Black Ghosts
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
DIRECT STRIKE
“Eagle One! Eagle One!” The two helicopters were trying to establish communication, their radios screeching. Moving toward the midpoint of the bridge from either end, they drew close to the scene of battle.
Facing away from the bridge, two more of Yazarinsky’s men emerged from the shadows, each carrying a sleek, dark green cylinder containing a deadly Stinger surface-to-air missile. There was a thud and a cloud of smoke as each was fired, and a gray streak pointed upward.
“Look out! Something’s coming at you!” squawked the helicopter radio. But it was too late. The infrared heat-seeking missiles locked onto the choppers’ exhaust pipes, both Stingers found their marks, and simultaneously the helicopters were blown out of the sky in a flash and a thunder, leaving only a shower of debris.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
BLACK GHOSTS
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Wilshire Press trade paperback edition / April 2001
Berkley premium edition / May 2011
Copyright © 2001 by Victor Ostrovsky. Cover photos: Helicopter by Wikimedia Commons; Russian buildings by stock.xchng; Russian coat of arms by Wikimedia Commons. Cover design and photo illustration by Jae Song. Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.
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To Bella.
I love you, babe!
In memory of Adash Silverberg, Bella’s uncle.
A wonderful young man who didn’t survive the
Holocaust.
CHAPTER 1
Prison Colony No. 5, Central Siberia
February 15
06:45 hours
Peter Ivanovich Rogov expected all hell to break loose, and he was well aware of the fact that any deviation from the plan could render him dead. Either way, he regarded it as a gamble worth taking. No matter what happened he would be free from this frozen abyss. After six years in this barren scrap of purgatory, the chance of freedom, no matter how slim, was worth taking.
Few places on Earth were as inhospitable as Prison Colony No. 5—or, as the prisoners referred to it, “the grave”—on a winter morning. Little, if anything, ever changed in the grave, except perhaps the weather, and that was always for the worse. Peter raised his frayed coat collar, shielding his face from the freezing wind that howled across the desolate, color-starved valley, pushing clouds of swirling snow in its wake through the razor wire and electric fences.
The prison colony was perched on a hill overlooking the nuclear bomb factory known as Tomsk-7. Guard towers rose high on solid timber stilts and loomed over the rectangular prison compound. Powerful spotlights and heavy Gurianov machine guns mounted on each tower probed the grounds day and night. The prison administration building and guards’ barracks were outside the fence, beyond a deep moat surrounding the camp like an ugly scar. Except for the shrinking food rations and a decline in the guards’ discipline, which manifested itself in their sloppy attire and rowdy behavior, the prison was a living monument to a dead regime.
Peter, found guilty of treason for his part in the failed coup against then-President Mikhail Gorbachev, had been sentenced to life with hard labor. He found it ironic that he, a devoted guardian of the revolution, was called a traitor, while those who sold out the motherland, aiding in the collapse of an empire, were honored. That, he vowed, he would soon change.
He heard a truck grinding its gears in the distance. He squinted his pale blue eyes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of it through the arctic veil of blowing snow. His thin lips twitched in what the few who knew him would call a smile.
“Lev!” Peter hissed to the frail man beside him who was busy stomping his feet to keep his meager body from freezing. “It’s time.”
“Yes, sir,” the little man muttered, his breath icing up his sparse mustache.
“Tell the others to get ready!” Peter commanded.
Lev nodded and headed for the inmates’ quarters.
Drawing one last puff from his yellow, foul-smelling cigarette, Peter watched Lev hobble across the central yard. As soon as Lev entered the first in a row of dilapidated barracks, Peter flicked the smoldering cigarette butt to the ground and headed to the long woodshed at the other end of the camp, passing a row
of prisoners huddled by the kitchen exhaust shaft, attempting to draw some heat from it. They stood with their backs to the wind, waiting for what the camp administration cynically referred to as breakfast. They were too busy keeping themselves from freezing while protecting their place in line to even notice him.
Although Peter wore the same tattered gray uniform and coat as the other inmates, he stood out, shoulders pulled back, chin forward in defiance, unmistakably a general, the kind men fear and admire, an ex-KGB brigadier general eager to make his comeback.
