The End is Coming

Chapter Thirty-three

Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy stood in the unopened doorway of the commandeered Lear executive jet, staring through the porthole in the pressure door at the airfield and beyond it Chey-enne Mountain—The Womb.

The Lear finally stopped its movement under him, settled as he peered out on the central eleva-tor pad. And a new sensation of movement be-gan—lowering.

There was brilliant sun like a halo around the field as he stared through the porthole, then a flicker of darkness, shadow, and then the bril-liance of artificial, more yellow light. The copilot was suddenly beside him, working the controls to open the door, the door pushing outward, passenger stairs folding out automati-cally, before him as the down motion stopped. Commander of the North American Branch of The Committee for State Security of the Soviet, Colonel Nehemiah Gustafus Rozhdestvenskiy—he was keenly aware of who he was, what he was—looked to his blue-black uniform’s left shoulder—the green shoulder board bearing the tri-angular formation of three stars denoting him as full colonel, KGB, had a speck of dust on it. He flipped it away with his white-gloved right hand.

Before stepping outside—the band already playing the national anthem—he glanced at him-self in the lavatory door mirror near the exit.

His nearly knee-high black jack boots gleamed with the richness of their leather and the labor of his aide. The brass of his buttons and the buckle of his gold parade dress uniform belt caught the overhead lighting, sparkled. His medals—not all of his medals, for to wear them all would have shown a lack of taste, something he despised in others of his rank or above, something he detested in men beneath his rank—followed the line of his left lapel, plunging in a sharp angle from the uni-form above his left breast toward his belt. The red collar tabs high on his lapels, the redness of the wide band that encircled his uniform cap—he ad-justed the angle of his cap to where it dipped slightly over his left eye. Rozhdestvenskiy turned from the mirror, glanc-ing neither to right nor to left, stepping through the doorway, standing on the top step of the egress, raising his right hand in salute, the voices of the assembled troops raised in chorus, his own joining their voices: “Soyuz nerushimy respubliks-vobodnykh. ...”

The hammer and sickle—he stared at it as it waved in the breezy downdraft from the elevator opening above him.

The men—their uniforms worn proudly, the 7.62mm Kalashnikov rifles with bayonets fixed held at high port across their chests, all eyes turned as the men—more than a thousand strong—all looked at his face. Still holding his salute as the strains of the So-viet national anthem died, he turned fully to face his troops. Smartly—so they would know how he meant it—he snapped away the salute—to them. Rozhdestvenskiy descended the steps, Major Revnik, his executive officer, striding forward, sa-luting as he called out in stentorian tones, “The troops are assembled, comrade colonel!”

Rozhdestvenskiy returned the salute smartly, starting forward, Revnik falling in step to his left. Faces—young, healthy, strong, dedicated. Men. And ranked behind them, in white blouses and black skirts with red neckerchiefs tied at the throats of their blouses, were the women. A thou-sand strong as well—the finest and best and strongest and most beautiful.

The men, armed, ready, the women—all were ranked in identical formations on both sides of him as he walked the length of the underground hangar bays of what once had been North Ameri-can Air Defense Headquarters—NORAD.

Now, The Womb.

Tanks—the massive T-72—ranked endlessly be-yond them as far as he could see. In the distance, he viewed the generating equip-ment for the particle beam weapons that formed their air defense and that would make them ulti-mately masters of the earth. Standing at the far end of the ranks as he walked, in the exact center, was a solitary young woman. In her arms was a bouquet—roses, he thought.

He walked toward her, seeing her face, her flowing black hair—her eyes were dark, her figure exuding the radiance of health.

Rozhdestvenskiy stopped.

The woman stepped toward him.

“Comrade colonel—the loyal women of the So-viet Union who have been honored by their selec-tion to perpetuate forever the noble spirit of the triumphant peoples of the State salute you!”

She handed him the bouquet. She leaned up and kissed his left cheek and his right cheek. Revnik’s voice: “To the triumph of the Soviet!”

Two thousand voices shouted, the halls ringing with it— “Triumph!”