He fought with the AR-15, battering repeated blows at the man's head and snatching the rifle away before he could get his hands on it. It was like throwing stones at a bulldozer, and then the creature knocked the rifle out of his hands with a massive sideswipe. He was moving in for the kill, and Cris tried to get beneath those powerful arms to hit him with hard, hammering punches. But the Russian was fast. Deceptively fast, and he locked his hands around Cris' throat.

  He started to lose consciousness, and the fight was over. He’d lost, and soon they'd all be dead, their limbs hacked off and nailed to trees like the other kills. He fought and struggled, hammering punches into the creature’s body. Into his throat, into the area around his heart, kidney punches; they should have been agonizingly painful, but the man just shrugged them off.

  He was almost passing out when Karpov tripped on something lying on the forest floor, and he went down. Cris rolled to the side to stop him falling on top of him, and when he looked down, the Russian had tripped over a body. A familiar body, Yuri was lying there. Not dead, but groaning, as he recovered consciousness. With a few short seconds to spare, Cris dragged him to his feet.

  "We have to run. Can you make it?"

  "I can make it." The voice was shaky, but he'd be shakier still if he stuck around for the beast from Russia to lock those powerful hands around him. The Russian was climbing to his feet, and then he was coming after them.

  A heavy burst of machine gun fire rattled through the trees. Somehow, Kareena knew their approximate location and was firing blind. He began to wonder if he’d been right the first time. Did she have a weird combination of supernatural powers and x-ray vision? The ability to see through solid timber, in almost zero light, and keep firing the machine gun? He couldn’t come up with another explanation.

  Once again, they had a few seconds grace as their pursuer waited for the burst of gunfire to end. They reached the clearing, and the other Karpov brother was there. He'd found the body and was finishing what his brother had started. Hacking the limbs from the dead body of Stan Miles. Gurgling to himself, like crooning some childhood Russian folk song. It was sick, bizarre, and obscene, and Cris felt like he wanted to vomit. But he didn't, they had to keep moving. Find Maria, creep away, and find somewhere to hide. The monster didn't notice them and continued working at his gruesome task.

  They reached her, and she was almost catatonic with terror.

  "I thought you were dead, and I was next," she said. She inclined her head in the direction of the creature still hacking at the body across the clearing, “Like Stan.”

  "We're not dead yet, but we will be if we stay here. We have to get away.”

  They continued through the trees, and when sufficiently far from the clearing, broke into a jog. They found a trail, and it almost finished them. The path emerged on the lakeshore, and they nearly ran into Sheriff Henry Dodge VIII. He saw them at once and fired a wild burst from his rifle. They swerved away, but Kareena was alerted, and she switched her aim. Bullets spat around the cops, and two of Dodge’s deputies went down. The brothers rushed out into the open fifty yards away. They saw the cops and paused for a hurried conversation. They nodded to each other, and ran toward the cops, swinging their machetes. The chase was forgotten. They'd seen more human quarry, meat for their machetes.

  Dodge stared at them wide-eyed in astonishment for long moments before he regained his wits. He shouted to one of the men who was talking on a radio to get the armored car fast, and then he jumped into a passing cruiser, screaming at the driver to get out of there. The tires spun, and the vehicle skidded as it surged away from the scene of blood and devastation.

  Cris led them away from the Karpovs, running as fast as Yuri and Maria could keep up. They arrived at the outskirts of Traverse City and came across a cab. A gleaming Plymouth stopped at the side of the road, and a few yards away, the driver was standing in the bushes taking a leak. He pushed Maria into the passenger seat, told Yuri to climb in the back, and he vaulted behind the wheel. With the engine running, he slammed the gearlever into drive, released the parking brake, and stamped on the gas. They squealed away, and in the mirror he could see the cab driver racing after them. The poor bastard was screaming abuse and waving his hands in the air.

  Too bad, buddy, our need was greater than yours.

  "How long do we have?"

