His muscles were in agony and he rushed forward with the nightmare sensation that he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t making any headway: the snow was like quicksand. The breath fogged in front of him in great cloudy gasps and it seemed an inordinate time before he reached the corner of the car and touched his glove to its metal; Sergei ran along beside him slinging his submachine gun and unsnappinga pair of riot grenades from his webbed combat belt. Alex trained the tommy gun on the burst windows to give Sergei cover while Sergei armed the grenades and pitched them inside. Alex heard the muffled whump-whump when the grenades burst and flooded the car with tear gas.
He pulled his mask on over his head before he reached up for the door. The lower step had imbedded itself in the snow; he didn’t have to step up. The door came open: they never locked armored doors because it was armed attack they feared, not burglary.
He wheeled across the vestibule platform and smashed the inner door open with the butt of his tommy gun and curled into the long carriage spraying ammunition with abandon. The tommy gun climbed against his arm and he fought it down, hosing the billowing smoke-gas until the gun went hot through his gloves.
The gas stirred and in the sudden silence he heard someone exclaim behind him-the muffled echo of a voice contained behind a gas mask. It was Sergei. The others crowded past him and he heard the far door snap open.
“Hold your fire.”
Nothing moved, there was only the swirl of tear gas. Not a soul. The car was empty.
8
He got outside and wrenched off the gas mask. “Radio.” Voroshnikov trotted up and knelt with his back to Alex and Sergei pulled the thin telescoping antenna up, extending it from the pack. Sergei had the switches on. He handed the handset to Alex.
The rest of them clustered around him in slow silence. Their faces were masks of inarticulate fury. When the set was warmed up he spoke into it. “Alexsander to Saracens. Report.”
“Saracen One. Reading you.”
“Saracen Two. Read you clearly.”
“Saracen Four. Reading you.”
He touched the Send button. “Alexsander to Saracen Three. Report.”
Nothing. “Alexsander to Saracen Five. Report.”
Nothing. He didn’t give it another try. “Alexsander to Saracens. Rendezvous. Repeat-rendezvous. Acknowledge.”
Seconds elapsed and in the static he could feel the impact on them as they tried to absorb it. “Saracen One. Acknowledge.”
“Saracen Two”-he heard it when Solov’s voice broke-“Acknowledge rendezvous. Out.”
“Saracen Four. What happened?”
“Alexsander to Saracen Four. Acknowledge my order.”
“… Saracen Four. Acknowledge your message… Out.’
“Alexsander to Saracen One.”
“Saracen One reading you, Alexsander.” Postsev’s voice was harsh.
“Keep trying to raise Saracens Three and Five. See that they receive rendezvous orders. Acknowledge.”
“Saracen One. Acknowledge.”
“Alexsander out.”
He slapped the handset into Sergei’s palm and then the reaction hit him, the stunning disbelief and a rage beyond anything he had ever experienced: he stood agape in the snow and his muscles vibrated and he was overcome by an actual paralysis.
But the organism continued to accrete the impressions detected by the physical sensors and he was acutely aware of the stolid hissing of the rear locomotive-still there on the tracks behind its derailed tender-and of the wraiths of gas escaping from the two blown windows of the empty hospital car; the shattered debris of the troop carriages that had been bombed to twisted fragments, the explosion and crash his ears had absorbed earlier without conscious recognition then: Felix’s plane going down. And it struck him now that in all this furore he could account for only twenty casualties: the pilots and crews of the two bombers accounted for eighteen dead and he had seen two men catapulted from the skidding front locomotive when it fell over; they had flown from it like rag dolls and must be dead.
Now he heard Sergei talking to someone behind him: “There must be a driver and fireman there. Get them.” He was talking about the rear locomotive, the intact one.
Four men. The train had carried a total of four men: two locomotive engineers and two firemen.
He imagined he heard Vassily’s laughter A short burst of rapid fire. He didn’t turn to look. In a little while Sergei came back to him, walking with an unhealthy lurch along the roadbed as if a deck heaved under him. Sergei hoicked and spat. “Both of them ran for it. They were armed. We had to shoot them down.”
Sergei’s soles gritted on the snow. Alex saw the gloved palm flashing but he didn’t stir to avoid it. The hard slap rocked his head to one side.
He blinked and lifted his free hand to his cheek. Sergei pointed-the crest at the head of the railway grade.
He turned his dazed face that way. Nothing in sight but now he picked up the sound.
“Tanks.”
It shook him loose: galvanized him. He raised the tommy gun overhead. “The locomotive.” And began running toward it because if there were tanks ahead of them there would be tanks behind and perhaps coming in through the forest on either side as well and they wouldn’t send tanks alone without infantry to cover the gaps. It was a complete trap and the Soviets had waited until they were certain everybody was caught in it and now they were moving in for the kill.
But they had counted on the train being disabled and part of it wasn’t and that might provide an edge.
His troops ran forward in little knots, clustering on the tracks and leaping over the debris, homing on the chuffing steam engine. At the crest four T-34S loomed in line abreast and he saw the muzzles of their turret guns swivel and depress.
“Mortar. Shoot to blind them.”
It wouldn’t stop a tank but it could throw up spouts of snow to render the tanks’ spotters temporarily blind. The mortarman lodged the base of his pipe against a steel brace on the side of the locomotive and Alex waved his men forward, counting heads. He hadn’t lost any people. No casualties: no battle. The battle started now.
“Get aboard-find a handhold, get aboard.” He was leaping up into the cab then and Sergei was tossing his gun aside and reaching for the shovel but the tender was gone and there was no coal except a few handfuls in the scuttle and when Sergei had poured those into the firebox and slammed it shut he said, “It won’t take us far.”
“As far as it can.” He rammed the lever right over as far as it would go and released the brake.
The mortar went off softly, almost reproachfully. Then before its round landed one of the tanks opened fire.
The wheels spun on the cold rails and the engine moved with gasps and lurches; he ran the lever back down to slow speed in the hope it would get better traction. The T-34’s seventy-millimeter shell erupted somewhere in the snow beyond the boiler; he heard the great roar of it but didn’t see it. The muzzles were traversing now, the tanks grinding forward and starting to shoot in earnest: range about a thousand yards. With long guns they’d have blown the locomotive apart with the first half dozen tries but the T-34 carried a stubby antitank gun and it wasn’t much for accuracy. All these calculations ran unemotionally through his mind in a split instant of time. The wheels had purchase now and he ran the lever through three notches to half speed. The locomotive was moving-very slow but it was a downgrade and there was no load, no train to drag; she picked up speed inexorably. Fifteen White Russian soldiers clung to her-crowded into the cab, hanging on the ladders, perched on footholds. His perception of scene and events was fragmented and a significant part of his mind was in shock but he was taking the right actions, doing things out of instinct and as long as he could function under this intuitive motor power he’d be all right. He had no doubts: he’d got them into this and he’d get them out.