by Ralph Peters
Anton stared, sweating, up through the trees. The sky shone a hot, magnificent blue. He wheezed, waiting for his body to finish punishing him. He felt that all of his strength was at an end.
The roar of the jets came up fast. They flew very low. It was a big, rushing noise, commanding in its power. The jets, he thought. Already. His father had sent him these gifts.
But the forest began to burn around him. He was on his side, lying in dampness. Another blast picked him up and slapped him against a tree. He sagged, crying. The noise engulfed him. He wasn’t certain whether the ground was shaking or if he was shaking on top of it. He felt as though he were tumbling. He was tumbling in the waves, playing with Zena. It was Cuba, and the sea was salty and warm, and the sky was a splendid cloudless blue. And the sun. The sun came closer and closer. And he rolled in the sea. It was too rough for Zena. He called to warn her. And the enormous sun came closer still, colliding with the earth.
Anton opened his eyes. Everything around him was on fire. Then he realized that he was burning, too. His hands were burning. The rags around his ankles were burning.
He scrambled to his feet, stumbling, waving the torches of his hands.
Zena, he cried out, or thought he cried out. Father. Not like this, god, not like this.
Twenty-three
Sobelev had lost his confidence. He expected death to come up and meet him on each next flight. He had worn himself through fear into resignation. He would go on doing his technical best to kill the enemy until the enemy killed him. The losses on both sides had scoured the skies of the masses of aircraft evident, despite the poor weather, on the first day of hostilities. Now the air efforts were concentrated against key points, and there were great expanses of nearly vacant skies.
Sobelev flew low. He would have liked to fly even lower, but the number of losses to power-line strikes had been appalling. There were too many towering pylons, with their long, ropy lines set like nets to catch the very best pilots.
He had lost his wingman on a run against the autobahn bridge between Wiesbaden and Mainz. He hit his target, but the strike did not seem to do any significant damage. His lieutenant went down and the bridge stayed up — it was an enormous structure — and the enemy retained its use.
It took all of Sobelev’s experience and talent to fly the aircraft now. Exhausted, he continued to worry that his own error would get him before the enemy did. He had a terribly difficult mission this time. Close support of ground forces in a battle with no clear front line. He had never believed that pilot training for close air support was really adequate, but he prided himself on his professional skills, and he did his best to improve himself. He had spent endless hours in the flight simulator, although he never really felt that the simulations were of sufficient quality. The voice commands never had the panic encountered on a real battlefield. Still, whatever the deficiencies of the system, the ground troops continued to scream for air support.
“Zero-Five-Eight, Zero-Five-Eight, I think I’ve got you on my radar.” It was the target control and identification post. “Is your wingman hugging you tight? I can’t discriminate.”
“This is Zero-Five-Eight. No wingman. Solo sortie.”
“Roger, Five-Eight. I am vectoring you on an azimuth of two-four-five from your known point. You are about to become army property.”
The ground rushed by under the belly of the aircraft, and the treetops seemed to surround the fuselage. Sobelev’s tired mind fought to maintain control, to make everything hold together.
“Roger, I have the known point.”
“You’re in the box, Five-Eight. Passing you directly to your tactical controller.”
A new voice came up. “North Star, this is Orion. Passing this one directly to the forward.”
“Roger, Orion. Did you copy that, Five-Eight?”
“Heading, two-four-five,” Sobelev confirmed. “Waiting for voice from your forward.”
Sobelev did not like this kind of mission. He preferred to know in advance exactly what kind of target he was going in after and exactly where it was located. But the Third Shock Army sector was apparently in trouble, and every available aircraft had been scrambled with only the vaguest of mission briefings. Now Sobelev had no idea if he would be directed against tanks or infantry, artillery positions or an enemy command post. And any one of those targets would be very, very difficult to identify from a hurtling aircraft flying low. The controller on the ground had to do his job correctly, or the mission was wasted.