  He was concentrating so hard on keeping their speed at maximum, watching for a pursuit, he didn't at first realize Maria had spoken.

  "Not long. The driver will report it on his cellphone, and they'll be on our tail. Minutes, I guess. Maybe ten or twenty."

  “You think we’ll get away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She sighed in frustration. "Cris, everything we’ve tried so far has failed. We need to do something different, something they’re not expecting. If we carry on blundering around this place without a plan, sooner or later they’ll get us."

  He'd been thinking the same thing, and he nodded. "You're right. We need to find somewhere where we can tackle them. They’re animals, wild beasts, and the one surefire way to deal with them is to trap them. Somewhere deep underground would be good. Get them to come to us, and then we take them. Like an abandoned mine, something like that.”

  She shuddered, but didn't reply. From the back Yuri said, "I'm looking now, scrolling through the Navcom. I have an idea of the kind of place we need."

  "What kind of place would that be?"

  "A missile silo. Plenty of underground tunnels and reinforced steel doors."

  "And how would you know where American missile silos are situated?"

  He chuckled and tapped the Navcom. "You don’t understand how good this thing is. It's all programmed in here, every missile site. Even Cheyenne Mountain. Surely you knew the Russian military have always been prepared for any eventuality, and that means knowing the exact location to the meter of every missile installation in the CONUS. I’m thinking of the Minuteman silos. They’re abandoned now, so we shouldn't have any problems."

  He thought about it for a few seconds, and it sounded good.

  A missile silo is precisely what we need. Deep, dark, secure, built with reinforced concrete. Perfect.

  "Give me directions, Yuri. We’re going to war."

  Chapter Four

  He drove cross-country, taking remote forest trails, rough, deep-rutted logging tracks, and where possible staying undercover of the tree canopy. They emerged on Highway 131 and turned right, heading south. Past Cadillac, Reed City, and Big Rapids. Through Grand Rapids, and they circled around Wyoming City. Halfway to Kalamazoo, Yuri redirected him to take a turn-off labeled ‘Government Property-Keep Out.’

  A half-mile along the track they arrived at an eight-foot-tall chain link wire fence that surrounded the Minuteman silo and its launch and control facilities. Built in the 1960s to supplement other Minuteman sites under development at the time, they'd abandoned it after they hit an underground spring that partially flooded the tunnels. Although the Russians were aware of the intended site, adding it to their targeting list almost as the first shovel went into the ground. Yuri interrogated the Navcom and found they’d pinpointed the position, and marked it as a likely candidate for a primary or secondary strike.

  Fortunately, the feared nuclear exchange never happened, and maybe it never would, although heads were turning in an altogether different direction these days. Toward a despotic regime off the Sea of Japan, sandwiched between Russia, China, and South Korea. A flyspeck, shithole of a country ruled by a tubby lunatic with delusions of grandeur.

  Maria was listening to Yuri, and she nodded gravely.

  "Fortunately is the word. I’d hate to see any country left a smoking ruin after a nuclear exchange. Unable to sustain life for God knows how long, until the radiation has faded.”

  “It came close once or twice,” Cris murmured, but she didn’t hear him over the noise of the engine.

  They were approaching the perimeter fence, once a tough, substantial structure of coiled razor wire. It was now long gone and corroded. In parts it had disappeared altogether. He drove through a wide gap where someone had torn away part of the wire, probably a local farmer intending to stock proof a field for his cattle, and into an area that was desolate and derelict. Across the other side, a rusting antenna gantry was tilted over to one side, but the main feature was a long, low building, like a vast prefabricated hut. There was little else to show what the place had once been. Except to the north, a slight bulge in the ground. They'd nailed planks of wood over the opening, but their eyes were all drawn to it. It seemed somehow ominous, evil, despite the obvious dilapidation.

  "The missile silo," Yuri said, his voice solemn, "I wonder which part of my country they intended to target."

