The Russian soldiers watching began to clap and yell, as well. Whether their demonstration was to support Venya or make fun of him was known only to them.
As he tried to get his footing on the sloped foredeck, the strap of Venya’s submachine gun slipped from his shoulder and the weapon clattered off the tank and down to the ground. GIs and Russians alike ducked for cover. Miraculously, despite bouncing off the hull on the way down, the weapon didn’t discharge.
The dropped submachine gun ignited a new round of clapping and cheering. But this time there was no doubt that everyone—GI and Russian alike—was mocking the hapless Venya.
The final insult was when a female Russian soldier picked up Venya’s weapon, twirled it with a skillful flourish as if on a drill team, and then did the first playful taunt: she pretended to be handing him the gun only to snatch it back as he grabbed for it.
The crowd roared its approval as the Ivana took a bow.
She offered the weapon to Venya again, only to snatch it back a second time.
Then she did it once more. But before she could take the bow, Venya leapt on her, knocking her to the ground. He seized his weapon and scrambled back onto Eight Ball’s foredeck.
When the Ivana rose to her feet, she was no longer the joker she’d been just a moment ago. There was blood in her eyes now. She leveled her submachine gun at Venya. Few doubted she was about to pull the trigger.
But before she could, a Russian lieutenant stepped forward, barking something at her. The Ivana froze in place. The lieutenant snatched the weapon from her hands.
His lips against her ear, he said, “Let’s just kill Germans with this thing, Comrade Private.”
Then he pulled her into the anonymity of the crowd, which turned its attention back to razzing Venya’s driving abilities.
He blurted loudly that it wasn’t his fault but the fault of this piece-of-shit American machine. The GIs, of course, had no idea what he’d said, but the Russians began to laugh at their comrade all the louder.
So the GIs laughed louder, too.
And then Venya snapped.
Pointing his submachine gun down through the driver’s hatch, he held down the trigger, intent on emptying the entire seventy-round drum of ammunition into the belly of the steel beast. His wounded ego needed to teach this American abomination a lesson she would never forget.
But she was, after all, made of steel. Some of his bullets did succeed in shattering the gauges on her instrument panel. Some even destroyed a few of the switches and punched holes in the thin sheet metal of the panel itself.
But the rest either ricocheted off stubborn metal or splattered on contact, spraying whole bullets and sizzling metal fragments around Eight Ball’s interior.
At the weapon’s blistering rate of fire—one thousand rounds per minute—it could empty its drum in less than five seconds. It took nearly half that time for Sean’s crew to overcome their shock at what was happening.
They flew into action. The three men in the turret—Sean, Fabiano, and Lorenzo, the loader, evacuated through the turret hatches as if they were on springs.
In the bow, Bagdasarian, the assistant driver, tried to jump through his hatch but took a rebounding bullet in the thigh. His leg buckled and he fell back into his seat, startled but not yet feeling the pain of being shot.
Kowalski, kneeling on the hull deck near where Venya was standing, pulled his .45 and shot the Russian dead.
Played out on the elevated stage of Eight Ball’s deck, the crowd could see everything. It held its collective breath as the scene unfolded, at first all smoke and the frightful noise of gunfire, and then nothing but an abrupt and equally frightful silence.
Venya’s body was slumped over the open hatch. Kowalski looked stunned. He let the pistol slip from his hand as if he no longer wanted it.
Or maybe his subconscious mind told him that losing the weapon would free him from the calamity he’d just unleashed.
As if some invisible hand was culling them into opponents on a skirmish line, the crowd of soldiers around the tank began to separate into two distinct mobs. One mob would be GIs who thought the Ivan got what he deserved for having the gall to shoot up one of their tanks. The other would be Soviet soldiers who’d just watched one of their own shot down by an American.
Both mobs were armed to the teeth, sitting on a powder keg whose fuse was already lit. If they hadn’t been intermixed at first, bullets might have been flying already.
