Last Citadel

Dimitri spanked his knees with his hands, relishing the old General’s reply every time he told the story. Pasha and Sasha clapped and Valentin rocked back in his seat on the tank. The slanting lantern light made all their faces merry.

‘So, you see,’ Dimitri said. ‘The whole world fears the Cossack.

Including Napoleon and Pasha’s mother. And the Germans.’

He leaned into the lantern, to light his face better for this next chapter of the rite. ‘My old father. Your sergeant’s grandfather. He would be here right now if he were alive. Cossack families go to war together. Did you know that?’

The two lads shook their heads.

‘Well, they do. Every Cossack family knows the history of its warriors.

The family heroes are remembered with praise, the villains are the cowards or the disloyal ones. When I was your age, I went to war with my father. We wore red-topped caps and black burka cloaks with red hoods. We rode in pigskin boots and kept a tea kettle and sacks of biscuits tied to our belts. I had a curved saber, a carbine with a bayonet, and a goathorn full of powder.

We rode first against the Romanovs, those inbred European shits. And when we’d won enough battles against their white cavalry all across western Russia, even on these steppe lands around us right now, the Tsar himself gave in. The Cossacks were rewarded with free land, the right to govern ourselves, and respect! Then, after a few years of royal bribes, when it was clear the Bolsheviks would win, we traded in our white flag for a red one.

We turned on the bastard Tsar for the new bastard Lenin. Because the Cossack fights for the Cossack. It doesn’t matter who invades us. Germans or Russians, Tsars or commissars. Napoleon called us the disgrace of the human race. And he was right, if you look at how most humans live!’

The two boys were rapt. Dimitri understood the rotten training these two had been given before they were shipped to the Kursk bulge for their first battle. They’d been bullied and frightened and given no pay and less than a month’s lesson on how to fight in these tanks. Commissars had shouted slogans at them, they’d taken oaths, but no one had talked with them, told them tales of bravery and deeds and mentioned they might have what it takes to do the same, valiant things - podvigs. Valentin and his sour ilk were all they’d seen of the Red Army. These lads were considered nothing more than numbers to be thrown at the Germans.

Dimitri knew he could not make them into more. But if he and Valya were going to fight alongside these boys, they were going to think they were more. Or they would all die, because few die alone in a tank.

‘My father Konstantin was the best swordsman in the Kuban. Did you know a real Cossack sword has no hilt to protect the hand? Do you know why?’

No, they shrugged.

Dimitri cut his eyes to Valentin on the tank. ‘Tell us, Sergeant. About the Cossack sword.’

Valentin ran fingers over his pate. The stubble of his short hair made a fizzing noise. Dimitri held up an open hand, to say please.

Valentin cleared his throat. So needless, Dimitri thought, to be uncomfortable talking to men who may well save your life in the next week.

Embrace them, Valya, he urged silently, these are spirits, children like you.

Valentin gave the answer, continuing to scratch his head.

‘It… um… it’s not made for dueling. It’s made for striking from horseback.’

‘Exactly. And Pasha, Sasha, I will tell you right now with the pride of a father that your sergeant Berko there was the finest swordsman in all the Kuban when he was your age. Just eighteen, and a champion dzhigitovka!

In our village, the streets are wide and there’s a great central square. That is where we hold our war games. On Sundays and holidays, the streets are lined with saplings, set thirty feet apart. On top of the trees are clay pots.

The test, you see, is to gallop full bore between the trees and cut the pots with your sword. And Valentin there… well, your sergeant there, he was the best. Slashing back and forth, boys, he was a sight! A champion!’

Pasha looked up at Valentin. ‘Did you cut them off, like cutting off heads?’

Valentin appeared impatient, not with the query so much as his own past, before he became a sergeant for the Soviets. Watching his son fidget, Dimitri recalled the day when young Valya came to him and said he was going to join the army. ‘Wonderful,’ he had said, ‘we’ll go together. Yes!

We’ll be in the cavalry’ And Valentin answered him, ‘No, I want to join the tanks.’ The tanks! The metal horses, slow and stupid beasts, with a cannon and armor and dials where there ought to be a pounding heart and lungs and a life under your rear, not a hard seat and a stubborn clutch. A tank instead of a horse. A Soviet instead of a champion son. Dimitri listened to Valentin’s response to the boy Pasha, and thought, He sounds like a stinking Romanov up there high on his tank.

‘No, Private… no. A Cossack does not cut off heads.’

‘But…’ Pasha seemed to want to be scared, to hear of heads rolling by the dozens on the Cossack battlefield.

‘Only poor Cossacks cut off heads, Pashinka,’ Dimitri said. ‘Not your sergeant. He practiced hard and became a master of the many different saber cuts from horseback.’

‘You mean there’s more than… ?’ Pasha drew a finger under his neck.

‘Yes, yes.’ Dimitri got to his knees and made a blade of his open hand. ‘There’s the one straight down on the shoulder to take off an arm.’ He hacked at Pasha, who laughed. Sasha beside him giggled. ‘There’s this one, to cut open his guts. One across the hip…’ With each description Dimitri sliced at the two boys to make them laugh and understand they were more than numbers now, they were clan with him and, yes, the sergeant.

Dimitri sat back and glanced again up to Valentin. His son smiled thinly at his father’s antics. Alright, the smile said, enough. We are who we are, Father. So, enough. Dimitri sighed, and held up a hand for more of their attention.

‘The life of every Cossack relies on two things. First, his fellow Cossacks. He must be willing to die and kill for them, to never betray their trust. The second is his horse. The bond between rider and horse goes deeper than words. It is instinct and devotion. And do you know who was the best rider in my village?’

It was Valentin who gave the answer. ‘Katerina.’

Dimitri turned to beam at Valentin.

‘My daughter Katya. She was a champion, too. There was nothing she couldn’t do on the back of a horse. She could leap across a stream and lean down from the saddle to take a drink.’

‘No,’ whispered red Sasha.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri breathed back.

‘Where is Katya now?’ Sasha asked.

‘She’s a Night Witch. You’ve heard of the Night Witches?’

‘Yes!’ Pasha blurted. ‘My mother used to tell us the Night Witches would come if we…’

‘Pasha.’

‘Yes?’

‘Your mother used to frighten you a lot, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. Well… urn…’

‘Were you as bad a child as all that?’

Sasha laughed first, then Valentin and Dimitri. Pasha took a jabbing elbow from the quiet hull gunner and chuckled, too.

‘Katya’s a pilot,’ Valentin explained, ‘my sister is a night bomber.’

‘Oh.’ Pasha blushed enough to be orange in the lantern shine.

Dimitri asked, ‘Now, do you boys want to become Cossacks?’

Sasha’s eyes went wide. ‘Is that something you can do? Can you do that?’ He turned to his mate Pasha, but the thick boy shook his head, skeptical. ‘No,’ he said, ‘Dima’s playing with us again. We won’t be real Cossacks. It’s a game.’

Dimitri kept still, embedding his gaze into Pasha’s eyes.

‘It’s no game.’

Skinny Sasha jutted his nose at Dimitri. ‘Yes. Make me a Cossack.’

Dimitri waited for Pasha’s face to change. The loader looked up at his sergeant. Valentin nodded to him.

Pasha said, ‘Me, too.’

‘Listen,’ Dimitri said. ‘You’ve got to know the history first. This is the story of the Cossacks. Centuries ago, Russia was different than it is today.

Before the Soviets. In the long time of the Tsars. Russia was a collection of little kingdoms, ruled by boyars and landlords. The people were either rich aristocrats or poor peasants and serfs. But there was one place where the gentry didn’t run things. My homeland, Ukraine. Even its name tells you how free it was: ‘ Borderland.’ During this time, Ukraine was a giant and unsettled country, a wild land. There was room to roam, there were fish and grainlands, grasses for cattle and sheep and horses. The first Cossacks were criminals. These were men who wanted their freedom enough to risk their lives to get it. They were running from the law. Or they were sentries from some landlord’s army, who got tired of manning a post and fighting someone else’s battles and ran away. The first Cossack was an escaped serf. Or he might have been some highborn who screwed the wrong peasant girl or stole another lord’s land and came to avoid scandal or being hung. He might have been a Greek or a Turk looking for adventure.

Whoever he was, boys, whatever he was running from, his trouble was not going to follow him into Ukraine. He got a clean slate. And while the Russian state to the north and east was getting more and more civilized and tamed, Ukraine stayed without masters. It was a place for the common man, for bandits and fugitives, vagabonds and slaves to remake their lives. These men who skulked into Ukraine became farmers and trappers. They settled the land and raised their families. Everyone was equal.’

Pasha and Sasha watched him, spellbound; with his hands, Dimitri carved for them Ukraine out of the air, made pistols out of his fingers for the bandits, whips across the backs of the serfs, and open, clear fields with sweeps of his palm.

Sasha raised a hand like a schoolboy to ask a question.

‘How did the Cossacks learn to fight?’

‘A good question, Pashinka. The plains of Ukraine were not empty when the first Cossacks came. Hordes of Mohammedan tribesman roamed there. So the Cossacks were forced to band together. They learned from their battles with the Mohammedans, who were wonderful horsemen. The Cossacks borrowed the best of what they saw and soon became even better riders and warriors. But even when the Cossacks found themselves coming together for survival, they maintained their love for kazak, their freedom. They asked little from those who wished to join them. Only three things does a Cossack have in common with all other Cossacks. Three questions, and you have to answer yes to each. Are you ready?’

The two boys hesitated. Dimitri was tickled at the gravity he’d created in them.

‘Yes,’ both uttered.

Dimitri’s legs were tired, his knees griped. But this part of the rite had to be done standing.

‘Alright, get up.’

Valentin stayed in his place on the tank.

When Pasha and Sasha were on their feet, Dimitri asked, ‘Do you want to become Cossacks?’

Both nodded.

‘Say so,’ Dimitri prodded.

‘Yes!’ they said, a bit too loud. Dimitri kept a serious demeanor though he wanted to grin.

‘Good, good. Hold it down, lads. Next question. Will you die if you must for another member of your clan, and for your freedom?’

‘Yes.’ The two boys stood shoulder to shoulder. Dimitri watched them press closer to each other.

And last. Do you believe in God?’

The two boys Pasha and Sasha answered well. ‘Yes. I do. Yes.’

‘Good. Bend your knees. Let’s pray’

Dimitri dropped to his knees on the tank-crushed grass. Pasha and Sasha knelt with him. Dimitri did not glance up at his son. He didn’t want to know if Valentin was praying or simply watching with his Soviet disdain.

Dimitri said a silent prayer for the lives of these two youths he’d been given.

He asked God to only take them if they were greatly needed to win the battle. Let them stay Cossacks as long as they can, God, let them be free on the earth. But if You cannot, let them be free in heaven. He asked also for God to protect Valya and Katya. He did not ask for himself.

One of the boys said Amen,’ finished with his prayer. Dimitri ended his and lifted his head before he realized the Amen’ was Valentin’s. He stood, Pasha and Sasha scrambled to their feet. Dimitri stepped to his son’s perch on the General and patted Valya’s knee. Valya was maddening this way. Dimitri could never be comfortable with his frustration or his pride in the boy. He did not know Valya at all.

‘This,’ he said to the loader and the hull gunner, newly minted Cossacks, ‘is your hetman. He is your sergeant and your tank commander, but he is your Cossack leader, too. You’ll do everything he orders. Is this understood?’

Valentin slid down from the tank.

‘Are we done?’

Dimitri itched to backhand the boy for the sudden swings he caused in Dimitri’s chest.

At that moment - because, thought Dimitri, there is a God and He listens and once in a while even if you don’t ask He answers - a convoy of panel trucks rumbled up through the dark, headlamps jouncing over the ruts in the field cut by the company of heavy tanks. In the beds of the trucks, lit by the lights of the vehicles in line behind, jostled crowds of old men holding up bottles, and women. Dimitri saw fiddles, an accordion, and even a clarinet.

He recognized her voice. Just Sonya called out for him.

He moved to his son and lapped his arm across the boy’s shoulder.

‘Yes, Sergeant. We’re done. Excuse me.’

Dimitri grabbed his two new charges by their lapels and tugged them away from the lantern, telling them they had an additional duty as Cossacks to perform. They must each take a girl.

‘Dima, is this another game?’ Pasha asked, lagging at the end of Dimitri’s arm.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri told him, ‘and Cossacks play it well. Come.’

* * * *

CHAPTER 7

July 1

1430 hours

Kalinovka aerodrome

Katya stood beside a dozen other girls from her regiment watching the truck roll closer to the aerodrome. The others hoped longer than she did, asking, ‘Is it them? Can you see?’ But Katya noted from far away how the four women in the back of the approaching truck held on with both hands to the side rails, how they did not wave their white silk underhelmets in the afternoon. They were not the four Night Witches come back from the dead, but replacements. Zoya and Galina, Marina and Lily were gone. They were not in this afternoon’s truck the way they were not in the truck yesterday or the day before. The four dead friends would stay Night Witches forever now, they would never be. anything else. That is not such a bad way to die, Katya thought, to remain for all time someone brave. She was the first to turn from the road.

Leonid said nothing. He put his arm around her shoulders and walked with Katya to the big tent her squadron shared. Minutes behind her the other girls did come in from the road, some even saying, Tomorrow, maybe tomorrow. Katya and Leonid opened the four girls’ steamer trunks. Diaries and personal items would be sent home to their parents. Unmailed letters would be posted. The four beds would be remade for the replacement pilots and navigators. Katya was moved by the disparity of things she and Leonid pulled from the trunks: stuffed animals and extra signal flares, dried flowers and flight logs.

The other girls milled around the four beds, littered now with items from the trunks. They joined Katya in sifting through the objects, arranging piles, recognizing and weeping over mementos, sitting on the beds remembering many talks. This was not the first time there had been deaths in their squadron, but it was the only instance when two crews had been lost on a single mission. The doubled blow seemed almost too great.

Katya watched Leonid withdraw from the tent; Katya had the others around her now. She rose from Lily’s cot. The springs squeaked, a sign of life but not of Lily’s, and Katya had to hold back tears over such a small thing.

She went outside. Leonid stood staring into the midday sky.

‘Today’s the first day of July,’ he said.

Katya nodded.

‘How much longer can they wait?’ she asked, gazing up with him. The battle would take place underneath and in this sky; the blue that fell all the way to the horizon gave Katya the sense the battle would be fought in tight quarters, two titanic fighters in a bout, under this ringing blue sky.

‘I don’t know. It should have started by now’

Katya was jarred, this seemed insensitive. She wanted to point back into the tent, to the sobbing girls, and tell Leonid it has started. But she knew what he meant. It’s going to be worse, far worse, than anything before. So she let the comment alone.

‘Walk with me, Leonya, will you?’

She turned and headed for the hardstands where the eighteen U-2S

of her squadron sat chocked and waiting. She did not speak along the way.

When they reached her plane, Leonid ran his hands over the patched wings. He patted the engine housing and plucked the wire struts. He chewed his lips in thought. Katya watched him and again felt the sting of resentment. Was Leonid being condescending, the way he looked over her intrepid little plane? He tapped on the U-2 as though he’d never seen one.

Then he squatted on his heels. With a finger he drew a circle in the dust.

‘This is your target tonight. Show me how you’ll attack.’

Katya walked over to sit cross-legged beside the little circle. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Show me your flight and attack plan.’

She was in no mood to have her squadron criticized, especially not by a free-ranging, fast-flying fighter pilot. Four dead comrades bought her this day free from tongue clucking.

‘I want to go back to the tent.’

‘And do what? Mourn some more?’

Katya gripped a fist of dirt and flung it at Leonid.

‘Yes. Mourn some more. Maybe there can’t be enough mourning.’

‘That’s selfish.’

Katya cocked her head and repeated the word with shocked silence.

Selfish?

‘Yes. And what do you think I’ll do when it’s you dead on the ground because you’d rather cry than adapt? Do you think I’ll sit on your bed and go through your trunk? Or do you think I’ll get back into my Yak and shoot down some more Germans? What do you think, Katya? Which is it for you?

Do you want to fight or do you need a fresh handkerchief? Do you want to learn something? Because if you do, you need to do it right now. You have another mission tonight, and there’s going to be another night fighter waiting for you.’

Katya clamped her teeth. Leonid had not even wiped off the dirt she’d heaved on him, the dark bits salted his folded lap.

‘Show me,’ Leonid said.

Katya made her hand into a plane, spreading thumb and pinky for wings. It was simple. She approached the target at three thousand feet.

One mile out, she cut her engine and glided in, bleeding off altitude to twelve hundred feet. Here she lowered her hand over the dirt circle. She dropped her bombs, hit the magnetos and throttle, and got away as fast as she could from the lights and guns. She banked her hand away from the circle and raised it, heading for home. Three minutes behind, approaching the target right about now, was the next bomber, coming from the same direction at the same altitude. Simple, she thought, again watching her hand sail safely away, not a scratch on it. Then she asked herself the question before Leonid could: What if there is another night fighter waiting for us tonight? Will we fly right into his sights again?

Katya made another plane out of her free hand. This was the German Me-109, stalking high above the target for the Night Witches who floated in straight and on time.

Will we do anything different tonight? No. Leonid is right. Who will it be, then, in flames next?

‘Do you have an idea?’ she asked.

Leonid sat cross-legged with her. ‘Do you?’

Katya looked at the two hands she hovered above the circle in the dirt. One was a defenseless bomber, the other was the black German fighter. The German hand licked its chops. He had the speed and gunnery to make a joke of her regiment’s standard attack plan. He already had. Then it struck her.

What if both hands were Night Witches?

‘Leonya. What if we take in two planes instead of one?’

Leonid nodded. He looked down at the dirt circle with her, picturing the altitude, the light beams searching, flak exploding. She could see the plan hatching in his head even as it took shape in her own. The scheme was just as simple as what their squadron had been doing for the past year.

Perhaps that’s why it had been overlooked. This new adversary, the night fighter, called for a new tactic. Katya allowed herself an inward smile, even on this sad day.

