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Chapter Fifteen

Pavel Khlynin, Red Guard, Tsaritsyn

Taganrog, Russia

The boat, while small, presented an image of order and cleanliness. It was gasoline powered, with a short stack, and lay about forty feet long by perhaps ten in beam at the waterline. A small, gray-bearded skipper stood just outside the tiny wheelhouse, arms folded and bearing a resentful and skeptical look.

“He told you I was a thief, didn’t he?” queried the old man.

“What?” asked Turgenev, standing on the dock while the others unloaded the wagon. “Who?”

“My cousin, Igor,” said the old skipper, pointing. “He told you I was a thief, right?”

“I don’t know if he used quite those words,” Turgenev answered. A quick glance at Mokrenko’s nodding head affirmed that the stable master had, indeed.

“Well, I am not a thief. But times are hard, fuel is dear and hard to come by, both, and there are risks. That’s why I charge what I do.”

“Yes, you are a thief,” said Igor, from the wagon, helping to hand bags down to waiting hands. His resolution not to get involved between the parties was apparently none too strong. “You charge too much.”

“Do I, you horse-stinking bastard? Let’s see you scrounge, beg, borrow, and steal enough gasoline to keep this boat moving, a boat, I remind you, that is about all that’s keeping trade going between us and Rostov.”

“Bah!” answered Igor. “You exaggerate, as always.”

Mokrenko shrugged eloquently, I have no idea what he’s talking about; taking his boat to Rostov is the cheapest and most reliable way to get there. Probably also the fastest.

“Relax, Comrade . . . .”

“Also Sabanayev, just like my asshole cousin, but Ivan in my case. But save that ‘comrade’ nonsense for when there are Reds around. I loathe the Reds.”

For emphasis, Ivan Sabanayev spat over the side of his gently rocking boat. “Fucking godless communists bastards! Why, oh, why, did the Little Father abandon his people?”

“I suspect a few thousand red bayonets pointed at the throats of his children had something to do with it,” Lieutenant Babin commented.

Ivan’s sad nod agreed. “It’s still a terrible shame. Nor will any good come from this Bolshevik revolution. Well . . . never mind. Come; load your baggage and come aboard. You have my money, yes?”

“Yes,” Turgenev, said. “Eighty rubles in gold, yes?”

“Yes, unless you want me to send my boy to go buy—well, try to buy—some fresh food in the market. But I can’t use gold there; it’s too tempting, too rare. Do you have silver or, maybe better, paper. I’ll have to pay four times what it’s worth in paper, mind you, but at least it doesn’t attract attention.”

“Can you get us a few days’ worth of food?” Mokrenko asked. “or maybe a week’s worth.”

Ivan thought about that. “Maybe,” he answered. “The boy can try.”

Turgenev tossed his own bag in, then jumped aboard and bent to dig out eight gold coins from his store. He then pulled about forty more rubles in low denomination paper from the same bag. These he handed over. On second thought, he added another two notes and requested, “See if the boy can get a chetvert”—a bit over a quart and a half, British—“of a decent vodka. I think everyone could use a drink at this point.”

Got to love a thoughtful officer, mused Mokrenko.

“There are some newspapers, fairly recent, you can read while we wait,” said Ivan.

Mouth of the Don

“I don’t suppose you people are armed,” queried Ivan.

“We might be,” answered Turgenev. “Why?”

“Well . . . there are river pirates,” said the old man. “Ordinarily, they’re a lot like the Bolsheviks, just thieves, in other words. They stop my boat, take a small percentage as ‘a toll,’ as they phrase it. But ordinarily I don’t carry passengers. Passengers mean money. And you have a girl and they’re practically a medium of exchange, too.”

“Sergeant Mokrenko!”

“Sir. All right you shitheads, break out the rifles and load up.”

“Make a great show of the rifles,” Ivan said. “Odds are good that will be enough to scare them off.”

Mokrenko began posting the men of the strategic recon team around the boat, in such as businesslike way as to make it clear that trying to stop the boat would be a most bloody exercise. It must have worked, because at the points where Ivan tensed up, as if expecting trouble, no trouble materialized.

“You know,” said Ivan, after passing the second place where he’d been expecting the river pirates to sortie out to take their “toll,” “for another fifty gold rubles I’ll take you almost all the way to Tsaritsyn.”

