He heard the crack of gunfire and realized that Diak and Tisha had been shot. Then, as the dark edges grew, he saw the masked men coming for him.
They loomed at the shattered windows like monsters from a childhood nightmare.
God watches over those who are careful, and death stalks those who are not.
His door opened.
He felt hands take him.
Then he blacked out.
CHAPTER 82
THE COLD WOKE him. His feet felt as though they were being dragged over shards of glass, and every inch of his skin burned with cold fire. He opened his
eyes, but the world refused to come into focus. All he saw was gray. Then his other senses returned and he realized he was moving, or, more precisely, he was being moved.
He heard the crunch of footsteps on snow, and felt hands beneath his arms. Gloved hands against his bare skin. Where were his clothes? His eyes started to regain focus and he could now see his bare legs and feet trailing through snow, his limbs numb and distant, as though they were someone else’s.
He raised his head and saw two men, both in ski masks and dark clothes, one either side, lifting him by his arms.
It was night, and their way was lit by a man at the head of a trailing group. A macabre procession of at least nine people, all of whom were also masked. There might have been more, but Yenen could only count nine before his eyes failed against the darkness.
“He’s awake,” one of his captors said.
Yenen prepared for the inevitable blow, but none came. He wore nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and for a man accustomed to comfort and safety, his near nakedness left him feeling vulnerable. But the lack of immediate violence emboldened him, and after a few moments, he plucked up the courage to say something.
“Does Salko know about this?” he asked.
The man to his right, a towering figure twice as wide as the average person, glanced back at the man with the torch.
They said nothing, but kept pulling him on.
Where? Where were they taking him?
Much more time in the open, and he would die.
He peered into the darkness ahead and tried to pick out shapes. He saw black silhouettes against a gunpowder sky, and followed the edges to discern the outlines of some buildings. The curved roof of a warehouse, the flat roof of an office … wait … no … it couldn’t be.
But part of him knew it was. He hadn’t seen this place for years, but it was branded in his memory like an owner’s mark. Boltino Army Base. He’d never be free of its legacy. Not unless … He stopped himself. Now was not the time for dreams. Even if he could escape whatever dark fate this night held, true freedom was an impossibility.
His captors dragged him into the main administration block. They hauled him through the building and, as the flashlight beam fell here and there, Yenen’s memory brought the decayed place to life. Colonel Arman Zhuk, the camp commander, a man long since dead, had his office along this corridor. Yevgeny Salko, the young intelligence agent whose zealous mind dreamed up everything they’d done here, had been two doors down. Everywhere he looked, Yenen saw bursts of the past, and he wondered whether the cold had got to him. Was he beginning to hallucinate?
The men dragged him into what had once been a classroom. Now it contained nothing but snow and a broken desk, a relic of what had once been.
His captors tossed him into the snow, and the leader shone the flashlight in his eyes as the group encircled him. There were more than nine. Including the two who’d carried him, there were fifteen people in total. Men and women, all masked, all in dark clothes.
“Please,” Yenen pleaded with the leader. “I’ll die in this cold.”
“It’s good you know that.” It wasn’t the leader who spoke, but the huge man who’d dragged Yenen to this place. “It means you won’t delay in giving us the information we need.”
Yenen rubbed his hands against his frozen torso, and a wave of painful needles tracked the course of his fingertips. His teeth chattered and he felt as though death already had hold of him.
“What happened here?” the big man asked.
The question cut through the numbing cold, and woke Yenen’s deteriorating mind.
Who are these people? How much do they know already?