The Red Horseman

10

Sergi Pavlenko was dozing in the guard shack when the noise of a helicopter brought him awake. He was nineteen years old, a conscript from a collective farm, and he was not used to helicopters. He came immediately awake and went outside where he could see better.

It was one in the morning, the middle of the summer night, which was still short here three hundred miles southeast of Moscow at the Serdobsk Nuclear Power Plant.

The lights of the helicopter were curious, a red, a white and a light that flashed and made the machine look like some unearthly thing, some vision from a vodka-drenched nightmare. When it became obvious that the machine was going to land here, Sergi Pavlenko straightened his uniform tunic and resettled his hat on his head at the correct angle. He eased the strap that held his rifle into the correct position and stood erect with his heels together, as a proper soldier should.

Now the helicopter’s landing light came on, a spotlight that shone downward and slightly ahead. Pavlenko started. He had never before seen a helicopter flying at night and the landing light was unexpected.

As the light moved toward him, the thought suddenly occurred to him that he might be in the place where the descending machine was going to alight. Galvanized, he scurried back toward the guardhouse at the entrance to the power plant.

Safe in his refuge, he looked across the enclosure at the guard kiosk at the main gate, where he could just see his friend Leonid under the light pointing with one hand and covering his mouth with the other. Leonid would laugh and tease him; he must have looked like a frightened rabbit running from the helicopter.

And now it was there in front of him, roaring like an enraged bear and stirring up a hurricane as it settled onto the grass.

The engines died immediately. The pilot obviously had no fuel to waste.

Five men climbed out. One of them, wearing a dark suit and dark tie, came toward him. Sergi straightened to attention.

“Where is the manager?”

“I don’t know. No one said you were coming.”

“I’m accustomed to being met by the manager of the facility.”

“The telephone from the outside is out of order. It has not worked all night.”

“Well, tell the manager I am here.”

Sergi was at a loss for words. Who was here? Should he ask for identification? The panic must have shown on his face, for the man’s expression softened and he growled, “Just get him out here.”

There was a telephone in his guardshack, a little wooden building that looked as if it had been added as an afterthought right by the concrete wall of the reactor building. It was a rotary dial instrument. Sergi wiped his hands on his trousers before he picked up the handset and checked the list of telephone numbers taped to the wall. The list was so dirty as to be almost unreadable. Control room, number 32. That was the only place in the complex where there would be people this time of night.

The first time Sergi dialed nothing happened. No ringing in the earpiece. The equipment was old and the electrical switches were worn out, like every other telephone system in the former Soviet empire. Still, the only telephone on Sergi’s collective farm had belonged to the manager, an important person, and Sergi had never used it. Having a telephone waiting for him to pick up to call someone — just within the facility, this instrument could not be used to call elsewhere — made Sergi proud. To complain about the quirks of the instrument was an impulse that had never crossed his mind.

Now he used his thumb on the hook to break the circuit, then lifted it and listened for the dial tone. There it was. He carefully dialed the number again. This time he heard the ringing. As he waited he turned and looked at the helicopter and the big red star on the fuselage. One of the passengers was over at the kiosk at the main gate talking to Leonid: Sergi could see them standing together under the light.

A man’s voice answered the telephone.

“This is the main door guard,” Sergi Pavlenko said loudly into the mouthpiece. “A helicopter has arrived. An important person wishes to see the manager.”

“The manager is home in bed. I’m the watch officer.”

“Yes, yes. He is waiting here to talk to someone in authority. It is a big helicopter with many rotor blades.” This fact impressed Sergi; it should impress the man inside too.

Apparently it did. “I’ll be right out,” the voice told him.

Sergi Pavlenko hung up the telephone and turned to report to the man from the helicopter. As he did so the man used a silenced pistol to shoot him once in the head, killing him instantly.

