There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 22
Rostov shook his head. “And so we take it, and by spring the people of this village are cooking food over fire pits, reduced to living like savages. And perhaps we escape, and perhaps the KGB catches us, anyway, and then they have the fuel. No, Comrade Colonel. We strip Suschenko of its means of survival only at the cost of our souls. But on behalf of my men, I thank you.”
Rostov saluted and returned to the command car.
The men who had become Rostov’s de facto staff had reassembled in the command car. The room had been designed for holding audiences, not meetings, and the desk had to be pulled to the center to make room for extra chairs around it. Gyrich and Pilkanis sat together, as did Wrenn and Blaustein. Zorin was off to one side, and Rostov stood by the plywood paneling that still covered the broken window.
Right back where we started, Rostov thought.
No one had commented on his decision to return the fuel. No one had to, nor would it have made any difference. He stared at the pile of railroad maps as he spoke.
“Comrade Gyrich, how far can we go on the fuel we have remaining?”
Gyrich rubbed his chin. “Perhaps another three hundred kilometers. No more.”
“But three hundred kilometers to where?” Pilkanis asked quietly. “The track behind us has been destroyed. By the time we can even find another route west, the last of our fuel will be used up.”
Rostov took a deep breath and folded his arms. Damn the KGB light tanks; how the Regular Army had laughed at the ridiculous little steam-powered vehicles when they’d first seen them. Nobody would laugh at them again. Rostov leaned back against the plywood, rubbing his forehead. KGB tanks and fuel.
He turned and looked at the wood. “Sergeant Zorin, the fire destroyed a boxcar of lumber, yes? How much is still left?”
“Eh?” Zorin was surprised by this new tack. “I’m not sure, Aleksei; a couple more cars full, at least.”
Rostov pulled the chair out and sat at the desk, gathered up paper and pencil, and began making calculations as he spoke.
“How hot does your boiler have to be, Comrade Gyrich?”
Gyrich and Pilkanis shared puzzled looks; the younger man turned back to Rostov. “Well. As Comrade Gyrich said, it’s more a question of pressure, Lieutenant. As long as we don’t need any spectacular bursts of speed or power, these P-38s can do fine on their operating standard of two hundred thirteen psi—that’s pounds per—
Rostov cut him off with a grin. “Yes. I know.”
Rostov worked in silence for a few minutes, revising and correcting equations frequently. When he was finally satisfied, he looked up from his calculations. “Sergeant Zorin, have the men draw off all the fresh water into canteens and drums. Then have the water purifier converted to simple distillation; the way we had it for that batch of vodka Colonel Podgorny commissioned last Easter.”
Zorin nodded, hiding his puzzlement. Part of his value as an NCO rested with rarely being surprised at anything an officer did. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that this time Rostov had lost him.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant.” It was Pilkanis again, and he didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his tone. “But are you suggesting we drown our grief in revelry? We need fuel… we can’t run a locomotive on vodka–” No sooner had the words passed his lips than it dawned on him.
Rostov nodded. “But we can, Trainman Pilkanis. Or not vodka, exactly. Methanol.”
Gyrich frowned. “Perhaps. I remember much research when I was young, into alternate fuels. Alcohol mixtures showed great promise, but weren’t pursued.” The old man shrugged. “There was always oil.”
“How will we alter the fuel feed systems of the engine itself?” Pilkanis asked. “They are designed for diesel.”
“Indeed they are,” Rostov said. “And while I’m no expert on locomotives, I do know something about tanks. Those KGB light tanks are steam-powered, with alcohol-fired boilers. If the designers followed the pattern set by the State War Production Committee, they will be of standardized, modular construction.”
Pilkanis’ eyes widened, first in surprise, then in pleasure. “And we can cannibalize their fuel feed systems to replace the diesel ones in the locomotive.”
Rostov smiled. “From what I have seen in the last few days, Comrade Pilkanis, if anyone can, it is you and Comrade Gyrich and your crew of trainmen.”