Two planes will fly in together. The first ignores the target, but instead draws the attention of the searchlights and the artillery batteries. Meanwhile, the other Night Witch glides straight for the target. Once she drops her load, both planes hit the gas, climb, and circle back. But next time they switch roles. If all the dodging plane has to worry about is staying away from the lights, the guns and night fighters, she can do a better job of staying alive. And if all the bomber has to do is bear down on the target without avoiding the lights, she can be more accurate. When the first pair’s sortie is over, the next two in line do the same. Yes?

‘Yes,’ said Leonid, snapping his fingers. ‘And make sure you stagger the times between pairs, and vary the direction you fly in from. No night fighter can hit what he can’t find.’

Katya worked her two hands over the target, practicing the maneuver over the dirt circle, determining altitudes and patterns so the two U-2s wouldn’t collide in the dark and confusion. The strategy made sense. It could work.

Leonid said nothing while Katya worked out the plan. Then he reached above the dirt circle and took one of her hands in his own, as though his hand was flying beside hers over the make-believe target.

‘Hey.’

Katya’s hand hovered in his. Their eyes locked high above, among the pretend stars.

Leonid said, ‘I know you lost four friends. I am trying to help. It’s just my clumsy way of doing it.’

Katya gazed at their elevated and linked arms. We’re both better up here, she thought, more graceful in the air than we are on the ground. She set Leonid’s hand loose.

‘It’s alright,’ she said. She wanted to say more but could not figure what it would be. The firmness of his hand in hers and the concern in his warning, the gentleness of his apology, these were all opposites of the grief and fear rummaging in her heart. Katya felt guilty and tugged at. She sensed risk and vulnerability and so banked hard away from it.

‘I’ll go and tell the others. See what they think.’

Leonid rose first, taking the cue from her voice. He looked down at her from his height. He said, ‘Good luck tonight,’ and walked off to his own hangar.

She watched him stride away, his name on her lips. ‘Good luck to you,’ she mumbled instead to his back.

Katya rose, glum over how she’d left things with Leonid. He’d spoken sharply to her and she’d returned fire, then they’d both retreated before anything could be damaged badly. She shook her head. No, their friendship was too strong, nothing would have been damaged. Gazing into the immense blue sky, where God lived and she herself galloped, Katya wondered, Was it harm Leonid and I averted just now, or was it something else, something secret revealing itself on this mournful day? What would I have said to Leonid if I’d let myself speak? Would it have been… ? The sky had no answers for her, only endless room for asking. No, she thought.

Comrades have died, and comrades can be saved with this new tactic.

There’s a mission to be flown, and a major battle looming. I have my answer.

She entered the command tent and found the captain of her squadron, Nina Vasi Pyevna Smirnova. She told the captain the new strategy. Smirnova was impressed and asked Katya to write it up. Katya would address the pilots and navigators at their briefing in a few hours.

Tonight’s mission would be above a rail station deep inside enemy lines. The partisan network had identified a trainload of German heavy tanks being transported to Belgorod. Efforts were being made to stop this train.

One partisan cell was planning to attack the train itself. The partisans needed the Night Witches to take out the station, its water tower, maintenance shed, and tracks to slow the train’s progress.

Tonight, she and Vera were assigned to fly one of the two lead planes.

* * * *

July 1

2130 hours

Katya lay inside the tent and did not see dusk settle over the steppe, but she knew it had come when she heard the first Yak-9 fighters tear away from the field. The pages of her report jostled and mingled on her cot when she jumped off it to run outside.

She was too late. Leonid’s plane was the third to take off. His climb was beautiful to watch, his sleek fighter rose and Katya thrilled to the engine’s power. She saw the top of Leonid’s helmet through the clear bell of his cockpit and felt a palpable rising in her chest, as though part of her heart were flying off with him, banking hard in line with the others on night patrol. The rising went into her hand and she hoisted it in a wave he would not see. The last of the Yaks bounded off the grass field. The pilots closed ranks over the airstrip, then flew beyond sight and sound. Once they were gone, Katya listened to the wide silence return under the vast and bruising steppe sky, serrated only by crickets and some mechanic hammering at something stubborn.

Katya trod back to the tent. She completed the report and closed her eyes. Other girls filtered in, squeaking their cots for some rest before the night’s mission. No one spoke, a few snored, and Katya drifted away. She awoke a little while later when the other girls stirred. There was a change in her when she sat up. She recollected a vague sense from a dream she must have had while napping. The dream was of her and Leonid. She remembered a closed door between them. She did not recall if the door ever opened in the dream. She felt bereft of him; he’d taken off before she could see him and explore again what she’d wanted to say, perhaps even what she wanted to hear. The door in the dream was closed, she knew that now. Sitting upright on the cot, she rubbed her eyes awake and made a decision, to leave the door open. Vera walked past on her way to the briefing. She stopped in front of Katya’s cot.

‘What?’ Vera asked.

Katya looked up at her navigator. The girl wore a kind and silly grin.

She leaned down to Katya, to read something in her eyes as though on one of her maps.

‘Hmm?’

Vera leaned down farther. ‘What’s with you? You’ve got a look on your face.’

Katya made no response. She stood from the cot and grabbed her report. Vera blocked her way. She called to the other girls, ‘Did you see the look?’

‘Yes,’ a few answered. ‘A definite look.’

Katya snorted and spun away from Vera. Laughing Night Witches hooted behind her, ‘A look, yes, yes. I saw it.’

Vera caught up with her outside the tent.

‘So, Katyusha. Did you and Leonid…’

‘No!’ Katya held up the pages she’d prepared. ‘We’ve got a mission tonight. Do you think you could get your crazy brain to focus on that right now?’

‘Yes, Katyusha.’ Vera feigned shame. ‘Of course, my pilot.’ She stabbed a finger into Katya’s face. ‘But you’ll tell me everything when we get back, or I’ll ask Leonid. We’ll see what he says.’

The briefing took an hour. The pilots and navigators discussed Katya’s proposal, refined it, then accepted it. Katya received a round of applause. Captain Smirnova sent them out to get ready. Take-off would be in fifteen minutes, at 2200 hours. The sun’s long goodbye over the steppe was still in progress when Katya strode outside the command tent. In the remaining glimmer, she spotted the fuselage lights of the first Yak-9

returning to the field. In moments the sound of the plane came within range.

The engine sputtered. Something was wrong.

Men ran past Katya to the edge of the grass landing strip. Many carried fire extinguishers, a few hauled medic boxes. Katya kept her eyes in the dimming sky, on the flashes from the oncoming plane. Then the Yak came into view. Smoke trailed behind it, blacker than the congealing night.

The engine coughed and the plane pitched, dipping and unsure. Katya crept closer to the field, some of the other girls in her squadron came with her. The fighter came in too steep. Katya’s lips formed the words Pull up, pull up, and at the last moment the nose of the Yak-9 lifted, the wheels hit the ground but bounced the fighter back into the air. Then the engine cut.

The Yak touched down and stayed, running fast over the grass, but the dulled propeller slowed and the fighter turned off the runway in a sharp pivot. The engine was throttled back. The Yak did not taxi to its assigned station but halted where it was off the runway and quit. An acrid haze billowed from the engine until runners doused it with white chemicals.

Others climbed the wing, shoved back the cockpit bell, and clotted around the pilot. Fingers touched the back of Katya’s fist. Vera stood beside her.

Katya opened her balled hand and took Vera’s in hers.

More planes landed, none as badly as the first wounded plane; that pilot was hauled away on a stretcher and his plane was pushed by a ground crew to its hardstand. Three more in Leonid’s squadron of a dozen trailed smoke when they touched down. The eleventh plane landed and Katya scanned the maroon sky for his green and red running lights. Vera’s hand tightened around hers.

‘He’s coming,’ Katya said.

The eleventh and last plane was the squadron commander. Katya watched this pilot park his fighter, climb off, and speak to his mechanic. The sky did not issue another plane for Katya, the only lights were the first winking stars. The commander headed away to make his report. Katya felt her dread swell with every passing second, each step the squadron leader took was another thing that would make Leonid’s failure to appear final.

Without thinking, she released Vera’s hand and ran across the field through the warm smells of exhaust and burned oil. Weaving through the wings she saw the bullet holes ripped into the planes.

‘Captain,’ she called, ‘Captain, please. A moment, sir.’

The grimness of the officer’s face was plain when he turned to her.

Katya ran up beside him but he did not stop. She stepped into his path.

‘Captain, please. Lieutenant Lumanov. I didn’t see him land.’

‘No.’

This single word tore through Katya like one of the bullets through the Yaks.

She fought for her composure. ‘Can you tell me, sir, what happened?

Where is he?’

‘Who are you, Lieutenant?’

‘Katerina Berkovna, sir. I’m with…’

‘Yes, you’re one of the Night Witches. I know. Leonid tells me about you.’

‘Captain, please.’

‘There was a dogfight over Tomarovka. He was shot down, Lieutenant.’

Katya seized up, her lungs seemed to bite at her from inside her ribs.

Before she could speak, the Captain laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘I flew over his crash site. He sent up a white flare. He’s alive. But he’s pretty deep inside German territory. I don’t have any way to know if he’s injured or how badly. He’s a clever lad, Lieutenant. I suppose you know that.’

Katya muttered, ‘Yes.’ The word was a relief, better than another wounding No, but the comfort was cold. Tomarovka was six miles south of the front line. Leonid might have been badly hurt in the crash. Yes, he survived, but for how long? Until he bleeds to death, or a German patrol captures him? The Captain studied her face. She did not know or care how much she showed him.

‘We’ll alert the partisans in the area. They’ll try to get to him first.

That’s all we can do, Lieutenant. You understand?’

Katya nodded. Leonid had been shot down. She’d imagined this fate for herself with every mission over the past year, she’d suffered with her mates when this fate fell on others in her regiment, she’d seen it happen in the sky more than she cared to remember. But never once had she prepared herself for this to happen to Leonid.

But the worst had not happened. He was still alive.

The Captain cleared his throat. ‘I’ve got to make my report. Good luck. Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’d like to tell you something. Leonid has made me appreciate you Night Witches. I… wanted to be sure you knew that.’

The praise was spoiled. Katya wanted to beat the man’s chest: Why didn’t you bring him back?

‘Thank you, sir.’

The Captain sidestepped her. Impulsively, Katya reached for his arm.

‘Captain? West of Tomarovka? East?’

‘East, Lieutenant. Two miles due east. In a small field beside a dry creek.’

‘Thank you, Captain. Thank you.’

Katya turned to hurry away, but this time the Captain stopped her.

‘I hear those broomsticks of yours can set down almost anywhere. Is that true?’

‘Yes, Captain. Anywhere.’

* * * *

July 1

2340 hours

over no-man’s-land

Voronezh Front

Leonid was on the ground. This notion wrapped Katya as tightly as did the flying night. She tried to keep her mind on the mission, on the train station far inside enemy lines, but like a disobedient horse her thoughts shied from her instruments, away from the wind in her wings. She tightened her mental reins and brought her own head around to attention on the raid.

Only a wedge of moon glowed behind soupy clouds. She and Vera cruised southward at four thousand feet. Far to port, the other U-2 belched little exhaust fires from its engine. The plan was for that crew, Olga Sanfirova and navigator Olga Kluyeva, to attack the station first while Katya and Vera diverted the defenses, then they would switch roles. The darkness tonight was dense enough for them to hide in its folds. Katya kept one eye on the popping blue fires from the Olgas to avoid drifting too close to them. Vera remained quieter than usual in Katya’s earphones. Something was unsaid between the two of them. This added to Katya’s sense of burden in the cockpit. Leonid was on the ground. Katya chugged through the air, distracted and scared, and Vera, never a mystery, was silent.

The air currents were smooth and the flight was even. Vera’s direction brought them in range of the target only forty minutes after take-off. The rail station lay fifteen miles south of Belgorod in the village of Oktabrskaya. The tracks ran alongside the Lopan River, and Vera brought Katya and their bombs down the slim waterway to the lights of the village. They were deeper tonight behind German lines than they had yet flown. Katya checked the two Olgas. They were dead even to port.

‘Cut engine,’ Vera said.

Katya pushed in the throttle and switched off the magnetos. The plane began to sail, and under her gaze the two Olgas disappeared, their motor shut down, too. Katya began to drop altitude, gliding and accelerating to the target. The Olgas would hold up here at four thousand for a count of ten, then begin their muffled dive. Katya looked out through the flipping propeller, the whoosh of wind mounted, and she thought, Leonid, I must leave you for a few moments, please hang on.

‘Steady,’ Vera intoned. Katya grabbed a flare and readied it. No searchlights lashed out yet, their approach was fast and unspoiled. The air she slid down was silken and beneath the rushing wind everything was hushed. The ground below slipped by, wary and dangerous.

Then, high over her head, she heard a snarling deep and unseen in the dark.

The night fighter circled. The Germans had success with this countermove once, so they tried it again. There would be no artillery tonight, just lights and the game of hunter and quarry.

Katya licked dry lips. It was time to find out if the quarry’s new tactic would work.

Her altimeter read twenty-five hundred feet. Vera whispered -she’d heard the howl of the night fighter, too - ‘Drop it.’

Katya struck the flare and tossed it out of the cockpit. For a second, the bottom of her upper wing jittered white from the bursting flare, then she banked away. The train station of Oktabrskaya was made garish by the sparks floating down under the tiny parachute. The flare glittered against the roof tiles and the vacant steel rails. In the next instant, everything was punched out of Katya’s sight by a hard white fist of light.

A searchlight beam drove straight into her face. Katya slammed her eyes shut and whipped the stick to the left, ramming hard on the left rudder to swing the U-2’s nose around in a snap turn. Behind her eyelids the blackness was alive with a starburst of electric swirls and hues.

‘Level out, level out!’ Vera shouted in the intercom.

‘I can’t see!’

Katya felt Vera’s hands on the stick, but the girl was not a pilot, the stick waggled directionless and panicky.

‘We’re in the lights! Katya, come on!’

Katya tried to open her eyes but the world was a morass. She shut them again.

‘Vera, let go!’

‘What! We have to…’

‘Let go!’

Katya felt Vera release the U-2. She laid her own hand on the stick and sensed her plane, the speed and gravity of her flight. A thousand times she’d ridden in the saddle with eyes closed, wearing blindfolds to do tricks, as a child she could do a handstand and canter in the ring with Papa at the center, her horse on his long lead. She lifted her chin, tilted her head, and knew she was rolling left. She twitched the stick back and to the right and the nose came up, the starboard wings dropped and trimmed out. She ducked her head into the well of the open cockpit, out of the searchlights, and opened her eyes. Her vision was stained but the gauges reappeared.

She was flying level, at nineteen hundred feet.

Without hesitating, Katya whipped the plane into a steep corkscrew left, diving and twisting away from the powerful beams. In that instant, scorching red tracers flashed in her wake. The roar of the black Me-109

blasted behind her tail, the German’s engine screaming to pull the fighter out of its dive. Katya followed the sound in a swooping power arch behind, then beneath, then in front and above her, cleaving through the air like a scythe. The noise was wicked and mesmerizing, fusing every bit of Katya to it so that she didn’t notice she’d slipped out of the searchlights. She turned to look back at the station and every search beam was trained in her direction, away from the two Olgas. Katya blew out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her strategy was working, even though the night fighter had missed her and Vera by inches!

Katya’s altitude was down to twelve hundred feet. Her vision cleared.

She glided into a slow wide turn in time to see the bombs hit the station.

The little building erupted and even sailing a half mile past the target Katya saw brick and tile shards and burning timbers flung in the air, lit by the explosions. She flicked the magnetos and the propeller caught. She throttled power to gain more height for her bombing run. High above, the deadly night fighter skulked in circles. Behind her, the Olgas switched on their motor and together the planes gained altitude in a tight spiral. At three thousand feet the two Olgas cut power and glided away. Katya held back until she saw the searchlights sweep the night, watched them miss the dancing Night Witch, glance her, then lose their dazzling grip. The night fighter was too fast for its own good; it couldn’t spot the slow and mobile U-2s as long as they stayed out of the light. The German would have no prey. The two Olgas swung left and right, riding the creases of darkness between the swaying beams. Katya followed them in. She put her nose dead on the burning train station, cut power, and one minute later blew the Oktabrskaya tracks into scrap.

* * * *

July 2

0055 hours

‘Vera.’

The navigator did not answer right away. Moments later, Katya said again, ‘Vera.’

‘Just a second.’

Katya turned to look in the cockpit behind her. Vera’s flashlight swept over her lap, across a flapping topographical map. Vera made notes on a pad strapped to her leg. She leaned her head out over the fuselage and took some mental snapshot of a landmark below, then entered it on her notepad. She trained the flashlight on her stopwatch.

Off the tail, three miles behind Vera’s bent head, the second flight of night bombers was over the target. The searchlights sliced back and forth, a good sign, they could not find the Witches working in tandem. The burning station made an easy bull’s-eye.

Katya pivoted to face forward. Off the port wing flew the Olgas, their U-2’s signature blue flames a halo around their engine.

‘Any time, Vera.’ Katya noticed her own tone was impatient.

‘Now’

Katya drew out the fuel mixture knob slowly to lean out the gasoline and increase the air flowing to the engine. She teased the motor just to the point of choking, then goosed the mixture. The plane coughed and sputtered, dipping in altitude. Katya rode the control to make the plane spit as loudly as it could.

The two Olgas swung alongside. Vera waved her flashlight at them to signal distress. When the other plane was close enough, Katya pushed in the control to smooth the engine. Her little U-2 caught and rose. Vera lowered the flashlight, and Katya slid out the knob once more. The engine hacked. Katya let the plane stumble in the air. The Olgas stayed by her side, matching her rise and fall. She reached for the flashlight. She shined it on herself, to make a signal to the Olgas that she was having engine trouble but she would be okay. At that moment, she pulled out the throttle all the way to shut off the fuel, flicked off the magnetos, and let the engine quit.

She cut off the flashlight, banked hard beneath the two Olgas, and vanished from their sight.

