SNAFU: Hunters

“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.”