“Get an inspector out there.”
“There’s a train half a kilometer away,” his assistant warned.
“Tell it to stop at once!” The dispatcher flipped the switch controlling the tower signal.
The deputy dispatcher lifted his radiotelephone. “Train eleven ninety-one, this is Kazan Central Dispatch. Trouble on the bridge ahead, stop immediately!”
“I see the signal! Stopping now,” the engineer replied. “We won’t make it!”
And he couldn’t. Eleven ninety-one was a hundred-car unit, flatcars loaded with armored vehicles and boxcars loaded with munitions. Sparks flew in the pre-dawn light as the engineer applied the brakes on every car, but he needed more than a few hundred meters to halt the train. He peered ahead looking for the problem-a bad signal, he hoped.
No! A track was loose just at the west side of the bridge. The engineer shouted a warning to his crew and cringed. The locomotive jumped the track and ground sideways to a halt. This could not prevent the three engines behind it and eight flatcars from surging forward. They too jumped off the track, and only the bridge’s steel framework prevented them from spilling into the Yauza River. The track inspector arrived a minute later. He cursed all the way to the telephone box.
“We need two big wreckers here!”
“How bad?” the dispatcher asked.
“Not as bad as the one last August. Twelve hours, perhaps sixteen.”
“What went wrong?”
“All the traffic on this bridge-what do you think?”
“Anyone hurt?”
“Don’t think so-they weren’t going very fast.”
“I’ll have a crew out there in ten minutes.” The dispatcher looked up at the blackboard list of arriving trains.
“Damn! What are we going to do with these?”
“We can’t split them up, it’s a whole Army division traveling as a unit. They were supposed to go around the north side. We can’t send them around to the south either. Novodanilovskiy Bridge is packed solid for hours.”
“Reroute them into Kursk Station. I’ll call the Rzhevskaya dispatcher and see if he can get us a routing on his track.”
The trains arrived at seven-thirty. One by one they were shunted onto the sidings at Kursk Station and stopped. Many of the troops aboard had never been to Moscow before, but except for those on the outermost sidings, all they could see were the trains of their fellow soldiers.
“A deliberate attempt to sabotage the State railroads!” the KGB colonel said.
“More probably it was worn trackage, Comrade,” the Kazan dispatcher said. “But you are correct to be prudent.”
“Worn trackage?” the colonel snarled. He knew for certain that it had been a different cause. “I think perhaps you do not take this seriously enough.”
The dispatcher’s blood chilled at that statement. “I have my responsibilities, too. For the moment that means clearing the wreckage off that damned bridge and getting my trains rolling again. Now, I have a seven-train unit sitting at Kursk, and unless I can get them moving north-”
“From what I see of your map, moving all the traffic around the city’s northern perimeter depends on a single switch.”
“Well, yes, but that’s the responsibility of the Rzhevskaya dispatcher.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that saboteurs are not assigned in the same way as dispatchers? Perhaps the same man could operate in a different district! Has anyone checked that switch?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out! No, no, I will send my own people to check before you railroad fools wreck anything else.”
“But, my scheduling . . .” The dispatcher was a proud man, but he knew that he had pressed his luck too far already.
“Welcome to Moscow,” Alekseyev said genially.
Major Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin was short, like most paratroop officers. A handsome young man with light brown hair, his blue eyes burned for a reason that Alekseyev understood better than the major did. He limped slightly from two bullets he’d taken in the leg during the initial assault on the Keflavik air base on Iceland. On his breast was the ribbon of the Order of the Red Banner, earned for leading his company into enemy fire. Sorokin and most of the early casualties had been flown out for medical treatment. He and they were now awaiting new assignment since their division had been captured on Iceland.
“How may I serve the General?” Sorokin asked.
“I need a new aide, and I prefer officers with combat experience. More than that, Arkady Semyonovich, I will need you to perform a delicate task. But before we discuss that, there is something I need to explain to you. Please sit down. Your leg?”
“The doctors advised me not to run on it for another week. They were right. I tried to do my ten kilometers yesterday and pulled up lame after only two.” He didn’t smile. Alekseyev imagined that the boy hadn’t smiled at all since May. The General explained to him for the first time why this was true. Five minutes later, Sorokin’s hand was opening and closing beside the arm of the leather chair, about where his pistol holster would be if he’d been standing.
