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If the attackers were dressed in black, they were not army. His OMON teams dressed in black, but they were downstairs. He called his own unit commanders down below.

“Truck up and move out,” he ordered. “I want two thousand men out on the streets and a thousand to stay and defend this place.”

If any coup d’état was taking place, the attackers would have to neutralize the Interior Ministry and its barracks. Happily the latter was built like a fortress.

Outside, other troops were already on the move, but they were not commanded by Koslovsky. The Alpha Group strike force was closing on the ministry.

Grishin’s problem had been timing. Without breaking radio silence until the last minute, he needed to coordinate his attacks. To attack too early could mean the defenders were not well enough into their celebrations; too late and he would lose some of the hours of darkness. He had ordered the Alpha Group to strike at 9:00
P.M.

At 8:30 two thousand OMON commandos left their barracks in trucks and APCs. As soon as they were gone the remainder sealed their fortress and took up defensive positions. At nine they came under fire but for the attackers all element of surprise was gone.

Counter-fire raked the streets around the ministry and ripped across Zhitny Square. The Alpha Group soldiers had to take cover and wish they had artillery. But they did not.

“American?”

“Here.”

“Where are you now?”

“Trying to stay alive. Heading south from the TV center, avoiding Prospekt Mira.”

“There are troops on their way. A thousand of mine and two thousand OMONs.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“If you must.”

“Ostankino is only part of it. If you were Grishin, what would you target?”

“MVD, Lubyanka.”

“MVD, yes. Lubyanka, no. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble from his old mates in the Second Chief Directorate.”

“You could be right. What else?”

“Surely government headquarters at Staraya Ploshad, and the Duma. For the appearance of legitimacy. And places where resistance might come from. You at the GUVD, the paratroopers at Khodinka Field. And the Defense Ministry. But most of all the Kremlin. He must have the Kremlin.”

“That’s defended. General Korin has been informed and he is on alert. We don’t know how many Grishin has.”

“About thirty, maybe forty thousand.”

“Christ, we have less than half.”

“But better quality. And he has lost fifty percent.”

“Which fifty percent?”

“The element of surprise. What about reinforcements?”

“General Korin will be on to the Defense people by now.”

Colonel General Sergei Korin, commander of the Presidential Security Force, had reached the barracks inside the Kremlin walls and barred the multi-defense Kutafya Gate behind him just before Grishin’s main column entered Manege Square. Just past the Kutafya is the bigger Trinity Tower, and inside that, on the right, the barracks of the Presidential Security Guard. General Korin was in his office and on the phone to the Defense Ministry.

“Give me the senior officer on duty,” he shouted. There was a pause and a voice he knew came on the line.

“Deputy Defense Minister Butov here.”

“Thank God you’re there. We have a crisis. There’s some kind of a coup going on. Ostankino has gone. The MVD is under attack. There’s a column of armored cars and trucks outside the Kremlin. We need help.”

“You’ll get it. What do you need?”

“Anything. What about the Dzerzhinski?”

He referred to a Special Operations Mechanized Infantry Division, created specifically as an anti-coup d’état defense unit after the putsch of 1991.

“It’s at Ryazan. I can have it rolling in an hour, with you in three.”

“As soon as possible. What about VDVs?”

He knew there was an elite parachute brigade barely an hour away by plane which could drop onto Khodinka Field if the drop zone could be marked out for them.

“You’ll get everything I can lay on for you General. Just hang on.”

A team of Black Guards ran forward under covering fire from their own heavy machine guns and reached the shelter of the covered Borovitsky Gate. A shaped charge of plastic explosive was placed on each of the four hinges. As the team ran back, two were cut down by fire from the tops of the walls. Seconds later the charges went off. The twenty-ton wooden doors shuddered as their hinges were torn apart, then teetered and crashed to the ground.

Impervious to the small arms fire, an APC ran up the approach road and into the shelter of the arch. Beyond the wooden doors was a great steel grille. Beyond it, in the parking area where tourists were wont to stroll, a Presidential Guard came into view and tried to aim an antitank at the APC through the bars. Before he could fire, the cannon on the APC took him apart.