But now they were two distinct camps, the GIs on one side of the street, the Soviets on the other.
Were shots to ring out—and there seemed no doubt they would ring out any moment—it wouldn’t be a proper battle. It would be a gang fight with automatic weapons few would survive.
But the first shots were not from either mob; they came from the .50-caliber machine gun on top of Eight Ball’s turret. Sean fired a short burst over their heads, hoping the old adage just the noise of a fifty cal will scare you to death was not just barroom wisdom.
But the burst had the desired effect. Soldiers on both sides froze in place. Faces which just a moment ago were masks of hate were now fearfully gazing up at this big sergeant behind the smoking gun that could turn them all inside out.
American and Soviet officers appeared out of nowhere and formed a buffer between the warring camps. Sean directed some GIs next to the tank to remove the Ivan draped over the driver’s hatch—with respect and dignity—and turn him over to the Soviet officers.
He ordered a few other GIs to take the wounded Bagdasarian to the aid station.
Then he told Fabiano, “Get Kowalski the fuck out of here, on the double.”
“Where the hell should I take him, Sarge?”
“Bring him to the battalion CP. Tell Colonel Abrams what just happened. He’ll know what to do.”
“Okay,” Fabiano replied, “but do you know your boot’s all wet?”
It took Sean a moment to realize it was wet with blood. His blood. He’d taken a projectile from Venya’s onslaught in his ankle. Maybe it had been a bullet, maybe a fragment. He hadn’t realized it happened and felt nothing from the wound until that moment.
“Shit,” he muttered as awareness brought the hot sting of torn flesh with it.
The center of Perg—where the dividing line between the two forces had been drawn on paper and then promptly ignored—became a militarized border within minutes. Tanks blocked the streets on both sides of the line. Fences of concertina wire were quickly strung along the entire boundary, punctuated at regular intervals by sandbagged machine gun emplacements.
The party was over. Americans and Soviets were no longer interested in being friends. They were enemies now, poised to fight each other.
All it would take for that fight to begin was one more spark.
The GIs were still calling it Purgatory, but it wasn’t just a game with words anymore. Now that the battle lines had been drawn with the Russians, they felt convinced that they were truly between Heaven and Hell…
But probably a lot closer to Hell.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tommy and his team sat in that locked room for far longer than the promised hour. Nearly four hours elapsed before the door unlocked once again, and two armed guards motioned them to their feet. They were marched out of the building, into the nighttime darkness on the street that ran behind Schwechat’s hangars.
There were plenty of vehicles on the street, any one of which could’ve taken them to freedom. But they weren’t ushered to any of them. Instead, they were led on foot to another building. Once inside, there was no doubt what its function was: a jail.
They were marshaled into one cell, a tiny basement space with grimy concrete walls, a barred window high off the floor, and a solid steel door with a slot near the floor and its own barred window. Like that first holding room, it was lit with one dim light bulb. There was a sink with a faucet that didn’t work, and several large, empty jars with lids tucked into a corner.
Pointin
g to the jars, McNulty said, “I guess those are the faculties, huh?”
“You mean facilities?” Tommy asked.
“The shitter. That’s what I mean.”
“I’m afraid so, gents,” Hammersmith said. “This looks like a right lovely Soviet prison, complete with slop jars.”
J.P. Lambert paced the cell, tapping the walls, pulling on the door and window bars as if escape from this concrete and steel chamber was actually in the realm of possibilities. Every few steps, he’d mutter, Lying Russian bastards. Sometimes he said it in English, sometimes in French.
Adam Mischenko was the most distraught of the group, agonizing whether his mastery of the Russian language—had he actually been able to exercise that mastery in their last meeting with General Kozlovsky—would have made any difference. Perhaps instead of being prisoners, he could have made them all free men.
But he’d heard everything Sonia had said in Russian, how conciliatory she’d made it sound for the general. He had to admit that it was doubtful he could’ve done any better. The general had made up his mind long before he’d entered that room.
