by Tony Roberts
Seated facing him, smoking a black cheroot, was Astapenko. He looked even more evil than before. He observed the two newcomers. “Yes? Ah, Comrade Orlov, and also Comrade Kaskarov! How delightful to see you! So, report.”
Orlov, the Commissariat man, looked at Casca fearfully. Casca whacked him hard with his pistol and the man crashed to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Astapenko shot up out of his chair, his cheroot dropping to the floor, while the interrogator stood with his eyes wide open, waiting for his master to give him a new toy to play with.
The guard swung round, grabbing his rifle off his shoulder. Casca had his Nagant aimed at Astapenko. “Call him off and tell him to come in here,” Casca snapped.
The Cheka man shot his eyes to the right at his interrogator. The man was only armed with the cudgel and would stand no chance, but perhaps distract the traitor Kaskarov long enough for him to get at the renegade Commissar? Surely he was working for the Ukrainians! It would be interesting to hear his confession.
Casca was already ahead of him and moved like lightning. He took Astapenko by the throat and pressed his pistol against the Chekist’s temple, standing behind him so the guard couldn’t shoot him safely. “Now!”
Astapenko nodded to the guard who reluctantly stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. “Now, you,” Casca nodded at the gorilla, “drop that club.”
The sound of the wooden cudgel striking the floor filled the chamber.
“Alright, Comrade,” Astapenko said, his voice strained. “So what’s this all about?”
“What was this poor man’s crime?” the Eternal Mercenary demanded, indicating the strapped man. “Walking across the street at the wrong time? Looking at you in a way you didn’t approve of? Being the first to stop applauding one of your boring brainless speeches?”
“He’s an enemy of the state!” Astapenko protested.
“No, he’s just an enemy of you Communists, that’s what. He doesn’t even have to have done anything. You’re a psychopathic maniac who delights in beating up helpless people for kicks and now we have an apparatus in power that lets creatures like you get into positions of power. In any sane and civilized society people like you are put behind bars to keep you away from ordinary law-abiding people, but here? Lenin and his cronies must be desperate to let you and your kind to run riot over the populace.”
“You won’t get away with this, Kaskarov. You’ll be caught and arrested and tortured and then shot.”
“You do that to people who merely speak in a way you dislike. I bet he’s done nothing wrong, really.” He regarded the guard who stood looking from one to the other in an uncertain manner. “Lose the rifle, son. Now.”
As the guard let the rifle slip to the ground, Astapenko, seeing his last chance to act, dug his elbow into Casca’s ribs and twisted violently aside. “Kill him!” he screeched.
The gorilla moved on Casca, his hands outplayed, teeth fixed in a rictus of hatred. Casca’s first shot took the man in the chest, stopping him for a moment, then the big brute came on, but now his expression was of pain. Shot two went higher, through his forehead. That took care of him.
The guard snatched up his rifle but Casca kicked the young man in the jaw, knocking him flat. Leaving the guard dazed, Casca ran out into the corridor, just to see Astapenko running hard for the door, which was opening due to the guards on the other side being alerted by the sounds of the shooting.
Casca knelt and squeezed off two shots. One struck the Chekist on the shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground with a screech, knocking one of the guards aside. The second shot smashed into the other guard’s chest, knocking him over.
Cursing as Astapenko staggered to his feet and, screaming about counter-revolutionary traitors, stumbled out of sight. The one guard left on his feet raised his rifle, and Casca blasted him backwards with the last two shots from his Nagant. Then, picking up a dropped rifle, the scarred Eternal Mercenary went running up the steps after Astapenko.
Up to the main part of the prison, two guards came running, attracted by the shouts and shots. Astapenko tripped over the last step and fell prone on the hard, cold, stone floor, squealing about Tsarist sympathizers. Casca shot from the hip as he went up the steps, taking the first man through the guts. The second one hastily aimed and squeezed the trigger, but he hadn’t worked a round into the chamber, his inexperience and panic fatally making him forget his rudimentary training. Casca didn’t miss. One shot through the heart took care of him.