Vera guided her. ‘Come to port a little more.’ Katya tweaked the gliding plane to the northwest. She felt a twinge that her fellow Night Witches were surely flying mad circles behind them, looking for a struggling plane or a crash landing. After a minute of silent running, having spent only a thousand feet of altitude, she struck up the propeller and powered the U-2

back to four thousand feet.

‘We should cross the Udy River in about eight minutes,’ Vera said. At this speed, we’ll be over Tomarovka twelve minutes after that. Two miles east, right?’

‘Yes.’ Katya put fingertips on the stick. The U-2 was marvelously stable.

‘Verushka?’

‘What.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me.’

‘Yes, thank you. Leonid will thank you.’

Vera did not reply. Katya kept the plane on a straight heading. Leonid had been on the ground now for just under two hours. Enough time for German patrols or the partisans to get to him, enough time to bleed to death. Katya’s plan was simple, because it was the only move she could make. She hoped to fly close enough to Leonid in the dark for him to recognize the popping Russian engine. If he was still alive, he would send up another flare to tell her so. She and Vera would set down in the nearest clearing, scoop him up, and lift him to safety. She’d brought along an emergency medical kit in case Leonid had wounds. She carried a pistol strapped to her belt; Vera did not, the girl knew nothing about firearms.

They would have to locate him somewhere east of Tomarovka, set down in an unknown pasture in the dark, then gather him up and take off across this same field, missing ruts and irrigation ditches, creeks and stumps. If he could not walk they must carry him somehow to the plane. They had to reach him before the Germans, who may have seen the white flare Leonid fired for his squadron commander, and they must get out ahead of their guns. They had to fly low and very slow to find him, above an untold number of enemies. There was not a single step of the plan that was not dangerous. Katya wanted to talk some more about what they were facing but Vera stayed stony. This was a reversal of their natures.

It occurred to Katya that Vera was scared.

‘Vera, we have to do this.’

The navigator did not reply.

Katya kept talking. ‘We’ll be alright. He’s alive. I know he is.’

‘So are we.’ She noted Vera’s heavy sigh in her earphones.

‘There’s no one else who can do this! It’s up to us.’

‘The partisans. You said the partisans were in the area.’ Vera took the same harsh tone, the intercom made both their voices thorny.

‘Yes, they are. But they’re going after the train tonight, who knows if they’ll send help after a downed pilot? The Germans will definitely go after him.’

More silence. Katya tried to fix her mind on the black flying and the rescue ahead but she required more, she needed forgiveness for bringing Vera into this extra peril.

‘You’re being very brave.’

In response, Vera almost barked. ‘Don’t we do enough? We risk our lives in these shitty little airplanes they give us. Leonid risked his, too. He knew this could happen. We do enough, Katya.’

Katya wondered, How can I answer her? How can I say, No, we don’t, we never do enough so long as a friend is in trouble. How do I tell this girl, my good friend, that I would die to find him? I can’t do otherwise. She knows this. She agreed to come. She’s just frightened.

‘If he’s not there, we’ll go on. I promise, we’ll only look for a few minutes.’

‘And if we find him?’

‘Then, Verushka, you have to trust that I’m the best pilot you know and I can land this plane on a ruble.’

Vera made no response. Behind Katya the flashlight came on. Vera was checking her maps.

‘There’s the Udy River. Straight now, twelve miles. Damn it. Let’s get him and go home, wing-walker.’

Katya chuckled. This was her absolution from Vera, the bond and honor between them was stronger than the danger. The U-2 bumped over an air current, and this was a signal to focus on their task. Leonid was on the ground, and the Night Witches were coming for him.

They flew over the heads of a hundred thousand enemy soldiers. The Germans drew back a hundred thousand bolts, stuffed themselves deeper into their helmets or holes, winced, and eyed the night sky for a glimpse of the Russian plane droning past in the dark. They knew the sound of the U-2’s puttering engine. But none would know it better than Leonid, and none would be happy to hear it but him.

The village of Tomarovka lay where the Vorskla River crossed an east-west rail line running to Belgorod. Vera located the tracks and kept Katya over them, headed west. The area where the fighter captain had said Leonid was down should be within two or three miles of these tracks. When Vera whispered they were five miles east of the village, Katya began her descent. She had to fly in low enough to be certain Leonid would hear her.

And if he did send up a flare, Katya and Vera would need to get on and off the ground fast.

At two thousand feet, the potshots began. Katya did not hear the reports from the rifles and machine pistols, but muzzle flashes like a carpet of orange sparks blinked in her path. She could not glide over these men and guns, the motor had to keep running, that was her signal to Leonid. One ragged hole appeared in the port wing. She kept the U-2 flying straight; it made no sense to dodge, these were blind shots. She settled lower, to fifteen hundred feet, and leveled.

Tomarovka sat three miles to the west, dead and invisible. So close to the front lines, the occupying Germans hunkered without lights. Vera found a bend in the rail tracks that matched her map. ‘Start circling,’ she said. Her voice was firm and this gladdened Katya. She took the plane into a soft bank, dipping the port wings to look down at a velvet black earth. She prayed for Leonid to hear her. She asked that he be in a smooth field, that he not be hurt, that the Germans not know he was there until she had taken him away. She felt that God heard her better when she was in the air. She was closer to Him, to His domain, mimicking His angels. Katya muttered,

‘Amen.’ Vera said, ‘I don’t know what you were asking for, but Amen, too.’

Katya swept in a wide arc, staring at miles of nothing, as though down an eternal well, the earth was so featureless. Her engine pop-pop-ed. She flicked her eyes once at the gauges to make certain of her attitude and height, then did not pull her gaze from the deep, horizonless ground. She drifted lower, to make her engine louder. The propeller and pistons shouted: Leonid, Leonid! It’s me!

For long minutes, Katya flew and scanned. The red winks from the ground grew fewer, the Germans got tired of shooting at a noisy but fleeting shadow. She banked right, to change her pattern to a figure eight and fly closer to the fortified village. She leaned so far out of the cockpit the wind almost whipped the goggles from her face.

She began to hear her own heartbeat louder than the engine. One more minute churned past. Vera’s voice came from far away, behind the motor and wind, the pounding of her heart, and the silence of Leonid.

‘Katya.’

A white sparkle punctured the even darkness on the ground. Her first thought was someone was lighting a fuse, as if to fire an old-fashioned cannon up at them. She turned the plane broadside to the light and banked to circle it just as it vanished. She kept her eyes on the spot; seconds later, the sparking flash came back, disappeared again, then returned.

Was this Leonid?

Katya whipped the plane directly at the light and it flicked on and off once more. It must be Leonid! Of course! He couldn’t send up a flare, a German patrol would spot that, too, and home in on him. He was flashing a flare on the ground, covering it with a bucket or something. Katya checked her altitude: one thousand feet. She pushed in the throttle and flicked off the magnetos. The engine coughed and quit.

‘What are you doing?’ Vera asked.

Katya did not answer. She let the U-2 glide for ten seconds. This was the hallmark - the broomstick - of the Night Witches. Leonid, if it was him, would know and answer.

He did. The flare appeared, then blinked out.

Katya fired up the propeller, the plane had fallen to eight hundred feet. The flare glimmered from a mile away to the west. Leonid must have left his wrecked plane, to hide in the fields. He’d known she would come.

She tried to keep her vision glued to the spot in the dark canvas where she believed he was, but taking her eyes from the ground for a moment to check her dials, Katya lost the location. Vera, the steady navigator, did not lose the bearing.

‘Left. More. More. There! Straight ahead. Go get him, Katya.’

Katya’s mind raced with the plane. Leonid would have moved to a field he knew would be suitable for her to land in. She had faith in this; he was a pilot himself, and like his captain said, a clever lad. The U-2 needed very little runway, less than four hundred feet. She could swoop in, stop, bring him onboard, then turn and roar out for safety. Yes! They would do it!

There, a half-mile ahead, was another flare. This one did not blink but glowed fiercely, a landing light!

Katya swung the U-2’s nose right at the beacon. She dropped altitude for a fast and abrupt landing. There was no time to do a fly-by and check out the conditions of the field; she had to trust Leonid for that. Her heart climbed into her throat with the approaching ground, five hundred feet below and closing. One hand juggled the stick, the other adjusted the throttle; she put out her senses to determine the direction of the wind, it seemed light and at her back. Her feet stayed ready at the rudders.

The flare gleamed straight ahead. This close to the ground, she could discern the shapes of trees to her left and right, and behind the flare spread a flat dark swath of ground. Leonid had done his job. Now she did hers.

At three hundred feet off the field, she was still coming in hot. She had time to bleed off the last of her speed in the thousand feet before she lifted the nose and laid down the wheels. She pointed at the white flare, aiming to touch down just past it, Leonid would have set it at the leading edge of the runway. She felt a thrill, not just for the return of Leonid but for the heroic feat of all this, the podvig. Her hands and toes kept the plane reined tight, she leaned forward in these last seconds, into the mane of the airplane.

In that moment another, smaller flash lured her eyes away from the flare to her extreme right. Blinks of crimson glittered from a stand of trees silhouetted against the night. In that one swift glance, Katya knew. A German patrol had followed the sparking flare and the pops of her engine.

Enemy soldiers were running at her, firing.

She sped past the flashes; there was still time to get on the ground, collect Leonid, and get away. The flare was ten seconds ahead. She slipped in the throttle, easing her airspeed, then pulled on the stick to lift the nose and slow her approach, but instead of responding the stick surged on its own to the left. The plane dipped and banked. She lost a moment in surprise, then hauled back too late and not enough, now the plane’s descent was sideways and too steep.

‘Vera, let go!’ she screamed into the intercom. ‘You’ll make us crash!

Let go!’

The stick did not free into Katya’s struggling hands. She shouted at Vera but no answer came into her ears or her straining grip.

Katya was afraid to take her eyes off the expanding ground but she had to see why Vera was gripping the stick. There were only a few seconds remaining in which to right the plane. She whirled at her navigator. The girl was slumped. Her head lolled against her chest. Vera’s body was crumpled in her harness and her leg lay across the stick, shoving it to the left. In the right wall of the fuselage, lit by the little green light of the dials, a diagonal line of holes was punched through the fuselage. Each was matched by a black rip in Vera’s flight suit.

Katya screamed again, ‘Vera!’ The feat that had lain only seconds away became a panic. She could not reach Vera’s body, could not take her hand off the stick even for a moment, the ground was too close, her speed still too great. Frantic, she shoved against Vera’s bent head. The dead girl would not lay back. She had no time to mourn; battling the stick and Vera’s weight against it, Katya fought her shock and the dread rising in her fast with the ground.

If she could level out and pull up, Vera would fall backward off the stick. Leonid would hear her fly off, he’d run from the Germans to another field. She could circle and come back.

If.

Katya looked at the rising dark earth. She yanked a final time on the dead stick. No, she thought. No. She went rigid in the cockpit against this fate.

The port wings grazed the ground first, cartwheeling the fuselage.

The left wheel touched down, then bounded into the air. The tail leaped behind her, the propeller and engine smacked the earth, drilling into the soft loam and snapping to a halt. Her goggles went blank with dirt, her brain curtained black with concussion. One last thought streaked through the collapse of her life: Vera is dead, Leonid is lost, and I am dead; goodbye to Papa and Valentin. She felt dismay that it all could be summed up and done so quickly.

She opened her eyes. No sound or light told her she was alive until one of the U-2’s wire struts broke with a comic sproning. Her head was too heavy to lift. She faced the ground, which jumped with uneasy shadows.

Katya turned her throbbing head enough to see a flare on the ground, and the curtain parted, memory pierced her. The U-2 had not been pulverized in the crash but somehow had come to rest standing on its engine like a dart flung into the earth. She was suspended in her harness. Vera was dead in the cockpit behind her. Ah, Vera.

Leonid’s flare hissed, she tasted its smoke blown at her. Where was he?

Katya’s chin hung against her chest. The number of her predicaments flooded in on her; riding this awareness came pain. She fumbled with her safety belts but could not muster the strength in either hand to pull the catches. Both shoulders felt wrenched out of joint; her head seemed ready to snap off her body from the ache rising through her neck.

The flare began to fizzle, its time almost done. Katya sensed the weight of Vera dangling at her back. She tried again to get out of the wreckage, pushing back her pain to work her hands on the buckles.

In the last sizzles of the flare, a knife appeared beneath her throat.

The German patrol! They’d come to finish off the Night Witch! No, no, Katya thrashed her head and arms, she kicked her feet in horror, the pain in her body forgotten. No!

‘Calm down, calm down,’ a male voice urged. The words were Russian. It was Leonid! ‘Sit still, damn it!’

The blade withdrew. A strong hand went into Katya’s hair and yanked up her head to see. The face that slid close to hers was dirty and unshaven, yellow teeth flickered in the dying flare.

‘I’m going to cut you out of here. Do you understand me?’

Katya tried to speak but her throat stayed clamped in hurt and the ebb of her terror. She tried to say Vera’s name.

The face issued an order to someone else. ‘Kick some dirt on that fucking flare, fast!’

Instantly, the white light went out. The hand that gripped her head by the hair let go. Katya heard a snipping sound, several hands pushed up on her in the cockpit and she was released into them past the shreds of the slashed belts.

‘Can you walk?’ The hands lowered her out of the cockpit. They tried to put her on her feet. Her knees buckled. Dark shapes did not let her hit the ground.

‘Her,’ she mumbled. ‘Get her.’

‘No time,’ the voice answered. ‘You two carry this one. Let’s go.’

Before she could protest, she was dragged away from her plane. The tops of her flight boots scraped over the ground. The three men smelled of wool, sweat, and grass. The sourness of gun oil rose from their backs, where their carbines were strapped.

‘Leonid. Where… ?’

The man hurrying on her left, short and burly under her arm, answered. ‘He ran away before we could find him. We weren’t expecting you to swoop in like that.’

No, Katya thought. Leonid wouldn’t have done that. He would have run to the plane the moment it crashed, he would have gotten me out of the wreck. He would have gotten Vera out.

‘He…’ she forced the words out, to defend Leonid, ‘… wouldn’t run away’

She felt the partisan’s heavy shoulder shrug under her weight. ‘Then the Germans got him.’

* * * *

CHAPTER 8

July 3

0120 hours

Wehrmacht train

north of Khar’kov,

near the Ukraine-Russian border

the Russian steppe

A knock sounded on Luis’s compartment door. He snapped awake. His sleep was never deep anymore, this frail frame he despised needed only shallow rest.

‘Yes.’

‘A message for you from the engineer, sir.’

Luis pulled his heels off the bench across from him. He stood and arranged his uniform. No trooper would see him in disarray, he was a Waffen SS Captain. His father had always told him the power is in the performance.

He slid the cabin door all the way back. The soldier seemed surprised, expecting the door to be only cracked at this time in the morning, not to encounter such alertness.

‘Give it to me, Private.’

‘Yes, sir. Good morning, sir.’

Luis took the folded sheet without looking down, keeping his eyes glued to the young grenadier’s face. Was there any hint of surprise on the boy at the gaunt white form who’d opened the door? No. Good. Luis nodded and the soldier clicked his heels in attention. Bearing, thought Luis.

Bearing. This soldier could snap me in half if he had a mind to, but I can make him jump off this moving train with a word.

Luis opened the page. The private waited.

He read the one-line message, then looked the soldier up and down.

Strong boy, he thought, big blond lad. But the soldier was not German. The insignia on his collar and sleeve revealed he was Czech. He and Luis had this in common, they were non-Germans serving in the SS. Because of their massive losses, the SS was recruiting outside Germany. Standing here on this rattling train deep in Russia, blond and dark, were two samples of the reach of Hitler’s ambitions.

Luis patted the boy’s arm.

‘Tell the engineer to stop the train.’

The soldier set his jaw, a love of taking orders was clear. Looking at him, Luis thought: This boy has not been to Russia before. The soldier said, ‘Yes, sir!’ and left. Luis reached back for his cap, nestled it on his head, and walked to the next compartment. He knocked.

‘Major Grimm.’

Behind the door, a sleepy throat snorted and coughed.

‘Yes. Yes, who is it?’

‘Captain de Vega.’

‘Captain. What time is it?’

‘Open up, please, Major.’

‘Yes. A moment.’

The major slid back the door only inches, disheveled, the plat of hair he combed over his wispy pate hung below his ear. Luis saw he was barefoot and in his undershirt.

‘Do you have a sidearm, Major?’

‘What?’

‘A weapon, sir. Do you have a gun with you?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Please strap it on and come with me.’

The fat officer sighed, then nodded, resigned. ‘Give me a…’

The major started to close the door to dress but Luis gave him a displeased glance, that he would not care to linger outside a shut door, waiting. The major slid the door full open and turned to his task.

The car jerked to the squealing of brakes, the train slowed and stopped. Under the gasps of steam from the locomotive, the officer donned his pants, tunic, and boots. Out of a travel case he took his Luger pistol and holster and buckled them on. He asked no questions.

Luis led him down the hall to the passenger car door. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘As ranking officer on this train, I thought I should alert you, Major. I’ve received a radio message that the tracks are broken ahead at the Oktabrskaya station. We cannot get through just yet. I’ve ordered the train to a halt.’

Luis stepped out of the train onto the rail mound. The major clambered down behind him.

‘Why are we stopping out here in the middle of…’

‘Shhh, Major. Please.’

The train stood still, the locomotive continued its heavy metal breath, waiting for the order to continue. On either side of the tracks stretched a field, without trees or bushes. His ears caught nothing, not the rustle of a leaf or the shush of a breeze, so vast was the open land, just a flat earth black with unmown grasses.

‘They won’t come here.’

‘Who won’t come here?’ the major asked.

‘The partisans.’

‘Partisans?’

‘They’re trying to stop this train, Major.’

Something in Luis’s flat tone kept the major from further queries. The officer’s bare head pivoted up and down the empty tracks, he seemed suddenly aware he was alone outside the train car with only a skinny SS

captain and their two pistols. The notion of partisans was a fearsome one, bearded wild men in civilian clothes who fought with abandon, with vengeful crudeness and animal cunning. They were natives who knew every inch of the land and had the local populace to abet them. But there’s no danger right here, Luis thought. He’d seen enough ambushes, set a few himself, to know when and where they were likely Not here, without cover to attack and retreat. No, they’re waiting somewhere ahead. There will be trees beside the tracks and they’ll come out of them.

