The Free World War
Page 18
It couldn’t be …
Several dark green shapes were lumbering down the same track they’d been following.
How the heck did they follow us?
Then he increased focus and noticed they weren’t T34s. Look like early ISs, either a bad coincidence, or someone who spotted us radioed ahead and let them know where we were headed. No matter …
“Greene, step on it! Those Ivans want their tank back!”
Looking forward again, he could see the thin brown strip of dirt road meandering through some denser underbrush a mile or so ahead. It wouldn’t conceal them completely but they would be a more difficult target.
“Be sure to stay on the road, there’s more cover up ahead.”
Still no one firing at them. Cooper scanned the middle distance. Through the viewport’s glass, the glare of the early morning sun illuminated a layer of fog lying low to the ground in a depression. On either side of the road, the trenches and wire had given way to open ground, sure to be strewn with mines.
He was thinking furiously, about the next few hundred critical yards. Should they get off the road? Would it be mined out here beyond the trench lines?
But something else was nagging at him.
Greene had to slow the T34 right down as they rumbled through the patch of fog, to ensure they didn’t stray off into the minefield. The crew knew that the tanks behind them would be catching up.
As Cooper anxiously waited for the sound of an incoming shell, he scoured the brush-covered terrain now only hundreds of yards up the road. If the Reds had been preparing to counterattack through here, then the road would have been cleared of mines. They had to risk it.
The fog was clearing as the road started rising up the gentle slope out of the depression. Cooper turned the scope back to the rear. The group of Russian tanks was now amongst the trench lines, and well within range, but they were slowing down. I’ve got a bad feeling about this ….
He could see the lead IS, come to a halt. Taking aim.
The ugly black snout of its gun was pointing directly at them.
But they didn’t fire. Cooper’s sense of foreboding only increased. Why haven’t they fired? I guess they’re still not sure about us.
He called back over his shoulder, “See anything?”
“Like what?” answered Greene in frustration, “A farewell party?”
A massive thump rocked the T34. It swerved off the road out of control. Greene braked to avoid running into any mines.
“What was that?” Cooper asked as he swiveled around, desperately searching all around.
“Track’s hit!” Greene called out, “I can’t steer …”
The driver tried to get the tank moving again, but stopped when he saw the broken track peeling off the drive sprocket and out onto the ground in front of him.
Another round thudded into the soft dirt only feet away.
“That was a six-pounder … they’re our guys!” yelled Keponee. Cooper’s mind reeled. He had to be able to think clearly, but the impact and swerve off-road had thrown him against the turret lining. The jagged piece of shrapnel in his shoulder jabbed him as though it were a serrated knife and he almost passed out from the agony.
Through clenched teeth he asked, “Anyone see any white cloth?”
They could try and make it to the allied lines to surrender, but unless they showed intent, the chances were they would just get machine-gunned.
Precious seconds passed as they frantically rummaged through lockers and under stools. Nothing.
Cooper sat back against the turret in an attempt to recover his strength. A few seconds later he had another idea, but it was one that might be riskier than just baling out, “Kep, rotate the turret, target the nearest IS.”
Keponee gave him an incredulous look. Any second they could get lit up like a firework by their own army, and the commander wanted to pick a fight with the Reds.
Seeing the fresh blood streaking down Coopers arm, he wasn’t going to argue, so he complied.
“… and load HE,” Cooper added, “I want to make a lot of noise.”
The 75mm gun started slowly turning toward the group of halted tanks. After it had almost completed its turn, sparks crackled and burst out of a control box next to the gunner. The turret stopped dead, the gun pointing only a few degrees short of its intended angle.
“Shit!” Cooper spat, “Goddammed useless Slav engineering!”
He winced in pain from the effort of getting angry, “… and it hasn’t even been raining!”
The atmosphere inside the T34 was electric from the extreme tension and irony of their situation.
Keponee urgently looked through the sight to see how close the gun had lined up to their target, “It’s no good, we’re gonna miss it by yards.”
Cooper screamed, “I don’t care if we hit anything … I just want a damned explosion!”
The gun fired. The shot skewed off to one side – a complete miss, but the explosion among the trenches would have been clearly visible.
“There! Satisfied?”
Cooper ignored him, and Keponee began to reload. The commander was waiting for a reaction – from either side. He struggled to his feet and looked through the scope. An hour seemed to pass, but it was only moments later that he got the answer he was looking for. He saw a puff of smoke from one of the ISs, and braced himself as the round slammed into the back of the engine.
Within seconds, flames began to reach through into the crew compartment. Cooper hoped like hell that the allies had seen everything, and had decided they were not the enemy.
“Out! Out! Out!” he shouted.
Hatches flew open and the three tumbled out. They sprinted back on to the road and started zig-zagging. Spurts of dust sprang up around them to the zip! zip! zip! of bullet impacts. The Russian tanks were now machine-gunning, but accuracy was impossible from such a long range.
