eh?”
The bandits laughed.
Danilov seemed to relax. He waved one gloved hand toward the sergeant. “Vanya, you old son-of-a-bitch! For a second there you scared the shit out of me!”
The bandy-legged little man grinned from ear to ear, jumped down to the tracks, and came over to them. “So sorry, Comrade Danilov.” He nodded toward Chuikov. “I see you’ve already met my gallant leader.”
“Indeed. He’s been the perfect gentleman. A rare credit to our glorious armed forces.” Danilov holstered his pistol. “Well, I’d better get the lads to work. We’ve got a lot to unload and not a lot of time to do it in.”
“You won’t…” Chuikov choked off the rest of his sentence.
“Won’t what, my dear fellow?” Danilov asked politely. “Get away with it?” He smiled again. “Of course we will. By the time anyone realizes this train hasn’t just suffered a routine breakdown, my friends and I and the goods you’ve been guarding so efficiently will be halfway to Moscow. And Moscow is a very big city. You’d be surprised at how easy it is for people and merchandise to disappear there.”
The bandit chief glanced down at the bandy-legged sergeant. “Look after the lieutenant, Vanya.” Something bleak and cold appeared in his eyes. “Take care of him for me, won’t you?” He strode off toward the waiting line of trucks.
“Why, Sergeant? Why?” Chuikov asked bitterly.
“Money, why else?” The sergeant laughed, a harsh, braying sound. “My cut of this one job will be worth a year’s pay. And I don’t have to kiss any ass wearing an officer’s shoulder straps to get it, either.”
There wasn’t any good answer to that.
Chuikov watched his surviving troops being herded out of the passenger car at gunpoint. They stumbled down the embankment, hands clasped to their heads, pale with shock and shame. He could feel his own anger growing. By God, he’d make sure these bandits didn’t escape justice. He’d help the military police hunt Danilov and this bastard sergeant down wherever they tried to hide. Their smirking faces were burned into his memory.
Their faces… Chuikov suddenly shivered. They’d let him see their faces.
The little sergeant read his mind. “That’s right, Lieutenant. This is as far as you’re going.” He raised the assault rifle he’d been cradling so casually.
Chuikov whirled in a panic, running for the forest.
The other man let him get just ten feet before he fired.
Three burning hammerblows threw Chuikov facedown into the mud. His fingers scrabbled vainly in the dirt as he struggled to lever himself upright, trying desperately to breathe. He was still gasping when a final crashing blow sent him spiraling down into darkness.
One hundred and fifty miles northeast of Moscow, the mighty Volga River meandered past Yaroslavl’s domed churches and silent smokestacks. Pollution-stained chunks of ice swirled southward with the current — visible signs of a winter arriving weeks before its normal time. Patches of black ice and sudden, blinding snowstorms were already making travel along the Moscow highway a dangerous and uncertain enterprise.
There were other signs of trouble in Yaroslavl.
The line of weary men, women, and children clutching empty shopping bags wound past all the Government Milk Store’s bare shelves and stretched far out into the main city square. Dour workers in stained white smocks and hair nets stood behind a wooden counter at one end of the store, dispensing small ration packets of powdered milk and moldy cheese at a glacial pace.
The tired faces of those at the front of the line tightened as a worried-looking worker emerged from the store’s back room and went into a whispered conference with the store’s portly, bearded manager. Just to get this far, they’d already been shuffling forward an inch or two at a time for hours. Supplies of even the most basic goods were running low as the oddly early winter closed its icy grasp around the city.
“Friends, friends! Please listen to me!” The manager waved his hands, seeking their attention. “I have a most unfortunate announcement to make.”
He shook his head sorrowfully. “Because of unexpectedly high demand, our stocks have fallen below emergency reserve levels. Accordingly, I am forced to close this store until new supplies arrive… perhaps tomorrow.”
Muttered curses rose from the waiting crowd. Some of the younger children, frightened by their parents’ anger, began crying.
One of the men closest to the counter, a big ironworker, stepped out of line and glared at the manager. “Stuff this ‘emergency reserve’ garbage! You’ve got milk and cheese left back there. Now, start handing it out!”
“I’d like to oblige you, friend. Honestly, I would.” The manager’s plump fingers plucked nervously at his beard. “But regulations require me to keep — ”
“Regulations, hell!” an angry voice shouted from near the back. “These bastards are hoarding the milk for themselves!”
Others in the crowd growled their agreement with that outraged assessment. They began pushing and shoving their way forward. A rack of empty shelves toppled over with a thunderous crash.
The manager paled and backed away from his counter. “Hold on! Hold on, friends! Don’t make this a police matter.”
Jeers greeted his plea. “Fat pig! Bloodsucker! Exploiter!”
Led by the big ironworker, shouting men and women climbed over the counter, urged on by those behind them. Others even further back began smashing the store’s plate-glass windows, hurling shelves and signs they’d torn down out onto the pavement. Some started chanting, “Food! Food! Food! We want food!”
As the crowd surged over the counter several clerks tried to block the stockroom door with their bodies. That was a mistake. In seconds, heated words turned to violent acts. The clerks went down under a sudden barrage of flying fists and boots. Pieces of wood torn from splintered shelves and now used as clubs rose and fell, thudding into skulls and smashing ribs. Blood stained the store’s tile floor and splattered across its yellowing white walls.
Shaking with fear, the milk store manager turned to flee. But powerful hands dug into his plump shoulders and yanked him backward.
“No, pig. You don’t get away so easily!” The ironworker’s face was a hate-filled mask.
The manager screamed in terror. He was still screaming when the big man hurled him into the midst of the howling mob.
The big black ZIL limousine swept past the guards manning the Borovitskaya Tower gate without stopping. Command flags flying from its hood identified the car, and no soldier with any sense delayed Marshal Yuri Kaminov on his way to a meeting with the Russian Republic’s President. Plenty of the dirt-poor and isolated border outposts near Kazakhstan were full of officers and men who’d done something to annoy the notoriously bad-tempered chief of the general staff.
Gearshift grinding, the ZIL followed the steeply rising road, roaring uphill past the elegant nineteenth-century facade of the State Armory building and into the main Kremlin compound. Still moving at high speed, the black limousine flashed past the domed palaces, cathedrals, the old headquarters of the Supreme Soviet, and the Russian Senate building. Flocks of startled birds and well-dressed bureaucrats scattered out of its path.
Kaminov’s staff car stopped in front of the massive yellow brick Arsenal — once an army museum and now used as an office building by the President and his advisors. The driver, a young sergeant in full dress uniform, climbed out quickly and opened the rear driver’s-side door. Then he stiffened to rigid attention, still holding the door open.
The marshal, stocky and squarely built with a rough-hewn peasant’s face, nodded to the young man as he emerged from the ZIL. “Wait here, Ivanovskiy. I won’t be inside long.”
“Yes, sir.”
Another officer followed the marshal out of the limousine. The three stars on Valentin Soloviev’s shoulder boards identified him as a full colonel in the Russian Army. Everything else about him, from his straw-colored hair, ice-cold gray eyes, and high, aristocratic cheekbones down to his immaculately tailored uniform and brightly polished boots, seemed to separate him from the older, plainer Kaminov.
A waiting functionary hurried forward from inside the Arsenal. “The President is ready to see you, Marshal. In his private office, as you requested.”