“Define ‘almost’ and tell me how long it would take,” said Lieutenant Turgenev.

“About forty versta away,” Ivan replied, “and maybe three or four days. Nearest point is the town of Kalach, almost exactly west of Tsaritsyn.”

“Probably more secure than taking the train, sir,” Mokrenko said.

Turgenev nodded, but then said, “We don’t have the time to spare anymore, though. We’re five days behind where we should be, with no guarantees that we won’t fall further behind. No, thanks old man, but no. We need to hop a train.”

“It’s none of my business,” said Ivan, “but, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your hurry?”

“We do mind, though,” said Mokrenko.

Rostov-on-Don, Russia

The town was still occupied by German and Austrian soldiery, courtesy of Trotsky’s silly notions about “neither war nor peace.” The two armies, under the direction of Max Hoffmann, had demonstrated that the Bolsheviks didn’t have the initiative Trotsky presumably thought. Still, they’d be going home, eventually.

The party had split up into four pairs and a trio, intending to stay away from each other until such time as they were past the chance of inviting close interest from the German and Austrian soldiery that seemed to be everywhere in the town, and nowhere so much as at the riverfront and the train station. The problem was security, not so much physical but in terms of safeguarding information about their mission.

People just talk too damned much, thought Turgenev. Best to stay away from any of them.

He did, of course, have a passport letter from Hoffmann, himself, but that was for ultimate extremities, which this was not. And using it was bound to cause some ripples, unfortunate ones, somewhere down the line.

There are two decent ways to do this, thought Turgenev. One is blending in with the other passengers and the other is not being seen at all. He thought the other was the better of the two.

Thus, currently, Mokrenko and Shukhov, the engineer, were off at the marshalling yard, trying to bribe the group passage aboard one of the freight cars.

And the downside of that, thought Turgenev, is that freight cars are generally unheated. Oh, well, we brought plenty of blankets . . . 


The Russian running the rail yard was accompanied by two Russian-speaking soldiers, one Austrian, one German. The Austrian was senior, which Mokrenko took for a good sign, since they were almost always easier to deal with the than far more anal-retentive Huns were.

“What I don’t understand,” said the Austrian, a Major Leitner, beefy and florid-faced, but friendly enough, “is why don’t you just book a normal set of passenger seats and enjoy the ride. Do you know how cold those freight cars can be?”

“Once we get past your lines, Major,” Mokrenko said, “we’re getting into the beginnings of a civil war. Both sides may well be conscripting whoever they can get their hands on. Frankly, we’ve already all been conscripted for one war more than we cared to be in, in the first place. We just want to hide until we get close to home, and then disappear to our villages and towns.”

Leitner looked at the Russian.

“I don’t mind giving some discharged soldiers a hand getting home,” the Russian said. “And they’re right about the civil war that’s coming, even though nobody’s interfering with the movement of trains. But I’m going to have to bribe the passenger section to forget about their lost revenue.”

“We got a decent discharge pay,” Mokrenko lied. He was normally quite honest, but mission took priority when it was a mission of this importance. “We’ll gladly pay the difference.”

“All right,” said the Russian. “How many did you say there were?”

“Eleven,” Mokrenko replied, “but one’s not a soldier, just a girl who lost her parents and who’s got relatives in Tsaritsyn. She’s had a pretty hard time of it, the last few months, and just sort of attached herself to us as a better—above all, safer—bet than any other she’d seen.”

The Russian yard master pointed, asking, “See that car over there? Fourth one from the rear of that group?”

“The group with the locomotive backing up to it?” asked Mokrenko.

“That one, yes. Get your friends and meet me there. I’ll smooth things over.

“By the way,” said the yard master, “when you get to Tsaritsyn? Last we’ve heard here, the Reds own that. If you don’t want to be drafted again, I’d stay under cover until nightfall.”


The steady clack-clack-clacking of the train over steel tracks whispered of progress, and, for a change, at some speed.

Turgenev and the others were somewhat surprised that there wasn’t so much as a single stop and search between Rostov-on-Don and Tsaritsyn. The rail line, after all, was crossing what should have been the front line between hostile armies.

