Kirov Saga: Hinge Of Fate: Altered States Volume III (Kirov Series) (16 page)

Now he had to decide. Do I go
down those steps to look for this man, Volkov? What in God’s name will happen
here if I find him? First things first. Secure this inn. He could see that the entrance
was guarded by three men, and he knew there were probably more inside.

The sound of gunfire raged beyond
the inn, and he knew the Siberians were hard pressed now. Angered by the fiery
loss of their only ride home, the Grey Legionnaires were pressing their attack
with fierce abandon. Troyak stuck his head out the front school door and
shouted at the guards.

“Hey! Pizda! Get your men up to
the front. I’m bringing up two reserve squads to hold this place. Move!”

The guards gave him a wide eyed
look, one reflexively leveling a rifle in his direction, but Troyak paid it no
heed. He walked right up to the three men, scowling at them. “Didn’t you hear
me? Move your men up to support the perimeter! And get that rifle out of my
face, Corporal, or I’ll shove the damn thing down your throat!”

The men looked and saw the rest
of his rifle squad coming up behind him, hard men the like of which they had
seldom seen. One passed a fleeting thought that these were the enemy. Their
uniforms were strange and they carried unfamiliar looking weapons. Their
insignia was nothing they recognized, but then Troyak gave them an evil grin.
“Did you see how we toasted that stupid zeppelin? We’ll make short work of the
enemy just the same.”

“You were sent by Karpov?”

That name jolted Troyak a moment,
but he seized on it, realizing a moment when he saw one.

“Of course—who else? We’re taking
over here. Move your men out to the causeway!”

It was all it took to gain entry.
The sheer force of Troyak’s presence and will power, his uncanny command of the
Siberian dialect, the dour Marines at his side, and a little
lozh
. The
guards ran off to the front line and Troyak signaled Zykov to bring his men in.
He took his squad up the main stairway to the second floor and the men
instinctively tramped down the hallway and into the empty boarding rooms to
take up firing positions at the windows. They found three more men inside, and
sent them on their way.

Now Troyak noted that the upper
landing to the back stairway was taped off. He had the presence of mind to give
one order that mattered here: “No one is to use that back stairway under any
circumstances. Understood? If I give a withdrawal order, and for any reason you
cannot get to the main stairs, then use the windows. Otherwise you can check in
here for an extended stay.”

Zykov’s team swept through the
park, coming to the clearing where a round waterless fountain surrounded by a
low, red brick wall sat just behind the inn. He soon saw that the perimeter
defense had finally collapsed. The causeway had been forced by the determined
assault of Volkov’s engineers, who brought up a heavy machine gun to suppress
the defensive fire while three rifle squads had raced across. The enemy was now
just two blocks away, and he reported as much to Troyak when he reached the
inn.

“Alright,” said Troyak. “We’ll
hold here until we secure this place.” Then he gave an order for his grenade
launcher. “Drop 200 meters and fire for effect!”

The pock, pock, pock of the rapid
fire launcher sounded on the crisp air, and soon the small 30mm grenades were
popping off all along the front of the enemy advance. The Siberian riflemen had
fallen back through the town and were trying to regroup in the big concrete
locomotive depot. A main street from the causeway came right through the town
between the inn and the depot, and he knew the enemy would come that way. That
would leave Troyak’s Marines as the only force east of that road against the
Grey Legion.

“What do you figure we’re up
against, Sarge?” said Zykov as he deployed his men on the first floor.

“At least two companies, maybe
three.”

“A battalion? Good! It’s a fair
fight for a change.” Zykov smiled.

Troyak sized up the situation. I
can hold this inn indefinitely, he thought, unless they have heavy weapons,
which I doubt if these men came off those zeppelins like we did. But if I let
them sweep into town and surround this place… He didn’t like the thought of
that.

If he was going to take the risk
of going down those stairs, then the inn had to be secure. Fedorov had warned
him that time passed at different speeds at both ends of that stairway. He
didn’t quite understand it, but grasped the fact that even if only a few
minutes passed for him, it could be hours for the men he left behind here. And
what if it took him hours, or long days to track down his quarry? What if
Volkov was nowhere in sight? What if he ended up in some other year? The
unknowns associated with a sortie down those stairs were simply too great.

