Putilov Industrial Complex Loading Yard. Vyborgsky District, Saint Petersburg.
The night hadn't quite finished when Stepán Morozov began checking the three trucks.
It was the kind of hour when Saint Petersburg's sky was neither dark nor light, but somewhere in between, a gray state in which the city existed in silence and the cold had a different quality than it did during the night hours, without the wind that in the small hours had cut between the complex's buildings, lifting powder snow off the courtyard cobblestones. Stepán had been up since four forty-five. He had woken without an alarm, as he had done for eleven years driving coaches on the Saint Petersburg–Novgorod route, when departure depended on the light.
The first truck, the one he would drive, was a mid-load Russo-Balt with an open rear flatbed, steel-link chains already mounted on the double rear tires. The chains had been installed the previous afternoon following mechanic Fedorov's instructions, which he had explained twice with the patience of someone who knows he's going to have to repeat it a third time and would rather not. Stepán had installed them correctly on the first try. Fedorov had looked at him with something that, if interpreted generously, could be called respect.
He checked the chains on the first truck by lantern light. Correct tension, pins properly secured. He moved to the second truck, which Afanasi Golubyev would drive, four years older than him, former coachman for a private courier service. Same procedure, same result. On to the third, Timur Yusupov's, the youngest of the three, and the only one who hadn't come from working with horses, he had gone straight from warehouse hand to the first weeks of the driver training program. The third truck's front left pin wasn't fully tightened. Stepán fixed it without a word and went to find Fedorov to report it.
Fedorov noted it in his inspection log. "How's the oil level on the third?"
"Haven't looked yet."
"Look at it. And the second too."
Stepán went back to the trucks with the dipstick and the lantern. The second truck's oil was at the correct level. The third was about an eighth of an inch, three millimeters, below the minimum mark. Enough that under normal conditions it wouldn't matter, and enough that in extreme cold with the engine running at full load on an uphill grade during the final hours of the trip, it would matter more than was ideal.
Fedorov added oil from the reserve can stored in the rear compartment of the first truck. Half a liter. The dipstick showed the correct level.
"What temperature is the engine oil right now?" Stepán asked.
"Cold. Like always at this hour."
"Is there a warm-up procedure?"
Fedorov looked at him. It was the question that separated drivers who had read the manual from those who had actually thought about what the manual said. During the training sessions, the engineers had explained that the engine oil in the Neva-3B motors needed to be above sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, about twenty Celsius, to flow correctly through the internal passages from the very first moment of operation. Below that, the first few minutes after starting brought a drop in oil pressure that in normal conditions was trivial, but under heavy load with outside temperatures at one degree below zero Fahrenheit, seventeen below Celsius, could be the beginning of a problem that showed up thirty kilometers down the road when there was nothing left to do about it.
The warm-up procedure didn't appear in the operating instructions handed to the drivers. It was in the technical appendix of the mechanic's manual, which the drivers hadn't received because mechanic's manuals were for mechanics.
Fedorov went to the workshop, came back with three small iron braziers loaded with burning charcoal, and placed them under the oil pans of all three engines, far enough away to warm without risk of ignition. He left them for twenty minutes.
During those twenty minutes, Stepán went to the night-shift canteen for tea. He brought back three cups, one for himself, one for Golubyev, one for Yusupov. He didn't bring one for Fedorov, because Fedorov had made clear at the start of the preparation that he didn't drink tea on the job because tea required stopping and stopping was time that didn't exist. Stepán respected that, even if he didn't share it.
. . . . . . . . . .
They pulled out of the complex yard at six forty-two.
The convoy formation was: first truck, Stepán at the wheel, loaded with eighty sacks of Portland cement at a hundred and ten pounds, fifty kilos, each, stacked on the rear flatbed and secured with canvas straps that Golubyev had checked on Tuesday following a procedure the two of them had worked out briefly and agreed on without anyone telling them to, straps in an X pattern, not parallel, with the greatest tension in the rear third where the load tends to shift under braking. Second truck, Golubyev, pine lumber for formwork, forty-eight pieces at roughly six and a half feet by ten inches, tied in four bundles with steel cable. Third truck, Yusupov, heavy construction tools: pickaxes, iron shovels, manual percussion drills, and two eighty-meter, about two-hundred-sixty-foot, spools of signal cable.
