"You dog!" the Sergeant snarled. Pushing the throttle higher, Grey scooped the Russian onto his shoulder as if he were a sack of flour, hoisted him to the window, and dumped him back-first into a passing snowbank. He took a moment to look back and saw Russian soldiers running to try and catch the train. But gunfire from the two cars drove them back, and soon the Striker express was running into the night at three-quarters throttle.

When the train started up, Nikita was just coming around the cowcatcher. Jumping back off the track, he grabbed the handrail of the ladder behind and above the cowcatcher and walked up the three steps to the platform. Crouching there, his back against the boiler plate, he held his AKR submachine gun tight against his side and watched, with rising anger, as Private Maximich was hurled from the window and the other Americans fired to send his men, the rightful owners of the train, rushing behind trees and rocks for cover.

These are the men my father courted! he seethed as the last of the tear gas curled from the windows and the locomotive picked up speed.

Still crouching, Nikita switched the short-barreled gun to his left hand and stepped two feet up from the platform onto the ledge above the air reservoir. The narrow walkway ran above the injector pipe midway up the boiler, and as he held onto the narrow handrail that ran along the top of the engine, the Junior Lieutenant held the short-barreled submachine gun toward the cab.

And as Nikita passed under the steam dome, just eight feet from the cab, the unsuspecting American soldier looked out.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Tuesday, 4:02 P.M., Moscow

Interior Minister Dogin was feeling good. Very good.

Sitting alone in his office for the first time that day, he savored his impending triumph. General Kosigan's troops were moving into Ukraine without incident. There were even reports of expatriate Russians and Ukrainians alike greeting them with Soviet flags.