
call for another helicopter,” one of the men said
disgustedly. “We certainly can’t blow this damn thing
up unless we have transport out of here.”

“Back inside,” the colonel said. “Let’s
finish the job while I think,”

They were reluctant but the habit of obedience was
strong. The colonel followed them back into the
building.

It took forty-five minutes to finish setting the
charges atop the biological shield. Forty-five
minutes of sweating an impossible situation.

He should have had a backup chopper, should have brought
a two-way radio. But there was no time. “No! Do
it now! Do it tonight!” the general had said.

All the careful planning, all the preparations that
didn’t get done, all the backups that weren’t quite
ready. That was the trouble with the Soviet system-the
remorseless pressure to make “x” happen always
forced shortcuts, compromises in quality and
Safety. It was infuriating when you saw the disasters
everywhere You looked but goddamn
catastrophic when it was your life on the line. How
easy it was for a bureaucrat or general to shout
“Now!”

He forced himself to work slowly, with meticulous
care, as he set the shaped charges. There would be no
second chance. This had to be done right the first time, which,
he told himself furiously, would be the only
recorded instance of the accomplishment of that feat in
Russia since the czar impregnated his bride on
their wedding night.

He was perspiring heavily when he finished. He
stood back and used a rag to wipe his face and
hands. “Insert the detonators.”

“Colonel, how are we going to get away from
here?”

“I said insert the detonators. Wire them up
but don’t arm the triggering device. I’ll go find
us some transport.

Give me a submachine gun.”

One of the men passed his weapon over.

“Get busy.”

The colonel slung the weapon over his shoulder and
climbed the ladder.

When he left the cavernous room two of the men.
were inserting detonators and wiring them to the
firing device as the other two watched.

The army camp was three kilometers up the
road. The colonel cooled off as he walked in the
darkness. He was unwilling to use the flashlight, so
he stumbled occasionally over uneven places in the
road. Still he walked quickly.

Only two hours until dawn.

He stopped when he was still fifty meters from the
circle of light above the gate and looked the camp
over. It was surrounded by a sagging, rusted wire
fence. A guard kiosk stood by the open gate. No
doubt a sentry was there, the only man awake in the
camp. He hoped that no one else was awake.

There, by that building in the back, wasn’t that a
truck?

Yes. It had grass growing around it to the top of
its wheels.

Perhaps there was a car or another truck in the
garage.

The colonel moved toward the sentry’s kiosk,
staying in the shadows, making as little noise as
possible. He kept the submachine gun over his
shoulder but held the pistol with the silencer in his right
hand.

He was still fifteen feet from the kiosk,
just coming into the light circle, when the sentry inside the
unpainted wooden shack saw him and jerked in
surprise.

The colonel pointed the pistol at the soldier and
said, as calmly as he could and just loud enough to be heard,
“Don’t move. Just stay exactly as you are and you
won’t get hurt.”

The man froze. He was young, in his late teens.

“Now very carefully, step outside.”

The soldier complied. He was trembling.

“Where is the other sentry?”

The soldier merely shook his head.

The colonel pointed his weapon and repeated the
question.

“I’m the only one, sir.”

“If you are lying you will be the first to die. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go look at the truck.” The colonel
snapped on his flashlight and used it to point the
way. He followed the W; soldier, who had now
decided to raise his hands a little.

The truck was a rotting hulk. The tires were
flat, the glass was broken from several windows,
weeds peeked through the radiator grill.

“Where is the other truck?” he demanded, his
voice a forced whisper.

“In the garage.”

“Open it, quietly. If anyone wakes up .
.

The truck in the garage was fairly new, painted
olive drab and had air in all the tires.
Keeping the weapon pointed at the soldier, the
colonel eased the driver’s door open and shone the
flashlight on the instrument panel. No ignition
key was required. Merely switch on the
electrical system and push the starter button. The
colonel reached in and flipped the electrical
switch. The proper lights came on. He
examined the fuel gauge. The needle rested on the
left side.

Empty! The colonel flipped the switch off.

“Where’s the gasoline?”

“We haven’t had any gas for a month.” The young
soidier’s hands were down and his voice unnaturally
loud.

The colonel lowered the barrel of the pistol and
fired a round into the dirt at the soldier’s feet.
The report was merely a soft pop. “You’d better
find some.”

“Over there.” The gesture was quick, jerky.

There were some cans against the wall, beside a
motorcycle. The colonel hefted one. Half
full. The others were empty-all eight.

“This motorcycle-4oes it work?”

“Oh yes. The captain rides it every day over
to the reactor. And into town on Sundays. He-

“Shut up!”

The colonel quickly checked every other fuel can in the
garage. All empty. He examined the controls
on the motorcycle, the tires, then opened the cap
on the fuel tank. At least hal f full. He
made the trembling soldier fill the tank from the
only can containing fuel.

