A single shot sounded in the darkness. It was some distance away, a few blocks at least. Had the turmoil of the last four years hit Chelyabinsk hard enough to make a rifle shot something to shrug away? Probably not. Everyone would be more alert now.
Filip took out his knife, cut the wire, and climbed back to the ground. Golova handed him back his pistol.
Their next task was the guard.
Filip turned to Novak. “Approach him and keep his attention long enough for me to sneak up on him.”
Novak nodded, then he and Golova rushed along one side of the building while Filip and Makovec rushed along the other.
But when they reached the front, there were now two guards instead of one. Both held rifles.
They weren’t supposed to shoot anyone, just take them prisoner, but the added guard complicated their task. Filip weighed the benefits of caution against the benefits of boldness, but he took too long deciding. Novak acted first.
Novak sauntered toward the guards. He no longer wore his hat, and his greatcoat, though obviously military, didn’t indicate his nationality, especially not in the dark. He held something small in his hand, but Filip couldn’t see what. His voice carried just well enough for Filip to hear him ask for a light in precise, factory-worker Russian.
As one of the guards searched for matches, Filip left the safety of the shadows and slipped silently toward the group.
Novak made a joke about the tsar and the kaiser. One of the guards laughed while the other struck a match and lit Novak’s cigarette.
Filip slipped his knife against the neck of the guard with the match and shoved the barrel of his pistol into the other guard’s back. Novak pulled out his blunderbuss at about the same time.
“We’ll take those rifles, please.” Filip tried to imitate Gajda’s tone—even and unconcerned but unquestionably authoritative.
“Tie their hands,” Filip ordered Makovec, who had followed him.
Another shot sounded, again in the distance.
Filip needed information. “How many men are inside this building?” he asked the guard who’d offered Novak a light.
The guard clenched his jaw and looked away.
Filip had spoken Russian since 1915. The man understood him; he was deliberately ignoring him. In normal circumstances, Filip might have let it slide, might have been gentle and persuasive, but Dalek’s life was on the line, and so were the lives of eleven others.
Filip grabbed the man and whipped him into the stone building hard enough to crack his head. The man winced. “How many of your comrades are inside the building?”
He still refused to speak.
Filip turned to the other Russian and repeated his question.
“Ten awake. Twenty asleep, rifles within reach.”
“And the prisoners? Are they still inside?”
The man nodded.
Filip turned to Novak, who seemed to have the best Russian of the four of them. “Take this one’s coat and hat so you’ll blend in. Guard the door. You too, Golova. Makovec and I will take our prisoners back.”
After removing the guards’ hats and coats, Filip and Makovec marched them off. “How many armed men are within an hour’s march of this building?” Filip asked the more talkative of the two Russians.
The man shrugged. “Five thousand.”
Five thousand? Filip’s stomach did a flip of trepidation. “Russians?”
“Two thousand are. The rest are Hungarian. They’d rather join us than stay in their prison camps.”
Filip and Makovec took their prisoners through the quarter with stone buildings, through a neighborhood with wooden buildings, and past a few Siberian-style huts. Filip kept up the questions. According to the captured guard, the Bolsheviks and their allies were armed much more thoroughly than the legionnaires. Unless Gajda had captured the armory—that might make things closer to even.
“Halt!” someone called in Czech. One moment, the street looked empty. The next, dozens of men appeared in doorways and windows, from alleys and behind fences.
Makovec greeted one and verified they were all on the same side. Filip handed over the prisoners and spoke with the sergeant in charge, reporting what they’d done at militia headquarters.
“Good. Now it’s time to free our brothers. Lead the way,” the sergeant said.
Filip steered a group of fifty back toward the building. Czech and Slovak guards now held several of the intersections they passed. Some had piled up furniture to make a barrier. Others used sandbags. But if the local Bolsheviks found out what they were doing, the Czechs and Slovaks were going to need even stronger defenses. Small arms fire cracked in the distance as they returned. They were running out of time.
A block away from militia headquarters, Filip’s group converged with another group of about the same size. More legionnaires. And they had come from the Bolshevik armory.
Filip took one of the offered rifles, a Mosin-Nagant with bayonet, and a pocketful of ammunition to go with it. They weren’t supposed to fire, but he assumed the sight of one hundred armed legionnaires would convince the men holding their brothers to either negotiate or surrender.