Robert Conroy

by Red Inferno: 1945: A Novel

  Within a three-quarter-mile circle from the center of the explosion, everything died.

  Outside the circle, the shock and heat destroyed structures and vehicles, started fires, and caused secondary explosions. The force took the debris it made and turned the most innocent of objects into lethal projectiles that seemed to seek out and penetrate screaming and terrified flesh. Above, the fireball turned into a churning black cloud that raised itself into the sky like a horrific, monstrous, living thing.

  Almost two miles away, Suslov had been inside his tank, shifting supplies and ammunition. He shrieked when the light brilliantly illuminated him through the open hatches. Seconds later, he felt the tank lift up on its side as the shock wave slammed into it and flung him about helplessly inside. He felt something snap in his arm. With a crash, the tank righted itself and landed back down. Suslov screamed again as his shoulder smashed against the inside of the hull.

  He waited a moment for the chaos to subside and for his breathing to become regular. What had happened? The most logical conclusion was that a bomb had landed nearby. Damn the spotters for letting a plane sneak in. And where the hell were Latsis and the others? And what on earth could be burning?

  Cautiously nursing his broken arm, Suslov took several minutes to ease himself out the hatch and down onto the ground. The sights surrounding him were appalling. Bodies were everywhere, although some were twitching and trying to move or crawl. Despite the lack of fuel, many vehicles were on fire. A number of tanks were billowing black, greasy smoke, and ammunition was exploding everywhere. Worse and most frightening, he was in the shadow of a tower of flame and smoke that seemed to have engulfed everything in that direction. He froze where he stood, afraid to move.

  “Latsis,” he finally managed to call. “Popov, Martynov, where are you?” They had been outside when the explosion occurred. He called again, finally getting a whimper of a reply. He moved as quickly as he could without jarring his arm. He found his crew just behind the tank, where what looked like Latsis was squatting on the ground, bent over two other figures.

  Latsis looked up and gestured him over. There was a great brown-and-black burn on his face, and his shirt had been torn off showing other burns as well. “We are here, comrade. Come and look at us.”

  Popov was clearly dead. A piece of wood had been driven through his skull. Young Martynov, if that was indeed him, was a horror. The skin had been burned entirely off his face and his teeth gleamed at them like a smiling horse. There were holes where his eyes should have been. Martynov kept trying to open and close his mouth as if he was trying to say something.

  “Let me have your pistol,” Latsis said, and Suslov handed it over. He placed it against Martynov’s temple and pulled the trigger. “Goodbye, my friend,” Latsis muttered. The explosion was puny in comparison with what had caused the devastation about them and no one noticed, even though there were others walking about, most of them in an apparent daze.

  “At least we don’t have to worry about Commissar Boris reporting us as malcontents,” Latsis said, waving feebly to his left. “He’s that smoking lump over there.”

  Latsis helped put Suslov’s arm in a sling, but Suslov had nothing to help care for the other man’s terrible burns. The pain must have been agonizing. Even so, Latsis made it back into the tank and tried to start it. If they could, they might be able to drive it a few miles away from this awful field of death before they ran out of fuel. They were not in luck. It would not start. The shock wave had caused too much damage. For the first time, Suslov noticed that some of the tank’s paint had bubbled from the heat.

  Latsis climbed out and shrugged. “I guess we walk.”

  Suslov looked about him. “Can we make it back to Russia?”

  They looked at the sky, which had darkened even more as what looked like rain clouds moved in. “No,” Latsis said. “And don’t even think about walking. We are much too weak. I guess we stay here and wait for our future, comrade.”

  It began to rain. The drops were dirty, filled with specks of dark matter. Latsis said he felt dizzy and vomited.

  Twenty miles to the west, Tolliver’s men had grumbled when they received the order to stay in their holes and keep their heads down for a period of almost an hour. Since the order was not accompanied by any explanation, rumors ran wild, as did a litany of complaints. The most logical rumor was that a Commie ammo dump was going to be blown and the soldiers might get hit by flying shells. The craziest was that Jesus was going to come down from heaven on a shaft of light while riding a white horse. Tolliver put his money on the ammo dump. He had long since decided that Jesus was nowhere near the front lines.

