Red Army (26 page)

“Perhaps the outcome of the war will be the only viable measure.”

“Well, it’s unquestionably a bit muddled. But automation has really come through for Gubyshev. He couldn’t begin to manage his assets or to de-conflict frequencies with paper and pencil. And after all is said and done, Dudorov’s a believer. The GRU position is that we have meaningfully impaired the enemy’s ability to react on the battlefield.”

“Within the contours of the plan, I trust,” Malinsky said. “I’m still waiting for indications of the movement of the enemy’s tactical-operational reserves to the flanks. Don’t let Gubyshev queer that up. Don’t let him get carried away with a sudden sense of power. What about air-battle management? Every single one of the army commanders has complained about it. Of course, I recognize that they’re bound to complain. But it appears that we’re having some genuine problems.”

“It’s certainly a bit off track. The air force is struggling with it now. The biggest problem is assessing the damages we’ve inflicted, then retargeting aircraft. Even the automation’s overwhelmed. The air force representatives are attempting to put a good face on it, but I suspect there’s a lot of guesswork going on. I do not believe that all of the available missions are being employed efficiently.”

“Of course, we’re speaking of relative efficiency. On the edge of chaos. Think of what it must be like for the infantryman out there in the dark, Pavel Pavlovitch. And keep pounding on our comrade aviators. But not to the degree that it becomes counterproductive. So ... what’s your overall assessment of the troop control situation? From the perspective of the chief of staff.”

“Better than I feared,” Chibisov said. “We can communicate, although we’re often forced to rely on nonprimary means. The confusion on the ground is intense. It’s a matter of continuous effort. You know our antenna farm was struck earlier? We were at minimum capability for over an hour. That didn’t help the effort to maintain the automated data bases. But we’re back up to ninety percent now.”

“They’ll hit the bunker again,” Malinsky said. “And again. You’ll be able to measure their desperation by how often the walls shake around you.”

Chibisov nodded. He felt tired. Exhausted. Yet there was so much waiting to be done. The smoke from Malinsky’s cigarette snaked into his lungs, and he unconsciously touched the pocket where he carried his pills.

“Overall,” Malinsky said, “we’ve had better than average luck. And, while I recognize that luck is a thing best reduced to a minimum in one’s calculations, I know it when it touches me.” Malinsky nodded at the map, having worked his way through the mental clutter of war to a level of reasonable satisfaction. “Marshal Kribov is delighted with us -- his worries are all down south. The Americans are proving tough -- they’re so damned unpredictable. And the Germans in the south are fighting more like Americans.” Malinsky paused for a moment, mouth slightly open at a troubling thought. “Yes, we’ve been lucky. But tonight will be our first big test. Tonight, and then tomorrow morning. If they piecemeal their counterattacks, and if Starukhin gives me a breakthrough by noon, they won’t stop us until we’re standing on the banks of the Rhine.” Malinsky smiled. “And they may not even stop us then.”

Leonid sat comfortably in a chair by the window, belly stuffed full, dreaming of home. His assault rifle lay balanced across his thighs. The weapon reeked with the sulfurous smell of blown powder. He had not cleaned the rifle since the battle. He had, however, taken the first opportunity to scrub the blood and filth from his tunic, and now it hung drying over the footboard of some stranger’s abandoned bed.

The war seemed thankfully far away, and Leonid had convinced himself that he had done his fair share. It was up to the others now. He shifted his position, staring out into the cool darkness without focusing on any object. His slight movement ticked and clattered with the sounds of colliding plastic. He had filled his pockets with cassette tapes in an adjacent bedroom, which appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Delighted with his find, he wasn’t bothered by not being able to read the labels or recognize any of the groups from the small, colorful illustrations tucked inside the cassette cases. The high quality of the printing and the lively look of the performers in the photographs promised great things.

On the far horizon, beyond a palisade of darkened evergreens, the night sky shimmered and sparkled as though a vast celebration filled the distance. Occasionally, a sputter of closer brightness disturbed the perspective, and the kettle-drum noises roamed closer, only to recede again. Leonid thought that other soldiers were undergoing experiences similar to his own of the past afternoon. On one hand, he thought it might be even more frightening at night, but he also figured that it was easier to hide.

