SNAFU: Hunters

The Secret War David W. Amendola

Death lurked in the hamlet. A great deal of death.

Lieutenant Nikolai Zakharov could feel it. He could not smell it — the temperature was at least thirty degrees below zero so anything that died would quickly freeze solid — but he knew it was there, waiting. Kneeling behind a windfall at the edge of the forest, he observed the cluster of stout log cabins in the clearing through binoculars, watching and listening for signs of activity.

Nothing. Not even chimney smoke. All was quiet.

Black ravens perched in the nearby trees, another indicator of death. He noted that they were strangely silent and kept their distance from the hamlet.

Including Zakharov, his team numbered ten. He and seven others were armed with PPSh-41 submachine guns. The wiry Junior Sergeant Okhchen preferred his Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle with its PE telescopic sight. Private Kaminsky, a giant of man with red hair and fierce eyes, was responsible for the DP-28 light machine gun. He handled it like a toy, shouldering with ease the heavy satchel of extra magazines that normally an assistant would carry for him. Each man also had an RGD-33 stick grenade.

They were dressed for the extreme cold: quilted jacket and trousers, woolen underwear, fleece cap, fur mittens, and felt boots. For camouflage a white, hooded snow suit was worn over everything.

Nervous tension sharpened their senses and attuned them to their surroundings, made them alert for the slightest scent or sound. They knew all too well the nature of their enemy.

Zakharov whistled a bird call to get everyone’s attention and then motioned. He and six others emerged from concealment, snow crunching underfoot, and warily approached the hamlet.

The tiny settlement huddled on a river bank was an old trading post and stores that had catered to the local fur trade for nearly a century.

Mere minutes of murderous frenzy had snuffed it out forever.

On the icy, dirt street the soldiers found pale corpses and pieces of corpses lying frozen among stiffened tatters of shredded clothing. Puddles of blood and gore had solidified into dark-red ice. The villagers had been ripped apart: heads, limbs, and entrails were strewn about. All were gnawed and half-eaten, bones split for marrow and skulls smashed open for brains. A grisly feast for scavengers, but as Zakharov expected, none were skulking around. Wolves, like the ravens, were shunning this place.

A laika, someone’s pitiful pet, cowered behind a woodshed too terrified to even whimper. What had killed and eaten the villagers did not have a taste for dog meat.

The soldiers surveyed the carnage dispassionately, hardened to such horrors. This was not their first mission. All were frontoviks — combat veterans. Each had already been awarded the Medal for Combat Merit and a few had also earned at least one wound stripe.

Zakharov motioned again. Kaminsky lay prone and covered the length of the street with his machine gun. Then three men led by Senior Sergeant Sergei Kravchenko, a short stocky Ukrainian who was Zakharov’s second in command, crept up to the rear of the nearest cabin, staying below window level. With a bang the door was kicked in and they rushed inside, fingers on triggers and grenades ready to throw. After verifying the cabin was unoccupied, they moved on to check the next building.

At length the search was complete and Kravchenko briskly strode over to relay the results to his superior, who had remained beside Kaminsky.

“All clear, Comrade Lieutenant.”

“I assume there are no survivors,” said Zakharov.

“No.”

Zakharov nodded at Okhchen, who began inspecting the claw and bite marks on the slain villagers. He squatted to study a footprint in a patch of snow stained pink by blood, viewing it from different angles. Roughly the size of a man’s, it had three clawed toes reminiscent of a bird’s. He walked around and carefully examined other tracks on the hamlet’s outskirts before returning to make his report.

“Comrade Lieutenant, there were ten of them. They attacked last night.”

“Which direction did they come from?” asked Zakharov.

“Northeast. They’re headed southwest now.”

Zakharov nodded then turned to Kravchenko. “Let’s get moving. We head northeast.”

“We’re not following them?” asked Kravchenko.

“No, the other teams will have to intercept them. Our assignment is to locate their hole. Signal that we’ve found evidence of an attack and they’re headed southwest.”

“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant.” Kravchenko beckoned to a private and barked an order.

The Red Army possessed relatively few radios and the team had none. Laying wire for field telephones was often impractical, so messengers and flares were usually relied upon for communication between teams. The private loaded a flare pistol according to his signal chart, pointed it at the sky, and sent a two-star purple and white flare arching high above.

The Secret War had raged on and off for almost a quarter-century, never mentioned in the Soviet press or publicly acknowledged by Soviet leaders. Matters of internal security never were.

Zakharov remembered when he returned from his first search-and-destroy operation. He had been congratulated by his superiors, decorated with the Order of the Red Star, and then bluntly informed that if he ever told anyone outside the unit what he had seen he would be sent to a corrective-labor camp.

