Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

Docker now used a pencil to trace the diagrams on the pages, checking the distance Baird had estimated between various points to their position. And watching the sergeant, it seemed to Baird that the inside of his head was as white as the snow spinning around them, a billowing expanse streaked and colored with names and memories. It was a remembered childhood sensation, the springs inside his body coiling painfully with anxious thoughts of examinations and grades, muscles tightening at the prospect of not making the cut on athletic squads or failing to hold fire when hen birds were walked up in the meadow by his father’s gunning parties, dreading the fear of hearing his shotgun go off without a single cock bird in the sky above them, scarlet against the clouds. His constant effort to measure up to somebody’s else’s standards had always trapped him between what was expected of him and what he could accomplish on his own, suspending him between equally demanding, and impossible, alternatives... He recalled now regiments and flags and medals and battles he had studied as a child in his dormer room on the third floor of their home in Virginia, turning pages of spidery maps and brilliant pictures until he fell asleep, and always knowing that the morning would be gloomy or sunny depending on how accurately and rapidly he answered his father’s questions at breakfast about those yellowing manuscripts and engravings—

“Couple of things I’m not sure about,” Docker said, and Baird felt his heart pounding in tense anticipation, as it might have when Jonathan Baird turned from the sideboard, shoulders and silvery head silhouetted against the frosted windows to say, “What you seem to forget about Grant, son, is what he learned at...” or “The element of surprise on the battlefield means very little unless it creates chaos. Don’t confuse surprise with the merely unexpected...”

“There are just too damned many assumptions here,” Docker was saying.

“But they’re all logical, aren’t they?”

Baird’s theory was that the reluctance of the German commander to attack was based on two factors: One, by what he did know about the strength of their gun position. And two, by what he didn’t know. According to Baird, it had to be assumed that the German tank crew knew there was an antiaircraft cannon on the top of Mont Reynard. Nonetheless, they couldn’t risk a frontal attack because of a structural weakness in their tank’s armor, a weakness noted in specifications Baird had remembered from United States Army manuals.

He had written out these specs on one of Solvis’ ruled sheets of notepaper. They read: “Panzerkampfwagen VIB, Tiger Mark II with Porsche turret; Weight : 80 tons; Crew : 5. Height : 10 feet, 6 inches; Width : 12 feet, 5¾ inches (with wide tracks) and 10 feet, 8¾ inches (with narrow tracks). Length : 36 feet, 8 inches. Engine : one Maybach HL 230 P.30 inline, 600 hp; Speed : 30 mph on roads and 12 mph cross-country; Range : 106 miles on roads and 75 miles cross-country; Armament : one 8.8cm KWK43L/71 gun (88-mm cannon) with 80 rounds, and three 7.92-mm machine guns with 5,850 rounds; Armor : hull front 150-mm (6 inches), turret armor, 200-mm (8 inches), decking, sides and rear armor: 100-mm (4 inches).”

Baird had underlined the final specification with double pencil strokes.

“BELLY ARMOR: 40MM (1-¾ INCHES).”

“If he comes straight up the hill at us, he’s got to risk—”

“Yes, goddamn it, I can see that much.”

“Then the rest of it makes sense. The German officer doesn’t know what else we’ve got up here. Wellington said all warfare was just finding out what’s over the next hill. You can see his problem. He can’t attack our center, not with real confidence, and he won’t risk attacking our flanks because he doesn’t know what we’ve got in reserve. That’s why he’s trying to con us into surrendering. My father told me once—”

“Baird, will you forget about Wellington who’s been dead a few hundred years? And your father who’s a million miles away in the Pacific?” Docker tried to light a cigarette but the tobacco was soggy and wouldn’t burn. He threw it aside and said quietly, “Okay, what did your father tell you?”

“He said he could look at the order of battle on a map and guess the grade of the officers who’d planned it. The higher the rank, the stronger the reserve — that’s what my father told me. Generals, he said, always keep a lot of strength close to their headquarters. So if we show that German commander everything we’ve got, flank the cannon with our machine guns, he’ll think we’re committing all our resources to defend the edge of the precipice. That kind of recklessness is what a field-grade officer would expect from a gun section with noncoms in charge.”

“Incompetent fuck-ups.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, I did. Okay, we make him think we’re throwing our whole reserve onto the line. Which gives him the option of attacking our machine guns, which are no real threat to him. That about it?”

Baird let out his breath slowly. “With the dynamite, that’s about it, sergeant.”

“Yes, let’s not forget that little item.”

Docker studied the pages spread on top of the revetment and realized he was almost hoping to find a flaw in Baird’s proposals. They were dangerous, of course. God- damn, they were dangerous, but the longer he analyzed them, the more it seemed they were so simple and logical that they had at least a prayer of working. Still he hesitated, feeling the wet snow on his bare head and wishing to Christ he’d had enough sense to put his cigarettes in an inside pocket where they wouldn’t have got soaked in this weather... Finally he said, “I’m not sure we’ve got enough dynamite.”

“We do, sergeant.”

“How do you know that?”

“Tex asked Laurel to check the ammo dump before we came over here.”

Docker nodded and looked at his watch. “I’m not sure we’ve got enough time left, but there’s only one fucking way to find out.”

He waved to Farrel, and when the Texan came running toward him, shouted over the wind, “Get the rest of the guys up here. Tell them to snap ass.”

Docker braced himself against the sleeting blasts and looked at the faces of the men in Section Eight who, except for Dormund and Linari, stood in a loose formation in front of the revetment. Linari and Dormund were on the firing seats of the cannon, leaning forward over the cranking handles to hear what Docker was saying.

“Our only chance is to immobilize that tank,” he said. “If we can stop it, we’ve got enough firepower to handle the crew when they come out of the turret. Baird has an idea how to do it. I’ll spell it out for you, then we’ll talk.”

When he finished, Trankic said, “Are we cutting it too fine. Bull?”

“If they hit us at first light, that still gives us about three and a half hours.”

Trankic rubbed his jaw, his hand making an abrasive sound against his whiskers. “We cut the machine guns with blowtorches and hacksaws, maybe we can make it. No problem setting them up on this side of the hill. But without tripods, wedged into rocks, they ain’t gonna have a three-sixty field of fire.”

“What about detonating caps and fusing wire?”

“We’re talking about maybe forty yards on each flank, we got plenty.”

Schmitzer said bluntly, “You guys are acting like it’s all settled. Don’t I get something to say about this deal?”

Docker looked at him. “All right, Schmitzer. Make it fast.”

There was a deliberate challenge in Schmitzer’s eyes, and anger in his voice. “You say make it fast, that’s what bothers me, Docker. What’s the point of going a mile a minute when you’re talking about something that could get everybody killed?”