Last Citadel wwi-3

by David L. Robbins

  Now they were four against the four German tanks. Dimitri sent a curse trailing after the rising Stuka on behalf of friendly Andrei, and in answer to his damnation a Sturmovik fighter swooped into the German’s route. The two planes gnarled in the air, fighting to the death on equal terms. Dimitri wanted to watch the Stuka get his desserts but the two planes left his vision. He returned his attention to the wreckage of the barn. The four Mark IVs had not issued a shot. Dimitri drove the General in fast behind the barn, Valentin’s boot told him to stop there. Valya flung open his hatch and stood. The three remaining tanks in their squad pulled up behind him.

  Valentin leaped out, was gone for thirty seconds, then spilled back into his hatch, snapping his helmet into the intercom and kneeling low. He called out the orders to his crew over the idling General’s rattling hum.

  ‘We’re going to go first, Slobadov’s tank will be right behind us. As soon as we clear the barn, Kolyakin and Medvedenko are going to emerge going the other direction. We’re going to split their attention four ways, right and left. Papa, I need speed. This close to the Germans, if we run straight sideways to them, we’ll need to make it hard for them to keep us in their sights. Once we’ve gone far enough, you hit the brakes. I’ll take as many shots as I can, then you get us back up that hill.’

  This was a dangerous tactic. Running sideways to the Germans exposed the T-34’s tracks and its weakest armor, the side plating. Every tank is designed to have its thickest armor in the front. But this sideways run also would get Valentin and Pasha at an angle to the Mark IVs, at their own vulnerable sides.

  It was going to come down to who was better in his range-finder, and who was fastest on the trigger.

  Dimitri closed his hatch. He reached up to crack his fist on Pasha’s boot.

  ‘Pasha, kiss that first shell and name it Katya for me.’

  ‘Sure, Dima.’

  Dimitri caught Valentin looking at his loader, assessing the boy coldly, as if Pasha were metal, and Valya wondered only if the loader might break down under stress. Valentin saw whatever he needed, then returned to his seat. Pasha smiled down at Dimitri, assuring the old man he would not break, then got into his place, too. Sasha swung himself back to his machine-gun.

  Above Dimitri’s head, the turret whined and pivoted. Valentin and Pasha walked around the rubber matting to stay behind the swinging gun. Valentin brought the cannon around to the right, past ninety degrees, where he thought he’d be taking his shot once the General galloped out of cover.

  ‘AP,’ Valentin ordered. Pasha hefted an armor-piercing shell. Dimitri heard the smack of his lips in the intercom.

  ‘Go get him, Katya,’ the boy said to the round before slamming it into the breech.

  ‘Sasha?’ Valentin called.

  The machine-gunner answered, turning away from his gun portal. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s your mother’s name?’

  Sasha grinned at Dimitri, as though telling the old driver that his, their sergeant, wasn’t so bad, see? He was a good hetman after all.’

  ‘Tamara.’

  ‘That’s our second shell, then. Ready? Papa?’

  Dimitri told himself he was rarely ready for the things his son displayed. But there wasn’t time to ruminate over it right now. If they died together in the next minute, he could wrestle Valya all the way to heaven until the boy made sense to him. But now…

  ‘Ready. Good luck, my boys.’

  Valentin paused, like the moment before horse and rider were cut loose in the village war games. Saber raised, melons strung from trees…

  ‘Go!’

  Dimitri popped the clutch and hit the accelerator, the goosed tank spun up a cloud and took off. Dimitri was in second gear even before the General cleared the barn walls. Over the rumble of bounding steel Dimitri heard a ringing report; one of the Mark IVs had taken a potshot at them when their nose appeared around the building. The German missed, Dimitri’s revved-up General was too quick. But that was only for the first round, they were certainly loading another, and there were three other enemy tanks.

