Morozov and several of his unmarried friends had stepped outside when they heard the noise. Most of them had military experience, though he did not. It didn't matter – nobody had the first idea what they should do. Five men came running out of the darkness. They were wearing uniforms and carrying rifles.
"Come! All of you come, follow us!" More weapons started firing close by, and two of the KGB troops went down, one dead, one wounded. He fired back, emptying his rifle in one long burst. There was a scream in the darkness, followed by shouts. Morozov ran inside and called for people to make for the door. The engineers needed little prompting.
"Up the hill," the sergeant said. "To the apartment block. Fast as you can!" The four KGB troops waved them along, looking for targets, but seeing only flashes. Bullets were flying everywhere now. Another of the troops went down screaming out his last breath, but the sergeant got the one who killed him. When the last engineer left the room, he and a private grabbed the spare rifles and helped their comrade back up the hill.
It was too big a mission for eighty men, the Archer realized too late. Too much ground to cover, too many buildings, but there were many unbelievers running around, and that was why he'd brought his men here. He watched one of them explode a bus with an RPG-7 antitank round. It burst into flames and slid off the road, rolling down the side of the mountain while those inside screamed. Teams of men with explosives went into the buildings. They found machine tools bathed in oil and set their charges quickly, running out before the explosions could begin the fires. The Archer had realized a minute too late which building was the guard barracks, and now that was ablaze as he led his section in to mop up the men who'd been kept there. He was too late, but didn't know it yet. A stray mortar round had cut the power line that handled all of the site's lighting, and all of his men were robbed of their night vision by the flashes of their own weapons.
"Well done, Sergeant!" Bondarenko told the boy. He'd already ordered the engineers upstairs. "We'll set our perimeter around the building. They may force us back. If so, we'll make our stand on the first floor. The walls are concrete. RPGs can hurt us, but the roof and walls will stop bullets. Pick one man to go inside and find men with military experience. Give them those two rifles. Whenever a man goes down, retrieve his weapon and get it to someone who knows how to use it. I'm going inside for a moment to see if I can get a telephone to work–"
"There's a radiotelephone in the first-floor office," the sergeant said. "All the buildings have them."
"Good! Hold the perimeter, Sergeant. I'll be back to you in two minutes." Bondarenko ran inside. The radiotelephone was hanging on a wall hook, and he was relieved to see it was a military type, powered by its own battery. The Colonel shouldered it and ran back outside.
The attackers – who were they? he wondered – had planned their attack poorly. First they had failed to identify the KGB barracks before launching their assault; second, they hadn't hit the residential area as quickly as they should have. They were moving in now, but they found a line of Border Guards lying in the snow. They were only KGB troops, Bondarenko knew, but they did have basic training, and most of all they knew that there was no place to run. That young sergeant was a good one, he saw. He moved from point to point along the perimeter, not using his weapon but encouraging the men and telling them what to do. The Colonel activated the radio.
"This is Colonel G. I. Bondarenko at Project Bright Star. We are under attack. I repeat, Bright Star is under attack. Any unit on this net respond at once, over."
"Gennady. this is Pokryshkin at the laser site. We're in the control building. What is your situation?"
"I'm at the apartments. I have all the civilians we could find inside. I have forty men, and we're going to try to hold this place. What about help?"
"I'm trying. Gennady, we cannot get you any help from here. Can you hold?"
"Ask me in twenty minutes."
"Protect my people, Colonel. Protect my people!" Pokryshkin shouted into the microphone.
"To the death, Comrade General. Out." Bondarenko kept the radio on his back and hefted his rifle. "Sergeant!"
"Here, Colonel!" The young man appeared. "They're probing now, not really attacking yet–"
"Looking for weaknesses." Bondarenko got back down to his knees. The air seemed alive with gunfire, but it was not yet concentrated. Above and behind the two, windows were shattering. Bullets pounded into the pre-cast concrete sections that formed the building wall, spraying everyone outside with chips. "Position yourself at the corner opposite this one. You'll command the north and east walls. I'll handle these two. Tell your men to fire only when they have targets–"
"Already done, Comrade."
"Good!" Bondarenko punched the young man on the shoulder. "Don't fall back until you have to, but tell me if you do. The people in this building are priceless assets. They must survive. Go!" The Colonel watched the sergeant run off. Perhaps the KGB did train some of its people. He ran to this corner of the building.
He now had twenty – no, he counted eighteen men. Their camouflage clothing made them hard to spot. He ran from man to man, his back bowed by the weight of the radio, spacing them out, telling them to husband their rounds. He was just finishing the line on the west side when there came a chorus of human voices from the darkness.
"Here they come!" a private screamed.
"Hold your fire!" the Colonel bellowed.
The running figures appeared as though by magic. One moment the scene was empty of anything but falling snow-the next, there was a line of men firing Kalashnikov rifles from the hip. He let them get to within fifty meters.
"Fire!" He saw ten of them go down in an instant. The rest wavered and stopped, then fell back, leaving two more bodies behind. There was more firing from the opposite side of the building. Bondarenko wondered if the sergeant had held, but that was not in his hands. Some nearby screams told him that his men had taken casualties, too. On checking the line he found that one had made no noise at all. He was down to fifteen men.
The climb-out was routine enough. Colonel von Eich thought. A few feet behind him, the Russian in the jump seat was giving the electrical panel an occasional look.
"How's the electricity doing?" the pilot asked in some irritation.
"No problem with engine and hydraulic power. Seems to be in the lighting system," the engineer replied, quietly turning off the tail and wingtip anticollision lights.
"Well…" The cockpit instrument lights were all on, of course, and there was no additional illumination for the flight crew. "We'll fix it when we get to Shannon."
"Colonel." It was the voice of the crew chief in the pilot's headset.
"Go ahead," the engineer said, making sure that the Russian's headset was not on that channel.
"Go ahead, Sarge."
"We have our two… our two new passengers, sir, but Mr. Ryan – he got left behind, Colonel."
"Repeat that?" von Eich said.
"He said to move out, sir. Two guys with guns, sir, they – he said to move out, sir," the crew chief said again.
Von Eich let out a breath. "Okay. How are things back there?"
"I got them in the back row, sir. I don't think anybody noticed, even, what with the engine noise and all."
"Keep it that way."
"Yes, sir. I have Freddie keeping the rest of the passengers forward. The aft can is broke, sir."
"Pity," the pilot observed. "Tell 'em to go forward if they gotta go."
"Right, Colonel."
"Seventy-five minutes," the navigator advised.
Christ, Ryan, the pilot thought. I hope you like it there…