The Chekist tried to get to his feet but blood loss and dizziness was working against him. Casca took him by the lapel and hauled him around onto his back, bayonet pressed against his throat. “Now, you murderer, tell me, why are you slaughtering your own people like this when they’ve done nothing to warrant even being arrested?”
“It’s – it’s War Communism, Comrade!”
“What the hell’s that?”
“The Vesenkha declared we must adopt it to win the war!”
Casca pressed the tip of his bayonet a little harder into Astapenko’s throat. “Meaning?”
The Chekist swallowed, his eyes bulging. “All control to the Soviet, all industries to be nationalized, railways to be controlled, food to be brought into the cities and to feed the army, all non-working classes to be forced into labor, private enterprise to be banned, strikes forbidden, foreign trade to be controlled by the Soviet and all food and commodities to be rationed, under the control of the Soviet!”
“And, I suppose,” Casca growled, “any resistance to any of these would result in executions?”
Astapenko gulped. “It’s the only way to ensure victory!”
“Who is the Vesenkha, by the way?”
“The Supreme Economic Council, under the orders from Comrade Lenin and the Soviet in Moscow! It’s state policy!”
“So, you Communists, to ensure victory, will kill anyone opposing you, whether they be military or civilian, young or old, male or female, eh?”
Astapenko said nothing. Casca bared his teeth.
“You pigs deserve to die.” He leaned on the rifle, driving the bayonet clean through the Chekist’s throat.
He left the building quickly, as more shouts came to him from deeper within the building. He’d woken more of the occupants. As he ran into the street, someone yelled at him to stop from an open window, and when he continued running down the icy street, shots came his way but missed.
Now he had to get out of there. His time with the Bolsheviks was over, and he threw away his hat with the red star on it. It was a badge of shame, a badge of murder, of blood, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was dark, it was cold. The only blessing was it was not snowing. The ground was as hard as iron, even the rutted mud roads away from the main streets. Casca sat in an empty warehouse down by the river, smoking. He thought on his situation. Come the morning all hell would break loose and a hunt would be on for him. No way would the authorities let him get away. Anyone shooting prominent members of the Soviet would have to be made an example of.
So how to call the dogs off?
He would have to die.
Or, he reasoned, he would have to be seen to have died. He exhaled mightily and stood up. His legs were becoming numb and he stamped about the disused warehouse. It had been hard to find one as the army had taken over quite a few of them, storing munitions and supplies. And food. War Communism. He grimaced. If Communism meant killing everyone else then he was going to do all he could to fight it. He hoped the other nations of Europe resisted the revolutionary urge or else the blood-letting wouldn’t abate for a long time, and he wanted nothing to do with a regime that readily killed its own people. God help any other nation if the Bolsheviks got hold of them!
Finland and the Baltic States were struggling to break free of the Red grip, and Poland was making signs it wanted former Russian territory, so that would drag it into a war with the Bolsheviks, too. Of the other nations of Europe, the ones defeate
d in the recent Great War, God alone knew what was going on there. He had lost contact with the outside world since the civil war had begun.
He threw away the stub of his cigarette. Munitions. Ordnance. Shells, bullets, explosives. Made a nice bang and hid a lot of evidence. Hmmm. A blindingly violent end to the life of Comrade Kaskarov, perhaps.
He peered through the broken door to the outside world. A single lamp shone in the night sky over the other side of the waste ground, about fifty yards away, and he saw men huddled around the entrance, armed, uniformed, and using a burning brazier to keep warm. Someone had painted a crude giant red star on the rusting iron warehouse doors to denote whose warehouse that was.
But then, surely if War Communism was being enforced, Casca thought to himself, no private trader would be allowed to exist now. All trade would be controlled by the Soviet and therefore under the red star. As he watched, a truck came up, a flat-bed one, and the rear was crammed full of boxes and crates, and the guards all helped to unload it, and they lifted up the iron shutters with a loud clatter, revealing the space beyond which was more than half full.