There were lulls in the war, but then the things would return. Just exactly what they were no one knew. In the dead of winter, when the nights were longest, mysterious holes would appear in northern Siberia and the things would come forth, hungry for human flesh. They never hunted animals, only people. And Moscow would have to organize another campaign to eradicate the bloodthirsty creatures.

They had no official name, as they corresponded to no known species. Soviet scientists debated whether they were the wild men of myth — the almasty of the Caucasus, the chuchunya of Siberia, or the menk of the Urals. But legends described all of these as similar to apes or men, perhaps even surviving Neanderthals, and the terrifying creatures that attacked villagers and herders were definitely not human or simian. Unofficially they were simply referred to as upir, the generic Russian word for bloodsucking monsters such as vampires and ghouls.

Security operations within the USSR were normally handled by the internal troops of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s ruthless secret police. But these paramilitary units lacked the specialized training required. Hunting ghouls was altogether different from conducting mass arrests and deportations of alleged ‘enemies of the people’. After an entire NKVD regiment was annihilated along the Middle Tunguska River in 1936, search-and-destroy operations were taken over by the Red Army.

A unique unit of irregulars was formed: Special Group X — Spetsialnogo Gruppa X, often referred to simply as Spetsgruppa X. The X was not the Cyrillic letter but the Latin, taken from the mathematical notation for an unknown variable, since the creatures they fought were an unknown species. Composed of soldiers acclimatized and trained for winter warfare, preferably those who had been trappers or hunters in civilian life, its independent detachments were based at Siberian outposts. Whenever a ghoul incursion occurred, teams would hunt down the creatures, eliminate them, and destroy their holes.

But when reports were received in late 1942 of renewed ghoul activity they were given a low priority by the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was locked in a bloody death struggle with Nazi Germany, which had launched a massive invasion the previous year. All available troops and equipment were needed to replace the appalling losses suffered in the desperate battles for Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow. Spetsgruppa X was reduced to a token force. Before the war Zakharov’s team had been the size of a platoon; now it was a squad.

Zakharov took a sun sighting with a sextant. There were no accurate maps of this area, and he kept a log of their movements and location.

When none of the others were nearby, Kravchenko asked, “Permission to speak freely, Comrade Lieutenant?”

“Of course, Sergei Pavlovich.” Despite their difference in rank they were on familiar terms in private. Smart junior officers listened to and learned from their senior non-commissioned officers and Zakharov greatly valued Kravchenko’s experience. Almost twice as old as Zakharov, he had served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War.

“The detachment’s teams are deployed too far apart,” said Kravchenko. “We can’t support each other and coordinate patrols to sweep each sector properly. If one team encounters too many ghouls it might be overwhelmed before the others can help.”

“I raised that concern.”

“May I ask what the major’s response was?”

“He said we can cover more territory if we disperse this way. Not many ghouls were reported so he’s confident each team can handle any it finds.”

“Only a few have been detected so far, that’s true, but who’s to say there won’t be more? We have no way of knowing how many will show up each winter.”

“I know.”

Kravchenko sighed. “Why did Moscow send us a new detachment commander who has no experience in these operations? It’s bad enough we’re undermanned.”

“We have our orders.”

“Understood, Comrade Lieutenant. Did the major at least say something about the planes that were requested?”

“No, and I wouldn’t count on any either. Supporting our comrades fighting at Stalingrad is Moscow’s top priority right now.”

They returned to the forest. The dead villagers were left where they lay. Others would come later to dispose of them. The hamlet itself would be abandoned. No one would want to live here now.

Three soldiers in a nearby gully held the team’s horses, the animals’ foggy breath rising from frosted muzzles. Much of Siberia was still primordial wilderness, impassable for motorized transport. These beasts were small, shaggy Yakutians, a hardy breed that thrived in this brutal climate and subsisted largely on wild grass.

The team slung weapons, saddled up, and rode off in the direction from which the ghouls had come. Tracks led down the bank and over the flat, slate surface of the frozen river, swept by a whistling southwest breeze. This time of year the ice was thick enough to easily support horsemen. Upon reaching the opposite bank they plunged into the forest.

Okhchen scouted ahead, his dark, almond-shaped eyes picking out signs of the ghouls’ passage — broken twigs, scuffed lichen, footprints in the snow. But no droppings. Ghouls left no excrement. The team took care to ride single file alongside the trail, not over it, so as not to obliterate any clues. It was easy to follow: their quarry had made no effort to conceal it.

Zakharov considered himself lucky to be assigned to Spetsgruppa X. The nature of its operations necessitated giving commanders in the field more freedom of initiative than was usual in the Red Army. This comparative independence had increased with the recent demotion of the Communist Party political commissars. Reduced to an advisory role, they no longer held dual command with military officers.