A guard entered the latrine just as Peter had approached it. Peter stopped a few feet from the filthy door and made a futile attempt to light another cigarette against the wind. Precious moments were being lost, but there was nothing to do but wait. When the guard finally straddled out, still battling his fly with his heavy mitten, Peter slipped in. The stench almost overwhelmed him as he headed for the second stall from the end. He could hear the old truck rumbling in the distance; his ticket to freedom was making its way down the road. The only consolation in that dark, foul latrine was the refuge it offered from the wind, providing an illusion of warmth.
Peter leaned against the outer wall and waited, listening intensely for sounds as he tried to visualize his plan unfolding a mile and a half down the windswept road.
The old ten-wheel Zeel truck stopped at the gate cut in the high wall surrounding the nuclear complex. The sleepy guard in a glass booth put down his cup of hot tea and leaned forward, wiping the condensation off the glass to get a better view of the truck and its driver. He recognized the new deliveryman, two weeks on the job. His predecessor had a close encounter with a military truck in Omsk, they said. Poor man, the guard thought, but then that’s life: One moment you’re here, the next you’re under a truck.
According to regulations, he was required to check the truck before letting it in, but as Peter had predicted, he didn’t want to leave the warmth of his booth. Instead, he glanced back into the yard to make sure the duty officer wasn’t on rounds. Then he pressed the green button and waved the truck in as the loud screeching gate slowly moved along its track.
The gate log would read: 6:50—delivery truck arrived, checked and found clean. Entry permitted.
The old diesel engine revved and the truck slowly gained speed, making its way into the calm of the inner courtyard, moving down a narrow winding path wedged between the wall and a row of concrete silos that extended into the murky sky. Once out of the guard’s sight, the truck made a brief stop.
“Now!” the driver shouted through the window separating the cabin from the back. Three men, two in guards’ uniforms and one in a black diver’s wet suit, jumped out the back as the truck continued on its way to the kitchen.
Within seconds, the three men had cut the lock on a metal hatch at the bottom of the third silo. For months, they had practiced this on a mock-up. Moving quickly, they entered what was probably the most dangerous and unstable environment in the world. A reinforced steel tank, forty feet wide and thirty feet high, occupied the interior of the concrete silo, leaving a narrow corridor around it. The tank was filled to the brim with water. An electric grid along its inner wall kept the contents at 34 degrees F.
The two uniformed men carried a large black duffel bag. Their mission had to be completed before the truck returned. They had come to release Lucifer from his steel bottle.
The diver climbed a rusting ladder bolted to the tank wall. Once at the top he opened a round hatch and slipped into the water. Descending, he turned on a powerful flashlight strapped to the side of his head. A series of shiny cylinders made of a titanium alloy were neatly stacked on the tank floor, each with a red valve at its end. They contained radioactive acid, a lethal and volatile byproduct of the bomb factory. The water kept their temperature steady, as a fluctuation of more than three degrees could prove lethal.
Hovering over the cylinders, the diver hesitated only briefly before he carefully connected explosive devices, which he had removed from his belt, to two of them, each one positioned several inches from the red valve. A series of small suction cups held the devices in place. The detonators were equipped with electronic timers, on which a diminishing row of LEDs reminded him that time was running out.
There was just enough C-4 explosive in each device to blow off the security valve, releasing the deadly toxins into the water. The other two men were placing a second set of explosives on the outside wall of the tank, intending to blow a hole in its base, allowing the contaminated water to spill out of the containment area.
The timers were synchronized to create a single blast rather than a series of explosions, which could suggest sabotage. Peter knew that if sabotage was even suspected in the early stages, he would have to contend with a total shutdown of all entry and exit points in the entire region. It had to look like an accident if he was going to get away.
Standing in the stall, Peter counted the seconds, tapping his finger on the grimy wall. They should be just about done, he thought. They’re closing the hatch. Tap, tap, two ninety-nine, three hundred, three o one. Back on the truck, three o six, three o seven . . .
