Red Storm Rising

"We are far from that point. What about the timing? We depend on you to set the stage."

"I have a colonel who specializes in this sort of thing."

"I'm sure."

"One other thing we should do," Kosov said. He explained for several minutes before taking his leave. Sergetov shredded the notes he had from Alekseyev and had Vitaly bum them.

The trouble light and buzzer caught the dispatcher's attention at once. Something was wrong with the trackage on the Elektrozavodskaya Bridge, three kilometers east of Kazan Station.

"Get an inspector out there."

"There's a train half a kilometer away," his assistant warned.

"Tell it to stop at once!" The dispatcher flipped the switch controlling the tower signal.

The deputy dispatcher lifted his radiotelephone. "Train eleven ninety-one, this is Kazan Central Dispatch. Trouble on the bridge ahead, stop immediately!"

"I see the signal! Stopping now," the engineer replied. "We won't make it!"

And he couldn't. Eleven ninety-one was a hundred-car unit, flatcars loaded with armored vehicles and boxcars loaded with munitions. Sparks flew in the pre-dawn light as the engineer applied the brakes on every car, but he needed more than a few hundred meters to halt the train. He peered ahead looking for the problem-a bad signal, he hoped.

No! A track was loose just at the west side of the bridge. The engineer shouted a warning to his crew and cringed. The locomotive jumped the track and ground sideways to a halt. This could not prevent the three engines behind it and eight flatcars from surging forward. They too jumped off the track, and only the bridge's steel framework prevented them from spilling into the Yauza River. The track inspector arrived a minute later. He cursed all the way to the telephone box.

"We need two big wreckers here!"

"How bad?" the dispatcher asked.

"Not as bad as the one last August. Twelve hours, perhaps sixteen."

"What went wrong?"

"All the traffic on this bridge-what do you think?"

"Anyone hurt?"

"Don't think so-they weren't going very fast."

"I'll have a crew out there in ten minutes." The dispatcher looked up at the blackboard list of arriving trains.

"Damn! What are we going to do with these?"

"We can't split them up, it's a whole Army division traveling as a unit. They were supposed to go around the north side. We can't send them around to the south either. Novodanilovskiy Bridge is packed solid for hours."

"Reroute them into Kursk Station. I'll call the Rzhevskaya dispatcher and see if he can get us a routing on his track."

The trains arrived at seven-thirty. One by one they were shunted onto the sidings at Kursk Station and stopped. Many of the troops aboard had never been to Moscow before, but except for those on the outermost sidings, all they could see were the trains of their fellow soldiers.

"A deliberate attempt to sabotage the State railroads!" the KGB colonel said.

"More probably it was worn trackage, Comrade," the Kazan dispatcher said. "But you are correct to be prudent."

"Worn trackage?" the colonel snarled. He knew for certain that it had been a different cause. "I think perhaps you do not take this seriously enough."

The dispatcher's blood chilled at that statement. "I have my responsibilities, too. For the moment that means clearing the wreckage off that damned bridge and getting my trains rolling again. Now, I have a seven-train unit sitting at Kursk, and unless I can get them moving north-"

"From what I see of your map, moving all the traffic around the city's northern perimeter depends on a single switch."

"Well, yes, but that's the responsibility of the Rzhevskaya dispatcher."

"Has it ever occurred to you that saboteurs are not assigned in the same way as dispatchers? Perhaps the same man could operate in a different district! Has anyone checked that switch?"

"I don't know."

"Well, find out! No, no, I will send my own people to check before you railroad fools wreck anything else."

"But, my scheduling..." The dispatcher was a proud man, but he knew that he had pressed his luck too far already.

"Welcome to Moscow," Alekseyev said genially.

Major Arkady Semyonovich Sorokin was short, like most paratroop officers. A handsome young man with light brown hair, his blue eyes burned for a reason that Alekseyev understood better than the major did. He limped slightly from two bullets he'd taken in the leg during the initial assault on the Keflavik air base on Iceland. On his breast was the ribbon of the Order of the Red Banner, earned for leading his company into enemy fire. Sorokin and most of the early casualties had been flown out for medical treatment. He and they were now awaiting new assignment since their division had been captured on Iceland.

"How may I serve the General?" Sorokin asked.

"I need a new aide, and I prefer officers with combat experience. More than that, Arkady Semyonovich, I will need you to perform a delicate task. But before we discuss that, there is something I need to explain to you. Please sit down. Your leg?"