The lieutenant gave an unseen shrug. “Dunno, sir. Haven’t had a chance to count them yet. Maybe about fifty.”
“Okay do you know where your company is?”
“Yes, sir; I’ve studied the diagrams and maps. They’re over by the girls’ gymnasium, northeast of the corner of Yershova and Slesarnaya.”
“Good, very good. Leave one squad to guard your prisoners and you take the rest of the platoon to reinforce your company commander. I suspect he’s having all he can handle.”
Girls’ School, Tobolsk
Three times the Omsk men had tried to break out, and three times Dratvin had been able to hold them. The last one, though, had ended up in hand to hand and at bayonet point to the south of the school. That had only been driven back with the aid of the cross-firing Lewis guns.
And, at that, thought Dratvin, half of the platoon here is down. We can’t hold another one, if they really try. May be time for the flamethrowers.
A shout came from the building. At first, half deaf from the shooting, Dratvin couldn’t make out the words. Eventually, he was able to hear, “We want a parley.”
Hmmm… I wonder if they can see where we are? Maybe time for…
“Engineer?”
“Here, sir.”
“Have one of your flamethrowers give a short spurt of fire, almost straight up. Just enough for them to know you’re here.”
That side of the school was suddenly lit up, almost as bright as day, by a long tongue of flame.
“No terms are offered,” Dratvin shouted back, “but immediate and unconditional surrender.” He decided to try a tactical lie or, rather, two of them in one. The lie was made credible, first by the sheer number of machine guns Dratvin’s company had in play, and second by the rather large battles and the amount of fire to be heard coming from the west. It was enough to make credible his tacit claim of having a battalion and that another one would be arriving shortly. “I am about to be reinforced by a second battalion. Once they arrive, there will be no mercy.”
“We’ve got a lot of wounded.”
Dratvin answered, “We’ve got limited medical capability, ourselves, but the town has its share of doctors. Bring your wounded out with you. Bring everyone out with you because when we go in to search the building we will give no second chances.”
Governor’s House, Tobolsk
It didn’t help any, when the Yekaterinburg Bolsheviks forced the front door open, that Sergeant Bogrov was dead and Third Squad had lost half its strength. One of them was shot down more or less instantly and, while a second one emptied a magazine into the horde pouring through the sundered doors, and it was not enough. The third, Vasenkov, inside the officers’ room, threw his back against the thick wall between the room and the corridor, waiting for an opportunity to… I’m not sure just what.
The Bolsheviks shot those two down, bayoneted the prone bodies, then knocked off their Adrian helmets and smashed their skulls for good measure.
Farther in, Lieutenant Collan, trying to direct the rescued prisoners, took one look and simply forced them bodily back through the door and into the staircase area. That cost him his life as his headlamp became a beacon for the fires of over a score of men who had not previously been blinded by flash grenades. Collan’s immediate guard, Lopukhov, dropped to one knee, firing into the mass charging down the hallway. He, too, was felled, just as his lieutenant had been, given away by both his muzzle’s flash and the light on his head.
The little French Bulldog, Ortipo, meanwhile, continued his running back and forth, accompanied by furious barking. He had no idea what was going on, but knew for a fact that he didn’t like any of it.
Farther up the main floor hallway, Sergeant Kostin, the Second Platoon Sergeant, and the few men with him, took cover in the doorways of previously cleared rooms. Shots then slashed back and forth, between Kostin’s men and the Yekaterinburgers.
Then two grenades—and not relatively harmless flash grenades—sailed out from the Bolsheviks. One landed in the hallway, not far from the dog. The other bounced off the doorframe leading to the stairwell, then fell to the stairwell’s floor.
His sisters, of course, made a great fuss over Alexei, borne in Nagorny’s sturdy arms, petting him and covering his face with kisses. He bore it with as much dignity as any hemophiliac crown prince could be expected to.
“I’m FINE, I told you,” he insisted, to absolutely no effect on his sisters.
The boy’s eyes darted around the little area. There was a press, he saw, by the door opening to the passageway that led to the kitchen. It created, in effect, a kind of traffic jam.
I’ve got to get one of those lights, he thought, as well.
In the light of the carbide lamps he saw something fly against the doorframe, then bounce off to land on the floor under his sisters’ feet. Not every adolescent boy would have recognized it, but Alexei did. Grenade, he thought. Grenade! My sisters!
I’ve lived as a mere shadow of a boy, a Pinocchio that bleeds…
The boy didn’t think about it, any further. Instead, he simply pushed and rolled himself out of Nagorny’s arms. The fall might have killed him to internal bleeding, anyway.
…but I die like a man.
Falling to the floor he pushed himself over the grenade and then lay on top of it. Just before the explosion came, with his body between it and his beloved family, Alexei’s last thought was, Thank You for my deliverance, Lord.
The pooch didn’t really need the light from the headlamps to see the stick thrown at his feet. His night vision was naturally better than any mere human’s.
Finally! The dog thought, something I can understand. Someone wants to play fetch.
The dog picked up the slightly more than one pound grenade with his teeth, then bounded in the direction from whence it had come. Unseen, he dropped it as the feet of the crowd of soldiers there, then ran back up the hall, expecting it to be thrown again. He was almost as far as Kostin when the grenade went off. After stunning the Bolshviks silly, the blast and shock wave roared down the hall. The dog was picked up bodily and tossed a dozen feet.
That, it thought, is the last time this little puppy plays fetch with anyone… ever.
The four girls and their mother let out a collective scream sufficient even to drown out the sound of firing. “Alexei!”
Nagorny, being closest, was the first one to get to the boy. On his knees, weeping, “My boy, my boy, my little prince,” the sailor rolled Alexei’s body over. “Oh, my God…”
The sight of that was sufficient to set the women to screaming again but, to be fair, even the normally placid former tsar joined them at seeing what the grenade had done to his only son.
As Nagorny lifted the corpse back up into his arms, blood simply gushed and splashed on the floor from the boy’s virtually disemboweled midsection. His skin was ghastly pale, even in the yellow light of the carbide lamps. One arm, his right, hung free, fingers lightly curled. His face was unmarked and smiling. In a way, that made it harder on his family, as, despite being so pale, he looked otherwise like he might have been merely sleeping. At least, he looked that way until one’s eyes glanced down at his abdomen.