Peter Idone - Red Vengeance

Vogel pushed the scout car down the gravel road as fast as it could go.

The night was swollen with noise and fire, men running, and machines that seemed to behave with the instincts of animals. From the beginning this had been a contest of machines, so Khan withdrew from this phase of the battle for the time being to allow it to run its feverish course. He did not excuse himself out of cowardice or contempt for his allies but merely out of wisdom. He climbed to the top of what remained of the water tower. A section of catwalk was still in place, but the water tank had collapsed in a pile of shattered lumber. The heavy supports had been weakened by the two explosions, but Khan was not concerned as he kept still and watched. He laid the antitank rifle across a stave that jutted from the mass of timber. The captain had insisted on fighting the beast at close quarters with his lightly armored car and 20 mm gun, which was no match for the densely armored Soviet tank. The weapon was not powerful enough—no weapon was, not even the behemoth Tigers the Germans believed were so invincible. Not where Red Vengeance was concerned. Khan had told the captain from the outset that the red monster could only be killed with help from the air. The hawk-winged airplane with the siren on its belly could dive from out of the sky and pounce on the beast. The captain took his advice but could not cultivate an ally among the pilots or the officers in charge. Yes, early in the hunt a few token missions were flown, but the pilots had no luck. Patience was required, and concentration, and time, but the airmen had none of these—at least not for the captain, for he himself lacked these qualities. Only anger, will, and white-hot revenge. It took many weeks to temper these faults, to rein the captain in; and Khan knew he was only moderately successful, even after he had employed his arsenal of craft and medicine. Without the combined use of fighter planes, their task had become all the more difficult. He told the captain that the beast must be made lame and destroyed by fire, crippled and set upon from all sides and heaped with relentless fire. But for now the Germans must be made crazy with their machines. There was no convincing them otherwise. They were a people who had absolute, unshakable belief in their machines. It was as powerful as magic or religion with all the whites. Khan watched the events unfold. Many men had died, and more would follow, some needlessly. Drive. Turn. Brake. Stop. Go. Forward. Reverse. It was so foolish and without result. Khan didn’t scoff or take delight in the knowledge that he was right. He could see everything, all the details of the fight, the poor maneuvers and misapplied tactics…quite clearly a situation that was headed for disaster. Especially for that armored battlewagon. A cow had more speed and sense than that machine. Khan saw the Germans not fighting in concert, together as one, but separately, each man fighting the same battle alone. He watched as the smoke from the supply yard fire entrapped and confused. The men in the battlewagon grew fearful when there was no immediate danger. A stray beam from the red beast, a gasp of flame from the settlement fire, perhaps even a distant flash of lightning had caught the driver’s eye. He went crazy with fear and crashed into the garage. The big man with the machine gun ran along the railroad embankment to find his dead comrade. The noises of all the machines filled him with terror. Khan could smell the man’s fear. Even more so now that he was alone, and he hated to be alone. The machine gunner could never find any solace within himself and craved company. Overwhelmed with fear and loneliness, he ran from the embankment and hid in a little shack north of the garage. Khan saw the other fellow, Angst, the one whose name meant “fear.” The captain and Vogel spoke of this, amused; they hoped the grenadier did not live up to this name. What sort of father would keep such a name for himself and his sons? This Angst fellow had grown confused by the smoke that blanketed the muddy street as he ran along the wall of the maintenance building. He stopped and entered the building but then came out again. His fright made him believe Red Vengeance hid within the smoke. He wavered with doubt that this could be, but with all the strange tales he had heard about the beast, he believed it was so. He struck a match, lit the fuse on the petrol bomb, and threw it. A muted orange ball of flame displaced very little of the dense smoke. The beast was not there, so Angst fled. He reentered the maintenance building and ran through to the other side, toward the disaster that was about to occur. Khan watched as the captain became lost in the smoke. This was saddest of all, because he allowed himself to be outwitted so easily. The beast traveled only as far as half the length of the supply yard, keeping close but well on the outside perimeter, unimpeded. The beast had switched off its searchlight, turned completely around, and drove in the opposite direction. It turned again, and Khan understood everything now as the beast positioned itself behind the sheds, almost directly across the way from the tower on which he stood. Khan tried to warn the lieutenant as he led the battlewagon out of the garage and turned north, but his voice was too weak—a great weakness, he always felt. It had been so ever since he was a child, but he made up for it with the animal voices he employed. He could bark louder than any dog and screech better than the owls. If he had a cartridge left, he would have fired a signal flare directly at where the beast was hiding, no matter what the risk. But all he could do was bark and howl as he got into position and aimed the antitank rifle. The machine gunner hiding in the shed near the garage became aware of the sound. He’d been frightened by the bark once, Khan remembered. He knew something was wrong, so he ran out of the little shed and called out to the men in the battlewagon, but they did not hear. Angst ran as well, having reached the garage only moments after the two vehicles made the fateful turn. On the gravel road, the captain’s machine raced toward the inevitable disaster. Khan made ready to fire.

