Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“Yes, he is,” Caitlin acknowledged. And her lover was locked in the barracks. And her comrade—and that, she realized, really was how she saw him—was down by the river getting a dozen boys ready to fight three dangerous men.

Kuliyeva waited patiently.

“It’s a long story,” Caitlin said wearily. Down below two boats were inching out into the current. “Is there somewhere we can go with a better view?” she asked.

“Of course. The roof. Here.” Kuliyeva picked up a pair of binoculars from the desk and handed them to Caitlin. “Come.”

As they climbed the steps, Caitlin found herself going through all of the feasible outcomes, and realizing that every last one was freighted with sadness and grief.

Komarov could hear the distantchurning of the paddle, but the ship itself was still hidden from sight by the bend in the river a mile or so downstream. There both banks rose into cliffs, and the paddle steamer, when it did appear, seemed dwarfed by nature, smaller than he had imagined. It was a dazzling white in the afternoon sun, pumping dark grey smoke into the clear blue sky.

The timing was almost perfect. By the time the boat reached Komarov’s position, the sun would be ideally placed to cover his intended angle of approach. Making use of this blind spot might not provide much of an edge, but it was all he had. If the riverboat slowed to its usual speed on this treacherous stretch of the river, and if the four of them rowed fast enough to catch it, then they might get aboard unseen. All the evidence pointed to there being only three renegades, and one at least would be on the bridge. The others, he hoped, would be suitably distracted by the cannons on the opposite bank and the boats up ahead in midchannel.

Komarov scrambled down the bank and into the skiff, which was screened from view by the drooping branches of a large and ancient willow. When Maslov and the two soldiers all looked up expectantly, he found himself feeling almost irritated by their touching faith in his leadership.

Three-quarters of a mile farther upstream the other two boats were inching out into the center of the river, each with its crew of three soldiers. These men had shown rather less confidence—they were quite likely lambs to the slaughter, and some of them seemed to know it. If the cannons could silence the mounted machine gun, they had a good chance of survival. If not…

The paddle steamer was less than half a mile away, and appeared to be moving slower than Komarov had expected. Which, if true, was excellent news.

There was no sign of passengers or crew, no movement on the outside deck—if not for the churning wheel and the steam pulsing out of the funnels, it could have been a ghost ship.

But then a steam whistle pierced the air, once, twice, like a bugler announcing a charge, and Komarov could make out a blond-haired figure on the foredeck, crouched behind the mounted machine gun. The latter’s position gave it a wide field of fire, but as Komarov had hoped, the riverboat’s superstructure, rising behind it, precluded it from covering his intended approach. His plan might work.

The seconds ticked by, the distance shortening—surely it had to be in range by now. “Fire, for God’s sake,” he heard himself mutter.

Somebody heard him. First there was a puff of yellow smoke, then a dull boom that rolled across the water. The outflung ball splashed into the river behind the churning wheel.

The Red Turkestan drew level with Komarov’s position. “Go,” he told the others, leaning into the oars.

“How many guns?” Piatakov shouted.

Brady was standing on the steps up to the bridge, examining the southern bank through the captain’s telescope. “Two!” he yelled back. “And they look about a hundred years old. If only we had a Jolly Roger!”

The second cannon fired, its ball falling fifty yards short. Piatakov could see the guns now and knew they were still beyond his machine gun’s range. So were the two small boats up ahead, but he aimed a short burst at them anyway, hoping they’d realize the cost of staying where they were.

There was another puff of smoke on the bank, and this time the ball crashed into the ship’s superstructure with a deafening clang. Piatakov instinctively flinched, then saw that the culprit was trundling off down the deck like a bowling ball.

He and Brady grinned at each other. The enemy might as well have been throwing cabbages.

Komarov swore under his breath.The cannons were next to useless—only a direct hit on the machine gun or the paddle would cause the renegades a significant problem. And God only knew what the machine gun would do to the men in the boats up ahead.

The men on the landing stage had opened fire with their rifles—he could hear the bullets pinging off the metal sides. His boat was now about a hundred yards adrift and slowly gaining. Sweat was pouring off their faces as they strained at the oars.

There was a thumping explosion on the far bank, and Komarov lifted his eyes in time to see something—or someone—heading skyward above the muzzle-loaders.

One of the guns had exploded. The Kerki Soviet would probably need a new chairman.

Piatakov fired a burst overthe heads of the soldiers in the two small boats, hoping that they would turn tail like their colleagues in Burdalik. A bullet whining off his improvised breastplate suggested that they intended otherwise, and he raked one boat, dropping at least one soldier and causing two others to take to the water. But when he tried to swing the barrel into line with the other boat, it wouldn’t move.

“What’s the matter?” Brady shouted.

“The mounting’s jammed!”

“Leave it!” Brady yelled as he ran down the steps. “You take the port side,” he told Piatakov, gesturing in that direction. “Anyone tries to get aboard, tell them they don’t have a ticket.”

As Komarov’s skiff pulled alongside,a well-aimed grappling hook tagged it to the moving paddle steamer. He watched as Maslov and the two soldiers clambered up and through the deck railings, then followed. There was no one else in sight. The machine gun had fallen silent; the only firing was coming from the landing stage, the bullets bouncing off the ship like blind mosquitoes. So where was the enemy?

Someone ran along the deck above them, the footfalls disappearing around the stern.

“Take the other side,” he told Maslov. “You go with him,” he told one of the soldiers. “Shoot on sight.”

The young Ukrainian tried for a gallant smile and only narrowly failed. Komarov stood where he was for a moment, watching the two men go, aware of the sweat running down either side of his nose. He hadn’t felt this frightened since his days as a trainee policeman.

“All right,” he said calmly, as much to himself as to the soldier beside him. “Slowly.”

They edged forward, Komarov in front, trying to keep their heads below the windows. The rifle fire from the landing stage had stopped, and all he could hear was the thunderous spinning of the paddle wheel. Then someone shouted something from a long way off, something unintelligible.

Komarov stopped abruptly, and the soldier stumbled into his back. The engine room! They should have gone straight for that and put the boat out of action. He remembered all the times he’d thought that you couldn’t make a policeman out of a soldier. It seemed the opposite was also true.

Two shots rang out on the other side of the boat, one crack, one boom. Maslov! Komarov hurried forward, looking for a way across, but all he found was a view across the open hold. Maslov was nowhere to be seen, but the soldier who’d gone with him was draped across the deck rail like a casually thrown-off coat.