"They come again?"
"Course they will, Jak," Ryan replied. "It's coming down to the gun. Russkies know we're here. Know we can't run."
"But we can jump," J.B. said. "Now the gateway's nearly ready."
Doc had been listening from the damaged floor above them, with Zorro cowering at his side. "The door is nearly completed, gentlemen. That is perfectly true. But I fear that it doesn't mean we will necessarily find the chamber working when we attempt it. The only way to test it is to use it."
"What could go wrong, Doc?" Ryan asked.
"Who could know that, my dear friend? Who knows the face that launched a thousand ships and something something the topless towers of somewhere or other? If you take my meaning."
"No."
"Tarnation! The mat-trans might simply not function at all and we shall look pretty fools sitting there waiting for our Communist friends to pop us in their bag. Or, it might work a little."
"Then fucking what, Doc?" Jak asked.
"Then we might all occupy a little space somewhere between the stars. A smudge of displaced molecules positioned roughly between eternity and infinity. I do not believe there would be much pain in such an ending."
"Thanks, Doc," Ryan said. "Sure gives us all something to chew on for a while."
"You're most welcome, my dear chap."
"Send them back to their hovels. I want them out of the way before the final assault."
"They are unhappy, Comrade Major-Commissar. So many lost."
"They are not lost, you mumbling, fish-fucking cretin! If they are simply lost we can wait until the sun rises properly and burns away the mist. Then they will be found again. They are notlost! They are out there dead."
"The claims for..." the local commander continued, torn between fear of Gregori Zimyanin and the knowledge that the survivors would probably assassinate him for his part in the massacre.
"It will come under Industrial and Allied Pension and Personal Injury Claims, Comrade. Arrange for the appropriate forms to be handed out tomorrow."
"Yes, Comrade Major-Commissar."
"And tell the sec patrols we attack in precisely fifteen minutes. I want the one-eyed American in my hands within the hour."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
"Next time'll be the big one," Ryan predicted.
"Yeah," J.B. agreed. "Won't be a bunch of kids. Won't be a suicide squad of dirt-poor stupes. It'll be the sec men, and they won't give up easy."
"I can hear something," Krysty said, leaning against the window, head on one side. Doc had taken her place in the deep basement, checking over the last connections to the gateway. Rick had said that it should finally be ready within the hour. Ryan's worry was that they might not have that long before the Russians broke in.
"Wags?"
"Yeah. Four or five. There."
They could all see them, four wags that had come all the way from Moscow. Three of them had heavy armaplate on the front, protecting the cabs and the beds from ordinary bullets. Ryan guessed that they'd all be packed with armed sec men. They'd drive straight at the front of the house, and there was nothing the defenders could do to stop them.
"Any armapiercers, J.B.? Or any grens?"
The Armorer sniffed. "Nope. Not enough to stop them. You?"
Ryan shook his head. "Nothing. Could take out the tires when they get closer. Pick off one or two when they break for the house."
"Burn big stairs," Jak suggested, eagerly handling his huge cannon of a blaster. The teenager was frustrated that, so far, he'd been able to contribute nothing to their defense.
"Could. Trouble is, start a few flames in the center of the house and the whole place could go. Last resort, mebbe."
Krysty touched Ryan on the shoulder. "Didn't tell you what the freezie wants, lover."
"What?"
"He's ready for death. Welcoming it. Insisted I gave him a pyrotab, and he's sitting there with the cans of gas. Says that as soon as we jump, he'll blow the whole place. Himself with it. He means it, lover. I know."
"Fine. I'm not going to stop him. Couple of gallons of gas down there would come up the stairwell like a blasting nuke. Be a hell of a good way for a man to go." The admiration rode high in Ryan's voice.
"Long as he doesn't light it too soon," J.B. warned.
"They got a gren launcher," Krysty announced, shading her emerald eyes from the bright cutting edge of the rising sun.
"Then it's time we moved," Ryan growled. "Get ready for Cawdor's last stand."
Unless the defenders had some secret cache of nukes, Zimyanin knew his men couldn't fail to destroy the damaged building. They could pound it with high-explosive rounds until it was only rubble. Or they could napalm it and roast the Americans alive. But that would leave vital questions unanswered. Questions that Marshal Siraksi would be asking in the next few hours.
Who were these terrorists?
What were their aims?
Did they have allies within the homeland?
How did they get into Mother Russia?
What did the age-old dacha hold that was so important to them?
Zimyanin's own promotion would depend on how many of those questions could eventually be answered. And if he simply chilled them all, the answers would be few and far, far between.
He had commandeered the small wag of the local sec commander, and driving the vehicle himself, followed behind the line of lumbering armawags. The whole advance would stop at his order when the gren launchers were set up and ready.
"Instructions requested, Comrade Major-Commissar, for opening fire."
The voice came crackling from the talkie on the seat next to him, the reception surging and fading as it always did.
Zimyanin picked it up, feeling a rush of excitement. He waited a moment before pressing the Send button. A phrase from his English handbook came to him. "I have great pleasure in declaring this event to be well and truly open." He pressed the button. "Zimyanin here. I want three roads of low-ex grens from each launcher. Aim at the left and right flanks of the building, the ground floor."
"Shall we open fire, Comrade Major-Commissar?"
"Yes."
"Repeat, if you please, Comrade Major-Commissar. I say again, please repeat order."
Zimyanin controlled his swelling anger with the greatest possible effort. He held down the Send button with his index finger and kept his voice calm. "Fire. Fire!"
Two of the grenades failed to explode at all. One only traveled about twenty yards before burying itself in the damp earth, sending a cascading fountain of mud over the lead wag when it finally detonated.
A third missile sailed high over the dacha, vanishing into the bright morning sunlight and landing on the far edge of a deep swamp, sinking out of sight without exploding.
One of the remaining pair of low-ex grens clipped the right-hand corner of the building and exploded with a deep-throated roar of noise, bringing down some of the exterior woodwork in a shower of torn splinters.
The last gren was more successful.
Ryan and the others spotted the firing of the launchers and had time to throw themselves to the floor, hands over ears, eyes closed, braced for the explosions.
It was the sixth gren that landed plumb on target, striking the broken window at the lower left corner of the imposing facade. It bounced across the empty room, and exploded in the back room, where it caused extensive damage to the corpses of the wolf pack.
Chunks of the ceiling fell down in a fog of white plaster. The building trembled under the impact, but it had been solidly built and suffered little structural harm.
"Worth a few shots at the guys with the launchers?" J.B. asked.
Ryan considered the chances. The parked armawags partly blocked a clear sight line. The fog was dissipating fast, lying only in a few hollows and covering fewer of the bodies that seeded the field.