Scorpion Winter

Chapter Thirty-One

Pripyat,

Chernobylska Exclusion Zone

The danger point would be crossing the empty street and the area in front of the building in full view of Shelayev or whoever was in that apartment. Up till then they kept close, moving in the shadows of the buildings. Scorpion had Dennis shut off the Geiger counter beeper. It helped that they wore dark clothes and there were no streetlights of any kind. To be in this city at night was bizarre; a ghost world of ice and darkness, Scorpion thought, forcing his mind back to the target. He had to assume Shelayev was armed. Unless he caught him by surprise, the situation would go out of control as fast as Chernobyl had.

Scorpion studied the building. There was a drift of snow by the front entrance. He put his night vision goggles on and looked for footprints in the snow. There weren’t any. That either meant there was no one there, which wouldn’t explain the light, or that Shelayev had used another entrance. Scorpion looked up at the apartment on the top floor where they had seen the light. He could see no movement. Nothing. There was nothing for it, he thought. They had to cross the street.

Dennis looked up at the building.

“Maybe I go wait in avto,” he said, meaning the Lada.

“Maybe you leave me stranded here with no way to get back,” Scorpion said.

“I am not liking.”

“Neither do I. You want to give me back the five thousand?”

Dennis didn’t say anything. In his mind, Scorpion thought, he’d already spent that money. He nudged Dennis, motioning him to follow. They ran across the street, nearly slipping on the frozen snow.

Dennis followed him to the side of the building. Keeping close to its walls, they went around to the rear entrance. Through the night vision goggles, Scorpion spotted footprints in the snow by the rear entrance. He heard Dennis breathing as he came up behind him. The obvious choice was to go in the back entrance and up the stairs. But Shelayev was Spetsnaz, he thought. He would likely reason that if someone trained was coming after him, they would come in the back way. They had passed a steel fire escape on the side of the building. Scorpion decided to go in that way. He started back toward the fire escape, motioning Dennis to follow.

“Why we going-” Dennis began.

Scorpion clamped his hand over Dennis’s mouth.

“Zatknis!” he hissed into Dennis’s ear. Shut up.

He looked up the ladder at the metal landings above but saw nothing, then tested his weight on the fire escape. Everything was radioactive and had been rotting for a long time but it seemed solid. He put his finger to his lips, then climbed step by step up the fire escape to the second floor. Dennis followed. Their footsteps grated hollowly on the metal stairs. Too loud, Scorpion thought. If he Shelayev was there, he’d know they were coming. They needed to get off the fire escape. A broken window on the landing was open, and Scorpion stepped through it into an empty apartment and onto a snowdrift. Dennis came in behind him. Scorpion motioned for him to follow.

They tiptoed through the apartment trying to avoid crunching on broken glass and went out to the hallway. Even there they could feel the icy wind. Adjusting his night vision goggles, Scorpion started carefully up the hallway stairs. When he reached the top floor, he paused and peered down the hallway, with its glints of broken glass from a faint glow of light coming from the corner apartment. It appeared empty. No cameras, no surveillance, no wires. He stepped into the hallway but stayed close to the wall, not walking down the middle of the corridor. He sensed Dennis behind him, breathing heavily.

Scorpion stopped at the half-open door of the apartment next to the corner apartment. Shelayev was Spetsnaz, he told himself again. He couldn’t go straight in. He turned to Dennis, put his finger to his lips and motioned for him to stay there. Dennis nodded that he understood. Scorpion pressed his ear against the wall but could hear nothing. If someone was in the corner apartment, he wasn’t moving around. He stepped through the half-open door into the next-door apartment, the Glock ready, walked into an empty room and checked the door to the balcony. It had no glass. Stepping out on the balcony, he peered around the edge of the wall at the corner apartment balcony. It was close enough to jump over, and he could use the balcony wall to help balance himself.

He just started to put his foot on the balcony ledge when he heard a sound behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Dennis starting to walk toward the corner apartment. He must’ve gotten bored waiting or he had seen or heard something, Scorpion thought.

“Dennis, don’t!” he shouted, thinking, You stupid son of a bitch as he climbed back into the room. He ran back through the room toward the hallway, catching a glimpse of Dennis as he passed the open doorway.

The explosion flung Scorpion off his feet, hurling pieces of the wall at him.