David Robbins - Last Citadel

Luis dropped the pistol. He dove backward for the commander’s hatch. The turret whined to the left, every second revealing more of its thinner side plating to the Soviet shooter. He rammed his head down into the hatch, past Thoma’s blood, and screamed, ‘No! Stop! Stop!’

Balthasar had his back turned, his attention was riveted into his optics. Beside the gunner, on the far side of the immense breech, the loader looked up from his seat. Luis screamed at him, gesturing frantically at Balthasar, ‘Stop the turret! Stop him!’ The loader looked stunned, no idea what was going on. ‘Stop him!’ Luis screamed.

Beneath Luis the turret kept turning, the huge turret with the undefeatable cannon.

Luis fumbled for the cord to reconnect himself to the intracom. His fingers waggled at it, just out of reach. He’d have to clamber down to his seat to retrieve it, plug in, and scream into the microphone. That would be too late.

The loader got the idea. He set down the shell he cradled. He rose from his seat and leaned far across the breech to tap Balthasar on the back, saying something into the intracom. Balthasar was rapt and did not turn away from his eyepiece. There was a comic aspect to the loader’s calm, he was oblivious to their peril. Luis watched the slow drift of events, more seconds gone. The loader was a dead man. So was Balthasar. Luis did not bother to inform them.

By now the turret had spun a quarter way around to the left, exposing its entire side to the field. The waiting, aiming Russian gunner out there in his smoking tank with his live cannon must be amazed at his good fortune. Now he will shoot. He must.

Luis lifted his head out of his hatch, done with frenzy. He lay on his belly, facing the rear of the turret. The Russian driver had not let up for a moment, gnawing and jamming the starboard drive sprocket, holding the Tiger in place. The two tanks seemed to be mating, violent, the cramming of animals. Luis slid forward on his stomach to see better into the Russian hatch. The old man was there, leaning in to his gears and levers; he looked to be gripping the reins of his animal, galloping flat out, going nowhere.

The Russian looked up. His mouth was wide open. He was bellowing.

Luis used the last second to decide, after all, the old man was insane.

Dimitri watched the Tiger’s cannon rotate away from his blocking barrel. The Tiger, the tank killer, was laying itself wide open.

With the turret revolving from him, Dimitri could back off. He could fly into reverse, spin around, hit the gas, and get out of there.

But if he freed the Tiger, the big tank would back away, too. Valentin’s aim would be thrown off. With just a flywheel, the boy might not be able to adjust his gun fast enough.

The Tiger’s turret turned, like a backward second hand, set to go off when it reached Valentin.

Dimitri had to stay, grappling the German to a standstill.

So be it, he thought.

He shouted, ‘Yah!’ to spur his T-34 faster.

Take the shot, Valya.

Dimitri shoved his T-34 deeper into the Tiger.

He charged one last time into the enemy. He had no sword to swing and he did not wear the flapping cape of his clan but he spurred his mount and he saw his foe’s face. It was a white face, taut and skull-like. It was daubed with blood. It was Death’s face, sure enough, looking down on him over the rim of the Tiger’s turning turret.

The game T-34 rumbled around him, lunging hard against the Tiger. The two corpses on the tier behind him had settled and gone silent in the last seconds; they were dead and terribly done, and they appreciated his vengeance. But they did not recruit Dimitri, they left all decisions to him.

The Tiger’s turret kept turning, ticking more seconds. Dimitri was not alone here. He had his connection to his daughter. He was inside her spirit more than he ever was in Valentin’s. He’d lived well in her heart, housed and respected there, he had no worry for Katya the flyer, the rider.

Take the shot, boy. Before the Tiger’s turret swivels around the other side. I’ll stay here. This is my last saddle, I’ll stay in it.

Do it now.

Is there any link left between us, Valya? Hear me. Damn it, hear me, don’t let this Tiger leave the valley! Show me you hear me!

The Tiger’s turret was full broadside to the sunflower field now. The German commander lay on top of his tank as if to save it, to beg for its life.

Beg all you want, bastard. A Cossack tells you this.

Dimitri closed his eyes. He leaned forward in his seat, pressing his weight, too, into the Tiger, everything he was. Everything.

He drew a deep breath, tasting diesel smoke, metal shavings, blood, the holy steppe, life, and screamed out for victory.

‘Take the shot! Take the shot, boy! Yah! Take the shot!’

Luis had time in the air to look but too much pain to make sense of what he saw.

But he knew flame, that was heat. Red below him, black-veined, uncoiling. It reached for him, he sailed ahead of it. There was something else in the air with him, giant, a flipping tiddlywink, a great twisting lollipop.

Sound shut down and then there was no color. He was black but not so black that he was not light, flying in this body, all had slipped him, light and gravity.

He was black but fear welled out of it, congealed, a shadow deeper.

When the ground struck him he’d forgotten about the ground, so intimate was his soaring. He was shocked to stop, and lay aware only that he was still.

His senses stayed away, frightened off by his emptiness the way jackals avoid a fire. He lay with the fear only, because there was nothing else.

This was the hell he’d read about, he’d learned of in church. Fear, alone. It was horrible. Where was the door out, where was his death? He searched in his body for his death but that, too, eluded him. This was the second time looking for death and not finding it. Leningrad was the first, and now. Where? Here. Kursk.

Sound came back, his moan. Then light, fluttering, creeping back to him. He cracked open his eyes.

The blackness began to dispel. His fear did not leave right off but instead ran into his legs and arms, his chest, neck, and head, looking for reasons to stay, places to hide.

The Tiger burned in front of him. The T-34 jammed against it was also swallowed in gouts of fire and smoke; the two machines were catastrophic wrecks, melting together. The Tiger’s turret was gone, the hole where it had been was a volcano.

Heat from the blaze lapped at his cheeks. Luis rolled onto his back.

He looked up and did not see vastness, only the low, thick haze from rain and the battle still erupting. He listened and heard the lick of flames even louder than his heart. His body throbbed at him, almost rocking him in a sharpened cradle of pains, but the earth beneath him trembled even more with explosions and the heavy foot of war.

He lay alive, bleeding, broken in places. The battle had been taken from him, and that was all. He tried to be grateful, but that avoided him, as well.

Now that he had failed, everything averted itself from him. Destiny, God, even death.

Luis was again a pariah.

The air-raid sirens began their city-wide wail.

Abram Breit did not turn around on the bridge across the river Spree to run back to the hospital. He did not run anywhere, his ribs hurt too much and his hips were still sore from his wild gallop on the Russian steppe to escape the crazy partisans. Bruises lined the insides of his thighs and he had a tender spot on his crown from being thumped in the field after the crash. After two days of rest, he’d signed out of the hospital. He intended to make his way to his rooms in his boarding house near the Zoological Gardens in Charlottenburg. The sirens surprised him but would not dissuade him from getting back to his own bed after his Russian adventure. Limping, he ran a hand along the bridge railing, looking up.