“Major, the essence of a soldier is discipline,” Alekseyev concluded. “I have brought you here for a reason, but I must know that you will carry out your orders exactly. I will understand if you cannot.”
There was no emotion on his face at all, but the hand relaxed. “Yes, Comrade General, and I thank you from my soul for bringing me here. It will be exactly as you say.”
“Come, then. We have work to do.”
The General’s car was already waiting. Alekseyev and Sorokin drove to the inner ring road around central Moscow that changes its name every few kilometers. It is called Chkalova where it passes the Star Theater toward the Kursk Railroad Station.
The commander of the 77th Motor-Rifle Division was dozing. He had a new deputy commander, a brigadier from the front to replace the overaged colonel who had held the post. They had talked for ten hours on NATO tactics, and now the Generals were taking advantage of their unexpectedly extended stop in Moscow to get some sleep.
“What the hell is this!”
The 77th’s commander opened his eyes to see a four-star general staring down at him. He jumped to attention like a cadet.
“Good morning, Comrade General!”
“And good morning to you! What the hell is a division of the Soviet Army doing asleep on a Goddamned railroad siding while men are dying in Germany!” Alekseyev nearly screamed at the man.
“We-we can’t make the trains move, there is some problem with the tracks.”
“There is a problem with the tracks? You have your vehicles, don’t you?”
“The train goes to Kiev Station, where we switch locomotives for the trip to Poland.”
“I’ll arrange transport for you. We don’t have time,” Alekseyev explained as though to a wayward child, “to have a fighting division sit on its ass. If the train can’t move, you can! Roll your vehicles off the flatcars, we’ll take you through Moscow, and you can get to Kiev Station yourself. Now rub the sleep out of your eyes and get this division rolling before I find someone else who can!”
It never failed to amaze the General what a little screaming could do. Alekseyev watched the division commander scream at his regimental commanders, who went off to scream at their battalion commanders. In ten minutes the screaming was done at the squad level. Ten minutes after that, the tie-down chains were being stripped off the BTR-60 infantry carriers and the first of them rolled off the back of the train for assembly in Korskogo Square in front of the station. The infantrymen mounted their vehicles, looking very dangerous in battle dress, their weapons in their hands.
“You got your new communications officers?” Alekseyev asked.
“Yes, they have completely replaced my own people,” the division commander nodded.
“Good. We’ve learned the hard way about communications security at the front. Your new men will serve you well. And the new riflemen?”
“One company of veterans in each regiment, plus others spread individually throughout the rifle companies.” The commander was also pleased to have some new combat officers to replace a few of his less-well-regarded subordinates. Alekseyev had clearly sent him good ones.
“Good, get your division formed up in columns of regiments. Let’s show the people something, Comrade. Show them what a Soviet Army division is supposed to look like. They need it.”
“How do we proceed through the city?”
“I have gotten some KGB border guards for traffic control. Keep your people in proper order, I don’t want anyone to get lost!”
A major came running up. “Ready to move in twenty minutes.”
“Fifteen!” the commander insisted.
“Very good,” Alekseyev observed. “General, I will accompany you. I want to see how familiar your men are with their equipment.”
Mikhail Sergetov arrived early for the Politburo meeting, as was his habit. The usual complement of Kremlin guards was about, one company of infantry with light arms. They were from the Taman Guards division, ceremonial troops with minimal weapons training-a praetorial guard without teeth, like many ceremonial units they practiced parading and boot-shining and looking like soldiers, though at Alabino they did have a full divisional set of tanks and guns. The real Kremlin guardians were the KGB border guards and the division of MVD troops garrisoned outside Moscow. It was typical of the Soviet system that there would be three armed formations loyal to three separate ministries. The Taman division had the best weapons but the least training. The KGB had the best training but only light weapons. The MVD, which answered to the Ministry of the Interior, was also short on weapons and trained mainly as a paramilitary police force, but they were composed of Tartars, troops of known ferocity and antipathy toward the ethnic Russian people. The relationship among the three was more than merely complex.