Luis lifted his nose, sipping the night air, calculating. The major asked,

‘How do you know this?’

‘The SS has received reports over the past few days that the Russians would try to bomb the Oktabrskaya train station. This they did tonight, apparently quite well. Blowing up the station was just a delaying tactic, Major, to slow the train in case the first partisan attack fails. While we wait for the tracks to be mended, they’ll have time to organize another ambush.’

The major fidgeted. ‘Another ambush?’

‘Yes. After the one tonight.’

‘Tonight?’

The major was repeating things again, but Luis grew patient now that he knew what was going to happen. The engineer had followed his instructions and alerted him when the train approached Slatino, ten miles south of the Ukraine border with Russia, twenty miles south of Oktabrskaya.

Luis eased his voice and said, ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’

The officer cocked his head at Luis.

‘You may get back on board, Major. I’ll join you shortly.’

Major Grimm turned on the sooty rocks. He climbed the steps back into the passenger car.

From the steps he asked, ‘How did you know, Captain de Vega?’

Luis nodded into the vast darkness of the Russian steppe.

Yes, he thought, let’s begin, and he harkened back to the huge silence of the plaza when the bull first enters the ring.

‘I know, Major, because we have infiltrated the partisans.’

* * * *

July 2

0200 hours

Luis ate only half of the bratwurst sandwich. He offered the rest of it to the engineer. The man declined, making a face to indicate he was too nervous to eat.

Luis looked around the locomotive compartment. It was not unlike the innards of a tank with all its dials and handles, everything made of metal and glass, but roomier. He admired the power of the big, pulsing machine to pull the immense weight trailing behind them. With a smile he considered how easily any one of his Tiger tanks straddling these tracks could shoot this locomotive into the ditch. But he did not say this, he was not feeling competitive. The engineer was executing his job well and with discipline, doing what Luis told him to do. The man did not also have to be brave.

Luis kept watch on the terrain beside the tracks. Major Grimm had wanted to wait until morning to continue but Luis made the decision to keep going the rest of the way under the cloak of night, a trainload of new Tigers would be ripe for a Soviet air attack. Besides, this was his train, his first assignment back on active duty, and it was going to arrive at Oktabrskaya at sunup, as scheduled, even if the station there was in shambles.

‘That’s enough,’ he told the engineer. The man worked his levers and cords and the train slowed with a tremendous sigh. When it was stopped, Luis climbed down onto the rails, his Luger in one hand, a flashlight in the other. From one of the troop cars, a soldier climbed down and waited. Luis flashed his light at the soldier once, the soldier flashed back.

Luis walked ahead. The train panted in stillness behind him. He trod the rail mound leaving the flashlight off, fixing his gaze on the racks; this was the third time in the twenty kilometers since Slatino he’d escorted the train through a passage of trees lining the rails. The scanty body he was trapped in made almost no sound walking the ties, his balance was so good he could stay on a single rail for a hundred meters before stepping off. His night vision was remarkable. He was sharp, like his nickname, cutting through the night.

The partisans will come with fifty men, he thought. That was the SS

intelligence.

Somewhere close to the Ukraine border. He paused and turned back to the unseen train a half mile behind him now. He blinked his flashlight twice. He knew without seeing that the soldier he’d stationed a quarter mile between himself and the train was signaling with another flashlight for the train to move forward. In response to the signal, Luis heard only a distant heave of steam.

The phalanx of trees was at least another mile long. The woods appeared to him as a jagged edge of deeper night, like the blackest paper roughly torn and pasted beside the tracks. He walked, head down, considering the partisan plan, filling in the gaps of his knowledge with what he would do in their position. Fifty men with small-arms, on foot, would wait in the trees. They’ll expect the train to come barreling past. When it does, they’ll blow the track under the locomotive or perhaps under one of the troop cars. The train will derail and the partisans will rush in a single wave out of their cover, across fifty meters of open ground on either side. Many cars will be upended, the garrison will be stunned or injured. They’ll engage in a quick and fierce firefight. In the midst of the shooting, they’ll head for the tanks with more explosives to spike the cannon barrels. Then the partisans will melt back into the steppe, and Luis will make his return to his SS division Leibstandarte by reporting the death of the ten Tigers that were under his protection.

Luis stopped. He turned a full circle on the rails and tingled. He’d walked into the place where he would have set the snare were he the one lying in ambush. A curve in the tracks. A band of trees on both sides of the rails. Wide fields behind them, no villages close by. Luis cast his gaze into the brush and branches left and right, and peopled the dark with twenty-five dirty faces per side, breaths held, fifty fingers on triggers. He walked another dozen quiet steps, sensing the Russians’ anger; in the darkness he pitched his own wrath against theirs, and in the spark that was made when the two met and struck, he saw the explosive.

He froze on the track. The train was far back and puffing, waiting for his signal to come forward. The partisans would be waiting just ahead, expecting the train’s momentum to carry it past the point of the tracks they intended to blast, toppling the cars in front of them. Perhaps they haven’t heard the train yet; Luis himself could barely make out the huffing locomotive.

He hoped they hadn’t seen or heard him, either.

He bent low, approaching the mine with five careful strides. Wedged sideways between the tracks was a fat log, like a damsel tied there in the night. Luis knelt beside it, feeling the bark, listening into the darkness for the sound of boots coming to draw a knife across his scrawny neck. With exploring fingers, he determined the nature of the bomb. Jammed between one end of the wooden trunk and the left-hand rail were two bars of C-3

explosive, two and a quarter pounds of the stuff smashed between the wood and the steel. Luis skimmed fingers across the putty lumps of plastique, feeling for the blasting caps; there would be two, wired together in case one failed. He found them and pulled his hand away; blasting caps were notoriously volatile, far more than the C-3 itself.

Luis admired the cleverness of the partisans. The section of tree trunk had been laid between the tracks as tamping for the explosive. When the C-3 blew, only one track would be severed, the one on the inside of the curve. This rail would break to the side, not up. The tram cars leaning around the bend in the tracks would derail to the inside of the curve, and because one set of wheels would be lower, the cars would spill over.

Luis saw the single electric cord running to the blasting caps. The slender wire ran left, straight into the trees in front of him. This was not good. The partisans were right there, forty meters away. Slowly, he put his Luger pistol in the hand holding the flashlight, and reached his empty hand into a tunic pocket for his wire cutters.

He dropped the Luger.

The thing clattered, metal tattle-tale on the big granite stones of the rail mound. Luis wasted not a second. He clutched the wire cutter and snipped the wire, felt the wire coil away from the blasting caps, then pulled the caps out of the C-3 as quickly as he dared. Once the explosive was disarmed - the detonators were out in seconds but to Luis it seemed an hour - he jumped to his feet and took this new physique of his on its first flat-out run.

He turned on the flashlight and blinked it three times into the darkness that swallowed the train. This was a different signal. Then he threw the flashlight away and drove his arms and legs as fast as he could. It was good to hear his boots were not always so silent; this time they tore down the rail ties with blaring purpose.

The first shots sounded in the trees. He could not tell how close the bullets came to him, he was running and huffing so hard he would have to get hit by a bullet before he would know if they had a bead on him. He ran down off the rail ties into the grass; it made no sense to race straight down the tracks, it made him too easy a target. More reports cracked out of the trees on both sides. Luis reproached himself for a clumsy ass, dropping the pistol like that. He ran on, exhilarated, laughing with manic gasps at every shot fired behind him that missed; he was too thin to be much of a target.

The waist-high grass beside the rail mound did not slow him. Like running on the moon, he thought, pumping his knees and elbows; whipped-up pollen flew in his face, a night breeze brushed his puffing cheeks. But what speed, he thought, where is the gravity of the world now?

He lost count of the shots the partisans fired at him. He wasn’t worried about being wounded, they never got a clear look at him in his speeding black uniform. He just wanted to get back to the train fast, before the partisans could repair the cut wire and blow the track anyway, settling for that little victory and making their escape. Luis had more planned for them.

The soldier shined his flashlight at Luis coming up out of the grass.

Luis stopped and turned back up the tracks. He controlled his breathing as best he could to be quiet, to hear if they were still shooting or even following. He heard nothing.

From the other direction came the train, rushing to where they stood.

This soldier had done his job. When Luis flashed him three times, he was to summon the train.

‘Captain, are you alright?’ the soldier asked.

‘Yes,’ Luis huffed. ‘They… uh…’ he took a deep breath and blew it out, ‘… they spotted me. But I found it. I cut the wire…’

‘Are they following you, sir?’

‘I don’t know.’

The soldier unshouldered his submachine-gun.

‘You go back to the train, Captain. I’ll keep them off you.’

Luis took one more moment to look this boy over, the Czech one who’d delivered the message to his compartment an hour ago. This is why the SS is running out of men, Luis thought.

‘No, Private. Stay with me. You’ll get your chance in another minute.’

The train rumbled up to them. The two ran alongside. Luis climbed onto the ladder to the locomotive. He stuck his head into the compartment.

‘Keep this speed, no faster,’ he shouted to the engineer. Then he dropped off the ladder and let the train haul the first of the passenger cars to him. He beckoned the Czech grenadier to follow, then matched the pace of the car and jumped aboard.

He entered the car. Fifty SS troopers huddled in the seats; helmets, boots, belts, and barrels creaked and rattled with the joggling of the slow-moving train. Several of the soldiers snored.

‘Up,’ Luis said. A few leaped to their feet; the jangling noise animated the rest.

‘Now,’ Luis said.

In seconds the men lined up like paratroopers in an airplane to leap from the passenger car doors. Luis turned to enter the next car.

‘Up,’ he said.

When he had done this in all four cars, issuing two hundred trained grenadiers onto the rail mound, he jumped down the tracks, the Czech soldier at his heels. The train engineer, though a fearful man, had not sped the train up one jot.

When his own passenger car rolled past, Luis saw the major peering out the open window of his own cabin.

Luis waved. ‘You’re going to miss the fun, Major.’

Grimm held up both palms to Luis and shouted down, ‘Wait!’ He disappeared from the window. Luis envisioned the fat officer scrambling in his dark compartment for his socks and boots to scoot off the train before it reached the partisans and their booby-trap.

The train ambled by. When the flatbeds carrying the Tigers came up, he called to the guards on the first car: ‘Ready’

Two of the guards jumped from the flatbed over to the connected car, which was covered by a tarp. With Luis and the Czech private watching, the guards slipped the ropes holding the canvas sheath. The tarp flapped in the moving wind and fell away from a sandbagged machine-gun position. The two guards leaped in behind the gun, primed the ammo belt in the breech, and slid by toward the partisans, pivoting the barrel left and right, ready just as Luis had commanded and planned. When the last car in the train rattled by carrying the second tarp-covered pillbox, Luis gave the same signal.

The soldiers sprang to their assignment.

Luis and the Czech stood behind the slowly receding train. The major trundled to the end of the steps and held on, hesitant to jump down to the moving ground, then hopped off, almost stumbling on the rocks. Luis looked at the Czech. The boy was eager like a dog, to fetch, to chase.

‘Go,’ Luis said, releasing him with his voice and an open hand. The boy ran off behind the train, to get his portion of the kill.

Luis strolled behind the train, over the tracks he’d run across just two minutes before. He walked over to the major, caught his elbow and walked him forward along the tracks.

‘Shouldn’t we stay back here?’ the major asked, confused and apprehensive.

‘It’s safe, Major.’

To punctuate this, small-arms fire erupted out of the night from up the tracks. Luis walked beside the officer, listening and calculating when the train would pass beyond the partisans’ defused bomb. Gunfire spurted on both sides of the rail line, automatic weapons unleashed their rat-tat-tat, then gave way to single reports, then nothing. It was over. The train was safe.

‘What did you do?’ Major Grimm inquired. The man walked with both hands clasped behind his back, buttoned and belted belly out. His double chin hid part of his collar. Luis felt a twinge of vexation at this Wehrmacht officer, who carried on him as extra all the weight Luis had sacrificed, who cowered in his compartment until even that became unsafe, while others -

SS men all - ran ahead into the dark to engage the enemy.

‘Once I found the place where the partisans wanted to blow the tracks, I cut the wire to their explosive. Clever idea they’d come up with, to wreck only one rail and spill the train on its side. They spotted me at the last second and I ran back to the train.’

‘Those were the first gunshots, then. Them shooting at you?’

Nothing was said about the dropped Luger. Luis caught himself drawing up his posture, gaunt shoulders back, he took longer strides, the peacock walk of the matador. He had lain in hospital beds for months, tottered with canes for more months, suffered in sanitary surroundings through seasons of battle news from the front, and now this night marked his return to the war. Luis preened and strolled and talked.

‘In addition to escorting the Tiger tanks, I’m also bringing a company of reinforcements to Leibstandarte. Once I was sure where the partisans were located, I sent each of the four platoons ahead. Two platoons were ordered to take positions between the tracks and the trees. Two more were to penetrate the woods and come out behind the Russians in the fields.

The train drove between them. The Tigers were protected by twin machine-gun redoubts on rail cars.’

‘The tarpaulins.’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, I wondered what was under those sheets.’

‘Guns, Major.’

‘Yes, of course. Well, this is a war. What does one expect?’

‘Once the train was safe, the first two platoons entered the trees to flush the partisans away from the tracks and back toward the fields. When the Reds ran out from cover to disperse, the second platoons were waiting.’

‘It sounds like a quail hunt,’ the major said with approval.

‘Actually, a pincer action.’

‘Yes, well, it doesn’t matter. The tanks are safe. And so are we, I assume?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Good.’ The major clapped Luis on the back, celebrating his own closeness to danger and his survival in the graces of this little SS

captain. There was something condescending in the slap on the back, Luis thought; it carried the flavor of a German officer thanking a Spaniard for a job well done in the service of Germany. There was also a hint of surprise, as though Luis were too much a runt to be this brave and effective.

They approached the place on the tracks where the partisans had set their bomb. The log was still smeared with the gray explosive on one side, the blasting caps and wire were helpless deposits beside the rail. Major Grimm studied the set-up and clucked his tongue.

The locomotive sighed in the dark around the bend. As per Luis’s instructions, the tram halted a half mile away. Dawn would overtake them in another hour. Luis would roll with his Tigers safe and on schedule into the ruins of the Oktabrskaya station. The rails there would be repaired before the day was out. The tanks were too valuable to leave them at a rail station thirty miles from the front.

The two hundred SS grenadiers he’d unleashed into the woods began to return to the tracks. They came crashing through the underbrush carrying the bodies of dead partisans, as they’d been instructed. One by one, the carcasses were tossed like sacks onto the slope of the rail mound.

Luis walked along the line of bodies, the Germans laid them out spaced neatly. The partisans would be found like this. Their ruse to blow the tracks was discovered and averted. They might suspect they have a spy in their cell and tear themselves apart looking for him. Perhaps not. No matter.

Even if they found the informant, he’d be easily replaced. The Gestapo were masters of persuasion.

He walked the line of corpses. He expected to see many forms of one man, the simple Russian peasant roused to fight the European invader, knobby-handed laborers, shaggy beards and moustaches under close-cropped hair, tattered clothes and savage expressions even in death.

These freshly killed ones were civilized, and Luis found that odd. These partisans were not starved, their clothes were not ragged. The weapons collected by the grenadiers were first-rate, front-line rifles, oiled and loaded. A handful of the partisans had been young men, perhaps soldiers slipped into the conquered lands to provide the partisan cells with professional training and leadership. Most were older, with determined looks frozen on them in repose. Luis kicked the boots of one; these were new boots, good leather all around.

Major Grimm came to his side.

‘They’re getting stronger,’ the major observed.

Luis nodded. He’d been briefed that the Russian partisan movement was disorganized, tattered. These corpses gave the lie to that intelligence.

These men lying shoulder to shoulder on the gravel had been supplied, supported, led, emboldened. Their kind of fury was fed by the harshness of Germany’s occupation, the stench from the death camps, and the lunacy of taking these people lightly, something Luis had sworn long ago he would not do again.

Thirty-six bodies were lined up. Luis saw the determination and efficiency of the SS troopers daubed somewhere on each one, each corpse a quick tale; a short run to somewhere ended in being shot down. A wound in the neck, several in the chest or abdomen, many coats had no rents, their bullets were in the back. At the end of the row of partisans lay one SS soldier. Over him stood the Czech private.

‘Your friend?’ Luis asked.

The young soldier nodded. The dead grenadier, too, had the Czech flag on his sleeve. One stained rip dotted the dead boy’s jacket, the hole darker than any night.

‘Go get the train,’ Luis ordered the soldier. ‘Tell the engineer to come back.’

The soldier said, ‘Yes, sir.’ With what seemed like no effort he reached down for his comrade and slung the corpse across his shoulder.

He walked off down the rail ties with his cooling burden.

A sergeant from one of the platoons presented himself to Luis and the major beside him.

‘Report, Sergeant,’ Luis instructed.

‘A few got away, sir, no more than four or five. But we’ve got these here who surrendered.’

Behind the sergeant stood three partisans. These men hung their heads, making Luis think of a bull when he and the picadors were done with it. But these men were captive and afraid and for Luis that was their difference from the bulls, animals that were never afraid. He moved close to the three. They smelled. He curled his nose at fear and dirt, cheap wool and vodka. He never hated the bulls when he fought them, he and every man inside the ring respected and loved the beasts for their courage and how hard they died. He tried to keep his anger from quaking his hand when he held it out for the sergeant’s pistol. The soldier laid the gun in Luis’s palm.

‘Turn them around,’ he directed the sergeant. The soldier obeyed.

Luis barely looked at them. He’d had more curiosity for the dead ones lined along the rail mound, the ones who died fighting. These three surrendered.

Luis dispatched the first one. The single shot to the back of the head pitched the partisan forward. The report flew off into the fathomless night.

