A scream made Akinfeev look up, just in time for the first surge of arterial blood from Urusov’s shattered thighs to wash over his face.
His NCO died before his eyes, the large arteries spilling his lifeblood in seconds.
Akinfeev resembled the stuff of nightmares, his face and upper body bathed in blood and human detritus.
He screamed, clawing at his hair and face, desperately trying to remove the horrors found there.
Screaming again, he unnerved the few men left in the building as he ripped off his tunic and used the destroyed garment to wipe himself.
One man rose to leave.
“Stay here and defend this position!”
“The battle is lost, Comrade Kapitan, we should save ourselves.”
The unhinged officer grabbed for his pistol, intent on shooting the mutineer, until Lucifer entered the room.
As Hanebury moved up, slipping from cover to cover, he became more and more angry, finding another of Smith’s men here, two more there.
The support fire slackened and then stopped, conscious that their leader was almost on top of the building.
Some moved forward to support him, but the First Sergeant kicked open the door and swiftly moved inside.
When the American Army had first brought the pump action shotgun to war in Europe, their First World War adversaries, the Imperial German Army, had declared the weapon illegal and threatened to execute any man carrying such a weapon, so devastating was it in the fine art of trench clearing.
In the right hands, the 12-gauge Winchester was also the most perfect weapon for removing any hostile intent in a room.
Lucifer had the hands for the job, and the Winchester blew the intended mutineer off his feet and spread parts of him over the already stressed Akinfeev.
The Soviet officer went into rapid meltdown.
Hanebury’s reflexes made him swivel and pump in one easy fluid movement, directing a stream of shot into the three men who started moving to attack him. Each went down and stayed down.
Hanebury brought the weapon back round, but the strap momentarily caught on the muzzle of a propped rifle, which gave Akinfeev time.
The unhinged officer brought his pistol up but, before he could fire, an explosion unbalanced him, buying Hanebury the extra half-scond he needed.
The Winchester deposited its contents in Akinfeev’s exposed left side, stripping away flesh, and flaying the stomach and hip area.
Thrown against the wooden wall, Akinfeev somehow retained enough understanding to raise his pistol towards Hanebury, even as his innards started to spill from the horrendous wound.
Akinfeev had no strength, and the pistol sagged away.
His mad eyes, fired with pain and hatred, looked at his killer, and saw only death therein.
Lucifer put the last 12 gauge in the middle of the Russain’s chest, and brought instant end to the man’s suffering.
Dispassionately examining the horrendous wounds on his victims, Hanebury slid more shells into the Winchester.
Hearing a small whimper, Hanebury dropped behind a table and brought the Winchester up ready. Curled up in the corner was Smith, his own emotional breakdown in its advanced stages.
Relaxing, Lucifer noted the approach of two of his men.
“What the fuck happened to you, Rodger?”
His 2IC stumbled in, clearly in pain.
“Someone put a faust on my vehicle, Top. Seems I left a little bit behind when I bailed out.”
“Let’s get that seen to. Medic! Medic!”
Stradley tossed his head in the direction of the gibbering wreck in the corner.
“What’s with the laughing boy there, Top?”
“Guess he just couldn’t cut it, Rodger. Medic! Medic!”
They actually didn’t have a medic, but Sergeant Ringold knew his way around battle wounds, so to him fell the task of reassembling Stradley’s foot.
“Right, let’s get this area secured a-sap. Call the Greyhound team in closer. Leave the firebase for now. C’mon, let’s move it, boys!”
Gradually, the MP unit made sense of the scene and recovered the bodies, friend and foe alike.
Those of their unit were laid out and covered, ready to be transported back to civilisation.
Those of the enemy were simply laid out, with all the horrors visited upon them on display.
Nave walked up, having repositioned the command jeep, chewing on a Hershey bar as he inspected the Soviet corpses.
“Jeez, Top. I take it these here are your handiwork?”
Hanebury shrugged, the Winchester sat nestled in the crook of his arm.
“Damn but that thing can fuck up your whole day and then some!”
There was no arguing with that.
Corporal Collier strolled up and mimed taking a chomp out of Nave’s Hershey.
“Get ye the fuck!” shouted Nave, his Arizona accent doing its best with the Scottish expression they had frequently been exposed to when camped alongside a Highland regiment in England.
None the less, he extended the bar and Collier nibbled a portion off.
“Top, second sweep is complete. Area is secure. We have eighteen bad guys here, all dead.”
“Nineteen.”
Both Hanebury and Collier looked at Nave in puzzlement.
“Eighteen,” Collier corrected, sure of his figures.
“Come down here a ‘ways.”
A few yards down the track, Nave stopped and pointed upwards.
“Now, I don’t know exactly what that is, but I’m guessing it isn’t a fucking bird.”
It certainly wasn’t, but it was the very devil to get down.
Eventually, the limbless torso was nudged out of the branches and fell into the undergrowth below.
Hanebury searched the pockets for intel before allowing the body to be piled with the others.
He examined the two items quickly and decided he would look at the map and booklet properly later. For now, he just wanted to get his unit secured and the whole affair reported.
Nazarbayeva was quite thankful that she had arrived early for the meeting, as she and a number of other senior officers were presently queuing to get into the building where the meeting was to be held.
Since the failed attempt by Makarenko, security had been tightened up, and no weapons of any kind were permitted within the main buildings, except those carried by the Kremlin Guards and authorised NKVD troops.
Having already been searched twice, Nazarbayeva was now in a line of some fifteen senior ranks, waiting to be sent through the latest acquisition intended to protect the lives of the General Secretary and his entourage.
A large but extremely effective Geffchen & Richter metal detector, stripped from a factory in Leipzig, obstructed the main stairs at ground floor level, leaving no alternative for anyone wishing to go upstairs but to walk through it.
It was a slow process, as there was seemingly no-one without something metal that set off the device, from belt buckles to watches to pens. Those attending had already been warned not to wear their awards, so it was a curiously unadorned group of generals and admirals that waited patiently for their turn.
Zhukov, leading the queue, removed his watch and belt, before stepping through to a relieving silence.
Accepting both back on the other side, he nodded at one or two in the queue and moved off, having ‘reassembled’ himself.
Marshal Hovhannes Bagramyan ceased his animated conversation with his frontal aviation commander, Major General Buianskiy, and followed next, as behind him the growing queue become a virtual who’s who of Soviet military talent.
By the time Nazarbayeva got to the device, most of those waiting understood what would and what wouldn’t set the damn thing off, and most already held belts, pens, drinking flasks and a plethora of personal artefacts ready for open inspection.