Chapter Six
Illustration from an early manual for the Model 1910
Water-cooled Heavy Machinegun
Outside the Amerikanskaya Hotel, Pokrovsky Prospect, Yekaterinburg
“So where do you intend, finally, to go?” asked Turgenev of the stout, now mufti-clad, female captain. The pair of them, Turgenev and Maria Bochkareva, plus Lavin, generally trailing slightly behind, walked the cold streets of the city, seeking out the Bolshevik headquarters, thought to be on 1905 Square.
“Tomsk,” she replied. “That was my original plan. I am from there, have family there, and there I could have seen to the care of my sick troops.”
“What changed your mind?” he asked. “You have changed your mind, yes?”
She shook her head, but not exactly with negation. “Only to the extent of wanting to keep as many of my girls together as possible for what I expect to be some very bad times to come. I changed my mind,” Bochkareva added, “when I heard that the imperial family had been rescued. That, so I thought, surely means civil war.”
“You’re a militarist,” said Turgenev, feigning a sneer. “You want to be in on the civil war you predict will come?”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “Maybe I would, if I knew what side to be on.”
Turgenev grinned. “And what side would you be on if you could pick that side’s political platform?”
“The side of democracy . . . though . . . not if that idiot Kerensky were in charge of it. And that’s even leaving aside that he wanted me shot.”
“This is Russia,” Turgenev said. “Democracy is probably not suited to us.”
“Maybe not,” Bochkareva admitted, “but we can get closer than either a tsarist or a Red autocrat.”
“Funny you should say that . . .” The Guards Captain let the thought trail off. “Sometimes, you know, the proper thing is to pick the least-worst solution, over the most worst.”
Now it was Bochkareva’s turn to sneer. “Are you suggesting the Bolsheviks are the least worst?”
Turgenev answered this with a noncommittal shrug. Instead, he changed the subject to, “And how did you become a captain?”
“I don’t know who made me one,” she replied, “only that I was told of the promotion by General Valuyev.”
“It’s a low rank for a battalion commander,” he observed.
“My battalion was only the size of one big or two little companies,” she said. “And I wasn’t really a trained officer, though I think I was a pretty good sergeant. I know hardly anything about machine guns or artillery, for example, and have only a woman’s natural grasp of logistics. But those things can be found in others, while Russia’s army needed what I was really good at, strict discipline.”
She changed the subject abruptly. “You ask a lot of questions, Maxim Sergeyevich. I have answered yours, so answer one of mine. Why in the name of all the saints are you even here?”
I have gotten too used to lying to accomplish my mission, thought Turgenev, but then, what’s one more lie . . . or one more shading of the truth?
“My superiors are concerned for the safety of the Abbess of the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary, and wish me to ensure her safety, especially as the Reds of this town are unusually extremist in their views.”
“Funny you should say that,” she said, “for my girls and I saw her just last night . . .”
“Where?” Turgenev demanded, stopping progress, spinning the stout woman to face him, and grabbing her by both arms.
“She was . . . she and about a dozen others were in carts, moving north from a stockaded house south of the train station. I don’t know the name of the house nor its address, but it was at the intersection of Voznesenski Prospect and Voznesenski Lane. You really can’t miss it; there’s a not-quite-complete stockade around it.”
“Come on, this way” he ordered, changing direction.
“Where are we going?”
“To the intersection of Voznesenski Prospect and Voznesenski Lane.”
“But the abbess isn’t there, I told you.”
“I know, but the men there will know where she was taken. Come on!”
The remaining guards on the Ipatiev House hadn’t said a useful word. All they’d admitted to was that the prisoners were “gone, comrade. Spirited off in the middle of the night.”
Currently all of Strat Recon, except those with the wagon and sleigh train northwest of town, and one on guard outside the door, were crowded into Turgenev’s room in the hotel. With them was Maria Bochkareva. They’d been discussing matters for a half an hour, at this point, and the general tone of the discussion led Bochkareva to an unavoidable truth.
“You’re no Bolshevik!” Bochkareva accused. “I don’t know what you are but a Bolshevik you most certainly are not!”
“Shshshsh,” said Turgenev. “What I am and what I am not is not germane to the discussion at hand, which is finding out where the Grand Duchess and the others were taken.”