He closed his eyes. Three twenty-two. The truck should be at the gate of the nuclear complex—three twenty-four, three twenty-five—now! He stopped breathing, aching to hear the gate open. “Now,” he whispered, pleading through clenched teeth, “open the goddamned gate.” He felt stiff, the veins bulging in his forehead. Peter had no god to pray to, no one to whom he could promise repentance if things went well. He was all alone in that miserable latrine, knowing every moment of silence drew him that much further away from freedom. He was as focused as a man could be on an object so far out of reach, pushing at the gate with his tortured mind, trying to pry it open.
Finally, like the sound of water to a thirsty man, he heard the gate open, then the truck moving. He slapped one hand against the wall, sending his other fist skyward. Then he stepped on the toilet seat and reached to the overhead ceramic water tank. Pushing the cover to one side, he pulled out a wet plastic bag. Anxiously he ripped it open and unfolded a guard’s uniform. Now that he knew the team was out of the complex, he could put on his disguise.
He covered the filthy floor with his threadbare gray coat, placing the brown uniform in one corner and hurriedly tearing off his prison garb.
The sensation of the clean, ironed cotton against his skin was something he had long forgotten. He felt the coolness of the starched collar on his grimy neck. The fullness and warmth of the overcoat felt good. He looked at the prison uniform bundled on the floor, thinking he would rather die than wear it again.
The wind had subsided to an icy hiss. Peter could hear the Zeel changing gears as it approached the prison gates. The well-oiled electric gate slid open just enough for the truck to pass. Peter knew the guards would not bother to check the vehicle as it entered, but they would pick it clean on the way out.
Peter’s heart pounded hard against his chest, sweat broke out on his forehead, and he felt a numbness in his knees. There was nothing for him to do but wait, a passenger on the brittle wings of fate. His gas mask was in his hand, ready.
The sudden blast cut through the cold air like the crack of a whip, shaking the entire camp. All eyes turned in fear toward the complex down the road.
Peter pulled the black gas mask over his face, waiting for the alarm. Time seemed to have stopped. Then, with a monstrous shriek, the siren began to howl. Peter stepped out into the blinding white cold. What he saw reminded him of Bruegel’s vision of hell. Armed guards in green coats and black gas masks, like warriors from another world, were herding rows of thin, pale men in tattered gray uniforms onto dark green trucks. In the distance, an ominous gray pillar of smoke capped by a black, swirling toxic cloud slowly leaned away, toggled by the wind, like a giant contorted mushroom.
The prison colony’s proximity to the nuclear complex was no coincidence. The inmates were regarded as disposable labor, to be used on cleanup details in the event of an accident. No gr
eat loss, as far as the designers of the facility were concerned.
In fact, the prisoners had been drilled for such an occasion as this. Now they were being rounded up to be trucked to the facility that was spewing clouds of deadly black smoke. The guards’ assignment was to deliver as many prisoners in the shortest time possible into the hands of the security cleanup team at the nuclear complex.
Peter made his way to the last truck in the convoy that was about to leave for the accident site. He climbed into the cabin and sat next to the driver. In back, his blockmates were shackled with leg irons to the truck floor, guarded by four men in guards’ uniforms and gas masks. The last guard to board the truck signaled Peter with a thumbs-up. It would be hours before anyone would find the four real guards who had been on kitchen duty, their throats slashed, stacked in the corner of the walk-in freezer like so many slabs of beef.
Soon he would be free. Suddenly his blood froze in his veins as an officer tapped on his window, signaling him to roll it down. What had gone wrong? Options were rushing through his head. He looked at the truck’s rearview mirror and could see one of his rescue team cocking a gun. His men had their orders: “If something goes wrong, open fire and we’ll try to fight our way out.” It would be a futile attempt, but Peter was getting out of this place, one way or the other.
The officer looked directly into Peter’s eyes. Peter recognized the man and was sure the recognition was mutual.
“Here,” the officer said finally, reaching through the window and handing Peter a key on a short chain. Peter nodded and palmed the key. The officer turned and walked away from the edge of his grave, never realizing how close to it he had been. Peter had forgotten that although his face was known, no one would be likely to recognize him behind his gas mask.