Romanov Succession (37 page)

He saw them coming at him from the port side—three of them in a vee—and he jerked the plane toward them and it threw them off; they swept overhead but there was another one coming dead-level at him across the treetops and he heard the guns chattering behind him—the dorsal gunner's voice: “Look at that! I got him—I got him!” And the I-16 plunged into the trees in a black burst of smoke.

He had the altitude of the jump from Rostov's explosion; he used it to take violent action—a feint to the right, a sudden dive to the left with the four Cyclone engines shrieking at full power. He had gone rock-steady. “There will be no evasive action once we turn onto the bomb run. Brace yourselves—and God bless you all.…”

“Bombardier to pilot. PBI centered.”

“Bombardier—eight seconds.”

“Ready Highness-”

“They're not going to stop us. Not now.…” He jammed the mike button. “Two seconds—one—it's your airplane.…”

And then there was nothing he could do but sit in the juddering pool of his terror. Fifty feet above the roadbed the B-17 roared straight down the railway and for a moment he had the utter fright of knowing that the smokestack of the engine was going to smash right into the nose of the plane. Then they were over it, past it, running down the back of the train with the jerk and slam that meant the bay doors were open. It was as if he could drop down through the greenhouse and land safely on his feet on the catwalk of the train.

All around him the I-16s were snarling and wheeling: jabbing at him with their guns; dodging like mosquitoes. Something stitched a line of half-inch holes through the ceiling of the cockpit and the bullets lanced forward at an angle, breaking the windscreens outward: slivers of glass spun about the cockpit and one of them cut the back of his right hand. He was cool enough to make a rough count of the planes he could see in the air and he had to estimate their number at more than thirty; it was a miracle he was still in the air and it was a miracle that was needed: he needed it and history needed it.… The lurch of the airframe pasted him down into the seat and he saw the nose writhe wildly into the sky and for a moment he thought they'd been shot to pieces but then he realized what it was: two tons of bombs had left the airplane and the sudden loss of weight had thrown them upward fifty feet in the air.

“
Bombs away
!”

He hauled everything to climb power and angled his flaps and sent the big plane into a narrow skidding turn that might easily wrench the wings off but it was worth the risk, anything was. “I'm making a three-sixty.”

“
What
?”

“I said a three-sixty. We're making the bomb run again—
we've got to be sure.
”

He was far enough into the turn to be able to see out when the delay-fused bombs went off and he was close enough to it to be rocked by the explosion, deafened by the earsplitting thunders of it.

He saw it crystal clear when the roofs lifted right off both cars. He saw the red-painted cross on the roof between them before they disintegrated into hurtling missiles of shattered armor-plate. He saw the two carriages go up with a force of violence that lifted half the train off the rails by its couplings and sent the forward locomotive spinning across the snow as if it were on skates. In the midst of the boiling smoke there was nothing left of the troop cars—nothing bigger than a matchstick; nothing at all; and he yanked the controls far over to the right and bellowed at the top of his voice:

“Cancel that last order. We've done it!
Russia—you are free
!”

The B-17 staggered; it threw him forward against his harness straps and an incredible roar burst into the cockpit—a cry of wind that fluttered the cuffs against his ankles and ripped the chart from Ulyanov's lap. The Plexiglas nose section had been blown through by I-16 cannon and the plane was a stovepipe and he had time to yank the control yoke back between his knees but no time for anything else. Cannon and machine-gun tracer tore the aircraft apart in a fury of concentrated violence and he was reaching to press the Bail-Out bell when the plane pivoted on its tail and there was only time for a white-hot instant of wheeling triumph before the blackness of forever engulfed him.

7.

When the flock of Soviet pursuit craft jumped the leading bomber Alex knew it was finished and he heard Sergei's anguished cry: “We are betrayed!” but there was nothing for it but to carry it out to the finish because the train was approaching on schedule and there was still a chance at it. But the hope had drained out of him even before Felix's B-17 made its spectacular bull's-eye hits on the two armored troop carriages and blew the hospital car completely off the rails intact—askew like a toy that had been the object of a petulant child's temper. The forward locomotive skidded around on ice and tipped over very slowly with steam exploding from it everywhere. The gallant Flying Fortress wheeled away toward the west and the Soviet fighters swarmed angrily after. Alex was on his feet then: there was still a chance to get to the hospital car before the fighters came back strafing. He yelled and waved them forward and slammed his hand down on the mortarman's shoulder and when he began his run he heard the tinny rattle of the charge sliding down the pipe and then the
whump
like the very loud echo of a hard-hit tennis ball. Running in the deep snow with Sergei and the rest strung out in a splashing line he heard the shell flutter overhead and saw it explode beyond the target—a geyser of snow and clotted earth. The mortar dropped its aim and the next one dug a crater just ahead of the hospital car and now the aim was bracketed and the third one—he was still forty yards out, running as fast as he could but the snow nearly sucked the boots off his feet—the third one splashed against the side of the carriage and then the fourth mortar shell exploded right between two windows. It didn't breach the armored wall but it blew both bulletproof panes out of their housings and buckled the metal. Then the mortar went silent because it had done its job.

In the sudden quiet there was nothing but the ringing in his ears from the explosions and the thrashing crunch of their legs in the clinging snow. He had the nine-millimeter tommy gun braced against the crook of his bicep ready to fire when they appeared in the windows but they kept their heads down inside the car; at intervals one or another of his own men sprayed the face of the car with automatic small-arms fire. The edge of the big drum-clip cannister rubbed against his left wrist and he listened for the rattle of gunfire beyond the train, expecting it because some of them might try to escape the carriage on that side. But no one emerged from the isolated carriage on either side. They must have been battered when the car had been blown off the tracks; perhaps a good many of them inside were dead.

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.