Cooper held his damaged left arm tight against his chest to limit its movement. He couldn’t keep up with the other two, but urged them on when they turned around to check on him.
The sound of artillery shells screaming overhead signaled the US Army’s response, the start of another day’s firefight.
Keponee looked behind and saw the shells landing in front of the trench lines. He slowed and waited for the struggling Cooper to catch up, then slung an arm around his waist to help him along.
Every dirty brown yard was another gasping second of cheating death.
Then the machine-gunning stopped as the Russian tanks started backing out of range of the artillery.
Minutes later the three slowed to a jog as they entered the protection of sparsely treed undergrowth.
A shout hailed them, “Hands up! Rooch! Vearkh!”
It was a GI, calling out in bad Russian – the survivors of Three-Z’s crew had made it back.
∞
Rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.
Thomas Jefferson
General George S. Patton sighed.
As he looked out over the smoke-clouded plain, it was a sigh of frustration rather than regret. In previous wars he’d led men into battle as a fighting man … these days he had to lead by inspiration more than through action.
He detected no scent from the smoke and dust, which were no doubt laden with the smell of grass-fires, burning oil and death. Over the years his senses had dulled to the acridity of the battlefield, so it was just like breathing normal air.
Lowering his field glasses from the horizon, a gust of cold swept over him. He felt gratified, rather than uneasiness, as he recognized a familiar presence.
Although Napoleon had reached Moscow in 1812, it had been a hollow victory. After continually retreating as they were fearful of a full engagement, the Russians had preferred to burn their own capital rather than allow it to be of use to the enemy.
We won’t b
e letting them do that to us …
He heard the faintest whispering in his ear: glory denied by an enemy’s cowardice is still a victory for honor!
A movement from behind stirred him back to the present.
“General?”
It was Colonel Corday. “We received a report from our units operating in the enemy’s rear. The operation appears to have met its objectives … the Red Army advance is slowing.”
“Excellent Colonel,” the General said, turning from the battlefield, “Their efforts will have been of great strategic value.” He summarized the campaign’s progress, “The advancing enemy armor had been attempting to relieve the numerous Red Army divisions of the two Tank Armies being encircled by 3rd Army around Bialystok and Krynki. In all, more than forty Soviet divisions are either trapped within the salient, or confined to a fifty-mile front behind and either side of them.”
It had been a huge gamble by the Red Army, similar to the one attempted by the Nazis in the Ardennes at the end of 1944. In this case, the Soviets had been pushed back from Germany, through Poland, and were now facing defeat on the border of their homeland. Stalin had ordered an all-out offensive to prevent Minsk from being taken.
The Stavka high command knew that the territory around Bialystok was the key. Defeat the Allies there, and they could retake Poland, swing west and threaten the landings on the Baltic coast.
“The efforts of your battalion, and others across the front, have, by slowing down their counter-attacks, helped to contain the enemy in the pocket, and also behind and either side of it,” Patton explained.
“I appreciate the valor and sacrifice of your men. Their efforts will have a far more significant impact than the direct influence of their actions.”
“Thank you sir, their losses have been heavy. Can we now send the order for the remaining units to withdraw?”
Patton sighed … this time it was out of resignation.
“Not yet. They need to maintain their pressure a while longer.”
He lifted his gaze to the heavens. “Our deliverance will soon be forthcoming.”
∞
Captain Deming’s Hellcat looked as though it would have to be scrapped rather than repaired.
Blackened and scarred from days spent out among the fires covering the burning steppe, high-explosive near-misses, and scores of hits from small arms fire, the M18 limped along at well below its top speed.
Just keep us moving away and out of here girl … it won’t be much longer.
He glanced at his map, his eyes straining to focus due to his recurring concussion. We should be on the edge of the grid reference … another half-mile should do it.
He looked up and his gaze cleared. The sky was a brilliant azure, so clear that Deming thought he could see all the way up to the edge of space. All the way up to the realm of angels.
It was a beautiful vision, one so far removed from the hellscape around him he almost lost touch with his reality. The reality in which he’d lost a lot of his men. If there were any other survivors, they were scattered and miles away, out of radio contact, and making their own way back.
As he watched the sky, something moved into its unreachable tranquility, and slapped him in the face.
A tiny, distant speck; a momentary glint. He squinted against the glare, and his pulse quickened.
The bright metallic pinpoint grew as the seconds passed, leaving a long contrail. It was as though the time remaining before the end of the world was being measured by a single silver line.
Deming was mesmerized, watching the line continue to stretch. He exhaled, realizing he’d been holding his breath. His heart started hammering against his chest – more silver contrails appeared – then a hundred.
“Get us out of here!”
The sky was filling with countless high-altitude bombers.
He called down to the crew inside the tank, “Give it everything she’s got! Bombers! They’re ours – and there’s a lot of ’em!”
The Hellcat’s engine screamed in anguish as dirty black smoke belched from the exhausts.