The five men worked fast. The main door had a lock that worked only from the inside. When the watch officer opened it they herded Leonid from the main gate, the watch officer and everyone in the building into an empty office and gunned them down with silenced submachine guns. They didn’t bother to pick up the empty brass cartridge cases strewn about.

They blocked the front door open with a piece of wood and carried in bags from the helicopter.

The reactor was operating at 50 percent power. The man who had shot Sergi examined the control panel carefully, then led the way through the lead-lined door that led to the reactor space.

A nuclear reactor is, when explained to schoolchildren, a very simple piece of machinery — a large tea kettle is the common analogy. True, the first reactor, Enrico Fermi’s pile under the University of Chicago’s football stadium, was indeed simple. But there was nothing simple about the Serdobsk reactor, a liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder. The core was made up of five tons of metallic oxides of uranium-235, plutonium-239, and uranium-238, the breeding material that would be converted into plutonium during the course of the reaction. This material was fashioned into twelve thousand long pins, each less than six millimeters in diameter and arranged with extraordinary precision inside a small core, a hexagonal container only three feet across each face.

The core sat in a cylindrical stainless-steel pot filled with molten, liquid sodium that was cycled through the core by three pumps. Unavoidably the sodium flowing through the core absorbed some neutrons and was converted into sodium-24, a highly radioactive gamma ray emitter, so the radioactive sodium was run through an exchanger where it gave up some of its heat to the secondary cooling system, also liquid sodium. The unpressurized stainless-steel vat that contained the core and the primary and secondary cooling systems was forty feet high and forty feet in diameter. Between the surface of the liquid sodium and the top of the vat was a cloud of argon, an inert gas. Lead shielding surrounded the entire vat. Surrounding the lead was a concrete vault with walls about three feet thick.

Pipes brought the secondary sodium out of the vat near the top and took it to a second heat exchanger, where it was used to boil water for steam to turn turbines, then returned it to the vat. The pipe holes in the vat and the lead and concrete shields were all above the level of the liquid sodium.

The nuclear reaction itself was controlled by dozens of graphite rods that absorbed radiation. These rods were withdrawn from the core to start the reaction and pushed into it to kill it.

The men from the helicopter began with the rods. Standing on top of the concrete vault, they planted a series of small explosive charges designed to shatter the rod mechanisms before they had a chance to slide down into the core. This job took about half an hour.

Still on top of the concrete biological shield, they used tape measures and chalk while the man in charge consulted a sheet of paper in his hand. When the chalk marks were precisely where he wanted them, he personally began placing six shaped charges that would vent their explosive force down into the vat. While he was at it several of the men climbed up the ladder and wandered out into the hallway for a smoke.

One of them came running back. “Colonel, the helicopter is starting!”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Yes, he could faintly hear the whine as the engines spooled up. He stumbled and almost fell running for the ladder. He hurried up and raced along the catwalk toward the control room. He arrived outside just in time to see the helicopter transition into forward flight and move away into the darkness.

Two of the men came out behind him and one aimed his submachine gun at the departing machine.

“Nyet,” the colonel cried. “That won’t do any good.” The fool! If he successfully shot down the helicopter the noise of the crash would bring everyone in the army camp over here. And it would be damned hard to fly out of here in a crashed helicopter.

The colonel stood listening to the noise of the machine as it faded. When all he could hear were the night noises of frogs and insects, he still stood undecided. He had expected problems, but not this — to be abandoned by the helicopter pilot! Betrayed!

The pilot was a Ukranian. He should have demanded a Russian pilot. The colonel choked back his rage and frustration and wondered what to do. He had, he well knew, miserably few options.

“What do we do now, Colonel?” one of the men asked.

The query decided him.

“Let’s set the charges.” He was surprised at his own voice. It sounded calm, in control, which wasn’t the way he felt at all. Usually when he was enraged his voice became a hoarse croak.

“If we hadn’t cut the telephone lines we could call for another helicopter,” one of the men said disgustedly. “We certainly can’t blow this damn thing up unless we have transport out of here.”