He nodded to himself. There was his way in. He loped across the waste ground, keeping low and making sure he didn’t trip over anything or tread on something sharp and unpleasant. There was a road at the far side where the truck had come from so he angled across, towards the first of the buildings that bordered the industrial zone.
A broken low wall stood here, the first foot and a half still standing upright but the rest collapsed and lying on the ground behind the foundations. A broken water tank lay at a jaunty angle, icicles hanging off the metal rim, and he crouched behind it. The truck that had delivered the crates and boxes now rattled past him and vanished into Belgorod, and Casca waited, growing increasingly cold as he did so.
Then he heard the engine of another truck approaching. A quick look over his shoulder. The men outside the warehouse were visible but in the glow of the bright light whereas he was in darkness. He moved out onto the road, clutching a lump of stone.
The truck came around the corner, the driver working the gears, and Casca hurled the stone at him, smashing into the wind shield and starring it. The driver slammed on the brakes and the truck struck the side of the last building with a screech, then it stopped.
The driver’s mate stumbled out, grabbing his rifle, but Casca was already at the door and helped the man out by pulling on his arm. The soldier hit the ground hard and Casca helped him into unconsciousness with a boot to the skull. He picked up the dropped rifle.
The driver fumbled for his pistol but stopped when he saw the muzzle of the rifle pointed at his forehead. “Get out,” Casca growled.
The driver did as bid, wide-eyed. “Wh-what is this, Comrade?”
“First, I’m not your comrade, so don’t call me that. I’m also no murderer, unlike the Cheka and the Soviet. My name is Kaskarov and I’m declaring war on the Soviet. Now get lost.”
The man ran off like a startled hare. Casca got into the cab, worked the gears, but he was still not that familiar with the new automobiles. His previous experiences had included driving an ambulance in Alexandria when fleeing British soldiers. Now he was going to drive at Russian ones. Oh well. Drive on…
He smashed the wind shield out with the butt of the rifle and then made sure it had a round in the breech. You could never rely on the youthful Red Army soldiers. Most of them were volunteers, joining the Bolsheviks in the hope they could become something under the new regime, rather than the downtrodden peasant class they came from.
He worked the gear stick with a teeth-aching shriek, then remembered the clutch pedal. First gear. He turned the wheel and pulled the truck away from the wall, the near-side mudguard ripping off with a screech. He accelerated and worked second gear. One hand on the wheel, the other holding the rifle through the gap where the window had been.
The soldiers on duty around the brazier were on their feet, staring at the approaching vehicle. They had heard something, but not seen what it had been. They still hadn’t raised their own rifles, and peered uncertainly at the truck, revving inexpertly. Casca searched for and found the headlamps and turned them on full, blinding the soldiers.
With their hands up to their eyes, pupils shrinking, they had no idea that they were now in full sight of a man who had been fighting for nineteen centuries. Jamming his knees up against the bottom of the wheel he aimed carefully with both hands and blasted the first man aside, then dived out of the open side of the cab just as the truck plowed into the brazier, knocking one luckless man aside as it careered into the shutters with an unearthly crash.
Casca rolled onto his shoulders, rifle cradled in his great paws, then fetched up against the wall of the warehouse. He got to his knees. One soldier was scrambling to his feet ahead of him and Casca had no difficulty in drilling him through the back. The soldier sank slowly to the ground.
Scuttling around the back of the truck, Casca ducked back as a shot spat narrowly past his head. The two remaining men were on their feet. The Eternal Mercenary worked a round into the breech, then quickly sighted on the one who’d shot and sent a bullet into his guts. The man fell over, screaming in agony. A gut shot was one of the worst wounds to get for pain.
The last man blasted wildly and in a terrified manner, sending his bullet too high. Casca carefully sighted on him and shot him through the chest. The soldier flung up both arms and fell backwards, striking the hard ground and remaining still.
