All the same, the refugees were an annoyance. Bezarin felt like a cavalryman with new spurs since the engagement along the ridgeline with the British, and he wanted to drive his steel horse faster and faster, to water it on the banks of the Weser.
His tattered battalion unfolded from the high road and the crown of trees, opening into a quick, if somewhat ragged, battle formation. The self-propelled guns sidled off to firing positions as the wave of tanks, followed by infantry fighting vehicles, plowed toward the valley floor. The warriors who had survived the morning’s engagement had a changed feel to them now. Bezarin could sense it even through the steel walls of the tanks. It was, he suspected, the feel of men who had tasted the blood of their enemies.
Tanks sprayed dirt and mud in their trails as they maneuvered across the declining slope. Turrets wheeled to challenge the flanks. Bezarin saw only the readiness, the will to combat, ignoring the unevenness of the line. He knew that his demanding approach to training, despite the resentment it caused, had paid off. He felt that he could match his tankers against any in the world.
Along the highway, still nearly a kilometer distant, the refugees on foot began to run at the sight of the skirmish line of tanks. First a few of them ran, then other runners gathered around the first clusters like swarming insects. Some fell. Others discarded their last possessions.
At first, this response surprised Bezarin. It had never occurred to him that this slow river of humanity should be afraid at the sight of his tanks. The idea of causing them any intentional injury had never crossed his mind. In a moment’s revelation, he saw the world through the fear-widened eyes of the refugees. Despite the seal of his headset over his ears, he imagined that he could plainly hear their screams.
Bezarin was about to redirect his formation toward a secondary road heading off to the west, refusing his right flank, when the first muzzle blast flashed from across the valley.
Beyond the stream of fleeing civilians, an enemy force of undetermined size either had been waiting in ambush or had just reached the wooded ridge on the opposite side of the valley. Other muzzle blasts flared in quick succession, and Bezarin’s tanks maneuvered to take advantage of the sparse local cover. They had been caught fully exposed on the slope.
On his right, Bezarin saw one of his tanks erupt, its turret lifting like the top of a mountain raised by the force of a volcano. Some of his platoons had begun to fire back, but the enemy was at extreme range, and the tanks had to fire from the halt to have any hope of hitting their targets.
Another of his tanks began to burn.
Good gunners, Bezarin thought. The bastards.
His first instinct was to pull everyone back up into the treeline. His ridge was considerably more commanding than the one occupied by the enemy.
“Attention,”
Bezarin called into the radio mouthpiece. “Do
not
return fire unless you have positively identified a target. Voronich,” he called, dispensing with call signs, “your task is to identify targets for volley fire. The artillery is to suppress the enemy position along the treeline. Neshutin, you -- ”
Bezarin froze. The enemy were coming out. It was senseless. They had good concealed firing positions. They were willingly putting themselves at the same disadvantage Bezarin’s vehicles were in.
Then he got it. They were trying to rescue, to cover, the refugee column. Again, Bezarin was startled by the enemy’s apparent perception of the threat his tanks posed. But he did not waste time on moral philosophy. The enemy had just told him, frankly, where their values lay.
“Everybody,”
Bezarin called over the radio net. “All tanks and fighting vehicles. Move forward
now.
Full combat speed. Get in among the refugee traffic. Use the automobiles for cover. Fire smoke grenades and move
now.
All tanks back on line.
Now.
”
His vehicle lurched forward at his command. Bezarin triggered the reloaded smoke grenade canisters and drove headlong into the rising puffs. His vehicle jounced wildly over the uneven field.
The smoke made him cough. But he did not want to seal himself in the belly of the tank. He was afraid he would lose control of this engagement, as he had lost control in the morning’s fighting.
Beyond the thin screen of smoke, the column of automobiles soon blocked the enemy’s fields of fire. Bezarin looked quickly to the right and left, unsure how many tanks should be there now, but satisfied with the grouping he saw. Quick armored infantry fighting vehicles nosed their sharp prows in among the tanks, losing drill formation in the headlong dash for the highway.
