World War III

They started shooting all at once. The squad leader went down first as he was at the point, the back of his white parka suddenly red with blood from three gaping exit wounds. The soldier directly in front of Avalik windmilled backward, his M-16 falling away from him. And then everyone was falling. The stiff arctic wind was loud with men screaming, whirling awkwardly in their snowshoes as they died stumbling into one another. Avalik was hit on the right hand; the slug ripped off his canvas mitten and twirled him around so that he suddenly faced into the wind, gasping for breath. The second bullet pierced his left leg above the knee. He fell face down in the snow. He’d kicked off both snowshoes and started rolling when the real massacre began. The sound of automatic weapons thundered all around him. The bullets made the snow dance, white sprays which were consumed by the swirling wind and transformed the patch of runway into a white nightmare of death. Avalik tried rolling again and was hit in the side by a ricochet. Another slug destroyed the radio on his back and shattered one of his skis. He scrambled on all fours, mindless of the pain of his wounds, desperate only to get out of the lines of fire.

Unable to see and afraid to stop, Avalik ran like a crippled spider until he dropped headfirst off the edge of the runway. He rolled behind a mogul and stopped. The shooting continued for another thirty seconds though the screams had already ceased. He waited, his mouth clamped shut against the burning pain in his leg and side. He waited, afraid to look back toward the runway to see one of the figures in white coming for him. He waited, but nothing happened. When the shooting ended, there was nothing.

Only the wind.

“Podshchitai i zakapai.”

The disembodied voice came from out of the whiteness. Avalik didn’t move. He held his breath, expecting to be kicked or to hear the short static cough from an automatic weapon that would end his misery permanently. But he wasn’t kicked or shot and he didn’t hear the voice again. For half an hour he just lay there. His white parka would serve as some camouflage, and if the blowing snow covered the blood that was surely splattered over his legs, they might not find him. He fought against the urge to cry out for help. He tried to orient himself. He prayed.

When he’d gotten enough nerve to raise his head, he saw nothing but swirling snow. He rolled onto his back and nearly blacked out from the pain. It took nearly another half hour to apply a compress from his first-aid kit on his leg and untangle himself from the straps and buckles of his radio and cartridge belt. He didn’t know where his rifle was — he didn’t even remember dropping it — but he wasn’t going to need it anyway. Not against those guys.

Corporal Avalik started crawling. He knew approximately where he was and approximately where he had to go. The main thing was to get away. That was the first thing. Stay alive and pray he could make his way back to the company. They’d send a squad looking, sooner or later. Maybe… maybe he could walk, at least hobble along, once he was safely away from here. But that was something to think about later.

He didn’t think about the Russians. He didn’t think about them, but he knew that’s what they were from the moment he heard the voice. It didn’t matter to him and he didn’t care why they were there, though it was pretty obvious. All he had to worry about now was not freezing to death and staying alive until someone else found him. Then he could worry about the Russians.

Avalik reached out with both hands and pulled himself forward. Snow whipped at his face. Just one foot at a time, he thought. Just one foot at a time.

MOSCOW 0900 HRS

The short procession of cars, a black limousine sandwiched between a pair of unmarked sedans, moved cautiously through the falling snow like three nearsighted beetles. It was Party Chairman Dimitri Gorny’s daily routine. He drove his son to school every morning and the security cars led-followed him everywhere he went like worker ants protecting their queen.

Gorny was in the rear seat of the limousine with his son Aram, a slight, gentle boy dressed in a school uniform and wearing a heavy coat. The physical differences between father and son were striking.

Gorny was powerfully built; his thick neck was merely an extension of his shoulders and his strong, disciplined face seldom gave away the workings of his mind. They were logical characteristics for a man party members had nicknamed The Bull. It was a name Gorny himself found amusing. He considered himself more thoughtful than bullish, more patient than headstrong, though there were times when it was expedient to let the party members believe what they wished.