Keeping one’s command still depended on results though. Failure was never an option in the USSR. Even if you were a marshal it could mean a sentence to a penal battalion or the Gulag, the NKVD’s network of prisons and forced-labor camps. Or a firing squad.

Not that results guaranteed safety. Thousands had been imprisoned or shot during the purges. To meet the quotas of enemies demanded by Stalin’s insatiable paranoia the secret police could arrest anyone for any reason — or no reason at all. Arbitrary terror maintained his iron rule.

Every division had an NKVD Special Department attached. Fortunately the head of this unit in Spetsgruppa X was an alcoholic whose wife had an eye for bourgeois luxuries. The commanding general prudently supplied plenty of vodka and furs to ensure glowing weekly reports.

The team followed the tracks through the bleak taiga. Larches stood gray and skeletal, having shed their needles last autumn. The forest floor had little underbrush, tufts of brown grass poking up through the snow in clearings. Siberia was not only very cold, but also very dry. Many parts actually received little snowfall, although what snow did fall would remain on the ground for at least six months out of the year. The only signs of humanity were small deadfall traps; winter was the hunting season for sable.

This time of year the days were very short, a blue twilight only lasting about four hours. The golden sun did not come up until late morning and struggled to rise just above the horizon before setting again by mid-afternoon.

At one point the team heard a long wail far in the distance. The shrill cry resembled nothing uttered by human or animal. They heard it again from time to time, coming from different directions. The soldiers exchanged anxious, knowing looks.

“Ghouls,” Kravchenko muttered.

Zakharov raised his hand to signal a halt. He glanced around at the trees. One nearly fifty meters tall towered above the rest. Handing his binoculars to Okhchen, he said, “Get up there and see if you can locate them.”

Okhchen strapped spikes to his boots and shinnied up the trunk until he could reach the lowest branches, then climbed up through the boughs. Sitting in a crook near the top, he slowly scanned in all directions before quickly clambering back down.

“Comrade Lieutenant, twelve are two kilometers northeast moving down the trail towards us,” he said. “Ten more are a kilometer and a half southwest, following us and coming fast. The second group is probably the pack that attacked the hamlet. They must have discovered our tracks.”

“They’re hunting us now,” said Zakharov. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We could dig in and summon the other teams.”

Kravchenko shook his head. “It’ll be dark before anyone can get here. We’re too far apart. Then the ghouls will have the advantage since they can see at night.”

“Then we’d better attack now while it’s still daylight and the packs are separated. Eliminate the ones behind us then destroy the rest.”

Kravchenko grinned, revealing a gold eye tooth. “We’ll catch them by surprise.”

The team wheeled about and cantered back the way they had come. Soon the horses neighed. They had a keen sense of smell and ghouls exuded a disagreeable odor.

Swerving behind a rise, the soldiers dismounted. Three held the horses. Okhchen and Kaminsky crawled up to the crest to over-watch positions while the others, led by Zakharov, spread out in a skirmish line in front of the rise.

Ten ghouls ran through the woods ahead.

They were thin, wiry creatures with gray, leathery skin totally devoid of hair. Running in a forward crouch like apes, each would stand a little over meter and a half tall if fully erect. Long, bony arms almost reaching the ground ended in gnarled hands with curved, black claws. Bipedal, they had clawed, three-toed feet. Narrow heads had pointed ears, slits for nostrils, and slanted yellow eyes smoldering with ravenous hunger. They bared slavering fangs and long, blue, forked tongues flicked out.

Even weak daylight impaired their vision so they did not see the soldiers immediately.

A yellow flare was sent up to alert the other teams that ghouls had been spotted. Then the echoing crack of Okhchen’s rifle broke the silence. A ghoul staggered as a 147-grain 7.62 millimeter bullet punched through its left eye, blasting out the back of its head in a spray of black ichor. It toppled backwards.

The other ghouls looked around angrily for the source as a second and then a third were killed in rapid succession by headshots, until finally they spotted the humans. With a bedlam of bloodcurdling howls, they charged. One threw back its head and let out a long, wavering shriek that echoed across the forest and sent chills up the spines of the soldiers.

“Fire!” shouted Zakharov.

The ghouls were fast and agile. The soldiers stood their ground and opened fire — the quick, harsh chatter of their submachine guns punctuated by the slower rattle of the DP-28 above and behind them.

The creatures rushed into a storm of lead. They stumbled and fell, riddled by scores of slugs, their ichor sizzling as it splashed on the ground, instantly melting any snow it touched. A pair veered left, trying to outflank the team, but to no avail. This move had been anticipated and they too were shot down, the last collapsing dead just meters from the soldiers.

The team ceased fire and reloaded, adrenalin slowly ebbing from their veins. Zakharov noticed Kravchenko calmly bandaging a wrist.

