“Stand by,” said Cherimisov, “make ready… two… three…. GO!”
Yumachev’s foot lashed out, practically ripping the door from its hinges. As soon as it was out of the way, Yurin and Ilyukhin pulled the porcelain beads attached to the cords, and threw. Both threw to the far wall, which was not to plan.
“Flash! Flash!”
Every man closed his eyes and looked away. There was, however, only a single boom.
“Cease fire!” Cherimisov ordered. Fuck! Defective grenade. It would have to be early on, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t be the last try of the day; oh, no, that would never do. Now we have to wait half an hour. Double fuck.
The defective grenade not being their fault, Yumachev’s men didn’t lose their place in the order of march. Instead, with the defective grenade dragged outside with a grappling iron on a rope, and new grenades issued, the six of them once again stood in three ranks of two, ready to clear the room.
Once again the captain said, “Stand by… make ready… two… three…. GO!”
The door flew open under the shock of Yumachev’s boot. The first and second man in the stack each pulled the porcelain bead on their grenades, then flung them through the door.
“Flash! Flash!”
And there were two great flashes, following two smaller booms.
Yumachev opened his eyes and looked up. His right thumb pulled the lanyard of the dynamo light, then went back to gripping his machine pistol. The others followed suit. He stepped through the door and immediately opened fire on one of the dark targets. It went down.
As Yumachev stepped left while turning half right, keeping his back to the wall and scanning for more targets, Sobchak jumped through the door, firing. He, mirroring Yumachev, stepped right, put his back almost on the right wall, and fired again.
Unfortunately, Sobchak neglected to distinguish between a light painted target and a dark one. The target labeled “Grand Duchess Maria” fell over.
Next in was Yurin. He hadn’t gotten very far before Cherimisov shouted, “Cease fire! You all forgot to shout, ‘Romanovs get down!’ Now clear your weapons if you already haven’t, get out, and go practice that until you get it right. And tell the first sergeant to send down another squad.”
Camp Budapest
“Did any members of the royal family survive?” asked Kostyshakov, that night in the officers’ mess.
“Not a one, sir,” Cherimisov answered, with misery in his voice.
“Is the problem with the drill we’ve worked out?”
The captain shook his head, slowly, answering, “I don’t think so, sir. I think it’s a case of needing more practice in making quick distinctions.”
“You have any ideas?”
“Yes, sir, but it’s going to require a lot of ammunition. We need another underground range, this one in the form of an obstacle course of a sort, but different from the above ground one we put in, with dozens of targets, some light, some dark. Maybe some we get painted with civilian features, girls’ features. They have to be targets that appear very fleetingly, from odd places. It has to be confusing. And it has to make the men think quickly. And before we waste any more ammunition on something they’re just not up to yet, we need to get them to perfection on distinguishing these things in an instant. And I don’t want to use Range G4, the multistory complex one, because that’s supposed to be a graduation exercise. Besides, the light sucks more than we’d want for this.”
Kostyshakov thought about that for a few moments, chewing over the idea in silence. “No,” he said, finally.
“‘No?’”
“No, there’s enough time to build what you want. There’s not enough time to build it and run everybody through. So we’ll do something different.
“I’m going to task both Second and Third Companies to build one maze each. Well… not really a maze; just think of a wide, deep, snaking trench. No cut and cover, we’ll just dig down. The spoil we’ll pile on either side as bullet stops.
“We’ll put some platforms across so that the men running it can get from section to section. Then we’ll have all kinds of wooden targets—some we’ll paint as girls and boys—that can be moved, controlled, or released to gravity. We can move those around, too, so it remains unpredictable. Also, we can get or throw together some furniture and such to make it kind of an obstacle course.
“Let’s suppose we make them four arshin by four, and about sixty arshin of trench. That’s about eight cubic arshin per man in each of the two rifle companies. One day’s digging; call it. Then another day to set up platforms and a target system.
“Then we can run every man in each of your assault platoons through three, maybe four, times a day, for three or four days, if we must.”
Cherimisov thought about that. “I think that will work, as far as it goes. But I really wanted to be able to do it under limited light.”
Kostyshakov tilted his head to one side, looking at Cherimisov as if the latter had suddenly grown an extra nose on his forehead. “Have you never, young captain, heard of these things called ‘sunset’ and ‘night time’?”
Head straightening, Kostyshakov looked more closely. “When was the last time you slept, Cherimisov?”
No answer being forthcoming, he said, “That’s about what I thought. Go to bed. I’ll put the other companies to work on ranges G5 and G6.”
“Yessir.”
With a sketchy salute, Cherimisov stood, turned, and began to make his way from the mess to his own tent. On the way he heard several familiar voices—notably Mayevsky’s and the two assault platoon sergeants—discussing the day’s events. It was possible there was a slight trace of alcohol in the voices, but it could have been fatigue.
The troops will always bullshit, Cherimisov thought. Wish we could put it to some good use. I’ll just keep to myself and listen for a bit…
Interlude
Tatiana: The Sewing Circle
It broke my heart, seeing Olga withdraw into herself. She had always been the most serious of us girls. How could she not be? For nine years, Mama and Papa thought she would be the future tsarina. Papa even had a decree drawn up stating that Olga would succeed him to the throne. He made her co-regent, along with Mama, should he die before Alexei reached the age of twenty-one.
Yet when Alexei had been born she’d been filled with joy. Some might say that as a child of nine she couldn’t possibly understand, but they would be wrong. I remember the look on her face—the pride—when Papa made her Alexei’s godmother.
She could have resented Alexei, but didn’t, not even when he wouldn’t listen to her, when he’d misbehave so badly that Mama would blame Olga.
As she stared out of our bedroom’s window she seemed a very different person. It went beyond the melancholy woman she had grown into.
Once, she had spoken to me of the future of which she dreamed.
“I want to get married,” she’d said. “To live always in the countryside, always with good people, and with no officialdom whatsoever.”
I shared that dream. How it had soured.
Just the other day Olga had sat in the parlor with Mama, going through Mitya’s letters. Her eyes filled with tears which she wiped away with trembling hands. I believed that she was getting better, or at least, forgetting. She still kept mostly to our room and avoided conversation. Fortunately, Anastasia was happy to fill the silence with her own chatter.