  Now Valentin fired. The General heeled over onto the left track from the concussion of the blast, with the cannon fully sideways to the chassis and the treads bumping over corn rows. Jolted, Dimitri kept his hands and feet pressing more speed out of his machine, shifting into third gear even before the General could get both tracks back on the ground. Pasha fumbled the second AP shell, Dimitri heard it clang on the floor, but the boy scooped it up and got it into the breech in time. In his ear, Valentin urged, ‘Go, go, go…’

  Dimitri wound the T-34 as far as he dared take the transmission. He watched the rpm’s shoot past the point where he should have shifted, he begged the General to mind him and hold a moment more with the building speed. His prayers were lost in the rising whine of the engine. He waited, then stamped on the clutch, threw the gearshift into fourth, and the General heaved forward, relieved and running for all it was worth. He looked at nothing, not through his small slit, not into his periscope, just at the jumping green walls around him; he reached out with his senses five hundred meters to his right, across the river, to the four German tank commanders, wishing them sudden blindness and palsy.

  Then Valentin yelled, ‘Now!’

  Dimitri’s foot smashed on the brake. He downshifted as fast as he ever had any machine in his life, in his heart a horse reared its head at the suddenness of the pull on the bit but dug in its hooves, heeding its rider. Dimitri leaned back in the saddle and pulled harder, the horse came still, the grinding tracks of the T-34 settled and dust flowed over them. They were motionless and in the open, broadside and six hundred meters from four enemy tanks.

  Dimitri’s pulse pounded in the single second before Valentin moved. He looked over his shoulder to watch his son. The boy laid his left foot on the firing pedal, the turret slipped a few degrees more to the right and Valentin hopped on the other boot to keep up with the rotating cannon. His eyes were locked in to his periscope. Pasha stood beside the loaded breech, another shell cradled in his arms. A further second pounded inside the tank as though it had come from a blow against the armor. Valentin’s hand turned the elevation wheel.

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘come on…’

  Dimitri wanted to reach his hand up and push down the firing lever himself. Christ, boy! he thought, shoot! We’re not measuring them for a new fucking suit, we’re trying to kill them! Shoot!

  Valentin’s boot toed the firing pedal: The cannon erupted. The report was thunderous, the breech shot back and the smoking casing flipped out, but before it could bounce twice Pasha had the next round in the big gun and Valentin made a small adjustment to the elevation. He toed the pedal again and the tank rocked, another immense bang shook the tank and the breech spit another shell. The compartment stank with the gases but Dimitri had no time to wrinkle his nose, he had to dodge his face away from Valentin’s oncoming boot, the signal to get the General running, and fast.

  Dimitri worked the levers and gears to the sound of Pasha and Sasha shouting, ‘Go, go, Dima, come on! Go!’ Bounding away, Valentin traversed the turret around to face front again, for better balance and speed.

  ‘Well?’ shouted Dimitri. ‘Well?’

  Valentin made no answer for a few moments. Dimitri guessed he was turning his periscope back to the Mark IVs, to read the damage while speeding away.

  ‘Two Mark IVs burning. One smoking. One missed.’

  ‘What about our tanks?’

  ‘Medvedenko,’ Valentin said. ‘Disabled. The crew got out.’

  Dimitri drove hard, swerving up the hill, but he hadn’t gotten out of second gear yet. His shoulders and arms ached from grappling the levers.

  ‘What?’ he asked the frowning face of Sasha.

  ‘We go back. Right? They’re alive.’

  Dimitri had been too busy flailing the tank back up the hill to consider this.

  ‘No,’ answered Valentin over the intercom. ‘We do not go back.’

  ‘B
ut…’

  ‘I’m not risking three tanks to rescue four men, Private. They’ll have to fight where they are.’

  ‘You said so, Dima.’ Sasha addressed Dimitri now. ‘You said a Cossack will die for someone in his clan.’

  Dimitri grinned at Sasha, even through his mounting fatigue. The General swung and accelerated up the hill.

  ‘Yes. I did say that.’

  Pasha piped up from his loader’s position. ‘They’re in our clan, Sergeant. They’re tankers, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dimitri answered before his Soviet son could.

  ‘And we’re the Cossacks,’ Sasha implored.

  We’re the special ones, Sasha was saying. This freckled boy understood.

  Dimitri spoke up. His voice shook with the effort in his hands maneuvering the tank. He’d brought them halfway back to their lines.

  ‘Valya. We vote to go back.’

