‘No,’ Dimitri muttered.
At that the boy hacked and twisted in his seat, he awoke like a fighting fish. Dimitri took a harder grasp on the boy’s arm to tell him he was alive. Dimitri caught a glimpse of the boy’s blood splashed on the tank wall where he’d slammed his face when the German shell hit.
Dimitri heard coughing. The intracom was off, the General was out cold. The tail of the tank hissed, hot metal sprayed water and diesel.
‘Get out,’ his son spewed in a huffing voice. ‘Everyone out!’
The first thing Dimitri saw in the turret was Pasha’s toothless open mouth. The thick boy lay crumpled on the matting, eyes closed and limbs splayed in an awful way to show he was either unconscious or dead. Several teeth lay around his cheek. Dimitri couldn’t reach him to check for breathing. Beside Pasha, Valya’s boots wobbled but planted him firmly enough to stand and open his hatch to release the smoke.
The Tiger had hit them square in the rear. The engine compartment and radiator were surely torn up and lost, but they’d contained the blast enough to let the crew, or most of them, survive.
‘Valya,’ Dimitri called. ‘Valya.’
His son bent to bring his face down to Dimitri. Smoke poured out above him as though up a chimney.
‘Papa.’ Valentin grinned. ‘Good.’ His face was welted and bruised. The bridge of his nose colored, likely broken. He nodded at his father.
Dimitri returned the nod, to tell Valya he was heartstruck the boy was alive.
‘Sasha?’ Valentin asked.
‘He’s okay. Cut up a little.’
‘Get out, Papa. Get Sasha out.’
Dimitri raised his eyes to the motionless loader. ‘Pasha?’ he asked.
Valentin shook his head, he didn’t know yet. He laid a hand on Pasha’s ribs, then nodded. The big loader was breathing. Pasha will have a mouth of gold teeth to show for this day in the sunflowers, Dimitri thought.
‘Go, Papa. I’ll get Pasha out.’
‘We stung him, boy, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, we damn well did.’
‘Someone will finish him off before the day’s out.’
‘Yes. Someone will. Get going.’
Dimitri started to turn around. He reached a hand out to shake Sasha into action. Valentin stopped him with a hard grip to the shoulder.
‘Papa. You were…’
The look on Valya’s face was the awakened gaze of a son at a marvelous father, an indomitable figure.
‘I know, boy. Come on. We’re not done. Hurry, Valya. See you outside.’
Dimitri got woozy Sasha to open the belly escape hatch between his feet; then helped him slide out of the tank. When Sasha was on the ground, Dimitri tossed a glance over his shoulder to see Valya wrestling with Pasha, who roused like a sleepy child. We’re all alive, Dimitri thought, our luck is changing. He rose from his seat through the driver’s hatch and stood out into the sunflower field.
Sitting inside the General, careening back and forth over the valley floor, he’d had no way of experiencing any part of the battle except his own. Dimitri slid to the ground and felt it tremble.
The noise hit him next. Tank engines howled on every side, an incredible number of them in this valley, more than should fit here, engines crossed paths, pistons decided life and death as much as cannon fire. Tracks squealed over sprockets, more than a hundred guns mauled each other at gladiator distances, and from lifeless tanks strewn all over the field the black pulses of oil flames panted into the morning like the devil’s breath. Overhead, unseen behind clouds and haze, more engines struggled to kill one another high in the air. Dimitri felt helpless and out of place, a man on this battlefield racked with motors and clashing steel. He leaped when a hand grabbed at his boot.
‘Sasha! Christ, boy, come on, get up.’ Dimitri helped the crawling lad from under the General’s treads, glad to be startled out of his astonishment. Several dead T-34s and one Mark IV were within a hundred meters. Closer was a deep crater. There was no time to salvage the toolbox he kept kit-strapped to the General’s deck. Ah, well, he thought. Better to save boys than wrenches. With Sasha leaning on him, running, Dimitri noticed for the first time a drizzle had begun to fall on the valley.