  He didn't answer, but the Minuteman launch chamber held their attention until they reached the low building. Maria was still looking at the silo, but she turned her head and murmured, "A monument to man's destructive capability." She regarded the single-story building with dismay, "How does this help us? I thought we were looking for an underground facility."

  Cris explained. “Most of it is underground. They built it like a giant submarine on one side of the site, and the launch silo on the other. The access shaft will be inside that building, and we can use it to get underground. That's where we're going to finish the Karpovs, once and for all."

  She turned to him. "Kill them, please, Cris. Don't let this go on any longer."

  He tried to reassure her. “You can count on it. Soon, they’ll be dead and buried, believe me."

  “I believe you. I want to believe you, but…"

  "But you can't see how we can do it. How we could beat monsters like that."

  "That's right. How can we do it?"

  "We trap them, like wild beasts. Then kill them."

  "That's it? How do you plan to trap them?"

  "You'll see. I've been in one of these places before, and it may look derelict on the surface, but underneath, there are plenty of steel doors. Like watertight doors on a submarine, or the blast proof doors on a battleship. We’ll lure them inside to a room with no other exit, and close the door on them."

  “And then what?” She didn’t look convinced.

  “One of their big worries with these places was the risk of fire, in case of a missile strike. They installed mixed CO2 and halon sprinklers to extinguish the flames before they could do any damage.”

  “And…”

  “And when halon fills a room, it evacuates all the air. Whoever is in there will die. As soon as we get underground, I’ll check out the firefighting system, and make sure it’s still operational. We’ll need a mask each, with a portable oxygen supply. Enough to keep us alive once the halon floods.”

  Finally, she smiled. "It sounds good. I hope it works."

  Me, too.

  The doors to the main building were closed and locked, but the sides were rotten. Panes of glass were missing, and aluminum sides flapped in the wind where the metal had detached from the main structure. He aimed the hood of the Plymouth at a yawning gap and drove through with a screech of tortured metal. They were inside the building, and they climbed out of the car. It was eerie, dark, and thick with dust. A few pieces of upturned office furniture lay scattered on the floor, and cobwebs hung from the ceiling in thick curtains. There was nothing else. On the wall, someone had painted, ‘A present for the Russkie sumbitches.'

  He steered her away from it, and they went looking for the shaft. Situated at one end of the building, the elevator was at the top with the door open. With no power, it wouldn’t operate, but Cris opened the access hatch in the floor and gestured to Yuri.

  "You go down first. Maria, you’re next, and I'll follow in a few minutes. I want to take a look outside first and make sure we’re still on our own.

  He went back outside the building and scanned the countryside. No noise, no roar of engines, and no helicopters churning up the air. Just silence, and he reckoned they'd bought themselves enough time to set up the trap. Maybe. He returned to the elevator, climbed through the hatch in the floor, and started down the ladder. The launch control center was the height of three stories, a long climb to the bottom. He made it and walked through a blast proof door, into the launch control center. Maria and Yuri were inspecting the equipment, and Yuri's eyes were ablaze with enthusiasm.

  "You know what this is? Collectors’ items! Which equals money, 1960s computers, tape drives, military grade CRT screens, you name it. This lot would fetch a fortune on the collectors’ market."

  "You’d have to be alive to spend the money."

  He grimaced. "There is that."

  Maria looked at him. “How is it up there? Have they found us yet?"

  "Not yet, everything’s quiet."

  "Perhaps it’ll take them a long time to find out where we went. We could be safe here for some time."

  He gave her a skeptical look. “You want to bet on it?"

  She didn't reply. He left them there with instructions to keep an eye on the access shaft. Cris walked through to the next underground chamber, the launch equipment room. A treat for Yuri, packed with more sixties technology that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. All covered in dust and cobwebs, and as far as he knew, unused from the day they'd installed it. There was a single door set in the wall. He opened it and was about to step through when he stopped. Just in time, he'd seen the gleam of light on water. Where the spring had flooded the control center, it had pooled in this place, and he stepped back. There was a faint stench of sewage coming from the dark, flooded room, and he found a sign that explained it.

