There were a few grunts and growls in the group. “Ma’am, I’ll share my foxhole with you,” said one Marine. There were laughs and jeers from a few.
“I may just take you up on that, Marine,” she joked. There was a howl from the group.
“Any of you guys from South Dakota?” she asked.
“I am, Ma’am.”
Richardson turned to see a vague figure in the darkness. “Where bouts?”
“Custer, Ma’am.”
That was a surprise. Richardson was also from Custer. “What’s your name, Marine?”
“Caraway, Ma’am. Kelly Caraway.”
Richardson reached out and slapped the young man on the arm. “Good to meet you Caraway. I’m from Custer too.”
“I know, Ma’am. My Mom told me to say hello if we ever met.”
Curious, Richardson asked, “Who is that? I had a bunch of friends there.”
“Mom is named Janice. She was a Meadows.”
“Well I’ll be damned. You’re little Kelly? Janice was my best friend in high school. How’s she doing?”
“Not too bad. She told me some stories about you after I went through boot camp. I’ll let her know we met.”
“You do that. If we get the chance to talk again, you’ll need to fill me in. It’s nice to meet someone I know,” Richardson said. “Now what about the rest of you? Tell me something about yourselves.”
The talking went on for more than an hour. After the young men loosened up, it was like old friends shooting the breeze. That was just what Richardson needed to slough off the tensions she had been carrying during the trip. It reminded on a similar night years before, when she and another young Marine talked on a night much like this. In the end, everyone shook hands and went their ways. Richardson went to her stateroom and slept like a log. The others went back and told their fellow Marines of their commander and how they would follow her to hell and back.
The demonstrations had gotten much larger and stronger. A mass of several thousand filled the Palace Square. They were bundled against the terrible cold blowing off the Baltic, but they held their banners high. Shouting “We want heat and we want food,” they began marching in an ever growing circle around the Alexander column until the square was filled with angry people. Police were called in to calm the crowd but they were shouted down, or in some cases, the police joined the crowd. A military vehicle came up and troops were unloaded. It made no difference. The crowd stripped the men of their weapons and shoved them into the center of the circle by the column. Using their bare hands, the people overturned the truck and set fire to it. For many, it was the first heat they had felt in almost three months. People took their time around the burning truck to share the heat, but they continued to circle.
Someone stood with a portable loudspeaker and the crowd got silent. A single woman stood before the crowd. “I am from a small town named Vednoye. The state has taken all of our young men for this war,” she said. “Just a month ago we received the notices. They are all dead! All but one gave their lives in this cursed war. Our leaders did this. They took them from us and forced them to fight against the Europeans and the Americans. I do not blame the Europeans, I blame our leaders for getting us into this! Now there is but one child of our town still alive. A whole generation of our people has been wiped out! We asked for this child to be returned. Our government said he would give his life for the glory of Russia. What glory is this? It is not our glory. In the Great Patriotic War we fought against the evil of Germany, but what evil is this now? Now it is the evil of Borodin!” she shouted. “He starves us. He leaves us to freeze. Thousands have frozen this winter because of the politicians. We starve. Our children don’t have enough food, and still they take our young people each day. We of Vednoye refuse to send our children. We will hide them, we will send them away. We will protect them! Take to the streets to end this suffering!” she shouted to the crowd.
As she spoke, the shouts and protests from the crowd got louder and stronger. Police on the scene became truly frightened. More police were called in and more troops barricaded themselves around the Hermitage. On cue, tear gas was fired into the crowd. Many of the canisters were simply flung back at the police. The crowd didn’t disperse. Now more armed troops arrived. They began gathering at each entrance to the square, filling it with soldiers. The people saw this and began tearing apart the iron fence surrounding the column, using the pointed ends to pry up the paving stones on the square itself. Some began striking the marble base of the column and smashing it into something to throw.
Concentrating on the street leading to the bridge over the river, the soldiers and police were assaulted with stones and pavers. Almost as one, the crowd surged toward the bridge, overwhelming the force, taking their weapons and moving down to the river. They began to cross the bridge. They got half way when the armored personnel carriers blocked the other end. They opened fire on the crowd.
The people at the head of the crowd were cut down unmercifully. The rest turned and tried to run, but the crowd was still surging forward. More were shot down before the noise of the firing caused the rest to panic. They fled back toward the square, but by now the troops at the square had bottled them in. They too began firing. People began getting off the main street and trying to find some sort of shelter. Some began making their way downriver on the ice which was thick this time of year. Others crawled into the sewers and into the military school on the street. Locked doors forced them around corners and into inner courtyards where they were trapped.
The police moved in. They continued to fire until there was little movement on the streets. By the time it was over, there were over five hundred killed or wounded. The police took their time getting the survivors to a hospital. At the head of the bridge was the woman still carrying the portable megaphone. She had been shot through the head.
From his vantage point atop the Hermitage, Ivan Teznarik packed away his video camera. He had already uplinked the signal to a satellite. He didn’t know where it would go. He just knew his controllers had told him to use his position with the museum to gather the footage and send it on. He met regularly with some of the dissident factions and relayed information back and forth. His reward was a photovoltaic panel he could use to charge his equipment and to run some small appliances. He also used it to charge batteries which would heat his blanket at night. Not a bad trade off.
Entering the museum offices from the roof, he made his way to his office and returned the camera to a safe before locking up and making his way home for the night. What he had seen was frightful. The people of Russia were getting angry and more violent. Because he was a historian, he knew the significance of it all. The only other time Russians had been this angry was when they had overthrown a Tsar.
The training for the new drones hadn’t taken that long. Most of the controls were the same. The few buttons and switches that were new had been easy to learn. The drones had more ammunition for the pistol, carried both the pistol and two grenades and had a microphone and speaker system so that things could be communicated. But the best thing was the small photovoltaic cell on top. It wasn’t much larger than a playing card, but with it, the drone could remain airborne all day.
Despite the fact that they were near Krakow, it had taken a week before Petyr could go anywhere near his home. Getting permission to strike out alone, he made his way toward the neighborhood he had known all his life. What he saw in the monitor was beyond description. The bombs and artillery had done their work. Images Petyr had seen of places like Berlin and Dresden at the end of the Second World War were something he never thought he would see in Krakow. The buildings were mostly burned out shells. Occasionally there would be something that appeared intact, but the bullet holes and other damage left no doubt that people were no longer in them. Only on a few occasions did he see someone scurry between buildings or duck into some sort of shelter.