“It does matter,” the woman insisted. “You brought me here to enlist my aid in something. Whether I help you, whether you get that something, depends on what you are.”
The leader of Strat Recon blew air through his lips, sighed, and decided. He answered, “I am Guards Captain Maxim Sergeyevich Turgenev, and my mission is to rescue Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna from captivity.
“As to what I want from you . . . I could attack the house with the stockade and take the remaining guards prisoner. But that might be noisy and might therefore alert the remaining Bolsheviks in the city. I think, if you could send one or two of your more seductive women . . .”
“Get that right out of your mind,” she said, eyes flashing indignantly. “My girls are all good girls. A fair percentage of them were aristocrats and royalty, too, like my Adjutant, Princess Tatuyeva . . . Well, there was that one girl, but she isn’t with us anymore.”
“I’m not saying they must sleep with anyone,” Turgenev said. “Maybe they could just chat up the guards, take them to lunch when they get off duty. I can always attack if I must, and take the risk. But I’d really rather not.”
“Do you have a couple of very friendly and pretty women?” asked Mokrenko. “They needn’t do anything immoral, but if they could pretend they would and lead a couple of guards down a dark street or alley, we can handle the rest.”
“I doubt any of my girls could convince anyone of any such thing.”
Mokrenko tilted his head quizzically and asked, “Do you have a couple of pretty ones who are also smart?”
Turgenev shot an inquiring glance at his sergeant.
“Sir,” replied Mokrenko, “in an industrial town like this, finding a whore to teach them the ropes should be no problem at all. But I’ll need a couple of ten-ruble pieces. And we’ll need a safe house after all, someplace soundproof to cover up the inevitable screaming.”
Bochkareva looked from man to man to man, taking the measure of all the men in the room. These are real soldiers, she thought. The kind of soldiers I haven’t seen since maybe a year after the war began. Admit it, too, Maria, that if Turgenev lied to you about what he was, you lied to him, equally, about the side you were on . . . would be on. You don’t really care about the form of government, do you? Oh, noooo, don’t lie, especially to yourself. You care about the form of army you’re in.
“I used to work in a brothel . . . no, get that disbelieving look off your faces, you swine!” Bochkareva laughed and shook her head, ruefully. “Look at me; even when young I was no prize. Why, two years ago, when I was in the hospital for frostbite, we put on some amateur theatrical play; they had to use a young male officer to play the girl’s part. Why? Why because he was prettier and more feminine than me. No one was going to pay good money to screw me. I just kept house for the madam. Well, yes, okay, and was an occasional bouncer. But I watched the working girls. I can teach a couple of my girls how to act. That’s if any of them will volunteer, because this is a mission for volunteers.”
“Why makes you sign on so readily?” Mokrenko asked.
With a deep sigh, Bochkareva answered, “Because first and foremost, Lieutenant, I am a soldier. That’s all I am and all I want to be. My girls are the only family I want. Speaking of which, the quarters I found for my girls will do for your safe house. As you say, there will be a lot of screaming to cover up, yes? Well, my girls are out of singing practice. Remedying that should help.
“I think I’ll need a couple of your men, Maxim Sergeyevich, to test my candidates against. But then what? What are your ambitions, Guards Captain Turgenev?”
Bochkareva’s Barn, Yekaterinburg
Though large, the place wasn’t really a barn. Rather it was a two-story log cabin, with a basement, and something on the order of five thousand square feet, not counting the basement. It was warm, toasty warm, had a few windows for light, and even a number of beds for the sicker among the women. For the rest, a good deal of hay had been found in an actual barn on the property.
Mokrenko and Timashuk were there, while Shukhov, the engineer, was off collecting one of the sleighs and one of the Yakut horses.
All of Bochkareva’s women, even the sick girls, had volunteered. By this point in time, too, they all had their hair back. She selected by having each of them walk past Mokrenko and Timashuk, the medic, in as seductive a manner as possible. Most had failed, and failed miserably.
Only two seemed shapely enough, pretty enough, and—the real discriminator—brazen enough for the job, Anna Petrova and Lada Kusmina. The former, tall, blonde, and naturally slender, had a little amateur theatrical experience, while the latter, shorter and darker, and with the most impressive breasts, just seemed to have the instincts for the job at hand.
