Daniel Yarosh - The Death of Hercules - A DocuNovel

As he approached the yard, he saw men attending to the north bound trains, loading them with coal and stowing boxes. The south facing train remained where he last saw it in February, immobile. As he walked past the station a trainman scowled at him with an unspoken warning to ‘stay away, you bum’. But he was concerned with the operational trains, and Max ducked behind the stationhouse and looked out at his prize.

Choosing his time carefully, Max dashed across the empty tracks to the southbound train and scampered inside. At the back of the locomotive cockpit, he peeked over the top of the coal bin and found it half full. Good! The only good fortune he needed. He lowered himself to the far side of the locomotive, shielded from the view of the yard workers. He swung himself under the engine and lit a match to see. He reached behind the flange of the steel plate near the boiler and touched the hidden connecting rod. Great. No one had done anything in all these months.

Feeling inside the engine, he located the attachment point and fitted in one end of the connecting rod. He then reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the cotter pin he had taken from the Fiat-Omsk armored truck. He slipped it in, maybe a little too small but it worked. He then fit the other end of the rod and clamped it with the second cotter pin. That would have to do.

Max climbed back into the locomotive cabin, closed all the valves and lit the boiler. Smoke flooded the cabin and diffused outside, but none went up the smokestack to give him away. Waving away the fumes from the gauges, he watched the steam pressure mount. When it just entered the active zone, Max disengaged the break, and the train began to slide south down the tracks. By the time he reached the end of the main yard the steam pressure had built up. Max engaged the engine and released the excess steam with a whistle that no doubt woke up every soldier in the Ukrainian Army.

Max was now engineering a powerful locomotive with just a coal bin car attached, but he was afraid to go too fast and toss the connecting rod. He knew that it would take some time to turn around one of the Proskuriv trains to follow him, so he had a head start. But he wasn’t sure how far it was to Odessa. 200 kilometers? 400 kilometers? It was actually 550 kilometers, or 330 miles.

As day broke over the Southern Ukraine farmland, the train ran smoothly down the rails, passing through trackside depots of Derazhnya and Zhmerynka without stopping. Max felt a weary satisfaction descend on him. He had overcome so much, and now he was free. He smiled as he surveyed the peaceful land just coming awake. Then as he passed through Vapnyarka he saw an army caravan pushing north on the road beside the train, and the harsh reality crept over him. He had stolen a train and was now trapped between two warring armies, with no allies, no food and no water.

He began to devise plans to slow the pursuit. At first, he threw loose metal pieces and wood boards over the coal bin and onto the tracks, but most of them bounded away down the grating. Then he tied the car cranks he had taken from camp with his rope, and then lowered them close to the tracks and then cut the rope. This placed them between the rails, but as he watched them recede in the distance, he was sure they were not enough to slow or stop a pursuing train.

He passed through a wide flat plain covered in wheat, and the bucolic scene contrasted with his growing anxiety. The land went on forever, and there was no sign of Odessa on the horizon. When he finally reached the end of the plain at Kryzhopil, he looked back and saw a puff of smoke on the northern horizon. A train in pursuit, and it must be catching up to him.

His mind raced and panic set in. He was tired and could not bring himself to run any more. Then he saw ahead, just past the town of Yavorivka, that the tracks took a sharp turn to the right, away from a heavy forest. When he finally approached the turn, he slowed, carried the curve and then slowed to a stop. He released the steam pressure, disengaged the engine, and climbed down with his pack. He jogged back to the curve in the tracks and stood at its apex, scanning up and down the tracks. He knelt down and pulled from his pack four of the compressed air starters he had taken from the motor pool, and a length of rope. These he tied to the inner rail at the point of the sharpest turn, securing it to a track nail in the ground that connected two bars. He could hear the chug of the pursuing train and when he stood he could see the puff of steam from its locomotive.

He ran back to his train, stoked the boiler to bring up the pressure, engaged the engine and began slowly to pick up speed. Now he could see around the bend the pursuit train pulling a coal car and a flat bed, with soldiers sitting on it, their rifles glinting in the morning sun. He turned back to the front and held the speed steady. Max knew he could not outrun them, and his best hope was to keep the train intact all the way to Odessa.

The pursuit train spotted Max ahead and the engineer picked up speed. He was experienced with this run and knew the curve south of Yavorivka. He had taken it often, sometimes needing to make up time, so that he knew he could maneuver it at a speed that was perhaps above that recommended by the rail commission. When he came around the turn, he did not see the four compressed air cannisters tied to the inner rail, and it would not have made any difference if he had. With the weight of the train on the outer rail, the inner wheel hit the first cannister which exploded with a pop and raised the wheel slightly off the rail. It then immediately hit the next three cannisters POP – POP – POP. The inner wheel lifted off the rail at the turn, and with the weight of the train on the outside, the outer wheel jumped the track. The train hurdled off the turn, down the side berm and into the forest. The startled engineer pulled on the brakes, but with little traction for the wheels the locomotive skidded and slammed into and then through a stand of trees. The soldiers were thrown from the flatbed as it bounded over the rails, down the berm, and came to an abrupt stop wedged against the fallen trees.

Max was focused ahead, slowing and steering through a left-hand turn in the tracks at the town of Rudnytsya, when he heard the four loud pops, the grinding of steel, and the crash of the locomotive into the woods. He smiled, and a sense of relief washed over him. Now the exhaustion bloomed, and his knees weakened. He slowed the train to a leisurely pace and sat down to gather himself. The high anxiety soon passed, but he realized that he was well into danger. He was driving a locomotive stolen from an army base straight into the army headquarters 300 kilometers away.

The next few hours over the midday were a welcome respite. With the army mobilization in full gear, Max passed a few trains heading north, pulling flatbeds loaded with army equipment and heavy guns. Their engineers, startled to see a locomotive with no cars in service heading south, whistled three short bursts of steam greeting. Max enjoyed replying with one long burst. He assumed that they would somehow communicate with the Odessa station that a rogue train was headed their way.

By late afternoon, as Max approached Odessa, he could see the church steeples, massive theater and apartment buildings of Rue Richelieu on the city skyline. Then ahead he saw a box car blocking his track flanked by a dozen fully armed troops. He slowed and saw a trackman motioning with both hands to his left. Max relaxed as his train was diverted from the main rail to side rails where a few other locomotives stood still. He braked to a stop and raised his hands in surrender.

He was roughly arrested, and the train searched before he was taken to the local commander. While the captain began his interrogation in Russian, Max replied in English, “I am Max Shertok, American. Take me to Mr. Herbert Hoover. American Relief Administration.” He repeated his claim in English to the astonished captain, and then again in fluent Russian with an Odessa accent.