In the aftermath of the engagement, he had found his way to the remnants of his own unit with surprising ease. The firing had diminished to a trickle, then it shut off completely, as though a tap had been closed. The barking of the officers soon replaced the noises of battle. The wounded made noises, too, but the officers seemed determined to shout them down, to bury their reality under the bullying noises of control.

Seryosha had made it through, and he told stories of machine-gunning countless numbers of the enemy. Leonid noticed that Seryosha was still laden with most of the ammunition he had carried into battle, but he accepted the tales, neither believing nor disbelieving. Their squad vehicle could not be identified, but Lieutenant Korchuk, their political officer, shepherded them to Junior Sergeant Kassabian, and they became part of a unit again. Korchuk praised their performance and asked them how they felt now that they were veterans of battle. But it was evident that Korchuk did not really listen to their responses. The
politruk
was upset because so many of the platoon group Komsomol organizers, his helpers in the political agitation effort, had been killed or wounded. It seemed apparent that the most active and enthusiastic Communists truly had led the way. When Korchuk left them, Seryosha ridiculed the fallen organizers, saying that maybe war wasn’t such a bad thing if it killed off all of the boot-lickers. Then he laughed and speculated broadly about where Korchuk himself had been during the battle.

Their unit remained behind as the others lined up and pulled off in the direction of the shifting battle noises. Korchuk returned and explained to them that they were to help gather the wounded who had fallen for the cause of international peace and socialist brotherhood. The young soldiers followed the wanderings of the medical orderlies, who were clearly at a loss confronted with such devastation. An orderly would bend over a helpless figure and seem to play with it. But Leonid did not believe that the orderlies really knew what they were doing.

In one respect, Leonid surprised himself. He did not mind helping to lift and carry the wounded. He wanted to make them feel better, although their miseries made no deep impression on him. He spoke a few comforting words, repeating himself frequently, promising the unlucky boys that they would be all right. The regimen called for gathering the wounded officers first. But they, too, now were just boys and young men, no longer radiant with power, but simply shocked into silence, or weeping at their misfortunes, or groaning with their unimaginable pains. The soldiers loaded the officers into the little train of field ambulances, then they filled the few remaining spaces with badly burned other ranks. As the ambulances pulled off they began the drudgery of packing the mass of the casualties into the beds of empty transport trucks. The few wounded enemy soldiers in evidence went carefully ignored until the last, then they were loaded onto the already crowded vehicles. Most of the trucks had no medical orderlies to attend their cargoes, and two officers had an argument that Leonid did not quite understand. Lieutenant Korchuk cautiously avoided touching any of the wounded at all.

After policing their fragment of the battlefield, the soldiers in Leonid’s unit loaded up onto the combat vehicles that were still operable. Leonid, Seryosha, and Sergeant Kassabian rode with a reduced vehicle crew whose members Leonid half recognized from battalion parades. The atmosphere had changed now, and the soldiers grew loose and talkative. The rain had stopped, and they drove down German country roads with the top hatches open, weapons held at a casual ready as they watched the world go by.

In the last twilight, they drove through a village whose streets seemed to have been strewn with diamonds, an effect of the light of burning buildings reflecting off broken glass. Along a street that fire had not yet touched, external blinds had been lowered over windows, sealing the houses off like private fortresses. But an artillery round exploding at the end of the street had blown all of the nearby blinds away, leaving the windows looking like dark, dead eyes. To Leonid, the last untouched houses seemed to be waiting like sheep. In the town square, bodies littered the pavement, some with a distinctly unmilitary appearance.

In the next village, the little column had to wait as towed guns with long, slender barrels moved ahead of them. Then they were delayed again, this time by a serial of military equipment the like of which Leonid had never seen. The oversized vehicles had the appearance of farm machinery, or of giant instruments of torture.

“Engineers,” one of the soldiers said, eager to flaunt his knowledge.

Finally, the vehicle in which Leonid and his comrades rode was directed into position between two houses on the edge of town. Sergeant Kassabian received command of all of the dismounted soldiers. An unfamiliar officer ordered Kassabian to set up firing positions inside the house beside the road.

