Harry Turtledove - Fallout

Morozov’s musing cut off when Kalyakin asked him, “Comrade Sergeant, what do you want me to do now? Stay here and wait for the enemy or for reinforcements?”

“No, no. Back it up some more. Let’s not come out at them the same way. We’ll go around to the far side. Juris, swing the turret around so you can fire as soon as you see the chance. Slap a round of AP in there for that. If we need it, we’ll need it bad.”

“I’ll do it,” Eigims said. Actually, Sarkisyan would, but it amounted to the same thing. And they did need it. The first thing Konstantin saw when they came around the other side of the church was a Centurion. But it had its main armament aimed at where he had been, not where he was.

“Fire!” he yelled as the English tank’s turret started a desperate traverse. Eigims did, and he hit with the first shot. The Centurion exploded in smoke and flame. Konstantin ordered the T-54 back behind the church again. He’d given the Tommies something to stew over, all right.

–

Somewhere-maybe off a dead Russian officer-Sergeant Gergely had found himself a big, shiny brass whistle. He wore it around his neck on a leather bootlace, and he was as happy with it as a three-year-old would have been with a toy drum. He always had liked to make noise. What sergeant didn’t?

He blew it now. It was loud and shrill. “Come on, you lugs! Get moving! It’s been a while, but now we’re starting to put the capitalist imperialist warmongers on the run!” he said, and blew it again.

Istvan Szolovits didn’t giggle. Not giggling took some effort, but he managed. During the last war, Gergely would have shouted Hitler’s slogans, and Admiral Horthy’s, and those of Ferenc Szalasi, the Magyar Fascist Hitler installed after he stopped Horthy from making a separate peace with Russia.

Now Gergely yelled what Stalin wanted him to yell. He sounded as if he meant every word of what he said, too. Szolovits was sure he’d sounded just as sincere when he bellowed Hitler’s slogans, and Horthy’s, and Szalasi’s.

And he must have sounded even more sincere when he explained to the Chekists or the Hungarian secret police how he’d been lying through his teeth when he made noises for Hitler and Horthy and Szalasi. He’d made them believe him, or give him the benefit of the doubt when there should have been no doubt.

He’d been a noncom for the Fascists. Now he was a noncom for the Communists. If the world turned on its axis yet again and Hungary found itself a satellite of the USA rather than the USSR, Istvan would have bet anything he had that Gergely’d wind up a noncom for the capitalists. Whoever was in charge needed good noncoms, and the sergeant damn well was one.

Which didn’t mean Istvan was eager to follow Gergely as the veteran loped forward. An American machine gun was stuttering dangerously up ahead. A man could get hurt if he got close, or even closer, to it.

But the Hungarians weren’t the only ones moving to the attack. They had Poles to their left and Russians to their right. The Russians, richer in equipment than their fraternal socialist brethren, had a couple of SU-100 self-propelled guns with them. Those were tank destroyers from the last war. Following the Nazis’ lead, Stalin’s designers put a 100mm gun in a non-traversing mount on a T-34 chassis with some extra frontal armor. Tanks could do more things, but guns like that were cheaper and easier to make-and when they hit, they hit hard.

Those big mobile guns wouldn’t destroy just tanks, either. They were also lovely for knocking even concrete machine-gun nests to smithereens. One of these SU-100s did exactly that. When the nasty machine gun shut up, Istvan let out a whoop like a Red Indian in a Karl May Western.

Andras Orban laughed. “You tell ’em, Jewboy!” the Magyar said.

“Suck my dick, Andras,” Istvan answered. Why didn’t the Yankees knock you over before the self-propelled gun got ’em? he wondered. Most Magyars didn’t jump up and down about Jews. Szolovits had no trouble coping with that. But Andras was one of the minority who, had he been born a German, would have wanted to shove Jews into the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

You couldn’t say out loud that you hoped he’d get killed. He and you were allegedly on the same side. But not even the MGB had yet figured out a way to read what you were thinking.

Only a few strands of barbed wire protected the American lines. The men hadn’t been here long. They hadn’t had time to run up the thick belts that stymied every kind of attack except one spearheaded by heavy tracked vehicles. Some of the wires were already cut. Istvan twanged through others with the cutter he wore on his belt. A bullet cracked by above his head. He was already down on his back, reaching up to work on the wire. He exposed himself as little as he could.

Then he was past the obstacle and rolling down into a trench. A Yank lay there, half his face blown off. Istvan had seen horrors before, but he was still new enough not to be hardened to them. His stomach did a slow lurch, like a fighter pilot’s in a power dive.

That didn’t stop him from rifling the dead man’s pockets and belt pouches for cigarettes, food, and the morphine syrette from his aid kit. Americans were as rich as people said they were, sure as the devil. He’d never seen soldiers with gear as fine as the U.S. Army gave its men. Not even the Germans had come close. Of course, the end-of-the-war Germans he remembered were the ones who’d taken a beating for the past few years. But he didn’t think even the victorious Germans of Blitzkrieg fame made war as extravagantly as the Americans did.

Sergeant Gergely blew his stupid goddamn whistle again. “Keep moving!” he shouted. “We’ve got to drive them while we can!”

One of the Red Army SU-100s obliterated another machine-gun nest. An American with a bazooka obliterated the other self-propelled gun. It burned and burned, sending up its own stinking smoke screen. How long had the men in there lived after the rocket slammed into their machine? Long enough to know how screwed they were? Long enough to scream? If they had, the SU-100’s armor didn’t let their cries escape. More imaginative than he wished he were, Istvan had no trouble hearing those shrieks inside his head anyway.

He scrambled up and out of the foremost trench, rolled across the dirt between it and the next, and flopped down into that one. He found himself not ten meters from two live Yanks.

One of them started to bring up his rifle. Istvan shot first, by sheer reflex, from the hip. His round caught the American three centimeters above the bridge of his nose. The man groaned and crumpled like a dropped sack of flour.

That was nothing but dumb luck, but only Istvan knew it. He felt terrible about it. He didn’t want to kill Americans. But he was also the only one who knew that.

The dead GI’s buddy certainly didn’t. He didn’t see a scared Hungarian Jewish conscript fighting not to heave. He saw a fierce, straight-shooting Communist warrior whose rifle now bore on him. He threw down his own M-1, raised his hands, and gabbled something in English that had to mean I give up!

Istvan frisked him, quickly and clumsily. The American handed him his wallet and wristwatch. Istvan took them, though he cared more about smokes and food and medicine. Then he gestured back toward the rear. Off the new POW went, hands still held high.

He had no guarantee, of course, that some other trigger-happy soldier of the Hungarian People’s Army wouldn’t plug him for the fun of it or because he had nothing left worth stealing. But that was his problem, not Istvan’s. Istvan also did a quick job of plundering the soldier he’d killed. The dead man’s identity disk said he was Walter Hoblitzel.