When Bochkareva asked her about it, though, Lada answered, shame-faced and staring at the floor, “After we split up, I decided to stay with the sick ones. To nurse them as best I could. We had no money so . . .”
Bochkareva was shocked speechless. Everyone present and within earshot was.
Ah, good, thought Mokrenko, pragmatic as always; we won’t have to find a local whore to teach the rules of the game.
It was Timashuk who offered, “Whatever you had to do, to save another human being, and especially a comrade in arms, and whatever”—here he looked directly at Bochkareva—“anyone might say about it, it was a holy act, insofar as you did it for others.”
“Thank you,” Lada whispered.
“Yes, thank you,” Bochkareva echoed. Well, he only spoke the truth, a truth I was a bit blind to.
“Okay,” said Bochkareva, “the rest of you are dismissed for the evening. Don’t forget your prayers. Lada and Anna, we’re going to work with these two men until we have everything properly planned out and rehearsed.”
“I’ll need to make a few modifications to the house, too,” said Mokrenko.
Ipatiev House, Voznesenski Prospect, Yekaterinburg
“Ten rubles,” said the guard, “it’s all I have.”
“Ordinarily, love,” said Lada, the vastly more experienced of the two women, “I’d take you up on that, even eagerly. But this is Yekaterinburg, in the winter, and there’s little or nothing to buy. And what about my friend, here?”
“I have a friend . . . but he won’t have anything I don’t . . .”
“Surely there’s a kitchen in that fine old mansion,” Lada said. “Find two large sacks and fill them with bread and meat and butter and cheese. Add in some cabbage and potatoes. We’ll show you a very good time for that, and cook you a good meal, too.”
“I’m still on duty,” said the guard. “but . . . I’ll be off in three quarters of an hour. Can you wait?”
“Can you get the food?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” agreed Lada, “we’ll walk around the block a few times. We’ll be back in . . . well, it will take you some time to fill the sack . . . let’s say in one hour?”
“One hour works,” agreed the guard. “And, God knows, I use a good screw right about now . . . as well as a good meal.”
Timashuk, being the most harmless looking of the three, had the reins of the sleigh.
“Wish to fuck they’d hurry,” complained Shukhov, shivering with a large piece of canvas wrapped around his shoulders. The fact that his boots were off made it all the worse, despite his feet being wrapped in cloth.
“These things, I suppose, take some time,” said Mokrenko patiently, without turning around. Instead, Mokrenko lay on his belly, slowly freezing solid, with the top of his head just barely around the corner of a building, at ground level. “Though, yes, it’s been a while. I wonder if . . . aha, never mind, here they come.”
With that, Mokrenko slid back, then stood, stiffly, and hurried to the sleigh. He slipped his hand through a loop in a short piece of rope then checked to ensure that Lavin had done the same.
“Cover us up, Timashuk,” the Cossack ordered, while taking his boots off, “then turn the corner toward the girls.”
Covering the men and taking control of the reins had been rehearsed several times. Both acts took Timashuk considerably less than a minute. Then the medic gave a flick to the reins to get the horse going before pulling on one rein to turn the sleigh to the right.
The two couples, two Red Guards plus Anna and Lada, swayed together down the street, making suggestive small talk and giggling with mutual arms around waists. As rehearsed, both girls leaned heavily onto their presumed customers as the sleigh pulled by the little horse clattered down the street.
Once the sleigh was past, the driver pulled on a single cord. The cord split somewhere under the concealing canvas, leading to grasping hands, to tell both men riding hidden that it was time to come out.
Silently, Mokrenko and Shukhov flipped off the canvas and rolled out onto the street. Each man had an Amerikanski pistol stuck in his belt and a sheathed dagger hanging from the same. But the weapon of choice for tonight’s festivities for each was a cosh, a long sock, purchased on the civilian market, filled with sand and gold coins, and double tied below the filling.
They should feel privileged, thought Mokrenko, padding up on half frozen unshod feet. Up came the cosh. Another two steps and Mokrenko reached out to yank his target’s ushanka off of his head. Then down it came, fast, striking the Red’s skull, dropping him almost silently to the ground.
To Mokrenko’s left, Shukhov had been as successful.
“Fine work, girls,” Mokrenko congratulated. “Now take the legs of your would-be clientele and let’s get them loaded into the sleigh.”