The partisan crumpled across the tracks. One of the grenadiers hauled the body back by the feet, aligning it tidily with the rest of the corpses.

The second partisan whimpered. Luis stepped back and shot him from an outstretched arm, to put as much distance between himself and this weeper as he could. This one did not even tumble forward but collapsed at the knees, so weak was he. Another soldier straightened the body.

Luis walked behind the third. He raised his pistol. The man turned around to face him, not lifting his eyes to the Luger aimed at his forehead but glaring deep into Luis’s sockets. Luis saw a sneer; the partisan was enjoying what had been done to this SS man he now eyed, the flesh stripped off him by the war made on Russia. The partisan licked his lips, dry, under clean-shaven cheeks. He was old, this one, he’d seen enough life, time to balance it out with death. He challenged Luis by turning around.

He mocked him by speaking.

‘ Rodina,’ the partisan said.

Luis felt alone with the partisan, enfolded by night out here on a stretch of Russian rail. The man had said ‘Motherland.’ His eyes were final, not just for himself but for Luis and the whole war. Luis held the gun steady between the partisan’s eyes.

Slowly, with even more sureness than the partisan had mustered, he shook his own head. No, he told the man with the gesture; the finalness is yours alone.

He lowered the gun, handing it back to the sergeant. No one else moved, not the major nor any of the watching grenadiers.

In a flash, Luis grabbed the hilt of his SS knife. The blade leaped from its sheath. With a backhand stab, knuckles up, Luis drove the dagger into the side of the partisan’s neck. The knife embedded where it was intended, missing the carotid artery and striking between the vertebrae to slice the spinal cord. Luis yanked the blade out and the partisan fell like a puppet with its strings cut. The glare on the man’s face was wiped away.

Luis looked to the sky. The sun was beginning to rise. He knelt to swipe his knife on the partisan’s pant leg, then slid the blade back into its scabbard.

He issued no orders for the soldiers to follow, but walked away past the line of bodies, toward the waiting train. The men tramped after him, wordless, rifles clanking in their arms and across their backs. He didn’t look down at the partisans, there was no more curiosity, death made every man the same.

Major Grimm caught up to him at the head of the company. Luis still felt the life of the defiant partisan throb in his hand, a powerful sensation, like a heartbeat. The major wanted to talk, it seemed, but Luis did not oblige. He reached into a pocket for a packet of crackers to appease his hunger.

* * * *

CHAPTER 9

July 2

0210 hours

west of Tomarovka

Even half conscious, Katya could still ride.

The three dark partisans who’d cut her from her downed U-2 had horses tied at the nearby farm of a peasant. Four mounts waited, the spare was to have been for Leonid.

She needed help climbing into the saddle. Her ribs and hips all felt clobbered, every muscle seared. The old peasant looked her over while handing a bag of food up to one of the partisans. He asked, ‘Is this the pilot you came to rescue? A woman?’ The partisan took the parcel and replied,

‘No.’

One of the men grabbed the reins to guide her horse. Katya drew the leather back into her own hands and told him, ‘Ride.’

The three partisans wheeled their mounts. The peasant continued his distasteful glare at Katya, as though he’d risked his life stashing these horses for the partisans to salvage nothing more than some fragile female.

She managed one good kick in her horse’s ribs and lit out behind them into the darkness.

They rode for an hour, stopping at every sound in the night. The horses were well trained, accustomed to stealth, they did not nicker or stomp. The three men did not talk to Katya, they seemed angry with her.

She did not ask questions. She was in a new slipstream, swept off in the current of unexpected events and people. She clung to the horse by instinct, for her hands and knees could barely clutch. Her mind staggered between blows: in one moment pain, in the next dead Vera left behind, in another Leonid lost or captured, then fear, then again pain.

One of the partisans was the leader of their little group. He rode in front and set the tone and pace. They stayed out of the open fields and away from every building, creeping along the gaps between tree lines. The Germans in this area kept themselves murky, only a few distant campfires were spangles on the darkness, one set of headlights on a far-off dirt road glimmered and vanished. The four riders came to a stream. The leader raised a hand for them to stop. He dismounted and waved the others from their horses. Leading his horse, he moved into the calf-deep water. Katya swung her leg across the saddle. She heard herself moan, the ground became the sky, galaxy-filled. She fainted.

* * * *

July 2

Noon

in a field south of Borisovka

Rain dribbled on her forehead. Soft light played over her eyelids. The grass beneath her back felt soft and damp. Papa knelt beside her - was it Papa? -

smelling of horse and steel, and close too was the youth of Valentin, an energy she could feel without seeing. A horse pawed, a leafy branch strayed between her shut eyes and the sky. She was home.

Katya opened her eyes. Gray light dodged through wet branches low over her face. She blinked, and that movement tripped off the pain in her joints. She groaned and turned her head.

‘So, this is a Night Witch.’

The voice tumbled from a squatting man, his elbows across his knees and his boot heels off the grass. His voice was deep, but no deeper than the eyes which were set in his sockets as if at the back of caves. They were black eyes under black brows, over hollow grim cheeks fletched with silver stubble. But he smiled and reached down a hand. Each finger was filthy with half-moons of dirt under the nails. He wore a charcoal wool suit coat and brown slacks. His shirt was forest green.

Katya took a deep breath; her ribs protested, making her wince. The squatting man shook the hand he held out. Katya took it. He pulled gently and she sat up.

‘There,’ he said. ‘All better, yes?’

‘No.’

She looked about. In addition to this stranger, thirty others sat oiling guns, eyeing the surrounding fields through the dripping leaves, or napping.

An equal number of horses clustered around the trees where they were tethered.

‘Where am I?’

‘Three miles south of Borisovka. In a stand of trees. On your ass, where you’ve been for the last nine hours.’

Katya remembered stopping at the stream. Swinging her leg out of the saddle. The burst of stars.

‘I…’

‘You passed out. They brought you in across your saddle.’ The man pointed at three men standing behind him. ‘You’re a sound sleeper, Night Witch. What’s your name?’

The three came to loom over the kneeling partisan. She recognized them through the haze of her recollection; last night’s leader was an old one very like the man beside her, hardened, something vicious under the skin.

The other two were younger, probably soldiers found behind enemy lines.

One was thin, the other heavy. The skinny one was cold-eyed, not much more than twenty yet he looked wicked, a killer. The heavy one might have been her age, twenty-eight, with a blushed, full face like a red rising sun.

This one’s manner was mercurial, with fleet eyes and a nervous, jiggling neck. Katya knew either of them, any of them gathered under these trees, would stick a dirk in her heart if they believed she was a threat to their unit.

‘Is there any water?’ she asked, holding her voice steady.

The heavy one handed down his canteen. He smiled with the gesture, then like a fish the smile darted from his lips.

She drank, then answered the kneeling man’s question. ‘Katerina Dimitriyevna Berkovna. Lieutenant, 208th Night Bomber Division.’

Katya tried to stand. The kneeling man stood and helped her. The fat one lent a hand, too. The other two held their ground and watched her struggle upright.

Once she was erect, before speaking, she made her peace with the wracking in her body. No bones were broken, but she knew beneath her flight suit she was a storm cloud of bruises.

She addressed the three partisans who’d saved her from the plane and the German patrol. ‘Thank you.’ They nodded, and the unspoken clung on their faces, a show of their dismay that it was Katya they had rescued and not the fighter pilot they’d been seeking at Tomarovka.

The deep-eyed man spoke for them. ‘I’m Colonel Plokhoi.’ This partisan called himself Colonel Bad. ‘You’re with a druzhiny of the Hurricane Brigade. Last night our cell had a radio alert that a Yak-9 was down in our region. My men went to bring the pilot back. They were about to meet him at the assigned location when you showed up to save him instead.’

‘Leonid Lumanov.’ Katya said the name so Leonid would not be known as ‘him.’ These partisans were like untamed bits of the earth itself, gloomy and weathered. She hurt a great deal standing here but not so much that she would drop her defiance and become the disappointing woman these four believed they’d lugged back. She was a pilot, like Leonid.

‘Lumanov,’ the colonel allowed her, nodding. ‘Well, when Lumanov struck his flare for you to land, the Germans saw him. As a result, you got shot down. Your pilot friend disappeared. And your navigator got killed.’

Katya winced. She wanted to say Vera’s name, too, to lay a grave marker on the cool words of this partisan. But Plokhoi was right. If she had stayed away, Leonid would be safe. Vera would be alive.

Katya fought the urge to hang her head in grief. Instead she kept her chin and her gaze firm; neither Vera nor Leonid would want her to show regret to these men. Vera had encouraged the rescue, her last words were

‘Go get him, Katya.’ And Leonid had lit the flare, preferring to be rescued by Katya and her little U-2 instead of the partisans. Yes, she was sorry for what happened, the loss and death, but for nothing more, not her own effort, not the bravery of Vera, not the faith of Leonid.

The three partisans who’d brought her back turned away now that she was awake and standing. The heavy-set one allowed a sympathetic smile before walking off. His thinner mate went to sit with some comrades, men who made no noise other than the sound of several whetstones under swirling blades, a hiss that blended with the patter of the rain.

Plokhoi jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his platoon. ‘They’ll be fine. Actually, they’ve got plenty to thank you for. We get a lot of supplies dropped to us by you Night Witches. By the way, were you in on bombing the station at Oktabrskaya last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, you’ll be glad to know your part of the mission went well. The station and the tracks were wrecked, and the German garrison was hit hard.’

What did Plokhoi mean, ‘your part of the mission’? Then she understood. Plokhoi’s druzhiny must have been the partisan group assigned to work with the Night Witches to stop the German tank train.

Something had gone wrong.

‘Last night,’ Plokhoi said, ‘I had seventy-two men. I sent fifty of them after the train. Today I’ve got thirty-one left. The Germans were ready for us. The train got through to the station. It’ll reach Belgorod by tonight after the rails are fixed. And I don’t have enough men to go after it again.’

Katya rammed her thoughts through the crash, back to the mission over the Oktabrskaya train station. The night fighter had been waiting. As it had been three nights before that, at the sortie above the enemy supply depot. Again, the Germans had known the Night Witches were coming, where and when; the night fighter was there, too. Her Night Bomber squadron received its targets from intelligence gathered by the partisans.

And what about last night’s attempt to rescue Leonid? A German patrol had been closing in at the same time Katya and Vera and the partisans reached him. Now Plokhoi said his partisans had been anticipated last night by the tank train. Their ambush was damned before it started.

She said nothing to Plokhoi about these facts, or her sudden suspicion that there might be a traitor in their number. Plokhoi must be aware, if he himself was not the traitor. She didn’t know the man from a stranger before waking up to him five minutes ago. A cold feeling seeped down her spine, as though raindrops had dripped into her flight suit. She cast her eyes over the surviving partisans. Which one was it?

Outside the copse of trees, the day was leaden. These partisans huddled like trolls from the daytime. The steppe must be a poor landscape for guerilla fighters, not like a mountain wood or a swamp, where it would be easier to hit and disappear. These men had not many places to hide in the Kursk region, a few dispersed villages, some small forests, but the rest was flat, ranging farmland. Secrecy was their survival. Katya knew in an instant it would be hers, as well.

Plokhoi offered a cigarette. She shook her head.

‘We’ll get you out of here tonight,’ he said, looking up through the leaves, invoking darkness, the only time his cadre could move. ‘I’ll radio your Witches to come pick you up.’

‘No,’ Katya said.

She didn’t trust this Colonel Bad and his radio. More important, she didn’t know Leonid’s fate. She and Vera had come looking for him, and she hadn’t yet found him. He might have been captured, but he might still be free and close by.

And if there was a spy in this partisan cell, she had a debt to pay him.

For the four dead Witches. For Vera. And maybe for Leonid.

Besides, the partisans had horses. She said to Plokhoi, ‘I’m staying.’

* * * *

July 2

1915 hours

Plokhoi assigned the three who’d rescued Katya to stay with the Witch. He would not call her by her name or rank. Katya did not insist. She let it go -

after all, she thought, this was a person who’d anointed himself Colonel Bad. She wondered what kind of man he’d been before the Germans invaded. A professor, perhaps, or a gentleman bandit. The dirt on him spoke of stamina and ruthlessness, this was not a man who led from behind. He was charismatic; the others nodded when he spoke and never broke their eyes from him. Colonel Bad reminded Katya of a quieter version of her father.

The three partisans introduced themselves, then let her rest in the deepening shade for the whole of the afternoon. When she sat up, the rain had ended, leaving a spongy humidity under the trees. The thin one brought her water. His name was Daniel. The heavy one approached with a tin of dry biscuits. His name was Ivan. The older man, their squad leader, tossed a pair of men’s trousers, a wrinkled tunic, and a thin wool coat on the ground to replace her green flight suit. He walked off and sat near but with his back to them, gazing out through the trees. Josef was his name.

Big Ivan settled next to her and took a few of the biscuits for himself.

Daniel folded like a jack-knife, his long legs tucked under him.

‘I’m sorry for the men you lost last night,’ she told them. Both lowered their eyes. Ivan muttered that he was sorry they couldn’t get the body of the other Witch out of her plane.

‘The Germans,’ he explained. ‘No time.’

What will happen to Vera? Katya wondered. The Germans will take her papers and maps and leave her body to rot. Villagers will come along to scavenge things from the wreck. They’ll bury her, and after the war there will be a memorial to Vera on the spot of the crash, a bust and a marble garden.

Katya thought, too, about the members of this fighting group killed in last night’s raid against the train. More than half of this druzhiny, gone. She wanted to ask if there’d been any word about what happened to Leonid, but she put that away for now. This was not the time to ask any of these men to address her concerns.

The mood under the trees was somber, even the horses stood still and dulled. So many lives taken all at once. The partisans sat without talking. Katya was tempted to warn the two young partisans who’d warmed up to her that their dead comrades might have been betrayed. She wanted to tell them how she, too, had lost friends to a possible traitor in their midst.

She bit all this back. Daniel and Ivan carried the water and biscuit tin to Josef. He waved them off and kept his eyes on the patches of steppe showing through the wet branches.

Until dark, Katya sat alone. She changed into the new baggy clothes.

Then she let her body rest, let Vera’s death sink far enough beneath her surface so she could continue on. That was what these partisans seemed to be doing, burying their dead in their hearts, making themselves accustomed to a world that was suddenly without their comrades. Silent and grieving, she watched the partisans sharpen and clean their weapons.

They were twelve miles from the front lines, but no enemy convoys or patrols came near their stand of trees. All daytime activity by the Germans seemed to have stopped. Plokhoi interpreted this to mean the battle would start soon.

After full night fell, Plokhoi led the remains of his band out of the trees. Katya hoisted herself gingerly into her saddle. The moon was shunted deep behind dense clouds as they rode, a shrouded midnight.

Katya rode in the thick of the pack, surrounded by Daniel, Josef, and Ivan. Her horse was sure-footed and strong, well fed. These partisans were obviously receiving supplies, with support and food from both the villages and the Night Witches’ air-drops. The men bristled with weapons and ammunition. Colonel Bad even had a radio, something very few partisan cells could boast. This must be a key group, and a good one, to operate right under the Germans’ noses like this. For them to fail so badly as they did against the tank train, something was rotten. Plokhoi must be aware of that.

They rode west, away from Borisovka. Daniel whispered to Katya that they were going to the villages to recruit, to regain their strength.

Somewhere in the night, Katya heard planes high up in the quilted clouds. Her spirit leaped for a moment, she closed her eyes to listen to the engines. These were not the popping motors of her night-bombing squadron on another mission. These were bigger planes, American-made Boston A-20s, and fighters, Yak-9S in escort.

Katya and all the partisans reined in their horses to watch the restive black world around them. Colonel Plokhoi sidled up next to her, a wild look in his eyes. Then, no more than five miles behind them, around Borisovka, the night blistered into orange and yellow flashes. She kept a tight rein on her horse, but the animal did not flinch at the bomb blasts and firelights.

The horse was used to this.

Plokhoi wheeled his mount around to see the Soviet air raid better. He shouted over the explosions, unconcerned he might be heard by any Germans in the area.

Are you sure you don’t want to go home, Witch?’ He leaned closer to her. ‘I can smell it, you know, I can tell you!’

The partisan leader raised one arm into the air and shook a grimy fist.

‘Goddamn!’ he bellowed. ‘Goddamn, here it comes!’

* * * *

CHAPTER 10

July 3

0700 hours

Vladimirovka

beside the Oboyan road

Valentin’s boot tapped on Dimitri’s left shoulder. Then the hard toe nudged the nape of his padded helmet. Dimitri hauled back on the left lever and shoved the right one forward. The tank spun into a left-hand turn, slipping slightly, Dimitri sensed the mud under his treads. He brought the tank out of the turn and stomped the clutch, jamming the shift knob into fourth, the T-34’s highest gear. The transmission grumbled. Dimitri leaned down for his hammer but the General did not like to be struck and complied, the gears meshed. Dimitri floored the accelerator and the tank bounded along the ridge at thirty miles an hour, top speed.

All hatches were closed. Dimitri peered into a gash of gray-green and bouncing world through a small periscope. The designers of the T-34 didn’t put much stock in the discretion of the driver. His little, horizontal, mirrored view of the road made what bits he could see look like he was driving through a toy world. For the most part, the driver was forced to rely on his commander to tell him when and where to turn. Even the commander’s vision was limited; he sent his tank charging into a battle he, too, could barely observe. The commander peered through a periscope or a telescope, which provided him no more than a fourteen-degree-wide outlook, pressing his forehead and eyes against poor rubber pads that did little to keep light out of the optics. In addition he had one small armored port at shoulder height and a pistol port below that. Buttoned up like this, the T-34 was a collection of blind spots. Running this morning shut tight as a tin, the General’s insides were humid and smelly, piquant with perspiration and temper.

Valentin rested his feet on Dimitri’s shoulders, guiding the tank with his heels and toes because he was busy using the intercom for other duty.

He was yelling at the loader Pasha.

‘No, no, no, the other bin! The other bin! I want AP! AP, Private! Get three ready. Now, do it, go, go!’

