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Like his uncle before him, Andreev disdained to squat beneath a closed turret, peering through the periscope. His turret cover was thrown back and his head and torso were out in the cold, padded helmet and goggles masking his face.
One by one the T-80s rolled past the Great Palace and the pockmarked cathedrals of the Annunciation and the Archangel, pulling past the Czar’s Bell into Ivanovskaya Square where once the city crier announced the emperor’s decrees.
Two Black Guard carriers tried to take him on. Both were reduced to shards of hot metal.
Beside him the 7.62mm light machine gun and its heavier sister the 12.7 emitted a continuous chatter as the tank’s searchlight began to pick up the running figures of the putschists.
There were still over three thousand combat-fit Black Guards investing the Kremlin’s seventy-three acres, and it would have been pointless for Andreev’s dismount squads to have left their vehicles. Barely two hundred of them would have made small difference on equal terms. But inside their armor, they were not on equal terms.
Grishin had not foreseen armor; he had brought no antitank gunnery. Lighter and nimbler, the Tamanskaya’s APCs could penetrate the narrower alleys where the tanks could not go. Ou
t in the open the tanks were waiting with their machine guns, impervious to counter-fire.
But the real effect was psychological. To the soldier on foot, the tank is a true monster, its crew peering unseen through armored glass, its machine-gun snouts swiveling to find further helpless targets.
In fifty minutes the Black Guards cracked, breaking cover to run for the sanctuary of churches, palaces, and cathedrals. Some made it; others were caught in the open by the cannon of the BTRs or the machine guns of the tanks.
Elsewhere in the city the separate battles were at different stages. The Alpha Group was close to storming the OMON barracks at the Federal Interior Ministry when one of them caught a scream on his radio from the Kremlin. It was a panic-stricken Black Guard calling for help. But he made the mistake of mentioning the intervention of the T-80s. Word of the tanks flashed through the Alpha Group and they decided enough was enough. This had not gone as Grishin had promised them. He had pledged total surprise, superiority of firepower and a helpless enemy. None of these had happened. They pulled back and sought to save themselves.
At the City Hall the street gangs of the New Russia Movement had already been taken apart by the Chechens.
In Staraya Ploshad, the OMON troops, supported by General Petrovsky’s SOBR men, were beginning to flush the mercenaries from the Dolgoruki mafia’s security companies out of the government headquarters.
At Khodinka Airfield the tide was turning. Five tanks and ten BTRs had taken the Vympel Special Assault Group in flank, and the more lightly armed commandos were being pursued through the maze of hangars and warehouses that made up the base.
The Duma was still occupied by the remainder of the privateers from the security firms, but they had nowhere to go and nothing to do but monitor by radio the news from elsewhere. They too heard the scream for help from the Kremlin, recognized the power of the tanks, and began to quit, each man persuading himself that with luck he would never be identified.
Ostankino still belonged to Grishin, but the triumphal announcement destined for the morning news was on hold as the two thousand Black Guards, watching from the windows, saw the tanks move slowly up the boulevard and their own trucks flaming one after another.
The Kremlin is built on a bluff above the river, the slopes of the bluff are studded with trees and shrubs, many of them evergreen. Beneath the western wall lie the Alexandrovsky Gardens. Paths through both sets of trees lead toward the Borovitsky Gate. None of the fighters inside the walls saw the single moving figure coming through the trees toward the open gate, nor did they see him climb the last slope to the ramp and slip inside.
As he emerged from the arch the passing flashlight of one of Andreev’s tanks washed across him, but the crew mistook him for one of their own. His quilted jacket resembled their own padded jerkins and his round fur hat looked more like their own headgear than the black steel helmets of Grishin’s Guards. Whoever was behind the flashlight presumed he was a tank man from a crippled APC seeking shelter under the arch.
The light flickered over him and went away. As it did so Jason Monk left the arch and ran under the cover of the pine trees to the right of the gate. From the cover of his darkness he watched and waited.
There are nineteen perimeter towers to the Kremlin, but only three have suitable gates. Tourists enter and leave by the Borovitsky or the Trinity, troops by the Spassky. Of the three, only one was wide open and he was beside it.
A man deciding to save himself would have to leave the walled enclosure. Come the dawn, the forces of the state would flush out the defeated in hiding, pulling them from every last doorway and vestry, pantry, and cupboard, even down to the secret rooms of the command post beneath the Spassky Gardens. Anyone wishing to stay alive and out of prison would deduce he should leave soon via the only open gate.
Across from where he stood Monk could see the door of the armory, treasure house of a thousand years of Russian history, hanging in splinters where the rear of a turning tank had crushed it. The flickering flames from a burning Black Guard personnel carrier cast a glow over the facade.
The tide of battle moved away from the gate toward the Senate and the arsenal at the northeastern sector of the fortress. The burning vehicle crackled.
Just after two he caught a movement by the wall of the Great Palace, then a man in black came running, doubled over to keep low but moving fast down the facade of the armory. By the burning APC he paused to look back, checking for pursuit. A tire caught fire and flamed, causing the fleeing man to turn quickly around. By the yellow light Monk saw the face. He had only seen it once before. In a photograph, on a beach at Sapodilla Bay in the Caicos Islands. He stepped from behind his tree.
“Grishin.”
The man looked up, peered into the gloom beneath the pines. Then he saw who had called. He was carrying a Kalashnikov, the folded-stock AK-74. Monk saw the barrel come up and stepped behind the fir. There was a chattering burst of fire. Chunks of living wood were torn from the trunk. Then it stopped.
Monk peered round the bole. Grishin had gone. There had been fifty yards between him and the gate, but only ten for Monk. He had not passed.
Just in time Monk saw the muzzle of the AK-74 jutting out of the broken doorway. He stepped back again as bullets tore the tree in front of him. The firing stopped again. Two halves of a magazine, he estimated, and left the tree and ran across the road to flatten himself against the ocher wall of the museum. He had his Sig Sauer against his chest.
Again the barrel of the assault rifle came out of the doorway as the holder sought a target across the road. Unable to see anything, Grishin advanced another foot.
Monk’s bullet hit the stock of the AK with enough force to tear it from the colonel’s hands. It fell and skittered out onto the pavement, beyond reach. Monk heard running footsteps on the stone floor inside. Seconds later he had left the glow of the burning APC and was crouched in the pitch darkness of the hallway of the Armory.
The museum is on two floors, with nine great halls containing fifty-five showcases. In these are literally billions of dollars’ worth of historic artifacts, for such was once the wealth and the power of Russia that everything possessed by the czars, their crowns, thrones, weapons, clothes, right down to horse bridles, were studded with silver, gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls.