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Chapter Twenty-six

Lewis Gun

Log House, North of the Governor’s House, Tobolsk

Lazarev, the platoon leader for Dratvin’s Third Platoon, attached to Fourth Company, was unsure of what to do. His men had spread out as they ran toward the log house. Only one guard had been encountered, and he’d been half asleep, leaning against the stockade with his eyes fluttering closed.

The bayonets of three men had pinned that guard to the stockade. He’d only awakened for a tiny moment before a rifle butt knocked him into next week. Half a second later, the first of three bayonets passed through his heart, cutting off even the chance to scream.

And now what? wondered Lazarev. Nobody’s awake in the log house. They’re going to wake up though, as soon as the shooting starts.

Hmmm . . . lights still on . . . maybe I have time to set something up.

“First Squad?”

“Here, sir.”

“You and your squad, take all three Lewis guns. Set up northwest of the house, facing generally east. Don’t let anyone escape.”

“Okay, sir.”

“Second and Third?”

“Here, sir.” “Here.”

“We’re going to go through that door,” the lieutenant pointed. “Fixed bayonets, regular grenades, minimal shooting, maximum shouting and screaming. I want to panic the men in there into running . . . and there go the lights.

“Follow me!”

Kornilov House, Tobolsk

It was weapons free as soon as the lights went off. As such, the reinforced squad above Molchalin, on the roof of the one story building northeast of Kornilov’s, opened fire on whatever they could see of the guards, on the north and east sides of the Kornilov House. As the firing began, the lieutenant slapped one of the flamethrower men on the back, shouting, “Follow me.” He and his assistant did. Another man, who hadn’t gone up on the roof, followed as a guard. All but the lieutenant bore extra donut-shaped fuel and spherical air tanks on their backs.

The four of them ran forward, as quickly as the heavy burden of the German flamethrower allowed. They came to the wall surrounding the yard where the newly arrived Reds had secured their horses. There was one guard there, who called out a challenge before Molchalin fired a burst at him. The lieutenant was rewarded with a scream, a groan, and a thud.

“Over the wall with the flamethrower, quickly,” the lieutenant ordered. He and the guard boosted the flamethrower operator to the top of the the wall. From there, the man swivelled himself around on his belly before gingerly letting himself down on the other side. The assistant quickly followed. In half a second, Molchalin dropped beside him.

“Let the horses escape!” were the lieutenant’s last words to his guard before dropping to the ground.

To their front, horses, panicked by the shooting, reared and stomped, ran the short distance available then turned to run back the other way.

“We’ll keep close to the wall,” Molchalin said. “Horses may be dumb but they don’t run themselves into walls. Come on!”

As fast as humanly possible, skirting as close to the wall as possible, the two dashed for the building. No guards barred their way, though Molchalin thought that he heard sounds coming from inside the building, Probably guards alerting from the firing.

When they reached the building the lieutenant kicked one booted toe through a basement window, knocking out a single pane that would leave a space for the flamethrower’s nozzle.

Ordinarily, a flamethrower is used to suffocate an enemy by burning up all the oxygen in an enclosed space. In this case, however, the objective was to burn down the entire building, preferably with the enemy inside. That meant they wanted oxygen to get inside. To this end Molchalin pulled a regular concussion grenade from his belt. He quickly unscrewed the cap letting the porcelain knob fall out. Grasping both knob and the stick handle of the grenade firmly, he pulled the knob down and the grenade up. Then he threw the grenade into whatever room in the basement was on the other side of the broken window. He and the flamethrower team pressed their backs against the wall as the grenade blew the remains of the window across the yard.

Shouts came from above. To Molchalin they sounded very panicky. Behind them, the horses screamed. Some of them had probably been hit by pieces of flying glass.

“Burn them!”

In half a second, the nozzle was inside the window, pouring out a couple of seconds’ worth of intense flame. They didn’t wait to see what had caught fire; something almost certainly would.

Somewhat distantly, Molchalin heard the twin booms of the infantry cannon, punishing the entire western face of the Kornilov House.

They’ve got to be shitting themselves in there, and hardly even imagining yet that we’re setting them afire.

From there, the two raced to the east to almost the halfway point on that side of the building. Once again, a grenade followed a booted toe and was, in turn, followed by flame. This time, screams came from the basement even as the panic-stricken shouts above grew.

“Now the next story corner!”

Kick-Boom-Fwooosh!

“All right,” said Molchalin. “Now the second floor.”

