SNAFU: Hunters

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.