Zorin and half of his men were in position on the rearmost flatcar. The rest of his force were spread throughout the train itself, mixed among the KGB troops. The bulk of the KGB were positioned along the top of the boxcars at each end of the flatbeds, effectively pinning down Zorin’s men when the shooting started, as it would any second now.
“Keep those light machine guns down at the sides,” he told his men. “When we start rolling, the troops still in the railyard will try to storm the flatcars; it’s the easiest way for them to get on.”
Zorin turned to take his bearings from a building that was suddenly several meters closer than it had been a moment ago. “Christus.” He turned to one of his men. “This is it. Get ready.”
Zorin scuttled over crates and vehicles to the rear of the flatcar. Balancing his helmet with one hand, he leaned over the edge and looked underneath at the bottom of the flatcar. A dozen of his men were hidden up among the framework and linkages. He checked the suspension and couplings connecting the rear flatcar to the last three cars. When he was satisfied that everything was in place, he raised his head, his face reddened less from hanging upside down than it was from excitement.
“You were about to say something, Comrade Colonel?” Serafimov prompted. What was wrong with these technical types? They all wound up acting like they spent more time drinking vodka than mixing their mysterious chemicals.
Podgorny’s mind lit on the most obvious excuse. “I must confess, I never thought I would leave this cemetery alive.” He put on his dim-witted peasant face that he reserved for high-ranking Party civilians. “Perhaps a toast? With your permission, sir?”
Serafimov smiled thinly. Why not? The teknik was only leaving one cemetery for the plot of another, after all. Still, it would not hurt to lull his suspicions. “Of course, Comrade Colonel,” Serafimov said coolly. “Please help yourself; in that cabinet behind you.”
The shades behind Serafimov were open, and Podgorny could see buildings crawling by. The KGB man would notice their movement in seconds. But if he could get close enough to him with a bottle, a corkscrew, anything…
Podgorny took vodka and two glasses from the cabinet. Closing the door, he saw Serafimov’s reflection in the glass; the KGB colonel had produced a pistol and was pointing it at him.
“Turn around very slowly, Colonel Podgorny, or I will shoot you in the spine. General Morevno was a most unfortunate choice of a lie. We evacuated the survivors of his unit yesterday. The tanks, anyway. Most of the men were killed in a bandit raid. Including Morevno himself.
Podgorny sighed. He turned slowly, hearing faint shouts from outside. “It doesn’t really matter now, Colonel Serafimov,” Podgorny said. “It sounds like your railroad guards have noticed us leaving without them.”
The KGB officer’s face went from arrogance to puzzlement, then to shock. It twisted into anger as he at last felt the train pass over a track joint.
Serafimov leaped from his chair, keeping the pistol trained on Podgorny. “Move and you’ll be a cripple.” He glanced out the window to see groups of his own men running from the buildings in various states of dress, trying to catch the accelerating train. Small arms fire suddenly erupted outside.
Serafimov smiled, shaking his head at Podgorny. “Pathetic. Is this as much ingenuity as you army types are capable of? Small wonder we lost the bloody war.” He circled Podgorny, moved to the brake cable on the wall. As on most Russian trains, only such cars as this one were equipped with them. In this case, it was opposite the lavatory door.
Serafimov heard a sound behind him: the lavatory door was opening, indicating a threat behind him. By the book, he thought. Deal with the present threat first. He shot Podgorny without a second’s hesitation. The bullet passed through the big Engineer’s abdomen and into the liquor cabinet door behind him. Podgorny went back a step, crashing into the shattered wood and broken glass, and fell heavily to the floor.
Serafimov spun to meet whatever threat might be coming from behind him, and instead saw one of his own KGB railyard guards. He hesitated then, until he suddenly realized the man was white; in that uniform, at that rank, he should be an Asiatic. What was—?
Wrenn grasped the KGB man’s gun hand, twisting until he felt bones grind and fingers open. The gun dropped, and Wrenn deftly reached to catch it. Serafimov batted the pistol away with his other hand, jabbed a knee up into the American’s stomach. Wrenn locked both arms around him, and they slammed into the floor.