Now he looked at Zykov, a glint
in his eye, dark brows furrowed over his bulldog face. “We can’t let them box
us in here.”

“Agreed. But why hold here at
all? We should just blow this place to hell and be done with it.”

That made sense. That was what he
should do.

“Take your squad back through the
park to those storage sheds on the other side and flank that causeway. We need
to hold this intersection.” He pointed to his map with a thick thumb. “I’ll
take a heavy rifle squad forward and take this position here. Then we’ll show
them what they’re up against.”

* * *

Fedorov
was sleeping
restlessly that night.
Kirov
was still anchored in the Faroe Islands and
they had been discussing future plans for the ship with Admiral Tovey. Soon
they would be bound for Reykjavik. Their plan was to swing up to Hornsrandir,
the northernmost cape of Iceland on the Denmark Strait in the Westfjord region.
Fedorov knew that there were several old farm houses and hunting cottages
there, and he had come up with the idea that they could set up a generator and
Oko
panel radar team in one. It would give them radar coverage over the whole
approach to the strait, and preclude the need to ever use the valuable KA-40 to
patrol the region. Admiral Volsky found out that they had six
Oko
panels
aboard, two for each of the three helicopters they would normally carry, so it
seemed a good idea to him, and he heartily endorsed it. From the tip of that icy,
windswept horn they could close the Denmark Strait, and Tovey was very glad to
hear this proposal.

“We will call it the Ice Watch,” Volsky
said to Fedorov.

Fedorov had selected the place he
had in mind, on a stony finger of land called Hornstrandir. It was a green
desolate preserve, pristine in its simplicity, with emerald swards that swept
up at near 45 degree angles to the edge of a jagged coastline that suddenly
dropped off in sheer cliffs to the rocky shore and cold sea below. The local
farmers were abandoning the region now that war had come, seeking safety in the
larger communities to the south. So it would be a bleak and lonesome watch
there, in a land where legends held that spirits and trolls haunted the stony
vales, and polar bears roved the shore to look for seals, or anyone foolish
enough to be at large there.

The details of that mission, and
his worry over Troyak’s mission, had kept him awake that night, a fitful sleep
as he sifted through possible outcomes. What had happened to the
Narva?
They had missed five consecutive radio checks since leaving Port Dikson. He had
this in the back of his mind all through the Faeroe Island conference with
Admiral Tovey, but now it came to the fore.

Did they suffer some mishap or
accident, or was this a simple radio failure? Did they get through to Ilanskiy?
If so, what was going on there? Some inner sense kept nagging at him that there
was unforeseen danger at the heart of this mission, deep dark trouble that he
had not considered or accounted for. What had he overlooked? Then he sat up in
his bunk, suddenly realizing something, his eyes wide and alert.

No! Troyak cannot go down those
stairs! Why did he not think of this earlier? He had been so busy with his duty
on the ship, planning the meeting with Tovey, and he should have realized this
before. He should have talked it over with Kamenski, and now he thought that he
may have made a fatal mistake. It was imperative that he get through to Troyak
now, and he was up from his bunk, throwing on clothes and grabbing his service
jacket and hat to run down the long corridor to the citadel.

A sleepy eyed watchstander heard
footsteps on the ladder up to the main hatch there, but was very surprised to
see Fedorov when he burst through the entrance. He sat up, startled, and then
instinct served and he shouted: “Captain on the bridge!”

“As you were.” Fedorov was
immediately to the communications console. Rodenko was standing the late watch
and he came over with a curious smile.

“Need to send a message?”

“Any word from Troyak or Orlov?”

“None, sir.”

“Well, we have to get through. Is
there any way we can boost the signal from our end? What if we piggy backed it
on our over the horizon radar?”

“It would get lost in the
microwaves. But we could switch off that system, and then use its high power
amplifier to boost our HF radio signal. In fact, I can even configure the top
mast radar antenna to receive.”

“Do it, Rodenko, as fast as you
can.”