“I gotta confess,” McNulty said, “that I’m having a little trouble trying to reprehend what these Russian bastards are up to.”
Tommy mouthed the word comprehend for a puzzled Hammersmith, who was almost willing to take the sergeant’s original statement at face value.
McNulty continued, “First, they tell us we’ll get bussed back to our lines in a fucking hour. Well, it’s way past that time now, and unless this hole in the ground is our lines, they’re blowing smoke up our asses.”
Tommy replied, “You remember what I told you about the Russians, Sarge? How no can mean yes…”
“Yeah, I remember. And yes don’t mean jack shit.”
Lambert pointed an accusing finger at Hammersmith. “It’s all Oliver’s fault,” the Frenchman said. “They know he’s spying…that he’s got us spying, too. They saw him writing in that notebook of his all the time. And where’s that notebook now, Oliver?”
Sheepishly, Hammersmith replied. “They found it…and took it.”
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” Tommy said. “A fucking notebook? Didn’t I tell you not to write anything down? When were you planning to tell me about this, Ollie?”
“It happened when you were flying that last mission. There was no chance.”
“No chance? Are you shitting me or what? We’ve been alone together in one fucking room or another all damn day. There was plenty of chance…and all the days before that, too.”
“Look at it this way,” Hammersmith said. “If they’d wanted to kill us, they would have done it already.”
Tommy’s jaundiced reply: “You’re sure about that, are you?”
All night, they tried not to use the slop jars. But one by one, each of the five men in the cell found it unavoidable. By dawn, the odor had become overpowering. Though ravenous, none of them could even look at the meager breakfast of gruel and stale bread pushed through the slot in the cell door.
It was 0800 by their watches when the door suddenly opened. Sonia Alexiev was standing outside with three male soldiers armed with submachine guns. When she spoke, she had that same imperious tone as General Kozlovsky. They had a hard time believing this was the same Sonia who’d once befriended them.
“These Comrade Soldiers are taking you back to the American lines,” she said, pointing at the three well-armed males. “You will step from the cell one at a time now.”
Tommy went first. The moment he passed through the doorway, his hands were bound in front of him with coarse rope. The rest followed in turn and were tied up in the same manner.
“Come this way,” Sonia beckoned them.
They followed her up the stairs and out of the building, into the bright sunlight of a new day. A vehicle was waiting, its engine idling. It was an American three-quarter-ton utility truck, another of the many lend-lease vehicles in the Soviet inventory.
Two of the guards climbed into the cab. The third stood by the tailgate, waiting for Tommy’s team to climb to the bench seats that lined both sides of the cargo bed. Sonia held Tommy back as the other four boarded the truck. She whispered to him, “Under the right-hand bench, in the forward corner, are two pistols.” Suddenly, she seemed like the same friendly Sonia to whom he’d grown accustomed. “One of them is yours,” she added.
“What’s the other one?” he asked.
“It’s a Russian Tokarev.” Then she added, “It is mine.”
“Wait a minute, Sonia. How are you going to explain losing a pistol?”
“I don’t have to explain anything,” she replied. With a coquettish smile, she added, “Did you forget I know the general very well?”
When it was Tommy’s turn to get into the truck, Sonia whispered just one more thing: “Stay alert, Captain Moon. Very alert.”
The grave look that suddenly came over her face told him exactly what the warning meant.
The MP captain standing in Colonel Abrams’ CP had that officious way of speaking so common to those who practiced a mindless adherence to Army regulations not tempered by the lessons of combat. Abrams heard what the captain had to say. Then he made him repeat it. The captain, now flustered, got halfway through his speech again before Abrams finally cut him off.
“You can take this back to your provost marshal at Corps, Captain,” the colonel said. “No one—I repeat, no one—from my command is going to face some kangaroo court accused of murdering a Russian soldier.”