The total cargo weight across the three trucks was sixteen thousand, three hundred pounds, about seven thousand four hundred kilos. That was relevant because the Neva-3B engine's rated power at full load on flat ground was adequate for that weight. On an uphill grade with compacted snow, available power dropped and the traction coefficient of chained tires on ice varied with ice quality, on the roads between Saint Petersburg and the Volkhov River that could shift from one kilometer to the next, depending on whether the sun over the previous days had slightly thawed the surface and the night cold had refrozen it, leaving a layer of hard blue ice over the original snow.
Stepán knew all of this without having it formulated in those terms. He knew it the way eleven years of driving in winter teach things that have no name, because whoever learned them had no time to give them one, only to use them.
Getting out of Saint Petersburg via the Tosno branch to the southeast and then the turn at Mga toward the east took forty minutes. The city streets were empty at that hour except for the early-run electric trams passing with their lit windows above the overhead lines sparking in the cold. In the city the trucks rolled without trouble at eleven miles per hour, about eighteen kilometers, the urban driving speed they had agreed on to avoid overloading the steering on intersection turns.
It was after leaving the city, past the twenty-second kilometer, that the real road began.
. . . . . . . . . .
The road between Saint Petersburg and the Volkhov dam site was not a road built for the traffic it was going to receive over the coming years. It was a compacted dirt track, laid over the terrain with no lateral drainage or crushed-stone base, which in summer turned to mud up to cart axle-depth and in winter solidified into an uneven surface of frozen ruts, the impressions left by carts and sledges in the mud before it froze. Those ruts, packed down over weeks of traffic and then locked in by the cold, produced a surface of transverse ice ridges between two and five inches high, separated by valleys just as deep. Cart wheels with small diameters simply followed the rhythm of the terrain, but the trucks' tires, eighteen inches in diameter, a size that matched none of the usual rut spacings, produced a continuous, irregular vibration that traveled from the axle to the cab to the load to the drivers, kilometer after kilometer.
At kilometer thirty-one, Golubyev sounded the horn twice, the non-urgent stop signal they had agreed on before departure.
Stepán pulled the convoy over at a natural widening of the road beside a row of firs that cut the crosswind. He climbed down and walked to the second truck. Golubyev was on the rear flatbed checking the pine lumber bundles.
"Two of the binding cables have worked loose."
The steel cables they had used to tie the bundles were not tensioning cables but pass-through cables locked with crimps, which in extreme cold contracted slightly, reducing the tension they had set during loading in the complex's heated yard. It was an effect Stepán knew from the drum brakes on coaches, where the operating cable also lost tension in winter and had to be reset tighter.
The two of them re-tensioned the cables. They checked the other two bundles. The third bundle also had a partially loose crimp, they fixed it. The process took twelve minutes.
Yusupov had climbed down from the third truck and was checking the chains on the rear right tire, which had been making an off-rhythm knocking sound for the past kilometer.
"One of the links is bent."
A bent link wasn't a broken one. The chain was still operational. But the bent link was striking the fender on every revolution with clockwork regularity, and while the impact itself caused no immediate structural damage, over seventy kilometers of continuous vibration it could fatigue the link to the point of failure, and a broken chain link at speed on snow meant the chain partially detaching and wrapping around the axle.
Stepán pulled the ball-peen hammer from the tool compartment of the first truck and worked the link for three minutes until it had recovered enough geometry for the connector pin to sit properly centered. It wasn't perfect. It was functional for the remaining distance.
They moved on.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Mga River crossing at kilometer forty-eight was a plank-wood bridge with no railing, built for horse-drawn carts, with a maximum design load that no one had written anywhere visible but that anyone with a basic knowledge of timber structures could estimate by looking at the diameter of the logs and the span of the central opening.