  Tolliver was in his foxhole, squatting on his haunches and facing the rear as ordered when the area was bathed with an unholy brilliance. His first thought was that the rumor about Jesus had come true. Then he realized that there had been an enormous explosion somewhere in the Russian area. He waited a few seconds and stood.

  “Unbelievable,” Tolliver muttered, and the soldiers nearby echoed him. The mushroom cloud was clearly visible as it formed and billowed on its way to the sky. Some of them actually saw the shock wave as it raced across the ground. Fortunately, by the time it hit them, it was a gust of air and virtually devoid of any power to injure. Even so, Tolliver called for a nose count to see if everyone was all right.

  One GI was injured. The young PFC had caught a blast of light from a reflection off a mirror he’d had out to help him shave.

  “I can’t see, Lieutenant.”

  Tolliver and a medic checked the man over. “Can you see anything at all?” Tolliver asked as he looked in the boy’s eyes. There was no apparent damage, but his skin did look a little pink and flushed.

  The boy blinked. “A little, sir, around the edges. But there’s a dark spot in the middle of my eye and I can’t see through it.”

  The medic bandaged the boy’s eyes and guided him back to the rear. Tolliver looked into the distance at the cloud and wondered just what kinds of hell the Russians were enduring. He had no idea what had actually caused the explosion, but he was certain that it had been a bomb and not some kind of accident or natural event like a volcano. After all, wasn’t a bomb the best reason for the order to stay heads down?

  Tolliver saw a vehicle about a mile away, in the Russian area. It looked like some kind of truck. From a distance, it seemed to move with exquisite slowness, but he realized it was going very quickly and was running all over the road as if the driver was in a panic. Or blind. Who the hell could blame him? Tolliver thought. The truck hit a rock and turned over.

  For the first time, he felt a kind of sympathy for the Russians. What the hell was going on?

  CHAPTER 30

  Lieutenant David Singer simply showed up that evening at Logan’s bunker. He looked a little pale, but had regained some lost weight and seemed otherwise healthy. He leaned his cane against the wall and grinned infectiously, like a kid who had just put something over on a teacher.

  “David,” said Logan as the others looked on, “aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital?”

  “Hospitals are for sick people. Tell me, do I look sick?”

  “Let me rephrase the question. Did the hospital release you, or did you just take off?”

  “What does it matter? I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Sergeant Bailey offered Singer a cup of coffee. “I think Lieutenant Logan is concerned because he is in so much deep shit with the captain for breaking rules that he doesn’t want to get in any deeper.”

  Singer took a swallow and made a face. “This really tastes like hell. All right, I took off and Dimitri doesn’t know I’m here. So what?”

  Logan took a deep breath. “Why, David?”

  “Guys, I wasn’t joking when I said that hospitals are for sick people. There’s a battle coming, and they don’t need me moping around and getting in the way just because I lost twenty pounds the hard way. Besides, unless I’ve missed something, I’m still an officer in this man’s
army and I am reporting for duty. And I’m not going to tell the captain. I should also be honest and tell you I’ve been thinking it may be safer right here with you guys. The hospitals are marked with red crosses, but that hasn’t stopped the Reds from shelling them.”

  “Why not tell Dimitri you’re here, sir?” asked Bailey. “You afraid he’ll send you back?”

  “Because rumor has it he’s so pissed at young Lieutenant Logan that he’d replace him with me, one arm or not. After all, I am senior to him in date of rank. Worse, there’s the possibility that Dimitri would make me stay with him so as to keep me out of trouble, and that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Okay,” said Logan resignedly, “you’re our little secret and just one more reason for Dimitri to crucify me. Now, what use can you be to us?”