“Got to change tanks, sir.”

“Well, do it, but hurry!”

Once the tank was changed, with both machine pistol and flamethrower nozzle raised, the pair backed out and away from the building. This was risking being trampled by the horses, now outright mad with fear, but there was no help for it. Molchalin turned for a moment, ready to shoot any that came too close. He discovered that, dumb as they might have been, the horses were still not so dumb as not to recognize the source of the explosions and fire that had them panicked. They did their screaming and shrieking while doing their best to stay far away. Some were also escaping out the gate opened by the guard of the small flame party.

“Good enough,” said Molchalin. He took a not especially careful aim at the second window in from the eastern corner, then blasted it out with his MP18.

“Flame!”

Instantly, the flamethrower shot a jet of hot burning fuel through the shattered window. It bounced off the ceiling inside, then splashed down onto the rest of the room. This time there was no doubt; Molchalin heard intense screaming coming from inside. He changed magazines while the flame was ongoing.

“One more. Will that thing reach the top floor?”

“Yes, sir, no problem.”

“Good.”

Another window was shot out. Molchalin saw, illuminated in the glow of the rising flames, a man leaning out a window with a rifle. The Lewis gun firing from the roof to the north drove that Red back inside.

With a window open there was no particular need to shoot out another one. The flamethrower operator fired through the open window, once again splashing flame down. The scream that came from that was truly horrifying.

“Any fuel left?” Molchalin shouted.

“Maybe two seconds’ worth, in this tank, sir.”

“Good. Expend what’s left on this one.” Again, the machine pistol chattered, shattering wood and glass overhead.

Whoooooshshshsh.

“Now let’s get the hell out of here!”

“We’ve got one more fuel tank, sir.”

“Save it.”

Girls’ School, Tobolsk

Dratvin had only his second platoon, south of the school, open fire initially, as the lights dimmed out, and that with rifles only, and those with a deliberate effort to do no harm. The Lewis and Maxim guns he wanted to be the first of several surprises he had in store for the Bolsheviks from Omsk.

Given the trouble and bad blood between them, the Omsk Reds are most likely going to think we’re the original guards, come to settle some scores. They won’t take us too seriously, and may just come charging out. And for that . . . 

For that, Dratvin had two Lewis guns, cross firing along the streets to the south and north, and a Maxim and a Lewis gun, each, sighted to fire up the avenues, east and west. He also had the two remaining flamethrowers from the engineer platoon, but was holding them in reserve as he absolutely did not want to cause a rush from the building greater than he thought he could handle.

He also had a flare gun, ready to illuminate the scene when they tried.

And, sure as hell, they’re going to do it.

In the muzzle flashes from the rifles Dratvin caught the image of a mass of men, maybe as many as a hundred, pouring out of the school’s main entrance and then charging down Great Archangel Street with wild shouts and cries.

He raised the flare gun and fired. The starshell arced up, then exploded into light approximately over the school’s eastern side. Instantly, the heavy machine gun on that side, plus the Lewis in support, plus the other Lewis that was intended to cross fire from east to west, all opened up.

The two Lewis gunners shifted their upper bodies, left and right and then right to left again, each emptying a forty-seven round magazine onto a street and open area less than seventy feet wide. In a couple of seconds the magazines were changed and the guns firing again, right to left and then left to right.

The Lewis guns were firing low. Few were killed by them, until the bullets shattering ankles and femurs brought their owners’ torsos to street level. Then shoulders and skulls shattered, too. Likewise were hearts exploded and lungs perforated. The worst were the kidney hits, that silenced the receivers for a moment, with the sheer agony of the thing, but then set them to screaming like lost souls, as they bled out there, into the street.

While the Lewis guns fired low, the heavy, water-cooled Maxim was sighted to fire at about crotch level. The gunner depressed the trigger, sending out a steady spray of bullets at a rate of something between nine and ten per second. With the trigger depressed, he began slapping the gun, also left to right and then, once it had swept all the way to that side of the street, after switching firing thumbs, right to left.

At the same time, the one squad stationed east in the houses along the north-south avenue added their little bit to the carnage.

By the time the overhead flare had burnt itself out, forty or fifty Omsk Bolsheviks lay dead and dying in the street, while the rest, among them a number of wounded, some badly so, had scampered back into the school in abject terror.

So now, wondered Dratvin, do they try to fight out to the west or to the north? I don’t think they’ll risk the east side street again. But what I don’t want is to give them much time to think.

“Antitank rifle?”