Dimitri kept the tank barreling ahead straight, listening to his son holler at the burly teenager while the boy scrambled for the ammunition. Pasha struggled on his knees, stripping back the neoprene matting that lay across the floor bins, digging down in them for the correct shells; this time Valya wanted solid-shot armor-piercing rounds. Somehow Pasha had managed to grapple from the floor the wrong ammo, a heat shell, a high-explosive anti-tank round. The T-34 carried seventy-seven rounds: nineteen of armor-piercing, fifty-three of high-explosive, and five of anti-personnel. Only nine of those rounds were easily accessible, on racks located left and right on the turret wall. Once those shells were expended, the loader had to root around under the floor mat into the eight storage bins beneath their feet.

When the tank was moving at full speed, swaying and hopping the way it was now, the loader’s job was very difficult.

Valentin’s foot crunched into the middle of Dimitri’s neck. This meant stop, fast. Dimitri down-shifted and hit the brakes. He brought the General to a skidding halt. No sense aggravating his testy son any more than he already was.

Valya’s voice swelled in the intercom. ‘Load AP!’

Behind and above Dimitri, Pasha rose from his knees to slam a shell into the breech. Valentin hit the electrical traverse and the turret began to whir and pivot. The turret walls, the dials, sights, and controls, the thick breech of the big main gun, all began to swing to the right. But Valentin’s and Pasha’s seats did not move. Valya’s feet left Dimitri’s shoulders, he had to stand and dance with the turret whenever he swung it around. This was a major design flaw in the T-34; the seats for the commander and loader were not mounted to the turret itself but to the ring of the chassis, so that the two had to skitter around with the swiveling breech and the firing controls whenever the turret was turned. Dimitri looked over his shoulder to watch his son. The boy contorted himself to keep his eye on his range telescope and at the same time twirl the elevation flywheel to raise the main gun to match his range to the target. At Valya’s feet, Pasha was folded again into the floor of the tank, he had the rubber mat in a shambles looking for two more AP rounds to satisfy his sergeant.

Metal clanged and the big boy began to rise with a shell cradled in his arms. Valentin lifted his right boot and laid the foot in the middle of the boy’s spine, forcing him back inside the bin.

Valentin had two foot pedals beneath his position, the left one for the 76.2 mm main gun, the right for the machine-gun mounted co-axially to the cannon. He kept his brow pressed against the padding above his telescope, his foot on Pasha’s squirming back. He turned the elevation wheel one more round, then stepped on the left pedal.

The big gun fired. The tank jolted with the blast, Dimitri wasn’t ready for it and knocked his padded head. Inside the tank, the breech rammed backward in its recoil, the metal slab just missed smashing Pasha’s head into pulp. A scalding casing popped out of the breech and clanged on the exposed bins. Valentin pulled his boot off the boy’s back to let him up. The casing rolled near Pasha’s cheek and he yelped, dropping the AP shell he held, making him dig frantically back into the bin to retrieve it. Sulphurous smoke backwashed down the breech into the cabin. The General’s ventilation system sucked at the fumes but with all the hatches secured drew them outside too slowly. Everyone coughed a little; quiet Sasha, crammed beside Dimitri at his gunner’s position, gagged.

The tank sat apprehensive, the diesel engine idled waiting for an order. Sasha kept his face at his own machine-gun vision block, a mirrored slit no bigger than Dimitri’s. Pasha sat up with the AP shell clutched to his chest, looking up at Valentin from bended knees. The turret traverse whined, spinning the main gun to face forward. Valentin glared tight-lipped through his optics to see if he’d hit his target, pirouetting with the green turret walls turning around him.

Dimitri gripped the handle over his head. He turned it and shoved the heavy metal hatch up. Sodden air tumbled in on him like a wet dog. He stood into the drizzly morning.

‘I need a piss break. Anyone?’

He laid his hands flat on the dripping armor and curled his feet up under him, to slide off the glacis plate to the trampled ground. The tank stank of exhaust, fumes from the fired AP shell still trickling out of its long muzzle, black diesel puffs issuing from its rear. Dimitri walked beside the T-34 and opened the fly on his coveralls. He waited for Valentin’s hatch to lift and a stream of abuse to fly at him. Instead, the floor escape hatch beneath the gunner’s position fell open and thin Sasha crawled from between the treads. The commander’s hatch rose. Valya climbed down the side of the tank and hopped off the treads. Round little Pasha followed.

The four of them peed into the ground. The General, surrounded by its keepers, purred.

Dimitri finished and kept his eyes out over the steppe. Craters and scorched spit-up ground dotted the crest of a low hill a mile off. This spot was where the tanks of his 3rd Mechanized Brigade came to calibrate their cannons and season their new recruits, their own Sashas and Pashas. All the land here on the southern shoulder of the Kursk bulge rose slightly to the north, favoring the Russian defense; here, the steppe was so flat that even a slight elevation was an immense advantage. The Germans will have to run uphill in their opening assault. Another tank on a nearby crest let loose with a shell, the thing whistled and struck, blasting into one of the holes already scarring the ground out there. Dimitri let his imagination create the coming battle on the field and hills below. The thunder and last pattering rain from the fading storm, plus the crash of gunnery from the other tanks in his company, made a grim and real fabric with his conjuration of havoc and punctured metal, screaming shells and geysers of metal and men.

Valentin came beside him.

‘They’ll get us killed, Papa.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ Dimitri kidded. ‘I was afraid all you Communists put no value on your own lives.’

Valentin ignored the jab. He fixed his eyes where Dimitri looked. Did Valya see the images? Did he perhaps see himself there, broken in the carnage?

‘I’m serious. These two got shit for training before they were sent here. They’ll get us killed.’

Dimitri expelled a breath. He winced up into the falling rain to release the vision of the battle, the image of his son dead below. Pasha and Sasha walked up.

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant,’ the loader said glumly. The boy had his sleeves rolled up above husky forearms. His skin was scraped raw from digging into the jiggling bins, several nails were blue from getting pinched between the jostling shells.

‘The sergeant says you’re going to get us killed, Pasha. You’re a Cossack now. Would you do that?’

The boy’s reaction pleased Dimitri. He didn’t cower or mutter, nor did he erupt into shocked shame. He firmed, like something made harder by fire. He lifted his head and inflated his chest.

‘No,’ he said. Pasha considered his answer under the eyes of the others, his little clan, then repeated it. ‘No.’

‘There,’ said Dimitri, laughing into the rain. ‘I knew it! Pasha won’t get us killed at all! It’ll definitely be a German who does it. Right, boys?’

At this Dimitri spread his arms and turned the two teenage soldiers back to the tank. He urged them to the General with a shove. The two boys climbed into their hatches and took their seats.

Dimitri looked at his son, and saw the young man wondering what to do with his impudent father. Dimitri reflected back to his own father, how many times the old man had taken the flat of a sword to his buttocks, the flat of a palm to his cheek, how many lessons handed down with a blow or a barb. He’d hated the old man too many days, and loved him here, now, long after the man was gone, for those lessons. He did not want to be hated by his own son, but how else could he teach, what other way did he know?

There is a straight line, Dimitri thought, from grandfather to son to grandson, like a saber skewering us all. Impatience, demands, love given too late. And now there is another war on; when would Dimitri have a chance to do it better than his father did?

As though reading his mind - this was Valentin’s mother surfacing again in the boy, she could do that, answer questions Dimitri asked only in his head - Valentin said, ‘I’m trying.’

Dimitri wanted to tell the boy the time was long past for trying. The biggest battle in history was going to start in a day or two, their tank company had orders to defend the Oboyan road with their lives, and it would be Valya’s trying, not Pasha or some lucky Nazi bastard, that got them killed. It was high time to quit trying and start doing. Valentin whined and sought forgiveness for getting it wrong. His anger and distance with his men was not leadership, it was just authority. None of the Communists seemed to understand this point. They preached that every man was equal, and so looked down on all men, explaining their mistakes that led to the deaths of millions as trying.

‘Thanks for the piss break,’ he said instead.

* * * *

July 3

0905 hours

Valentin left for a meeting with the other commanders in their company.

Before he disappeared, he ordered the crew of the General Platov to remove every one of the shells from the bins and racks left after the early firing practice and lay them on the ground beside the tank. He told Dimitri his reason: he wanted to get rid of some of the heat rounds and add more solid-shot shells. If they were going to face Mark VI Tigers, there’d be little chance they could penetrate the mammoth tanks’ armor with the General’s 76 mm main gun. So he was going to target the Tigers’ treads and wheels for mobility kills. A still Tiger is a lot easier to surround and destroy. Plus, knocking out one Tiger takes out two, because it takes a Tiger to tow a Tiger off the battlefield. For that, the General needed more AP rounds.

Heat rounds were best used against light armored targets, not tanks. And they were less accurate at ranges outside eight hundred meters, requiring more trajectory. This all made sense to Dimitri and he said he’d take care of it. Valya went off with another sergeant. Dimitri watched his son and the other man, both the same age and rank, walk away together, smoking and speaking as equals. He was glad Valya had men to talk with, since he clearly didn’t have much to say to his own crew. He wondered what his son was like as a friend and comrade. Probably quiet and earnest. Likely a follower. These would make him acceptable, perhaps popular.

With Valentin gone, the gray morn had them sweat to do their work, a sauna under the camouflage netting. Pasha dug into the bins and passed the heavy rounds up through the commander’s hatch. Dimitri hoisted them out of the tank and handed them down to Sasha, who could barely handle the shells’ weight. Still, the boy laid them on the ground in a meticulous way, in rows of five, by ammunition type; he turned red as autumn in the process but never slacked. Dimitri’s muscles drank the exertion, and his worries were submerged in the dampness of the day.

When all the shells were on the ground, the three men lay beside the rounds to gaze into the low scudding roof of cloud. Dimitri lit a cigarette, sensing the wet ground seep into his coveralls and not caring; being clean and dry was something he’d long ago said farewell to. Dimitri smoked, gazing up - the boys were resting -tapping his fingers on his thighs and wanting darkness, another quick dawn, and the following day to come, knowing that it, or the next, would bear the battle with it.

He was fed up with waiting. There wasn’t much more the Soviets could do to fortify the Kursk salient. How many more artillery pieces and tanks and mines and barbed-wire bales can there be left in the world after what had been jammed into these five hundred square miles? How many more times could he flog his tank over the grasses and untended crops to fire at make-believe targets, how long until fate stopped flapping her wings over Kursk and descended to them, to sort them all out one by one?

Crouching behind these thick layers of defense, letting the enemy choose the timing of the battle, was making Dimitri edgy. A Cossack was by nature a charger, and this was what the Red Army had become since Stalingrad, pounding the Germans backward, slapping them reeling, back toward Poland and out of Russia. Now, he thought, we wait for the Nazis to call the tune. He sat up and looked south, the enemy lines were thirty miles away.

He cast his thoughts over the drab rim of the world, above the heads of the million defenders between him and the enemy, and called the Germans curses in his head: cowards, bastards, godless, anything to anger them and make them come now.

Dimitri stretched out to kick Pasha and Sasha awake.

‘Do you know,’ he asked the boys when they were sitting up and bleary, ‘the difference in these shells? What each one does?’

Both shook their heads, no. Dimitri thought as much; the training these new replacements had been given was - as Valya had said - shit.

‘The heat shells hold a warhead called a shaped charge. Inside the nose-cone here is an upside-down V of explosive.’ With his finger, Dimitri sketched the V on the shell, drawing the line, a mirror image of the point of the shell, so that a diamond was made starting at the tip of the shell. ‘When this hits, the charge ignites,’ and he drew his finger through the center of the diamond toward the tip, ‘and makes a jet of molten metal and superhot gases that will burn a hole through the armor. The crew inside is blinded in the first split second, then everything inside the tank is set on fire.’

‘Everything?’ asked Pasha, blinking, not comprehending what there was inside a tank to burn. There was nothing in there but metal and glass, and a little rubber padding.

‘Yes,’ Dimitri said. ‘Everything, including the air.’

The two boys gaped, wide alert now.

‘Then the ammunition cooks off, and boom!’ Dimitri spread his hands, there was nothing between them but a fiery vision.

Next, he nudged with his toe one of the AP armor-piercing rounds.

These, he explained, were solid shot topped with a soft metal cap. When this shell struck, the cap splashed against the armor, giving the hard, sharp metal core a better surface to grip, lowering deflection and improving perforation. Once the arrow-shaped penetrator broke through the armor, it would blast a blizzard of shrapnel over the crew from its own break-up and the hole it drilled in the tank wall.

Pasha and Sasha marveled, only dimly imagining what kind of death one met inside a tank.

‘It’s fast,’ Dimitri said, knowing it was that and much more but choosing only to describe the speed.

Sasha asked, ‘Do the Germans have these?’

Dimitri couldn’t contain his laugh.

‘Yes. Plenty of them. All pointed at us, my boys.’

His other two tank crews had been boys like these, not much better trained, not much brighter, all awed by war and the responsibility they’d been given by Stalin and his mouthy commissars to stop the Germans. The first crew had died in the Cauldron outside Stalingrad, while the Red forces were finishing off the last of the encircled German 6th Army. Some plucky, sneaky bastard jumped up on the tail of the first General Platov and jammed a magnetic mine under the rear overhang of the turret. When it blew, Valya had been standing in his commander’s hatch. He was rocketed straight into the sky like a Roman candle, his clothes shredded and on fire.

Dimitri was just as lucky; the turret was lifted right off its ring and he found himself sitting in a convertible tank chassis, watching his smoking son drop out of the sky twenty feet in front of him. Half of the loader beside Valya was still in the turret. The gunner in the seat next to Dimitri had been smashed by the lifting turret. And three months ago, when the Germans retook Khar’kov, the second General had been immobilized after an anti-tank gun hit one of its treads. Dimitri knew whoever fired it had a bead on them, and they had to bail out in the time it took to reload that gun. He shouted, ‘Get out!’ and flung open his hatch. Dimitri heard the crack of the incoming shell while he dove shoulder to shoulder with his son into a crater.

The other two boys were slower. The incomer was a HEAT round fired from a Mark IV no one had seen. The second General rocked, and the tank with its two scrambling boys left inside disappeared in blaze and smoke.

Dimitri said none of this to Pasha and Sasha. The other four boys had their graves, they needn’t be buried fresh inside these two. Instead he handed them both cigarettes. A soldier ambled by carting a wooden crate of bottles, a daily ritual for the Red Army.

Dimitri held out his hand and the soldier filled it with a clear bottle, a hundred liters of vodka stoppered with a cloth cork. Sasha reached for it but Dimitri held it back.

‘The commander gets the first swallow, Pasha. Always. We’ll wait.’

Dimitri laid his back against the wheels of the T-34, making his cigarette glow. The clouds were not parting, the day would be dark. The three of them sucked on their cigarettes and Valentin walked up to the three red dots. Dimitri handed up the bottle. Valya tipped it well, then returned it to Dimitri.

The crew of the General Platov ate a late morning meal, meat hash with black bread, and the vodka. Another ordnance truck came and swapped shells for Valentin, it was the commander’s option to carry into battle what ammo load he preferred. After the truck left, Valya unzipped his coveralls and bare-chested helped reload the bins and racks. Then Valentin ordered them back into the tank for more drills the remainder of the day.

That night, Dimitri was the last of the crew to go to sleep. He sat on the closed hatch above his driver’s seat and watched the stars slip into the sky by degrees. Well into his second pack of smokes, he looked down the line of tanks and saw the breathing embers of other cigarettes, other sleepless men. He noted for the first time there was no traffic going on around him. Not a truck delivered soldiers and supplies, no tank rumbled off on night maneuvers. Nothing more was being done in the short dark hours away from the Germans’ surveilling eyes. The preparations to defend the Oboyan road were finished. He spit and the taste of tobacco was like gunpowder.

In another hour, the southern horizon flared scarlet. The dark flowed back in, but another jittery dome was bitten out of the night. Dimitri watched and the flashes increased, a fever.

From far off came the thumps, the gavel of war, the commencing.

* * * *

CHAPTER 11

July 3

1240 hours

Oktabrskaya train station

The beat of pickaxes and sledges lulled Luis. His passenger car sweltered.

His train had been stopped since last night at the ruined Oktabrskaya station. The brick station house had no roof left, just scored beams, and all its sills were marred with black brows of soot from the fire. The Red night bombers had done nice work. The garrison billeted at Oktabrskaya would be without quarters for a while. But more vexing, the rails were broken in several places. Luis and Major Grimm sat as they had all morning, staring out their dripping windows at a dreary drizzle, waiting for repairs to be effected.

The major sweated profusely An hour ago he’d begged Luis’s pardon and stripped down to his white blouse. Luis watched him mop his head repeatedly. Porters ferried water to the major but there was no ice left on the train to cool it for him. Luis did not undo the first button of his SS

uniform; his body had so little excess on it that he pitied the corpulent officer melting in the seat across from him. The two had spoken very little since the major came to sit down. Luis took long, languorous blinks, wishing to nap in the heat. But the major would not sit still and rustled the fabric of his seat every few minutes.

‘Perhaps a walk in the rain,’ Luis suggested.

‘No. I don’t want to climb back into that damn coat.’ The major held up his soaked hanky. ‘This is my first time in Russia. I thought it was supposed to be cold.’

‘I think, Major, Russia is only supposed to be inhospitable.’

Major Grimm nodded and smiled, wiping sweat from his upper lip.

The look on his face seemed an appreciation of the man who made this jest, one who’d bled a part of his life away into the Russian soil.

‘I think I will put you in for a medal.’ The major spoke under the dabbing kerchief. ‘You’re very clever, you know. Your preparations saved those tanks. And the way you handled those partisan scum.’ The major pretended a shudder.

Luis had waited all morning for this statement from the officer. But Major Grimm had slept late, peeping out of his compartment only when the lunch trays were brought around. Luis contained his smile; this was the first step in the vision he held of his return to Russia and warfare. He would cover himself in medals and distinction on the Eastern Front, and go home to Barcelona as blinding to the eye as the sequins on his father’s golden traje de luces.