“Wounded?” he asked.

“A drop of their blood splashed on me,” said Kravchenko. “Burns like acid.”

The ghoul carcasses began smoldering and disintegrating. Within minutes all that would remain would be heaps of ashes and a foul reek lingering in the crisp air. No bones. And nothing would ever grow in these spots again. This accelerated decomposition had made it impossible to obtain specimens for scientific study, so details of ghoul anatomy were unknown.

Zakharov collected a little bit of the ash, sealing it in an envelope. He had standing orders to take samples when conditions permitted.

Attempts to capture ghouls alive had proved unsuccessful. They could not be subdued and were totally resistant to tranquilizers. All anyone had to go on were eyewitness accounts, blurry photographs, plaster casts of footprints, and laboratory analysis of ash residue. Ghouls did not appear to have any type of social structure or leadership. Nothing resembling offspring were ever seen and their method of reproduction was unknown. They all looked alike and there was no visible gender differentiation.

The team hurried back to their horses and rode off to intercept the other pack.

The woods thickened, forcing them to slow as they followed tracks down a slope to a frozen, meandering stream cloaked in shadow, the treetops etched against the orange sky.

Okhchen abruptly reined in and motioned for the others to stop. His eyes darted around suspiciously.

The breeze shifted. The horses whinnied sharply.

“Ambush!” shouted Okhchen.

Screeches filled the air as ghouls suddenly leaped from behind the rocks and scrub brush on the opposite bank where they had been hiding.

One private was decapitated by a single slash of a claw and his headless body, spurting bright-red blood, rode along for a ways like a horrid rag doll before finally tumbling from the saddle. Another was dragged off his mount; his submachine gun and arm were torn away and the top of his head was sheared off. The neighing horse of a third man reared and hurled him to the ground, breaking his leg. A ghoul immediately disemboweled him and bit his throat out.

One sprang into a tree above Zakharov, but before it could pounce on him he peppered it with a burst from his PPSh-41. Several branches broke as the ghoul fell heavily to the ground.

The soldiers recovered quickly from their initial surprise and urged their steeds forward. They managed to ride clear of the ambush and then swung around to open a relentless fire from horseback. The pack was quickly eliminated.

Zakharov jumped down and rushed over to his fallen men along with the team’s medic.

Two were already dead. The third, the one missing an arm and the top of his skull, was incredibly, horribly, still alive and conscious. With the usual stoicism of Russian soldiers he did not cry out. But he was beyond aid and there was nothing the medic could do except administer morphine to ease his last moments, cradling him in his arms until he mercifully expired.

Zakharov had a green flare fired to signal that all the ghouls seen had been destroyed. Then he grimly collected the identification booklets of his slain men for safekeeping. The bodies were stripped of weapons and equipment and loose stones were piled over each to erect a crude cairn. The iron-hard permafrost made grave digging a herculean task they had no time for. They paused for a somber moment of silence, then mounted up and rode on, taking the extra horses with them.

Because of the classified nature of these operations the government did not award a campaign medal for participation. Zakharov would not even be allowed to write consolation letters to the families. He could recommend deserving men for posthumous decorations, but the citations would themselves be classified. Relatives would never be told the circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths, only that each had died “fighting gallantly in defense of his beloved Motherland.”

They returned to the original trail. Night descended, the gloom faintly illuminated by the cold gleam of the stars. The temperature dropped still further, down to fifty degrees below zero. The trail was clear enough for the team to continue following it by starlight for several hours before finally stopping to camp.

A sentry was posted and trip wires for flares were strung around the camp perimeter. Everyone would take his turn standing watch while the rest slept. Zakharov determined their location again using a sextant sighting of Polaris.

First priority, as always for mounted troops, was the horses, which were picketed, groomed, checked for injuries, and allowed to graze. Finally a tent was erected and the team sat inside to eat, huddled around the oasis of warmth provided by a little iron field stove.

Zakharov saw to it that his men were taken care of first before wolfing down his own meal of black rye bread, buckwheat porridge, and hard sausage washed down with hot tea. He made a point of refusing officer’s rations and eating the same food as enlisted men. An allotment of vodka was also authorized under regulations, but he strictly forbade it. Back at base the men could drink and carouse as they pleased, but on a mission he needed everyone sober and sharp.

Afterwards they cleaned weapons, oiled them with cold-weather lubricants to keep the mechanisms from freezing, and reloaded magazines. They talked and joked and enjoyed the luxury of a smoke, rolling strong, coarse tobacco in newsprint to make crude cigarettes.

The glint of metal betrayed a little Christian cross one private wore around his neck and kept hidden under his jacket. Zakharov, as usual, pretended not to notice.