Apart from the one screaming from the gut shot, the rest were silent and still. Casca opened the back of the truck. Full of munitions, like the previous one. The Bolsheviks were storing their ammo in this warehouse. All in one spot. Lovely.
He carried one box of ammo into the warehouse, now easily accessible thanks to the rip in the shutters. The cab of the truck was stuck through into the warehouse proper, and Casca noted the steam rising from the busted radiator. The lights were still on and he could see what had been stacked in the rows running down the length of the facility.
He searched for and located explosives. Dynamite and fuses. He grinned and set up what he hoped would be a nice surprise. Then he grabbed a length of wood from the fallen brazier and walked through the warehouse, finding a back exit, out into overgrown land running down to the river.
Whistles were beginning to close in. The authorities had heard the shooting and were coming to investigate. No doubt the man he’d let go would have told the Soviets what had happened and who was responsible. Someone would have put two and two together. The traitor Kaskarov was in the ammunition storehouse.
He returned to the front of the building and saw trucks lined up away from the entrance, and soldiers gathering. Casca looked up into the sky. Dawn would not be long. He would have to act now before it got light.
He aimed into a knot of approaching soldiers and fired. Someone fell and the rest scattered and threw themselves to the ground. Casca ducked back out of sight and just in time, for a volley of shots smashed into the building and the truck. Some bullets whined close to his head, and ricocheted into the darkness.
An officer yelled to the men to stop being stupid whoresons and cease fire. The entire warehouse was stacked with munitions and one stray shot could sent the entire thing up. Casca grinned. Precisely. He leaned back around the iron pillar he was taking cover behind and eyed the scene. Soldiers were moving forward, urged by some tactically-aware commander. Move, stop, cover. Next wave. Yep, they’d be here in moments.
Casca aimed again. Another shot. This stopped the advance. The soldiers were frustrated. Here was an enemy and they weren’t allowed to shoot at him!
“Comrade Kaskarov!” came a voice, and Casca assumed this was the man in charge.
“What d’you want?” Casca shouted back, reloading his Mosin-Nagant. His pistol was already loaded.
“Give yourself up to us. You will be treated well. I give my word.”
“Don’t be dumb. You’ll turn me over to the Cheka who’ll turn me
inside out for information, then you’ll have what’s left of me shot. So go fuck off. Comrade.”
“On your own head be it, then. You have so little time left.”
Casca rattled off two rapid shots then ran to the fuses lying across the floor, lighting them. They led to the truck. It would take perhaps fifteen seconds. He ran hard to the rear of the warehouse and shoved the door open, plunging into the weed-infested dead ground that ran down to the river.
He threw himself to the ground and put his hands over his head.
The truck went up like a mine exploding. Casca had experienced that enough times, Vienna for instance in the seventeenth century. The ground shook and light tore up the night. Flames spread into the warehouse and more explosions came as the ordnance there ignited. The warehouse was rumbling with constant eruptions and Casca scuttled away, down to the water’s edge.
Here were small narrow walkways of wood, some rotten. Boats were tied to the pillars and set back were the houses of the boatmen. Anyone inside would be staring at the burning warehouse by now, and Casca was in the other direction. It was no good getting a boat, though, as the water was completely frozen over.
He gingerly crossed the river, which was about thirty feet across, away from the inferno, still being rocked by explosions, and wondered how many of the Soviet soldiers he’d taken with the destruction. Not that he cared. His mind was now on which direction to go. He had two choices, south or west.
He made his way south for an hour until his legs were feeling as if they were going to drop off. He had kept close to the bank and scrambled up a slight incline into a large growth of trees, something that would hide him from any possible pursuit, if anyone had the mind that he had in fact not gone up with the warehouse but had escaped out the back. He gripped his rifle in the growing light and vanished into the pine forest that grew along the river bank. Tall, straight trunks rising up to a canopy above. The trees grew close together and he had to zig-zag his way south. South it was. He was on the east bank so going west was not an option. Probably just as well at that moment, for the front line would be over there somewhere as the Reds were pushing on towards Kharkov.