The Undesirables (Sample Chapter)

Chapter 1: The Correspondent

"Into the city," Jillian said back to him. "You'd better hurry, the ferry won't wait for stragglers."

Stepan only hesitated for a moment before standing up and following Jillian. Jillian was impressed. Most political appointees would be too afraid to join her in the burning city.

Despite the crowd, Jillian and Stepan had little difficulty shouldering their way to the front. The Russian conscript soldiers looked none too anxious to cross the Volga and enter that cauldron of fire that had once been a city. So they willingly let her and her babysitter cut in front of them.

As she reached the edge of the dock, Jillian noticed that the sailors onboard hadn't bothered to moor the vessel. They didn't want to be trapped on the dock, and as Jillian showed her authorization papers to a young Naval Infantry officer, she discovered why. Suddenly a flight of German Stuka dive-bombers emerged from the smoke across the river and rolled in the air right toward them.

Fortunately for Jillian and the others crowding the dock, the warplanes had already dropped their bombs on Stalingrad's Tractor Factory. Otherwise they could have sunk the ferry and obliterated the harbor. Instead, the best they could do was strafe the dock with their machineguns.

Even before the first tracer bullets flashed through the sky, everyone around Jillian hit the deck.

Then the planes were almost directly overhead, their thundering guns ripping through the cowering bodies in fountains of gore.

Stepan was one of the first to die.

Jillian didn't hit the deck. Instead she grabbed her authorization papers from the Naval Infantry Officer's cowering hands and leapt aboard.

She was just in time. The ferry's panicking Captain, hoping that a moving ship would be a more difficult target for the German planes to hit, gunned the throttle. The ferry jerked away from the dock and began to churn through the water toward the center of the river.

Jillian lost her balance and crashed to the deck just beneath the gunwale. The German dive bombers circled around for another pass. Jillian climbed to her feet so she could watch.

The Russian soldiers on the dock were terrified, trampling each other to escape the promised renewal of carnage.

The German warplanes levelled off and dove. Jillian could hear their engines scream. Their machineguns once again began to bark and spit tracer rounds.

But this time Russian anti-aircraft guns responded. Heavy 37mm shells tore into the planes' formation, sawing through a wing and causing one Stuka to spiral uncontrollably.

Jillian instinctively ducked as the burning aircraft rocketed overhead and plummeted into the water only a few hundred yards down river.

The rest of the warplanes broke off the attack. They had gotten too greedy and it had cost them a valuable machine. They wouldn't make that same mistake again.

Russian anti-aircraft fire followed them ineffectually until they disappeared back into the iron cross of smoke.

The ferry was safe. But its Captain didn't bother turning around to pick up more passengers. He just continued, at full steam, straight for the opposite shore.

As the city grew closer Jillian could start to make out the flames. Every single building, it seemed, was alight. This wasn't a random terror blitz as the Germans had done to London. It was a coordinated and concerted effort to destroy every single building, block by block.

As usual, German reconnaissance was better than the Russian equivalent. Russian air defense headquarters had been the first building destroyed. As a result, Russian fighter planes fought back in a disorganized rabble. The German pilots tore them apart.