He had seen too many good men die needlessly — and far too young — to entertain any belief in God. But like his soldiers he was the son of a peasant and understood their ways — their rough humor, their towering profanity, their taboos and superstitions — and he indulged them whenever possible. He also ignored their occasional grumblings about the regime. Zakharov was a pragmatic Communist. So long as his men fought that was all that mattered.

Zakharov snapped awake amid the frantic neighing and stomping of the horses. Even as he and the others in the tent fumbled for weapons the harsh, white glow of a trip flare suddenly lit up the camp and two bursts of automatic fire shattered the stillness.

Zakharov darted outside. Kaminsky was on sentry duty, smoke curling from his machine gun’s muzzle.

“Over there,” he said, nodding in the direction. “Two of them. Got both when the flare blinded them.”

The team scrambled to defensive positions around the camp as the flare fizzled out and darkness returned. They waited in tense silence as their night vision recovered. The dark woods seemed fraught with menace, a gibbous moon glowering above. But nothing happened, and at length the horses settled down and became quiet again.

“I don’t think there are any more of them,” said Okhchen.

The team relaxed. Zakharov went over to Kravchenko, who was squatting beside one of the ghoul ash piles, deep in thought.

“We were lucky,” said Zakharov. “There were only two and the horses smelled them before they got too close.”

Kravchenko grunted. “That’s what worries me.”

“Why?”

“Ghouls don’t appear to be intelligent, Comrade Lieutenant, not in our sense of the word, but they’re not stupid either. They’re cunning like any predator. They’ve been shrieking back and forth all day, communicating. Communicating about us and the other teams. Our flares pinpoint our locations.”

“Unfortunately we can’t help it. We have no radios.”

“For sure the ghouls know all about us — what we are, where we are, how many of us there are. So why are they attacking us just a few at a time or in small packs? If there aren’t that many of them, then why not avoid us entirely and hunt for easier prey?”

“I don’t know. When you put it that way, it doesn’t make sense.”

Kravchenko stood. “No, it doesn’t.”

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, but the team slept fitfully and rose before dawn. After a quick breakfast they resumed the hunt by moonlight. The trail turned due north.

As the first feeble rays of sunlight filtered through the trees Okhchen spotted something away from the trail and rode over to take a closer look. He got off his horse and examined the ground. Zakharov went to see what he was looking at. Okhchen brushed away snow to uncover yellowed, splintered bones, scraps of khaki fabric, a few black buttons, and the slashed remnants of boots and accouterments.

“Another ghoul victim?” asked Zakharov, dismounting.

“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant, but this fellow died a long time ago.” Okhchen bent and plucked from a frayed pocket an identification booklet, its red cloth cover stained and faded. He was illiterate so he showed it to Zakharov.

Zakharov grunted with interest. “NKVD.”

A rusted Nagant revolver lay nearby and he picked it up. Flicking down the loading gate, he rotated the cylinder to check the chambers. All seven rounds were spent. “He didn’t go down without a fight.” He glanced over the remains and noticed a skull fragment with a small, round hole in it. “Looks like he saved the last bullet for himself.”

“He was carrying this,” said Okhchen, holding up a map case of brown leather, battered and cracked by the elements but otherwise intact. He peered inside. “It’s filled with old papers.”

Zakharov took the case and the identification and put both in his saddlebag. “I’ll look at them later. We need to move on.”

They hurried on. Far to the west a yellow flare arced like a comet above the forest. Shortly thereafter they heard faint gunfire. The flurry of shots intensified.

“One of the other teams has found ghouls too,” said Kravchenko, reining in.

The shooting tapered off and ceased. A green flare went up.

“And they eliminated them,” said Zakharov. “Let’s go.”

At length Okhchen halted again, studying the ground. Zakharov saw tracks branching off in the trampled snow. Ahead, beyond this divergence, the trail became wider and heavier with more spoor than before.

“The ghouls split up here,” said Okhchen. “Those tracks going west are probably from the pack the other team ran into.”

Zakharov nodded. “That means we’re following the main trail. Good.”

Ahead lay a great swath of taiga devastated by wildfire, likely sparked by lightning last spring or summer and destroying thousands of hectares before finally burning itself out. Isolated tree trunks scorched by flame stood stark and black in a landscape of utter desolation. Hooves crackled and snapped on burned timber buried under the snow crust. They stopped to camp.

After eating, Zakharov examined the papers of the dead NKVD man. He flipped open the identification booklet. The photograph of a stern young man was inside along with the identification number, issue date, issuing authority, his rank and position, and so forth.

“So who was he, Comrade Lieutenant?” asked Kravchenko, rolling a cigarette.

“Junior Lieutenant of State Security Boris Stepanovich Sukhishvili, 13th Rifle Regiment, NKVD Internal Troops.”

