David Robbins - Last Citadel

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.

This 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.