“Forgive the delay,” Orlov said. “I told the Radio Officer to have the train stopped and to get my son on the line, but then the link went dead. I honestly don’t know what has happened.”
“I’ve learned that my team put a tree across the track,” said Hood, “but I don’t believe there was a collision.”
“Then perhaps my order was relayed in time,” said Orlov.
Hood saw the General look down.
“Nikita is calling,” said the General. “Gentlemen, I will be back.”
The image winked off and Hood turned to Liz. “What’s your impression?-
“Eyes steady, voice a little low, shoulders rounded,” she said. “Looks like a man telling the truth and not happy with the weight of it.”
“That’s how I read him.” Hood smiled. “Thanks, Liz.”
She smiled back. “You’re very welcome.”
And then the printer began to hum and suddenly both Rodgers and Herbert looked to Hood much as Orlov had as they watched the first photograph roll from the slot of the digital imager.
SIXTY-ONE
Tuesday, 10:54 P.M., Khabarovsk
Repair of the uplink cable was hampered by the fact that the tips of Corporal Fodor’s fingers were numb from the cold. Squatting beside the dish, he’d had to cut away an inch of casing with a pocketknife in order to expose enough wire to twist and poke into the contact. The fact that two of the civilians were watching him, discussing better ways of stripping wire, didn’t help.
When Fodor finally finished, he handed the receiver to the Lieutenant, who was standing directly behind him. Fodor’s movements were not triumphant, but quick and economical.
“Nikita,” General Orlov said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, General. We’re clearing away a tree-”
“I want you to stop.”
“Sir?” Nikita asked.
“I want you to call in your command. You’re not to engage the American soldiers, do you understand?”
Icy air blew through the window, against his back. But that wasn’t what made Nikita cold. “General, don’t ask me to surrender-”
“You won’t have to,” said Orlov. “But you will obey my orders. Is that clear?”
Nikita hesitated. “Completely,” he replied.
“I’m in contact with the American commander,” Or lov said. “Keep the line open and I’ll give you further-”
Nikita didn’t hear the rest. There was a dull clunk on the wooden floor of the train. He turned away from the phone and saw the grenade roll toward him slowly; an instant later it erupted in a flurry of intensely bright flashes and loud pops. The people in the car began to shout and he heard another thud, followed by the hiss of escaping gas.
Even as he drew his pistol and made his way to the door at the front of the car, Nikita couldn’t help but think about how clever this was: a flash grenade to make them shut their eyes, followed by tear gas to make sure they kept them shut-but without the optic damage that might have resulted from taking the gas in open eyes in such a tight space.
No permanent disfigurement to take to the United Nations, the Lieutenant thought angrily.
Nikita guessed that the Americans were attempting to smoke his soldiers out and capture them in order to make off with the money. No doubt the attackers had already scattered, to positions in the surrounding countryside, and it wouldn’t pay to send troops after them into the dark. But the commandos wouldn’t get him, and they wouldn’t get his cargo. As he felt his way through the dark with his left hand, he cursed his father for believing the Americans could be trusted … that they, and not General Kosigan, had Russia’s best interests at heart.
As he neared the door, Nikita shouted, “Sergeant Versky, cover us!”
“Yes, sir!” Versky yelled back.
When he reached the front of the car and emerged from the rolling clouds of tear gas, Nikita opened his eyes. He saw Versky’s men splayed belly-down in the snow, ready to shoot at any sign of enemy fire. Behind him, Corporal Fodor and another soldier were helping the disoriented civilians from the train.
Nikita backed away from the car. He called to a soldier on top who was facing the other side of thee train.
“Private Chiza, do you see anything?”
“No, sir.”
“How can that be?” Nikita yelled. “The grenades came from that side”‘
“No one approached, sir!”
This was impossible, Nikita thought. Those hand grenades were lobbed in, not fired from a rocket launcher. Someone had to have been close to the train, and then it occurred to him that if someone was, there would be footprints in the snow.
His frozen breath trailing behind him, Nikita trudged through the deep snow toward the engine to look on the other side.
SIXTY-TWO
Tuesday, 10:56 P.M., Khabarovsk
Crouched behind a boulder the size of his dad’s vintage T-Bird, Sergeant Chick Grey didn’t actually see Squires or Newmeyer toss their grenades through the windows of the train. But when the pride of Long Island, Valley Stream’s South High School track and field team saw the snow turn from charcoal to magnesium-white, it was as if a starting gun had gone off. He’d already snatched a look at the engine, and now he spun around the boulder, legs churning, body bent low as he raced toward it through the snow. He saw Squires and Newmeyer pull themselves up through the respective windows of their boxcars. He listened for the distinctive sound of the Berettas, didn’t hear it, then saw smoke pour from the back door of the second car, then caught a glimpse of Newmeyer bent over the coupling between it and the caboose. A moment later, the red car came free, leaving a soldier firing helplessly from the cupola.
Grey felt a rush of pride for what Squires had orchestrated: if no one was hurt, this would be an operation for the special forces time capsule.
Jerk-hole! he thought, and veered to the left, then to the right as he ran. He realized he’d courted doom by anticipating success, and atoned in crude but accepted Striker fashion.
When he was still several yards from the train, Grey saw a flare-cast shadow moving toward the front of the engine on the other side. Someone was coming around and, not wanting to stop, Grey leapt toward the injector pipe that ran perpendicular to the cab, just above the trailing truck. He grabbed it, swung his legs sideways into the window, let go of the pipe, and landed inside, squatting.
The engineer turned in surprise. Grey curled the fingers of his left hand tightly, hardening the outside of his hand, and drove it up under the soldier’s nose. He followed that with a hatchet kick, driving the side of his left foot into the man’s knee and dropping him to the floor.
The Sergeant didn’t want the man unconscious, just cooperative, in case he couldn’t figure out how to start the train. But the throttle and floor brake were easy enough to operate, and after kicking the latter so it was in the upward, off position, he pulled the vertical throttle toward him from the left. The train lurched forward.
“Out!” Grey barked at the soldier.
The peach-faced young Russian was fighting to get his legs under him but gave up, settling on his knees.
The Striker gestured roughly toward the window. “Dah-dosvedahnya!” he said, using the only Russian he knew. “Yes-so long!”
The Russian hesitated, then made a sudden grab for the Beretta in Grey’s left hip holster. The Striker cocked his left elbow back hard, into the Russian’s temple. The soldier hit the comer of the cab like a fighter caught by a ghost uppercut.
“You dog!” the Sergeant snarled. Pushing the throttle higher, Grey scooped the Russian onto his shoulder as if he were a sack of flour, hoisted him to the window, and dumped him back-first into a passing snowbank. He took a moment to look back and saw Russian soldiers running to try and catch the train. But gunfire from the two cars drove them back, and soon the Striker express was running into the night at three-quarters throttle.
When the train started up, Nikita was just coming around the cowcatcher. Jumping back off the track, he grabbed the handrail of the ladder behind and above the cowcatcher and walked up the three steps to the platform. Crouching there, his back against the boiler plate, he held his AKR submachine gun tight against his side and watched, with rising anger, as Private Maximich was hurled from the window and the other Americans fired to send his men, the rightful owners of the train, rushing behind trees and rocks for cover.
These are the men my father courted! he seethed as the last of the tear gas curled from the windows and the locomotive picked up speed.
Still crouching, Nikita switched the short-barreled gun to his left hand and stepped two feet up from the platform onto the ledge above the air reservoir. The narrow walkway ran above the injector pipe midway up the boiler, and as he held onto the narrow handrail that ran along the top of the engine, the Junior Lieutenant held the short-barreled submachine gun toward the cab.