Even in the dark, Leonid could tell that the Germans were very well-to-do. Sergeant Kassabian made a halfhearted attempt to position the soldiers at firing points behind doors and window frames. But soon he, too, succumbed to the general desire to explore. Seryosha even tried to turn on the electric lights, but there was no power. The soldiers wandered about by the light of matches, stolen lighters, and a few candles that turned up.

The kitchen was full of food, and the soldiers ate their first real meal since their deployment from garrison. They made it into a slopping feast. There was even beer, still mildly chilled from the now-powerless refrigerator. Several of the soldiers commented on the apparent wealth of the Germans, jealous and admiring. Finally, one man said angrily that the Soviet Union could be rich, too, if it stole from starving people in Africa and Asia. Leonid did not know what to believe, but he envied any family that could possess such a house. Then one of the unfamiliar soldiers with whom they had been thrown together began to smash things.

There was no logic to it, but the mood quickly caught on. The soldiers tore through the house, upsetting furniture, hurling vases and figurines, and ripping pictures from the walls. Upstairs, the boys scattered the contents of drawers over the floor, and one soldier found a treasure of oversized women’s underthings. Laughing crazily, he pulled on a drooping bra and panties the size of a big man’s swimming trunks. He pranced about, throwing his shoulders forward in a parody of enticement. In an adjacent room, Leonid discovered a fine little cassette recorder and a drawer full of tapes. He doubted that he could conceal the recorder, and there were too many tapes, so he hurriedly culled the lot by matchlight, filling his pockets with the most interesting-looking items.

Out of nowhere, Lieutenant Korchuk appeared, armed with a pocket flashlight. He remained silent for a full minute, standing in the hallway, sweeping the beam of light from one room to another, inspecting the frozen revelry. Leonid expected a great fuss and heavy punishment. But Korchuk only ordered Sergeant Kassabian to reoccupy the squad’s fighting positions. The political officer seemed to have taken over some level of command now, and he appeared disheartened by the responsibility. In a strained voice, he ordered the soldier who had adorned himself with women’s underthings to return his uniform to its proper state.

Already weary of their fun, the soldiers acquiesced to Sergeant Kassabian’s paper-thin commands. Sergeant Kassabian wielded bits of half-remembered officer talk from old field exercises, struggling to please the lieutenant. The soldiers slumped off to guard the doors and windows. Shortly afterward, Lieutenant Korchuk disappeared back into the night. But the soldiers remained in their separate rooms, as much from inertia as from duty, as quiet as exhausted children.

Leonid and Seryosha took possession of an upstairs bedroom. The furniture had been toppled, and the mattress lay on the floor, where one of the soldiers had urinated on it. The two boys put down their rifles and flipped the mattress, then lifted it back onto the bed frame. They agreed that they would take turns sleeping -- Seryosha first -- after Leonid cleaned his uniform top. He carefully stuffed his precious cassette tapes into his trouser pockets and bent to his labor by the light of a dying candle. Water still ran in the pipes, and Leonid soaked and scrubbed his spattered tunic in the bathtub, as much impressed by the water pressure as by the luxury of the fixtures.

Leonid sat peaceably at the window as Seryosha drowsed, then muttered a few unintelligible words before beginning to snore with martial regularity. In a state of weariness that could not measure time, Leonid watched the brilliant display of battle on the horizon, the nighttime sequel to his own experience, in a war that had moved beyond him. He thought about music, and of how painful it would be at first to re-form the calluses on the fingertips of his left hand. He closed his eyes, chording his guitar in his mind. Twice he nearly collapsed into sleep, and the second time he woke himself just in time to see a beautiful pageant of colored rockets in the distance. The colored stars trailed off in slow deaths that filled Leonid with sadness to a depth he had never before known. The thought of the most trivial detail of home gained the power to bring tears to his eyes, and when he thought of his mother, the tears fell down his cheeks in the darkness just as the distant starbursts dropped into the darkened woodlands. Pulled loose from any real sense of the hours, he concluded that the night must be nearly over, and he carefully dried his eyes and the adolescent coarseness of his cheeks. Timidly, he began the task of waking Seryosha. He felt as though he would give anything just to sleep for a little while.