"I regret deeply that my lady wife will not be able to attend your soiree on account of her sudden indisposition."

The officer straightened then buried himself in a pile of reports and documents. The spring thaw would soon begin to release the city from the clawed grip of General Winter. There would be much to do, work parties to enlist and press into reluctant action.

A thick red folder on a shelf across from the desk was marked with the single word "Subbotnik." In the old days, Zimyanin knew from his researches, the citizens of Moscow would have to give up their free time to work for the city. This was Subbotnik, the Saturday when you "volunteered" to help with manual labor. Things had changed.

During the cleansing days of the megacull, great swathes of Moscow had been laid into perpetual dust by the nuking missiles of the hated Americans. Little of the center had been rebuilt, but the suburbs survived — after a fashion. But there was so much to do. A century later and there was always so much to be done.

Subbotniks now tended to refer to people snatched by armed patrols of sec men and forced to perform the menial, essential tasks.

And the time of the spring thaw was the worst for that. The thought of the melting ice brought back a memory to the officer.

Another phrase from his well-learned book. "I am delighted to have made your acquaintance." He paused, his totally bald brow wrinkling with the effort of concentration. "But I do not believe we have been formally introduced."

They hadn't.

But he could still see the face of the mysterious American across the frozen sea that nestled against the Kamchatka Peninsula and touched the land of the Americans in the region they called Alaska. It had been there, not far from a hamlet called Ozhbarchik, following the brutish killing band known as the Narodniki.

"Hozhdenie v narod," Zimyanin said to himself. It meant to be going to the people.

The leader had been called?.. "Uchitel," whispered the officer, nodding his head. The Teacher. That had been the name of the psychopathic slaughterer.

It came back.

The defeat of the Narodniki had been a triumph for Major Zimyanin, his passport away from the icy wasteland beyond the tumbled ruins of Yakutsk. He returned to Moscow with a promotion and thanks from the grateful Party.

"Americans," he said, half smiling.

He had never been sure how many there had been. Even with his precious Zeiss binoculars he hadn't been able to make out their numbers, but he had seen the missile they had ready. That had all been reported to the central offices, an indication that the remnants of the United States weren't yet ready to fall into the hands of Russia.

He'd met four of them face-to-face: a tall black man; a short, fat man with the cold eyes of a born slayer; a woman, handsome with the reddest, most fiery hair that Zimyanin had ever seen.

And their leader...

"I am desolated to see that you have been incapacitated by an accident, sir," he recited.

His gaze moved to the far wall of the small office, near the window, jammed with brown paper to stop it rattling in the winter gales. A rifle hung there on two rusting nails, his own weapon, an old SVD Dragunov sniper's blaster with a PSO-1 scope sight. It had been given to him by the marksman in his unit out east, Corporal Solomentsov, when Zimyanin had received his promotion.

He ran a finger down the furrows of his pockmarked cheeks, thinking about that adventure and the blood that had flowed.

There was a cautious knock on the door again and his clerk stuck her head into his office.

"I am sorry, Major-Commissar Zimyanin, but I'm afraid that..."

"My wife has called again and she wishes to speak with me," he guessed.

"Yes," she replied, surprised at the accuracy of his guess. "She said to tell you..." She stopped as the officer held up a weary hand.

"Don't, sister-comrade. I'm sure I can imagine what my dear..." He gestured for her to leave, watching as she turned in the doorway. The material of her skirt stretched tight across the firm buttocks; her muscular thighs slid down toward her polished boots. Zimyanin sat for a moment after the door had closed, allowing his sensual imagination to run on for a while, imagining himself locked in a sexual embrace on a soft feather mattress with Clerk Second Class Alicia Andreyinichna.

But the vision faded with the certainty of how shrill his wife's voice would sound when he called.

Gregori Zimyanin reached for the Bakelite phone, part of his mind still recalling the leader of the American guerrilla group — the man with the scarred face and a patch over his left eye. A face he would never forget.

"Close bastard door!" Jak yelled, his heavy satin-finish Magnum in his right hand.

"No, leave it!" Ryan countered. "Anyone out there could have an angle to put a bullet through someone going near." He looked sideways at the freezie, who lay flattened against the wall of the long hallway, his bamboo cane just out of reach. "Rick? You all right? You hit?"

"No. I'm terrific, Ryan. Great shape. Popper of amyl'd be down the white line." His voice changed suddenly, louder, more shrill. "Course I'm not all right, you dumb-ass bastard! I damned near turned my Jockeys brown."

"Sounds like he's okay, lover." Krysty grinned.

"I believe that the firearm sounded like something from my childhood," Doc called, crouching at the bottom of the stairs.

"How's that?" J.B. said.

"A musket. Black powder. A percussion cap from the flatness."

The armorer glanced around at Ryan and nodded, the light from the half-open doorway glinting off his eyeglasses. "He's right. Not a modern blaster. Some old Kentucky musket. Or whatever they call 'em over here."

Ryan had thought the sound of the gun, bursting at them from the snowy wilderness, had indicated a cap-and-ball kind of weapon. One round, the bullet ripping a long splinter of white wood from the leading edge of the door.

They lay in the dim light for about five minutes, but there was no further shooting. No voice, no sound of movement. Trader had taught Ryan that the worst thing you could do when you suddenly found yourself under blaster fire was to start rushing around carelessly.

"Chickens without heads," Trader had said, in that calm, measured way of his. "Think of a chicken skittering around a yard, blood gushing out the windpipe. Hold that in your mind, and it might — just might — stop you doing something real foolish one of these hot days."

Gesturing to the others to hold their positions, Ryan crawled toward the door, eased his good eye around it and peered out into the stark morning light.

The view was the same as it had been from the roof. Just a little more limited. Snow lay everywhere, piled deep against the trunks of some of the trees. There was no sign of life.

"Jak, cover the rear. Just look, don't shoot. J.B., take the east. Krysty, the west. Doc, go slow up the stairs and see what you can see from the second floor. Slow and easy."

"How about me, Ryan?" Rick asked.

"Sit still, stay quiet and keep a tight grip on your ass."

Ryan stayed where he was, watching the wilderness of tree-scattered white. If it had been a shot from an antique musket, the chances were that the attacker was within a hundred paces. He had come across a beautifully preserved Sharps .50-caliber buffalo rifle a year or so ago. In the right hands, the weapon was capable of putting a man on his back from half a mile away.

He waited for something to happen.

They had cover in the house, although an assault by anything over a dozen might be tough to hold off. One shot. A warning? Too close to Rick for that. It had been aimed to hit. To chill.