“Here, sir.”

“Start putting rounds into the center of the building. I want to try to panic them into trying another attack.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, have you any idea how much this is going to hurt? Not complaining, sir; just asking.”

“Just do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Infantry gun section, Southwest of the Kornilov House

Both ends of the building were blazing merrily, now, with flames pouring out of the windows, north and south, and scorching the exterior walls. Even over the firing and the roar of the flames, it was possible to hear wounded men screaming as the fire reached them.

While the 37mm projectiles were blasting out windows and exploding against walls opposite the windows inside the rooms of the place, the antitank gunner, with his Mauser T-Gewehr, began putting rounds into the building more or less at random. The objective wasn’t actually to kill anyone, since the fire would take care of that part, but to frighten the occupants and disorganize or break up any firefighting parties that might arise.

It’s a damned good thing no one is expecting me to aim carefully, thought the gunner, because it’s all I can do to force myself to pull the trigger, knowing how much it’s going to hurt.

Trying to protect a thumb he suspected had been broken by the slamming of the pistol grip against it, the gunner slapped the bolt handle up with an open palm, then pulled it back with the four so far undamaged fingers of his right hand.

“Put another round in,” he told his assistant gunner, “I can’t hold it.”

With the round in place, he used his palm, again, to close the bolt and then rotate it down.

He was still praying for a blessed misfire when the gun section’s chief noncom, Yahonov, knelt beside the Mauser and said, “Put a couple into the area behind the door; the lieutenant thinks they’re getting reading to make a charge out.”


The first explosion was muffled enough to make Yurovsky think of a faulty heating system. The second one, however, left no doubt, That’s enemy action.

Instantly he’d tucked his orders into a jacket pocket and was on his feet. Bounding from his quarters, he began to shout for his men to take up their rifles and to defend themselves. It was good for him, at least for the moment, to have left his room when he did, because the place was lashed by machine gun fire coming from somewhere outside a bare moment later.

There were more explosions coming from inside the building, he heard. But they’re smaller, I think. Maybe not much more powerful than the muzzle blast from a rifle . . . okay, maybe two or three times more, but what could that be? Some kind of small hand grenade?

And then Yurovsky smelled smoke. He turned around and looked back through the door he’d just passed through. Through the now broken windows, he saw fire reflected from the buildings on the other side of the street.

Oh, shit. Those Omsk bastards!

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

Lepa was one of the first to realize an attack was in progress. He, however, also assumed it was coming from the Omsk louts. This was, in fact, a not unreasonable supposition, as the distance away of the platoon designated to seize the Governor’s House and free the Romanovs meant that, for the time being, there was nothing much—and nothing noisy—doing about the Governor’s House.

As de facto sergeant of the guard, Lepa was stationed at the southeast corner of the house, in a room previously designated “for officers.” Just to the north of that was the small room that normally contained Lili Dehn, now much overstuffed with Lili, plus Catherine “Trina” Schneider, and Countess Anastasia “Nastenka” Hendrikova.

Shouting the alarm, Lepa filled the officers’ room with the four guards on the main floor. They began firing at the large muzzle flashes coming from across the town park, to the due south.

“One of you,” shouted Lepa, “go rouse up the ones asleep in the dining room. I’m going to direct the men up above.”

With that, Lepa bounded north up the corridor, cut left, and then practically flew up the main set of stairs to the upper floor. He found there the four guards for that floor, looking through the windows at the fire in the Kornilov House.

“What are you idiots doing?” Lepa demanded. “Shoot back for fuck’s sake.”

“Shoot at what?” asked one of the men.

“Muzzle flashes, you idiot.”

Lepa turned and retraced his steps down to the main floor, then turned left again, heading for the dining room. There he found men half asleep, but fast awakening, pulling on bits of uniform and boots.

“Forget the boots and shirts, you idiots! All you need are your rifles and ammunition. The house with the commander and our comrades is under attack. Half of you . . . no, that’s wrong . . . the second shift, upstairs to the large hallway and return fire. The third shift, come with me.”

Meanwhile, Ortipo, Tatiana’s little French Bulldog, ran back and forth, barking excitedly at all the noise and confusion. Lepa thought briefly of shooting the animal, but, All things considered, he’s not as annoying as those three women shrieking behind the officers’ room.

South of the town park, Tobolsk

It’s the odd crack of a passing shot that tells one someone has become annoyed with him. Those shots started coming in, filling the air with a malevolent sound, like a nest of hornets on the rampage but smacking head-on into a glass wall.