Stepán climbed down before the first truck reached the bridge and walked the fifty-six feet, seventeen meters, of the deck. The planks were frozen on the surface and dry inside, which made them stiffer than usual and therefore more resistant to point loads but more susceptible to dynamic loading, which was exactly what a truck produced at speed when it drove up onto the deck.
The clear width between the outer longitudinal beams was about seven feet eight inches, two meters and thirty centimeters. The center-to-center distance between the rear dual tires was about six feet eleven inches, two meters ten. It fit, with four inches of clearance on each side, ten centimeters, which with snow accumulated on the deck and the first truck loaded with nearly nine thousand pounds meant exactly four inches.
Golubyev came over while Stepán was measuring.
"Will it hold?"
Stepán took a moment to answer because he was looking at the bridge supports on both banks, round pine logs about sixteen inches in diameter, set into the riverbank without any visible anchoring system beyond the weight of the structure and the lateral pressure of the earth. In summer, with the Mga running low, those supports probably had some lateral play. In January, with the bank frozen deep, they were completely locked in place.
"One at a time. Walking pace. And Yusupov doesn't pull onto the bridge until the first one is completely clear on the other side."
The first truck crossed in five minutes. Then the second. Then the third. The planks groaned under each one, most noticeably under the rear right wheel of the second truck, where the wood was slightly less dense, but none gave way.
On the far side of the Mga, Stepán wrote in the notebook he kept in his coat's inner pocket:
"Mga bridge, km 48. Passable with mid-load truck. Verify before heavy-load crossing. Planks in good condition. Width tight. North-bank support: check at spring thaw."
It was information for the report he had to hand in at the end of the trip. It was also, without anyone having told him to think of it this way, information that would help decide whether that bridge needed to be reinforced or replaced before the traffic volume toward the dam site increased over the coming months.
They continued east.
. . . . . . . . .
The holdup came at kilometer sixty-three.
It was a stretch where the road descended for roughly a thousand feet, about three hundred meters, to the bed of a minor stream and then climbed back up the opposite bank. The descent was fine: the compacted snow gave enough grip with the chains and the grade wasn't steep. The problem was the bottom of the dip, right at the stream, where the constant passage of loaded carts had worn two parallel ruts about sixteen inches deep, filled with packed snow in the center but with live ice beneath the snow on the sides. The rear tires of the first truck entered the ruts without difficulty, followed the track, reached the lowest point, and at the moment they began the climb up the opposite bank, lost traction.
The chains were spinning but not biting. Under them, the live ice was too smooth even for the links.
The engine roared as he accelerated, the rear tires spun and threw up powdered ice, and the truck moved forward about six inches before stopping.
Stepán didn't accelerate further. More throttle in that situation didn't make the ground rougher, it only made the tires spin faster on the same ice, generating heat that slightly melted the surface and made it smoother still. It was the lesson coachmen learned with horses that locked up on ice: pulling harder made things worse.
He climbed down. Golubyev and Yusupov climbed down too. All four men, including Yusupov's assistant, who until that point had ridden silently in the cab of the third truck, studied the problem from different angles without speaking for a moment.
In the tool compartment of the first truck were, among other things, four pine planks measuring roughly three feet by eight inches that Stepán had loaded at the last moment back in Putilov's yard, without anyone asking him to.
They placed two planks under each rear tire, angled in the direction of the climb, secured in position with two cement sacks temporarily removed from the load and placed as stops at the rear end of each plank so they wouldn't slide backward when traction was applied.
Stepán got back in the cab. He engaged first gear, applied throttle gently until he felt the tires bite the wood, and released the clutch gradually while Golubyev and Yusupov pushed against the rear side of the truck with their body weight. The first impulse was enough, the truck climbed over the planks, caught the bank grade, and kept going all the way to the top without stopping.
They went back for the planks. Laid them for the second truck. Same procedure, same result. For the third they adjusted the plank positions about an inch further out because Yusupov's tire tread pattern was slightly different.
From the start of the holdup to the moment the third truck crested the bank: fifty-one minutes.
. . . . . . . . .