Sobelev flew right through an artillery barrage. The aircraft shook and nearly bolted from him. We’re down in the shit now, he thought.
“Unidentified forward, this is Five-Eight. I’m climbing. Tell me when you have me visual.” Sobelev mastered the aircraft up into the sky, hoping that none of the air-defense troops, either Soviet or enemy, would decide to knock him down.
Everything went incredibly fast. Below him, lines of military vehicles crowded the roads, and clusters of equipment blurred by in the fields where units had deployed. In most cases, it was impossible to identify the vehicle types. Columns of smoke marked a nearby engagement, and islands of fire soon developed into an archipelago along the trace of the main road.
“Five-Eight. I have you visual,” the forward air controller called. “Decrease speed.”
Like hell, Sobelev thought.
“Marking own troops with green flares,” the controller said, rushing the words. “Hit the far treeline, hit the treeline.”
Just in front of his aircraft, Sobelev caught sight of the flares arching into the sky above billows of black smoke.
“Visual on your markers. Here we go.”
Sobelev corrected slightly on the flares and searched beyond the smoke for the designated treeline in the last quick seconds. He thought he had it, hoping it was the correct one. Terrain features rushed up so fast he could not see any enemy vehicles at all. He saw nothing but a fringe of trees.
He half heard the controller verifying that he was on the correct heading as he cast off his ordnance. Ground-attack aircraft had stopped doing initial orientation passes after the first day of the war.
Behind his tail section, the entire planet seemed to shake. The aircraft shimmied, and Sobelev prayed that it would just hold together and do what his fingers ordered it to do. He came out in a hard turn, heading back toward home.
Kill them, until they kill me, he told himself, sweating and shaking so badly that he could hardly guide the aircraft. Kill them, until they kill me… kill them…
The new mission startled Bezarin. He had expected to be withdrawn into a reconstitution area where his scattered unit could be reassembled and his tanks could be repaired and rearmed. But the orders, delivered by a staff officer in a hurry, were to dig in and prepare to defend the western bank bridgehead against an armored assault.
It made no sense to Bezarin. Certainly, the smothered thudding of a great battle had arisen in the distance. But it was inconceivable to him that the torrent of Soviet armor that had been pouring across the river since midnight could possibly be driven back to depend on his handful of battered tanks.
An engineer vehicle appeared to prepare defilade positions for his unit. Bezarin almost laughed. He was very much in favor of protected fighting positions, but he did not think they would be of much use unless he received some ammunition. In the light of day, his remaining tanks looked like wrecks that would hardly be accepted by a vehicle cannibalization point. Reactive armor had blown or torn away, and the thinner plates of metal twisted up to scratch the air. Little remained of the equipment racks and stowage boxes, and the snorkels, useless in the best of times, were hopelessly perforated by shell fragments. Bezarin roused his men and forced them to perform basic maintenance chores. He believed that, with ammunition and a bit more fuel, his unit could give a good account of itself in an emergency. But it seemed absurd to expect his tiny force to hold back any threat that could devour the unscathed new-model tanks that had passed in such great n
umbers to the west.
The bridgehead had taken on the character of a small military city. Air-defense systems crowned the surrounding hills. Supplementary bridges lay in the Weser at intervals of several hundred meters, emplaced to augment the highway bridge or replace it, should enemy aircraft finally succeed in their efforts to drop the prize span in the water. The canvas of administrative entities had already begun to appear, although many organizations preferred to exploit buildings on the edge of the smoldering town. Bad Oeynhausen was quickly turning into a forward command and control center. On the eastern bank, artillery batteries poked deadly fingers into the sky. And in the midst of it all, the traffic controllers from the commandant’s service waved their arms and shouted and argued, straining to sort out competing priorities on the roads.
Probably, Bezarin figured, his orders simply reflected caution. A systematic response to an enemy counterattack, aimed at preventing any Soviet forces from suffering the sort of surprise his tanks had inflicted on the enemy the day before. He set his face into his “I’m in command here” expression and marched down among his vehicles, guiding the efforts of the big engineer tractor and refining individual zones of fire. He felt a profound surge of pride in his dirty, knocked-about tanks and in the new brotherhood of men who crewed them. Come what may, they would do their duty.