With the Reds loaded, face down, Mokrenko and Shukhov bound their hands behind their backs and then their legs at the ankles. The prisoners’ mouths were stuffed with bunched cloth and tightly gagged. They were then covered with the canvas. Lada took a seat next to Timashuk, while Shukhov sat atop the two silent bodies, cosh in hand and ready for reapplication as needed.
“Off with you, then,” Mokrenko said, pulling on boots. “I’ll walk with Anna to confuse matters and meet you at the girls’ quarters in about twenty minutes.”
Bochkareva’s Barn, Yekaterinburg
“Gentlemen,” said Mokrenko to the two bound and gagged prisoners, “we are going to play a little game together. Now, before we begin to play, I want you to understand a couple of things. One is that the irons are already being heated; indeed, they are red hot by now.”
The lieutenant’s eyes twinkled as he smiled broadly. The smile, more than anything else, terrified the two prisoners.
“Another is that the flaying knives are sharpened. A third is that down in the basement, where you will be brought in a minute, are ropes tossed over beams to haul you up by your wrists, which, you may have noticed, are behind you. You know that really stings. I have hammers for your toes, fingers, kneecaps, wrists, and elbows.”
He paced a bit in the space between the two prisoners, before continuing, “Those, however, along with your bodies, are the pieces of the game. The game itself is called ‘information.’ I win—and so do you—if I get all the information that I want. I lose—and so do you—if I don’t get it.
“The way the game is played is that you two will be separated into rooms where you cannot hear each other. I will ask each of you the same question. If I get answers that match, we move on to the next question. If I don’t—and this is the really sad part—I inflict a great deal of pain upon you both until the answers match.
“Now think about that before you try to make up a lie; your comrade isn’t going to know the lie and so cannot match it. Therefore you will both suffer until the one of you who’s lying realizes the pain will never end until he tells the truth. Oh, and the one who is telling the truth; stick to it. If you start to lie too then the pain will not end. That would be how everyone loses, and we don’t want that, now, do we?”
Nodding at Shukhov and Timashuk, Mokrenko said, “Move them to the rooms that have been prepared.” To Bochkareva he suggested, “Captain, I think you should begin choir practice in about five minutes.”
While the women upstairs could be heard doing a very heartfelt rendition of Ahk Vy Seni, Moi Seni, both prisoners were sobbing, separately but about equally. Mokrenko muttered, “Alapaevsk? The school in Alapaevsk? I suppose it makes a certain sense.”
“What about this one?” Shukhov asked, pointing with his chin at the bound, sobbing, trembling ruin of a man, broken toed, somewhat burnt of skin, hanging by his wrists with his feet above the dirt floor, the rope running behind him and over a beam. The man lacked the strength and will anymore even to have his feet flail for purchase on the ground below. Some quantity of fecal matter ran down the prisoner’s foot and dripped off his toes.
“Put him out of his misery?” Mokrenko said. “No, I offered a chance to live if he cooperated. Besides, Timashuk’s a gentle soul.” Noticing Shukhov’s doubtful grimace, Mokrenko added, “You’re wondering why I am reluctant after seeing my conduct on the train, yes?”
On the TransSiberian Railway, Mokrenko had once held a man’s face to a red-hot iron stove to extract information, then killed his victim without pity.
“You didn’t show the slightest reluctance or mercy then, Sergeant.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “There’s a difference, Shukhov, between what you feel you can do when your blood is up, with bandits who had tried to rape a young girl, when you owe your life to that young girl, and . . . well . . . soldiers not a lot different from ourselves, really, not at core.
“So help me get the rope and we’ll lower this one gently. Then let’s see if Bochkareva or her girls have some vodka for their pain.”
Amerikanskaya Hotel, Yekaterinburg
“Worse and worse,” said Turgenev at the news. The news? Sarnof, hanging around the telegraph office as if in search of a job, heard a telegram come in telling of another eight hundred Reds coming to Yekaterinburg to fill in, partially, for the ones gone to Tobolsk.
“What do we do?” asked Bochkareva.
“I’m not sure. Eight hundred Bolsheviks hunting for us as we try to spirit away nearly a dozen royals is about seven hundred and ninety more than I want to deal with. And it’s still almost the dead of winter, we can’t survive out there indefinitely.”
