“Get out!” Sergeant Groves was shouting. “Get out now! I’ll take care of the wolf.”
But Slater wasn’t going anywhere. He pointed his own flashlight toward the far end of the church. There was a wooden screen, a few feet high and still adorned with scraps of paint, standing behind a jumble of broken boards and furniture.
Among the debris, a black shadow stirred.
“I see it!” Groves said, and she heard his pistol cock.
“Don’t shoot it!” Nika shouted.
But the sergeant snorted in derision, and the gun went off with a deafening blast. A corner of an old chair flew apart in a spray of splinters, and the shadow leapt behind a pew.
“Let it go!” Nika said. “If we leave, it will go on its own!” She pulled on the sleeve of Slater’s shirt.
Just then, there was a blur of motion as the creature vaulted out of its cover and, to their astonishment, came racing straight toward them.
Groves fired again, the bullet hitting an andiron with a clang, and before he could get off another shot, the wolf, like a gust of wind, went hurtling right past them all, head down, eyes fixed on the open doors. Nika felt its fur bristle against her leg as it charged down the aisle.
The sergeant whirled around, but Slater warned him not to shoot.
And then it was gone, into the night.
“Was there just one?” Groves asked her urgently.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s all I saw.”
The sergeant’s eyes now fell on the corpse, and after taking a deep breath, he looked more puzzled than appalled. “Who the hell is this?”
“One of the lost crewmen,” Slater said, kneeling down, and examining the life jacket in the flashlight beam. In white letters, it read NEPTUNE II.
“Wait—I recognize him now,” Nika said. “It’s Richter. Down at the docks, where he worked, they always called him Old Man Richter.” She became aware that there were several other members of the expedition now, clustered on the steps of the church and peering in through the open doors.
“I guess Harley Vane wasn’t the only survivor of the shipwreck, after all,” Slater said.
“But how the hell did this old guy get up here to the colony?” Groves, holstering his gun, wondered aloud.
“When they have no choice,” Nika said, solemnly, “people can do extraordinary things.” And St. Peter’s Island was plainly the place to do them. No wonder she’d had the heebie-jeebies since getting there. The island had a bad rep, and it was living up to it in spades.
Chapter 28
Slater awoke in the dark, with no idea of the time. He glanced at the fluorescent numerals on his watch, and saw that it was not even 6 A.M. yet. The sun wouldn’t rise, if that’s what you could call it, for hours yet.
All around him he was aware of the others, still asleep—Dr. Lantos on the insulated rubber flooring under the table, Kozak snoring on a pile of the ground mats, and Nika—safely removed from the old church—curled like a cat into her sleeping bag between some unpacked crates. The thought of what might have happened to her earlier that night, alone with the wolf and its frozen carrion, made him shudder. He had never lost a man—or woman—on a mission before, and he was not about to start now.
Especially with someone like Nika.
Rising quietly, he went to the flap of the tent and poked his head outside. The air was so cold that just drawing a breath felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of ice, and the colony grounds were dusted with a fresh coat of snow—not as deep as he’d dreaded but enough to prove a nuisance with their dig. The Sikorsky was parked a hundred meters away, with Sergeant Groves and his Coast Guard crew bunked down inside. Like the Greeks hidden away in the Trojan horse, Slater thought.
As he watched, the hatchway slid open, and Groves, his parka flapping open and his boots unlaced, stepped out onto the snow with his flashlight on. Slater raised a hand, but Groves didn’t see him as he made his way to the latrines. There was an immense amount of work to do that day, but Slater knew that if anybody could get it all organized and done, it would be the sergeant.
When he ducked his head back inside, he saw that Dr. Lantos was stirring. “Who let the draft in?” she said, fumbling for her glasses, and even the professor had quit snoring and was stretching his burly arms. All he could see of Nika was the top of her head, burrowing deeper into her bag for a few extra minutes of slumber.