Still, Bezarin thought, it would have been nice to have a bit of ammunition.
Shilko felt as though he had stumbled into a cache of hidden treasures, like the hero in a folk tale. Splendid farm instruments crowded the barn, a harrow and a shining plow, a seeder and a hay mower of a new type with which Shilko was not familiar. And this wonderful assortment of devices for bringing life out of the earth apparently belonged to one private farmer here in West Germany. It did not seem fair. Shilko thought about how such tools would ease the tasks of his little agricultural collective back in garrison, and how much more they could produce. He reveled in the mingled smells of hay and dust, breathing lustily until it made him sneeze. In his heart, he grudgingly suspected that the Germans did, indeed, have superior talents or values in some respects. He sat on a bale of hay, leaning over his belly to rest his elbows on his knees. He envied the absent German farmer. He envied all of the farmers of the world, and it came to him that he had wasted his life.
Shilko rarely wandered off by himself, always preferring the crowding and company of his battalion officers, his second family, unless he needed to rest or faced a particularly unpleasant writing task. He loved to be surrounded by other men. Refusing to be suspicious — sensible, his wife called it — he warmed to every man who gave him the opportunity. There would be plenty of time to spend alone in the grave. Life was meant to be enjoyed in the company of other human beings.
But now, west of the Weser River, perhaps a day’s journey from the fabled Rhine, riding the currents of victory, Shilko’s unruly thoughts had led him off for a few moments of solitude. He was not a man given to serious reflection, yet it seemed there were so many things that needed to be mulled over. Sitting in the rich twilight of the barn, with brilliant rays of light slicing through the amber gloom, he tried to sort things out. But he could not quite get a grip on any single train of thought. He wondered if he had ever understood anything about the world at all, or if he had merely gone through his life in a waking sleep. Whenever he thought of the face of the suffocating lieutenant, it seemed to him that that single moment of helplessness had revealed to him the failure of his entire life. Men were dying by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. But only the pathetic death of his lieutenant had made it real for him.
His guns had done well, and he credited Romilinsky with much of that. His staff had been a wonderful support to him, a team. And his soldiers fought well. Shilko was determined to do his best by them, to fully shoulder his responsibility. But sitting in this German barn, surrounded by these life-giving tools made of the same steel as his precious guns, Shilko felt that all he really wanted to do was to grow things, to be a farmer, on whatever terms were offered. Surely, the peasant generations from which he had come had learned to hate war the hard way, just as they naturally loved the green shoots bursting up through the holy soil.
Perhaps, he thought, Pasha, his son, could help him. Perhaps the Party needed someone to help in the renewed agricultural effort. Surely the Party could make use of his talents, especially since he expected so little in return. A chance to muddy his boots in peace.
Shilko rose to return to his place of duty, accepting the inevitable. The control post had been erected in the farm courtyard, with Shilko barking like a friendly old dog to insure that his men did no unnecessary damage to the place. No sooner had the post gone operational than the airwaves crowded with reports of a German attempt at a breakout to their rear, and a linkup operation on the southern flank, with rumors of a massive American counterattack down in the Third Shock Army sector. In the haste of the moment, no one had bothered to send Shilko missions for his guns. But he knew that the missions would come when the time was right. He had turned over control to Romilinsky and strolled off. His men were enraptured by the war, intoxicated by victory. Even with the reports of trouble across the front, his men remained full of confidence. Shilko wondered why, after all of his years of preparation for this, he could not share their enthusiasm any longer. He laid his hand on the snout of a compact green tractor, petting it as though it were a draft animal. Reluctantly, he took his leave of the quiet stable of machines.
