She hastened downslope to the divergent trail and followed it for a dozen yards, kicking her way along and restirring the surface. She found what she had feared: red-stained snow, covered over and hidden. Reaching the end of the trail, she dropped to her knees and dug into the drift. It didn’t take long to uncover the parka-clad body.
Kayla Brown wouldn’t be going home to her fiancé in Indiana. Gently Randi brushed the snow from the young woman’s face. She had died from a smashing blow to the temple from some heavy, pointed object, possibly an ice axe. Traces of shock and terror, her last expression, lingered frozen on the student’s face.
Kneeling beside the girl’s body, Randi Russell decided that it would not be adequate for this clever person to suffer. He was going to die, and it would please her to be his executioner.
Randi reburied the body with a few sweeps of her arm. She would not tell Trowbridge about this discovery. Not immediately, at any rate. Kayla Brown would keep here for a time, at least until Randi could arrange for her avenging.
Randi continued to the hut row. The lights were already on within the bunkhouse. Doctor Trowbridge had volunteered to prepare an evening meal. Pausing on the main trail that led past the hut entrances, she judged vision angles and distances. Near the front of the bunkhouse, Randi veered off the trail, plowing out into the virgin snow for a few yards.
Then, dropping onto the snow, she burrowed and rolled, compacting a pit large and deep enough for her to lie in with her back almost flush with the surrounding surface. It brought back unbidden childhood memories of making snow angels up at Bear Lake. Her intents now, though, were quite different.
Satisfied with her efforts, she got to her feet, shook off the ice rime, and went in to dinner.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The Misha Crash Site
“It strikes me that a lot of people are going to feel awfully stupid if we get in there only to find that containment vessel has been lying on the bottom of the ocean for the past fifty years.” The MOPP biochemical warfare suit had been designed to fit over his cold-weather clothing, and Jon Smith suspected that he looked very much like the Michelin Tire man.
“That is a stupidity I could live with,” Smyslov replied, passing him the headset for the Leprechaun tactical radio.
“So could I.” Smith flipped back his parka hood and settled the headset in place, wincing a little as the searing chill bit at his momentarily exposed ears. “Radio check.”
“I’ve got you.” Valentina Metrace hunkered down on the ice beside him, wearing a second tactical headset. “We’re all right for line-of-sight distances at least.”
The team had set up some fifty yards upwind of the crash site, behind the meager windbreak afforded by their backpacks and a low ledge of extruded ice. Evening was standing on, but there was nothing in the way of a sunset; the grayness around them simply grew darker and the wind colder. Time and environment were becoming critical.
“Okay, people, this will be a fast in-and-out to learn if the anthrax is still aboard the aircraft, and to see if anyone else has been in there.” Smith popped the plastic safety covers off the MOPP suit’s filter mask. “You two know what I should be looking for, and you’ll walk me through it. There shouldn’t be any problems, but I’m putting one absolute in place now. If, for any reason, something goes wrong-if I don’t come out, or if we lose contact-nobody goes in after me. Is that clearly understood?”
“Jon, don’t be silly…” Valentina started to protest.
“Is that understood?” Smith barked the words.
She nodded, looking unhappy. “Yes, I understand.”
Smith looked at Smyslov. “Understood, Major?”
In the shadow of his parka hood, Smith could see some emotion roiling beneath the Russian’s stony features, an effect Smith had noticed several times before during the past week. Again Smyslov was struggling with something down in his guts where he lived.
“Colonel, I…It is understood, sir.”
Smith pulled the anticontamination hood over his head, adjusting the mask straps and sealing tabs. He took his first breath of rubber-tainted filtered air and drew on the suit’s overgauntlets.
“Okay.” His voice sounded muffled even in his own ears. “Dumb question of the day: how do I get inside?”
“The fuselage appears to be essentially intact,” Valentina’s voice crackled over the radio channel, “and the only way into the forward bomb bay is through the forward crew compartment. Unfortunately the conventional access doors are located in the nose wheel well and in the forward bomb bay itself, both of which are blocked. Your alternatives are through the port and starboard cockpit windows, which would be hard to wriggle through in that outfit, or the crew’s access tunnel to the aft compartment. The latter is your best bet.”
“How do I get into the aft compartment, then?”
“There is an access door in the tail just forward of the horizontal stabilizer on the starboard side. You’ll have to work your way forward through the pressurized crew spaces from there.”
“Right.” Smith stood awkwardly and waddled toward the murky outline of the downed bomber.
The port-side wing of the TU-4 had been torn loose in the crash and folded back almost flush against the fuselage, but the starboard approaches to the bomber were clear. As he circled around the great aluminum slab of the horizontal stabilizers Smith found himself marveling a little. Even in an age of giant military transports and jumbo jet airliners, this thing was huge. And they were actually flying these monsters during the Second World War.
Smith approached the great cylindrical body and ran a hand over the ice-glazed metal.
“Okay, I’m here and I’ve found the entry door. There’s a flush-mounted handle, but it looks like it’s been popped out.”
“The emergency release will have been pulled from the inside,” Valentina replied. “It should open, but you might have to pry it a bit.”
“Right.” Smith had a small tool kit slung at his belt, and he drew a heavy long-hafted screwdriver from it. Fitting the tip of the blade into the frost-clogged slit around the door, he slammed the heel of his hand against the butt of the tool. After a couple of blows there was a sharp crack as the ice seal broke. A few more moments of levering, and the door swung outward, the wind catching at it, leaving a rectangular shadowed gap in the fuselage.
“You were right, Val. It’s open. Going inside now.”
Bending low, he ducked through the small door.
It was dark inside the fuselage, with only the trace of dull exterior light at his back. Smith removed a flashlight from his tool kit and snapped it on.
“Damn,” he murmured. “I never expected this.”
“What are you seeing, Jon?” Valentina demanded.
Smith panned the flashlight beam around the fuselage interior. No appreciable amount of snow had leaked inside, but ice crystals glittered everywhere, thinly encrusting the battleship gray frames and cable and duct clusters. “It’s incredible. There’s no sign of corrosion or degradation anywhere. This thing might have rolled out of the factory yesterday.”
“Natural cold storage!” the historian exclaimed over the radio. “This is fabulous. Keep going!”
“Okay, there’s a catwalk leading aft past a couple of large flat rectangular boxes to a circular dished hatch right in the tail of the airplane. The hatch is closed, and there is a round window set in its center. A couple of what look like ammunition feed tracks are set on either side of it. I guess that must be the tail gunner’s station.”
“Correct. Is there anything else noteworthy back there?”
“There’s some kind of a mount or pedestal with a couple of unbolted cables hanging from it. It looks like some piece of equipment has been dismantled.”