Ralph Peters - Red Army

63

He halted along the wet metal sidewall of the running vehicle, feeling its vibrations. Above the idling engine, he could hear the razzle of a radio call in a strange language. He wondered if it was a call for the station that had just perished.

Someone moaned, almost as if he was snoring. Then it was quiet again.

Plinnikov breathed in deeply. He felt terribly afraid. He could not understand why he was doing this. It seemed as though he was meant to be anyplace but here. He looked at the grenadier's contorted remains.

Somehow, it had all seemed a game, a daring game of driving through the artillery. And if he had been caught, he would have been removed from the game. But the man slopped against the tree was out of the game forever. For a length of time he could not measure, Plinnikov simply stared at the tiny black, red, and gold flag on the rear fender of the far vehicle, as if it could provide answers.

He took a last deep breath, fighting his stomach. He pulled his weapon in tight against his side and threw himself around the corner of the vehicle onto the drop ramp.

He had forgotten the dead man on the ramp. He tripped over the corpse, flopping over the body and smashing his elbow. He landed with his mouth close to the dead man's ear, and, in an instant of paralysis, he felt the lifelike warmth of the body thiough the battle dress and sogging rain. The dead man had fine white hairs mixed in with the close-cropped black on the rear of his skull, and Plinnikov saw the red pores on the back of the man's neck with superhuman clarity.

As soon as he could, Plinnikov pushed off of the corpse and twisted so that he could fire his weapon into the interior of the vehicle. But he knew that if anyone still had been capable of shooting, he would be dead already.

The running vehicle bore a stew of bodies in its belly. The accidents of dying had thrown several men together as though they had been dancing and had fallen drunkenly. The inside of the cluttered compartment was streaked and splashed with wetness, and uniforms had torn open to spill filth and splinters of bone. Plinnikov realized that some of the rounds that had penetrated the near side of the vehicle had not had the force to punch out the other side and had expended themselves in rattling back and forth inside the vehicle, chopping the occupants.

In the track parked opposite, a lone radio operator sat sprawled over his notepads, microphone hanging limply from a coil cord. On the radio, a foreign voice called the dead.

Plinnikov was sick. He tried to make it to the trees, out of some elementary human instinct, but he stumbled over the dead man on the RED ARMY

ramp for a second time and vomited on the corpse's back. As he looked down at his mess Plinnikov panicked to see blood smeared over his own chest before realizing that it had come from his embrace of the middle-aged corpse.

Plinnikov felt empty, his belly burning with acid and his heart vacantly sick. He stared at the slow progress of his vomit down the angled ramp.

He wanted to be home, safe, and never to see war or anything military ever again.

He wiped the strands from his lips, wondering if his crew had watched his little performance. The taste in his mouth made him feel sick again.

He realized, belatedly, that the amazed man with his hands up had been trying to surrender, and that it had been wrong to gun him down. But during the fighting, it had never occurred to him to do anything but shoot at everything in front of him.

The voice on the radio called again. Plinnikov imagined that he could detect a pleading tone.

Suddenly, he braced himself. He stared at the silver ornaments on the epaulets of the corpse on the ramp. This was a command post. There would be documents. Maps. Radio communications data.

Stomach twisting, Plinnikov turned to his task.

Senior Lieutenant Filov failed to grasp what was happening until it was too late. He brought his company of tanks on line behind the smokescreen, moving at combat speed toward the enemy, maintaining reasonable order despite his spiky nervousness. Then the tanks began to sink in what had appeared to be a normal field.

Reconnaissance had not reported any difficulties. Now his command tank stood mired to the deck, and none of his vehicles succeeded in backing out. Their efforts only worked them deeper into the marshy soil.

His entire company had ground to a halt in a tattered cartoon of their battle formation.

Filov attempted to call back through the battalion for more smoke and for recovery vehicles. But the smokescreen began to dissipate noticeably before he could establish radio contact. The nets were cluttered with strange voices.

"Prepare to engage, prepare to engage," he shouted into his microphone. When his platoon commanders failed to respond, he realized with a feeling of near-panic that he had been speaking only through the intercom. He switched channels, fingers clumsy on the control mechanism, and repeated his orders.

"Misha, I'm stuck," one of his platoon commanders responded.

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Ralph Peters

"We're all stuck. Use your call sign. And mine. And use your head."

Filov tried to raise battalion again. Without more smoke, they'd be dead. Filov was sure the enemy had trapped them, that this was a clever ambush, and that enemy antitank gunners were waiting to destroy them.

The smoke continued to thin.

Nothing on the battalion net. It was as though battalion had vanished from the earth. Filov's gunner, a Muslim from Uzbekistan, was praying.

Filov slapped him hard on the side of his headset.

"God won't help, you bastard. Get on your gunsight."

Flares popped hot bright through the last meager smoke. From the angle of their arc, Filov could tell that none of his people had fired them.

In any case, the use of flares was inappropriate. Even with the rain and smoke, there was still plenty of light. Probably a distress signal, Filov thought. But he had no idea who could have fired.

He tried the battalion net again, begging the electronics to respond.

The gun tube of his tank was so low to the ground that it barely cleared the wild grasses.

Filov wondered if they could dig themselves out. He knew how to recover tanks in a classroom, when the problem allowed nearby trees.

But now they were stuck dead center in a meadow. He was about to order all of his vehicles to begin erecting their camouflage nets and to send one of his lieutenants back on foot to locate the rest of the battalion when the last smoke blew off.

The battlefield showed its secrets with painful clarity, the light rain and mist offering no real protection. Less than five hundred meters from his line of tanks, set at an angle, Filov saw five enemy tanks. The enemy vehicles were also bogged down almost to the turrets.

"Fire," Filov screamed, paying no attention to which channel he was riding, forgetting all fire discipline and procedures. His gunner dutifully sent off a round in the general direction of the enemy. Filov tried to remember the proper sequence of fire commands. He began to turn the turret without making a decision on which enemy vehicle to engage.

The enemy fired back. Filov's entire line fired, in booming disorder.

Nobody seemed to hit anything.

Filov settled on a target. "Loading sabot. Range, four-fifty."

The automatic loader slammed the round into the breech.

"Correct to four hundred."

"Ready."

"Fire."

The round went wide, despite the ridiculously short distance to the target. But another one of the enemy vehicles disappeared in a bloom of 66

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sparks, flame, and smoke under the massed fires of Filov's right flank platoon. Filov's headset shrieked with broken transmissions.