“What if . . . ?” The woman hesitated.
“What if what?”
Making a sudden decision, she asked, “What if we could keep them on the other side of the river from the town? It’s not as if my girls have any reason to love the Bolsheviks after what was done to them.”
“A hundred of you? Against eight hundred Reds? I don’t think so.”
Mokrenko asked, “But what if we can change the odds?”
“What do you mean, ser . . . lieutenant?”
“The captain’s women are not the only ones with no reason to love the Reds. We’ve got a couple of dozen more men, plus whoever in the town can be recruited . . . lots of rifles and two heavy machine guns. Those, plus whatever can be captured.”
“We don’t know how to use machine guns,” said Bochkareva.
“So we leave a couple of men here who do,” said Mokrenko.
“Who?”
“Me . . . and . . . mmm . . . Novarikasha, I think. We can drill an adequate if not great couple of crews in a few days.”
“How much time do we have?” Turgenev asked of Sarnof.
“Four or five days, sir. Or maybe a little less, to be on the safe side.”
“How many Reds went with the royals?” he asked of Mokrenko.
“The Reds we interrogated said eight guards went with them plus their commander, Startsev and his assistant, Ryabov.”
Turgenev had gotten a good deal more decisive since he and Mokrenko had first met. “That means I go on the rescue, because I’ve a better chance of bluffing the Reds with Startsev. That means that you and Novarikasha stay here to aid Captain Bochkareva. You’ll need one man to oversee the teamsters, either Bulavin or Gazenko . . .”
“Bulavin, sir,” said Mokrenko, “though Gazenko’s a competent medic and probably ought to stay here with Captain Bochkareva. Some of her women are still sick, after all.”
“And you, but not on a machine gun. Oh, wait—silly of me to forget. You’re a Guards Lieutenant now; Rostislav Alexandrovich. That makes you rather senior.”
Mokrenko said nothing since he was pretty sure he could do the forthcoming job better than the woman. No shame to her; I’ve just had more time in, more training, and more experience.
“Then . . . Lavin can use a machine gun. He’s not a fully trained gunner but I know he’s had to take the place of a trained gunner a couple of times.”
“Captain Bochkareva?”
“Sir?”
“Do you have any problem taking orders from Guards Lieutenant Mokrenko? He does outrank you.”
“None, sir.”
“Good. Now let’s start planning to take over the city, tonight. I’ll leave in the morning for Alapaevsk. Mokrenko, send someone to the teamsters to bring in them and the weapons. No, on second thought, it has to be you in order to enlist them and take their oath.”
Got to love having a decisive superior officer, thought the Cossack.
“Also, before you go, send someone to round up the American consul and the banker, Maynard, as well as that miner, Curran.” Turgenev reached into a pocket. “Here’s his address.”
“Why the banker and miner, sir?” queried Mokrenko.
“Because right after we polish off the Reds, I want to get our hands on that gold, silver, and platinum for Her Majesty’s war chest. And they know where it all is.”
Ipatiev House, Voznesenski Prospect, Yekaterinburg
There were a number of targets. Not all of these had to be hit in the initial strikes; some could be picked up later. The banks fell into the latter category, as Jay Maynard explained: “There are no Bolsheviks guarding the precious metal, just the civilian guards that were there before.”
“The miners,” added Curran, “are the most Bolshie men in town. But they’re not armed, and the precious metal will wait there until someone digs it out.”
Of the targets that mattered, there would have been two popular bars, if they were not closed, while there were three well-staffed brothels that never closed. Both of the latter classes having been revealed and confirmed by the kidnapped Reds, who still wallowed in misery in the basement of the house. There was also one central barracks, mostly empty, the Bolshevik headquarters on 1905 Square, the main train station, which included the telegraph, and the stockaded Ipatiev House. Also, two two-man teams were dispatched to sever the phone and telegraph lines leading out of town.
Bochkareva drew the Ipatiev House. For the task she kept twenty of her women, rifles loaded, but with filled magazines only; no rounds in the chambers, and bayonets fixed. These double-timed up Voznesenski Prospect until splitting up just before reaching the stockade. Ten of them raced for the rear of the house, on the side facing the river, where the fence was not nearly complete yet, while ten and Bochkareva, herself, went for the guards on the gate.
