Mickey turned appealingly to Feodor.
“They do not know,” said the boy smilingly. “I must apologize for not telling you before, but—I am Koslovitch.”
Mickey’s eyes almost popped.
“You!” he almost yelled.
“Yes,” said the fifteen-year-old leader of the most hated and feared guerrilla band in that part of the Caucasus. “I am Feodor Koslovitch.” He said it quietly; modestly.
Mickey eyed the boy a moment. Then he shook his head. “Now I’ve seen everything,” he muttered.
He understood now what he couldn’t understand before; the tone of authority in the boy’s voice; never requesting a thing to be done, but ordering it; and getting it done without question or protest.
His reputation as a guerrilla fighter had given him a national reputation. He was known wherever a Russian defended a foot of his native soil against the Nazi invaders.
It was odd that a boy should lead men. But this was no ordinary boy. He was a born general; a splendid, natural strategist. There were geniuses or prodigies in other fields; why not in the art of war?
“Well,” thought Mickey, “why not?”
He glanced back toward the rear of the cave. In the dim candlelight he made out over a hundred small wooden boxes. They contained dynamite and ammunition.
“That’s dynamite, isn’t it?” he asked.
Feodor nodded.
“If that stuff should suddenly decide to go up, some night,” Mickey said, “there would be no further need here for a doctor.” Then he added smilingly: “In fact, there would be no doctor. No. And no guerrillas and no Koslovitch.”
“You’ll get used to sleeping with it,” grinned the boy.
Mickey removed his coat.
“Well,” he said in a most professional and doctor-like manner, “if we’re going to put these men back on their feet, I think we’d better start now.”
He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and went to work on the husband of the woman who drove them to the hideout. He had one of the tables cleared and the man placed on it. The woman provided clean sheets from her furnishings. Hot water was given him by one of the men young Koslovitch ordered to put on a fire. The man would need an operation. The right leg had received a nasty bullet wound; had turned gangrenous and would have to be removed.
The man screamed he’d die first; Mickey told him he would die if he didn’t permit the operation. Koslovitch ordered it. The man quietly obeyed the young guerrilla. His eyes filled with tears; he agreed. He did not weep for the loss of the limb. He wept because he knew his days of defending his homeland were over.
Koslovitch was right. There would be a need for brave men who survived the holocaust to revivify Russia. Even if they had only one leg, they would still prove of inestimable value in the process of reconstruction that would follow.
The woman proved a good and able nurse. Although Mickey worked under a handicap; bad light; inadequate tools and supplies, the job was skillfully done.
The other men were not so seriously hurt. But they needed attention and lots of it. Mickey taught the woman how to care for them. She was a most apt pupil; and an efficient worker.
Koslovitch’s guerrillas now had a guerrilla nurse—and a guerrilla doctor.
IV
Mickey worked through the night on the wounded men. Dawn crept into the cave as it slipped down the pass from the opening in the hills above. As he stepped out for a brief smoke, through the gap he could see the peak of Mount Elbrus, eighteen thousand feet above him, and about five or six miles to the south.
The other twenty-five of Koslovitch’s men trailed in during the night and dropped onto their beds of straw, tired, slightly disgruntled, for they could not find any Nazis to maraud. But their boy leader encouraged them. He would find something to do. Something important; vitally important.
It happened sooner than he dreamed. As Mickey stood in the pass and admired Mount Elbrus, one of the men who acted as lookout brushed past him and dashed breathlessly into the cave shouting for Koslovitch.
Mickey, sensing some exciting event impending, followed on the man’s heels. Out of breath from his mad dash down the mountain from his lookout post, he gasped:
“Fifteen Nazi tanks. Stalled. They’re fifteen miles north of Kislovodsk. They’re headed south for Pyatigorsk and the German lines.” He paused for breath. In his hand he held a pair of fifty-seven power German binoculars taken from a dead Nazi. These binoculars could make plain almost anything within fifty miles or more.