“I’ll need an engineer on the
main mast. It’s not something I can toggle from the console here.”

“Then get someone, and wake up
Nikolin, I’ll need him here.”

The young mishman at that post
was only too glad to be relieved when a sleepy eyed Nikolin showed up on the
bridge ten minutes later.

“Sorry, Nikolin,” Fedorov
apologized. “I’ll see that you get the entire morning watch off, but I need you
here now. We’re going to try something.”

It took another forty minutes,
but the radio engineer soon called down from the top mast above the citadel and
reported he had cabled the HF military broadcast system to the powerful radar
amplifier equipment on the mast.

“Alright, Nikolin. Can you
frequency hop from about 1.6 to 60 MHz? I want to blast a signal so loud at
them that they would have to be deaf not to hear it.”

“With that kind of power they
would have to be dead,” said Nikolin. “Either that or the radio sets are all
destroyed.”

That thought gave Fedorov no
comfort, and Nikolin regretted it the moment he said it, but they pressed on
with the plan. It was a tense five minutes, but then Nikolin saw his secure
signal line go green and he knew they had managed to make contact.

“Got them!” he said with a smile,
and Fedorov sighed with relief. But a sudden pulse of anxiety swept over him
now. If I give this order, he thought, then my own fate is directly involved
this time. I could create another insoluble problem for time, and this time she
just might go after the offender—me! Yet he knew he had to do something. That
stairway was simply too dangerous.

He closed his eyes. Even if it
meant he might now be casting his soul to the wolves, he had to act. Then he
reached for the handset and pushed the send button.

* * *

Troyak’s
men gave the
onrushing Legionnaires a nasty surprise. The enemy had crossed the causeway and
were working their way past an old abandoned garage and vehicle park. Troyak
let them come, then gave the hand signal for his men to open up. They cut down
the two lead squads in seconds, the staccato of their assault rifles sharp in
the air. The third enemy squad retreated quickly. They brought up two machine
guns to try and answer the heavy automatic weapons fire from the Marines, but
the RPG-30 made short work of them.

“Sergeant Troyak! I have comm-sig
from
Kirov!
It’s Nikolin!”

The Sergeant had just reloaded
his assault rifle when the radio man he left with the two demolitions experts
sounded off in his earbud. “Here it is sir, I’ll patch him through to you.” The
man toggled his speaker switch but it was not Nikolin. Troyak immediately
recognized the voice of Fedorov.

“Fedorov here. It is
imperative that no one utilizes the back stairway. I repeat. Sergeant
Troyak—your mission down those stairs is cancelled. Implement plan B, and then
move to extract your team. I repeat. Plan A is aborted. There must be no sortie
on the stairwell. Implement plan B and extract. Over.”

Troyak had his answer. He kicked
a little ass here, pushed these odd legionnaires back over that causeway, and
now he was considering what to do about those stairs. The problem was solved
when this order came in from well above his pay grade. Plan B was just what
Zykov had advised. Blow the place to hell and then pull his men out. Someone
has had second thoughts, he realized. Good enough. He acknowledged the signal,
reported his status, and confirmed his new orders.

Even as he did so he heard a
distant train whistle, sounding high and shrill above the mutter of small arms
fire to the west. A train was approaching, and he knew it was probably carrying
much needed reinforcements for the Siberians. My brothers here will have what
they need to beat these Kazakh scum off now. He had heard the distant shouts of
the Legionnaires and he recognized their dialect as well.

“Alright,” he said decisively.
“Get back to the railway inn, Litchko,” he said to a nearby rifleman.
“Demolition team,” he called on his mike. “Stand ready.” He pinched his collar
mike and then gave Zykov the news.

“Hey Zykov! We got through to the
ship! Orders are to do things your way now. We blow the place sky high and
extract. Spot for the grenade launcher, then notify
Narva
on the radio. We’ll
say goodbye and then pull out.”

Chapter 15

“I’m
not sure why I never
thought of this before,” said Fedorov. “I knew it was problematic, but then it
just hit me!” He was sitting in the officer’s briefing room with Admiral Volsky
and Kamenski. “So I gave the order, sir. I hope I was not out of line.”