At the lip of the hole, Dimitri lowered Sasha, then jumped in after him. He clambered up on his elbows to look back at the General.
Pasha stumbled over the field behind them, clamping a hand to his bleeding mouth and staggering. Dimitri waved to be sure the loader saw them in the crater. Pasha waved back a crimson palm.
Where was Valya?
Dimitri helped the hurt loader into the crater and lowered him next to Sasha. He did not let go of the boy’s arm.
‘Where’s Valentin? Pasha, listen to me. Where is the lieutenant?’
Pasha shook his head, not wanting to talk through the bloody gaps in his gums. Dimitri shook his arm.
‘He’sh in ‘e tank,’ Pasha burbled. ‘He won’ come.’
‘What… what do you mean he won’t come?’
Pasha pleaded with a puckered face to be left alone, to see if he could live out the rest of the day in this crater. If Lieutenant Berko wanted to stay in the tank, that was fine, because Pasha wanted to stay here and keep his head down. Dimitri stuck a finger at Sasha to instruct him, Pasha was just too stupid.
‘Don’t move. You’re safest here. Wait ‘til a T-34 comes by and flag them down and get on. Then get out of here.’
Sasha sat up. ‘Where… ?’ Dimitri pushed him back down to the warm dirt of the crater. Sasha sank back, unresisting.
‘I’ve got to go, boys.’
Dimitri gripped both lads on their knees and squeezed, to be sure they could feel his parting blessing through their pains. ‘Kazak, Pasha. Kazak, Sashinka.’
He scrabbled over the lip of the crater. Every joint ached but he cast his pain off him like cobwebs; this is no time to be an old man, he thought. The two boys he left behind had a chance in the crater if they stayed low, if they had any more luck at all today; they’d used plenty already this morning. But Valentin. What was he doing?
Dimitri ran. His hip stabbed at every step but he would not let it slow him. He crashed over the few standing sunflowers rather than run around them. He was halfway to the General when he stopped.
Forty meters away, the commander’s hatch cover to the General fell and clinched down. Dimitri’s chest seized. Moments later, he watched the driver’s door shut, too. He could hear the hard metal clangs, like a closing cell.
Valya had seen him coming. He was not going to leave the tank.
Dimitri screamed across the distance, into the bellow of cannons and screeching shells. He bent double at the waist and balled his fists.
The General stood stoic, weeping smoke. The two stood, man and tank, father and son, both exhausted and glaring and absolute.
Then Valentin answered Dimitri. The turret of the dead tank, facing the opposite direction, began to rotate, creaking, turned by the hand crank.
The General’s engine and all power were down. But the gun still worked. And Valentin was still the gunner.
‘No,’ Dimitri protested, knowing the word was useless.
The Tiger.
Dimitri cursed and tore his eyes to the left, across the earsplitting valley. Four hundred meters off, the monstrous German tank was withdrawing, backing away with its frontal armor toward the field. Valentin was going to take another shot.
‘At what?’ Dimitri raged at his son. ‘At what? The fucking thing is leaving, let it go! You can’t hurt it, let it go!’
Valentin had no angle if the German retired straight up the slope. Any shell smacking that thick hide would only snag the Tiger’s attention and get an answering .88 mm round, aimed at a motionless, defenseless T-34.
Valya said the two of them had traded places. That Dimitri was not ready for it. Dimitri thought now, we have not traded this place, father and son. You will not die first, boy.
‘No,’ he said again.
Th
is time the word did not feel so without purpose on his lips.
Dimitri whirled from the General. Four other T-34s knocked out by the Tiger were within running distance. If he could find one of them that still had a working cannon, he would…
Before he could take a step, a Mark IV bore down on him out of a patch of sunflowers. He caught the sparking of the machine-gun in the corner of the glacis plate. Bullets ripped up the steppe near his boots, others zinged past like hellion bees. He dove to the dirt. He barely heard the zip of the machine-gun in the loudness of the battle and the crunching of the tracks. The machine-gun looked for him, tossing stalks and dirt into the air, then paused. Dimitri lifted his head out of his hands. The Mark IV still barreled straight for him.
