Mokrenko and the others dismounted, quickly. Two went for the other building from the chimney of which poured smoke, while two more, including the sergeant, drew pistols and stormed through the half open doorway.
Inside they found two women. One, an aetherially beautiful eastern Tatar or Yakut woman, or a close cousin to them, tended the fire in the masonry stove in the middle of the room. The other, young—far too young, thought the sergeant—clutched a fur blanket to cover her chest. He didn’t think she was wearing anything underneath.
“Who are you?” asked the Tatar or Yakut girl, looking up warily.
“My name doesn’t matter,” the sergeant replied. “Think of me—of us—as your liberators. At least we were given to understand that you women and girls were held captive here.”
“For about six months,” the woman replied. “Some of us a little more, some a little less. And our captors?”
“Dead, all dead, except for two.”
“And my horses?”
“Those we have. We don’t need them all or, at least, not all the ones we have plus the ones in the field. We’ll pay you for what we take. Why, by the way, horses? Why you?”
The lovely woman sighed sadly. “We were told the tsar was paying a good price for stout horses for the war. My father tallied up the extras we had, matched that to the price, and decided we could spare fifty. So he sent my husband and myself, with our children, west to Yekaterinburg to sell them. Our train was robbed. My husband and son killed. My daughter, like myself, was forced to become a whore for the scum who robbed us and murdered my man and boy.”
“You’re not a whore unless you both charge and do it willingly,” Mokrenko corrected. “Even the fucking Moslems know that much. Neither you nor your daughter are whores. How much were you expecting to get from the tsar for your horses?”
“Eight hundred rubles, in gold, apiece,” she said.
“I’m a little surprised the Imperial Army was willing to buy Yakut horses. They don’t really meet the standards, even though I am sure they’re fine animals.”
“The representative who came to town said that the casualties among horses had been so high that the standard was being dropped for many of them, or there would be no new horses at all.”
“That makes a certain sense,” Mokrenko agreed. “It’s a little high, but we can pay that for what we’ll need. Up to the lieutenant, though.”
“What’s up to me?” asked Turgenev, coming through the door, rifle in hand.
“What we’ll pay this woman for her horses. They belong to her.”
“I see. Well, yes,” agreed Turgenev, “of course we’ll pay a fair price.”
“Perhaps,” said the woman, “you are our liberators, indeed.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Come, there is something you must see.”
“See to it, would you, Sergeant? I want to check out the other buildings.”
“Sure, Sir. Lead on, Mrs…?”
“Saskulaana. That’s my given name.”
“Saskulaana,” repeated Mokrenko, savoring the sound. Truly, there is beauty to be found in every corner of the Earth. “Very lovely, if you don’t mind my saying so. Now what was it you wanted to show me?”
Leaving the large Russian stove, she led the sergeant over to a separate chamber, just off from the main room. It was something of a treasure trove, he noted, with stocks of fur, warm clothing, heavy cloth, tools like shovels and axes, and all manner of useful things stolen from the railroad.
“This was their chief’s quarters. Mishenka was his name. I don’t know his family name.
“There,” she said, pointing. The object at which she pointed was a mid-sized iron safe. “No matter how hard he tried, he could never get it open.”
“Where did it come from?”
“They took it from a train. I think it was heading east from Yekaterinburg.”
“Indeed? Well, I have someone…”
There was something else in the room, a large pile of baggage and clothes.
“And this is?”
Saskulaana answered, “It’s part of how they kept us here, when they were generally too lazy to post guards. We were allowed a single garment apiece, exchanged as needed. All of our warm clothes, though, were kept here so that it was death to escape, most of the year.”
For the moment the prospect before him took Shukhov’s mind off the pain of his still fresh and recently outraged bullet wound.
“If only I had some nitroglycerine,” he muttered. “Well… make do or do without,” he decided, heading to one of the sleighs to recover his mini demolitions kit.
Mokrenko accompanied the engineer because, after the miscalculation with blowing up the Loredana, only partially mitigated in the sergeant’s mind by the fortuitous destruction of the Kerch, he didn’t entirely trust Shukhov’s abilities, demolitions-wise.
It had taken all of them, including the fourteen freed women, to both round up the horses and get them in shelter and to drag the thing on rollers out of the building, and then on sledge to a spot the engineer had picked for his first attempt at—oh, be still, my heart—safecracking. How much did it weigh?
I’d guess a bit over a ton, thought Turgenev, straining to move it with the rest.
“I need a pot and a good fire,” Shukhov had explained. “‘Why?’ you ask. Because while I don’t have nitroglycerin, I do have TNT, and it has a low melting point. Oh, and I need some fat or grease.”
“Are the fumes toxic?” asked the sergeant.
“Yes, but they won’t be bad outdoors if we don’t go out of our way to breathe them.”
Saskulaana brought one pot and a tripod in one hand and, in another, a pot with coals from the big Russian stove in the main room. Several of the other women brought armloads of wood, small enough gifts, they thought, for the men who had freed them from slavery. One girl, small and slight, brought a pot of fat, since the engineer hadn’t specified how much he would need.
“Perfect, ladies, perfect,” the engineer assured them. “Now go back to the building where it’s warm and safe.”
The safe lay on its back, door to Heaven. A close inspection told Shukhov that, The door is tight enough to the frame to make sure the TNT stays in the crack, rather than going into the interior of the safe. This is good.
It’s also good—better than good, really—that the Germans gave me TNT rather than hexanite. I wouldn’t dare try this with that toxic shit.
Carefully, using the sticks, logs, and kindling provided by the women, Shukhov nursed the coals into a fire. On this, he placed the pot, then tore the packaging from the TNT. He recognized that the letters and words on the paper packaging were in English, but whether they were American or British high explosive he couldn’t say.
Free of its packaging, the two blocks of TNT were dumped into the pot.
“Sergeant,” asked the engineer, “could you find us a longish twig about the width of the blasting caps?”
This wasn’t especially hard to find. He broke the twig in two, dipped each in the fat, and then jammed each one at an angle into the crack between safe door and wall.
Humming, but making sure he stayed upwind of the pot, Shukhov stirred the explosive as it liquified.
Once it was a liquid, yellow and still fairly thick, he picked up the pot by the handle and, using a gloved hand, then carefully began pouring the contents to fill the crack. He could only do this on three sides, as the side by the hinges was quite tight and flush to the wall.
The liquid TNT filled the crack in a safe that was, by now, ice cold. One effect of this was that the TNT tended to freeze in the juncture of door and safe wall. This helped ensure that none of it, or so little as not to matter, would leak into the hollow of the safe even if there were a gap somewhere.