‘Thank you, Major.’

The officer leaned forward to pat Luis’s knee, the puffed hand silly on his puny leg. ‘You deserve it, Captain.’

Luis waited a moment while the major toweled himself. Then he stood, taking his leave to inspect the tanks, the men, and the progress of the repairs. He needed to do none of these. He simply knew it was a good moment to walk away. When the bull is down, walk the ring once, then stride away under the applause. Luis had gotten what he’d wanted from this officer. He’d made sure the man saw everything he did last night, held back the surprises of his tactics the way a matador hides the sword beneath the cape. Luis kept concealed until the right moment the tarp-covered machine-guns, his signals to the train’s engineer, his orders to the company of grenadiers. He could have sent someone else up the tracks to locate the explosive on the rails but he went himself. Knifing the last partisan was an inspired stroke. The major was enamored of Luis Ruiz de Vega, la Daga, the white Spanish blade.

He stepped off the train into the sultry summer sprinkle. Luis drew himself up and let others notice him, the painfully thin SS man, unmindful of the rain, the one who’d put down the partisan; yes, they were talking. Moving only his eyes he caught someone point him out. Luis had been comfortable under the gaze of thousands in the plaza de toros, just the way he was accustomed to the feel of blood on his hands. Walking these tracks in damp Russia was nothing as far as performances went.

Fifty meters in front of the locomotive, new rails were being laid by gangs of workers. The old, bent rails lay aside like giant tusks. The laborers were local Russians pressed into service by the occupation force, guarded by soldiers with machine pistols.

Luis approached a sergeant.

‘ Schneller!’ he said. Faster.

The sergeant took a step forward and struck one of the workers with the butt of his gun. This worker - elderly like the rest of them, there was little but dregs left of Russian manhood in the towns, all the youth were gone to fighting - crumpled under the blow. Luis watched the man wobble to his feet without help, the other Russians along the rails kept their heads down. He did not see an appreciable increase in the rate of work, but the sergeant seemed satisfied and stood back. Luis did not watch. He’d made his appearance and his point. Again he wondered at the German mind, the strange calculation that striking a human was the best way to make him obey. Perhaps this worked in Russia. It would not, he thought, work so well in Spain. The bull just gets angrier the more it is stabbed. When this war is over, he intended to be one of the men who saw to it the Germans took a more civil approach in his country.

When he returned to his passenger car, the rain had not slacked. The major receded into his compartment and Luis was able to sit alone. He ate a bit of bread and cheese, always surprised by how quickly he felt full. More than half of what had been brought to him remained on the tray. He tossed the rest out the window and left the empty set of plates in front of him.

When the porter came to clear them he gave Luis an approving wink. Luis closed his eyes and listened to the Russians work, the clink of hammers and spikes. The rain had washed away some of the day’s close heat. He slept, and did not awaken until the train lurched into the gray dim afternoon.

* * * *

July 3

1845 hours

Belgorod station

At Belgorod, Luis’s mission dissolved around him. The rain stopped, too.

The company of grenadiers filed from the train and was met by its new captain. They marched away. The locomotive uncoupled and chugged off on a different line to lug another train back to the west. Major Grimm disappeared and did not say goodbye. Luis was not greeted by anyone, though the station bustled with people in uniform. No one came to congratulate him for arriving with the Tigers safely. He felt deserving of attention but was unnoticed.

The train yard was large and not ruined at all by bombs. He stood on the platform waiting, making himself easy to find should someone be looking for him with new orders and a pat on the back. He gazed over the skyline of the small city. Onion domes, crosses on spires, and water towers were visible against the overcast sky. Solid brick buildings without adornment made the character of the town humble and strong, Luis sensed it was very Catholic, and he liked Belgorod at the end of his long journey back into Russia. He thought this boded well for him. He cheered up and walked to the rear of the train to supervise the off-loading of the ten Mark VI Tigers, and the change from their narrow transport tracks to their wider combat treads.

He knew this work to be back-breaking; he’d watched the tan-colored Tigers loaded onto the train in Germany, and now the process had to be reversed. Crews of mechanics from Leibstandarte clustered around the tanks on their flatbeds, local rail operators assisted by uncoupling the cars one at a time. One mechanic lifted himself into the driver’s hatch of the Tiger at the end of the train. He cranked the engine, black exhaust spat from the pipes, and the thing roared and shook the whole flatbed car, so powerful was it even in starting. Others scrambled to lay reinforced ramps at the end of the car; somewhere deep in the Tiger’s guts the transmission clanked and the tank shuddered. It was like watching a behemoth come alive. The sprocketed wheels began to turn, the treads squealed, the flatbed flexed under the rolling weight, and the tank kicked forward with a cloud of smoke and metallic whines. Men stood back while the tank crept ahead toward the ramps, afraid the giant might stumble and fall on them.

They stood admiring, heartened. Luis felt even better, because he’d brought the Tigers here to Russia, he had saved them from the partisans.

The Tiger crept down the ramps, screeching and belching, surrounded and welcomed. When it was flat on the ground, two pairs of mechanics hammered at the tracks on either side, to knock out one of the pins that held the transport track sections together. The mammoth stood fuming under their blows; the small sledgehammers insignificant against what this tank’s armor could withstand, the hammer strikes like petting strokes.

While the pins were hammered out, the crew assembled the Tiger’s wider battle tracks on the ground at a spot twenty feet in front of the tank.

Each cast-steel link weighed seventy-five pounds; the assembled tread would weigh well over a ton. A dozen men wrestled each link from the flatcar and hefted it into place, then pounded its pin in to join it to the whole.

Luis sat on a fuel barrel watching the mechanics; when their Tigers roll over a mine in combat, or lose a track to an enemy shell, these mechanics would have to effect this repair on the battlefield, under fire, or lose the Tiger. No one was better at this than the Germans, Europe’s greatest machinists.

Once the pins on the transport treads were beaten out, the tank rolled slowly forward, allowing the unhinged tread to spool out onto the ground.

The tank rolled across the earth on its bare wheels for a few meters, then crept up onto the new combat tracks. Mechanics on both sides guided the tracks over the sprockets with come-along rods. When the new tracks were in place, they were joined with the pins bashed back into place. The transport tracks on the ground were hooked to a tractor and dragged off.

The first of the new Tiger tanks stood ready, leaving behind an exhausted crew staring at nine more groaning flatcars.

Luis watched the off-loading of the second tank, wondering if the mechanics would be able to get them all on the ground and re-treaded by dark. The tanks had been his charges for several days, he’d risked his own neck to protect them, and he felt little pangs when they were started up, refitted, and driven off without him.

While the third Tiger was idling on its flatbed, another SS captain walked over from the train platform. He leaned against a steel pillar beside Luis’s perch. The man was impeccably outfitted, every buckle and strap gleamed. A cigarette was pasted on his lips, his pale blue eyes were hooded and sleepy. He folded his arms and crossed his boots, standing on one leg, spewing smoke, rakish.

‘What do you think?’ He spoke without taking the cigarette from his mouth.

Luis turned to the man, the only one to talk to him in the hours since the train pulled in. He was one of the German SS, wearing the lightning bolt runes at the collars. Between the collar tabs hung an Iron Cross First Class.

This captain was close to Luis’s age, the blond, lithe Aryan of posters. Luis felt something pleasant he’d missed for most of a year: He was drawn to another human. This captain was disdainful, confident with a cool carriage, the manner Luis considered best for soldiers and bullfighters. The man cut the figure that Luis imagined he would have without his wound.

‘About what?’ Luis answered.

‘The Tigers. What do you think? Are they worth waiting for? We’ve been putting off the attack until they got here.’

Luis couldn’t tell how to respond. Was he being baited into saving something negative? He didn’t know this captain; what was the man’s interest in the Tigers? Or in Luis?

He watched the next tank amble onto the ramps. The thing was huge, its cannon so powerful, the chassis and turret girded with the thickest armor of any tank ever produced. It would be operated by SS-trained crews. What did the Russians have to counter the Tiger or the SS? Luis envisioned the fire belching from the big cannon, Russian tanks bursting before it, Russian villages burning, his own hand - the old hand, the fleshy one - on the trigger.

Luis had arrived with the Tigers, defended them on the rails, and they remained under his protection until they were off the train and driven away.

He felt loyal to these tanks. He would not criticize them simply to curry favor. And he would not utter anything good about the Russians. Is that what this captain wanted him to do? Luis watched the man grip his cigarette between long, elegant fingers. He noted the band on the captain’s left cuff, the words Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler emblazoned in silver thread. He was still drawn to this captain but now he felt competitive. He was in Leibstandarte, too. He felt the life of the partisan throb again in his knife hand. What has this captain done? Has he done that?

‘Yes,’ Luis said, ‘yes, of course they’re worth waiting for. Look at them. They were designed to be better than any tank in the world. What other tank has an 88 for a main gun? The Russians have just got 76s. Pop guns. The Tiger can sit back at two thousand meters and pick them off.

What have the Russians got to match that?’

The captain puffed, not looking at Luis but at the growling Tiger being shucked of its transport treads.

‘What the Russians do have is twenty-five T-34s manufactured for every one of these Tigers,’ he told Luis. ‘When the Kursk battle starts, we’ll have Mark IIIs, IVs, Mark V Panthers, Mark VI Tigers, all of them mixed together. How do we expect to keep spare parts available for so many models? Tracks, transmissions, engines, wheels. But the Reds, they were smart, you see. They put only one tank on the field. The fast little T-34. If something breaks, there’s plenty of parts laying around for it. And every one of their soldiers knows how to fix the damn thing, it’s as simple as a wind-up toy. The Russians make one tank and they produce thousands of them a month. But do you know it takes over three hundred thousand man hours to build one Tiger? Yes, the Reds. The Untermenschen. They are smart about this.’

The captain brandished his smoky fingers while extolling the intellect of the enemy. Luis frowned at the suggestion that the Russians had out-thought Hitler.

‘That’s crap. What does it matter, when none of them can stop a Tiger? I don’t care how many T-34s the Reds have got. Each Tiger is worth a hundred of them. The armor is so thick…’

‘One hundred twenty millimeters on the gun mantlet, one hundred millimeters on the hull front,’ the fetching young captain interrupted. ‘Eighty millimeters upper-hull sides and rear, sixty on the lower sides. Turret front has one hundred millimeters, turret sides and rear, eighty. Twenty-five millimeters all horizontal surfaces. Impervious to the Russian .76 gun at distances greater than four hundred meters. Impenetrable by Russian tanks at any distance head-on.’

Luis paused. This man knew the tanks’ specifications. Luis nodded at the captain, though the man’s blue eyes stayed fixed on his tanks. And they were his Tigers, Luis realized. He was the one who’d come to Belgorod station to claim them.

The captain stood away from the pillar. He dropped his cigarette and trod on it, walking toward the grounded tank and the hammering mechanics.

He raised a hand to point out his observations, assuming without looking that Luis was behind him.

‘Look at the armor. See how it’s straight up and down, like a giant shoe box? Hitler told his designers he wanted nothing of Russian design, those Untermenschen and their tanks. So instead of sloping the armor, which would have added a great deal of protection, the Tiger is a collection of flat faces. If the plating had been sloped like the T-34, the Tiger could have been made twenty to thirty percent lighter. Lighter means faster.

Better range and maneuverability. But this big bastard is too heavy for its engine. It’s ponderous even under the best conditions.’

The captain walked to the rear of the Tiger, inhaling its engine fumes like the scents of a woman. He knows these tanks, Luis thought. He’s fought in them, he’s lost them and seen them killed and is furious with their flaws because he loves them. He knows these tanks must save Germany.

And look at him. He wants a few more medals for himself. So he knows, too, the Tigers have to do their job before the Americans intervene, or there’ll be nothing left to win in Russia but your own life.

The captain talked on, breezy.

‘Look at all this back here. Exhaust covers, air filters, it’s a trap for shot. And this eighty-eight millimeter gun you’re so in love with. That’s the reason why this damn tank is so gigantic, just to carry it. There’s a new, long-barreled seventy-five on the Panthers that will do the trick. But Hitler wanted the eighty-eights, and so here they are. Do you know what the mileage for a Tiger is?’

Luis shook his head. The captain was showing off.

‘Point eight miles per U.S. gallon on roads. Less than half a mile per gallon cross-country. With a one-hundred-and-forty-two-gallon fuel capacity, that’s four to five hours of battle running.’

‘That’s not good.’

‘No,’ the captain laughed, ‘it’s not good.’

The man reached out to the idling Tiger and smacked it hard.

‘But so far, it’s been good enough.’ He thrust the hand at Luis.

‘Captain Erich Thoma. 1st SS Panzergrenadier Division. Pleased to meet you, Captain la Daga. Major Grimm sends his regards.’

The captain’s clasp was warm and enveloping. With the mention of his nickname, the partisan’s life beat harder in his bony mitt, there inside the handshake between the two SS captains,

‘Captain Luis Ruiz de Vega.’

‘ Si,’ Thoma said. ‘ Gracias por truer mis Tigres.’ Thank you for bringing my Tigers.

‘You were in Spain?’

‘Yes,’ Thoma said. He cast his eyes over Belgorod’s fading skyline. ‘I wish we were there now. I much preferred fighting in Spain. Beautiful country.’

Thoma left the handshake and tapped Luis in the arm with the gibe.

The gesture was manly, between warriors, with no concession or notice of Luis’s painful thinness. Thoma put his hand between Luis’s shoulder blades.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Major Grimm wants to see you.’

* * * *

July 3

2115 hours

Belgorod

Thoma and the rest of the cars ran without headlights to get to their posts before the steppe darkness grew total. Luis rode beside Thoma in the front seat of a Mercedes convertible staff car. Belgorod was a small German city at this point, almost no Russians were visible on the streets and sidewalks.

Soldiers manned sandbagged positions at every corner. Not a single window let light seep into the gathering dusk, all were shaded by blackout curtains. Horse-drawn carts clip-clopped through the town headed north to the lines. There was something medieval about the sight of soldiers leading animals on tethers over cobblestones.

Thoma drove and talked about his tanks, acknowledging Luis’s background in them, updating him on changes in the armored divisions during the time he’d been in the hospital. The old Mark III light tanks were too small to be of much good anymore. The turret ring wouldn’t take any of the bigger guns. They were obsolete. Their production had been halted in June of this year. Even so, Germany still had over four hundred Mark IIIs around Kursk, in infantry-support roles. The 50 mm gun could still kill a T-34

at five hundred meters, but, Thoma opined, most Mark IIIs would be dead before they could get that close.

The workhorse of the Wehrmacht remained the Mark IV medium tank, with 850 of them around the Kursk salient. The design had been upgunned since Luis had commanded his Mark IV outside Leningrad. The tank now featured a long 75 mm cannon with a greater muzzle speed than the T-34.

The Mark IV, in Thoma’s estimation, had superior cannon and fire controls, and a better three-man turret. The Soviets possessed superb mobility and armor, but held only a crew of four, putting a lot of pressure on the commander/gunner.

‘Both can wipe the other out at standard battle ranges. There’s no real technical advantage between the T-34 and the Mark IV. So the dead and the living, you see, Captain la Daga, will be determined by tactics and training.’

The Tigers, Thoma declared, were not designed to be offensive weapons. They were too slow for that, they had eight forward gears and four reverse, with an average overland speed of thirteen miles per hour.

The range of the Tiger’s main gun was too long to be used solely in tight fighting, where the advantages of distance were dismissed. No, the heavy Tigers were most lethal when used in defense. But Kursk was not to be a defensive battle. The tank that was ordained to become Germany’s standard offensive weapon was the new Mark V Panther. Luis had never seen one of the Panthers, though he’d heard much about them. Sloped armor, medium weight, a long-barreled 75 mm main gun that could penetrate any Soviet armor, as nimble as the T-34s, the Panther was reputed to be the master of the Russian tank in every category.

‘But,’ Thoma said, wagging his long fingers again, ‘the Panther’s going through some teething pains. The transmissions and engines don’t seem ready, the things blow up on their own. Hitler hurried them into production to get them ready for their debut here. Two hundred were delivered to 4th Panzer Army but we don’t have any of them in the SS

Panzer Corps. They’re on our left flank with the 10th Panzer Brigade. To tell you the truth, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the Panthers in Kursk as anything more than smoke bombs.’

‘That leaves your Tigers,’ Luis said.

‘Yes. That does, doesn’t it?’ Thoma smiled. ‘Poor out-of-place monsters. They’ll just have to make do.’

The car pulled up in front of a four-story brick building rising beneath a tarnished gilt dome. Thoma and Luis slammed their car doors to the convertible, they were two young men with long strides in black uniforms, gliding alongside each other up the steps. Inside, they dodged men with sheaves of paper in the hall, other young, shining soldiers in the service of the generals directing the coming battle from these rooms. The eyes of those men hurrying by sometimes snagged on Luis, so odd-looking was he beside the hale Thoma, and he began his accustomed descent into contempt for those without scars. Thoma saw this - how could Luis hide it?

- and slipped his arm under Luis’s elbow.

‘They wouldn’t know which end of a gun to fire,’ the captain said without lowering his voice.

Thoma laughed, he and his Iron Cross, and Luis felt his own discomfort ease. Thoma ushered him into a high-ceilinged room off the main corridor. Under an impressive muraled ceiling lay a vast map of the Kursk region, resting on the tops of a half-dozen tables shoved together.

Positioned all over the map were painted wooden effigies, like game pieces on a wonderfully large board. There were carved tanks and artillery guns, squares and circles with flags standing over them denoting armed units, colored black or red, German or Russian. Two young orderlies waited along the rim of the table with long poles to push the pieces about; it was shuffle-board with machines and lives as pucks.

Thoma led Luis to the edge of the carpet and halted, heels together.

Luis copied this posture of attention, making his boots click. On the far side of the room stood Major Grimm speaking with an SS colonel. The fat major looked better now in a fresh shirt, he’d had a bath and a shave.

‘Captain Thoma. Good, good! Come in.’

The two young captains advanced around the long perimeter of the table. Walking beside the map, Luis glanced down to it. The map held far more red figurines than black.