“Back inside,” the colonel said. “Let’s finish the job while I think.”

They were reluctant but the habit of obedience was strong. The colonel followed them back into the building.

It took forty-five minutes to finish setting the charges atop the biological shield. Forty-five minutes of sweating an impossible situation.

He should have had a backup chopper, should have brought a two-way radio. But there was no time. “No! Do it now! Do it tonight!” the general had said.

All the careful planning, all the preparations that didn’t get done, all the backups that weren’t quite ready. That was the trouble with the Soviet system — the remorseless pressure to make “it” happen always forced shortcuts, compromises in quality and safety. It was infuriating when you saw the disasters everywhere you looked but goddamn catastrophic when it was your life on the line. How easy it was for a bureaucrat or general to shout “Now!”

He forced himself to work slowly, with meticulous care, as he set the shaped charges. There would be no second chance. This had to be done right the first time, which, he told himself furiously, would be the only recorded instance of the accomplishment of that feat in Russia since the czar impregnated his bride on their wedding night.

He was perspiring heavily when he finished. He stood back and used a rag to wipe his face and hands. “Insert the detonators.”

“Colonel, how are we going to get away from here?”

“I said insert the detonators. Wire them up but don’t arm the triggering device. I’ll go find us some transport. Give me a submachine gun.”

One of the men passed his weapon over.

“Get busy.”

The colonel slung the weapon over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.

When he left the cavernous room two of the men were inserting detonators and wiring them to the firing device as the other two watched.

The army camp was three kilometers up the road. The colonel cooled off as he walked in the darkness. He was unwilling to use the flashlight, so he stumbled occasionally over uneven places in the road. Still he walked quickly. Only two hours until dawn.

He stopped when he was still fifty meters from the circle of light above the gate and looked the camp over. It was surrounded by a sagging, rusted wire fence. A guard kiosk stood by the open gate. No doubt a sentry was there, the only man awake in the camp. He hoped that no one else was awake.

There, by that building in the back, wasn’t that a truck? Yes. It had grass growing around it to the top of its wheels. Perhaps there was a car or another truck in the garage.

The colonel moved toward the sentry’s kiosk, staying in the shadows, making as little noise as possible. He kept the submachine gun over his shoulder but held the pistol with the silencer in his right hand.

He was still fifteen feet from the kiosk, just coming into the light circle, when the sentry inside the unpainted wooden shack saw him and jerked in surprise.

The colonel pointed the pistol at the soldier and said, as calmly as he could and just loud enough to be heard, “Don’t move. Just stay exactly as you are and you won’t get hurt.”

The man froze. He was young, in his late teens.

“Now very carefully, step outside.”

The soldier complied. He was trembling.

“Where is the other sentry?”

The soldier merely shook his head.

The colonel pointed his weapon and repeated the question.

“I’m the only one, sir.”

“If you are lying you will be the first to die. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s go look at the truck.” The colonel snapped on his flashlight and used it to point the way. He followed the soldier, who had now decided to raise his hands a little.

The truck was a rotting hulk. The tires were flat, the glass was broken from several windows, weeds peeked through the radiator grill.

“Where is the other truck?” he demanded, his voice a forced whisper.

“In the garage.”

“Open it, quietly. If anyone wakes up…”

The truck in the garage was fairly new, painted olive drab and had air in all the tires. Keeping the weapon pointed at the soldier, the colonel eased the driver’s door open and shone the flashlight on the instrument panel. No ignition key was required. Merely switch on the electrical system and push the starter button. The colonel reached in and flipped the electrical switch. The proper lights came on. He examined the fuel gauge. The needle rested on the left side. Empty! The colonel flipped the switch off.

“Where’s the gasoline?”

“We haven’t had any gas for a month.” The young soldier’s hands were down and his voice unnaturally loud.