Upon making the turn, Voss immediately sped forward to allow Hartmann the distance necessary to gear up. He had not ridden far when a host of sounds converged upon his ears: dogs, voices, and motors. The Maybach engine of the armored personnel carrier had developed a loud knock, a clear indication it had sustained damage, and Voss wondered if it would make it around to the slag heaps. He was in line with the water tower, thirty or forty meters away, when the distinct crack from Khan’s antitank rifle was heard. There followed a more horrific noise. Deafened, Voss instinctively leaned low over the handlebars as a 76 mm shell screamed centimeters over his head. The Hanomag seized up as an armor-piercing round struck the front end. Pieces of armor, engine parts, and shell fragments rocketed through the flooring, the firewall, and the dash, filling the driver’s compartment with a howl of steel. Hartmann thrashed about wildly but stilled in moments, and Reinhardt was pitched backward on to the crew compartment deck. Red Vengeance plowed through the thinly constructed tool sheds and storage huts, leaving a swath of crumbled siding, smashed workbenches, and planks and an assortment of mangled debris. Voss swerved to the right, out of the tank’s way, but it had no interest in him. He was no more a threat than would be a fly. It fired a second round, again into the vehicle’s front end. Both armored engine covers blew off completely, and from the well, flames and hissing smoke issued. Glass shattered, and liquid flame dripped down the side of the tank’s hull. Detwiler had tossed a petrol bomb and ran for cover, as the hull machine gun opened fire, and the barrel swept from side to side within the confines of the mantelet. Another crack from the antitank rifle, and the lead bogie on the tank’s left track was hit and pieces chipped. The 20 mm cannon hammered away at the hull and turret. The scout car had arrived and was within range, having taken cover behind the flimsy outbuilding near the garage. Falkenstein didn’t let up until an entire magazine was emptied of shells. Red Vengeance reversed its course from out of the street, backing over the sheds and crumbled remains, clearly in flight, and headed for the railroad crossing. Now that the danger had temporarily passed, Voss circled back to the Hanomag. Flames lapped at the sides of the front end. The rubber road wheels were burning. Voss boarded the crew compartment and found Reinhardt, lying wedged between the seating. He was groaning; arms, shoulders, and chest were torn and bloodied. Detwiler and Angst joined him on deck and helped to carry the mauled body off the vehicle and set him on the ground. Voss reboarded to see after Hartmann. The driver’s cabin had filled with smoke, and small tongues of flame stabbed in through the ports. Hartmann was clearly dead; a deep gash across his throat and his torso perforated by shrapnel, like the radio that was gored and spilling its elements. Voss called for help, and once again the two grenadiers were at his side, tugging the mangled remains out from behind the steering wheel. They laid the body down on the cold, wet mud, out of the way of any potential traffic. “Salvage as much of the equipment as you can,” Voss ordered. The scout car had since pulled up, and he and Vogel worked feverishly to make a pallet on the top of the motorcycle sidecar. First Vogel shifted the flamethrower so it lay more flat. Next he set several planks, salvaged from the nearby wreckage, and laid them across the top. With Voss’s help, he lifted the sergeant and set him lengthwise on the planks over the sidecar. Falkenstein kept vigil from the turret. “Take him to the emergency bunker, Lieutenant. We will regroup in the warehouse and take stock of our situation.”