“We’ll have to break it and in a way that will be hard to fix quickly,” Natasha said, cringing a bit at the thought of destroying the best radio in Russia. “Otherwise they will be able to tell Moscow what has happened in seconds instead of hours.”
“But Moscow has its own radio,” Anya said. “We can’t break that one.”
They continued to talk as Bernie grabbed up two guns, a spare pair of pants and shirt, and a heavy jacket. “I’ll get the cash. All the money in the Dacha safe. Paper and coins both,” Sofia said. “Money is money.”
Bernie went to check on the car while Sofia headed back to Natasha’s rooms and the Dacha safe. Anya and Natasha went to get Filip and Gregorii and they all met back at Natasha’s office, which had been soundproofed two years ago to keep the occasional booms, bangs and clangs of experiments from aggravating the boss. And which, just incidentally, had kept the rest of the Dacha from hearing Anya shoot holes in Cass and two of Sheremetev’s guardsmen.
* * *
“So how do we take the radio shack?” Filip asked. It was more than a shack, though not much more. It had two rooms—the radio room and a toilet. And there was someone always on duty in case there was a message from Moscow. There were six radio men at the Dacha, but only one was on duty at this time of night.
“Keep it simple!” Anya said. “Walk in, point a gun at him, tie him up and gag him, then bust the radio and leave.”
Which is what they did. The guard didn’t resist and they tied him up as much for his protection as theirs. They told him what had happened in Natasha’s rooms and mentioned making a run for Poland and the USE. Between Filip and Bernie, they knew which bits to break that would take the longest time to fix. There were a couple of pieces from up-time that Vladimir had sent from Grantville; those they took with them. For the rest they took pieces and spares and hid them under junk in Bernie’s garage. They really didn’t want to break the stuff, just take it out of commission for a little while.
* * *
Sofia elected to stay behind. The final tally of those going were Natasha, Bernie, Anya, Filip, Father Kiril and Gregorii. They would take the car. After they left Sofia would tell a list of people to run if they wanted to and to go to Natasha’s estates, not to try to follow them to the USE. That way, if their judgment was wrong and some of the people were working for Sheremetev, they would lead the search west.
They hoped, anyway. Bernie was skeptical, since no matter what anyone told Sheremetev’s people, the car was bound to leave tracks in the road at least in places. But maybe seventeenth-century Russian secret policemen were just as prone as the authorities he’d known back up-time to believe what they were told instead of their own lying eyes.
The first graying of dawn was in the sky when Bernie turned the key and the old Dodge started up. When they drove out the gate of the Dacha, the trunk was filled with money, weapons, ammunition and bits of irreplaceable tech. Bernie had also taken the time to hitch up a small trailer on which they were towing as many five-gallon cans of gasoline as they’d been able to fill.
He could only hope the jury-rigged hitch would hold, but he thought they’d probably need that extra gasoline. Bernie was more worried about the condition of the roads. The rasputitsa was over, the notorious muddy season that made travel extremely difficult or even impossible on Russian roads for weeks during the spring and fall. But “over” didn’t preclude running into some still-bad stretches if their luck turned sour. If they did run into such a muddy stretch, they’d lose the fuel trailer for sure and might get bogged down altogether.
On a more positive note, any pursuers would have the same problem. Mud wasn’t any friendlier to horses than it was to wheeled vehicles.
The Dacha had started four years earlier as a largish house with a hunting park behind it and a tiny village in front. That had changed. Fencing and walls had been added, a canal had been dug that connected the Dacha to the Moskva River. The Moskva fed into the Oka, which fed into the Volga; which allowed goods to travel to the Dacha from all of Russia by river and canal. More buildings to house researchers and research had been added. The gate going from the Dacha proper to the villages was manned but not closed. As the Dodge approached, the guards waved for it to stop but Bernie didn’t slow down at all. The car kept right on going and the guard who had been blocking its path was a bit slow in jumping aside. He was used to the speed of horses, not of cars.
Bernie winced as he felt the thump of car striking flesh. The guard was knocked aside and slid into the canal that flowed past the gate where he came to rest, his lower body in the water. Hopefully he was just injured. Bernie didn’t have anything against the man personally. He was just doing his job.