Lieutenant Babin, who had decided to join the group and commit himself to its mission, had the answer to that, when Turgenev brought it up. “Our army has collapsed completely. There are no security checks because there is no front line. Indeed, the most powerful non-Bolshevik Russian military organization within thirty or forty versta is probably us. It may be different once we get to Tsaritsyn.

“Until we do, though, and if we don’t want to freeze to death, I strongly suggest we bundle up.”

Railroad station, Tsaritsyn, Russia

“I have never,” whispered Sarnof, the signaler, “not ever in my life, been so fucking cold.”

Natalya Sorokina nodded vigorous agreement. At least it allowed her to quietly move a couple of muscles to generate a tiny bit of extra body heat.

“Okay,” Lieutenant Turgenev said, “I’m going to go out and do a little bit of reconnaissance . . . Sergeant Mokrenko—”

“No, sir.”

“What?”

“Sir, you’re the worst possible candidate to send out alone—and it will be worse in company—to recon a Red-held area. Every move you make proclaims your aristocratic background. You couldn’t act like a peasant if your life depended on it, which, in this case, it does. Ours do, too. Moreover, if you take someone with you, the habits of a lifetime will show. He’ll defer and you’ll act like you expect that deference.

“So, in short, if you have two brain cells to rub together, you’ll stay right here. I’ll go.”

“Am I that obvious, really?” Turgenev asked, before admitting, “Oh, I suppose I am. Fine, Sergeant, you go and take two men with you. Let me dig you out some money; maybe you can get us some more clothes if it looks like they’ll be useful. Hmmm . . . you might have to stay out overnight, so a bit for an inn, too.”

“What if I can openly buy tickets?” Mokrenko asked.

“Good point, let me dig you out some gold rubles and more paper . . .”


The station was an early version of, perhaps even a predecessor of, Belle Epoch architecture, with onion domes compressed into octagons bedecking the roof and replete with pilasters on all sides.

The first thing Mokrenko discovered, on passing into the station, was, We’ll blend in better in our uniforms, provided we make them look scruffy, than we would in any civilian clothes. And we can be armed, as well, without inciting any curiosity. Now the question is, should we put on those red armbands some of the men are sporting or not?

Leaving his two escorts, Shukhov and Timashuk, the medic, he walked up to one uniformed sort, a rather young and fierce looking man, and introduced himself, receiving, in reply, “Pavel Nadimovich Khlynin, at your service. You look to be a soldier, but from a worker’s or peasant’s background, yes?”

“Even so,” Mokrenko agreed. “I’m just back from the front, such as it is, Pavel Nadimovich. I need to get back home to Yekaterinburg. I’ve got a few friends with me, too, from the same area. Once I’ve made sure my mother and father are alive and well, I hope to be joining the Red Guards.”

A measure of the fierceness disappeared to be replaced by a warm smile. “A noble ambition that is, Rostislav Alexandrovich, and Yekaterinburg would be a good place to do it, since it is, by all accounts, firmly in the hand of the revolution.”

“That is excellent news,” Mokrenko replied, “most excellent.” He made a show of looking around, then more closely at Khlynin’s armband, and asked, “The armbands; are they just a show of support or a sign of enlistment in the revolution?”

“Good question, Comrade. Frankly, it’s not entirely clear to me which is the case. I see my comrades in the Red Guards sporting them. I see filthy capitalist and aristocratic robbers sporting them. I see people I am pretty sure just want to be left alone sporting them. I see people who support the revolution sporting them. And I see people who do not support the revolution sporting them. At this point, all they really mean is, ‘I am not an active enemy of the revolution, so don’t shoot me.’ ”

“I see,” said Mokrenko. “Well . . . is there a good place to buy some?”

Khlynin pointed in the direction across the street from the station, then let his fingers paint a simple map in the air. “Over there, take a left and around the corner; you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, Pavel Nadimovich. For all your help,”—and in the supposition that I can pump you for more information—“can I buy you a drink or two?”

“Thanks for the offer, Rostislav Alexandrovich, but I am on duty . . . for . . . about another half hour.”

“I thank you, my friend. We’ll be back in half an hour, then. Now to go buy some markers of our show of support for the revolution, until we are placed to actively support it. Comrades, with me.”