Gyrich nodded thoughtfully, his mind already grappling with the problems. He looked up at Rostov. “I think it can be done, Captain Rostov. I won’t know for sure until I’ve seen the assemblies from those tanks, but even so… yes, it’s possible.”
“Alcohol will burn cooler than diesel,” Rostov added. “Will that be a problem?”
“I don’t know. Still, you must have at least one decent chemist in your unit who can help with any difficulties we encounter with the new fuel.”
Rostov admitted that was true. The unit was comprised of survivors from every branch of combat engineering—demolition, construction, chemical—and a good many other fields as well. The odds were good that the necessary skills were available.
“Then let’s get to work.”
It took Gyrich and Pilkanis twenty minutes to decide how to use the parts taken from the KGB light tanks. Of the seven vehicles destroyed or disabled, five had usable fuel assemblies.
“Aren’t they a little small for our purposes?” Wrenn asked when he saw them.
Pilkanis shook his head. “There are ways around that, Comrade Captain. We only need four; the fifth I can use as a model in the town machine shop for altering the locomotive’s original assemblies; or even making new ones.” The young trainman’s mind was already racing over alternatives; he was in his element, and it showed.
“The damaged stretch of line is a different matter,” Gyrich told Rostov. “The rail and ties we could replace, but the railbed is completely undermined. It would take a week to repack it and lay in new gravel, ties, and track.”
Through it all, Wrenn kept his eye on Rostov. The young Russian’s reserves of energy seemed boundless, but Wrenn knew that was an illusion.
Hang in there, my young Russian friend, Wrenn thought. Because this is it. Your first real taste of command. When you have reached the limit of your endurance and abilities. When you’re out of time, out of ideas, and out of luck, and still everyone’s life depends on you. It’s not how you got here that matters; it’s what you do now that you’ve arrived.
“We’ll have to switch back again,” Rostov said quietly, staring once again at the maps on the desk before him. With all his heart he wanted only to put his head on that desk and close his eyes. But he had been trained too well for that.
“All right, then,” Rostov said. “We switch back. It might even help us avoid the KGB for a while, if they think we’ve headed directly west.”
“What about the Islamic Nationalists to the south?” Wrenn asked. “Or the Turks?”
Rostov shook his head. “One problem at a time, I think, Captain, yes? We are going to have to find more stocks of uncontaminated fuel, to guard against any serious problems with the alcohol mixture. It may not be more than a temporary solution to our difficulties.’’ He looked up at the American. “I’m afraid that you, like Comrades Gyrich and Pilkanis and their staff, are going to be with us for a little while longer.’’
Wrenn smiled, holding up his bandaged hand. “I don’t know how much more fun I can stand, Captain Rostov.”
By that afternoon, they had returned all the drums of immunized diesel to the people of Suschenko. Major Fedorin watched the process with tear-filled eyes.
“It is not fair,” he said. “You have already done so much for us. You need it more than we do.”
Rostov shook his head. “Perhaps we will find more along the way, Colonel. We will manage.”
Fedorin was still bewildered by the whole disaster. “But Captain Rostov, what are we to do? Should we wait here, for someone from…” His voice trailed off.
Rostov looked at him for a long time before he spoke. Every Russian’s deepest fear was of anarchy; most had suffered from it at one time or another. It was a national phobia so great that in order to avoid it, her people had been willing to suffer even a government like the one the Alliance had sworn to destroy.
“There won’t be anybody else, Colonel. A few KGB perhaps. Those PRGs you told me about, be careful of them. Bandits almost certainly. But you have weapons now. And Suschenko still has a few young men. They will get older. Take care of what material you have and make what you don’t have.” Rostov smiled briefly. “They told us in training that the Afghanishti did something like that; gave the Army fits.”
“But it’s been over a year now since we had any contact from Moscow; who will be taking care of us?’’
Rostov looked around them. “This is a good place. You’ve taken care of it, and each other—and it’s taken care of you—for some time now, when you think about it. I don’t see any reason why that should not continue.”
