'I couldn't shoot,' the marksman sobbed. 'As soon as the helicopters came down they just chucked up the snow. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't give them covering fire.
When the snow cleared, the first thing I saw was that they had our people. They had knives to their throats. They'd have butchered them if I'd fired.'
His sergeant turned away, headed for the tra'pdoor, and the ladder and the corridor to the Commandant's office where the inquest would be raging.
The helicopter had speared first through the fences of Zone i, then across the roadway and into the fences and high wooden wall of Zone 4. It breached the barricades of the Women's camp.
The women had been in their work area at the time of the helicopters' assault, not at their machines but crawling up for vantage points, peering through the glass of the upper windows. As the helicopter exhausted its flight they had streamed from the doorway and out into their compound ignoring the shouts of the wardresses.
It was a stampede.
In the single watch-tower above the Women's zone, the guard seemed not to watch them, but stared across the broken defences into the men's camp.
One group ran towards the helicopter, and was laughing, screaming, at the dazed and disorientated crew strapped in their seats.
One group ran straight for the breach in the fences.
Twenty women, perhaps thirty, sprinted and slithered over the snow and iced paths, shrieking in hysteria, and heading for the hole without reason, and without care. Irina Morozova, not a part of the group, was running with them. A small girl, slight even in her quilted tunic and her knee-length black skirt. A single guard ran along the roadway dividing the two Zones holding rifle at the hip and his finger, awkward in its glove, trying to push forward the frozen catch from 'Safety'. The guard shouted once, and the women swept towards him, ignored him, the sight of the roadway in front of them, and beyond the guard the sight of the men's camp. The knees of the women pumped below their lifting skirts as they ran for the hole.
A sandcastle cannot staunch the tide. The guard was overwhelmed. He never fired, he never found the strength in his gloved finger to release 'Safety'. Beside Morozova, women fell on the guard and toppled him to the snow and she heard the howl of their fury and saw the scratching nails of their hands. Morozova watched. The hands ripped at his greatcoat, pulled at his tunic, thrust at the flies of his trousers. Morozova watched. She saw the skin of his belly, she saw the white of their hands. She heard the gabble of laughter, the scream of the soldier's fear.
There was a long burst of machine-gun fire into the snow and the women scattered like sparrows disturbed from a bird-table. Morozova saw two guards with machine-pistols a hundred metres away, on the road beside the corner of the men's fence. The guard whimpered; his arms were outstretched and his genitals were exposed and bloodied. Some women turned back towards their own compound. Two women ran away from the guards and along the stretch of seemingly empty road, but the watch-tower machine-gun found them and pitched them carelessly over. A few more women ran, hunched and bent, towards the hole into the men's compound. Morozova wondered if she were about to be sick, and she was running too, she was hunched as well.
Where was she running to?
In front of her a woman cartwheeled and there was the flash of flesh above her stockings and the white of her knickers. Another shouted as if a victory had been won.
Another wiped the blood from her hands onto the dark material of her skirt where it would be hidden.
Morozova saw the helicopter that was downed, she saw a dog that was dead. She could no longer see the other women, engulfed now by the men who had charged to meet them.
'You should not have come. You have escaped to a worse prison.'
A man gazed at her, a look of stupefaction on his round and fatted face.
'You have an Englishman in the camp,' she said. 'Where will I find him?'
'We have an Englishman… ' Poshekhonov shook his head and laughed. 'We also have a helicopter because we have an Englishman.'
Chapter 22
In the Kitchen Feldstein waited on Michael Holly, at the fringe of the river-flow of men. He had twice pulled Holly's elbow for attention, he had twice been rebuffed.
'They will have photographers on the Administration block. Every man, whether or not he is involved in positive action, must have torn off the name strip on his tunic…
'I want the forage caps down over men's heads, if they have a scarf they should wear it across their mouths…
'The machine-guns should stay under Huts 3 and 6, but I want a diversion rush with anything that looks like a gun to under 1 and 4. The men with most recent military experience should be involved…
'I want one man into the rafters of each hut and in the roof of the Kitchen and the Store and the Bath. I want holes in the roofing, and runners to report troop movements…
'What is it, Anatoly? No, the distribution of food is not my concern, that is for the Committee to organize… No, I am not putting a guard on the huts, that's the problem of the Committee. If they want to wreck the huts that's their concern… In a moment, Anatoly… Are we winning? Go and ask Comrade Major Kypov whether he thinks he's winning… Everything else must w a i t… After the meeting, please, after the meeting of the Committee…'
He gestured his hands to show that enough had been said.
The men around him backed away, respectful. In the corner of the Kitchen near to the Committee were the prisoners.
They sat on the floor, with their backs resting against the wall and their hands were clasped on top of their heads.
They watched for the first signs that they would be beaten, they waited for the rush of men with sticks and iron bars, they wondered whether before the night came they would be dangling from a taut rope.
'You have the prisoners. Don't play the idiot with the prisoners. With the prisoners we can show that we are not animals.'
Holly was distracted, half-listening, threading his way between the upturned tables and benches.
'How can we show that?'
'Let the prisoners go, Holly. Let them go without condition. Release them while you are at the zenith of your power.'
'Why?' it would be their way to shelter behind the backs of hostages. Only a coward covers himself with such a shield.'
'What if that shield saves us from a massacre?'
Holly had reached the table, eased himself down onto the end of a bench.
Feldstein spoke with a rare passion. 'You are a stranger, you know nothing of these people. You think they will allow a mutiny to continue because we hold one Colonel General, one helicopter crew? They don't give a shit about a human being. Look at this camp and tell me I am wrong.'
'Stay here, we'll listen to you.'
Holly turned away, the hands of the Committee reached out for him. A great gale of laughter blew amongst these men, and their hands slapped each other's backs, and the kisses smacked on their cheeks. Byrkin told how he had thrown a table-leg up into the hurricane of the down-blast, of the magic moment that he had seen the rope and the knotted blankets dragged away from the neat coil beside his feet. They laughed and they shouted and the noise echoed in the room.
'What will they do next?' Holly asked quietly, and the softness of his voice smashed through the bogus triumph.
'What any commander would do when he is beaten by an inferior force,' Byrkin said. 'He withdraws, he regroups, he waits for reinforcements, he attacks again… '
'How long?'
'Before tonight, before darkness,' said the man from Hut 4 with the mole on his nose.