With which words Mokrenko led the way out of the station and across the street to purchase one short of a dozen red armbands.


The tavern wasn’t much. The vodka wasn’t anything special, either. A drink turned into two, two into three, and three into a somewhat sodden Red Guard named Khlynin explaining everything he understood about the situation to date.

“In the first place, Rosti”—with a sufficiency of drink went a good deal of formality—“while everyone is picking sides and recruiting furiously, the trains all run as if there were no conflict at all. It’s almost completely inexplicable to an outsider but I think they’ll continue to do so. Food and coal, after all, must still get to the cities, coal to the small villages, and food to the coalfields. It’s in everyone’s interest to let them keep flowing.

“The most I can safely predict is that recruits for the revolution will not be allowed to move by train from White areas and vice versa, while each side will have to make do with whatever arms and equipment they can make or import into their own areas.”

“A strange thought,” said Mokrenko. “It’s as if we had kept up trade with the Germans even while fighting them.”

“It could be so,” Khlynin agreed. “I don’t know. I worked the railways, myself—still do, after a fashion—so I was exempt from conscription. I confess, the guilt of this . . .”

“Don’t feel guilty,” Mokrenko said. “You didn’t miss a thing. It was years of unending misery, failure, incompetence at the highest levels, bad food, clothing that, when it wore out, was always replaced by something cheaper and worse, and in the end, for nothing at all.

“I will say one thing, though; if you haven’t married yet you should have. So many men killed that even the best-looking women will be there for the choosing.”

Khlynin smiled a little drunkenly. “Now that much I can admit to. But with so many lovely blue- and dark-eyed girls, how can one choose between them.”

“For me,” interjected Timashuk, “there’s one girl. I haven’t had a letter in a while, but the last letter I got she said she’d wait until the gates of hell, itself, froze, if that’s how long it took.”

“If true,” said Khlynin, “she is a pearl of great worth. You must get home to her. Where is she from?”

“Tver,” said Timashuk, “or, rather, a small village not too far from there . . .”

Instantly, Mokrenko’s foot lashed out under the rough hewn table.

“But she moved to Yekaterinburg with her family, about four years ago,” Timashuk hastily corrected. “So that’s where I’m going.”

“Ah, Tver,” mused Khlynin. “I have heard the women are of surpassing beauty there.”

“It is so,” said Timashuk. “And so many that even a small and none too well-favored boy like me can find a prize among them.”

Mokrenko refilled Khlynin’s glass from a bottle provided by the bartender. “So who, if we need help with the rails, should we talk to in Samara?”

Train to Samara, Russia

The sun was still up, lighting the broad fields of wheat and rye to the west and, past the train’s own shadows, the mighty Volga to the east.

“And it was that easy?” said Turgenev, in wonder, for about the fifteenth time. The paper he’d been scanning for news of the tsar and his family he laid aside for a bit. “You just walk up, get the info, get the armbands, get the train tickets, and nobody says a cross word or suspects a thing?

“You were right, Sergeant Mokrenko; I’d have aroused suspicion, more likely than not, whether by my preparatory school accent or more subtle parts of my manner. Which makes me wonder . . .”

“Sir?” asked Mokrenko.

“It makes me wonder if I should even be here, if I’m that much of a liability.”

“You’ll earn your keep, sir, once we get where we’re going and have to start figuring things out. Note, too, that I was only able to get us passage as far as Samara. We’re going to have to change trains at Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg to get to Tyumen.

“Speaking, though, sir, of your inability to hide your roots, you need to get back to first class and pump the other passengers for information as well as make sure that none of them try to take advantage of your ‘sister,’ Natalya.”

Train to Tyumen

As it turned out, Khlynin had spoken and predicted truly. There were no official impediments to travel from anybody. There was a day’s wait at Samara, and another two days at Chelyabinsk, but these had to do with scheduling, not inference from Reds or Whites. Moreover, they were days both well fed and comfortable, in good but not lavish hostels and inns.

They’d also spent a little time in Yekaterinburg, just long enough to determine that the prisoners being kept in one guarded house were not the royal family, but a number of lesser members of the nobility, including the tsarina’s sister, the nun, Elizabeth Feodorovna, also known as Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. They’d also figured out, quite quickly, that Yekaterinburg was solidly red. Finally, a purview of the various mines, banks, and other repositories suggested that a good deal of mineral wealth was sitting there for whoever managed to grab it first.