“Okay, push it out of here and down to the kiosk at
the gate. I I Under the light at the gate the
colonel examined the machine. He turned the
petcock and let gasoline flow to the carburetor,
twisted the throttle, checked the chain and the clutch.

The only way to see if it would run would be to start
it.

But not here.

was Start pushing.” He gestured to the northwest,
toward the reactor facility. The soldier did as
he was told.

It was hard work pushing the motorcycle along the
dirt road in the darkness. The machine fell once
and the soldier went on top of it. The colonel
waited while he righted the thing and got it going again.

When they had gone about half a kilometer the
colonel told the soldier to stop and put down the
kickstand. Then he shined the flashlight into the
soldier’s eyes and shot him while he stood
blinking helplessly.

The man went down without a sound. The colonel
dragged the corpse off the road into some weeds.

With his gun in one pocket and the flashlight in
another, he climbed aboard the motorcycle and
eased the kick starter down until he felt
compression. Then he raised himself up and gave a
mighty kick.

No.

Again.

Nothing.

Again.

The fourth time the machine chugged once, but he fed
it too much gas and it died.

This time he got all of his body weight into the
downstroke of his leg and the machine gurgled into life.
As he sat astride the saddle and waited
for the engine to warm, the colonel used the flashlight
to check his wristwatch. Almost an hour gone. One
hour of darkness left.

Carefully he disengaged the clutch, popped the
transmission into gear, and eased the clutch out. The
engine almost died but he caught it with the throttle and
let the clutch engage. The sound the engine made was
well-muffled since the machine was fairly new.

The colonel brought it to a stop a hundred
meters short of the gate to the reactor facility.
He walked from there.

Two of his men were waiting by the door.

“We thought we heard an engine a few moments
ago,” one told him.

“You did. A car. I parked down the road in
case someone comes by. Are the detonators set?”

“Yes, sir. All you need to do is set the
timer. Do you want us to go on down and sit in the car
until you come?”

“Okay. I need maybe ten minutes. I’ll
send the others along.

When these two were about twenty-five feet away with
their backs to him, he used the silenced submachine
gun.

It wasn’t fair, but there it was. He
had transport for one.

The reactor had to be destroyed. After he had
shot them he walked over to where they lay and put a
bullet into each man’s skull.

One of his men was in the control room. “I’ve
got a car parked down the road out of the light,” he
said. “Go sit in it until I get the device
armed.”

“How much time are you going to give us?”

“What’s the maximum possible time?”

“One hour.”

“Then that’s what we have.”

“That would be a lot if we had a helicopter,”
the man objected reasonably, “but we don’t.
What if we have a flat tire or this car breaks
down?”

The colonel wasn’t in the mood. “We take
our chances.

Where’s Vasily?”

11 In the reactor space checking the wires and
detonators one more time.”

“Go wait in the car.”

Just before the man reached the door the colonel took
the submachine gun off his shoulder and shot him. As
he s lowering the weapon the door to the
reactor clicked shut.

He heard a noise, running feet. Damn!
Vasily.

The colonel popped the magazine from the weapon and
replaced it with a full one. After he had checked
to ensure it was seated properly, he opened the heavy,
lead-lined door to. the reactor space and
slipped in.

A bullet smacked into the wall.

What else can go wrong? Sweat broke out on his
face.

A more dangerous place for a gunfight would be hard
to imagine. One stray bullet could sever a
critical wire or punch a hole in a pipe
carrying molten sodium or water or steam or …

He was inside against the wall, the door on his right
side.

Another bullet whapped against the wall.

The silenced pistol was in his left hand, the
submachine gun in his right. Where was A bullet
caught him in the hip and half turned him around.
He tossed the submachine gun and fell heavily
on his face, his right hand palm up at an odd
angle.

The trick was old and hoary and he was a
fool to try it.

If he had had a moment to think he wouldn’t have.
If Vasily kept his wits about him or used a
smidgen of sense …

But he didn’t. He didn’t even shoot the
colonel a second time, a mistake the colonel
certainly wouldn’t have made.

The colonel lay like a sack of very old
potatoes. He felt the catwalk vibrate from
Vasily’s footsteps and he even got a
glimpse of one foot.

Still he lay absolutely motionless, muscles
slack, scarcely breathing, his left hip on fire
as the numbing shock of the bullet wore off. When he
heard the door begin to open beside him he moved-rolled
and instantly triggered the pistol into Vasily’s
foot, then his leg, then as the man fell, into his
body. He fired again and again as fast as the pistol
would work. When it was empty he stopped shooting.

Vasily sighed once as the spent cartridges
tinkled on the concrete far below. He didn’t
inhale again.

The colonel got slowly to his feet and
examined the location of the bullet hole in his clothing.
Blood was oozing out. The catwalk where he
had lain was smeared with it.

