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Dimitry had been a train conductor since the time of the Tsar. Now there was a Red Tsar in the Kremlin, a man of steel that ruled the country with an iron fist, but for Dimitry things were more or less the same. Out in the vast expanses of Siberia, at the helm of his trusted locomotive he had come to call "Natasha", Dimitry could take his mind off all the hardship, all the sorrow and all the pain, he, his family and his friends had had to endure. Out here, he felt free.

As he approached one of the longer of the many tunnels of the Circum-Baikal section of the track, he spotted something most unusual, an NKVD checkpoint. He remembered how his colleague Nikolai had gotten into trouble last year, and so began to sweat profusely, the stress of what the unannounced checkpoint might mean making him oblivious to the fact that many things were wrong, such as the lack of any sort of transportation for the NKVD men or their slightly off uniforms.

When he finally stopped, he noticed something extremely odd with the officer that came up to him, as he had hardly seen any higher-ranking NKVD personell being of Asian stock. As the man made eye contact with him, Dimtry finally realized what was going on - by then it was too late though, as two pistol shots reverberated across the wilderness, the bullets piercing his stomach. A knock on the head with a rifle butt as well as the sound of a short gunfight followed, as Dimitry was thrown out of "Natasha" and unto the muddy ground beside the track.

Lying there bleeding out, the last thing Dimitry witnessed was "Natasha", along with the mysterious cargo it had picked up at the Manchurian border, being driven a couple more meters into the middle of the tunnel, and then the deafening sound and wall of fire as the strange men detonated the train's cargo, collapsing the tunnel completely.
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