The word on the street was that the royals were in Tobolsk.

Food was, it was true, a little dear, but then, as Lieutenant Turgenev observed, “We’ve been living mainly off Vraciu’s gold and silver since we landed near Taganrog. Well, that and some paper currency. We’ve hardly touched our own gold or silver.”

The problem, when it arose, wasn’t from any official source or power but from the lack of any official source. In short, bandits did not exist only at sea and along river banks.


Passengers boarded and got off at each of the first ten stops on the line. Some looked well fed and content, others a little lean and hungry. There were men, women, children, and the odd pet among them. None looked exceptionally suspicious, and none seemed to be in groups large enough to pose a threat. Some were armed but, with discharged and deserting soldiers taking their arms with them, as often as not, this was seen as routine.

What was not routine was something that could not be seen: in this case the common purpose of some seventeen of the embarking passengers, split up among the first ten stops, and in no case numbering more than three men at any stop. They boarded, took their seats sometimes near each other and other times not, and proceeded to read, or gamble, or simply look out the windows and at the other passengers.

Mokrenko looked over the two who’d boarded together at one of the stations along the route, then taken widely separate seats in the car. They had the collars of their coats turned up, quite understandably, against the fierce and biting cold. He dismissed them as harmless and unimportant.


The train consisted of a single locomotive, a coal tender, one first class sleeper car, a first class dining and parlor car, a second class dining car, which held the kitchen for both, six second class cars, eleven freight cars, a caboose, and a second locomotive. The caboose looked less like a North American caboose and more like the boxcar from which it had been converted. Turgenev, Babin, and Natalya had gone to first class, while Mokrenko and the other seven men of Strategic Recon took up a good deal of the forwardmost of the second-class cars.

The central portion of their light wood-paneled car boasted a pair of wood-fired heaters, steel apparently, sitting on legs themselves atop tiled sections of the floor, with more tiles behind them, and with smokestacks running up through the roof of the car. They put out a rather pleasant smell but also tended to put people to sleep.

There was electric light in first class, but second had only kerosene-fired lanterns.

The car, which was right behind the dining car, had a dozen single seats, in six pairs, facing each other, on one side. On the other were a like number of benches, likewise in six facing pairs. The seats and benches were hard but, between the hour of the night, the heat, the steady clack-clack-clacking of the train on the tracks, and the fact that the eight men in them were used to discomfort, everyone but Mokrenko and Novarikasha were dead asleep, some with their heads resting on the half-tables jutting from the walls.

For that matter, both Mokrenko and Novarikasha, who had watch, found themselves nodding off and pulling themselves awake only by sheer acts of will.

The sergeant grabbed the junior man’s tunic and shook him awake by it. “Stay alert for a bit. Give me your cup; I’m going to go try to get us some hot tea from the dining car.”

Passage between cars promised to be bitterly, even finger threateningly, cold, so Mokrenko was careful to put on both his overcoat and his gloves. He left his sword behind, along with his rifle. His pistol was tucked into his belt, in front of his stomach, but under his tunic. However, Mokrenko being a good Cossack, his kindjal remained with him, hanging from his belt, and was plainly visible if his coat was open. Buttoning the coat hid it so that, when he entered the dining car, he appeared unarmed.

Moreover, as long as his coat was buttoned, he was unarmed; he couldn’t get to his dagger or pistol in a hurry if his life depended on it. As it turned out, what with a pistol pressed against his nose as soon as he entered the dining car, his life did depend on it.

Of course, he noticed the pistol first. The face that was covered below the eyes by a scarf and framed above by a large kubanka, he didn’t notice until a moment later.

“I just wanted to get some tea,” he said, helplessly. “I didn’t want to start a fight over it.”

“Get in and sit down,” snarled a voice full of desperate purpose.

“Can I get some tea on my way?”

“Just hurry.” Moving farther on, presumably covered by the gun, the Cossack saw two more seated passengers, by their dress from first class, cowering pressed against the side of the car while another robber, pistol held loosely in one hand, went through the contents of their bag and wallet with the other. These had been dumped out for inspection on a table.

