But first they had to get Lenin.
Chapter 10
Commander Marko Kravchenko knew something was amis when the lights went out. The train lurched once, twice, a third time, and then swung to the right and seemed to grind to a halt. The soldiers in the confined compartment began loading and priming their weapons. Curses and oaths were hissed in the faint light, the smell of sweat and cigarettes mixing with machine oil.
The narrow windows, no wider than eight inches high, cracked under sniper fire. Four men fell at once, blood and brain matter spraying their comrades. The remaining windows shattered and more bodies slumped. Panic spread through the compartment as the doors refused to budge.
Kravchenko roared above the melee. ‘Stay calm, Comrades, remember your training! Start shooting back. Locate and eliminate those snipers!’ He grabbed a radio operator, instructing him to send a mayday.
Sweat poured down the crouching operator's face as he twisted the band dial to no avail. ‘No signal,’ he whispered. ‘The signal’s jammed.’
More bodies were crumpling, filling the compartment, restricting any movement. Kravchenko moved back down the carriage stooping below the window height. Above the din of weapons fire he roared instructions to the N.C.O.s. The priority was to get out under covering fire.
Kravchenko began to taste copper in his mouth. Behind him the shooting had stopped, the shouts and screams falling silent as grenades were lobbed into the carriage. This is it, he thought, this is where I die, trapped like a rat.
Soldiers, desperate, surged, pushing him further into the alcove, smothering him. The first grenade flashed and the carriage shook.
Then the rest went off, muffled by the bodies pressing into him. Men screamed, cried out and, like cornered animals, sought escape by any means back into the snipers line of vision. More fell onto the dead, dying and injured, and a pile of bodies was mounting in the middle of the carriage. Muffled explosions outside, followed by the crack of a heavy machine gun, told Kravchenko that the second troop carrier was under attack. The body on top of him fell forward and he realised that he and two others at the alcove on the far side were all that was left of forty-five elite troops. Men were expiring in the choking miasma and the respite was brief. More grenades rolled in and detonated simultaneously, the shock wave throwing him upwards against the ceiling. Stunned, with tears rolling down his eyes, he spotted a rent in the floor. He decided he wasn’t going to wait for the next round of grenades. Grabbing two machine guns and a helmet he dived over the mass of bodies down the hole onto the snow below.
He rolled clear of the train carriage, hoping that he hadn’t been spotted. Pushing himself slowly backwards through the snow, he surveyed the carnage. Both troop carriages were destroyed. The locomotive had been derailed, making a meandering S-shape along the tracks.
Lenin’s carriage was untouched and German soldiers were disconnecting the carriage. Unaware of the carriage being unhitched, some Russian troops had escaped from the second troop carriage. They were firing into the trees in fire-fight desperation. They began to drop one by one as the snipers picked them off.
German soldiers appeared on the roof and began shooting down on them. Kravchenko’s mind began to race. Part of him wanted to join his comrades but it was clear that this situation was hopeless. They had been set up and the ambush was flawless. In minutes the entire elite NKVD unit had been wiped out. Slowly he eased into the line of trees, pushing the snow together with his arms in front to cover the trail.
Sitting against a tree stump, he fought the terror that had gripped him. His leg was involuntarily shaking as he checked himself for any injuries. His chest ached from the dive out of the carriage and he was almost totally deaf from the grenades. Blood mixed with snot ran down his face and his eyes swam with double-vision. He fought the wave of nausea that swept him. He took deep draughts of breath, the icy air piercing his lungs.
His head began to clear and he gingerly checked himself for injuries; nothing broken and no serious cuts. Apart from a gash across his upper left hand which he dressed roughly, he was in pretty good shape.
They were in the middle of nowhere, on a secret mission with only a handful of people who knew where they were. Tyumen would only start to become concerned four or five hours from now. He checked the two guns — PPSh-1941Gs — robust, full magazine, intact and not inclined to freezing. His sidearm was fully loaded and, in a sheath strapped to his calf, was a knife his father had made for him although these only marginally improved his odds of getting out of here alive.
Already the temperature was starting to drop. Added to the state of shock he was in, time was running out. The carriage containing Lenin and his embalming team was now disconnected and a German soldier on the roof fired a flare up into the sky. The area was washed in an unearthly red light and Kravchenko pressed himself further against the tree.
The forest overhead shook to the sound of engines revving and in the fading red light the immense shadow of an airship manoeuvring appeared across the snow. It positioned itself directly over the carriage, dancing only slightly in the breeze. The soldiers swarmed over the carriage, fastening harnesses around it. Within minutes the airship gunned its engines and slowly the carriage rose from the rails, groaning into the murky sky.
The soldiers remained standing on the carriage's roof, checking the ropes and harnesses constantly. A lone German was strolling back toward the ship, waving to it as he re-holstered his Luger. It was clear that the soldier was an S.S. officer.
Schenker took his time reaching the rendezvous point. During the ambush he had gone to the locomotive after it had de-railed. Ordering the two engineers down, still dazed from the blasts, he shot them both in the head. They lay slumped beside their engine, their blood mixing with the slush. He had remained out of harm’s way as Brandt’s Korps had taken out the two carriages.
The little untermensch Olga was somewhere in the trees. The sooner he could see her, the better he would feel. He considered her presence racially unclean for such a noble operation and, if the opportunity arose, he would put a bullet in her.
By the time he was back to Lenin’s carriage, it was leaving the ground under the drone of the airship's engines. He was joined by Brandt, Kant, Schultz and Kramer. Olga was walking back toward them. On instinct she kept looking in Kravchenko’s general direction but hadn’t spotted him.
Snow began to fall lightly on the burning carriages and the dead bodies around them. As soon as the team had assembled, the airship banked towards a clearing. Regan could be seen hanging out of the bridge with a hand- held camera pointing at the carriage. Bader, Hauptmann and Koheller looked up, giving the thumbs-up from its roof. The carriage was swinging slightly, dragging the airship with it.
Rathenow and his crew would have their work cut out if they had to ship it any further than the river. Rope ladders descended and the team climbed aboard. Only Schenker and Brandt remained behind.
‘Where were you, Schenker?’
Schenker’s jaw clenched. ‘Neutralising the enemy.’
‘Two defenceless train drivers?’ The attack had gone to plan. Had it gone the other way, and his unit been wiped out, it would have been acceptable. That was war but Schenker’s actions were cowardly.
Brandt slipped his Mauser pistol out of its holster and pressed it into SS officer’s ribs. ‘You first, Captain. From now on you will do as I say or I will shoot you and leave you in the tundra.’
‘Brandt, believe me, when the High Command hears of a Slav bitch fighting alongside German Soldiers, I can guarantee your remaining days will be in Russia.' He paused then sneered, ‘Too bad about that last mission in Norway. I believe it was very, very messy,’
Brandt pushed the pistol deeper into Schenker’s gut. It yielded softly. ‘You SS officers have no head for heights … and as for Olga, at least she and I will be fighting men who aren’t afraid of a fight — climb up!’
The Tura River was frozen as far as the eye could see and, sitting on the ice, was Kincaid’s private Short S26 C flying boat on modified skis. His studio’s logo of a bald eagle astride a film reel was emblazoned on the tail. On the nose section was the painting of a girl in a Grecian robe sitting side-saddle on a flagpole. In true cheesecake fashion, her red hair flowed out behind her and her infeasibly long legs seemed to kick joyfully the American flag flowing below her. Emblazoned beneath her in yellow day-glo letters was the flying boat’s name — The Liberty