The colonel lowered the barrel of the pistol and fired a round into the dirt at the soldier’s feet. The report was merely a soft pop. “You’d better find some.”

“Over there.” The gesture was quick, jerky.

There were some cans against the wall, beside a motorcycle. The colonel hefted one. Half full. The others were empty — all eight.

“This motorcycle — does it work?”

“Oh yes. The captain rides it every day over to the reactor. And into town on Sundays. He—”

“Shut up!”

The colonel quickly checked every other fuel can in the garage. All empty. He examined the controls on the motorcycle, the tires, then opened the cap on the fuel tank. At least half full. He made the trembling soldier fill the tank from the only can containing fuel.

“Okay, push it out of here and down to the kiosk at the gate.”

Under the light at the gate the colonel examined the machine. He turned the petcock and let gasoline flow to the carburetor, twisted the throttle, checked the chain and the clutch.

The only way to see if it would run would be to start it. But not here.

“Start pushing.” He gestured to the northwest, toward the reactor facility. The soldier did as he was told.

It was hard work pushing the motorcycle along the dirt road in the darkness. The machine fell once and the soldier went on top of it. The colonel waited while he righted the thing and got it going again.

When they had gone about half a kilometer the colonel told the soldier to stop and put down the kickstand. Then he shined the flashlight into the soldier’s eyes and shot him while he stood blinking helplessly.

The man went down without a sound. The colonel dragged the corpse off the road into some weeds.

With his gun in one pocket and the flashlight in another, he climbed aboard the motorcycle and eased the kick starter down until he felt compression. Then he raised himself up and gave a mighty kick.

No.

Again.

Nothing.

Again.

The fourth time the machine chugged once, but he fed it too much gas and it died.

This time he got all of his body weight into the downstroke of his leg and the machine gurgled into life. As he sat astride the saddle and waited for the engine to warm, the colonel used the flashlight to check his wristwatch. Almost an hour gone. One hour of darkness left.

Carefully he disengaged the clutch, popped the transmission into gear, and eased the clutch out. The engine almost died but he caught it with the throttle and let the clutch engage. The sound the engine made was well-muffled since the machine was fairly new.

The colonel brought it to a stop a hundred meters short of the gate to the reactor facility. He walked from there.

Two of his men were waiting by the door.

“We thought we heard an engine a few moments ago,” one told him.

“You did. A car. I parked down the road in case someone comes by. Are the detonators set?”

“Yes, sir. All you need to do is set the timer. Do you want us to go on down and sit in the car until you come?”

“Okay. I need maybe ten minutes. I’ll send the others along.”

When these two were about twenty-five feet away with their backs to him, he used the silenced submachine gun.

It wasn’t fair, but there it was. He had transport for one. The reactor had to be destroyed. After he had shot them he walked over to where they lay and put a bullet into each man’s skull.

One of his men was in the control room. “I’ve got a car parked down the road out of the light,” he said. “Go sit in it until I get the device armed.”

“How much time are you going to give us?”

“What’s the maximum possible time?”

“One hour.”

“Then that’s what we have.”

“That would be a lot if we had a helicopter,” the man objected reasonably, “but we don’t. What if we have a flat tire or this car breaks down?”

The colonel wasn’t in the mood. “We take our chances. Where’s Vasily?”

“In the reactor space checking the wires and detonators one more time.”

“Go wait in the car.”

Just before the man reached the door the colonel took the submachine gun off his shoulder and shot him. As he was lowering the weapon the door to the reactor clicked shut.

He heard a noise, running feet. Damn! Vasily.

The colonel popped the magazine from the weapon and replaced it with a full one. After he had checked to ensure it was seated properly, he opened the heavy, lead-lined door to the reactor space and slipped in.

A bullet smacked into the wall.

What else can go wrong? Sweat broke out on his face. A more dangerous place for a gunfight would be hard to imagine. One stray bullet could sever a critical wire or punch a hole in a pipe carrying molten sodium or water or steam or…

He was inside against the wall, the door on his right side. Another bullet whapped against the wall.

