“Veronika, I think you should go back to the car.”
“Why?” She nibbled at her lip. Did she realize she did that whenever she was worried?
“Because I don’t trust that train.”
The train came closer, slowing. Before it came to a full stop, soldiers rushed from the cars. They wore lengths of red fabric around their arms, and they held rifles in their hands.
“Now!” Anton physically spun her toward the boxcar, and together they ran. As rifles cracked on the other side of the station, he boosted her into the carriage. “Lay on the ground, and stay away from the doors and windows. All of you!” he said to the other women inside.
He wanted to stay and protect his wife, but he wasn’t armed. It was time to break out the rifles they’d been hiding since Penza.
Machine guns burst into action. Between the two legion trains, there would be several—or did he hear Bolshevik weapons? He arrived at his carriage as Emil jumped down, shoving bullets from a stripper clip into a Mosin-Nagant rifle.
Anton scrambled up as Emil ran off.
Petr tossed him a rifle. “Don’t know that we’ll be able to put this false wall back up.”
“After this, we won’t need it.” The Bolsheviks had just declared war on them, and an open war would end all smuggling. If they won, they’d keep their weapons handy. If they lost, they wouldn’t have any weapons left to hide. He prayed they wouldn’t lose.
Once he had a rifle in his hands, his first impulse was to run back to the women’s carriage. But he couldn’t do that. He had to work with the other legionnaires to defend the entire train, not just one boxcar, no matter how precious its cargo. Dust tickled his throat as he and Petr ran toward the fighting and followed orders to spread out. They found a defensible position to the side of the station, in a ditch that offered a good view of the Bolshevik train. The legion’s train curved with the track, so the women’s boxcar was out of sight, away from immediate danger.
Red guardsmen continued to leap from their cars and shoot. Anton and Petr shot back.
“Stupid Bolsheviks,” Petr mumbled. “Good for us though.”
“What?”
“If they attacked as a group, they’d be stronger.” Petr worked the bolt on his rifle to prepare the next shot. “Instead, they’re letting us pick them off a few at a time.”
The red guardsmen never had a chance to form a line. They were instead mowed down in the Czechoslovak crossfire. Some made it back to their train, more fled into the woods, and a significant number fell to the ground, wounded and dying.
“That will teach them to steal our weapons.” Petr grinned as he shot again.
Anton aimed at the few Reds still attempting to infiltrate legion positions. Petr’s sudden gasp was the first sign that something had gone wrong. Anton shot the Bolshevik trying to approach their ditch, probably the man who had shot Petr.
Blood flowed from Petr’s shoulder. Anton checked for an exit wound, but the bullet was still lodged inside. Warm, sticky blood clung to Anton’s hands.
“First thing, Petr, is to stop the bleeding. So hold this.” Anton pressed a wad of cloth into Petr’s wound, then guided Petr’s healthy hand to hold it. Anton used his rifle to repel a few straggling red guardsmen, then looked at Petr’s wound again.
“Do you suppose Larisa and the others are all right?” Petr’s voice sounded muffled.
“I doubt any of the Bolsheviks made it that far back. Even if they did, they’d target the cars we’re firing from, not a boxcar designed to haul cargo.”
When the firing died down, Anton dragged Petr from the ditch and hauled him toward the hospital car. Petr was conscious, but he wasn’t speaking anymore, and his eyes wouldn’t focus. Marianovka was a bad place to get shot. It didn’t look big enough for a doctor, and their train’s hospital car was staffed only by an orderly—wounds like this might be beyond his skill.
When Anton got Petr inside, his fears were confirmed. A medical orderly treated the handful of wounded, but with one look at Petr’s shoulder, he turned pale. “This needs a surgeon.”
Anton stripped off Petr’s gymnastyorka to get a good look at the wound. “The bullet entered the front and made a straight enough path. Someone just needs to remove the bullet and stitch up the skin.”
“Is that so? If you know so much about it, why don’t you do it?”
Anton had never removed a bullet before, but he’d assisted Dr. Horváth in the prison camps for months, sometimes with this very type of wound. In most of those cases, the bullets had been in the bodies long enough for the surrounding flesh to fester. “What tools do you have?”
The orderly waved at an assortment of devices. Anton picked up the forceps.
“Would you like me to clean them for you?”
Anton turned to the feminine voice. Nadia. “What are you doing here?”
“When the shooting died down, I thought there might be wounded. I can help.”
“The other women?”
“I told them to stay. None were injured. Veronika is fine.” She glanced at Petr. “And Larisa was fine as well, though when she finds out . . .”
“Let’s get him fixed before we tell her, shall we?” Anton said.
Nadia nodded. “You’ll have better light there.” She pointed to a patch of straw beneath the window.
Petr’s injured body had grown weaker, so Anton grabbed him beneath the arms and Nadia took his legs to bring him over. Then she held a match to the forceps while Anton washed Petr’s wounded shoulder. The alcohol drew a grimace and a shudder.
Nadia handed Anton the sterilized forceps. Petr was a friend, but a familiar detachment from his patient and curiosity over what to do next was back, just as strong as it had been when he’d assisted Dr. Horváth. War could do all manner of things to a soldier’s body. Healing it was one way to fight back against the madness that had gripped the world since 1914.
Petr flinched. “Hold him,” Anton told Nadia. She might not be strong enough to keep someone like Petr from moving, but Anton couldn’t force Petr down and pull the bullet out at the same time. “Petr, you need to hold still. I don’t care how much it hurts. If you move, it will hurt more.”
Anton waited for Nadia to establish a good hold and said a silent prayer for help. Then he dug for the bullet. He couldn’t see beyond the edge of the wound, but he could feel where the flesh was torn and where it was mostly whole. The bullet would be at the end of the hole, unless it was lodged in Petr’s scapula.
Blood continued to flow into and from the wound, but Anton finally felt something harder than muscle. He gripped it and yanked. It didn’t move. Was it stuck in the bone? “Sorry, Petr.” Anton yanked harder, and on his third tug, the bullet came out.
Petr groaned and shook with pain. He looked around as if coming out of a stupor. Nadia grabbed a rag and mopped the perspiration from his brow. He focused on Nadia for a second. “Is Larisa all right?”
“She’s fine,” Nadia said. “And you’re going to be just fine too, with a little rest. But this next part will hurt a bit.”
Anton started stitching. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Dr. Horváth had always had a cheerful manner with patients. He would tell a joke or offer sympathy and hope. And Nadia was pleasant and proficient, still murmuring encouragement. But Anton had never been good with saying anything beyond what needed to be said, except when he was with Veronika. A good doctor should use all resources, including speech, but Anton still hadn’t thought of anything useful to say by the time Petr’s shoulder was stitched. He’d have to work on that, because he wanted to be a real doctor, a good one.
The orderly nodded his approval. “There are more, if you can assist with them as well.”
Anton looked around. Eight wounded. Six dead. He glanced at Nadia, who nodded her willingness to help.