“Those were the ones massacred on the Tunguska six years ago. Far away from where we are. No survivors. What was he doing way out here?”

Zakharov turned his attention to the map case. Inside was a bundle of loose pages tied together that comprised an old file, the paper yellowed with age and stained from moisture. He untied it and began reading, starting with a hastily-scribbled note on top.

“He was trying to get back to his base,” he said. “He was a courier from Vladimir Orlov, the regimental commander. When the ghouls attacked, Orlov realized he was doomed and tried to save this file by sending it off with Sukhishvili.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“Orlov wasn’t just leading a search-and-destroy operation,” said Zakharov. “According to this he was also tasked with a mission by Gleb Bokii, a senior NKVD official conducting research into paranormal phenomenon. Code-named Operation Hades, it was an investigation into the origins of the ghouls.” He flicked to the next page. “In the village of Turukhansk Orlov discovered this file. It’s the testimony of a White officer named Grishin, who was captured and interrogated by Red partisans in March 1920.”

Kravchenko exhaled smoke, contemplating the glowing tip of his cigarette. “That’s shortly after the first reports of ghoul attacks.”

Zakharov carefully leafed through the file itself. The original testimony had been taken down in longhand and then a summary typed up. Some sections were so faded and stained they were illegible, but he was still able to read enough to piece together the essential facts.

At length he said, “Grishin was an aristocrat who belonged to the reactionary Black Hundreds before the Revolution so during the Civil War he joined the White counter-revolutionaries, serving on Admiral Kolchak’s staff. In November 1919, after Omsk fell and Kolchak’s White Army was forced to retreat, Grishin was dispatched on a secret mission.”

The men listened in rapt attention as the wind moaned outside like a lost soul. Despite the warmth inside the tent they unconsciously shivered.

Zakharov continued, his gaze scouring the pages. “An admitted occultist, Grishin claimed his assignment had been to perform black magic rituals in the arctic to summon the ghouls, the idea being that the Whites would use them against the Bolsheviks. Kolchak had supposedly discovered evidence of the creatures’ existence during the two polar expeditions he participated in before the First World War.”

“Well, if that’s true it sure backfired,” said Kravchenko. “Ghouls can’t be controlled and they slaughter everybody regardless of their politics. But if this crazy officer summoned them, why didn’t he unsummon them after he realized his mistake?”

“He said he wasn’t able to undo what he’d done. Even if he could, he was executed after his interrogation. Kolchak had been captured at Irkutsk a month earlier, but during his interrogation he was never asked about the ghouls, which no one suspected the Whites had anything to do with. Kolchak, of course, was executed too. And for some reason this file was never forwarded to Moscow. It was forgotten and ended up collecting dust in Turukhansk until Orlov found it.”

“What about Operation Hades? There was no follow-up by Bokii?”

“He was liquidated during the purges. Paranormal investigation fell into disfavor.”

Kravchenko shook his head in disgust and tossed his cigarette stub into the stove. “They shot everybody who could tell us anything.”

Zakharov carefully slid the file back into the case. “Well, for sure our bosses will want to read this.”

They went to sleep, but Zakharov only allowed his men a few precious hours of rest. Beyond the burned area the forest resumed, but then gradually thinned out. Soon the taiga ended entirely and gave way to barren plains of tundra, in the twilight an empty blue-white expanse stretching to the horizon. Only moss and lichen and grass grew here so nothing blocked the whining, bitter wind that whipped the team.

They encountered a man in a long parka riding a wooden sledge pulled by two reindeer, which he guided with a long pole. He was a Nenets, one of the native tribes living in the arctic. In recent years the government had tried forcing them to give up their traditional nomadic lifestyle, so the man was wary when he saw the soldiers.

Okhchen was an Evenki, another reindeer-herding people, and he rode forward in greeting. Okhchen spoke the man’s language and at one point the Nenets gestured towards a distant blue ridgeline with his pole. Finally the man moved on, and Okhchen reported to Zakharov.

“He’s from a clan fleeing the ghouls, Comrade Lieutenant. Says their hole is on the other side of those hills.”

Zakharov nodded. “That’s where the trail is headed.”

Dusk came. The northern lights appeared, shimmering green ribbons writhing across the black sky casting an alien glow bright enough to read by. The ground became rugged as it sloped up to the ridge. Zakharov could not see any footprints on the bare rock, but Okhchen still discerned faint traces — dislodged stones, chipped ice, bruised moss — and they followed it up to the crest. The opposite side dropped off sharply in an escarpment, the trail plunging down a narrow draw.

They filed down the draw, the horses picking their way carefully over loose scree at the bottom. Okhchen rode ahead and then stopped. He beckoned and pointed.