He wandered across the farmyard, past a low barn where imprisoned pigs snorted and stirred. The control post boiled with activity. Radios crackled, and grimy hands scrawled on clean sheets of paper. The chief of communications whined that every time he laid in wire to the guns, some bastards knocked it down or drove over it. Romilinsky worked at the situation map with the care of a surgeon. Here and there, men ate as they worked, making the most of the stores of food discovered in the farmhouse. The senior duty sergeant brought Shilko his tea.
“Any change?” Shilko asked Romilinsky.
The captain shook his head. “The situation is extremely confused. The number of missions assigned to the divisional guns remains low, but the regimental guns are firing up everything they have. It’s hot up front. There’s a great deal of intermingling of forces. I’m afraid the target acquisition program isn’t working very well.”
The sounds of battle were clearly audible from behind a low range of hills. But the valley in which the battalion had been ordered to halt and deploy remained at peace. Shilko hoped that the war would not come here to destroy the fine machines in the barn or the animals, or any of the other manifestations of the absent farmer’s good husbandry.
“Forward progress of the Americans?”
“The reporting from the flanking units is intermittent. I’ve been monitoring the division net,” Romilinsky said, eyebrows lowering in concern. “It sounds like a mess down south. But right now I’m more worried about the Germans up here. We even seem to have Dutch units counterattacking. Everybody thought they were knocked out of the war.”
“Desperation,” Shilko said matter-of-factly. “They’re fighting for their homes. It must be a terrible thing to be on the other side just now.”
Romilinsky looked at him in surprise. Then the crisp staff officer recovered, ignoring his commander’s musings. “All of our elements are in position. A total of eight operational guns, and we’re working to get Davidov’s number-three gun back up. Seems to be a hydraulic problem. And still no resupply of ammunition. But we have enough rounds left to make it hot for somebody, Comrade Commander.”
“And everyone is positioned so that they can engage in direct fire? If it should come to that?” The muddled reports on the artillery command net made it clear that it was time to expect the unexpected. Still, the idea of attempting to employ his heavy guns in a direct-fire competition with enemy tanks or infantry fighting vehicles seemed absurd and wasteful to him. Poor husbandry. But Shilko was, at bottom, a very stubborn man, and no mat
ter what his personal feelings, he would fight to the last gun against any attacker.
“We’re positioned to sweep the main arteries with direct fire,” Romilinsky said. “Hopefully, we’ll have a bit of warning.”
“Just be ready. I don’t want to lose a single man because we were unprepared.”
The big dull thumps in the distance sounded like a clan of giants beating the earth with clubs. The volume had increased noticeably, reaching Shilko’s ruined ears. Perhaps, he thought, the war would come to them after all. He tried to cheer himself by telling himself that his ears were so bad they played tricks, and that he was a very tired man, incapable of judging the situation with perfect objectivity.
“I want everyone in a fighting position,” Shilko said. “Every last cook. We’ve come too far to throw away success.”
Romilinsky moved sharply to act on the order. Shilko had decided that, whenever the war ended, he would recommend Romilinsky for honors and early promotion. And he intended to quietly do everything he could to secure the captain a better assignment where he would have more scope for advancement. Romilinsky deserved that.
Shilko listened intently to the hammering in the distance. Discontented, he put down his heavily sweetened cup of tea and stepped back outside, trying to hear more clearly. The traffic noise had diminished significantly, since all units had been ordered off the roads and into hasty defensive positions. The roads had been cleared for tank reserves.
But no tanks passed at the moment, and the area around the farmyard seemed deceptively peaceful, a rustic paradise. The signs of war were most obvious in the sky, where laces of jet exhaust adorned the blueness. Shilko tried to judge the distance to the nearest fighting by the reverberation of far-off guns, coaxing his ears to respond to his desires. He realized that his ancestors must have felt the same way, listening for hoofbeats or shots, or for the terrifying shouts that signaled the approach of a raid or an invading army, too late for any response but submission and hope that the massacre would not be complete, that enough food could be saved to feed the survivors through the winter and enough seed preserved to plant again in the spring.