Брайан Гарфилд: The Romanov Succession

He saw it crystal clear when the roofs lifted right off both cars. He saw the red-painted cross on the roof between them before they disintegrated into hurtling missiles of shattered armor-plate. He saw the two carriages go up with a force of violence that lifted half the train off the rails by its couplings and sent the forward locomotive spinning across the snow as if it were on skates. In the midst of the boiling smoke there was nothing left of the troop cars—nothing bigger than a matchstick; nothing at all; and he yanked the controls far over to the right and bellowed at the top of his voice:

“Cancel that last order. We’ve done it! Russia—you are free !”

The B-17 staggered; it threw him forward against his harness straps and an incredible roar burst into the cockpit—a cry of wind that fluttered the cuffs against his ankles and ripped the chart from Ulyanov’s lap. The Plexiglas nose section had been blown through by I-16 cannon and the plane was a stovepipe and he had time to yank the control yoke back between his knees but no time for anything else. Cannon and machine-gun tracer tore the aircraft apart in a fury of concentrated violence and he was reaching to press the Bail-Out bell when the plane pivoted on its tail and there was only time for a white-hot instant of wheeling triumph before the blackness of forever engulfed him.

When the flock of Soviet pursuit craft jumped the leading bomber Alex knew it was finished and he heard Sergei’s anguished cry: “We are betrayed!” but there was nothing for it but to carry it out to the finish because the train was approaching on schedule and there was still a chance at it. But the hope had drained out of him even before Felix’s B-17 made its spectacular bull’s-eye hits on the two armored troop carriages and blew the hospital car completely off the rails intact—askew like a toy that had been the object of a petulant child’s temper. The forward locomotive skidded around on ice and tipped over very slowly with steam exploding from it everywhere. The gallant Flying Fortress wheeled away toward the west and the Soviet fighters swarmed angrily after. Alex was on his feet then: there was still a chance to get to the hospital car before the fighters came back strafing. He yelled and waved them forward and slammed his hand down on the mortarman’s shoulder and when he began his run he heard the tinny rattle of the charge sliding down the pipe and then the whump like the very loud echo of a hard-hit tennis ball. Running in the deep snow with Sergei and the rest strung out in a splashing line he heard the shell flutter overhead and saw it explode beyond the target—a geyser of snow and clotted earth. The mortar dropped its aim and the next one dug a crater just ahead of the hospital car and now the aim was bracketed and the third one—he was still forty yards out, running as fast as he could but the snow nearly sucked the boots off his feet—the third one splashed against the side of the carriage and then the fourth mortar shell exploded right between two windows. It didn’t breach the armored wall but it blew both bulletproof panes out of their housings and buckled the metal. Then the mortar went silent because it had done its job.

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.

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.