The shocked and surprised guards on the gate didn’t get a shot off before finding themselves pinned to the log wall by three or four bayonets each. These were of the old-fashioned sort, spike bayonets, basically. The girls had to stab several times each to make sure the men were quite dead. Blood welled around the impaling spikes, but these were hardened women, who had already seen something of war. None of them wilted at a little spurting crimson.
The guards being dispatched, Captain Bochkareva and nine of her women stormed through the gate with the former in the lead.
There was one woman left behind, not as rear security, as one might expect, but because she’d driven her bayonet so hard into the Red’s body that the damned thing was stuck into the rough, unsawn wood behind it. When the other ten charged, she was still struggling to get it out, to the extent of lifting herself up by the stock of her rifle to plant both booted feet on the Red’s upright corpse. Cursing communists and bayonets with equal fervor, she pushed and pulled and twisted. And the thing still refused to budge. Finally, in disgust, she left her own rifle where it was and took up the dead Red’s weapon. She emptied the chamber while holding the next round down with her thumb to close the bolt, and then ran after her sisters.
At the door, Bochkareva threw her own not inconsiderable bulk against it. It wasn’t quite enough to break the wooden crossbeam that held the thing shut, no, but it was enough force to half break it and splinter the wood. Another foray and the door sprung open.
Into the upper floor of the house drove Bochkareva and her girls. Down below, in the basement, she could hear cries of shock as the dozen or so men still down there were awakened to gleaming, spiked bayonets and rifle butts.
In not even a full minute from the first bayonet thrust the house was secured.
There were no prisoners.
“Come on, girls!” exclaimed Bochkareva. “We’ve got a hot date at 1905 Square!”
Elsewhere in the city, three groups of a dozen women, each reinforced by one of Turgenev’s men, stormed each of the three bordellos on the list. Oh, the shock, oh, the embarrassment, as Reds and innocent—for certain values of innocent—customers alike were hounded out into the street at bayonet point, huffing and cursing all the while, carrying their clothes and their tattered dignity before being searched and allowed to dress . . . in the street. Any that were left, hiding, two of the girls and their attached man from Strat Recon went through to club and bayonet to death. No shots had been fired, to date.
The remaining women, now freed up, began to trot to 1905 Square to join their captain in a siege.
Main Train Station, Yekaterinburg
The teamsters, led by Bulavin and Gazenko, drew the train station. It turned out to be not much of an event. They charged in and burst through the main door, to find the dozen or so Reds present being caught at breakfast and largely disarmed. Teams of four and five fanned out to make sure the station was clear, and especially to grab the telegraph, but found no one who wasn’t already at breakfast. Even the telegraph was, oddly, unmanned.
Leaving a small garrison under Gazenko, Bulavin began marching the rest, under threat of bayonet, toward the designated POW collection point, which was the basement of Bochkareva’s Barn, now cleaned of blood.
Main Bolshevik Barracks, Yekaterinburg
No one was quite sure how many Reds were in the main barracks. Estimates ranged from a low of fifty to a high of two hundred fifty. One thing could be ascertained, however; this was that no more than four were on exterior guard at any one time.
The building itself, generally northeast of the center of town, was of about three thousand square feet on a floor, and of two floors, plus a basement. It was this size that made the high-end estimates of the troops billeted there at least plausible.
The building was oblong, with the short walls having relatively few windows and no doors, while the longer walls—front and rear, basically—had many windows and two doors each. One each of the heavy machine guns, therefore, was hauled into place at opposite corners, set back into the streets, with wagons pulled up to provide a modicum of cover. The machine guns’ fires were oriented to prevent escape out those windows and doors by anyone fleeing to and through the open areas to the front and rear.
There was no call to surrender. Instead, some of the men and women took up positions facing the front and rear and, at a preset time, opened fire to kill the guards shivering outside of the doors or, at least, drive them back inside.
At the sound of the opening of fire, Mokrenko, at one corner, and Novarikasha, at the other, each supported by one other man, respectively Peredery and Shukhov, the engineers, bounded up before pressing themselves against the blank walls. Each also carried about four vedro, or roughly six and a half gallons, of kerosene. Their backups had, each of them, a sledgehammer, matches, a couple of kerosene-soaked rags, one container of two vedro, and a section of hose.
