Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (32 page)

‘See them?’ Dimitri called into the throat microphone.

‘Yes.’

‘Sons of bitches. Where’s their big brother? Afraid of you, Valya, I’ll bet. Best damn gunner in the Red Army.’

Valentin laughed. His feet came back to Dimitri’s shoulders, a gentler touch this time.

The field just outside the village where Dimitri raced his tank was filled with dug-in men and weapons. Soviet anti-tank gunners with their long-barreled weapons lay belly down behind dirt embankments, machine-gunners squatted in shallow foxholes, and fresh, hot craters were filled in seconds with men looking for cover in the earth. Dimitri scurried his tank in and out among them, angling closer to the buildings at the water’s edge, waiting for Valya to give him the signal to turn and stop for him to acquire the Mark IVs and fire. The armor close to his head rang with the
pings
of small-arms fire banging against the
General’s
side. The lineup of German tanks must be going crazy waiting for this column of mad careening Red tanks to come to a stop.

‘Range, one thousand meters,’ Valentin intoned.

‘Closer?’ Dimitri asked.

‘Closer.’

Dimitri gunned the tank farther down the hill, his padded head took a buffeting in his hard driver’s space. He aimed the
General
at the remains of a barn along the riverbank. He intended to nestle behind it out of the sight of the German tanks. Their platoon of five T-34s could group there and decide on their attack. The Mark IVs would be less than five hundred meters away. That ought to be killing range.

Dimitri executed a sharp swing to the left. One more ‘S’ turn ought to bring them down to the lee of the barn. This time through his open hatch he saw the Stuka coming. The last two tanks in the platoon had not turned yet, their tails were still facing the path of the low-rushing German buzzard. Sasha saw the Stuka, too, and squeezed his machine-gun, the gun shook his whole body trying to keep it steady and aimed on the plane, but the fighter-bomber bored in behind his own bigger, raging guns. Dimitri watched the last T-34 in line, the tank driven by the other old man in the company, the Caucasus goatherder Andrei, take the hits. The chassis of the tank bounced under the tank-killing bullets ripping up its back, as though some giant stood on the tank and jumped up and down. The Stuka roared past, banking hard into the sky, a sort of coward, thought Dimitri, rushing away from the men and machine it left still and smoking, all dead.

Now they were four against the four German tanks. Dimitri sent a curse trailing after the rising Stuka on behalf of friendly Andrei, and in answer to his damnation a Sturmovik fighter swooped into the German’s route. The two planes gnarled in the air, fighting to the death on equal terms. Dimitri wanted to watch the Stuka get his desserts but the two planes left his vision. He returned his attention to the wreckage of the barn. The four Mark IVs had not issued a shot. Dimitri drove the
General
in fast behind the barn, Valentin’s boot told him to stop there. Valya flung open his hatch and stood. The three remaining tanks in their squad pulled up behind him.

Valentin leaped out, was gone for thirty seconds, then spilled back into his hatch, snapping his helmet into the intercom and kneeling low. He called out the orders to his crew over the idling
General’s
rattling hum.

‘We’re going to go first, Slobadov’s tank will be right behind us. As soon as we clear the barn, Kolyakin and Medvedenko are going to emerge going the other direction. We’re going to split their attention four ways, right and left. Papa, I need speed. This close to the Germans, if we run straight sideways to them, we’ll need to make it hard for them to keep us in their sights. Once we’ve gone far enough, you hit the brakes. I’ll take as many shots as I can, then you get us back up that hill.’

This was a dangerous tactic. Running sideways to the Germans exposed the T-34’s tracks and its weakest armor, the side plating. Every tank is designed to have its thickest armor in the front. But this sideways run also would get Valentin and Pasha at an angle to the Mark IVs, at their own vulnerable sides.

It was going to come down to who was better in his range-finder, and who was fastest on the trigger.

Dimitri closed his hatch. He reached up to crack his fist on Pasha’s boot.

‘Pasha, kiss that first shell and name it Katya for me.’

‘Sure, Dima.’

Dimitri caught Valentin looking at his loader, assessing the boy coldly, as if Pasha were metal, and Valya wondered only if the loader might break down under stress. Valentin saw whatever he needed, then returned to his seat. Pasha smiled down at Dimitri, assuring the old man he would not break, then got into his place, too. Sasha swung himself back to his machine-gun.

Above Dimitri’s head, the turret whined and pivoted. Valentin and Pasha walked around the rubber matting to stay behind the swinging gun. Valentin brought the cannon around to the right, past ninety degrees, where he thought he’d be taking his shot once the
General
galloped out of cover.

‘AP,’ Valentin ordered. Pasha hefted an armor-piercing shell. Dimitri heard the smack of his lips in the intercom.

‘Go get him, Katya,’ the boy said to the round before slamming it into the breech.

‘Sasha?’ Valentin called.

The machine-gunner answered, turning away from his gun portal. ‘Yes?’

‘What’s your mother’s name?’

Sasha grinned at Dimitri, as though telling the old driver that his, their sergeant, wasn’t so bad, see? He was a good
hetman
after all.’

‘Tamara.’

‘That’s our second shell, then. Ready? Papa?’