Rostov saw a dozen men running from buildings toward the train and thought, This is it, for what must have been the hundredth time that day. He hoped the gimmick he and Zorin had thought up would work. The train was picking up speed now, and it was getting harder to stay on his feet atop the boxcar. The command coach was another four jumps ahead, he thought. A bullet sparked off the metal of a signal tower. Rostov returned fire on the KGB troops, dropping two before he ran on.
Zorin’s men on the flatbeds had more luck than was usually the soldier’s lot. All the KGB troops rushing the flatcars were coming from one side. The Combat Engineers cut them down with machine-gun fire whenever they tried to get close to the train. As far as the KGB already aboard the train were concerned, however, the Engineers’ luck ran out. From the surrounding boxcars, the KGB troops’ height advantage allowed them to pour a withering fire into the gun positions of the Engineers.
Zorin turned to Blaustein; the surgeon was methodically squeezing off three-round bursts at the tops of the boxcars, trying to keep the enemy troops pinned down. Twenty or thirty other tekniks were following his cue. Several of their comrades were already sprawled lifeless on the flatcar decks.
“I’m going now, Comrade Surgeon; can you hold on?”
Blaustein kept his face snug against his rifle, speaking calmly even as he continued to fire. “Yes, Sergeant. You’d better get started. It’s not going to get any better. We’ll manage.”
Zorin scrambled along the little cover he could find to the rear of the flatcar. There he swung himself over the edge into the mass of cables and linkage below. Waiting hands pulled him in out of the line of fire. The twelve other men he had positioned there earlier were waiting for him, ready to go.
“Let’s get started,” Zorin said. Moving hand over hand along the underside struts, they began working their way forward.
Wren and Serafimov rolled across the floor of the car until the Russian got a grip on Wrenn’s beard and slammed the American’s head against the wall. Wrenn’s grip loosened, and Serafimov broke free.
The KGB colonel lurched to his feet; he was too far from the hand brake, too far from help, and he could feel the train picking up more speed with each passing second. He would have to finish his opponent himself. His gun hand almost numb from his opponent’s disarming attack, Serafimov reached across with his good hand and drew a long dagger from his boot.
Wrenn watched the KGB colonel advance, the dagger interposed as he maneuvered Wrenn away from the hand brake. If he gets to that brake and stops this train, Wrenn thought, we are well and truly screwed. Wrenn thought back to a training session on knife fighting he had received from a Marine, years before. He never thought he’d have to do it.
The American took a deep breath and steeled himself, concentrating on feeling nothing as he threw out his left hand and impaled it on the KGB man’s knife.
Wrenn knew he had perhaps a second before the pain hit him. He felt it breaking through his concentration, rushing at him from a long way off like—well, he thought, like a train. The blade went through his palm as he pushed his hand down hard, ending at the hilt, locking his fingers around it and the other man’s hand.
Serafimov had been prepared for almost anything else, but this mad action took him completely by surprise. For a moment, he simply stared, then Wrenn pulled hard, Serafimov staggered forward and the American drove his right fist into the KGB man’s throat with all the strength he could muster.
Serafimov fell choking to the floor, and Wrenn stumbled back against
the wall, drawing the dagger out of his hand with a roar of pain. The agony swept over him in waves. Can’t black out, can’t black out…
He pointed the blade toward the KGB colonel. He could hardly concentrate, but he managed to get enough breath to speak. “That’s it,” Wrenn said in English. Realizing his lapse, he switched back to Russian. “It’s over; lie down, flat on the floor.”
But at the sound of the enemy tongue, Serafimov’s skin stretched taut over his facial bones. The colonel snapped, threw himself across the floor, recovered his dropped pistol, and rose to his feet. Choking and gasping for air, his windpipe crumpled by Wrenn’s blow, Serafimov steadied himself against the desk, aiming the pistol at Wrenn’s head.
*Well, it’s been a good life_, Wrenn thought. _Some highs, some lows. I guess this counts as one of the lows…*
Serafimov fumbled with the trigger, cursed in Russian and pulled back the slide, then re-aimed. From behind him, Podgorny rose up, wraithlike. There was blood on the Engineer’s lips, a vodka bottle still gripped firmly in his hand. Podgorny swung the bottle in a huge arc.