They passed through Volkhov, the village nearest the dam site, about eight hundred residents, a red-brick church at the center, a small market with three stalls, and a roadside inn with smoke rising from the chimney at that hour, at eleven fifteen in the morning. The locals who were out on the street stopped to watch the convoy.
It wasn't the first time a truck had passed through Volkhov; the surveyors had come through in similar vehicles two weeks earlier. But seeing three together, loaded, in formation, with an apparent destination, was different from seeing one carrying survey equipment.
A man of indeterminate age, somewhere between seventy and eighty, wearing the sheepskin coat of northwest Russian peasants in winter, stopped Stepán in the main street by raising his hand with calm authority.
Stepán pulled to a halt and rolled down the window.
The old man didn't ask where they'd come from or what they were carrying. He asked where they were going.
Stepán said: to the construction site on the river.
The old man nodded. "The Volkhov." He said it as if confirming something he already knew. "So they're sending more machines."
It wasn't a question. Stepán said yes.
The old man studied him for a moment. Then he said: "My grandfather built the water mill at the north bend of the river. Built it in 1831. Ninety meters of wooden flume. Took him three years." He paused. "How long will the dam take?"
"Four years," said Stepán. "According to the engineers."
The old man considered that. "Bigger than the mill."
"Quite a bit bigger."
The old man nodded again, with the expression of someone accepting a piece of information that changes none of his fundamental opinions. Then he stepped aside.
Stepán rolled up the window and drove on.
. . . . . . . . .
The construction site was seven kilometers north of Volkhov, at the point on the river where the previous week's topographic survey had fixed the coordinates for the dam axis. They arrived at eleven forty-three.
The site was at that stage a work camp: six prefabricated wooden barracks set up on the south bank, a fuel depot of three thousand-liter tanks, and the surveying crew with their theodolites on tripods out on the river ice, working the layout of the foundation axes. The field chief was a construction engineer named Nikolai Lvovich Drobov, around forty-five years old, whom Stepán had briefly noticed during loading at Putilov's yard without exchanging a word.
Drobov came out of the main barrack when he heard the engines.
Stepán climbed down from the first truck and handed over the delivery manifest: Portland cement, ninety-seven sacks, pine formwork lumber, forty-eight pieces, miscellaneous construction tools, per inventory on attached sheet. He noted where each load was and the condition of each bundle after the trip.
Drobov signed the manifest, reviewed the inventory sheet, and went to the second truck's flatbed to look at the lumber. He lifted one plank from the pile and examined the edges, checking for seasoning cracks that would weaken the formwork. He was satisfied.
"How long did it take?"
"Five hours forty minutes from Putilov's yard."
Drobov looked at him. Not quite surprise, but not the expression of a man hearing what he expected either. "Any problems?"
Stepán summarized the three: the loose cable on the lumber bundle at kilometer thirty-one, the Mga bridge, and the holdup at kilometer sixty-three. He explained the solution to each.
Drobov listened carefully, particularly to the holdup and the planks. "You brought those planks yourself?"
"Yes."
"Did anyone tell you to?"
"No."
Drobov wrote something in his own notebook. Then he said: "That stretch at kilometer sixty-three is going to be a problem every winter until the road has a proper stone base. I need to know that before the heavy-load traffic starts." He nodded toward the sheet of notes he'd spotted sticking out of Stepán's coat pocket during the conversation. "Can you leave me a copy of what you have written down?"
Stepán tore the page from the notebook and handed it over.
Drobov called two men from the camp to begin unloading. Four people for three trucks took longer than the eight that would have been pulled off another task back in Putilov's yard, but the process was orderly, cement to the covered storage in barrack two, lumber to the supply area under the side tarp, tools to the storage barrack.
While they unloaded, one of the surveyors came in off the ice to retrieve something from the instrument barrack and paused for a moment to study the trucks with the focused look of someone running calculations.
"How many runs can they make in a day?" he asked, to no one in particular.
"Three in a long day," said Stepán. "Four if you leave before dawn and arrive with enough light."
"With the volume of cement we're going to need for the north foundation," the surveyor said, as if continuing an internal conversation he'd started out on the ice, "you'll need continuous runs for six weeks on cement alone."