  Valentin spluttered in Dimitri’s earphones. ‘You… you don’t vote! I said no.’

  Dimitri whipped the tank to the right, to circle back down the hill. Sasha held on while the tank jolted, shaking a skinny, childish fist at Dimitri in approval. Dimitri aimed the T-34 down the hill, grabbed the gear knob to shift into third, then froze. The blunt barrel of a pistol appeared beside him, in Valentin’s hand.

  Dimitri gazed at the gun. He thought, Well, let’s see if the little shit is man enough to make it stick.

  He flung the gearshift into third. The General plunged ahead. Dimitri posted a stupid grin on his face.

  ‘Yes, Valya, I see it! It’s a lovely pistol, but I don’t think we’re going to need it just yet. Put it away and get your big gun ready!’

  The pistol hung in front of Dimitri’s face for another second, then withdrew. Dimitri shook his head in a small, rueful rattle at the shame of this.

  The tank lumbered into the air, bounding off the lip of a crater, then crashed down and kept running. Everyone jarred. Dimitri knocked his padded head and wondered if this constant banging of his noggin was going to make him silly one day when he got old. He balled a fist, hollered, ‘Faster, General!’ and laughed. Death was everywhere, in the Germans’ waiting tanks, in his son’s mean cowardice, in the sky with its stinking Stukas. And Dima Berko was alive in the middle of all of it, shaking his fist and howling.

  ‘Are the other three still with us?’ Pasha asked.

  Dimitri didn’t know. He had to keep his eyes forward to get back down to the river and the barn. Valentin was the squad leader, and General Platov was the lead tank. The others were still under Valya’s orders. They’d be to the rear. Valentin would have to find them through his rotating periscope.

  ‘Yes,’ Valentin answered. ‘All three.’ Reluctance stained his voice. Dimitri considered: His son was no coward. No, the boy was a Communist. Three tanks for three men. Valya was right – it was a rotten risk – and he was so wrong.

  Two hundred meters away, smoke curled from both sides of the river. The burning Mark IVs were in full flaming bloom, their fuel and ammo had been set off. Gray trails billowed from the engine compartment of the third tank but it was rolling. The fourth patrolled back and forth along the riverbank. To the right of the barn, Medvedenko’s T-34 was ruined, its left-hand tread shot off and lying in pieces behind it. The tank smoldered, black smoke boiled out of the open hatches. One of the remaining Mark IVs had put another round into the Red tank to be certain it would not be rescued and repaired later. Dimitri drew closer. At one hundred meters, flinging the General to and fro to keep the German tanks from drawing a bead on him, he saw Medvedenko’s crew, hunkered behind their blazing T-34. Only two men squatted, waving at Dimitri’s onrushing tank. Two others lay on the ground.

  ‘They’ve got wounded,’ Dimitri called into the intercom.

  A burst of small-arms fire from across the river tattooed the glacis plate around his hatch door, tang-ting-tang. Dimitri angled the General to run alongside the bank. His wrists ached, the veins in his forearms were as swollen as the river. At top speed he brought the T-34 between the downed tankers and the river, then shut down his pace, broadside to the still functioning and dangerous twin Mark IVs. In the turret, Valentin was already acquiring a target, mincing in his small circle with the traversing gun. Pasha on his knees raked in his racks for shells. Dimitri shot a glance at Sasha.

  ‘Go.’

  The boy did not hesitate. He reached down between his legs and yanked the handle to the escape hatch. The door lifted and the thin lad slithered out between the treads, then pulled shut the hatch. Close by the General, a report boomed. One of the T-34s in their squad had gotten off the first shot. Dimitri couldn’t see the result. In the blue steppe sky, white scrawls displayed the ferocity of the air battle taking place. Below, for miles running west along the river, every meter of the battlefield bore guns and men exchanging fire, wisps of smoke showed where triggers were pulled, shells struck, lives were taken. Here, almost privately on this small plot of cornfield and river beside a shambled barn, the two Mark IVs and three T-34s defined the war, a rescue and a fight to stop it.