Fedorin nodded, considering. “I suppose,” he said, finally facing the truth of their isolation. He looked up at Rostov. “We really don’t need anything that we can’t make or grow right here. And if I take your meaning correctly, such things are all we will have for some time to come.”
Rostov held Fedorin’s gaze for some time before he answered. “I am glad, Colonel, that you take my meaning correctly. You and your reservists have kept Suschenko safe and running well.” He grinned. “You’ve even kept the clock tower on time. Keep things that way, and I don’t think you should have any problems.”
Rostov came to attention and snapped off a crisp salute to the old reservist.
“Captain Rostov, Fifth Guards Armored Engineers, requesting permission to decamp, sir!”
Fedorin drew himself to attention and returned the salute. “Permission granted, Captain. Good wishes, and God’s speed to you and your men.”
They shook hands and parted, Rostov to his final preparations for departure, Fedorin to the victory celebration and mourning for the people of Suschenko killed in the fighting. His neighbors, and his friends.
And tomorrow, Fedorin thought, tomorrow we will go to work repairing that section of westbound railbed. It would give them all something to do. And it seemed just possible to Fedorin that he had not seen the last of Rostov and his men, or their train.
Rostov was in the engineer’s compartment, steeling himself to climb the ladder to the roof hatch with his wounded arm, when Wrenn came up from the platform, wearing his Russian-overcoat disguise.
“Captain Rostov, there is someone outside who would like to speak with you.”
Rostov joined the American at the door and looked down onto the platform. At the foot of the stepladder, Zorin stood chatting with the old woman Rostov had befriended on their arrival. And, sure enough, the child was there, pressing tight against her babushka’s skirts. The little one was staring up at Zorin with undisguised awe as the big man spoke earnestly with her grandmother, occasionally patting the woman’s arm in a gesture of assurance.
Zorin turned and looked up at him. “Captain Rostov, could you spare a moment for this grandmother, sir?”
Rostov’s tired face split in a wide smile as he made his way down to the platform.
“Hello, Grandmother; good to see you again.” Rostov gave her the warm embrace every Russian always kept ready for the aged. When they parted, the woman began chattering in her thick Ukrainian accent; she pulled her granddaughter forward and showed them the child’s freshly bandaged arm. She finished by repeating “Spaceeba” over and over again.
Rostov looked to Zorin. “Did you catch what she’s saying?”
“Something about the child being hurt when those ‘hooligans’ attacked us, and Surgeon Blaustein’s treatment saving her life,” Zorin answered, then shrugged. “Probably not all that serious, but you know how grandparents are.”
“You are welcome, Grandmother, most welcome.” Wrenn had joined them, and Rostov shrugged and smiled. “That Ukrainian accent loses me; but she is a dear. And that child…”
“She also says,” Zorin went on, “that her granddaughter is all she has left, and feeding the child has been difficult for an old woman. She thanks us for coming here and saving her little girl from the hooligans, and hunger, and the winter.”
Rostov laughed good-naturedly. “Enough, enough! She makes us sound like the Messiah!”
The old woman had been happily chattering in counterpoint to Zorin’s translation. Now she reached up and touched Rostov’s cheek, then turned and laid a small, wrinkled hand on the massive drive cam of the locomotive.
“Angeli.” The words were almost a sob. “Zhelizniy Angel.”
Wrenn, Zorin, and Rostov looked at one another. No one had missed the old woman’s meaning that time.
“Angels,” she repeated, placing both hands on the engine like a benediction. “An Iron Angel. God sent you to deliver us.”
Rostov stood for a moment in thought. “Lieutenant Zorin, get some men and some paint, and form a detail once we’re under way. Iron Angel. I want that written on the sides of the locomotive.”
Zorin was at first unsure whether or not Rostov was serious.
“At once, Captain,” he finally said.
“And Mikhail,” Rostov stopped him.
“Yes, Aleksei?”
