David Robbins - Last Citadel

Dimitri checked the gauges mounted just below his hatch opening. The new General was running well. One shade of paint coated everything in the cockpit, a sort of muted, snotty mint. Outside, the tank was a deep forest green. All the T-34s were this color. The Red Army way, equality, the nail that sticks out is hammered down. Dimitri longed to roar out of the line he’d been in for hours, his hands ached with following.

Within the hour the column stopped. Valentin laid the flat of his boot between Dimitri’s shoulder blades, the unspoken signal to halt. Often during combat, when there was too much noise or the intraphone was broken, Valentin rode with his feet on Dimitri’s shoulders, guiding him with pressure to turn left or right; a boot to the neck meant forward, to the top of the head was speed up, two feet on the shoulders was reverse. The boot in Dimitri’s back was gentle enough; when the blood was up in the fighting, there had been some kicks. Dimitri shifted to neutral and idled.

Valentin stood in his place. Dimitri saw nothing but the rear of the tank in front of him, close and stinking of diesel exhaust. An officer walked along the line of tanks shouting orders up to the commanders. Valentin gave Dimitri the order to shut down.

The tank shuddered to a hulking quiet. Dimitri rose out of his hatch, filling his lungs with his first clean breath in hours. He lifted the goggles from his eyes; sweat had caked with the dust against his skin. He stepped out of the tank and slid to the ground. His legs needed a second to firm.

The dozen commanders in his company clustered around a captain. Dimitri walked away from the settling fumes and heat of the tanks, a little ways into the surrounding field.

In the silvery light he made out dots on every hill, in all directions. Perhaps two hundred tanks had been shaken awake hours ago and force-marched in the night to this staging area. Dimitri’s 3rd Mechanized Brigade was one of several units arrayed in an east-west line. The noise of tanks moving up on all sides sounded like the rattling of giant chains, there was a metallic moan to the treads eating into the earth, a whine from the engines, and Dimitri imagined this was the clamor of gathering titans.

One of the drivers walked beside Dimitri, offering a cigarette. The two men smoked while the commanders conferred and the tank engines cooled and knocked.

The driver was a dairy farmer from the Caucasus, an older fellow named Andrei. ‘This is going to be one shit pile,’ Andrei said. ‘This is our battle right here.’

The man swept a hand across the rippling southern plain, gray as gravestones.

‘That’s where the river runs, east-west. It isn’t much but the Germans have got to cross it. And that’s where the road branches. They’ll come right up from Tomarovka and Belgorod. And there,’ he swung the hand left, to the east, ‘is where the road splits off to Prokhorovka. We’ll meet them here, on the way to Kursk. Right fucking here, above the river. They’ve got to go around or through us.’

‘You and me, Andrushka,’ Dimitri said, patting the man’s back. ‘We’re the reason we’ll win. Hitler’s only brought his young pups.’

Andrei laughed, and he looked younger behind his cigarette. This is God’s bargain during war, Dimitri thought. If you face Him, face death, you are rewarded with living – truly living – every second you have left.

Andrei glanced back toward the tanks. The commanders were still confabbing.

‘How’s it going with your pup?’ he asked.

Now Dimitri laughed. ‘I’ve finally got him pissing on the newspaper.’

‘Well, there’s hope, then!’

Andrei dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. ‘Ride hard, Cossack.’

‘You, too, goatherder.’

Andrei returned to his tank. Dimitri flicked away his cigarette. He put his hands on his hips and leaned his head back into the cascading moonlight. He knew how the rest of the night and morning would go. Andrei was right, this was going to be their main defense region. Their battalion, all fifty tanks, would dig ditches deep enough for them to roll the T-34s into, hull down, so only the turrets were exposed. They’d dig shelters for ammunition, later in the day the shells would be brought up and stacked. There would be practice in camouflage and target acquisition. They’d drive over the plain and mark march routes for wetlands and boggy patches, they’d ease past minefields and mark them, too. They’d identify lanes of retreat should the Germans push them back from this second defense line to the third and final belt in front of Novoselovka, the last stand before Oboyan and Kursk. The generals would let German spotter planes photograph them here, let them report to their own command how the Russians have occupied this fork on the Oboyan road. Then tomorrow night, after the T-34s had gone, engineers would build maskirovka tanks here out of barrels, hay, and poles.

Hitler’s waiting. He should have come at us months ago, when we were still reeling from the Khar’kov loss. Now, with the spring and summer, we’ve packed so many men and guns around Kursk we’re tripping over each other.

The Red Army generals definitely know where Hitler’s going to attack, even if they’re not sure when.

But Hitler knows something we don’t. He’s let the weeks go by without concern that the Red Army has dug in. The bastard’s got something up his rotten little sleeve.

This is going to be a tank battle, that’s certain.

That’s it, of course. Hitler’s not worried about our million and a half men, our three thousand tanks, or our uncountable antitank mines and guns. He figures he’s got a weapon to turn the battle his way, no matter how ready we get. He’s waiting for his new tanks. The Tigers. His super-tanks.

Dimitri had never faced a Tiger. The hulking things had only made fleeting appearances during the debacle at Khar’kov. But every report, every rumor, told that wherever the Tiger appeared, it dominated. T-34s by the dozens were left in wreckage by a handful of Mark VI Tigers.

Around him, for miles in every direction, more and more moonlit tanks pulled into position. The T-34 was quick, even nimble, with Dimitri at the reins. It had excellent armor, a strong main gun. He recalled Andrei’s hand sweeping over this small southern portion of the battlefield inside the Kursk bulge, studded with Russian tanks. Can Hitler bring enough super-tanks here to kill all of us?

In the sky, between Dimitri and the moon, a shadow skittered, like a crone on a broomstick. Then came the faint clatter of engines. The sound headed south, toward the German lines. In a minute it was gone, and the night belonged again to the dark, idling tanks spread across the fields and hIIIs.

Valentin appeared beside him. The boy, too, had his eyes raised to where the black flash had cut across the moon.

‘Night Witches,’ murmured Valentin.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri answered. ‘I saw them.’

He scanned the sky farther to the south, away from the moon’s aura, and caught what he was looking for. One star blinked in and out, then another winked in line, and he wondered if this was Katya.

The flying was effortless. Katya pulled her hands from the stick, her feet from the rudder pedals, and the U-2 flew itself, straight and deliberate, heavy with four 200-pound bombs strapped under the low wing. The night let her pass unescorted except for what she brought with her, the pop-pop-pop of her little engine, the flap of wind in the percale of her wings, and the siffle of air slipping through the wire struts that held her bi-plane together.