  One of the T-34s pulled ahead of the General, Kolyakin angling for a better shot at the roaming Mark IVs across the river. Dimitri kept his own tank still, shielding Sasha while he helped Medvedenko’s crew climb on the Generals back with their wounded. Valentin poked his head out of his hatch to check on the progress of the scrambling men and boys. Dimitri heard him holler down at them, ‘Get on, get on!’ The turret swiveled again, Pasha shoved in another shell, Valentin toed the firing pedal and the tank recoiled. Something across the river took the hit, Dimitri heard a terrific metal din.

  ‘They’re on,’ Valya yelled. ‘Go! Get out of here!’

  Dimitri floored the gas. Kolyakin’s T-34 in front of him began to roll out of his way. Then, with a wrenching clang, Kolyakin’s tank was hit so hard it reared over, almost flipping on its side. The turret ripped off the tank’s body, a ball of fire gushed from the beheaded chassis. The noise was horrific, a gutting. Kolyakin’s turret rolled like a boulder behind his devastated tank, spewing flames and black fumes. Dimitri was stunned in the handful of seconds this obliteration played out in his hatchway. He muttered to himself, ‘Tiger.’

  Valentin screamed it. ‘Tiger!’

  That jolted Dimitri into action. He rammed on the brake, shifted the General into reverse. He swung his tail around fast, putting the rising hill behind him now, and laid on every bit of backward speed the tank could give him.

  He faced the Tiger on the far shore. The thing was mammoth, the first heavy German tank Dimitri had ever seen. Its main gun was so long the tank seemed to want to tip forward onto it. The Tiger was boxy, its armor not slanted like the Soviet tanks. But it looked solid, terrible and lethal.

  Dimitri ran backward up the hill, keeping his thick frontal armor facing the Tiger, and presenting the T-34’s smallest profile as a target, a broad triangle. Valentin shouted to Pasha, ‘AP! Now!’ The boy must have already had one of the armor-piercing shells in his hands because the breech was loaded in an instant. Dimitri kept his foot smashed on the accelerator. Anyone behind him had better fend for themselves, he would not see them to dodge. His eyes were fixed on the Tiger, needing to anticipate the movements of the huge 88 mm cannon to stay out of its lethal path. He thrashed the tank left and right, and hoped Sasha and Medvedenko’s crew were still clinging to the General’s deck handles. To give them a smooth ride right now would kill them all.

  Valentin managed to rotate the General’s turret around to face the Tiger. The other two tanks in their squadron were tearing away from the riverbank and the scorching pyre of Kolyakin’s tank. The Tiger opted for the easiest of his three Russian targets. Slobadov made a wide, circular turn, choosing speed over evasion. The Tiger let go one round, a fountain of dirt rose at Slobadov’s rear. A perfect smoke ring spit out of the big German gun. The Tiger adjusted its aim to Slobadov’s flight. The turret waited, drawing the proper lead. Slobadov wasn’t swerving enough, Dimitri knew, and
the Tiger’s gun yowled. The big tank barely rocked with the report, the thing was so immense. Slobadov’s tank was hit in the rightside chassis, above the wheels, by an armor-piercing round. No flames or explosion blew from this dead T-34. The tank ran another twenty meters, swung toward Dimitri’s retreating window, then stopped. A hole the size of a bread loaf gaped in the armor; Dimitri knew there was little left inside the tank that would resemble a man. The Tiger puffed out another perfect smoke ring, some kind of infernal hallmark.

  The Tiger’s turret paused, still aimed several degrees away from them. It appeared to be admiring its kill. Dimitri had propelled the General eight hundred meters from the river. In another minute, they’d be far enough out of range to turn around and run up the hill in forward gears, faster to safety. He hit the brake.

  ‘Take a shot, Valya.’

  His son was ready. The T-34’s turret whirred left, the gun was depressed a few degrees to the riverbank below. The one surviving Mark IV had moved behind the Tiger, like a handmaiden to the hulking queen.

  Valya fired. The General shivered behind the shell. The blast kicked up a dust cloud, and Dimitri hit the gas again, not waiting for the roiled dirt to settle. Backing away, he caught a glimpse of the Tiger. It stood impassive, haze drifting off its face where the AP shell struck, unhurt and swinging its turret straight toward Dimitri.