Dimitri told himself he was rarely ready for the things his son displayed. But there wasn’t time to ruminate over it right now. If they died together in the next minute, he could wrestle Valya all the way to heaven until the boy made sense to him. But now…

‘Ready. Good luck, my boys.’

Valentin paused, like the moment before horse and rider were cut loose in the village war games. Saber raised, melons strung from trees…

‘Go!’

Dimitri popped the clutch and hit the accelerator, the goosed tank spun up a cloud and took off. Dimitri was in second gear even before the
General
cleared the barn walls. Over the rumble of bounding steel Dimitri heard a ringing report; one of the Mark IVs had taken a pot-shot at them when their nose appeared around the building. The German missed, Dimitri’s revved-up
General
was too quick. But that was only for the first round, they were certainly loading another, and there were three other enemy tanks.

Now Valentin fired. The
General
heeled over onto the left track from the concussion of the blast, with the cannon fully sideways to the chassis and the treads bumping over corn rows. Jolted, Dimitri kept his hands and feet pressing more speed out of his machine, shifting into third gear even before the
General
could get both tracks back on the ground. Pasha fumbled the second AP shell, Dimitri heard it clang on the floor, but the boy scooped it up and got it into the breech in time. In his ear, Valentin urged, ‘Go, go, go…’

Dimitri wound the T-34 as far as he dared take the transmission. He watched the rpm’s shoot past the point where he should have shifted, he begged the
General
to mind him and hold a moment more with the building speed. His prayers were lost in the rising whine of the engine. He waited, then stamped on the clutch, threw the gearshift into fourth, and the
General
heaved forward, relieved and running for all it was worth. He looked at nothing, not through his small slit, not into his periscope, just at the jumping green walls around him; he reached out with his senses five hundred meters to his right, across the river, to the four German tank commanders, wishing them sudden blindness and palsy.

Then Valentin yelled, ‘
Now
!’

Dimitri’s foot smashed on the brake. He downshifted as fast as he ever had any machine in his life, in his heart a horse reared its head at the suddenness of the pull on the bit but dug in its hooves, heeding its rider. Dimitri leaned back in the saddle and pulled harder, the horse came still, the grinding tracks of the T-34 settled and dust flowed over them. They were motionless and in the open, broadside and six hundred meters from four enemy tanks.

Dimitri’s pulse pounded in the single second before Valentin moved. He looked over his shoulder to watch his son. The boy laid his left foot on the firing pedal, the turret slipped a few degrees more to the right and Valentin hopped on the other boot to keep up with the rotating cannon. His eyes were locked in to his periscope. Pasha stood beside the loaded breech, another shell cradled in his arms. A further second pounded inside the tank as though it had come from a blow against the armor. Valentin’s hand turned the elevation wheel.

‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘come on…’

Dimitri wanted to reach his hand up and push down the firing lever himself. Christ, boy! he thought, shoot! We’re not measuring them for a new fucking suit, we’re trying to kill them! Shoot!

Valentin’s boot toed the firing pedal: The cannon erupted. The report was thunderous, the breech shot back and the smoking casing flipped out, but before it could bounce twice Pasha had the next round in the big gun and Valentin made a small adjustment to the elevation. He toed the pedal again and the tank rocked, another immense bang shook the tank and the breech spit another shell. The compartment stank with the gases but Dimitri had no time to wrinkle his nose, he had to dodge his face away from Valentin’s oncoming boot, the signal to get the
General
running, and fast.

Dimitri worked the levers and gears to the sound of Pasha and Sasha shouting, ‘Go, go, Dima, come on! Go!’ Bounding away, Valentin traversed the turret around to face front again, for better balance and speed.

‘Well?’ shouted Dimitri. ‘Well?’

Valentin made no answer for a few moments. Dimitri guessed he was turning his periscope back to the Mark IVs, to read the damage while speeding away.

‘Two Mark IVs burning. One smoking. One missed.’

‘What about our tanks?’

‘Medvedenko,’ Valentin said. ‘Disabled. The crew got out.’

Dimitri drove hard, swerving up the hill, but he hadn’t gotten out of second gear yet. His shoulders and arms ached from grappling the levers.

‘What?’ he asked the frowning face of Sasha.

‘We go back. Right? They’re alive.’

Dimitri had been too busy flailing the tank back up the hill to consider this.

‘No,’ answered Valentin over the intercom. ‘We do not go back.’

‘But…’

‘I’m not risking three tanks to rescue four men, Private. They’ll have to fight where they are.’

‘You said so, Dima.’ Sasha addressed Dimitri now. ‘You said a Cossack will die for someone in his clan.’

Dimitri grinned at Sasha, even through his mounting fatigue. The
General
swung and accelerated up the hill.

‘Yes. I did say that.’

Pasha piped up from his loader’s position. ‘They’re in our clan, Sergeant. They’re tankers, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Dimitri answered before his Soviet son could.

‘And we’re the Cossacks,’ Sasha implored.

We’re the special ones, Sasha was saying. This freckled boy understood.

Dimitri spoke up. His voice shook with the effort in his hands maneuvering the tank. He’d brought them halfway back to their lines.

‘Valya. We vote to go back.’

Valentin spluttered in Dimitri’s earphones. ‘You… you don’t vote! I said no.’