Black Guards jumped out of the belly of the carrier and attached further charges to the steel grille. With the attackers back inside, the APC moved out of range until the charges went off and the grille hung drunkenly on a single hinge, then ran forward and knocked it flat.

Despite the fire, the Black Guards began to race into the fortress, outnumbering the Presidentials four to one. The defenders retreated into the various bastions and redoubts that make up the walls of the Kremlin. Others scattered through the seventy-three acres of palaces, armories, cathedrals, gardens, and squares of the Kremlin, and in some places fighting became hand-to-hand. Slowly the Black Guards began to take the upper hand.

¯

“JASON, what the hell’s going on?”

It was Umar Gunayev on the car phone.

“Grishin is trying to take over Moscow and indeed Russia, my friend.”

“Are you all right?”

“So far, yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Driving south from Ostankino, trying to avoid Lubyanka Square. Why?”

“One of my men just drove up Tverskaya. There’s a great crowd of those New Russia Movement thugs smashing their way into the mayor’s residence.”

“You know what the NRM think of you and your people?”

“Of course.”

“Why not let some of your lads settle the score? This time no one will interfere with you.”

An hour later three hundred armed Chechens arrived in Tverskaya Street where the NRM street gangs were rampaging through the seat of the government of the city of Moscow. Across the road the stone statue of Yuri Dolgoruki, founder of Moscow, sat astride his horse and stared with contempt. The door of the city hall was smashed and the entrance wide open.

The Chechens drew their long Caucasian knives, pistols, and mini-Uzis and went inside. Every man remembered the destruction of the Chechen capital of Grozny in 1995 and the rape of Chechnya over the two succeeding years. After the first ten minutes, it was no contest.

The Duma building, the White House, had fallen to the security firm mercenaries with hardly a struggle, since it was occupied only by a few caretakers and night watchmen. But at Staraya Ploshad the thousand SOBR troops were in room-to-room and street-to-street combat with the rest of the men from the Dolgoruki gang’s two hundred security companies, and the heavier weapons of the rapid reaction force of the anti-gang police of Moscow were a match for their opponents’ greater numbers.

At Khodinka Airfield the Vympel special forces troops were encountering unexpected resistance from the few paratroops and GRU intelligence officers who, warned just in time, had barricaded themselves inside.

Monk swung into Arbatskaya Square and stopped in amazement. On the eastern side of the triangle the gray granite block of the Defense Ministry stood alone and silent. No Black Guards, no firefight, no sign of entry. Of all the installations a planner of a coup d’état in Moscow or any capital would have to possess, and quickly, the Defense Ministry would be high on the list. Five hundred yards away, down Znamenka Street and across Borovitsky Square, he could hear the crackle of gunfire as the battle for the Kremlin raged.

Why was the Defense Ministry not taken or under siege? From the forest of aerials on its roof the messages must be screaming out across Russia to summon help from the army. He consulted his slim address book and punched a number into his car phone.

In his private quarters two hundred yards inside the main gate at Kobyakova Base, Major General Misha Andreev adjusted his tie and prepared to leave. He often wondered why he put on his uniform to preside over New Year’s Eve in the Officers’ Club. By morning it would be so badly stained that the whole thing would have to go to the cleaners. When it came to celebrating New Year’s Eve, the tank men prided themselves on taking lessons from no one.

The phone rang. It would be his Exec Officer urging him to hurry up, complaining that the lads wanted to get started; first the vodka and the endless toasts, then the food and the champagne for the hour of midnight.

“Coming, coming,” he said to the empty room, and reached for the phone.

“General Andreev?” He did not know the voice.

“Yes.”

“You don’t know me. I was a friend, in a way, of your late uncle.”

“Indeed.”

“He was a good man.”

“I thought so.”

“He did what he could. Denouncing Komarov in that interview.”

“What are you getting at, whoever you are?”

“Igor Komarov has mounted a coup in Moscow. Tonight. Commanded by his dog, Colonel Grishin. The Black Guards are taking Moscow, and with it Russia.”

“Okay, joke’s gone on long enough. Get back to your vodka and get off this phone.”

“General, if you don’t believe me, why not ring anyone you know in central Moscow?”

“Why should I?”

“There’s a lot of shooting going on. Half the city can hear it. One last thing. It was the Black Guards who killed Uncle Kolya. On the orders of Colonel Grishin.”

