David Robbins - Last Citadel

A round landed twenty meters in front of Dimitri’s path. The earth geysered.

‘They’re finding the range,’ he said into the intercom. ‘We’re getting bracketed.’

Valentin made no response.

Dimitri downshifted. He yanked back on the left-hand steering lever and shoved the right forward. The tank hauled into a left turn. Dimitri shifted up into third gear and sped straight down the hill.

‘What are you doing?’ Valentin shouted. A boot pressed between his shoulder blades, and when Dimitri did not stop to the order, the boot heel kicked him.

‘Load up,’ Dimitri called back, ignoring the pain beneath his neck. Through his open hatchway he watched the green field tear up beneath his tracks. ‘Check your maps, make sure we don’t go through a minefield.’

‘What? Turn around, turn around!’

‘Valya, listen. Don’t fucking kick me again! We can’t do a thing up on that hill. I’m going to take us down to the river. Signal the squad to follow. We’ll make a pass at top speed, I’m going to get you a shot in close. You’re the best gunner in the company. Take it, and we’ll get out.’

‘We don’t have orders to do that!’

‘You’re the squad commander. Give the damn order!’

Dimitri glanced over at Sasha. ‘What do you think, Cossack?’

‘Go!’ the boy hollered, a nervous thrill in his eyes. ‘Go!’

‘Hang on,’ Dimitri called into the intercom. ‘Valya, wave your hanky. Pasha, kiss a shell!’

Valentin barked in Dimitri’s headphones, ‘Damn it!’ When Dimitri did not slow or veer off, he grabbed up a banner from behind his chair back. He unfurled the blue flag and stood in his open hatch, waving the pennant over his head, the signal for the four tanks in their squad to follow the General Platov . Only command tanks in their corps had radios, the rest had to make do with smoke canisters and pennant signals. When the other T-34s had formed up into a column behind him, Valentin ducked down and buttoned his hatch. Dimitri smacked his lips and thought, That’s more like it, charging with your son and comrades under a battle flag. That’s how a Cossack fights.

The slalom down the long slope was fast and careering. Dimitri snaked left and right to stay out of any German’s range finder. The world through Dimitri’s open hatch was divided in half, the upper portion blue and clean, the bottom was all battle shroud and flying bits of crop and dirt. He yanked the General side to side, knowing it was impossible for Valya to find and target anything in the turret on this kind of wild ride. He’d have to do it at the bottom of the hill, and fast. Right now, Dimitri could not slow.

A shadow raced over the ground beside the General . Dimitri didn’t hesitate: He skidded the tank into a tight turn away from the dark shape flashing across the smashed cornfield. Twin rows of soil bounded into the air in the path he might have taken. The bullets stitched away, then quit, and the siren of a diving Stuka screamed through the clank of his tank when the plane tore past. The Stukas had learned to come at Red tanks from behind, trying to score a hit with their two 37 mm antitank guns on the engine compartment, which sometimes blew up and took the tank and crew with it. Dimitri’s forearms were beginning to smart from the exertion of swinging the levers back and forth over the bumpy, speeding terrain. He thought one more time about his daughter, and marveled again at the enemies she had to face in the air. Too fast for him; he preferred the ground, hooves and tracks. That Stuka will be back. Dimitri shifted into fourth gear and let the General roll as fast as it could, straight down the hill.

The demolished buildings and silos of Luchanino began to fill his restricted vision. He caught a glimpse of the sun glinting off the swollen river. Tracers and small-arms shredded the flowing water, trying to stop the German engineers floating across it on pontoons to establish a beachhead on the north shore. Behind the ducking, paddling pioneers stood a phalanx of four tanks, all Mark IVs. Every cannon seemed to point at the rushing General , Dimitri had no idea if the other four tanks in their squadron had kept up the frantic pace down the slope. The four German tanks were painted in the same camouflage tan scheme.

‘See them?’ Dimitri called into the throat microphone.

‘Yes.’

‘Sons of bitches. Where’s their big brother? Afraid of you, Valya, I’ll bet. Best damn gunner in the Red Army.’

Valentin laughed. His feet came back to Dimitri’s shoulders, a gentler touch this time.

The field just outside the village where Dimitri raced his tank was filled with dug-in men and weapons. Soviet antitank gunners with their long-barreled weapons lay belly down behind dirt embankments, machine-gunners squatted in shallow foxholes, and fresh, hot craters were filled in seconds with men looking for cover in the earth. Dimitri scurried his tank in and out among them, angling closer to the buildings at the water’s edge, waiting for Valya to give him the signal to turn and stop for him to acquire the Mark IVs and fire. The armor close to his head rang with the pings of small-arms fire banging against the General’s side. The lineup of German tanks must be going crazy waiting for this column of mad careening Red tanks to come to a stop.

‘Range, one thousand meters,’ Valentin intoned.

‘Closer?’ Dimitri asked.

‘Closer.’

Dimitri gunned the tank farther down the hill, his padded head took a buffeting in his hard driver’s space. He aimed the General at the remains of a barn along the riverbank. He intended to nestle behind it out of the sight of the German tanks. Their platoon of five T-34s could group there and decide on their attack. The Mark IVs would be less than five hundred meters away. That ought to be killing range.

Dimitri executed a sharp swing to the left. One more ‘S’ turn ought to bring them down to the lee of the barn. This time through his open hatch he saw the Stuka coming. The last two tanks in the platoon had not turned yet, their tails were still facing the path of the low-rushing German buzzard. Sasha saw the Stuka, too, and squeezed his machine-gun, the gun shook his whole body trying to keep it steady and aimed on the plane, but the fighter-bomber bored in behind his own bigger, raging guns. Dimitri watched the last T-34 in line, the tank driven by the other old man in the company, the Caucasus goatherder Andrei, take the hits. The chassis of the tank bounced under the tank-killing bullets ripping up its back, as though some giant stood on the tank and jumped up and down. The Stuka roared past, banking hard into the sky, a sort of coward, thought Dimitri, rushing away from the men and machine it left still and smoking, all dead.

Now they were four against the four German tanks. Dimitri sent a curse trailing after the rising Stuka on behalf of friendly Andrei, and in answer to his damnation a Sturmovik fighter swooped into the German’s route. The two planes gnarled in the air, fighting to the death on equal terms. Dimitri wanted to watch the Stuka get his desserts but the two planes left his vision. He returned his attention to the wreckage of the barn. The four Mark IVs had not issued a shot. Dimitri drove the General in fast behind the barn, Valentin’s boot told him to stop there. Valya flung open his hatch and stood. The three remaining tanks in their squad pulled up behind him.

Valentin leaped out, was gone for thirty seconds, then spilled back into his hatch, snapping his helmet into the intercom and kneeling low. He called out the orders to his crew over the idling General’s rattling hum.

‘We’re going to go first, Slobadov’s tank will be right behind us. As soon as we clear the barn, Kolyakin and Medvedenko are going to emerge going the other direction. We’re going to split their attention four ways, right and left. Papa, I need speed. This close to the Germans, if we run straight sideways to them, we’ll need to make it hard for them to keep us in their sights. Once we’ve gone far enough, you hit the brakes. I’ll take as many shots as I can, then you get us back up that hill.’