The Romanov succession

by Brian Garfield

  In the sudden quiet there was nothing but the ringing in his ears from the explosions and the thrashing crunch of their legs in the clinging snow. He had the nine-millimeter tommy gun braced against the crook of his bicep ready to fire when they appeared in the windows but they kept their heads down inside the car; at intervals one or another of his own men sprayed the face of the car with automatic small-arms fire. The edge of the big drum-clip cannister rubbed against his left wrist and he listened for the rattle of gunfire beyond the train, expecting it because some of them might try to escape the carriage on that side. But no one emerged from the isolated carriage on either side. They must have been battered when the car had been blown off the tracks; perhaps a good many of them inside were dead.

  His muscles were in agony and he rushed forward with the nightmare sensation that he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t making any headway: the snow was like quicksand. The breath fogged in front of him in great cloudy gasps and it seemed an inordinate time before he reached the corner of the car and touched his glove to its metal; Sergei ran along beside him slinging his submachine gun and unsnappinga pair of riot grenades from his webbed combat belt. Alex trained the tommy gun on the burst windows to give Sergei cover while Sergei armed the grenades and pitched them inside. Alex heard the muffled whump-whump when the grenades burst and flooded the car with tear gas.

  He pulled his mask on over his head before he reached up for the door. The lower step had imbedded itself in the snow; he didn’t have to step up. The door came open: they never locked armored doors because it was armed attack they feared, not burglary.

  He wheeled across the vestibule platform and smashed the inner door open with the butt of his tommy gun and curled into the long carriage spraying ammunition with abandon. The tommy gun climbed against his arm and he fought it down, hosing the billowing smoke-gas until the gun went hot through his gloves.

  The gas stirred and in the sudden silence he heard someone exclaim behind him-the muffled echo of a voice contained behind a gas mask. It was Sergei. The others crowded past him and he heard the far door snap open.

  “Hold your fire.”

  Nothing moved, there was only the swirl of tear gas. Not a soul. The car was empty.

  8

  He got outside and wrenched off the gas mask. “Radio.” Voroshnikov trotted up and knelt with his back to Alex and Sergei pulled the thin telescoping antenna up, extending it from the pack. Sergei had the switches on. He handed the handset to Alex.

  The rest of them clustered around him in slow silence. Their faces were masks of inarticulate fury. When the set was warmed up he spoke into it. “Alexsander to Saracens. Report.”

  “Saracen One. Reading you.”

  “Saracen Two. Read you clearly.”

  “Saracen Four. Reading you.”

  He touched the Send button. “Alexsander to Saracen Three. Report.”

  Nothing. “Alexsander to Saracen Five. Report.”

  Nothing. He didn’t give it another try. “Alexsander to Saracens. Rendezvous. Repeat-rendezvous. Acknowledge.”

  Seconds elapsed and in the static he could feel the impact on them as they tried to absorb it. “Saracen One. Acknowledge.”

  “Saracen Two”-he heard it when Solov’s voice broke-“Acknowledge rendezvous. Out.”

  “Saracen Four. What happened?”

  “Alexsander to Saracen Four. Acknowledge my order.”

  “… Saracen Four. Acknowledge your message… Out.’

  “Alexsander to Saracen One.”

  “Saracen One reading you, Alexsander.” Postsev’s voice was harsh.

  “Keep trying to raise Saracens Three and Five. See that they receive rendezvous orders. Acknowledge.”

  “Saracen One. Acknowledge.”

  “Alexsander out.”

  He slapped the handset into Sergei’s palm and then the reaction hit him, the stunning disbelief and a rage beyond anything he had ever experienced: he stood agape in the snow and his muscles vibrated and he was overcome by an actual paralysis.