Looking around the corner to make sure the coast was clear, Mokrenko calmly walked the few arshini to the nearest basement window, put down his heavy buckets of kerosene, and pointed at his backup’s slung sledgehammer. A quick strike and the basement window shattered inward. Then it was toss the open-topped buckets in, one after the other. When he was done, his supporting man did likewise.
Then it was strike a match, torch off a couple of kerosene-soaked rags, and toss them inside. Foooshshshsh!
“Come on,” said Mokrenko to his backup, “let’s get out of here and back to the Maxim!”
Build a man a fire, thought Mokrenko, as he and Peredery trotted for cover, and keep him warm for a night. Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
The heavy machine gun wasn’t far away. Novarikasha and Shukhov had plenty of time to settle in and become bored before the Bolsheviks began pouring out of the building on the side they covered, half dressed, half armed . . .
But utterly screwed, the Cossack thought, as he opened fire and began slapping his machine gun with his left hand and then right to sweep back and forth across the open space. In his view, Bolsheviks went down by rows. A few tried raising their arms in surrender but, in this context, a Maxim became practically an area fire weapon and lost the ability to distinguish. Even with that, many of the Reds decided that bullet was a better way to go than flame; by fours, fives, and sixes they bolted out, only to be cut down on the reddening snow.
Soon enough, there was fire blazing from every window and no more Bolsheviks trying to flee.
1905 Square, Yekaterinburg
Forty women under Princess Tatuyeva had taken positions around the Bolshevik headquarters on 1905 square. Their signal for opening fire was simply: “When you hear shooting, commence firing yourselves.”
The return fire was brisk but, on the whole, the women were better trained than the men inside the building. Moreover, they were continually reinforced by Strat Recon, with the heavy machine guns and Lewis Gun, the teamsters, such as were not guarding the rail station, and several score more women from their own battalion.
As the volume of fire coming in began to beat down the resistance, little white flags likewise began showing at the windows and doors. “Quarter?” came the cry. “We ask for quarter.”
Turgenev started to walk forward but was stopped by Mokrenko.
“I’m more expendable than you are,” said the latter. “I also bluff better.” With this, Turgenev couldn’t argue.
“Moreover, sir, you need to make sure the narrow-gauge train you ordered prepared is ready.”
“Can’t argue with that, either, Ser . . . Rostislav Alexandrovich. Even so, even accepting all you’ve said, get the surrenders started; I’ll leave after that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mokrenko then walked right out into the open space. “There are nine hundred soldiers surrounding this place,” he claimed. “Right now they’re under control. But if you shoot me, there will be no holding them back. You will all be killed. Probably in some lingering and disgusting fashion.
“If you want to save your lives, you must subdue anyone who still wants to fight, then come out with your weapons held over your heads. Drop them to the side as soon as you exit the door and then walk toward me.
“You will be well treated.”
Turgenev, freed of the need to even suggest he was a Red, was busy pumping the three Americans for information.
“No, Captain,” said Maynard, “there’s no rail to Alapaevsk. There’s a rail line, to Nizhny Tagil, but that only gets you a little bit closer. It’s not enough difference to even be worth the effort.”
Turgenev indulged himself with a very rare, “Shit! It will take three or four days to get there on horseback and I don’t know that we have that much time. Honestly, I don’t even know that we have any time at all, but I have to assume . . .”
“There are automobiles and trucks,” Maynard suggested. “I have an automobile. The consulate—”
“No,” Palmer interrupted, “until the U.S. government recognizes what’s going on in Russia, the consulate’s hands are tied. We can neither side with the Bolsheviks nor with the Royals. Well, not in any way that can be officially tied to the United States.”
“No matter,” said Curran. “This is an industrial town; there’s no shortage of drivers and trucks, and the gasoline stocks are still ample.”
“Mr. Maynard,” asked Turgenev, “You know the town and the people. Could I prevail on you to . . .”
“Do you want to bring your horses?” Maynard asked.
“If at all possible.”
“Give me . . . oh, call it four hours for Seamus and myself to round everything up.”
“Thank you!”
“No sweat,” Curran assured him. “Wouldn’t do to try to walk there, after all.”
“And can you spare us a rifle each?” asked Maynard. “Never know if we might need one.”