It was then that Mokrenko realized that both were wearing standard Imperial Army overcoats, no different from his own, and both were open. Probably so they could get at their pistols. They’re likely soldiers, too, thrown on their own wits and having no more wit than needed to rob unarmed people.

The dining car attendant, standing behind a counter with his hands high overhead, said, “Be careful, sir; the tea is scalding hot.”

“Yes,” agreed Mokrenko, trying to keep his voice calm. He’s trying to tell me . . . .ohhh . . . scalding hot, is it? Damn, though; one would be hard; two is four times harder. So how do I . . . ?

The one robbing those two people has his concentration on them. I only have to deal with just one, at least initially. Can’t make a lot of noise. No pistol. My kindjal, then. Can I get to it in time? That’s a definite maybe. Is it worth the risk? Come on, be serious; they’re robbers; they’ll get the money we need to complete the mission. There’s no choice but to fight.

As calmly as possible, Mokrenko filled first his own army-issue cup, and then Novarikasha’s.

He started to go back to his own car, when the first robber he’d encountered motioned him to take a seat in this one. Mokrenko shrugged, as if indifferent, then began to turn away. He’d made a quarter turn, then lashed back around, launching two mugs of scalding hot tea at the face of the robber.

That one’s face was protected by his scarf, true, but his eyes were not. Those took the full measure of scalding tea, causing the robber to shriek, drop his pistol, and begin to claw at his eyes.

In that brief moment of respite, Mokrenko ripped his coat open, sending no less than three buttons flying across the car, one pinging off a window on the other side. In a half a second the dagger was out, just as the other thief began to turn.

Mokrenko knew he was too slow; the pistol was lining up on him before he’d been able to get a good throwing grip.

One of the passengers, a fat man with dark gray hair and beard, propelled himself at the gunman, tackling him around the midsection and driving him to his knees. The bandit’s pistol fired into the ceiling, punching a minute hole in the train car.

As the bandit clubbed the struggling old man with his pistol, Mokrenko lunged for him. Grabbing a hank of his greasy hair, Mokrenko yanked the bandit’s head back and plunged his razor-sharp kindjal into the man’s neck just below his ear, then he dragged it out and downward, severing the windpipe and the neck’s sinews and blood vessels in a visceral spray that left the bandit nearly decapitated.

Mokrenko then launched himself at the other one, still occupied with his own agony and in scratching his own eyes out. Two quick jabs and the robber’s heart, slashed through, gave out. Blood poured from chest and mouth. But didn’t yet stain the overcoat.

Only then did the Cossack turn his attention to his savior, the old man who’d launched himself at the second robber.

A woman, presumably his wife, was already on the floor, weeping and cradling her man’s head on her lap. He bled from some scalp wounds, but not so freely as to appear life-threatening.

“Will you be all right, sir?”

“Yes . . . yes, I think. Little dizzy now . . . not too bad.”

“Sir, how many people entered the first-class compartment that didn’t really look like they belonged there?”

“Not sure . . .”

“There were three,” said the woman, through her tears. “Only three. I think . . . maybe . . . one was the leader.”

“Did any of them go into the sleeper car?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“Did they say anything besides some version of ‘your money or your lives’?”

“That they’d be getting off at the next stop,” she answered. “But why would they get off there? I’ve ridden this route several times, there’s nothing there to speak of.”

Mokrenko answered, “Horses; they’ll have their horses there.”

Now the question is, do I try to take the parlor car, with its three, or go back to my own car which has only two, I think, and where I can get reinforcements? Right, back it is.

Running his eyes over the two bodies, he decided that the first robber, the second he’d killed, was a closer match to him in size. He took from the corpse the kubanka and the scarf. Then he took that robber’s pistol as well as the other one’s.

“Sir,” he asked of the old man, “Do you think you can still shoot?”

“Poor excuse for an old soldier if I can’t.”

“Old soldier . . . ?”

“Colonel, retired, artillery.”

“I should have known. Sir, there are two pistols. Can I leave you here, with the dining car attendant, to guard my back and keep the other robbers from passing through this car?”

“Yes,” said the old man, without doubt or hesitation.

Mokrenko cast a glance at the dining car attendant.

“I’ll help, yes.”