  But the organism continued to accrete the impressions detected by the physical sensors and he was acutely aware of the stolid hissing of the rear locomotive-still there on the tracks behind its derailed tender-and of the wraiths of gas escaping from the two blown windows of the empty hospital car; the shattered debris of the troop carriages that had been bombed to twisted fragments, the explosion and crash his ears had absorbed earlier without conscious recognition then: Felix’s plane going down. And it struck him now that in all this furore he could account for only twenty casualties: the pilots and crews of the two bombers accounted for eighteen dead and he had seen two men catapulted from the skidding front locomotive when it fell over; they had flown from it like rag dolls and must be dead.

  Now he heard Sergei talking to someone behind him: “There must be a driver and fireman there. Get them.” He was talking about the rear locomotive, the intact one.

  Four men. The train had carried a total of four men: two locomotive engineers and two firemen.

  He imagined he heard Vassily’s laughter A short burst of rapid fire. He didn’t turn to look. In a little while Sergei came back to him, walking with an unhealthy lurch along the roadbed as if a deck heaved under him. Sergei hoicked and spat. “Both of them ran for it. They were armed. We had to shoot them down.”

  Sergei’s soles gritted on the snow. Alex saw the gloved palm flashing but he didn’t stir to avoid it. The hard slap rocked his head to one side.

  He blinked and lifted his free hand to his cheek. Sergei pointed-the crest at the head of the railway grade.

  He turned his dazed face that way. Nothing in sight but now he picked up the sound.

  “Tanks.”

  It shook him loose: galvanized him. He raised the tommy gun overhead. “The locomotive.” And began running toward it because if there were tanks ahead of them there would be tanks behind and perhaps coming in through the forest on either side as well and they wouldn’t send tanks alone without infantry to cover the gaps. It was a complete trap and the Soviets had waited until they were certain everybody was caught in it and now they were moving in for the kill.

  But they had counted on the train being disabled and part of it wasn’t and that might provide an edge.

  His troops ran forward in little knots, clustering on the tracks and leaping over the debris, homing on the chuffing steam engine. At the crest four T-34S loomed in line abreast and he saw the muzzles of their turret guns swivel and depress.

  “Mortar. Shoot to blind them.”

  It wouldn’t stop a tank but it could throw up spouts of snow to render the tanks’ spotters temporarily blind. The mortarman lodged the base of his pipe against a steel brace on the side of the locomotive and Alex waved his men forward, counting heads. He hadn’t lost any people. No casualties: no battle. The battle started now.

  “Get aboard-find a handhold, get aboard.” He was leaping up into the cab then and Sergei was tossing his gun aside and reaching for the shovel but the tender was gone and there was no coal except a few handfuls in the scuttle and when Sergei had poured those into the firebox and slammed it shut he said, “It won’t take us far.”

  “As far as it can.” He rammed the lever right over as far as it would go and released the brake.

  The mortar went off softly, almost reproachfully. Then before its round landed one of the tanks opened fire.

  The wheels spun on the cold rails and the engine moved with gasps and lurches; he ran the lever back down to slow speed in the hope it would get better traction. The T-34’s seventy-millimeter shell erupted somewhere in the snow beyond the boiler; he heard the great roar of it but didn’t see it. The muzzles were traversing now, the tanks grinding forward and starting to shoot in earnest: range about a thousand yards. With long guns they’d have blown the locomotive apart with the first half dozen tries but the T-34 carried a stubby antitank gun and it wasn’t much for accuracy. All these calculations ran unemotionally through his mind in a spli
t instant of time. The wheels had purchase now and he ran the lever through three notches to half speed. The locomotive was moving-very slow but it was a downgrade and there was no load, no train to drag; she picked up speed inexorably. Fifteen White Russian soldiers clung to her-crowded into the cab, hanging on the ladders, perched on footholds. His perception of scene and events was fragmented and a significant part of his mind was in shock but he was taking the right actions, doing things out of instinct and as long as he could function under this intuitive motor power he’d be all right. He had no doubts: he’d got them into this and he’d get them out.

