He was the talisman of the compound. All the men watched him. If he broke they would all break. The zeks were spread out across the Zone, as he had wished. Their posture was aimless. When the helicopters rose and peeped for the first time over the high wooden fence they would see only confusion. Let the bastards come…
Anatoly Feldstein was beside Holly. if it works, your plan, will men die?'
'Not necessarily… '
'And if you win this time, what of the next time?'
'I have not won this time, not yet,' Holly yelled brutally.
The nose of the lead helicopter sidled above the fence, a monster that had crawled from a cave and now flexed itself.
'We're not reading your bloody samizdat in a Moscow flat, we're not having wet dreams over a Solzhenitsyn typescript…'
Three more helicopters creeping into close formation above the first, clawing into the dull sky, climbing for altitude.
'… We're not sending telegrams to Ronald bloody Reagan. Nobody outside this camp gives a hell for us. We're on our own, understand that.'
Holly craned his head, following the grey undercarriages of the helicopters. They'd rise to a thousand feet, then drop.
A controlled fall down onto the compound, down onto men who had nothing but nine coils of table-leg, wire, rope, and blanket.
Feldstein held Holly's head, shouted in his ear. 'Can you know what it is to read samizdat? It's wonderful. It is true freedom to read samizdat
'Shut up and watch. Watch and I'll show you freedom.
Watch the helicopters.'
He pushed Feldstein away.
The sky darkened, the noise of the rotors pounded, thrashed the air. Holly saw the machine-gunners, saw them grinning as they peered from their opened doors, leaning out safe on the tether of their lifelines. Let the bastards come
… He depended on nine men, the nerve of nine men.
The zeks began to run, began to form into four concentrations as Holly had dictated. Snow swept into the void, a white and blurring confetti, and he lost sight of Byrkin, and when he spun round Chernayev also was gone. God… the noise, the blasting sound. Holly and Feldstein were alone, and ignored by the pilots. The pilots had greater riches. Four man masses to occupy them. The snow swirls lay like a fog, low and held down by the rotor-blades. The helicopters sat on the white mist, and the engines roared and screamed and howled.
'Now Byrkin… now Chernayev… now… now… '
A stick was thrown in the air. Holly watched, cold and fascinated. A stick was caught by a rotor blade and swept from his sight, and a wire and a rope and two knotted blankets flew in pursuit of a tossed table-leg. Beautiful Chernayev… beautiful Byrkin… beautiful all of you.
Look at the Captain, Holly. Look at his face roving over his instruments, his hands fighting the controls. Press the panic-button. Why won't the bloody thing respond, Comrade Captain?… Holly heard the cry of a failing engine. He flung his arms round Feldstein.
'We might have won…' he yelled.
The zeks knew, the zeks had heard the swing of the engine pitch from the high roar to the failing whine. Wire and rope and blankets were wrapped tight, bandaged, around the delicate free running spool between helicopter cabin and rotors. The zeks ran, broke and spread.
One machine bellyflopped in the compound.
The zeks would be at it like thieves at a Christmas party.
Another machine scraped over the Administration block, and disappeared for a few short seconds before there was an explosion and the answering sweep of dark smoke.
The third machine cleared Hut 3 and took the outer telephone lines from the poles. It keeled against a watch-tower, and fell beyond the high wooden fence.
Almost on the ground, the fourth helicopter seemed to give up the fight for height and settle only for distance. It careered between Hut 6 and the Bath house, scattering its way through fences. Screaming wire, ripping wood, the howl of the engine. Holly saw it go, a great wounded bird fluttering to a defeated landfall. Byrkin was bellowing at him, hanging on his arm for attention.
'I have a Colonel General… I have two pilots, two crew.
We have two machine-guns and ammunition.'
Holly shook himself, tried to rid his head of the echoing noise. 'Get the guns under Huts 3 and 6. Get the crew into the Kitchen.'
God… they had won! The zeks ran round him, dazed, overwhelmed, hysterical.
Holly went towards the Administration block. So quiet without the rotors spinning above him. He walked past the huge downed beast. The zeks were in it, hyenas at a carcase.
He walked tall.
The marksmen would be locked on him.
Twenty metres in front of the Administration block he stopped.
'Tell Major Kypov that we have a Colonel General and two pilots and two crew alive and in our care. Tell him also that we have machine-guns intact.'
'I couldn't shoot,' the marksman sobbed. 'As soon as the helicopters came down they just chucked up the snow. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't give them covering fire.
When the snow cleared, the first thing I saw was that they had our people. They had knives to their throats. They'd have butchered them if I'd fired.'
His sergeant turned away, headed for the tra'pdoor, and the ladder and the corridor to the Commandant's office where the inquest would be raging.
The helicopter had speared first through the fences of Zone i, then across the roadway and into the fences and high wooden wall of Zone 4. It breached the barricades of the Women's camp.
The women had been in their work area at the time of the helicopters' assault, not at their machines but crawling up for vantage points, peering through the glass of the upper windows. As the helicopter exhausted its flight they had streamed from the doorway and out into their compound ignoring the shouts of the wardresses.
It was a stampede.
In the single watch-tower above the Women's zone, the guard seemed not to watch them, but stared across the broken defences into the men's camp.
One group ran towards the helicopter, and was laughing, screaming, at the dazed and disorientated crew strapped in their seats.
One group ran straight for the breach in the fences.
Twenty women, perhaps thirty, sprinted and slithered over the snow and iced paths, shrieking in hysteria, and heading for the hole without reason, and without care. Irina Morozova, not a part of the group, was running with them. A small girl, slight even in her quilted tunic and her knee-length black skirt. A single guard ran along the roadway dividing the two Zones holding rifle at the hip and his finger, awkward in its glove, trying to push forward the frozen catch from 'Safety'. The guard shouted once, and the women swept towards him, ignored him, the sight of the roadway in front of them, and beyond the guard the sight of the men's camp. The knees of the women pumped below their lifting skirts as they ran for the hole.
A sandcastle cannot staunch the tide. The guard was overwhelmed. He never fired, he never found the strength in his gloved finger to release 'Safety'. Beside Morozova, women fell on the guard and toppled him to the snow and she heard the howl of their fury and saw the scratching nails of their hands. Morozova watched. The hands ripped at his greatcoat, pulled at his tunic, thrust at the flies of his trousers. Morozova watched. She saw the skin of his belly, she saw the white of their hands. She heard the gabble of laughter, the scream of the soldier's fear.
There was a long burst of machine-gun fire into the snow and the women scattered like sparrows disturbed from a bird-table. Morozova saw two guards with machine-pistols a hundred metres away, on the road beside the corner of the men's fence. The guard whimpered; his arms were outstretched and his genitals were exposed and bloodied. Some women turned back towards their own compound. Two women ran away from the guards and along the stretch of seemingly empty road, but the watch-tower machine-gun found them and pitched them carelessly over. A few more women ran, hunched and bent, towards the hole into the men's compound. Morozova wondered if she were about to be sick, and she was running too, she was hunched as well.