Up ahead the trail finally ended at its source — an irregular hole roughly three meters in diameter, ringed by piles of frozen earth. They peered over the rim. A foul odor wafted up from below and the horses became skittish, snorting and recoiling. The soldiers dismounted, unslinging their guns and snapping back the bolts.

“Pogodin!” said Zakharov. The team’s engineer stepped forward. “Time to earn your pay. Two of you go down there with him and cover him.”

Pogodin slung on two satchel charges from his saddlebags and clambered down into the hole, accompanied by two privates.

“Comrade Sergeant, has anyone ever tried going all the way down one of these rat holes to find out where they go?” asked Kaminsky.

“A team did once,” said Kravchenko. “They never returned.”

“Okhchen believes they go all the way down to the Lower World, where evil spirits dwell. Says the ghouls spawn down there and then burrow to the surface.”

Kravchenko shrugged. “Who knows? His people were living here long before white men showed up. They know this land better than we do.”

The demolition team switched on flashlights. The beams revealed that the hole was the entrance to a crude tunnel plunging down into subterranean blackness at an angle, delving past the permafrost deep into solid bedrock. Such geologic features were not unusual in the karst topography found in Siberia, but this was clearly not a natural formation created by erosion. It was too straight, too uniform in appearance. Just exactly how the ghouls dug them out was another unsolved mystery.

Pogodin had been a geologist in civilian life. Chewing on his mustache, he carefully inspected the rough, gray limestone with an experienced eye, noting fissures in the walls, piles of rubble fallen from the ceiling, and other indications of instability. He set down his satchels and began unpacking spools of primer cord and demolition blocks of TNT.

His two escorts stood guard nearby, pensive, weapons ready. They wrinkled their noses: the air was cold and dank, heavy with pungent ghoul smell. Then they tensed.

Far down the tunnel they could hear approaching footsteps — the flat, echoing slaps of bare feet and the click and scratch of claws.

Pogodin worked quickly, hurrying to place the high explosive at critical weak points in the tunnel. No time to drill boreholes; no time to double-prime charges either. He inserted a blasting cap into each block then crimped a short length of primer cord to the cap. The ends of these lines, in turn, he began tying to a long ring-main of primer cord so all the charges could be set off simultaneously by a single fuse.

His guards shined their flashlights down the pitch-black tunnel, but whatever lurked down there was beyond the reach of the light. The footsteps became louder, nearer; hissing could be heard. Then the footsteps sped up. Others joined it. The privates glimpsed the malevolent gleam of unblinking eyes.

“Here they come!” shouted one. “Vasily, hurry up!”

“Hold them off!” said Pogodin. “I’m almost done!”

As fiendish howls echoed the soldiers threw an illumination flare down the tunnel to blind the enemy then opened fire. The hollow roar of submachine guns was deafening in the confines of the passage, bullets spraying sparks as they ricocheted off walls. Empty steel casings clattered on the floor. The howls ceased; the flare burned out. The privates stopped shooting, ears ringing and nostrils filled with the acrid reek of blue cordite smoke.

The respite was only momentary. The running footsteps resumed.

“Fire in the hole!” said Pogodin, yanking the pull-igniter at the end of the ring-main. A thirty-second fuse hissed fiercely as it started burning down.

His companions scrabbled back up the tunnel and out the hole as fast as they could. Pogodin tried to follow, then slipped and fell. The others frantically reached down and hauled him out. Up on the surface the rest of the team had already withdrawn to a safe distance. The trio scrambled towards them.

Behind them a geyser of smoke and debris erupted from the hole with a muffled boom.

Zakharov waited until the air cleared, then cautiously ventured over to the crumbling edge for a closer look. The hole had collapsed and was completely filled with rubble. He nodded with satisfaction and returned to the others.

“Good job, comrades,” he said. “Hole’s sealed.”

He brought out his sextant. Locations of all known ghoul holes had to be recorded. As he annotated his notebook there was a distant rumble and the ground trembled beneath his feet.

Okhchen let out a cry of alarm, his normally inscrutable Asian features taut with dismay. He pointed north. Zakharov scowled and raised his binoculars. His heart sank.

“What is it?” asked Kravchenko.

Zakharov answered by passing him the binoculars.

Kravchenko looked for himself and swore vehemently in Ukrainian. A few hundred meters away a dust cloud billowed from a huge crater that suddenly yawned open. Crawling from its depths like monkeys were ghouls — scores upon scores of them, a swarm of gaunt figures in the eldritch gleam of the northern lights. He let out a gusty sigh and handed the binoculars back.

“It’s a full-scale invasion,” he said.

Zakharov nodded grimly. “Like six years ago. After that regiment was slaughtered the NKVD had to call in the air force to bomb the holes with poison gas.”

“So that’s why the ghouls only attacked a few at a time. They were bait to lure our detachment north, overextend ourselves. We’re the only line of defense out here.”