  Sergei spoke sharply. He flicked a glance to his left out the square steel opening beside him. He saw them in the trees beyond the cut: vague shapes, fitful movements in the forest. Infantry. He counted three tanks among them, grinding forward, smashing small trees down.

  It was the same to the right but he wasn’t concerned about those and he was barely aware of the earsplitting whup and slam of 70mm incomings and the mortar throwing back its pitiful replies. The locomotive had momentum now and it was accruing fast. They had a jump on the infantrymen and they were rolling faster than a man could run in the snow. The Red infantrymen were opening up with small-arms but the range was four hundred yards or more and they were shooting at a moving target through trees; he heard one or two jacketed slugs whine off the steel but most of it was going wide or being deflected by branches.

  He had her in reverse and he put full speed on. On the downgrade she’d be capable of doing ninety miles an hour with a fully hot boiler but the last of the coal was burning now and she wasn’t getting up anything like top speed. She was going backward and there was nothing in front of his face but wind and the slow curve of the sloping roadbed and what he was afraid of was what might appear there below them on their line of travel.

  Sergei reached for the tommygun slung on Alex’s shoulder. Alex felt it when Sergei rammed a loaded magazine into the weapon. Then Sergei tapped his shoulder and got down in a crouch with the rear half-wall of steel for a parapet. It made a wall of thin armor three feet high across the back of the reversing engine: enough to deflect rifle fire but no proof against a tank’s gun.

  Then Alex snapped out of it. The dreamlike state went. He saw everything clearly and with reasoned comprehension. The locomotive ran backward down the rails, bulleting toward a gradual curve beyond which anything might be approaching-very possibly another train or a pack of tanks. Behind him four T-34S were pursuing the locomotive in a losing race, their cannonfire falling behind, lifting great booming divots of snow and soil. On either side of the tracks the tanks and infantry were closing the trap but they were too late, the locomotive had got outside their circle and they were closing an empty fist.

  In that period of uncertain semiconsciousness he had got them out of it. They’d escaped even if it was only until the next bend of the track. It wasn’t much but it was a small triumph and he said, “All right, Sergei. I’m all right now.”

  Fifty miles an hour or better and they roared into the down hill bend.

  It was blocked of course. Tanks-three of them climbing the grade, their treads skittering on the snow.

  One of them was coming straight at him. Straddling the rails.

  Collision course.

  The mortarman’s head rocked back. Fear disfigured his face. His stare pleaded.

  Alex roared at him:

  “ Shoot!”

  It was a game of raw courage-the challenge of the ultimate bluff: who would give in first? But Alex had the advantage. It was eight hundred yards-half a mile-and when he didn’t cut power and jam on the brakes instantly it meant there wouldn’t be time to stop anyway and if the tank didn’t get off the tracks that was that.

  It took the tank driver a long time to make up his mind and in the meantime the guns of all three T-34S were firing. Alex’s mortar kept splashing snow in their eyes and the two outboard tanks were slithering in deep loose snow and every time their guns fired they were knocked askew by the recoil and the mortar explosions made it hard for them to line up again. It was the tank on the rails that was the threat because it was no good mortaring in front of it: that could rip up a track and derail the locomotive.

  Ludicrously it put him in mind of something Carol Ann had said: “Sometimes there’s not a damn thing you can do but act like a jackrabbit in a hailstorm: hunker down and take it.”

  The locomotive made a minimal target head-on at six hundred yards; half a degree’s error and the tank gun’s shells exploded harmlessly in the snow. It looked an easy shot but it wasn’t. At fifty miles an hour-possibly more-the solitary 2-6-2 locomotive was cutting the range faster than the tanks’ gunners could crank their elevation gear and there was just enough curve in the long bend of the track to force the guns to keep correcting their traverse aim.

