"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 3 - The Source" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

pass proper, or what had been the pass until the Perchorsk Projekt had got underway some five years ago.

Here on the eastern side of the ravine, the pass had been eroded through the mountain's flank by one of the sources of the Sosva River on its way down to Berezov; on the
western side, it had been dynamited through a deep saddle. Falling steeply from the mountains, its road roughly paralleled the course of the Kama River for two hundred
and fifty miles to Berezniki and Perm on the Kirov-Sverdlovsk rail link.

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In the forty years prior to the Projekt, the pass had been used chiefly by loggers, trappers and prospectors, and for the transportation of agricultural implements and
produce both ways across the range. In those days its narrow road had been literally carved and blasted from the solid rock, and so it had remained until recently: a rough
and ready route through the mountains. But the Perchorsk Projekt had brought about drastic changes.

With the construction of the Zapadno rail link to Serinskaja in the east, and the extension of the railway from Ukhta to Vorkuta in the north, the high pass had long since
fallen out of favour as a route through the mountains; it had only remained important to a handful of local farmers and the like, whose livelihoods hardly mattered in the
greater scheme of things. They had simply been 'relocated'. That had taken place four and a half years ago; then, with all the speed, ingenuity and muscle that a
superpower can muster the pass had been reopened, widened, improved and given a two-lane system of good metalled roads. But not as a public highway, and certainly
not for the use of the far-scattered 'local' communities. Indeed, their use of the pass had been strictly forbidden.

In all the project had taken almost three years to complete, during which time the Soviet intelligence services had leaked innocuous details of 'a pass in the Urals which is
undergoing repair and improvement'. That had been the official line, to forestall or confuse the piecing together of the true picture as seen by the USA from space. And if
additional proofs of the innocence of the Perchorsk Projekt were required, it could also be seen that gas and oil pipelines had been laid in the pass between Ukhta and the
Ob gasfields. What the Russians couldn't conceal or misrepresent was the construction of dams and the movement of heavy machinery, the incredibly massive lead shield
built up in layers over the erstwhile bed of a powerful ravine torrent, and perhaps most important, the gradual build-up of troop movement into the area to a permanent
military presence. There had been a deal of blasting, excavation and tunnelling, too, with many thousands of tons of rock moved out by truck or simply dumped into local
ravines, plus the installation of large quantities of sophisticated electrical equipment and other apparatus. Most of which had been seen from space, and all of which had
intrigued and irritated the West's intelligence and security services almost unendurably. As usual, the Soviets were making life very difficult. Whatever they were up to,
they were doing it in an almost inaccessible, steep-sided ravine nine hundred feet deep, which meant that a satellite had to be almost directly overhead to get anything at
all.

Conjecture in the West had gone on unabated. The alternatives were many. Perhaps the Russians were attempting to carry out a covert mining operation? It could be that
they'd discovered large deposits of high-grade uranium ore in the Urals. On the other hand, maybe they were concerned with the construction of experimental nuclear
installations under the very mountains themselves. Or could it be that they were building and making ready to test something quite new and radically different? As it
happened - when it happened, at that time just two years ago - advocates of the third alternative were seen to have guessed correctly.

Once again Mikhail Simonov was drawn back to the present, this time by the low rumble of diesel-engined transports that echoed up hollowly from the gorge to drown out
the wind's thin keening. Just as the moon slipped back behind the clouds, so the headlight beams of a convoy of lumbering trucks cut a swath of white light in the darkness
where they stabbed out from the gash of the pass in the deep 'V of the western saddle. The huge, square-looking trucks were just under a mile away across the ravine and
some five hundred feet below the level of Simonov's vantage point, but still he flattened himself more yet and squirmed back a little into his nest of gaunt boulders. It was
a controlled, automatic, almost instinctive reaction to possible danger, in no way a panicked retreat. Simonov had been very well trained, with no expense spared.

As the convoy came through the pass and turned its nose down the steeply descending ramp of a road cut from the face of the ravine, so a battery of spotlights burst into
brilliant life, shining down from the sheer wall and lending the well-gritted road excellent illumination. Fascinated, Simonov listened to the great diesels snarling into low
gear, watched the routine of a well-organized reception.

Without taking the nite-lites from his eyes, he reached into a pocket and drew out a tiny camera, snapping it into position in the lower casing of the binoculars. Then he
pressed a button on the camera and continued watching. Whatever he saw would now be recorded automatically, one frame every six seconds for a total of four and a half
minutes, forty-five tiny stills of near-crystal clarity. Not that he expected to see anything of any real importance: he already knew what the trucks contained and the camera
shots were simply to certify that this was indeed their destination - for the satisfaction of others back in the West.

Four trucks: one of them containing all the makings of a ten-foot electrified fence, two more carrying the component parts and ammo for three twin-mounted, armour-