Bezarin’s tank roared through an area of low ground from which the column of automobiles on the built-up road actually stood higher than his turret. Then the tank slanted back upward, heading for the multicolored column of civilian vehicles.
The last drivers deserted their automobiles, leaving doors wide open in their haste. Bezarin’s tank shot up over the berm of the road and slammed down on the pavement of the highway. His driver only halted the tank after its glacis had crunched into the side of a big white sedan.
The meadow beyond the road had filled with running figures, their bright clothing like confetti thrown over the green fields. The refugees scrambled toward their own forces. But now the tables had turned. The enemy tanks had lost the race to the road, and they stood embarrassed in the open fields, uncertain sentinels attempting to cover the human flood. Bezarin could see that the enemy unit was weaker than his own after all, its vehicles scarred by combat and spread thinly across the long slope.
“Get them,”
Bezarin screamed into the mike, “get them while they’re in the open. Don’t let them get away. Platoon commanders, direct fire.” He felt himself bursting with adrenaline; his determination to destroy his enemies was so powerful he felt it could propel him into the sky. He had not paused to consider his choice of words as he issued his command.
“Target,” Bezarin said, dropping into position behind his optics. “Range, six hundred meters.”
“Six hundred meters.”
“Correct to six-fifty. Selecting sabot.”
“Six-fifty. Sabot loaded.”
“Fire.”
Bezarin’s tank rocked back, and an instant later an enemy tank jerked to a stop, lifting slightly, like a man punched hard in the lower belly. The enemy tank failed to explode, but smoke began to fluster from its vents.
Bezarin was in a killing mood.
“Repeat target,” he said. “Six-fifty.”
“Target fixed.”
“Sabot.”
“Ready.”
“Fire.”
Bezarin’s tank rocked again and, before it settled, the enemy tank dazzled with sparks. A moment later its deck blew skyward. Magazine strike, Bezarin thought. And he scanned the fields for another target.
His optics found a changed scene. Most of the civilians had dropped into the high grass, caught in the middle of the battle. Then Bezarin saw one running group jerk into contorted positions and fall. Someone had intentionally gunned them down.
“Comrade Commander,
target.”
Bezarin saw the tank. Lumbering down, as if to rescue the survivors, its long gun fired above the bodies prostrate in the grass. It looked like a defiant, protective lioness. Bezarin understood, even sympathized with the commander of the enemy vehicle. The maneuver was brave, and suicidal. Bezarin fixed the target in his rangefinder.
The headset had grown chaotic with a litany of calls. Bezarin tuned them out until he had fired on the lone, brave enemy tank. Two other tanks also fired on it in quick succession, and they managed a catastrophic kill. The enemy vehicle burned its wounded crew alive.
The surviving enemy vehicles had pulled back into the distant treeline, and Bezarin’s supporting battery pounded their positions, forcing them back yet again. The firing of tank guns subsided very quickly. It had been a swift engagement, determined by the single factor of Bezarin’s tanks beating the enemy to the highway by less than a minute. Bezarin searched the horizon for any last targets. But all of the visible enemy vehicles remained stationary, either blazing or smoking heavenward. Bezarin watched as a lone civilian rose and ran up the hillside, only to be tossed about by a burst of automatic-weapons fire. Bezarin watched as though the action were occurring on a movie screen. Then he snapped back to his senses.
“Cease fire, cease fire,”
he shouted into the mike. “I will personally shoot the next man who fires on a civilian.”
He opened his turret, climbing up into open air only to be greeted by choking black smoke. At first, he thought his tank was on fire, that it had been hit and that they had not even realized it. Then he located the true source of the smoke. A burning automobile stood just to one side of the tank. The heat seared Bezarin’s cheeks. His vehicle, already battered, wore a cloak of black soot down the side.
The continuing volume of small-arms fire alarmed Bezarin. There was nothing left to shoot at. And there were too many shouts, screams.
He dropped back into the turret, ordering his driver to back up out of the grasp of the fire and smoke. Then he called his subordinates and ordered them to get their men under control, to halt all firing immediately. In a rage, he stripped off his headset and drew his personal weapon. He climbed out of the turret and jumped down from the tank, trotting through the smoke in the direction of the greatest density of noise.