  It was absurd to hide behind the thin plate of the engine’s rear armor but they did it out of instinct, five of them crowded into that little space and several more crouching on the plow blade behind the engine. Alex kept his eyes up far enough to see but there was nothing he could do but wait. And if the fire went out under the boiler right now it would be all over.

  You could see the shell come out of the muzzle or at least the exploding smoke that propelled it. You could hear them come in: overhead with a roar or to one side with a deafening crash. All three tanks were shooting as fast as they could load but the outboard ones weren’t coming anywhere close. Then a shell that must have been HE blew up a hundred feet in front of him and his breath caught in his throat because it looked as though it had blown the roadbed apart but it must have been off to the side just enough: it had dumped gravel and ice on the rails and the locomotive lurched and rattled under him but it didn’t lose its grip on the steel and they were still speeding down the track with the blown-up snow cascading over their shoulders.

  When they came out of it the tank was still astraddle the rails, still shooting. Five hundred yards-at fifty miles an hour that gave them about twenty seconds and then collision.

  A shout of alarm: a soldier clinging to the step. He was pointing back along the engine-up toward the crest behind them. Alex wheeled to risk a half-second’s glance.

  There was a train-coming down the track in pursuit. Its open flatcars bristled with artillery. A mile or more behind. He had time to see that much and then the locomotive bucked and pitched and he heard a tremendous ringing clang that all but ruptured his eardrums. The impact threw him flat against the armor plate.

  He thought for an instant they’d collided with the tank but reasoned second thought quickly discarded that: hit the tank and they’d all have been dead.

  They were still rolling.

  He had a painful bruise along his left shoulder where he’d slammed into the plating. Above him the armored roof of the driver’s cabin had been buckled by a tremendous blow.

  Not a direct hit. A 70mm would have torn right through it and ruptured the boiler.

  He leaned quickly outboard. Then he saw it. A shell had taken the smokestack right off. Shrapnel had dented the roof. He saw the sprawled bodies of six of his men back along the railway where the concussion had knocked them off the plow blade. The pursuing gun train was still there-gaining.

  And when he wheeled forward there was a point-blank four-hundred-yard stretch between him and that Soviet tank and the cleats were flashing. The tank was making its turn: giving in.

  Ponderously the tank clattered across the rails and it didn’t look like there’d be time for it to get clear and he watched bleakly because he couldn’t do anything else. The tankers opened up with their machine guns now because the range was down to that. On the locomotive the mortar kept chugging and its missiles made spouts and sprays in the snow. An armor-piercing round from a tank gun drilled into the ground just ahead and when it blew it shot a fountain of whistling rocks and snow across the tracks; he ducked and heard Sergei’s dry grunt amid the racket of junk raining on the twisted steel roof.

  They
came out of that into daylight within a hundred yards of the tank and it was still crawling, trying to get off the rails, skidding on the snow. One tread was still on the ties. There was an unrelenting cacaphony of artillery and small arms and the machine-gun bullets clanged along the steel surfaces of the locomotive. One voice cried out and the cry was cut off definitely in its middle. Alex distinguished the separate sound of tommyguns being fired by his own men on the sides of the locomotive-useless angry fusillades at the impassive tanks-and one by one those guns went silent: out of ammunition or shot off the train by the tanks’ wickedly traversing machine guns. About two seconds left now and he braced himself, wedged between Sergei’s big shoulder and a corner of the armored backplate; they would hit the tank or they would not hit it- now.

  It was a glancing collision but it tumbled Sergei against him and knocked the air out of him and it tipped the locomotive up on one side with all the wheels of its left side clear off the rail. It came back down onto the tracks with a fifty-ton blow that seemed to shake his teeth loose: he was sure the roadbed couldn’t withstand that punishment but somehow the locomotive was still rolling-speed down to forty now with the boiler cooling-and he crawled to the side of the platform and saw that the tremendous inertial blow had slammed the T-34 right over on its side like a helpless turtle. While he watched the tank skidded and spun across the snow and smashed into its companion tank.