Federov shouted, “Panfil and Oblonsky, get those guns on the . . .”

Crack. Down went Federov, with blood gurgling in his lungs and pouring from his lips to the ground.

The section sergeant, Yahonov, ran to his downed officer. He flipped him over, only to see a seeping hole in the lieutenant’s chest, by the flash of a firing cannon. There was no pulse, no sign of breathing.

A bullet cracked by, far too close for comfort, especially given the dead young officer on the ground.

Yahonov heard Panfil ordering his gunner to shift fire left. Even as he did so, another shot bounced off the steel gunner’s shield, setting it to ringing, long and loud.

“Goddammit,” Panfil cried, “that’s too close. Target: Main floor windows, right. Fire! Continuous fire!”

The infantry gun began pouring forth high explosive shells at a rapid rate, twenty shells a minute. True, they weren’t bunker busters, but twenty of them a minute made them nearly as good, especially exploding in a not very large room. On the other hand, the Governor’s House was very thick-walled, indeed; if a shell didn’t go through a window or explode on the inside of a window opening, it was pretty much useless.

A couple of seconds after Panfil’s gun switched, Oblonsky’s joined in, blasting at the upper floor windows on the southeastern corner.

It didn’t stop the firing from that corner of the Governor’s House, but it reduced it in both volume and accuracy by a good deal.

The problem of the Kornilov House, however, remained, and one antitank rifle could hardly be sufficient to solve it if the men from Yekaterinburg tried a breakout.

Still, thought the gunner, squeezing the trigger as his sights lay on the right side of the main door, I’ve got to try . . . no matter how much it hurts.

Governor’s House, Tobolsk

With the dousing of the street and house lights, the group with Cherimisov—his company Headquarters, battalion Headquarters, and his Second Platoon under Collan—lit their head lamps and leapt forward. One squad threw itself against the door leading to the kitchen, sending it crashing, while two more erected ladders against the stockade and crossed over by a mix of those and men boosting each other over. Collan’s Headquarters followed through the broken kitchen door.

Only one guard was present on that section of the wall, and he was distracted by the initial firing coming from the Kornilov House. He hardly noticed the clubbed machine pistol that split his skull and laid him out from behind. Slammed forward into the stockade, the guard crumpled at its base, alive but bleeding and insensate.

“Repin,” said Sergeant Bogrov, “kill him quietly.” Repin promptly drew his knife, knelt down beside the prostrate guard, lifted his head back by his hair, and then slashed his throat from ear to ear. The gushing blood made little sound in comparison to the hellstorm arising across the street.

From both sides of the kitchen, and through the door, Second Platoon converged on the passageway to the Governor’s House. Briefly, confusion reigned until Collan said, “Second Squad, take point,” physically pointing Sergeant Yumachev in the right direction.

Second Squad, under their sergeant, followed by First, under Tokarev, bounded through the door and up the stairs. The glow from their carbide lamps flickered and flashed in the cut crystal of the overhead dome light, just inside of the doorway. Ahead, they could hear firing to the right and the sound of men trying to organize and equip themselves, to the left.

We have to go into the hall to go upstairs, thought Yumachev. But that means instant fighting.

“Flash,” Yumachev said to the man following him. Then the sergeant pulled a flash grenade from his belt, unscrewed the cap, armed it, and tossed it down the hall in the direction of the dining room. The man following, Ilyukhin, the coal miner’s son, did the same thing in the other direction. They waited a few seconds until they heard two booms, in rapid succession. Then Yumachev shouted, “Romanovs down! Romanovs down!” while charging down the corridor toward the dining room.

It wasn’t entirely clear that the men in the dining room could see anything at. But Yumachev and Ilyukhin beside him could see well enough by the light of their carbide lamps. They began firing, spraying bullets as if water from a hose, cutting down the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks with neither hesitation nor mercy. As the other four men of the squad showed up they came on line and likewise began firing into the mass of writhing, screaming, begging, bleeding, and—most importantly—dying communists.

“All right,” said Yumachev, “back to the stairs and up.”

Meanwhile, covered by the fire and bodies of Second Squad, Tokarev and First Squad entered the corridor, rounded it into the staircase, and continued on up.

First squad, third in order of march, came out of the stairwell and, recognizing that there were two kinds of fire at play, and only their side’s was going to be full automatic, entirely, turned right in the direction of the other. The Bolsheviks there were not so stunned. Yes, Ilyukhin’s grenade had stunned and half deafened them, but, because they’d been facing out, it hadn’t done nearly as good a job of blinding them.