Zakharov realized how potentially serious this was. The German Army had overrun much of the western part of the Soviet Union, so vital industrial plants had been dismantled and evacuated to safer locations east of the Ural Mountains. Raw materials for those plants came from Siberia. A major ghoul invasion could threaten facilities vital to the war effort. Many of the forced-labor camps and exile colonies of the Gulag were located there too and a ghoul attack would hardly be liberation for the wretched prisoners.

He swung into the saddle. “Fall back!”

The team retreated towards the ridge. A great clamor of rabid howls rose. The ghouls had seen them and gave chase, their eyes glowing demonically. Zakharov knew they could sprint as fast as a horse and had greater stamina.

This was a race he could not win.

They rode up the draw and when they reached the top Zakharov signaled a halt. Grabbing Pogodin by the sleeve he said, “Ride like the devil! Warn the major!” He thrust into his hands the map case with the file, plus his logbook with the hole’s longitude and latitude.

“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant!” Pogodin kicked his horse with his heels and galloped away.

Zakharov turned to Kravchenko, his blue eyes narrow slits of determination. “We have to delay them, give Pogodin a chance to get away.”

Kravchenko nodded curtly. He dismounted and turned to the others. “Comrades, we make our stand here. Not one step back.”

The others knew what this order meant, but obeyed without question. They did not fight for Stalin, or for Communism, not even for Mother Russia. They fought first and foremost for the same thing that all soldiers have fought for since the beginning of time. They fought for each other.

Swinging down, they hastened to take positions among a jumble of boulders at the head of the draw. They unpacked all their spare ammunition and turned the horses loose; no one could be spared to hold them. The escarpment had cliffs too sheer to scale so unless the ghouls went a dozen kilometers in either direction and circled around the far ends of the ridge, they had to come this way.

A red emergency flare was launched even though everyone knew it was futile. No help would arrive in time. A few soldiers crossed themselves, the old Orthodox custom before battle that many rank-and-file in the Red Army still performed out of habit. The last illumination flare was sent up and it floated overhead on its parachute, the ghouls hissing and gnashing their teeth in anger, trying to shield their eyes from its bright, flickering glare.

Okhchen braced his rifle on a rock and began shooting as fast as he could work its bolt-action, picking off creatures at long range, pausing only to thumb in more rounds to reload.

Soon Kaminsky’s machine gun joined in, its pan magazine slowly revolving as he hammered away, spent cartridges spewing out the bottom, red lines of tracers streaking across.

The flare burned out and darkness closed in again like a pall.

“Steady, comrades!” shouted Zakharov.

The screeching tidal wave of death poured into the draw.

“Fire!”

Submachine guns lashed out. The ghouls in front stumbled and fell, but those behind did not waver. Heedless of losses the creatures kept coming, jumping over the fallen. The soldiers shot them down in droves, gagging on the rising stench as disintegrating carcasses piled up on the steep slope. They flung grenades and the explosions sent lethal splinters slicing into gray flesh. The draw became a killing zone as their inhuman foes were funneled into it.

But there seemed to be no end to the creatures: still more scrambled out of the crater, and the team could only hold the frenzied horde at bay for as long as they had ammunition. All too soon, gritting their teeth, they snapped in their last magazines. One by one they ran empty and the slobbering ghouls, shrieking with bloodlust, greedily surged forward.

Two privates blew themselves up with a grenade as the monstrosities sprang onto them, taking their foes with them.

Kravchenko dropped his empty submachine gun and plunged a combat knife into a ghoul’s belly up to the handle. He viciously ripped upwards, but no entrails spilled out, just a black gush of acidic ichor. The steel blade melted and he screamed as the ichor ate through his clothing and burned his flesh.

Okhchen sent his last bullet crashing through a leering face, then gripped his rifle by the barrel and swung it like a club to crush the skull of a second enemy with the wooden stock. The next tore his head off.

Kaminsky bellowed in defiance and rose to his feet, holding his smoking DP-28 waist-high as he raked the ghouls with slugs. When it was empty he threw it aside and swept out an infantry spade. One edge of the blade was sharpened so it could also be used like an ax — or as a weapon. Wielding it like a battle ax he hacked and slashed at the ghouls like a warrior of old, laughing and cursing them in Yiddish, splattering their gore on the rocks until finally they overwhelmed and dismembered him.

The magazine of Zakharov’s Tokarev service pistol held eight rounds. Seven he pumped into the nearest ghoul, bringing it down. Then, as three more lunged for him, he pressed the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.

His gnawed bones, and the gnawed bones of his comrades, could not be seen by the aircrews flying high above the ridge a week later. But they could see the crater in the tundra, and the Tupolev bombers carried full loads.

The Secret War went on.