“Very good. Consider yourself under the command of . . .”

“Colonel Plestov,” the old man supplied.

“Thank you, sir. You will be under the command of Colonel Plestov.”

With that, the Cossack put the mask over his face, pulled the kubanka down on his head, drew his Amerikanski pistol, placing it in his pocket, which barely served to cover it, and started back the way he’d come.


Freeing his own car and the bulk of his men had proven almost laughably easy. The two robbers there had barely spared him a glance and a grunt before turning back to robbing the passengers. Rostislav’s pistol spoke four times, twice for each robber, and then the section had their hands down, their knives out and were carving throats.

Timashuk, the medic, was the odd one there. He sat atop one of the thieves, his dagger lunging again and again into the dead man’s chest. “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” the medic repeated, mindlessly.

“Stop it!” commanded Mokrenko, changing the magazine of his pistol. “We have too much to do to leave messes behind. I need three men; Koslov, you cannot be one of them. So . . . Novarikasha . . . Lavin . . . Shukhov, get your pistols . . . forget the rifles and swords.

“Koslov? Goat, you take the rest and, when I start clearing forward you start clearing back. If you can’t hear it, and you probably can’t, start in ten minutes. A prisoner, if you can get one. I’d prefer two but no more than two. Kill the rest.”

“Yes, Sergeant. Timashuk, Visaitov, Sarnof, with me. Same order of battle for arms except take your swords.”

“Use whatever you can scrounge from the dead,” Mokrenko advised, “to disguise yourselves to get close to them.”


“Listen up,” Mokrenko told his half of the recon section, in the dining car, just on the friendly side of the door to first class. “I’m going to pull the same trick I did in our car; just walk in like I belong there and open fire without warning. I want you three to climb to the roof of the first class car, then crawl across it—got it, crawl; no footsteps on the roof—and one of you, Novarikasha, I think, to get down between it and the sleeper car. The other two continue to the locomotive. The colonel’s wife didn’t notice any there, but I think there must be one or two.

“Novarikasha, your signal to burst in will be either”—here, the sergeant consulted his watch—“seven minutes from my mark, or when you hear shooting or screaming. When you come in, for God’s sake remember that I am going to be dressed just like the robbers. But I’ll be the one with the Amerikanski pistol. And don’t hit either of the officers or the girl.”

“Now who’s got a watch? What? Oh, shit.”

Help came from and unexpected source. The old colonel offered, “Here, give them mine, Sergeant.”

“No, sir; keep yours. Here . . . Lavin . . . take mine. Sir, if you would tell me when seven minutes have passed?”


“Fifteen seconds, Sergeant,” said the old colonel. “Ten . . . nine . . .”

Mokrenko was already out the door. He crossed the curved open platform, above the coupler, then opened the door to the vestibule leading to first class. He instantly saw Natalya on the floor, some ruffian trying to get her clothes off as she fought back fiercely. The other two laughed over it, even while keeping their pistols generally pointed at the two officers still seated.

Turgenev is ready to charge, even bare handed. Well . . . no need. Sorry, girl, but yours is distracted so you’re lowest priority.

“You’ll have to wait your turn, Sasha,” said one of the robbers, “after we’ve had ours with the girl.”

Mokrenko shrugged his indifference. He was about to pull his pistol and open fire when he heard a fusillade of shots from the direction of the locomotive. In an instant, he had his pistol out, and began blasting. One of the robbers went down immediately, falling face forward. The other, in confusion, turned to the louder and more recent blast, but before he could get a shot at Mokrenko, Lavin burst in, followed by Shukhov. He put several shots into second robber. The third, just as he was about to get Natalya’s skirt up far enough, realized what was happening, backed off and raised his hands.

“You can have the girl first, no problem.”

Mokrenko looked at the weeping girl, looked at the would-be rapist, and then looked at the heating stove. He strode forward, then slapped the criminal upside the head with his pistol.

“No, not good enough,” he said to the bleeding thug. Then he bent and grabbed the man’s hair, dragging him by it to the stove. In a moment, the air was filled with the stench of melting and charring flesh, as well as a sizzling sound and a very loud scream. The scream went on for a long time, as the heat worked its way past the skin, past the skull, and began to cook the brain underneath.


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Framed