John Schettler - Devil's Garden

What next, he thought? Now we get to the Anatoly Alexandrov and take inventory. It would be stupid to leave and then find we’re still missing a man or two. He radioed ahead to Dobrynin and told him they were beginning their withdrawal, and to have everything ready to utilize Rod-25 at his command. The desperate shift back from the Primorskiy Engineering center had worked! They got their man, and more-the mission had paid him a mysterious dividend with the discovery of the strange effects he had experienced on the back stairs of Ilanskiy. He knew that if they made it safely back to 2021, one of the first things they would need to do is get men to secure that inn.

Yet a thousand miles away, another man was already on the job there-Captain Ivan Volkov where he sat being interrogated by the NKVD Colonel and Lieutenant Surinov, and events were about to take yet another twist in a strange new direction.

* * *

Volkovhad given the man his last warning. He didn’t know what these idiots thought they were doing, masquerading in these old uniforms and holding a Russian Naval officer at gunpoint like this. He looked the Colonel right in the eye…

There were three other men in the room, one holding a weapon loosely aimed at him, the other with his rifle shouldered on a strap. The last was the Lieutenant that had fingered him as somehow having something to do with Fedorov. That man, Lieutenant Surinov, was fidgeting with his glasses, trying to clean one of the lenses as Colonel Lysenko conducted the interrogation. Clearly none of the men expected any real resistance from their captive, as irascible and uncooperative as Volkov was. Yet that worked in the Captain’s favor. The NKVD men were not prepared for what happened next.

Just as Orlov had swiped the pistol from Commissar Molla’s hand, Volkov lashed out again, doing the same to Lysenko. The weapon went flying across the room, and Volkov kicked hard at the knee of the one NKVD guard who had his weapon at the ready, toppling the man while the Captain wrenched at his sub machine gun. The safety was off, and he squeezed off a burst of fire, killing the other guard.

Surinov staggered backwards, but a quick step and Volkov was able to use the butt of his weapon to deliver a sharp blow to his head, dropping him unconscious as his spectacles clattered to the hard wood floor. There were shouts and hard footfalls when the last two guards came running into the room. Another burst of well aimed fire was enough to end their rush. Now it was Volkov and Lysenko.

Lysenko dove to retrieve the pistol, but not fast enough. Bullets from a PPSh-41 are much faster, and the Colonel joined his guards splayed out on the floor of the dining hall for a long, eternal sleep. The arrogance of power and the brutality with which he would treat countless innocent men and women in all the days ahead died with him. Volkov’s single act of violence had done a great deal to ease the suffering of many, just as Orlov’s hands had choked a good measure of despair and degradation to death when the Commissar died, though neither man knew this.

I warned them, Volkov thought in the heat of the moment. Now to get that witless Englishman. He had the presence of mind to retrieve his service pistol from one of the dead guards, then he moved quickly, out of the dining room and into the foyer where the serving girl cowered behind the front desk. The Englishman gave him a wide eyed look, obviously afraid.

“You!” Volkov pointed his weapon at the man. “Come with me.”

The Captain prodded the man, goading him up the main stairway to the second floor until they reached the upper landing.

“Where is the room you were staying in?”

“There, sir… The second door on the right I think.” The man looked confused, frightened, and out of place in his odd clothing; almost archaic.

Volkov forced open the door, easing in carefully before he pushed the young reporter inside. “Russian Naval Intelligence!” he shouted, leaping in behind the man, but the room was dark and silent. Volkov’s eyes narrowed as he methodically scanned the nightstand, made up bed, and then he walked to inspect the closet and restroom to make certain no one was concealed there.

“Well it doesn’t seem that anyone has stayed in this room for some time.” It was clear that he remained very suspicious of the man. “Very well, come with me. Let’s find that old proprietor and see what he has to say about things. What was your name again?”

Thomas Byrne, sir. I’m a Reporter for the London Times-here to cover the great race is all, sir.”

“Well, Mister Byrne, your name should be on the register of this inn, yes? You had better hope I find it there. Now move!” He wanted to get back downstairs to look for his men and then phone in this incident. Someone would have to come and collect the bodies he left in the dining room. He would have to file a report, but first he wanted to see about this stranger.

They were out into the hall, very near the back stairwell, and Volkov steered the man that way with one hand on his shoulder. “So you say you were meeting with friends in the dining hall, eh? Some associates? I trust you saw what happened to them when they presumed to trifle with me. Bear that in mind. Now get down those stairs!”

If the Captain thought he was confused by his first journey down the back stairwell at Ilanskiy, the second would bring him to the edge of insanity itself. He would soon find his security detail was entirely missing, the inn itself entirely different again, and the station and town of Ilanskiy itself nothing like he remembered. They started down, and along the way he heard what sounded like thunder, an ominous rumble reverberating in the narrow passage. The young man in front of him was suddenly silhouetted by a strange amber glow. Three more steps to the lower landing and they were in the dining room, but it was nothing like the room where Volkov had just killed the NKVD who were interrogating him…It was nothing like that at all.

“Holdon, Jock! That looks like our man!” Sutherland hissed under his breath pointing through a gap in the storage crates of the warehouse where they had been hiding.

They had settled in, watching the entrance to the detainment facility across the street and trying to figure the best way to get inside. Sutherland was not too keen on Haselden’s suggestion that they merely walk up to the gate and present themselves.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” The Captain explained. “They’d throw us right inside, eh?”

“Well bugger me!” said Sutherland. “I didn’t paddle across the Caspian Sea and come all this way through muck and mire to get thrown in the bloody hole, mate. There has to be some other way to do this.”

Before they had time to argue the matter, they heard that strange thrumming sound above them, and Haselden looked out through a hole in the roof to see a swirling shadow in the sky. It was unlike any aircraft they had ever seen before, but it quickly vanished in the low cloud, the sound of the big engines fading away.

The appearance of the aircraft caused quite a stir, and there was too much activity in and around the site for them to even consider making a move at that point. Haselden swallowed his idea and decided to hunker down. “We’ll have to wait until things settle,” he said. “I suppose we could use the rest, and then this evening we put on the black face and see if we can slip inside that place.”

“Now you’re talking.” Sutherland was finally hearing a plan he could live with, and one his commando training could embrace. So they waited, throughout the long day until they were thinking to make a move. Unfortunately, the Germans soon presented them with another option. They could clearly hear the sound of rifle fire in the distance, men shouting, and the rumble of battle thickening with machine guns and incoming artillery. Then, to their amazement they heard an enormous roar in the distance, coming from the sea.