Misha Andreev found himself staring at the phone and listening to the buzz from the disconnected line. He was angry. Angry at the intrusion of his privacy on his private line, angry at the insult to his uncle. If anything grave were happening in Moscow, the Defense Ministry would immediately alert army units within a 100-kilometer radius of the capital.

The 200-acre base of Kobyakovo was just 46 kilometers from the Kremlin; he knew because he had once timed it on his car. It was also the home of the unit he was proud to command, the Tamanskaya Division, the elite tank men known as the Taman Guards.

He put the phone back. It rang immediately.

“Come on, Misha, we’re waiting to start.”

His Exec Officer from the Club.

“Coming, Konni. Just a couple of phone calls to make.”

“Well, don’t be long or we’ll start without you.”

He dialed another number.

“Ministry of Defense,” said a voice.

“Get me the night-duty officer.”

With considerable speed another voice came on the line.

“Who is that?”

“Major General Andreev, Commander Tamanskaya.”

“This is Deputy Defense Minister Butov.”

“Ah, yes, sorry to disturb you, sir. Is everything all right in Moscow?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

“No reason, Minister. I just heard something … odd. I could mobilize in …”

“Stay on your base, General. That is an order. All units are confined to base. Get back to the Officers’ Club.”

“Yes, sir.’’

He put the phone down again. Deputy Defense Minister? In the switchboard room, at ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve? Why the hell wasn’t he with his family, or screwing his mistress at some place in the country? He racked his brains for a name, somewhere at the back of his mind, a mate from staff college who had gone on to the intelligence people, the spooks in the GRU. Finally he checked a classified military phone directory and rang.

He heard the buzz for a long time and checked his watch. Ten to eleven. All drunk, of course. The phone at Khodinka Field was answered. Before he could say anything a voice screamed: “Yeah? Hello!”

Behind the voice he heard a chattering sound.

“Who’s that?” he asked. “Is Colonel Demidov there?”

“How the fuck should I know?” screamed the voice. “I’m lying on the floor dodging bullets. Are you the Defense Ministry?”

“No.”

“Well, look, mate, get onto them and tell them to hurry up with that relief force. We can’t hold on much longer.”

“What relief force?”

“The Ministry is sending troops from out of town. There’s all hell let loose here.”

The speaker slammed down the receiver and presumably crawled away.

General Andreev stood with the dead receiver in his hand. No, they’re not, he thought, they’re not going to send anything.

His orders were formal and absolute. They came from a four-star general and minister in the government. Confined to base. He could obey them and his career remain clean as a whistle.

He stared out across the forty yards of snow-choked gravel toward the brightly lit windows of the Officers’ Club, noisy with laughter and good cheer.

But he saw in the snow a tall, straight-backed figure with a small cadet by his side. Whatever they promise you, the tall man said, whatever money, or promotion, or honors they offer you, I don’t want you ever to betray these men.

He reached down to the cradle, killed the line, then dialed two figures. His Exec Officer came on the line, backed by roars of laughter.

“Konni, I don’t care how many T-Eighties are ready to roll, or how many BTRs, I want everything on this base that can move to be ready to go, and every soldier who can stand, fully armed in one hour.”

There was silence for several seconds.

“Boss, is that for real?” asked Konni.

“It’s for real, Konni. The Tamanskaya is going to Moscow.”

¯

AT one minute after midnight in the year of grace 2000, the first tracks of the first tank of the Taman Guards rolled out of Kobyakova Base and turned toward the Minsk Highway and the gates of the Kremlin.

The narrow country road from the highway to the base was only 3 kilometers long, over which the column of twenty-six T-80 main battle tanks and 41 BTR-80 armored personnel carriers had to proceed in single file and at reduced speed.

Out on the main road, a divided highway, General Andreev gave the order to occupy all lanes and increase to maximum cruise speed. The clouds of the day had broken up into patches and between them the stars were bright and brittle. On either side of the roaring column of tanks the pine woods crackled in the cold. They were cruising at over 60 kilometers. Somewhere up ahead a single driver approached; his lights picked up the mass of gray steel pounding toward him and he drove straight into the woods.