  At that moment, the thundering Russian barrage began again. For a second, Singer looked like he wanted to change his mind and return to the hospital, but he quickly settled down. “Maybe I can help with the radio. If nothing else, I can praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” he answered, mimicking the song that had been popular after Pearl Harbor.

  “Hallelujah,” said Logan, and he winced as a shell landed near. “Then get on the radio and find out what the hell is happening at the outposts. And David”—he grinned evilly—“don’t drop it.”

  As darkness fell, they got word that the Russians were advancing and that there was a lot of armor headed in their direction. Shortly after, the men from the outposts snaked their way back through the trenches and tunnels, passing through on their way to the rear.

  An engineer captain was the last to appear. He was stringing wire and had a detonator, and explained that an earlier line had been cut by the Russian artillery.

  “Are all the men out, Captain?” Logan asked. He knew a lot of those people in the outposts.

  “All that’s coming out, buddy.” With that, he twisted the detonator. A second later, the earth a half mile out in front of them lifted in a shower of dirt, destroying the now abandoned outposts. “Well, that’s that. I can only hope there were some Commies in there when we blew it.”

  Logan agreed, but he also hoped there weren’t any Americans alive in that hell.

  He quickly stopped worrying about others and focused on himself and the bunker. The Russians were indeed coming. American artillery began firing back with everything they had, aiming for the roads the enemy armor had to use. There was no reason for either side to save anything for a tomorrow that might never come. American mortars soon began landing on presighted targets where the Russians had been observed. Soviet artillery picked up the pace and the explosions became deafening, with the vibrations shaking the ground and sucking the air out of the bunker. Worst were the rockets, the Katyushas, the Stalin Organs, which the Russians had not used on them in a while. Shrieking like banshees, the shells came down in hosts, having been launched dozens at a time. Wildly inaccurate, they were, however, devastating psychologically and saturated the area on which they impacted. Worse, they lit up the sky and announced that the main attack was coming.

  Logan’s bunker was one of a number that were placed at angles to provide enfilading and overlapping fire on an attacking force. As before, there was a pattern of tank traps in front of them and a number of lines of barbed wire; however, there wasn’t enough wire. Getting quantities of it into Potsdam had proven a major problem. The area in front was mined as well, but, again, not enough mines had been flown in to really saturate the area and many of those had been destroyed by the artillery. The idea of dynamite had been General Miller’s, and it did appear to have slowed the Russians down a little.

  By now, the smoke and dust blown into the air obscured their night vision and limited their line of sight to an indistinct couple of hundred yards. American antitank guns and dug-in Shermans had opened fire, but on what? The air outside was filled with flying metal and other objects, and it was inevitable that some would find their way in through the bunker’s firing slits, causing cuts and bruises.

  “Aw, crap,” muttered Bailey, “look what’s happening to the tank traps.”

  Blood was trickling down Logan’s face, and he plucked a small piece of metal out of his cheek. He tucked it into a pocket, insanely thinking it would be a nice souvenir. Trying to keep as small as possible, he looked out and quickly understood his sergeant’s dismay. The dirt walls of the tank traps were collapsing. They had all been afraid of that possibility. Almost surrounded as they were by the river and the lakes, the water table was very close to the surface; thus, when the earth was damp and muddy, it became very unstable. The shelling had loosened the walls of the traps, and now they were falling in and filling the ditches. Could a tank get through? They would soon find out.

  “Tank,” yelled Crawford. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that?”

  An iron monster emerged from the smoke and darkness. It seemed twice the size of any tank they had ever seen before. Logan watched in shock as it moved slowly forward. Infantry huddled around it, but they were quickly swept away by the storm of metal. The tank crept closer. The main gun looked larger than anything Logan had ever seen in his life. A Stalin tank, he thought. It had to be a Josef Stalin model, as if that was important. An antitank shell hit the tank’s turret and bounced off. The Stalin was impervious to them.

