Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (31 page)

Dawn had come. Beside the tank, Dimitri gazed over the disrupted, smoking plain. The day would be dry judging from the dawn sky, the earth slippery. In a wide band behind him among the splotches of craters were the dug-in positions of the 90th Guards Rifles. Arrayed left and right was his own brigade, and stretching beyond them to the Pena River the rest of his mechanized corps. Spikes of gun barrels large and small bristled in every place his eyes lit, out of foxholes and tank holes and artillery bunkers. He turned his eyes south, down from the high ground where he and his brigade were dug in, and there they were, black barbed dots two miles off, the Germans with the same needles poking out of the earth, aimed at him. In the past forty-eight hours, the Germans had already fought their way ten miles north from their jump-off lines. This morning they had one prize in mind: the Oboyan road, the artery to Kursk and the latchkey to German victory. Now they sat behind a river two miles south, meaning to come get their road. Dimitri stood in the way.

The lull in the firing lasted the remainder of the morning. Valentin pitched in and the
General
was soon reloaded. Dimitri was done with chatter among the two new boys - they had their jobs and their destinies and he had his. Valentin was quiet as usual. Bordering the few miles between their second defense line and the Germans was the once-narrow Luchanino River; this was normally a summer creek, just a branch of the larger-flowing Pena. This morning the Luchanino was swollen with the past few days’ rain. It was no longer an obstacle the Germans could merely step across, they would need to bridge it. Between the villages of Syrtsev and Luchanino, the ground on both sides of the river was flat terrain, mostly carved into cornfields. The crops had been spared the bombardment of the night, the shells had arced over the tall stalks. According to Valentin’s maps, these were dense minefields. Dimitri tried to imagine a place in the world that was not mined or armed. He could not, because every place he’d ever been in his life was today at war. The cornfields, simple and honest stands of maize, had at this moment enemy sappers crawling on their bellies to burrow at the roots. The little village of Luchanino, not much different from his own village in the Kuban, was today glutted with guns to beat the enemy away from the river. The river, rippling and oblivious, would run scarlet before the day was up.

Dimitri looked over to the tank trench dug weeks ago by Just Sonya and her citizens of the steppe. He wondered where the woman was right now. Quickly he added her to the list of people he asked God to protect, and wondered if he wasn’t taxing God’s patience somehow, there must be a million men asking for the same right about now.

His son, standing in the turret, spyglasses up, screamed, ‘Down!’

Dimitri dove to the rain-soft ground one second before he heard the whistle. A round hit twenty meters behind him, rocking the soil, spraying a black shower distressingly high.

‘What was that?’ he shouted up to Valentin, clambering with Pasha and Sasha for their hatches.

‘Tank.’

‘Tank? Jesus.’

A Tiger, he thought. An 88 mm cannon. It must be.
It’s here
.

‘Jesus,’ he said again to himself, diving into his driver’s seat.

Behind him Valentin dropped into his own seat and buttoned his hatch. Boots came down to Dimitri’s shoulders. Both toes tapped in fast unison.
Crank the engine
.

Dimitri pushed the starter and the
General
shuddered. Valentin on the intercom ordered Pasha to load an anti-personnel shell, and Dimitri again stared into the blankness of the dirt wall. He wanted to ram the gears into reverse and get the hell out of this ditch but first the German assault had to come closer, the T-34s had to stay hidden and protected to get off the best shots against the enemy charge.

Dimitri worked himself into a sweat, flexing his hands in and out of fists, rapping his knuckles against the hard, close armor around him. Sasha never took his eyes off him. Dimitri fought the urge to yell at the boy to take his red face around or catch a smack on it. Valentin and Pasha worked well in the turret, firing another dozen shells in quick succession. They were aiming at German artillery positions or troops advancing down to the river. Lobbing rounds at armored tanks from this distance would be a waste. Valentin, his foot on the firing pedal, his eye to his periscope, muttered to himself: ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on… safety off… and…’

The tank shook with the report.

‘No.’ Valya had missed. ‘Five degrees left.’

The turret whined, Dimitri heard his son’s hand ratchet the long gun’s elevation wheel. ‘And…’ Another shell exploded out of the barrel. Dimitri reeled in his seat. ‘No. Shit. Another round! Now!’ The turret rotated one or two degrees. Pasha rammed another shell into the breech, then scurried in his racks for the next round.

This went on for minutes. Valentin and Pasha fought the war while Dimitri ground his teeth and glared at green gauges and dark nothing. Sasha wrapped himself in his thin arms and collapsed into his space. The motor idled with restive energy, the
General
wanted to get moving, too. A tank was not designed to be motionless, it was a mobile platform for a big gun. Dimitri idled with the
General
, popping, joggling and anxious.

Explosions jarred the ground around their T-34. Valentin and the rest of their tank squad buried on either side of the
General
continued to trade shots with the German big guns across the river. At last, in the wake of a few very loud and close shells, Valentin gave the order. The words were accompanied by the dancing of two boots on Dimitri’s shoulders.

‘Let’s back up. Fast. They’re getting our range.’

Dimitri jammed the gear shift into reverse and hit the accelerator. The tracks spun and everyone in the tank pitched forward from the backward speed he used to get out into the daylight. In a second, a shaft of sun glowed in Dimitri’s vision block. He leaned his forehead into the padded periscope and through the rectangle of glass watched the tank shed its dirt sheath.