The man continued: “They seem to be out of fuel. They were draining the fuel tanks of those Mark III’s which had more gas than the others, and filling the empty tanks of those which had not enough.”
“Let’s see them,” said Koslovitch.
He grabbed the binoculars from the hand of the watch, and together they started for the entrance to the cave.
“Do you mind if I go along, Feodor?” asked Mickey.
“Not at all,” the boy said. “But keep low as we climb the hill. I don’t want you to be seen.”
The three men crouched low as they climbed the side of the mountain through the brush and tall grass that grew upon it. They climbed for about two hundred feet and stopped by a tall pine whose branches were thick with needles and hid a small platform large enough for a man to sit on.
Because they were three, they did not climb to the seat but observed the distant steppes from where they crouched. The guerrilla watch located the tanks and turned the binoculars over to the boy. He watched the spot a few minutes before he spoke.
“They’re still dividing their fuel,” he said as he pressed the glasses closer to his eyes.
He was much older than his years, Mickey observed. He did not look like a boy at all but a little man. A sort of Napoleon without inhibitions or complexes.
Feodor swung the glasses over the panorama that unfolded in the lenses.
“They are the only Nazis for miles,” he said. “The way they are dividing their fuel I don’t think they will go far.” He turned the glasses over to Mickey. “Take a look.”
Mickey glanced through the binoculars.
* * * *
Fifteen Mark III’s, several on the road, others in the field at the side of the highway, were stalled and men in dirty, oily coveralls were handing each other small cans of gasoline drained from the tanks.
The American medical officer turned the binoculars back to the guerrilla leader.
“They look vulnerable to me,” he ventured.
“They are vulnerable,” said Feodor.
Back in the cave, the young fighter called his men together.
“Pavlovnik! Stavan! Volkov! Pushkin! Shostakovitch! Kudashkin!”
One by one the men fell into line and waited. They might have been guerrillas, but they were disciplined. The boy had insisted on military precision—and got it.
Feodor ordered the men to get shovels, picks, and other digging tools. He ordered others to take dynamite; others detonators; still others hand grenades. He turned to Mickey.
“You will join us, doctor,” he said.
Mickey found he had another surprise in store for himself. Feodor led the men to another hill a short distance up the pass. He had walked so fast that he was about twenty yards in advance of the men when he suddenly disappeared. As the men approached the spot, the American saw another hole in the side of the hill.
Mickey waited outside as the men entered. Their guns were slung over their shoulders; their cargo held carefully in their hands. He stepped inside as the last of almost thirty men disappeared within. About fifty yards back, he heard stomping of heavy feet on the soft dirt floor. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light within, he saw two long lines of horses. These horses were the individual property—or had been before the war—of the Cossacks who made up Koslovitch’s band.
Mickey stepped out into daylight again as Feodor Koslovitch walked two horses out into the pass. The horses blinked as they emerged into the sunshine.<
br />
“Can you ride?” he asked Mickey.
“Not like a Cossack,” said Mickey. “But I did play polo back in the States and I stayed in the seat.”
Feodor smiled. “That is recommendation enough.” He turned the reins of one of the saddled horses over to the American. “Here.” Feodor was a boy of few words.
Mickey examined the girdle; mounted the horse and adjusted the stirrups to fit his long legs and walked the horse a little way down the pass to make room for the others to emerge from, and line up in front of, the cave for their orders.
“We will go to the outskirts of Kislodovsk,” Feodor began. “Proceed five miles to the north of the village to the mountain pass those tanks will have to ride over if they ever hope to join their units.” He turned to the men with the picks and shovels. “We’ll dig traps for the tanks.” He turned to the men with the dynamite and the grenades. “You will plant your dynamite and grenades carefully.” He swung his horse in the direction opposite to that of the main cave and started a winding course in and out of depressions which hid the descending group from any possible observer.
