The Romanov succession

Sergei reached for the tommygun slung on Alex’s shoulder. Alex felt it when Sergei rammed a loaded magazine into the weapon. Then Sergei tapped his shoulder and got down in a crouch with the rear half-wall of steel for a parapet. It made a wall of thin armor three feet high across the back of the reversing engine: enough to deflect rifle fire but no proof against a tank’s gun.

Then Alex snapped out of it. The dreamlike state went. He saw everything clearly and with reasoned comprehension. The locomotive ran backward down the rails, bulleting toward a gradual curve beyond which anything might be approaching-very possibly another train or a pack of tanks. Behind him four T-34S were pursuing the locomotive in a losing race, their cannonfire falling behind, lifting great booming divots of snow and soil. On either side of the tracks the tanks and infantry were closing the trap but they were too late, the locomotive had got outside their circle and they were closing an empty fist.

In that period of uncertain semiconsciousness he had got them out of it. They’d escaped even if it was only until the next bend of the track. It wasn’t much but it was a small triumph and he said, “All right, Sergei. I’m all right now.”

Fifty miles an hour or better and they roared into the down hill bend.

It was blocked of course. Tanks-three of them climbing the grade, their treads skittering on the snow.

One of them was coming straight at him. Straddling the rails.

Collision course.

The mortarman’s head rocked back. Fear disfigured his face. His stare pleaded.

Alex roared at him:

“ Shoot!”

It was a game of raw courage-the challenge of the ultimate bluff: who would give in first? But Alex had the advantage. It was eight hundred yards-half a mile-and when he didn’t cut power and jam on the brakes instantly it meant there wouldn’t be time to stop anyway and if the tank didn’t get off the tracks that was that.

It took the tank driver a long time to make up his mind and in the meantime the guns of all three T-34S were firing. Alex’s mortar kept splashing snow in their eyes and the two outboard tanks were slithering in deep loose snow and every time their guns fired they were knocked askew by the recoil and the mortar explosions made it hard for them to line up again. It was the tank on the rails that was the threat because it was no good mortaring in front of it: that could rip up a track and derail the locomotive.

Ludicrously it put him in mind of something Carol Ann had said: “Sometimes there’s not a damn thing you can do but act like a jackrabbit in a hailstorm: hunker down and take it.”

The locomotive made a minimal target head-on at six hundred yards; half a degree’s error and the tank gun’s shells exploded harmlessly in the snow. It looked an easy shot but it wasn’t. At fifty miles an hour-possibly more-the solitary 2-6-2 locomotive was cutting the range faster than the tanks’ gunners could crank their elevation gear and there was just enough curve in the long bend of the track to force the guns to keep correcting their traverse aim.

It was absurd to hide behind the thin plate of the engine’s rear armor but they did it out of instinct, five of them crowded into that little space and several more crouching on the plow blade behind the engine. Alex kept his eyes up far enough to see but there was nothing he could do but wait. And if the fire went out under the boiler right now it would be all over.

You could see the shell come out of the muzzle or at least the exploding smoke that propelled it. You could hear them come in: overhead with a roar or to one side with a deafening crash. All three tanks were shooting as fast as they could load but the outboard ones weren’t coming anywhere close. Then a shell that must have been HE blew up a hundred feet in front of him and his breath caught in his throat because it looked as though it had blown the roadbed apart but it must have been off to the side just enough: it had dumped gravel and ice on the rails and the locomotive lurched and rattled under him but it didn’t lose its grip on the steel and they were still speeding down the track with the blown-up snow cascading over their shoulders.

When they came out of it the tank was still astraddle the rails, still shooting. Five hundred yards-at fifty miles an hour that gave them about twenty seconds and then collision.

A shout of alarm: a soldier clinging to the step. He was pointing back along the engine-up toward the crest behind them. Alex wheeled to risk a half-second’s glance.

There was a train-coming down the track in pursuit. Its open flatcars bristled with artillery. A mile or more behind. He had time to see that much and then the locomotive bucked and pitched and he heard a tremendous ringing clang that all but ruptured his eardrums. The impact threw him flat against the armor plate.

He thought for an instant they’d collided with the tank but reasoned second thought quickly discarded that: hit the tank and they’d all have been dead.