‘Damn it,’ Dimitri sputtered and jumped off the ground, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg. He had to lead the Mark IV away from the General. He couldn’t let the German spot Valya turning the T-34’s turret. And he couldn’t run back to the crater where Pasha and Sasha lay shaken and bleeding. He sprinted across the field, scrambling over trampled flowers and the dimpled ruts of tank tracks. He headed toward the nearest of the dead T-34s killed by the Tiger. The Red tank was sixty meters off, he needed all his speed. He pumped his arms and the Mark IV turned with him.
Bullets hacked at the ground behind him. He wove his way to the T-34, each shift of direction shot bolts of agony out of his hip. This Red tank was not burned like the others that had died near it. A wide hole had been bored neatly through the middle of the turret. At this range, the Tiger’s big cannon had drilled a shell right through one side of the T-34 and out the other! He had only that instant to marvel, the Mark IV’s machine-gunner cut loose again. Dimitri threw himself between the T-34’s treads just ahead of a sickle of bullets slashing at the soles of his airborne boots. He hit and skidded under the tank, his hip hurt so much, he thought he might have taken a bullet in it. Thirty meters away the Mark IV curled a small semicircle, pondering whether to keep up the chase against this lone tanker, then lost interest and veered away to another of the hundred duels raging in the valley. Dimitri peered out into the rain and watched the tank rumble past the General. The German did not see Valya’s slowly rotating gun.
Dimitri rolled onto his back. His hip smarted enough to force a tear down his cheek. He heaved for breath.
Just above his nose, the hard belly of the T-34 rattled. Dimitri smelled exhaust.
The tank was running.
Dimitri swept aside his pain again and thrust himself out from between the treads. The hatch was open. The driver was gone, so was the machine-gunner. He spun to look one more time at the General. Valya had the turret cranked halfway around to the escaping Tiger. In another fifteen seconds he’d have the gun in position. Dimitri hoisted himself up on the T-34’s fender. He stepped down into the driver’s hatch. He bent his knees and descended.
Dimitri almost leaped back out. Blood was everywhere. His feet reached for the pedals, skimming through a horrible slick in the bottom of the tank. The driver’s gauges and controls were splashed red. Dimitri whirled behind him and recoiled at the bodies of the commander and leader. The German .88 shell had cut through them both; the commander had been standing when the round entered, he was split and folded over at the ribs, his two halves were toppled on their sides, spilling entrails and every fluid the body courses, his shocked face toppled between his own boots. The loader was slumped in his seat, headless. The German shell had cut through his neck, then exited the turret beside him. The neat hole leaving the armor was rimmed with gore where the pressure sucked out, taking the loader’s head with it. Shrapnel had whittled both bodies with a thousand crimson pits, their coveralls were shredded. The smell of death cooped in this tank was overpowering: gut, bile, and blood mingled to make the compartment ferocious and sickening. Dimitri gripped the steering levers. The driver and machine-gunner must have leaped out as soon as they discovered they were still alive, no reason to stay in this hellhole.
He shifted into first gear, nailed the accelerator, and took off. The corpses behind him jostled with a damp flop. Dimitri shivered and hit second gear.
‘Christ,’ he muttered. He had only seconds, so that was all he could say for himself and his dead crew. He sucked his cheeks and found enough moisture in his mouth to spit into the blood at his feet, to clean his tongue of the vomit taste. Go, he thought. Go.
He was not able to see the General any longer. He drove hard, shifting again. He said to Valya, ‘Wait, boy. Wait for me.’
He slung the T-34 around as fast as he could, the bodies behind him skidded in their butchery but he could pay them no more mind. There was the limping Tiger, retreating into its own exhaust out of the sunflower valley. He sped toward it, skimming the T-34 back and forth as he had done the General, but this time not to get a shot, only to draw the Tiger’s attention. To make it stop. Make it turn sideways. To make the great son of a bitch aim its cannon at his speeding ghost tank, and not his son.
