But all of that lead down there. And these poisoned heights, a little more than mildly radioactive. And that Thing filmed by the AWACS as it did battle with the USAF jet fighters. Simonov couldn’t suppress a small shudder, which this time wasn’t due to the intense cold. He folded his nite-lites into a flat, leather-cased shape which he slipped inside his anorak with the strap still round his neck. Then for a moment longer he just lay there, his eyes staring into the enigmatic gulf below, his mind superimposing on the darkness the sequence of events he’d witnessed in London, recorded on that flickering AWACS film …
But even remembering it, he cringed away from it. Bad enough that he still occasionally saw it in his dreams! But could that . . . that . . . whatever it had been, could it really have come from here? A monstrous mutation? A gigantic, hideous warrior clone conjured in some crazed geneticist’s incredible experiment? A ‘biological’ weapon outside all of man’s previous experience and understanding? That was what he was here to find out. Or rather, it was what he was here to prove conclusively: that indeed this was where that Thing had been born – or made. That seething, pulsing, writhing –
Snow crunched softly, compacted by a stealthy footfall!
Simonov thrust himself to his feet, turning as he rose, and saw a head and staring eyes outlined briefly above the low jumble of rocks. His automatic was in his hand as he launched himself into a dive to the left of the boulders, his right arm outstretched, ready to target his weapon. A man in a pure white parka was crouched behind the boulders, with a gun in his hand which he even now lifted to point at Simonov. In the instant before Simonov came down on his side in the snow he snapped off two shots; the first one struck the man in the shoulder, snatching him upright, and the second slammed into his chest, flinging him backwards and down onto the patchy snow.
The dull phut, phut, of Simonov’s silenced weapon had caused no echoes, but he’d scarcely caught his breath when there came a hoarse, gasping grunt from close at hand and silver glinted in a sudden flood of moonlight. The snow on Simonov’s left-hand side, not eighteen inches away, erupted in a spray of frantic activity. ‘Bastard!’ a voice snarled in Russian as a massive hand reached out to grasp Simonov’s hair and an ice-axe came arcing down, its spike impaling his gun-hand through the wrist and almost nailing it to the stony ground.
The Russian had been lying in a snow-filled depression, waiting. Now he sprawled forward, trying to hurl his bulk on top of Simonov. The agent saw a dark face, a white bar of snarling teeth framed in a beard and a ruff of white fur, and drove his left elbow into it with as much force as he could muster. Teeth and bone crunched and the Russian gave a gurgling shriek, but he didn’t release his grip on Simonov’s hair. Then, cursing through blood and snot, the massive Soviet drew back his ice-axe for a second swipe.
Simonov tried to bring his gun to bear. Useless – there was no feeling in his hand, which flopped like a speared fish. The Russian hunched over him, dripped blood on him, changed his grip to Simonov’s throat and drew back his axe menacingly.
‘Karl!’ came a voice from the shadows of other boulders. ‘We want him alive!’
‘How much alive?’ Karl choked the words out, spitting blood. But in the next moment he dropped the axe and instead drove a fist hard as iron to Simonov’s forehead. The spy went out like a light, almost gladly.
A third Russian figure came out of the night, went to his knees beside Simonov’s prone form. He felt the unconscious man’s pulse, said: ‘Are you all right, Karl? If so, please see to Boris. I think this one put a couple of bullets into him!’
‘Think? Well, I was closer than you and I can assure you he did!’ Karl growled. Gingerly touching his broken face with trembling fingertips, he went to where Boris lay spread-eagled.