The bottle disintegrated against the side of the KGB man’s head. Serafimov spun around, clutching his tern-pie.
Wrenn dropped as the shot from the gun went wild. Podgorny threw his arms around Serafimov. Before the American could regain his feet, the big Engineer had staggered back against the window, still holding on to Serafimov. The safety glass panel splintered but held.
“Podgorny, no!” Wrenn shouted, realizing too late what the Engineer was doing. He stood, tried to cross the room in time, but was too late.
Podgorny dashed himself against the glass again. The window shattered, and both men tumbled over the sill. Wrenn got to the window at last. Two figures rolled down the cinder-blackened incline of the railbed, and in an instant were lost from sight behind the last buildings of the rail yard.
The door banged open. Wrenn spun about, the dagger still in his hand, to see Rostov raising his rifle.
The lieutenant recognized him just in time. Wrenn could barely stay conscious over the pain in his hand. He slumped to the floor as Rostov reached him. “For a moment,” the American murmured, “I thought the good Lord was going to be anonymous again.”
Rostov looked around. “Where’s Colonel Podgorny?”
Wrenn nodded toward the window. “I’m sorry, Rostov.”
“The KGB man,” Rostov said simply, then looked down at the hand Wrenn was clutching. The American’s lap was soaked with blood. Rostov reached down and examined the wound, and Wrenn nearly passed out. Rostov grimaced, seeing the American’s hand was nearly cut in half.
“Let’s get something on that.”
Wrenn was incredulous. “Oh, good fucking idea!” he snapped.
Rostov grinned. “Good. You’re angry enough to live through it. Comrade Blaustein has shown me how to fix worse than that. And we don’t want anything to happen to you, after all.”
Outside a grenade went off.
Zorin and his men had crawled along the bottoms of the flatcars until they reached the boxcars forward. Zorin himself stood up on the couplings and helped the rest of the men up and onto the ladder to the boxcar roof. The KGB troops were dropping grenades on the flatbeds; this business would have to be finished quickly.
Reaching the roof of the boxcar, the first Engineer saw half a dozen KGB at the far end, firing automatic rifles down into the men on the flatcar below. Zorin’s man opened fire, killing them all.
“Good. This end secured.” Zorin got the rest of his men on the boxcar roof. “Now move quickly to the passenger cars. Let’s clear this train out.”
Zorin ran back to give the all-clear to his men on the flatcars. They were still taking small-arms fire from the KGB troops on the rear boxcars. Those KGB had even received reinforcements from rail-yard troops who had managed to grab hold of the rear car and haul themselves aboard. Zorin leaned over, calling to his men below.
“Zorin!” Blaustein was waving to him exultantly.
“The front’s clear,” Zorin shouted back. “Go ahead, blow it!”
Blaustein made a gesture to the man next to him. Protected from fire throughout the battle, this soldier had the most important job of all. He made a twisting motion with a device held close to his chest.
Charges went off on the couplings connecting the flatcars and the rear boxcars. The KGB troops suddenly realized what was happening and began trying to leap across the space to the flatcar. A few even threw down their weapons as they jumped, perhaps hoping to be taken captive rather than be left behind in the ruins of Moscow.
The Engineers shot four, and two more failed to make the distance necessary to clear the widening gap. They disappeared under the now slowly rolling boxcars.
Zorin’s men sent up a cheer, then surged over the crates and tied-down vehicles, following the sergeant, who went to clear the train of the last enemy troops.
Rostov had found a first-aid kit in the desk. He had poured a clear disinfectant on the American’s ruined hand. Whatever it was, it must have hurt, because the fellow went even whiter and passed out. Just as well, Rostov thought as he threaded a needle from the same kit. I doubt you want to be awake for this. But he was wrong, for at that moment Wrenn’s eyes opened and he looked weakly around. He saw what Rostov was about to do and shook his head.
“I survive a KGB butcher only to have a demolitions expert try to put my hand back together. Terrific. Why don’t we wait for Blaustein to do this?”