* * * *
1012 hours
Luis backed away.
His Tiger could manage no more pace than a brisk walk. An hour ago, he’d rumbled down the slope through the wall of purple smoke, he was the first tank into the valley, blasting Russians and crushing flowers. He’d been a titan, astride a titan’s tank. Now he shrank away, stanching his own blood, his Tiger limping on a bad paw, spooling out the land he’d reeled in. Backing away, he was no larger than his little famished body.
Luis contained his anger at the receding battle. He would be back before dusk, mechanics be damned! And then he’d swell with the land again. He surveyed the departing field, the number of hulks he’d left around him. A dozen, more, he imagined their smoke rising into the sky to write his name in dark script. The sunflower field knew he’d been there, and Prokhorovka would know him when he returned tonight.
No other tanks came near. The Russians left him alone. Why would they come after a retreating Tiger; if it’s leaving the battlefield, isn’t that good enough for today? Why risk taking it on, still dangerous? Balthasar fired no more shots. Luis would not let the driver stop long enough for the gunner to take aim.
He surveyed the valley now that he was leaving it. Leibstandarte was stymied down here, but holding its own against vastly superior numbers. The Russians couldn’t keep pouring tanks into the fight, their reserves had to have a limit. His division would surely punch through by afternoon. He couldn’t tell what was taking place outside the sunflower field, north of the Psel with Totenkopf and south of the rail mound for Das Reich. The rain added its beaded curtain to the haze, closing down visibility. The valley magnified the wrench of steel and the deep whumps of cannons and exploding armor, giving Luis’s ears no information from the surrounding frays. He believed they must be as intense as his own, and grimaced that he did not know if the day was being won or lost. But backing away from the battle now, he was amazed at its magnitude. Still almost two hundred tanks clashed at close quarters in the sunflowers. Never before, he thought, and he had to cinch down his rancor at leaving the history that was carving itself out in this field. If Hitler could see this, he would not talk of stopping the assault on Kursk for Italy’s sake. He would applaud and come fight alongside us, and be part of this.
Luis had no more to eat. All his crackers and tidbits were gone. His stomach agitated for attention, he had nothing to give it but water. He dipped his head below the hatch to reach for his canteen, then stood in the cupola, unscrewing the canteen cap. He took a swig, eyes open, then lowered the jug too fast in surprise at what he saw. Water drizzled down his chin, cooling his cut; a pink wash slipped down his neck, under his black SS collar.
What was this? He winced into the gunsmoke mist and falling rain, at a Russian tank charging at him, cutting up the ground in that unbelievable lightning zigzag.
The crazy Red driver. It’s him again! But Luis killed his tank minutes ago!
He dropped the open canteen, it banged down into the Tiger’s well. He raised
his binoculars to pierce the haze in the valley.
The T-34 came hard, sideslipping. What was the fool doing? Was this some sort of loco Russian cat with nine damned lives?
‘Balthasar!’
‘I see him, Captain.’
‘Range.’
‘Three hundred meters. Closing.’
‘Stay on him.’
‘Jawohl’
The Tiger’s turret jerked awake. The hydraulic traverse began its high-pitched labor to bring the big cannon to bear. Balthasar’s voice had betrayed no concern. The gunner was locked in, figuring distance and lead, tracking the target with nothing else to think of. The turret jittered around Luis’s chest, left, then right, trying to keep up with the Russian driver all over again. This was the same man, yes? Supposedly a dead man, coming at the Tiger again in another tank. There couldn’t be two Red drivers with that ability. The T-34 dodged and weaved, alone in the attack, just like before. Luis recognized every move. He held out no welcome for the return of a worthy foe. He sensed a cold touch of dread. Something was going on that he could not fathom.
Last Citadel Page 48