“Sorry, sir, but my orders are to bring the offending American soldier to Corps HQ for trial.” He motioned to the three MPs in highly polished helmet liners standing behind him, as if that show of force would actually make any hardened combat commander shake in his boots.
Abrams leaned back in his chair, his impatient eyes boring into the captain like sharp drills. “Let me put it to you this way, Captain. This battalion is my command, and I’ll decide who gets disciplined and for what. The only way that’s going to change is if my commander tells me differently. Until that happens, nobody—and I mean nobody—is going to come into my house and start stepping on my dick. But I’m here to tell you, young captain, that I really don’t think that’s going to happen at all.”
The colonel took the arrest papers—the ones that didn’t even have a name of the accused filled in yet because no one outside of 37th Tank knew that name—and tore them into shreds before the dumbfounded captain’s eyes. Then Abrams said, “Do yourself a favor, Captain. Don’t let the door hit you and your boys in the ass on your way out.”
As the MPs stomped out the door, Abrams knew he’d better get in touch with the division commander right away. Shit was going to roll downhill if it was going to roll at all, and it would be so much better if the general heard it from him first so he wasn’t blindsided. Picking up the phone, he told the switchboard operator, “Get me General Gaffey up at Division, on the double.”
The call to General Gaffey was straightforward and brief. It ended with Gaffey telling Abrams, “Thanks for the heads-up, Creighton. And yes, you did the right thing. I’ll call 3rd Army and tell them what’s going on.”
Within the hour, General Patton’s chief of staff had briefed him on the incident. On the line to 4th Armored’s HQ, Patton told Gaffey, “I concur with your actions, Hugh, as well as those of young Abrams. I told General Walker at Twenty Corps to kick his provost marshal in the ass, too. Sometimes these damn cops get their heads so far up their asses that they don’t understand they’re not in the damn chain of command, they just serve it.”
Gaffey replied, “But speaking of the chain of command, sir, what about SHAEF? Isn’t that where this whole thing started? Like it’s some big political play, with Ike trying to placate the Russians?”
“Leave Ike to me, Hugh. Hell, I’ll tell him I intend to pin a medal on that boy of mine who shot that Russian. I’ll copy General Bradley, too, so he doesn’t think I’m going over his head and get his little feelings hurt. Tha
t Red bastard got what was coming to him, shooting up one of my tanks like that.”
Then Gaffey asked, “The Russians, sir…do you really think that once we’re finished with Hitler, we’re going to be fighting them?”
“I certainly hope so, General.”
The Russian guard riding with them in the back of the truck didn’t seem to care if they spoke to each other, not as long as he had that submachine gun pointed at them. He sat at the tailgate while his prisoners huddled together on the bench seats at the front end of the cargo bed, their hands still tied. They were no farther from the guard at the tailgate than a barrel-length of his submachine gun.
Tommy, Hammersmith, and Lambert exchanged a few unflattering comments about the Russian in English and French, just to see if they could get a rise out of him, but he didn’t show a glimmer of recognition to either language. When Mischenko asked him in Russian if they could smoke, though, the guard spat out a nasty Nyet.
They settled on conversing in English so McNulty and Mischenko could get it all first-hand.
“They’re going to kill us,” Tommy said.
“How do you know that?” Hammersmith replied. He sounded both alarmed and indignant at the same time.
“She told me,” Tommy said, afraid the mention of Sonia’s name in any language would get the guard’s attention. “She told me something else, too—beneath where I’m sitting are two pistols. Believe me, they’re there. I felt them when we first got on board. Remember when I dropped my cap? Well, that was no accident.”
“How’re them pistols held up in there?” McNulty asked.
“The barrels are just wedged into the seat frame, grips facing toward us. Pull on them and out they’ll come.”
J.P. Lambert glanced through the flapping canvas curtain separating the cab from the bed. “But there are three of them…”
“And five of us,” Tommy replied. “I kind of like those odds right now, submachine guns or not.”
Our Ally, Our Enemy (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 3) Page 29