Countless automobiles had taken fire, or had been wrecked in their last desperate attempts at flight. Between the drifting curtains of smoke, islands of clarity revealed dead and badly wounded drivers and passengers, slumped over steering wheels or spilling from opened doors. Dead civilians lay scattered about the roadway, some of them crushed. A heavily built middle-aged woman’s flowered skirt lofted on the wind, dropping high up on the back of her sprawled legs.
Beyond the next drape of smoke, Bezarin surprised a group of motorized rifle troops with a girl. They had stripped off her skirt and underpants, leaving her clad only in a sweater, and they were teasing her, driving her screaming from one man to another. The girl wailed in mortal terror, and his men laughed. Whether or not she could ever be pretty, her fear had wrought her young face into a mask of revolting ugliness. Her eyes were those of an animal beaten almost to death, but with just enough spark of life remaining to want desperately to live.
The girl shrieked in a foreign language, and one of the soldiers grabbed her sweater, tearing it as she tried to break out of the circle.
Bezarin fired at the ground, putting the round very close to the girl’s tormentor.
All of the men turned to face him, one even lifting his assault rifle. As soon as they recognized an officer, they all straightened, backing away from the girl as if it was only an accident that she and they were discovered in the same place. The soldier who had raised his weapon quickly lowered it.
“Pigs,”
Bezarin shouted at them. “You shit-eating pigs. What do you think you’re doing?”
None of the soldiers responded. Bezarin cursed himself empty, then could find no sensible words to express himself, and a difficult silence enveloped them. He almost launched into an angry series of platitudes about their duty and mission and the trust of the Soviet soldier. But this was all much too immediately human and terrible for classroom phrases.
Bezarin shook his head in disgust. “All of you. Get back to your vehicles.
Now.”
The soldiers obeyed immediately. Bezarin watched them go, weapon at the ready. He did not fully trust these strangers now.
And yet. . . they were his soldiers. They had fought together, and they would undoubtedly be forced to fight together again before the war ended for them.
Bezarin turned to the girl, embarrassed more by what his soldiers had done than by her charmless nakedness. He took care to look only at her face, which was red and beyond the range of normal expression. Still, she backed nervously against a smashed automobile, as though she expected Bezarin to become her next tormentor.
“Go,” Bezarin said. “Get out of here. Your people are up there.” He pointed, wishing he could tell her in her language.
“Go,”
he barked. He did not know what else to do. There were still shots and cries, and he had no doubt that his experience of what his soldiers were really like had not yet come to an end. He wanted to get away from here, away from this lost girl. But he was afraid to leave her alone.
The girl covered herself with her hands, tugging down the torn sweater in a hopelessly inadequate gesture. Bezarin closed on her, watching her fear grow. But he had no time to waste. He grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her along so swiftly that she could not resist. He drew her to the edge of the highway, facing the now-silent ridgeline from where her would-be guardians had come. Another small horror awaited him as he discovered a tumbled clutter of bodies in the drainage ditch by the roadside and trailing away from the raised berm.
“Go,” Bezarin ordered, pointing the way with his weapon. Visibility was far too good, despite the residue of battle smoke, and he worried that enemy aircraft would descend upon them. He knew he had to get his troops back under control, to get moving again.
He pushed the girl toward the enemy’s hill. She looked at him in fear and confusion. He pointed again.
Either the girl finally understood him or she simply obeyed what she perceived to be his desire. She began to pick her way down between the corpses. As her foot touched one of them the body moved with a life of its own, and Bezarin realized that, surely, there were many wounded along the column and out in the fields. But he could not cope with that issue now; he had no assets, and he had a mission to fulfill. He struggled to shut his mind to the welling visions.
He stepped back behind the cover of an abandoned vehicle and watched the girl go. She was a scrawny thing, little more than a child, and her naked behind looked like two stingy pouches of skin tucked onto a skeleton. Bezarin could not imagine anyone having sexual feelings for her. As she worked her way up through the field her half nakedness called up nothing in him but a sense of human weakness, of the miserable level to which human life was reduced in the end.