LITMIR.BIZ

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in his early sixties, who had spent the majority of his illustrious career with the Spetsnaz, the elite special forces unit that had been controlled by the KGB, and later the FSB, strode over to Yurov’s console and looked at the monitor. His eyes widened, and he called instantly for the general alarm to be sounded.

      But it was already too late.

      At the perimeter of the SPC base, crunching through the drifts of snow that had gathered at the foot of the electrified fence that ran high above their heads, Sergeant Pavel Luzhny was engaged in a heated discussion with his partner, Private Vladimir Radchenko, about the result of the previous night’s basketball game. Luzhny, a die-hard CSKA Moscow supporter, was lamenting the performance of his team’s point guard, a young man who the Sergeant had wasted no time in pointing out had Chechen blood on his mother’s side. The hapless player had missed three of the final four free throws in the previous night’s game, and his team had slumped to a 112–110 loss against Triumph Lyubertsy. Luzhny, a native Muscovite, was not taking the defeat at all well. He had moved on to listing the tactical errors made by the team’s coach when the alarm wailed across the freezing night. He instantly grabbed his radio from its loop on his belt, keyed a series of numbers, and held it to his ear, looking down at the base as he did so. An automatic voice in his ear told him that the base had been moved to red alert, so he slid his other hand to his waist and freed the SIG Sauer pistol that hung there.

      “Training exercise,” he said, turning back to Radchenko. “I’ll bet my—”

      Radchenko wasn’t there.

      Luzhny turned in a full circle, looking for his partner. There was no sign of him. Radchenko’s footsteps were clearly visible in the deep snow, two lines marching in parallel to Luzhny’s own. Then they stopped. There were no tracks in any direction, just a final pair of footprints, then nothing.

      “What the hell?” muttered Luzhny.

      Then he was airborne, as something grabbed him beneath his armpits and jerked him violently upwards. His trigger finger convulsed, and he fired the pistol empty, the bullets thudding into the rapidly receding ground. Luzhny didn’t scream, until he felt fingers crawl across his throat and dig for purchase. Then the fingers, which were tipped with nails that felt like razor blades, pulled his throat out, and he could no longer have screamed, even if he had wanted to.

      *

      The external microphones in the control room picked up the pistol shots, and Petrov tapped a series of keys on the console in front of him. The huge wall-screen that dominated the room separated into eight sections, each one showing a silent black and white view from the perimeter cameras. As the men in the control room watched, a black shape flitted across one of the cameras, then its picture disappeared into a hissing mass of white noise. Moments later, a second screen fizzed out, then a third, then a fourth.

      “Send the general alert,” said Petrov, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Call for immediate assistance.”

      “But sir—”

      “That’s a direct order, Private. Do it right now. And summon the guard regiment. There isn’t much time.”

      As he spoke, the final camera screens disappeared into snow. At a console in the middle of the room, a deeply frightened radio operator punched in the emergency frequency that linked the supernatural Departments of the world together, and sent the distress call Petrov had ordered. He had just finished sending the message, which was only six words long, when there was an audible thud on the external microphones, and the communications went dead.

      “General,” he said, looking up from his screen, fear bright in his eyes.

      But Petrov was gone.

      The General ran through the bowels of the SPC base.

      Sirens shrilled in his ears and the UV light that flooded the corridors hurt his eyes, but he didn’t slow his pace. A lift stood open at the end of the corridor, and he sprinted towards it, his chest burning.

      Been behind a desk too long, he thought. Run, old man. Run.

      Inside the lift, Petrov pulled a triangular key from a chain around his neck and inserted it into a slot on the metal panel beside the door, below the numbered buttons. The doors closed immediately and the lift shot downwards, the sudden motion churning Petrov’s stomach. He fought it back, and watched as the buttons that marked the floors lit up and went out, one after the other.

      -2...

      -3...

      -4...

      -5...

      -6...

      -7...

      Level -7 was the bottom of the SPC base, seven stories beneath the frozen Arctic ground. It was home to the enormous generators that powered the complex, as well as accommodation for the maintenance crews and support personnel; as a result it was rarely visited by SPC soldiers or scientists, and it was not General Petrov’s destination now. There was only one thing in the base worth the risk of a frontal attack, and he was one of the few men on the planet who knew what it was.

      The -7 button lit up, and then blinked out, but the lift continued its descent, into the unmarked depths. When the doors slid open ten seconds later, Petrov ran out into a single corridor of gleaming metal, lined on both sides by huge, heavy-looking metal doors, doors that looked like they belonged on the airlock of a submarine, or a space station. Each was stamped with a single number, in black letters three feet high; there were sixty doors, but Petrov was already running towards the one stamped 31.

      In the control room, the men of the night shift looked at each other nervously. Static squealed from eight screens of white noise, and the external microphones were silent. The men, eight of them in all, had broken out the arms locker and were holding Daybreakers, the heavy SPC explosive launchers, as they waited for whatever was out there in the snow.

      The door to the main access corridor suddenly flew open, slamming against the concrete wall, and the men jumped in unison. The thirty-two men of the Base Protection Regiment flooded silently into the control room, taking up almost every inch of space. The duty staff did their best to contain cheers of relief; the BPR was made up of the finest SPC officers, the very best of the very best. They took up a wide semi-circular formation, facing the heavy air-locked door that led to the outside world, their grey uniforms bristling with weapons and webbing that was heavy with equipment. They trained their Kalashnikovs and Daybreakers on the door, and the duty staff withdrew, taking up positions behind the soldiers.

      Silence.

      Then, slowly, a terrible sound of rending, buckling metal filled the room. Private Yurov, who was holding a Daybreaker with two shaking hands, had just enough time to say a silent prayer, before the huge metal door was wrenched from its hinges and hurled out into the black and white Arctic night.

      Snow swirled into the room in thick flurries, driving the men of the SPC back. The air was so cold that it closed their throats, trapping the oxygen in their lungs, and the snow was thick and blinding. Dark shapes, impossibly fast, flooded in through the gaping door, and the soldiers began to fire their weapons, almost randomly, hands covering their streaming eyes, their chests burning. Bullets whined off the walls, shattering monitors and punching holes in consoles, and the fiery crunch of Daybreaker rounds rang through their ears. The dark shapes seemed to be everywhere; they slipped through the snow-filled room like shadows, rending flesh and spraying blood as they went. A jet of crimson spurted from within the cloud of snow and hit Yurov in the chest and face. He recoiled, and then suddenly there was a dark figure in front of him, no more than six feet away. He raised the Daybreaker and fired, the recoil jolting up his arms. The figure staggered as the round hit home, and then lurched forward out of the snow.

      It was Alex Titov, the young Siberian who shared his desk. He looked at Yurov, his eyes wide, his mouth moving silently. The projectile had stuck to the front of his chest, over his solar plexus. As Yurov watched, helpless, the pneumatic charge fired, driving the charge through his breastplate. Yurov heard bones break, then Titov’s scream cut through the wind that was howling through the control

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