* * * *
Feodor knew that country with the same expertise that Mickey knew the tracing of a nerve in the human body. He knew every knoll; every depression; every plain; every hill and mountain. He knew every cave; every farmhouse; every pass and road, open or closed. This knowledge helped more than once to save the lives of his men. They knew this and trusted him implicitly; and carried out his every order with an undeviating faithfulness that Mickey no longer marveled at. Because he now knew, understood and admired the young guerrilla leader.
The Kuban Cossacks rode their horses as though they were a part of the animals. They rode out slowly at first. When they reached a stretch of open plain, they rode across the green with a speed that warmed the cheeks of Mickey Tchekov as the friction of the wind that flowed swiftly past rubbed the warmth back into the capillaries.
One hour later they reached their objective. It lay at the foot of a hill—in fact, the narrow pass lay between two hills. They tied their horses to the south side of the first of the hills, hiding them among a cluster of trees and about a half mile back.
Feodor sent a lookout to the top of the hill from which they worked to keep an eye for the approach of the German tanks. The spot cut them off ten miles in advance of the place where they had stopped to divide their gas. The guerrillas went feverishly to work. First with the picks, then with the shovels.
Thirty sincere men can dig a lot of holes in thirty minutes and when the dirt was cleared, the place in the middle of the road looked as though a two-ton bomb had dug the crater. The huge Mark III would fit into the gap nicely—and would have a lot of difficulty getting out.
Mickey watched the men plant their dynamite and set the detonators. When that job was done, others brought long, thin branches they had cut from the trees and placed them across the holes. This they covered with leaves and other foliage and made it look as though the wind had strewn the brown dirt pass. It was a magnificent job of earthy camouflage. A light layer of brown earth was thrown over the whole.
The holes dug in the side of the roadway were similarly treated. Only an expert in camouflage might suspect anything wrong. Mickey could see that the tank drivers would not.
“That’s a magnificent job, Feodor,” he said admiring the handiwork of the men.
“It is if it does the work it is intended to do,” replied the boy.
With the job finished, Feodor ordered his men up to the top of the hill where they could observe without being seen themselves. As they were up the halfway mark, they saw the lookout coming down. He signaled to Feodor that the tanks were on the way.
It was about two hundred feet to the top and when they arrived there, the men flung themselves on the grass for a much needed rest—and waited. They saw the line of tanks lumbering slowly along, digging their steel caterpillar tracks in the soft Caucasian earth. They rode slowly on to conserve what little fuel they had.
* * * *
Mickey watched them from his place on the ground. Young Feodor seemed unconcerned. Soon the noise of the roaring diesels reached them on the west wind. They lowered their heads deeper into the grass. From where the tanks rolled unsuspectingly along the pass, the guerrillas could not be seen.
Slowly, slowly on came the rumbling juggernauts. In Mickey’s mind they seemed a lot of jugger that would soon be naughts. Mickey looked below to see if the wind had disturbed the camouflaging. From where he and the others lay hidden in the ground on the elevation, they could see up and down the road for miles. So perfectly had the job of laying the tank traps been done, that even he could not locate them. He smiled at the knowledge.
He turned to Feodor. “It looks as though they are right on top of the traps,” he whispered. The tension that he felt all around him made him lower his voice. He actually thrilled at the experience. He had some difficulty controlling his emotions. This being a guerrilla, he thought, was stimulatingly exciting.
All eyes were upon the steel caravan below. They watched the slow moving lead vehicle rumble and grumble on; its diesel engine objecting strenuously to insufficient and inadequate nutrition.
Eagerly, anxiously, hidden eyes watched the scene hungrily. The heavy vehicle approached the main trap. The smell of burning oil rose to the men strewn about the grass. As their eyes followed the movement of the tank, there was a crashing sound that reached their ears; the tail of the tank rose suddenly into the air as the nose dived into the tank trap. The caterpillar tracks churned the edge of the hole and blew the dirt into the air like a dog kicking up the dust behind him.