The silenced pistol was in his left hand, the submachine gun in his right. Where was—

A bullet caught him in the hip and half turned him around. He tossed the submachine gun and fell heavily on his face, his right hand palm up at an odd angle.

The trick was old and hoary and he was a fool to try it. If he had had a moment to think he wouldn’t have. If Vasily kept his wits about him or used a smidgen of sense… But he didn’t. He didn’t even shoot the colonel a second time, a mistake the colonel certainly wouldn’t have made.

The colonel lay like a sack of very old potatoes. He felt the catwalk vibrate from Vasily’s footsteps and he even got a glimpse of one foot. Still he lay absolutely motionless, muscles slack, scarcely breathing, his left hip on fire as the numbing shock of the bullet wore off. When he heard the door begin to open beside him he moved — rolled and instantly triggered the pistol into Vasily’s foot, then his leg, then as the man fell, into his body. He fired again and again as fast as the pistol would work. When it was empty he stopped shooting.

Vasily sighed once as the spent cartridges tinkled on the concrete far below. He didn’t inhale again.

The colonel got slowly to his feet and examined the location of the bullet hole in his clothing. Blood was oozing out. The catwalk where he had lain was smeared with it.

He put his weight on the injured hip. Well, the bone wasn’t broken, although the wound hurt like hell. He looked at Vasily to ensure he was dead, then popped the empty clip from the automatic and inserted a full one from his jacket pocket. When that was done he retrieved the submachine gun. He hung it over his shoulder on its strap.

He made his way along the catwalk and descended the ladder onto the top of the reactor shield.

Thank God the charges were there, still properly installed and wired up. He got out his dirty handkerchief and wiped his face and hands as he examined the timer mechanism.

One lousy hour.

He pushed the test button on the battery, verified that the green light came on, then released the button.

One stinking, tiny, miserable little hour.

For it came to him then that his luck had gone very bad. Everything had gone wrong. All of his experiences in life had taught him that luck runs in cycles — sometimes good things happen for a while, then bad. And he was deeply into the bad just now. Was this hole in his hip the last of the bad things, or only the next to last?

He was not a religious man. Nothing in his forty-four years of life had even suggested possible resources other than his own skill, courage and endurance. Yet just now as he stared at the detonator he sensed that his own resources probably weren’t going to be enough.

He twisted the knob that turned the needle on the clock face. He turned it to the maximum reading, sixty minutes. He consulted his watch.

Now he looked about, again tested his weight on his injured hip, savored the sharp edge of the pain, wiped his hands one more time.

This was necessary. They would not have sent him if it weren’t.

Oh, hell. Everyone has to die sooner or later and he wasn’t afraid of it. Dying is the easy part, like going to sleep. Getting to that moment can be a real bitch, though.

He looked again at the sweep second hand on his watch. When it swung by the straight-up position he pushed the button to start the timer on the detonator. Exactly one hour from now, at 5:07 A.M. If this clock keeps good time.

He watched it tick for a few seconds, then crossed to the ladder and went up it, favoring his bad hip only a little.

In the control room the colonel scanned the dozens of gauges and dials. With a sure hand he reached for the master control and began inching the rods out of the core while he kept a careful eye on the temperature gauges. Another five minutes passed before he was satisfied with the new stabilized readings. The reactor was now at almost 80 percent power.

When he left the building he removed the wooden doorjamb and let the outside door close and lock.

Fifty-three minutes.

He limped past the bodies sprawled near the gate and turned right on the road. The breeze cooled the sweat on his face but he didn’t notice as he hurried along.

He got on the motorcycle and checked that the fuel was on. When he tried to shift his weight to his left hip and push up to get some leverage for the kick start lever the pain was so bad he almost fell over.

