Now Troyak noted that the upper landing to the back stairway was taped off. He had the presence of mind to give one order that mattered here: “No one is to use that back stairway under any circumstances. Understood? If I give a withdrawal order, and for any reason you cannot get to the main stairs, then use the windows. Otherwise you can check in here for an extended stay.”
Zykov’s team swept through the park, coming to the clearing where a round waterless fountain surrounded by a low, red brick wall sat just behind the inn. He soon saw that the perimeter defense had finally collapsed. The causeway had been forced by the determined assault of Volkov’s engineers, who brought up a heavy machine gun to suppress the defensive fire while three rifle squads had raced across. The enemy was now just two blocks away, and he reported as much to Troyak when he reached the inn.
“Alright,” said Troyak. “We’ll hold here until we secure this place.” Then he gave an order for his grenade launcher. “Drop 200 meters and fire for effect!”
The pock, pock, pock of the rapid fire launcher sounded on the crisp air, and soon the small 30mm grenades were popping off all along the front of the enemy advance. The Siberian riflemen had fallen back through the town and were trying to regroup in the big concrete locomotive depot. A main street from the causeway came right through the town between the inn and the depot, and he knew the enemy would come that way. That would leave Troyak’s Marines as the only force east of that road against the Grey Legion.
“What do you figure we’re up against, Sarge?” said Zykov as he deployed his men on the first floor.
“At least two companies, maybe three.”
“A battalion? Good! It’s a fair fight for a change.” Zykov smiled.
Troyak sized up the situation. I can hold this inn indefinitely, he thought, unless they have heavy weapons, which I doubt if these men came off those zeppelins like we did. But if I let them sweep into town and surround this place… He didn’t like the thought of that.
If he was going to take the risk of going down those stairs, then the inn had to be secure. Fedorov had warned him that time passed at different speeds at both ends of that stairway. He didn’t quite understand it, but grasped the fact that even if only a few minutes passed for him, it could be hours for the men he left behind here. And what if it took him hours, or long days to track down his quarry? What if Volkov was nowhere in sight? What if he ended up in some other year? The unknowns associated with a sortie down those stairs were simply too great.
Now he looked at Zykov, a glint in his eye, dark brows furrowed over his bulldog face. “We can’t let them box us in here.”
“Agreed. But why hold here at all? We should just blow this place to hell and be done with it.”
That made sense. That was what he should do.
“Take your squad back through the park to those storage sheds on the other side and flank that causeway. We need to hold this intersection.” He pointed to his map with a thick thumb. “I’ll take a heavy rifle squad forward and take this position here. Then we’ll show them what they’re up against.”
Fedorov was sleeping restlessly that night. Kirov was still anchored in the Faroe Islands and they had been discussing future plans for the ship with Admiral Tovey. Soon they would be bound for Reykjavik. Their plan was to swing up to Hornsrandir, the northernmost cape of Iceland on the Denmark Strait in the Westfjord region. Fedorov knew that there were several old farm houses and hunting cottages there, and he had come up with the idea that they could set up a generator and Oko panel radar team in one. It would give them radar coverage over the whole approach to the strait, and preclude the need to ever use the valuable KA-40 to patrol the region. Admiral Volsky found out that they had six Oko panels aboard, two for each of the three helicopters they would normally carry, so it seemed a good idea to him, and he heartily endorsed it. From the tip of that icy, windswept horn they could close the Denmark Strait, and Tovey was very glad to hear this proposal.
“We will call it the Ice Watch,” Volsky said to Fedorov.
Fedorov had selected the place he had in mind, on a stony finger of land called Hornstrandir. It was a green desolate preserve, pristine in its simplicity, with emerald swards that swept up at near 45 degree angles to the edge of a jagged coastline that suddenly dropped off in sheer cliffs to the rocky shore and cold sea below. The local farmers were abandoning the region now that war had come, seeking safety in the larger communities to the south. So it would be a bleak and lonesome watch there, in a land where legends held that spirits and trolls haunted the stony vales, and polar bears roved the shore to look for seals, or anyone foolish enough to be at large there.
The details of that mission, and his worry over Troyak’s mission, had kept him awake that night, a fitful sleep as he sifted through possible outcomes. What had happened to the Narva? They had missed five consecutive radio checks since leaving Port Dikson. He had this in the back of his mind all through the Faeroe Island conference with Admiral Tovey, but now it came to the fore.
Did they suffer some mishap or accident, or was this a simple radio failure? Did they get through to Ilanskiy? If so, what was going on there? Some inner sense kept nagging at him that there was unforeseen danger at the heart of this mission, deep dark trouble that he had not considered or accounted for. What had he overlooked? Then he sat up in his bunk, suddenly realizing something, his eyes wide and alert.
No! Troyak cannot go down those stairs! Why did he not think of this earlier? He had been so busy with his duty on the ship, planning the meeting with Tovey, and he should have realized this before. He should have talked it over with Kamenski, and now he thought that he may have made a fatal mistake. It was imperative that he get through to Troyak now, and he was up from his bunk, throwing on clothes and grabbing his service jacket and hat to run down the long corridor to the citadel.
A sleepy eyed watchstander heard footsteps on the ladder up to the main hatch there, but was very surprised to see Fedorov when he burst through the entrance. He sat up, startled, and then instinct served and he shouted: “Captain on the bridge!”
“As you were.” Fedorov was immediately to the communications console. Rodenko was standing the late watch and he came over with a curious smile.
“Need to send a message?”
“Any word from Troyak or Orlov?”
“None, sir.”
“Well, we have to get through. Is there any way we can boost the signal from our end? What if we piggy backed it on our over the horizon radar?”
“It would get lost in the microwaves. But we could switch off that system, and then use its high power amplifier to boost our HF radio signal. In fact, I can even configure the top mast radar antenna to receive.”
“Do it, Rodenko, as fast as you can.”
“I’ll need an engineer on the main mast. It’s not something I can toggle from the console here.”
“Then get someone, and wake up Nikolin, I’ll need him here.”
The young mishman at that post was only too glad to be relieved when a sleepy eyed Nikolin showed up on the bridge ten minutes later.
“Sorry, Nikolin,” Fedorov apologized. “I’ll see that you get the entire morning watch off, but I need you here now. We’re going to try something.”
It took another forty minutes, but the radio engineer soon called down from the top mast above the citadel and reported he had cabled the HF military broadcast system to the powerful radar amplifier equipment on the mast.
“Alright, Nikolin. Can you frequency hop from about 1.6 to 60 MHz? I want to blast a signal so loud at them that they would have to be deaf not to hear it.”
“With that kind of power they would have to be dead,” said Nikolin. “Either that or the radio sets are all destroyed.”