Deming looked up with his glasses again. The sky beneath the planes was darkening, so much that Deming wiped his grease-slicked brow thinking that it was caused by the grimy residue seeping into his vision. He was wrong.
It was the most dreadful sight he’d seen in all his life.
A black rain.
Locust swarms of steel-jacketed death growing blacker … and closer.
Bombs away.
Deming could only look up in despair. The clouds appeared to be falling straight toward them. The black clouds across the sky then formed into dark-gray sheets as they got closer to the earth, the bombs blurring as their velocity increased.
Then the first deep grumble of impacts reached his ears. He hadn’t heard any whistling through the air – the first hits must have been a couple of miles off.
Maybe I can only see the leading wing … there could be bombs dropping everywhere for miles back there…
Three miles behind them, mayhem was erupting. The 22nd and 156th Guards Tank Armies, which had been halted in their advance while attempting to relieve the Red Army divisions being encircled around Krynki, were being wrecked.
Forty divisions – fifteen hundred tanks, thousands of guns and artillery, and hundreds of thousands of men … either dug in or on the move – it wasn’t going to make a difference.
Three thousand allied aircraft delivered the largest volume of high-explosives into one area in a single day that the world had ever seen.
Deming and his crew could hear – and feel, the continuous quaking thunder as they moved slowly away from the kill zone. Several times in the following hour, they had to release purple smoke grenades to identify themselves to low-flying fighter bombers.
The rocket-firing Thunderbolts, Mitchell bombers and numerous other types of ground-attack aircraft, had to carefully time their sorties between the waves of heavy bombers far above.
It was a day of unprecedented destruction. If it was Judgment Day, then the sentence was death.
By nightfall, it was though an atomic bomb had been dropped, and the Battle of Krynki was effectively over.
∞
New York Times
September 24th, 1946
“SOVIETS PUSH ALLIES BACK!”
“The Red Army has staged a determined counter-offensive in the Caucasus. It is estimated that they have committed up to thirty recently formed divisions in an effort to protect their major oilfields. The commander of the Allied armies facing them, General Hurley, has described the situation as “in the balance.”
“The Reds are fighting desperately to defend Stalin’s home country of Georgia. Their new divisions appear to have been drawn from Kazakhstan and other regions of Russia farther east. Although we have lost some previously hard-fought ground, we will be falling back to prepared defensive lines and with strong air and naval support expect to hold Rostov and the Crimea.”
∞
Washington Post
November 2nd, 1946
“ALLIES BOGGED DOWN!”
“The advance on Moscow has slowed due to the increasing bad weather, turning the unsealed roads to rivers of mud. The autumn rainy season, or “Rasputitsa” (roadless season), has meant that supplying the forward armies has increasingly been conducted by rail and air.
On the other side of the front line, mass desertions of Soviet troops have been reported following a rain of a different kind. Millions of leaflets have rained down on the demoralized Soviet armies, compelling them to join the Russian Liberation Army, led by General Andrey Vlasov. It is expected General Vlasov’s army, currently fighting in the vicinity of Tula, south of the capital, will have the honor of being first to enter the city when Moscow falls.”
∞
Mojave City
2266 CE
Thiessen met Arjon and Eya as they left the wing of the stage in the Great Hall.
“We should be thanking you Arjon,” he said, “It i
s a measure of our society that an individual can spark a change that begins something bigger than all of us.”
“It has been an honor … one I can’t yet put into context. I feel that much more will arise from this.”
“Of course, and so much more to arise from our new Pillar – Purpose.”
After their drinks were refreshed, Arjon gave Eya a knowing look. He felt as though their relationship was symbolic of everything that had occurred. From their union, life continued. New life, the generations to follow, would then acknowledge them and what they’d accomplished, just as society was now acknowledging its beginnings.
He thought for a moment, and then asked Thiessen, “What if it was all the other way around?”
“How do you mean?” Thiessen responded.
“Our existence seems to be spent looking at the universe in a negative light, with nature as a form of chaos, and our knowledge and wisdom as peace and order – holding it at bay.”
“I see. You are wondering how the human condition would be affected if the converse were true?”
“Yes, if our universe was, and always will be, a peaceful and safe environment. Would we have evolved differently? Would humans be a negative and chaotic element, destroying the universal harmony simply by existing within it?”
“Hmmm … we humans as the serpents in the garden? I cannot answer sufficiently – I expect it may be the case. Life itself appears to be a platform for some greater purpose. Being human, living and then dying, may simply be a step in some timeless process. Perhaps one day we will be able to construct a simulation of such immense power that we could speculate on this, and derive some higher meaning.”
“Well … I hope one day to be witness to such an Enlightenment.”
∞
December 9th, 1946
North of Tula, Russia
Large flakes of snow splashed against the windscreen of a staff car. The driver pulled over, got out and poured gasoline over the ice-locked wiper blades to free them. A continuous flow of trucks carrying troops rumbled past heading north.