He put his weight on the injured hip. Well,
the bone wasn’t broken, although the wound hurt like
hell. He looked at Vasily to ensure he was
dead, then popped the empty clip from the automatic
and inserted a full one from his jacket pocket. When
that was done he retrieved the submachine gun. He
hung it over his shoulder on its strap.

He made his way along the catwalk and
descended the ladder onto the top of the reactor
shield.

Thank God the charges were there, still properly
installed and wired up.

He got out his dirty handkerchief and wiped his
face and hands as he examined the timer mechanism.

One lousy hour.

He pushed the test button on the battery,
verified that the green light came on, then released
the button.

One stinking, tiny, miserable little hour.

For it came to him then that his luck had gone very
bad.

Everything had gone wrong. All of his experiences
in life had taught him that luck runs in
cycles-sometimes good things happen for a
while, then bad. And he was deeply into the bad just
now. Was this hole in his hip the last of the bad things,
or only the next to last?

He was not a religious man. Nothing in his
forty-four years of life had even suggested possible
resources other than his own skill, courage and
endurance. Yet just now as he stared at the
detonator he sensed that his own resources
probably weren’t going to be enough.

He twisted the knob that turned the needle on the
clock face. He turned it to the maximum reading,
sixty minutes.

He consulted his watch.

Now he. looked about, again tested his weight on his
injured hip, savored the sharp edge of the pain, wiped
his hands one more time.

This was necessary. They would not have sent him if it
weren’t.

Oh, hell. Everyone has to die sooner or
later and he wasn’t afraid of it. Dying is the
easy part, like going to sleep. Getting to that moment can
be a real bitch, though.

He looked again at the sweep second hand on his
watch.

When it swung by the straight-up position
he pushed the button to start the timer on the
detonator. Exactly one hour from now, at
5:07 A.m. If this clock keeps good time.

He watched it tick for a few seconds, then
crossed to the ladder and went up it, favoring his bad
hip only a little.

In the control room the colonel scanned the
dozens of gauges and dials.

With a sure hand he reached for the master control and
began inching the rods out of the core while he kept a
careful eye on the temperature gauges. Another
five minutes passed before he was satisfied with the
new stabilized readings. The reactor was now at
almost 80 percent power.

When he left the building he removed the wooden
doorjamb and let the outside door close and
lock.

Fifty-three minutes.

He limped past the bodies sprawled near the
gate and turned right on the road. The breeze
cooled the sweat on his face but he didn’t
notice as he hurried along.

He got on the motorcycle and checked that the
fuel was on. When he tried to shift his weight
to his left hip and push up to get some
leverage for the kick start lever the pain was so bad he
almost fell over.

Gritting his teeth, he tried again. This time he
managed to kick the bike through but it didn’t start.

Again with no luck.

The third time it fired and he gave it just enough gas
to keep the engine going. He almost collapsed onto
the seat.

His leg was wet with blood. How long before he
passed out? He fumbled for the headlight switch.
There. But the headlight didn’t come on.

He hadn’t checked the headlight. Burned out,
probably.

Somehow he got the bike into motion.

This road led off to the northwest, he remembered,
upwind, so he stayed on it. When he went by the
gate to the reactor facility he got a fleeting
glimpse of his watch from the light on the pole.
Forty-one minutes to go.

Riding a motorcycle on a rutted dirt
road on a dark night takes intense concentration and
high physical effort. The colonel found that even
at a slow speed he was always on the verge of losing
control. Still, with every minute he gained confidence. When
his eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness he
could see the road easily enough, so he eased on more
throttle and shifted to a higher gear. This meant he
was going faster when he fell. The nose wheel hit
a rut, the handlebars twisted violently and he was
instantly flying through air.

The impact with the ground stunned him.

When his wits returned he levered himself upright and
groped for the motorcycle. He had to put some
miles between himself and that reactor.

He tried to see the hands on the watch but it was
impossible. He felt for the flashlight. It
didn’t work. Broken by the fall.

The submachine gun on his shoulder was gouging him,
so he took it off and threw it away into the darkness.

Getting the bike upright took all his strength.

Kick. No start. Kick again.

He lost count of the number of times he tried
to start the motorcycle.

How long had it been? How much blood had he
lost?

Flooded. He had probably flooded the damn
thing.

He sat wearily on the bike gathering his
strength.

Are you beaten?

No!

Throttle off. Kick, a real high arch off the
bad hip so all his weight would come down on the
kick lever under his right foot.

The engine caught. Slowly he twisted the
throttle and brought the engine up to a fast idle.
Now the shift lever.

He kept the bike at a slow pace, maybe
four or five miles per hour. The wind in his
face was the only bright spot. If he could just get
a little distance and get behind something solid, some earth
perhaps, he could survive the blast. The wind would
carry the radioactivity in the other direction.