“Put the names of our dead somewhere near it. Not too large. Nobody has to be able to see those but us. Colonel Podgorny’s name first.”
Zorin saluted and left. Rostov turned to the old woman and her grandchild.
“Hey, little one.” She watched him like a hawk watches a mouse. Rostov took a long, last look at the child’s huge brown eyes, long black hair. The resemblance to his wife was, he decided, not uncanny after all; only uncomfortable. He remembered the photograph Wrenn had shown him; the American with his wife and son. He wondered again whether Lilia might not have given him a daughter like her.
The child was looking at his cap again, and on impulse, Rostov removed it and put it on her head. Her face almost disappeared beneath it, her eyes shining from within its shadow.
“You keep this for me, child, da?”
The girl flashed him one more heartbreaking smile before turning to clutch her grandmother’s skirts once more.
Rostov stood and hugged the old woman a last time, then turned to Wrenn.
“Let’s be off.” He climbed up into the cabin, and not trusting his emotions, continued directly up the ladder into the roof hatch. Once there, he called down to Gyrich, and told him to take them out whenever he was ready.
The members of the review board were silent for a long time before commenting on the report of Captain Drachev’s radioman, Piotr. The tank commander himself was still in PRG One’s field dispensary, having his wounds treated. He had not yet regained consciousness.
“There seems little doubt that this Drachev did his best, under the circumstances,” Captain Adzhubei said quietly.
Steinmann dismissed the radioman.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all. You may return to your unit.” When the young man had left, Steinmann turned to Grishin’s seat on the council. “You were right,” he said.
“Hm?” said Colonel Serafimov. “Oh, yes. Small consolation, though; they still escaped.”
“Not escaped, surely. The Lieutenant says the tracks were demolished; they could not head west, not from Suschenko, at any rate. They can only turn farther back into Soviet-controlled territory, unless they want to tangle with the Islamics, and I doubt that. Now we have gained some time in which to look for them, and in our own territory as well.’’ Steinmann was waiting for Serafimov to share whatever was troubling him, but the Colonel seemed particularly reserved today.
“Perhaps that is not so much of an advantage as it seems,” Serafimov said almost to himself.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Colonel,” Steinmann said. “I thought your whole point was that these traitors should, at all costs, be kept in Russia?”
Serafimov raised an eyebrow, smiled, and shrugged.
I wonder, he thought. I wonder if that is such a very good idea, after all…
Suschenko was an hour behind them when Rostov pulled the photo from the inside pocket of his tunic once more. He looked again at the picture of his wife. Leytenant Lilia Rostova, Presumed Traitor to the State; also presumed lost with her artillery unit in the KGB’s punitive bombing of Kiev.
Rostov thought again of how very much he missed her.
The same thoughts, the same feelings, the same pain as always. Sometimes he felt as if he would spend the rest of his life going through the motions of existence, as changeless as the land around him.
But, he decided, there was one change he might make.
He pulled out a pocket knife and began digging and chipping at every badge and button on his tunic. Working methodically, in a while he had a pile of enamel chips and bent metal insignia before him.
Rostov scooped up the miniature junk heap, and tossed it casually off to the side of the roof hatch. A dozen tiny hammers and sickles of gold and red metal bounced along across the locomotive’s roof, and tumbled off over the side.
He looked at the photo again. For a moment, as always, he was tempted to tear it to shreds and cast the pieces away. In the end, as always, he returned it to his pocket.
Two hours later, Rostov went down to the command car that had become his quarters. And although he wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, nor even tired any longer, Captain Aleksei Aleksandrovitch Rostov ate some bread, drank a little tea, and finally went to sleep.
Nuclear Autumn, by Ben Bova
Editor’s Introduction
The apocalyptic vision of Nuclear Winter began in a Parade magazine article by Astronomer Carl Sagan on October 30, 1983. Shortly thereafter followed the well-known paper in Science, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Explosions,” which is most often referred to as TTAPS from the initials of the four major contributors.