"That means more trucks or more frequency."
"Or both."
It wasn't a problem Stepán could solve. But it was information that would exist in the report he would hand over to the operations chief at Putilov on the way back, where someone with the authority to request more trucks or adjust the schedule would read it.
. . . . . . . . .
Unloading finished at half past twelve.
Stepán checked all three trucks before the return trip. The rear platform arms on the first truck, now empty, were visibly higher than they had been under load, which indicated the leaf springs were working correctly and the weight distribution during the trip hadn't deformed any of the suspension components. The third truck still had the bent chain link he had corrected at the kilometer thirty-one stop in its place, though the repair was provisional and before the next run the link would need to be replaced with a new one.
He noted that too.
Drobov came over while Stepán was finishing the last check. He handed him three signed and stamped delivery receipts, one per truck. Then he said something Stepán hadn't expected.
"The road between kilometer sixty-three and here, the last twelve miles before the site, needs work before spring heavy-load traffic starts. What you described with the holdup is exactly the kind of problem that kills a construction schedule." He nodded at Stepán's notebook. "If you have time before you leave, tell me the other two or three points along the road where you think you might see similar problems."
Stepán thought for a moment. He had identified three stretches during the trip where the road geometry, the sun exposure, and the presence of nearby trees blocking natural drainage created conditions similar to kilometer sixty-three. The two or three days of slightly less severe cold at the beginning of the month had thawed and refrozen those particular stretches, leaving a more uneven surface than the rest.
He pointed them out on the map Drobov spread across the hood of the first truck, giving the approximate kilometer markers and the specific feature at each one.
Drobov marked them. "When can you come back?"
"Tomorrow or the day after, depending on what load is available."
Drobov nodded. "Tell them at Putilov I want the additional fifty formwork planks and the reserve signal cable on the next run."
. . . . . . . . . .
They left the site at quarter to one.
The return trip was faster than the outbound. Without cargo, all three trucks ran at fourteen miles per hour, about twenty-two kilometers, on the flat stretches, and the two problems from the outbound journey, the kilometer sixty-three holdup and the Mga bridge, resolved themselves without incident. On the first, the tires without the weight of the cement sacks got enough grip from the chains to climb the bank without stopping. On the second, the crossing unladen produced none of the groaning from the bridge planks that it had under load.
They entered Saint Petersburg as the January four o'clock sun began dropping toward the horizon with the speed that northern light has in winter.
Stepán handed in his written report to Putilov's operations chief at four forty-five. Four pages: the signed manifests, trip incidents, critical road points with approximate kilometer markers, the three mechanical problems on the trucks and their resolution status, the Mga bridge condition with the spring-thaw inspection recommendation. At the end, outside the formal report format, he added a separate paragraph with the information the surveyor had mentioned about the cement volume needed for the north foundation and the implied run frequency that would require.
The operations chief read the report that evening, separated out the cement volume paragraph, and forwarded it to the transport planning manager, who the following day incorporated it into the truck allocation calculations for the Volkhov project over the next two months.
Stepán knew none of that. By five fifteen he was already in the complex's changing room.
. . . . . . . . .
The night of January fifteenth in Saint Petersburg was exactly like the night of January fourteenth. The cold, the same. The streets, the same. The trams ran with the same rhythm and the same sparks on the overhead lines.
What was different was that a four-page report now existed in Putilov's planning office describing with precision which stretches of road between Saint Petersburg and the Volkhov site needed work before spring, how long the trucks took on the trip under full load, where the risk points for holdup were, and what the provisional solution to each one looked like.
That information had not existed before this morning, because no one had made the run with loaded trucks to find out.
Now it did.
That was enough for today.
[Nemryz: If you've enjoyed this story and want to read ahead, I have more chapters available on my patreon.com/Nemryz. Your support helps me continue writing this novel and AU. Thank you for reading!
I should mention that I've been more focused on university, which is why I haven't posted any chapters. I'll be posting the ones I have ready on Patreon, and I promise to upload 3 chapters a week, starting next week]