When the
General
was on level ground, Dimitri caught his first glimpse of the battleground before and below him. The cornfields on the southern bank of the Luchanino were trampled under the feet of many thousand running soldiers. They ran in a wide column; their sappers had cleared a big channel for them through the mines. German fusiliers ran to the riverbank to secure it for their pioneers to bring up bridging equipment. Across the river from the attackers, on the north bank, the village of Luchanino was lost under a pall of Soviet gunsmoke, a thousand steel throats screamed at the Germans to go back! Behind the men rushing to the fattened stream, Dimitri saw tanks rolling forward. At this distance the enemy were little more than dots against the ripped-up earth of the steppe. But the rounds falling on all sides of the
General
shook the ground with awesome force, and this from miles away!

Valentin shouted, ‘Driver, right!’

Dimitri jammed the tank into first gear. Valentin headed him west across the ledge of high ground looking down on the river villages. Valentin opened his hatch to stand in the shattering morning. Dimitri leaned forward and propped up his own hatch, widening his view. His jaw hung at what he saw.

Five of his brigade’s tanks were in ruins, smoking charnel even in their protective ditches. The German cannons had reached out and blown them to pieces. Two of the tanks were in flames, shafts of greasy fumes throbbed into the heating day. The others were just dead, crumpled like paper boxes into themselves, a gaping hole in each askew turret knocked from their fittings. This was why Valya had pulled the
General
out of its redoubt, to get back the tank’s best defense, to become a moving target.

Dimitri charged ahead along the ridgeline. The other four tanks in their squad plus a half-dozen others had dislodged themselves from their dirt casings and were doing the same, back and forth like giant picnic ants around a stomping foot. What now? The T-34’s 75 mm gun couldn’t even dent the German tanks across the river, the
General’s
main gun barrel wasn’t long enough to generate the shell speed needed to penetrate their heavy tanks, not from two miles, not even from one mile! But even from this distance those big, unseen Tigers and Panthers had the power to sit back and knock a T-34 out. The morning was a shooting gallery for them, and all Valentin and the others could do was hunker and fire spitballs or dash around in a dither. This is our first meeting with Hitler’s new tanks, Dimitri thought, and judging from the results, the little Austrian bastard was right to wait for them!

A round landed twenty meters in front of Dimitri’s path. The earth geysered.

‘They’re finding the range,’ he said into the intercom. ‘We’re getting bracketed.’

Valentin made no response.

Dimitri downshifted. He yanked back on the left-hand steering lever and shoved the right forward. The tank hauled into a left turn. Dimitri shifted up into third gear and sped straight down the hill.

‘What are you doing?’ Valentin shouted. A boot pressed between his shoulder blades, and when Dimitri did not stop to the order, the boot heel kicked him.

‘Load up,’ Dimitri called back, ignoring the pain beneath his neck. Through his open hatchway he watched the green field tear up beneath his tracks. ‘Check your maps, make sure we don’t go through a minefield.’

‘What? Turn around, turn around!’

‘Valya, listen. Don’t fucking kick me again! We can’t do a thing up on that hill. I’m going to take us down to the river. Signal the squad to follow. We’ll make a pass at top speed, I’m going to get you a shot in close. You’re the best gunner in the company. Take it, and we’ll get out.’

‘We don’t have orders to do that!’

‘You’re the squad commander.
Give
the damn order!’

Dimitri glanced over at Sasha. ‘What do you think, Cossack?’

‘Go!’ the boy hollered, a nervous thrill in his eyes. ‘Go!’

‘Hang on,’ Dimitri called into the intercom. ‘Valya, wave your hanky. Pasha, kiss a shell!’

Valentin barked in Dimitri’s headphones, ‘Damn it!’ When Dimitri did not slow or veer off, he grabbed up a banner from behind his chair back. He unfurled the blue flag and stood in his open hatch, waving the pennant over his head, the signal for the four tanks in their squad to follow the
General Platov
. Only command tanks in their corps had radios, the rest had to make do with smoke canisters and pennant signals. When the other T-34s had formed up into a column behind him, Valentin ducked down and buttoned his hatch. Dimitri smacked his lips and thought, That’s more like it, charging with your son and comrades under a battle flag. That’s how a Cossack fights.

The slalom down the long slope was fast and careering. Dimitri snaked left and right to stay out of any German’s range finder. The world through Dimitri’s open hatch was divided in half, the upper portion blue and clean, the bottom was all battle shroud and flying bits of crop and dirt. He yanked the
General
side to side, knowing it was impossible for Valya to find and target anything in the turret on this kind of wild ride. He’d have to do it at the bottom of the hill, and fast. Right now, Dimitri could not slow.

A shadow raced over the ground beside the
General
. Dimitri didn’t hesitate: He skidded the tank into a tight turn away from the dark shape flashing across the smashed cornfield. Twin rows of soil bounded into the air in the path he might have taken. The bullets stitched away, then quit, and the siren of a diving Stuka screamed through the clank of his tank when the plane tore past. The Stukas had learned to come at Red tanks from behind, trying to score a hit with their two 37 mm anti-tank guns on the engine compartment, which sometimes blew up and took the tank and crew with it. Dimitri’s forearms were beginning to smart from the exertion of swinging the levers back and forth over the bumpy, speeding terrain. He thought one more time about his daughter, and marveled again at the enemies she had to face in the air. Too fast for him; he preferred the ground, hooves and tracks. That Stuka will be back. Dimitri shifted into fourth gear and let the
General
roll as fast as it could, straight down the hill.

The demolished buildings and silos of Luchanino began to fill his restricted vision. He caught a glimpse of the sun glinting off the swollen river. Tracers and small-arms shredded the flowing water, trying to stop the German engineers floating across it on pontoons to establish a beachhead on the north shore. Behind the ducking, paddling pioneers stood a phalanx of four tanks, all Mark IVs. Every cannon seemed to point at the rushing
General
, Dimitri had no idea if the other four tanks in their squadron had kept up the frantic pace down the slope. The four German tanks were painted in the same camouflage tan scheme.