Rostov shrugged. “Blaustein may be dead. We’re moving too fast for anyone from the train yard to catch us on foot, and if Zorin gets the couplings blown, they won’t be able to chase us with any rail carts. But in the meantime, do I try to save your hand or not?”
Wrenn wanted to pass out, but he wasn’t sure he’d wake up. So he only turned away as Rostov attempted to suture the parted halves of his hand together. Rostov saw no loose tendons; the knife had been very sharp, and for the most part had gone between the bones.
But the young Russian was no surgeon, and by the time he was finished there was as much blood on his uniform as on Wrenn’s. Still, the American’s hand was back together, after a fashion, and tightly bound.
Rostov had heard an explosion that he took to be the coupling charges. He began looking about the room for some sort of blankets to put over the wounded American. The cold morning was not getting any warmer, and the man might go into shock. There was nothing.
Wrenn watched Rostov, guessing at his purpose. “We can worry about me later. Right now there are a few trainmen wondering about the outcome of this little escapade; I think we’d better get forward and let them know about the turnoff we’ve got to take.”
Rostov nodded. “Yes. Quite right. It will be warmer in the engine cab, too. Can you make it up the ladder?”
Wrenn nodded. Rostov supported him to the ladder outside, helped Wrenn pull himself up one-handed, then followed.
The Russian almost slipped halfway up; Wrenn gave him his good hand and somehow pulled Rostov up onto the roof of the tender. The wind of their passage made the cold morning air bite into exposed skin. A few first flakes of a light snow were floating by. Rostov looked around in silence. From the roof of the tender car, the view of the rail yards and the land surrounding them was unobstructed.
Stretching in all directions into the faraway morning haze, the ruins of Moscow lay spread out around them like a vast gray wound. Shattered buildings and acre upon acre of crumbled masonry and concrete covered the landscape. Where fires yet smoldered, thin strands of black smoke drifted upward, like columns supporting the lowering clouds above. The unbroken vista of destruction lay all around them like an abandoned graveyard. Little moved in the ruins, and still less lived.
For a moment, Rostov wondered how a mighty city could be so laid waste. But what the Alliance had left standing, his own Engineering comrades had leveled in the Scorched Earth policy ordered by the Party. He kept watching as the snowfall thickened. Already the twisted,
ravaged surfaces of the ruined city were softening under the cold, cold blanket of winter’s first snow. The city was a corpse, and here was its shroud.
Rostov turned and looked at Wrenn. The American was watching him, and for a few moments the two men stared at each other over the naked roof of the tender, five feet and a million miles apart from one another.
“In my wife’s religion,” Rostov finally said, “white was the color of mourning. That makes sense to me, for Russia has so much white to cover her every year. This year, it would seem she needs it more than most.”
“Snow melts, Rostov. White isn’t the only color men have to live with. And mourning isn’t the only thing left for you.”
Rostov shrugged. He suddenly realized that he didn’t feel the cold anymore. “I wonder,” he finally said, regaining the American’s gaze.
“What?” Wrenn stared back.
“Does Washington look like this? New York? Los Angeles?”
Wrenn frowned, taken aback. He had expected at least a verbal attack from Rostov. Instead, there was a grief in the young Russian’s voice so deep it was almost tangible. “I don’t know, Aleksei. I imagine they do.”
Rostov shook his head, tears in his eyes. “I hope not. I really do.”
Wrenn tried to stand, almost falling down again from the pitching motion of the train and his own loss of blood. Rostov crossed the distance between them and put out his hand, catching Wrenn’s good arm, steadying him.
“Come on, Rostov,” said the American. “Let’s go on. I need to rest.”
The Russian put an arm under Wrenn’s shoulder, supporting him. “Yes,” he finally said after a moment. “Both very good ideas. Let us do that.”
Rostov looked off toward where the sky was lightening as the morning sun began burning away the clouds. The snow was still falling, but it was only a light autumn dusting. He had seen enough such storms to know that no matter how deep, they never buried the land forever.
There Will Be War Volume VII Page 26