  Like an animal, the tank was testing the ground. The collapsing trap had it confused. The turret turned and seemed to see the bunker only fifty yards away. It fired and the bunker shook from the impact. Someone screamed. Logan picked himself up and took another look at the tank. It fired again. This time, the shell hit the edge of a firing slit and blew it apart, sending debris flying around inside. Now the slit was an open window and there was screaming from inside the bunker.

  The tank moved forward. It felt for the slope of the collapsed trap. Slowly, it lowered its bulk into the hole and almost disappeared.

  “Get me a bazooka,” Logan screamed. The tank would be on them in a minute if it was able to climb out of the hole.

  Bailey handed him a panzerfaust, the single-shot German antitank rocket weapon. It wasn’t a bazooka, but he had heard it was better, and there were a number of them in the bunker. The tank’s turret was now plainly visible as it slowly emerged. Logan laid the tube on his shoulder, aimed, fired, and watched as the rocket’s shell hit the front armor of the tank and bounced off. He yelled and asked for another, but Bailey was down. The side of his head was open and he could see the sergeant’s brains. Logan wanted to gag, but there wasn’t time. The tank was out of the hole and beginning to climb over the bunker. They were going to be squashed like bugs and buried alive.

  “Here,” said Singer with surprising calmness as he handed Logan another panzerfaust. “Try for a belly shot.”

  The ruined firing slit was almost all blocked by the bulk of the Russian tank as it began to churn its way onto the top of the bunker. Did its crew think everyone inside the bunker was dead? Perhaps they hadn’t even felt the first rocket when it glanced off.

  Logan backed away from the slit. The tank was actually too close for him to fire safely. Tough shit. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The rocket roared forward and pierced the less heavily armored belly of the Stalin and exploded inside it. The ammunition inside the tank began to detonate and hot metal shrieked into the bunker while the force of the explosions threw men about.

  The tank still had enough impetus, or perhaps the driver was yet alive, so that it actually made it to the roof of the bunker, which began to settle under its immense weight.

  Logan was on the floor. His arm hurt like it was on fire and his leg was bent at an impossible angle with bone sticking out from his thigh. There was a sticky wetness on his face and he knew it was his own blood. There was little pain from his leg and he realized he was going into shock.

  As consciousness faded, he was dimly aware of a couple of things. First, that the explosions outside had reached a new crescendo, as if that were even possible, and second, that the ea
rthen roof above him was collapsing and would soon crush him.

  Last, as he felt someone pulling on him, he heard the sound of someone else screaming in terror for his mother. As darkness overcame him, he recognized the voice as his.

  BAZARIAN TOOK THE reports of the assault on Potsdam in stride. He had expected heavy casualties and he was not disappointed. While he had hoped that the Stalin tanks would penetrate the defenses of Potsdam, the fact that they had failed did not deter him. The sudden appearance of the American bombers had stopped the assault as the B-25s, flying at nearly treetop level, dropped their loads on the battle below. In some cases, they went so far as to bomb their own lines in order to stop the Red armor. It had worked. Almost all the Russian tanks had been destroyed, along with that obnoxious pig of a Russian who led them. Then, bombs gone, the bombers returned to strafe the Russian positions with their machine guns, again from absurdly low altitude.

  However, it was the napalm that had really halted the attack. When the bombers departed, the fighters arrived in swarms and dropped scores of liquid-fire bombs that burned the Russian infantry and incinerated the crews of the remaining tanks. He had heard of the existence of the weapon, but had never expected to see it.

  Even so, he was confident that the next attack would succeed. The Americans had nothing left with regard to physical defenses. They had all been blown to pieces by the combination of artillery, Russian tanks, and American bombs. He would use his infantry in waves to overwhelm what was left. By assiduously collecting stray units as he had done with the armor, he still had a force of nearly fifty thousand men. While many were inferior soldiers and virtually all were reluctant warriors, they would still go forward on his orders, which he had told their officers came directly from Moscow. Stalin wanted Potsdam eliminated. Would you deny that to Stalin? None would. Potsdam would fall.