Gritting his teeth, he tried again. This time he managed to kick the bike through but it didn’t start.

Again with no luck.

The third time it fired and he gave it just enough gas to keep the engine going. He almost collapsed onto the seat. His leg was wet with blood. How long before he passed out? He fumbled for the headlight switch. There. But the headlight didn’t come on.

He hadn’t checked the headlight. Burned out, probably.

Somehow he got the bike into motion.

This road led off to the northwest, he remembered, upwind, so he stayed on it. When he went by the gate to the reactor facility he got a fleeting glimpse of his watch from the light on the pole. Forty-one minutes to go.

Riding a motorcycle on a rutted dirt road on a dark night takes intense concentration and high physical effort. The colonel found that even at a slow speed he was always on the verge of losing control. Still, with every minute he gained confidence. When his eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness he could see the road easily enough, so he eased on more throttle and shifted to a higher gear. This meant he was going faster when he fell. The nose wheel hit a rut, the handlebars twisted violently and he was instantly flying through air.

The impact with the ground stunned him.

When his wits returned he levered himself upright and groped for the motorcycle. He had to put some miles between himself and that reactor. He tried to see the hands on the watch but it was impossible. He felt for the flashlight. It didn’t work. Broken by the fall.

The submachine gun on his shoulder was gouging him, so he took it off and threw it away into the darkness.

Getting the bike upright took all his strength.

Kick. No start. Kick again.

He lost count of the number of times he tried to start the motorcycle.

How long had it been? How much blood had he lost?

Flooded. He had probably flooded the damn thing.

He sat wearily on the bike gathering his strength.

Are you beaten?

No!

Throttle off. Kick, a real high arch off the bad hip so all his weight would come down on the kick lever under his right foot.

The engine caught. Slowly he twisted the throttle and brought the engine up to a fast idle. Now the shift lever.

He kept the bike at a slow pace, maybe four or five miles per hour. The wind in his face was the only bright spot. If he could just get a little distance and get behind something solid, some earth perhaps, he could survive the blast. The wind would carry the radioactivity in the other direction.

He was climbing a hill. He could tell by the amount of throttle necessary. And the sky was getting lighter to the northeast. He realized then that he could see the road and the ruts better, so he eased on more throttle.

How much time?

Couldn’t be much. If he could just get over the hill. There on the other side, with the hill between him and the reactor, there he would be safe.

Every bounce, every jolt was another second past.

How many more did he have? He took his left hand from the handlebar and tried to see the watch. The bike swerved dangerously and he grabbed the handlebar again.

How far had he come? Was he far enough…?

The shock wave almost knocked him off the motorcycle. Then intense heat. He felt intense heat on his neck, on the back of his head, even through his jacket. And he wasn’t under cover, wasn’t…

Behind him a cloud of dirt and debris blown aloft by the explosion formed in the darkness above the reactor. In seconds it began to glow. The radiation intensified. The sensation of furnace heat was the last thing the colonel felt as a virulently radioactive ball of fire rose from the melted remnants of the steel, lead and concrete shielding.

In seconds he was dying even as the motorcycle continued away from the blast, dying like the sleeping soldiers at the army base on the other side of the reactor, dying like every other mammal within four miles of the now-glowing nuclear plant. Four miles, that was how far the colonel had traveled. The motorcycle continued upright with his dying weight for a few seconds, then the front wheel kicked against a rut, and the machine and the corpse upon it skidded to a stop in the road.

The engine of the motorcycle choked to a stop as a mushroom cloud formed over the reactor and the wind on the ground strengthened markedly as air rushed toward the intense heat source.

People and animals a few miles farther away from the reactor had several minutes of life left, amounts varying depending on the amount of material shielding them from the runaway nuclear inferno. By the time the sun came up in the northeast only a few insects were still alive within seven miles of the plant. Other people were also dying as a cloud of ferociously intense radioactivity drifted southeast on the prevailing wind.