  'Sewage sump pit.'

  It would suit his purpose perfectly. It was unlikely there'd be any way out of there, and he was about to go back to prepare the first trap when he saw a faint chink of light coming through the ceiling. A narrow chimney probably serving as a long forgotten and never completed ventilation shaft. No doubt for when the sewage rose above a certain level, and it would vent the foul odors to the air above. The shaft was narrow, far too narrow for one of the Karpov monsters to climb through, even if they could reach the opening in the roof. The room had no other exits.

  It will have to do, a fitting end for the Karpovs, or at least one of them, a sewage pool. That's what they are, human sewage.

  He was still checking for other means of egress from the sewage sump pit when Yuri shouted.

  "I can hear vehicles. Someone’s coming."

  He ran to the ladder at the bottom of the shaft. "Get outside and check. And stay out of sight."

  “Right, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Yuri shinned up the ladder like a monkey, and minutes later he sprinted back. Cris waited as he struggled to get his breath back.

  "Is it the Karpovs?"

  He shook his head. “No, it's the cops, and they look mean. They have a helicopter in the air, and four cruisers approaching this building. There’s also what looks like a sniper standing inside the door of the helicopter. And that’s not all. Just as I was about to turn away, I saw a SWAT van followed by an armored vehicle turn into the compound. When they come inside the building, they’ll see the car, and they’ll know we’re here. We’re screwed. You’ll never believe what they have mounted on the armored car.”

  “Try me.”

  “A flamethrower, would you believe! These guys mean business.”

  “A flamethrower, that’s something new. But I doubt they’d dare use it, not against a civilian target. It’ll be for use as part of their anti-terrorism program. Don’t worry. The cops arrived as expected. All we need now is for the Karpovs to join the party, and they won’t be long. Once the word went out on the police net, it would’ve attracted them like a bear to honey.” He stopped, thinking. Something wasn’t right, and he realized what was worrying him. They were late. What he’d seen of them suggested the Karpovs were never late for a kill, “You’re certain you saw no sign of them?”

  "Nothing."

  He tried and failed to relax. "It won’t be long. We have to get started. We’re almost out of time, and we have work to do."

  “Can we make it?” Maria asked, “Do we have time to set the traps?”

  “Either that, or we die.”

  * * *

  They were lying on top of a low hill, about a half-mile from the Minuteman site. The grass was long, untended for many years, and they were able to hide in the undergrowth without fear of being seen. She watched the Sheriff's deputies deploy, and the SWAT personnel van rumbled through the gap in the fence. A black armored car followed, which she stared at for longer.

  I wonder if the cops will use the military grade flamethrower mounted in the cupola on top of the hull. Probably not. These men won’t have the stomach for it. They aren’t Russians.

  She dismissed the thought from her mind, resolving to go down there and deal with them in the usual way. They’d be easy, like taking candy from a baby. Which red-blooded male would dare shoot her on sight? She was more than pretty, and she’d never failed to use her angelic face to press home her advantage on an opponent. They’d hesitate, like they always did. Try to talk to her, to reason with her, and then she’d kill them. A quick slash of the razor-sharp knife, or a stab in the neck with the hypodermic filled with nothing more than air. It made little difference, and the end result would be the same. Death. She regarded the armored car again for several seconds, and still she worried, but she put it out of her mind.

  I’ll deal with it. I am Kareena Karpov.

  "Please, sister, I need help."

  She sighed and turned to Kazimir, who was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. His eyes were slitted against the pain. She inspected his wounds, almost admiring the deep gouges burned into his flesh by the electrical cables. The smell of burning flesh was still pleasant, and she found the odor faintly arousing. He was moaning softly, begging her to help ease the pain of the burns and the bullet wounds in his body. She fished out a hypodermic from inside her coat.