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“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.

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“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.”