A terrific grating sound followed as the driver reversed the direction of the tracks in an effort to get out of the hole, but the more he ground, the deeper he buried himself and his tank.
Mickey and the others laughed silently as they watched the tank dig in.
It was only a matter of seconds for this to happen. So close rode the others behind the ill-fated Nazi landcraft, that the tank that followed it directly behind had not sufficient time to turn out and piled up on the tank in the hole with a crash that rang through the hills for miles. Its caterpillar track ground desperately on the roof of its fallen brother. The driver here too reversed his gear. The tracks in reverse rasped and screamed like a dull file on an iron casting. As the tank drew back off the other, it backed into another and oncoming rumbler behind it; the tracks of both tanks locked and the teeth were stripped from them like the teeth from an old comb. And just as the second tank rolled from the one in the trap, the stripping teeth robbed of power of grip and locomotion, the huge craft hung poised for a brief moment off balance, then toppled completely over on its side.
* * * *
The other tanks came on. The fourth tank, unable to pull up, crashed into the third tank which had just stripped it track teeth, and as the driver in the third tank again reversed his gear this time for forward motion, the impact of the fourth tank at his rear, and the propelling action of the track, drove him completely across the first and second tanks into another trap that lay buried just in front of the trap into which the lead tank had fallen.
General confusion, trapped Nazis shouting and screaming inside their tanks; steel crashing against steel, with the ringing noise mingling with the roar of racing diesels; all this reached the eyes and ears of the men above and they laughed uproariously at the mad scene below. Laughed again and again as others, turning out and away from the piled up wreck, themselves dropped into other holes in the sides of the road and sank up to the tops of their bogie wheels.
Feodor raised his hand to one man with a detonator. He dropped it again quickly. There was a terrific explosion below; a blast of yellow flame lit up the first of the stricken tanks, and its seam opened wide as the steel rivets blew off the tank like the buttons on the vest of an overfed fat man.
Feodor repeated the maneuver. One of the other guerrillas pressed the plunger on the detonator and another tank was b
lown apart.
The tanks in the sides of the roads, in holes that were not as deep as the first, reversed their tracks and drew out of the holes. But they did not go far. As they rode over hidden grenades that blasted the tracks off the bogie wheels and left the huge death-dealing steel elephants without a means of propulsion, the gas lines to the engines were also blown apart and the diesels coughed, gasped and, like many of the Nazi rats driving the craft, died a permanent death.
Of the fifteen tanks that rode casually on, only six managed to get into the fields and safety. But even they did not move beyond the stricken tanks. Their engines gasped for want of fuel, and the tanks stalled where they were.
Two more detonator plungers were driven home; two more deafening blasts followed; two more tanks were blown apart and fire began burning all around them. Men in the tanks who could escape ran to cover. Some ran up the hill toward the place where the Russian guerrillas were concealed.
Feodor Koslovitch swung his arm again and called unto himself the submachine gunners. They fell on their faces as they watched the men coming up. Their guns were poised and waiting for the Nazis to get within range.
Mickey followed them down; his kitbag in his hand. As he looked off in the direction of Pyatigorsk, toward the position in the Caucasus where the German lines were blasting at the Cossacks in an effort to bypass them to Grozny, Mickey saw two crawling objects about ten miles away. They were headed in the direction of the German tanks.
“Look, Feodor,” Mickey said.
* * * *
The young guerrilla leader put his binoculars to his eyes. “Tankers,” he said. “Nazi tanker cars with fuel for those crawling insects we’ve just blown apart.”
Feodor signaled the gunners to retire. They scurried back to the top of the hill, and down the other side.
“Come!” he cried. And ran down the hill followed by the men who had quickly gathered their detonators and other equipment and ran to where their horses were tethered.
Mickey and Feodor were the first to reach their horses. They mounted and waited for the others, and together they drove off at a gallop to a place about three miles below the shattered tanks.
The Military Megapack Page 39