Thus, when First Squad came south down the hallway, five Bolsheviks were waiting and almost ready. They fired first, taking down the squad leader, Bogrov, one of the men, Levkin, both dead or soon to be, and wounding a third man, Bok, before the automatic fire of the remaining three cut them down while they were trying to reload.

Lieutenant Collan, meanwhile, guarded by his runner, Lopukhov, stood in the main floor corridor shouting, “Romanovs here after freed! Romanovs here after freed!”

His platoon sergeant, Feldfebel Kostin began searching the rooms. This was done by a process they hadn’t rehearsed, but hit upon by Kostin once he realized the rooms were too small down here, most of them, for the flash grenades. Instead, he kicked open a door, then had his assistant place a flash grenade at the opening.

In this way, Kostin was able to evacuate first about nine maids, all still sound of health but deafened, blinded, screaming, and utterly terrified, back to the lieutenant, who pushed and prodded them towards the kitchen. For the next two rooms, a set of toilets and a bath, the platoon sergeant did throw flash grenades inside, before entering with the intent to kill anything moving. There was nothing, however, in either place.

In all three cases, Kostin chalked a large X on each door.

“Make sure they’re all dead,” he ordered the other two men, pointing at the corpse-littered dining room. Short bursts of machine pistol fire, methodically moving from body to body, rapidly followed.

At the other end of the hallway, the three remaining men of Bogrov’s first squad stood heaving over the communist corpses in the front room and the officers’ room. From inside the room behind the officers’ room came a woman’s voice. “This is Countess Hendrikova, a friend of the empress. For the love of God don’t shoot!”

“Come out,” said Corporal Turbin.

“There are three of us!” Hendrikova warned.

“Then come the fuck out, all three of you. We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

Immediately three women, one older, two more or less of marriageable age, came out. All were in nightgowns but in the process of pulling on coats.

“Go to the lieutenant,” Turbin ordered. “He’ll direct you to safety.”

“Hey, Corporal?” asked one of the men.

“What is it, Repin?”

“You ought to see this.”

Turbin went to the window from which Repin could see out and said, “Shit.”


From the 37mm position, the platoon sergeant saw the flash of a grenade, saw the firing, very distinct from single shot rifle fire, of the MP18s, and made the proper call to the two guns. “Cease fire! Cease fire!”


“Romanovs down! Romanovs down!” shouted both Sergeants Tokarev and Yumachev, along with all their men, as their squads fanned out, north and south, from the head of the stairs.

Yumachev wasn’t taking any chances with this group of Bolsheviks, He had thrown six flash grenades into the open hall into which the stairs opened. In that sudden storm of thunder and lightning, all five Bolshviks, including Lepa, were stunned silly and blinded. The six men of the squad, per the usual drill, split along the walls, firing, firing, firing, until not a Red remained standing. They then fired some more, to make sure. Yumachev then kicked open the door of the ex-tsar’s study and, with only three men, cleared it as well, all the while shouting, “Romanovs down!” From that room came two assistant cooks and a scullery maid.

In the other direction, Tokarev and his crew started clearing northward, room by room, always half expecting a female scream. The first room clearance, however, caused no screams. It was the drawing room, normally abandoned for the evening, but now containing, mostly asleep on the floor and on the couch, a half dozen of the male prisoners previously held in the Kornilov House. A door kick, a flash grenade, a quick entrance by two men, identified that none of them were armed, and at least one was recognizable, Prince Vasily Alexandrovich Dolgorukov, the Marshall of the Imperial Court. It was probably the presence of the prince that kept the rooms’s occupants from simply being massacred on the spot, as being altogether too male to be trusted.

“Come out,” ordered Tokarev. “Hands up so you don’t get shot. Feel your way to and down the stairs. Our lieutenant will tell you where to go, downstairs. Go! Go! Go!”

“God bless you,” said Dolgorukov, as he led the way onward.

The next room on the hit parade was known to be Tsarevich Alexei’s. It was a no grenade room by previous orders, too. Thus the door was kicked open and a man in a sailor’s uniform was seen standing between the door and Alexei’s bed.

“You’ll take him over my body,” said the sailor, Nagorny.

“That could be arranged easily enough,” Tokarev replied, “but it really isn’t necessary. This is a rescue, not a kidnapping.”

“Oh.”

“Now, if he can walk, get him to walk. If he can’t, carry him. Where? Downstairs to the lieutenant. He’ll direct you to safety.”

Nagorny, stunned despite the lack of a grenade, slowly turned, bent, and picked up Alexei in his stout arms. Before he’d turned back, Tokarev was gone and there was a sound of shouts—“Romanovs down!”—and explosions from both the boudoir, next door, and the royal sleeping chamber, across the hall.

“Wait, Klementi Grigorievich,” said the crown prince. “I’ll leave when my sisters and parents do. Stay here until we see them.”

Once in my life, thought Alexei, oh, please, God, just once in my life to be able to do something as brave and grand. Is that too much for someone cursed with my disease to ask for?

Kornilov House, Tobolsk

With shouts just barely able to overcome the sounds of roaring flame, screaming and burning wounded, shots, and explosions, Yurovsky managed to get all but a handful of unwounded men, with arms in their hands, plus some with grenades, assembled at the main door, fronting Great Friday Street.

“This,” he shouted, to the mass of men standing and crouching ready to charge across the street, “is an attempt by the Omsk mob to seize control of the Romanovs, hence of the revolution. We must prevent them from doing so; the future demands it. Now are you . . .”

Before Yurovsky could say, “ready,” a single shot smashed through the door, sending wood splinters everywhere. It then butchered half a dozen crowded men, tearing off limbs, disemboweling some of them, exposing one set of lungs, and removing one head completely, before ricocheting off the far stone wall to take out four more.

Oddly, between the fire and the shooting coming from the other three sides, the single, devastating bullet didn’t panic the men and drive them back. Instead, it panicked them into opening the door and charging across the street for the stockade around the yard in front of the Governor’s House.

Everyone in the infantry gun section not actively involved in manning the guns turned their own rifles on the Yekaterinburg men. One squad among those left with Molchalin’s platoon sergeant, to the south of the Kornilov House, were likewise able to bring fire onto them. It was not enough. Roughly one hundred and twenty men had been in the Kornilov House. Perhaps ninety or even one hundred of them massed at the door. Eighty or ninety burst through the door to charge for the stockade. At least forty-seven managed to get over the stockade. Meanwhile, the bodies of the remainder littered the street and formed a mass at the foot of the stockade.

That left forty plus inside the compound, terrified, exhausted, and unsure for the moment of what to do. Yurovsky, himself, lay unconscious in the street, his life only spared by the effect of cold in helping to clot the stump of a missing leg.

Then one of the Reds had the presence of mind to shout, “Secure the Romanovs!”

Bell Tower, Cathedral of the Annunciation, Tobolsk

Nomonkov watched the scene playing out below, rifle at the ready but having little to shoot at. He tried to take out one guard on the stockade as soon as he heard the firing erupt from Molchalin’s platoon. Whether he’d hit anything, though, was a matter of conjecture; the lights died before the first shots rang out while the Kornilov House, itself, hadn’t yet truly caught fire enough for any useful degree of illumination.

Once it had caught, though, the sniper had a bit of a field day. Down went the guard of the stockade’s eastern gate. Down went another one, on the southern side. Inside the Kornilov House’s upper floor, yet another was thrown back as the sniper’s bullet tore out his throat in a misty red spray.

And then there weren’t any targets for a while, not until Nomonkov saw a human wave of Bolsheviks—charging or fleeing; it was impossible to say and it may not even have made any difference—moving across the street to the stockade.

He was as surprised as anyone by the charge, so didn’t have a chance for a fourth kill until the mass was at the stockade. Then, with ease, the sniper dropped two men at the base of the stockade, mere seconds apart.

It wasn’t until the mass turned on the main entrance to the Governor’s House that Nomonkov could really reap large. Into the backs of the mob—hell, one hardly needs to aim—he fired again and again. What he didn’t quite realize, however, was that this was actually driving them forward into the house.

Basement, Governor’s House, Tobolsk

With more than thirty men shouting “Romanovs down” in both Russian and English, and none of them shouting it together, it was probably inevitable that some of the guards in the basement should have heard it as “down with the Romanovs.” It was no more surprising that, having heard this, some of them would have inferred that, rather than being a rescue, or even a kidnapping, what they were hearing overhead was most likely an attempt at mass assassination.

A few of the men in the basement, loyal to their previous mission if not to the Romanovs, themselves, insisted they should intervene and save the family. The rest, almost a hundred of them, said “To hell with that,” and sat on those few, literally, while the storm raged overhead.


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