‘Colonel,’ Major Grimm said, ‘this is the young man I told you about.

Captain de Vega, this is Colonel Breit. He’s the intelligence officer with your Leibstandarte Division.’

To Luis’s eye, Colonel Breit was the epitome of a general staff officer. The man was slender, with a close-cropped head of dark hair, flecked with white. The colonel was pale and seemed uncomfortable with speech, the opposite of the energetic and verbose Thoma. Breit wore a War Merit Cross with swords on his breast. This was not a battle citation but the sort of medal won by administrators, for non-combat contributions to the war effort. The only tank this one has ever handled, Luis considered, is on these maps. Breit welcomed Luis with a handshake and a curt, tight-lipped smile. Nothing on the man’s face betrayed any thought about Luis’s appearance. He’s the brainy sort, Luis decided. He doesn’t care about anything that’s not on these tables.

‘Captain de Vega,’ Breit said. His tone was clipped. ‘Thank you for coming. Major Grimm has been telling me you’re an impressive young man.’

Major Grimm piped up. ‘You should have seen him, Colonel. His planning was impeccable.’

Grimm said nothing more. There was no mention of the killings by the rail mound. Luis supposed they had been covered earlier by the major. But Breit held on to Luis’s hand for a longer moment, nodding into Luis’s eyes, seeing something there he approved of. There was much unspoken about this SS colonel.

Breit let go of Luis’s hand.

‘Captain, let me bring you up-to-date on the situation around Kursk.’

The staff officer turned to indicate the giant map and all its pieces.

Thoma came to stand beside Luis, Major Grimm sidled around to the Soviet side of the chart.

‘As you know,’ Breit said, ‘Germany has spent two summers now in the Soviet Union. We have not succeeded in destroying the Red armies as we’d planned. In fact, now in our third summer here, it has become unlikely we will do better than a stalemate on the Eastern Front.’

Luis stiffened at this candidness, smacking of defeatism. Breit cocked his head and smiled in his taut way again.

‘Captain de Vega, don’t be shocked. You’ve been away from the war for a year now, recuperating. The situation here in Russia is common knowledge, at least among the general staff. We keep up appearances among the men, of course, but we are officers here. You understand?’

This was the first time Luis had heard this view expressed as an official stance. He knew the coming entry of the Americans into the war made it urgent that Germany win in Russia this summer, at this battle. But now, to hear there was no victory to be had at all in Russia, simply a stalemate? What would happen after the Americans landed in Europe to his chances of returning home a conqueror? What will they say on the Ramblas in Barcelona to a tie? A million dead and ruined, for this? The notion lay rancid on his tongue. The bull must always die. When is it allowed to call a draw?

Thoma laid a hand on Luis’s shoulder. The touch said, Don’t worry, brother. These are not fighters like you and I. We will be the ones to decide, not them.

Luis swallowed. He indicated the map and Colonel Breit.

‘I apologize, sir. Please continue.’

The colonel resumed. ‘The question has been, what strategy will achieve for Germany the best political solution of the war? Our defeat at Stalingrad last winter cost us more than just men and weapons. Germany lost the initiative. Some of our allies have been looking for the back door out of their support for us. Romania and Italy have both contacted the Allies with peace feelers. Turkey is sitting on its hands and has decided not to attack the Soviet Union in the Caucasus, though they had agreed to do so.

Japan is up to its neck with the Americans in the Pacific and is therefore upholding its non-aggression pact with Russia. And Finland has made entreaties to Stalin for a separate peace. Under these circumstances, Captain de Vega, you can see why Germany cannot sit back this summer.

For both military and political reasons, we need an offensive on the Eastern Front to reclaim our momentum.’

Luis asked, ‘Sir, tell me about the Americans in Europe.’

‘Italy,’ Breit answered, shaking his head. ‘The Americans will invade Italy, most likely Sicily, and they’ll do it soon. This summer, certainly. When they do, the only place the Führer will be able to find troops to fend them off is here, the Eastern Front.’ Breit pointed down to the map, speaking to the German black blocks now, as though urging them. ‘If we haven’t broken through to Kursk before the Americans land in Europe, Hitler will almost certainly call off the attack. He will bleed off units from Citadel and send them to Italy. To Mussolini.’

Breit left his finger dangling above the map, contemplating the impact of such a thing.

‘Then,’ he said, lowering his voice and his hand as though lowering a flag, ‘I can make no predictions for Germany’s future.’

The colonel dug into his jacket for a cigarette. Major Grimm took over now. He raised one arm, a counterpoint to Breit’s deflated half-mast, and moved his flattened hand over the map’s terrain like a scudding cloud.

‘But we are going to attack, gentlemen. It will be fast and it will be magnificent, with more force than Germany has ever assembled. And the Americans can go hang. Right?’

Colonel Breit’s quiet face flared behind a flickering match. Thoma filled the void, responding with ‘Right.’ Luis said nothing and Thoma raised his eyebrows at him. Grimm said, ‘Take a look here, at the front line, stretching from Leningrad to Rostov. It doesn’t take much to see the best place for us to strike.’ He turned his flat hand into a pointing finger, as if the cloud had released one large drop of rain.

‘Here,’ he said, looking up at Luis. ‘Our target is Kursk. Operation Citadel.’

Luis brought his gaze down to the map and saw how right Grimm was, how easily the decision must have been made. The Soviet lines projected into German-held territory as though kicked into them by a mule. On the northern border of the bulge sat the city of Orel, in the south lay Belgorod.

A straight axis drawn between the two cities met in the middle of the bulge, at Kursk.

‘We’ll attack from the north out of Orel,’ Grimm said, ‘and out of the south from the area west of Belgorod. If we can meet at Kursk, we’ll have wiped out two Soviet front armies.

After a successful pincer action on Kursk, we’ll be able to straighten our lines, shortening them by a hundred and fifty miles. These are men and materiel we will need elsewhere. As Colonel Breit mentioned, the Americans are expected to land soon in Italy. Once we have Kursk, we can send our forces south to fight off the Allies for Mussolini.’

Colonel Breit sucked loudly on his cigarette. Grimm stepped back and Breit trod up to the map.

‘At first, it was discussed that our forces should wait on a Russian summer offensive. We would grind them down and then go on the offensive ourselves. Take them ‘on the backhand,’ Field Marshal von Manstein has called it. But it’s been decided by Hitler that we will be the ones to go on the attack. The ‘forehand,’ so to speak. And so…’ Breit swept his own hand over the map, ‘… here we are. Looking at the same chart the Russians are looking at. They know exactly what we intend, and where. History, it seems, will have it no other way’

The four officers stood around the huge map, sombered by the notion that they stood at a pivot point in world events. Luis looked to Thoma. The young officer seemed to be calculating the coming clash, his eyes shrewdly tagging the positions and strengths displayed in red and black blocks. He did not appear to Luis to be daunted, though some of the devil-may-care and dash in the set of his spine was gone.

Thoma spoke to Breit. ‘Colonel, may I?’

The officer nodded.

Thoma turned to one of the orderlies. He took from the boy the long stick. The tank captain addressed Luis.

‘The Reds have about one and a half million men inside the salient.’

He reached out the stick and tapped several red bits and flags inside the bulge, bearing the names Voronezh Front, Central Front, and Steppe Front.

‘We’ve got eight hundred thousand men. That’s a two-to-one advantage for the Russians.’

Thoma took in all the German positions with a wave of the stick like a wand. The ebony blocks were spread north, middle, and south, while the crimson ones concentrated in the middle. The blocks were clotted in each color, crowding each other for space on the map.

‘We’ve got ten thousand artillery pieces,’ Thoma said. ‘The Reds have twenty thousand. Two-to-one again. Facing our twenty-five hundred tanks and self-propelled assault guns, the Russians have five thousand.’ He lowered the stick and grinned at Luis. ‘I believe the math speaks for itself.’

Major Grimm began the long walk back around the table. ‘So you see, Captain de Vega, those ten Tigers you delivered to us are crucial. There are only a hundred and thirty-three of them out of all our tanks in Russia.’

Colonel Breit stepped to Luis, laying a hand to his arm.

‘You did a great service seeing those Tigers through. We don’t have a numerical advantage against the Russians. The Führer is counting on these tanks to even the score. Yours was the final shipment of Tigers.

Captain Thoma?’

‘Yes, mein Herr?’

‘Captain Thoma here commands one of Leibstandarte’s armored companies.’ Colonel Breit kept his hand and eyes on Luis. ‘Out of the forty-two Tigers in the SS Corps, we have fourteen in our division. Sixty-two Mark IIIs. Thirty-three Mark IVs. And… how many T-34s, Captain?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Twenty-five Russian tanks we will turn against their former owners.

So. There we are. Captain Thoma here will find you suitable quarters. I am assigning you to my staff, Captain de Vega. I assume you have no pressing orders requiring your return to Germany?’

‘No, Colonel.’

‘Good. From what Major Grimm tells me, I can use a steadfast manner like yours around this table. Settle in and report to me here at oh-five-hundred.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Colonel Breit nodded to Thoma and left the room. Major Grimm gave both young captains an approving nod and followed in the colonel’s wake.

The two orderlies went behind them. Thoma hung on to the long stick.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘good for you.’

Luis was conflicted about the assignment to Colonel Breit’s tactical staff. How much of the battle would be fought in this room? Real lives won’t be taken, real ground won’t be gained on this colossal paper plate.

Standing here during the battle he might win for himself one of the merit badges worn by officers like Breit. But what he craved was the Iron Cross worn by Erich Thoma.

‘Tell me something,’ Thoma asked him. ‘How did you get to be called la Daga? As soon as Major Grimm told me I said: Now that’s a wonderful nickname. Tell me the truth. Was it some bullfighting thing you did?’

Luis folded his arms, reluctant, but Thoma’s grin fanned a spark inside him. He had not had a friend in almost a year. He’d been an invalid, a recovering patient, surrounded by nurses and doctors who’d marveled at his willpower to heal and return to the war, but no one had dared enter the bulging eyes and white, straining frame to see if the heart and soul of the Spanish soldier had shrunk, too. They had not. Thoma stood now cajoling Luis, wanting a secret, something from beneath the flesh to share, something only for the two of them to know.

There was not much room anymore in Luis, he admitted this. He looked at smiling Erich Thoma and found there was enough for a friend.

‘No. It wasn’t from bullfighting.’

Thoma grinned. ‘And?’

‘In Barcelona, there’s a long boulevard through the old quarter down to the water, La Rambla. Gypsies used to walk along the stalls and mix in with the tourists. They taught me how to come up behind tourists and slit their pants pockets with a razor.’

‘Why?’ Thoma’s face was incredulous.

‘To get their wallets.’

‘ Gott im Himmel,’ Thoma cried. ‘You’re a pickpocket!’

‘Shhhhh.’ Luis waved his hands at the laughing captain. Thoma pretended to compose himself, then burst out guffawing again.

‘That’s better than any bullfighting story! That’s beautiful. You stole wallets!’

‘Alright,’ Luis said. Alright. Get it out of your system.’ He looked about to see if anyone else could hear this outburst from Thoma, but they were alone. Luis admired the wellspring from which Thoma laughed, it all seemed so rooted in him, so confident and authentic; at the same time, Luis was sorrowed by the knowledge that he no longer had such depths himself. Erich Thoma was the man Luis would have been.

‘Now it’s your turn. Tell me something. The truth, as well.’

Thoma cleared his throat and smoothed down his hair, worn longish for a combat officer. His face crinkled.

‘Citadel.’ Luis gestured at the campaign map. ‘I want to know about the battle.’

Thoma stepped to the map, lowering the long stick like a lance.

‘One thing’s for certain. It’s going to be one for the record books.’ He hovered the stick over the map. All the great generals are here.’ He tapped the stick to a set of black blocks on the northern shoulder of the bulge. ‘In the north, running the show, we’ve got Field Marshal von Kluge. He’s not so sure about the operation and has said so. Hitler, I think, has more confidence in General Model.’ He laid the stick to a collection of blocks in the north bearing the 11th Army signet, Model’s force.

‘Problem with Model is, he’s the one who’s been dragging his feet, making us all wait with his demands for more and more armor when we should have jumped off months ago. It’s July now, and he’s got his tanks and guns, but in the meanwhile the Reds have used the time to dig in like ticks.’

Luis took in the thickness of the red blocks. The analogy was apt, the map seemed bitten and swollen ruby by them.

Thoma swept the stick over the southern shoulder of the bulge.

‘In the south we’ve got our genius Field Marshal von Manstein. For the most part Citadel is his brainchild. And the best fighter in the bunch is down here, too, with 4th Panzer. Papa Hoth. Next to us here… on the SS right flank is Army Detachment Kempf. It’s an ad hoc collection, really, strong enough on paper but Werner Kempf has never commanded this many men before. He’s got to keep up on our right.’

‘How about the Russians?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Thoma chuckled, touching the stick to the hillocks of clustered red blocks inside the bulge, north, middle, and south. ‘They’ve brought out their top guns for this one, too. Central Front is under Rokossovsky. Voronezh Front under Vatutin. In reserve at Steppe Front, Koniev. And over all of them is Georgi Zhukov, who kicked our asses in Moscow and Stalingrad. I can’t wait to meet Georgi.’

‘Thoma.’

‘Yes, de Vega.’

This was the first time either man had not called the other ‘Captain.’

‘What do you think? Personally?’

‘Me? I’m just a soldier, I don’t have my own block. But I’ll tell you this.

The Reds have got more of everything, men, guns, tanks, planes, we’ve hemmed and hawed long enough to give them all the time they needed to get ready for us. There’s aerial photography for every foot of the salient, but it’s been hard to estimate the Reds’ strength. They’re so damn good at disguising their forces and using fake positions. Even so, hanging over all this is one big fact that every one of these blocks is aware of, red or black.

Up until now, in every German offensive, the Soviets outnumbered us then, too. But you know what? Not once have they stopped a German advance before we got far behind their lines. We’ll go deep on this one, too, you can count on it. The question is, will we get to Kursk? And will we get there before the Americans hit shore in Italy and Hitler pulls the plug on Citadel?’

‘Where are you?’ Luis asked. ‘Where’s Leibstandarte?’

‘In the heart of II SS Panzer Corps.’ Thoma dabbed the stick in the center of the southern lines. ‘Right here, to the left of Das Reich and Totenkopf. We’re going to be in the vanguard. Leibstandarte will make straight north. Right along here. Citadel jumps off in two days.’

Luis leaned forward to read the map under the point of Thoma’s stick.

Red blocks crowded along the path.

‘The Oboyan road.’

Thoma laid the stick to the Russian positions. ‘Right across from us is 6th Guards Army. They were at Stalingrad, so they’re battle-tough. Behind them, in front of Oboyan, is 1st Tank Army. Vatutin, here on the Voronezh Front, has put his best forces along that road, figuring Papa Hoth was going to dive straight for Kursk through Oboyan. Instead, 4th Panzer is going this way, northwest to Prokhorovka, around their best force. We’ll take on this group here, 5th Guards Tank Army, kept in reserve. We’ll deal with them, then swerve back west toward Oboyan and Kursk. As long as Kempf keeps up and protects our right flank, we should be alright.’

Luis was galvanized by the map. It was almost impossible for him to translate his combat experiences to it, to reduce the memories to such a tiny scale. But there it was. Head this way. Deal with this force. Turn and go that way. Where was the carnage? Where was the wound in his gut, where was it on the map?

‘Come on.’ Thoma clapped a hand over Luis’s shoulder. ‘We need to find you someplace to sleep. You look like hell.’

Luis did not take exception to the comment. It was not meant the way it came out.

He decided to smile at Captain Thoma.

He said, ‘I know.’

* * * *

July 3

2320hours

Belgorod

Thoma heard the bombers first. He raised one hand, cigarette poised between fingertips, and listened. Then Luis heard them, thrumming from the north. It was easy to imagine an Asiatic horde in the sky, riding down on them, the engines sounded like hoof-beats, the ground shook under the thunder.

Thoma threw away his smoke. It landed at the bottom of the steps of the storefront where Luis was billeted.

‘Good luck to you, la Daga. I’ve got to go.’

‘Take me with you. I want to see the division.’

‘Can’t. This might be the opening bell, and you need to be here in the morning. I might not be able to get you back. We’ve both got our orders.’

‘Thoma.’

‘Yes?’

‘Look… Thanks.’

The captain smiled and was at that moment a heartache for Luis. He suffered under Thoma’s round and full face, the strength in his handshake; the bit of battle was between Thoma’s teeth, and Luis was to be left behind beside a map, a stick in his hand.

‘Go.’

Thoma nodded and gripped once more hard, then let go Luis’s hand.

He turned and leaped into the convertible’s front seat without opening the car door.

‘Thoma?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to push the Leibstandarte blocks all the way to Kursk.’

‘Maybe you’ll do a lot more than that, la Daga! See you!’

Thoma wheeled away at the flashing western sky with his headlamps off. The roar of the motorcar disappeared into the pounding of bombs and high-flung engines. The Reds were targeting the German front lines, trying to soften up the Panzer Corps arrayed in a seventy-mile row across from them. The Russians must know the attack is coming soon.

In two days, Thoma said.

Luis stood on the sidewalk beside the abandoned cigarette. He looked around the darkened city of Belgorod, without lights or people, then pivoted a circle on his boot heels. Buildings lifted like an arena on all sides, but empty, without audience for him. When he came around to the west, the horizon above the roofs flickered orange, body blows to the three SS

divisions in a row there, where Thoma sped and Luis belonged. With each fiery glimmer, Luis remembered his hatred better; he grew angry at Erich Thoma for making him forget, even for a few hours, what he was.

Luis watched the bombs falling somewhere else and retreated inside himself, into his wretched, ugly body. He did not have far to go.

* * * *

July 4

0500 hours

SS Leibstandarte situation room

Belgorod

At dawn, Colonel Breit greeted Luis over the map. The colonel mentioned that this morning marked Independence Day in America.

‘I understand,’ the colonel said, ‘they celebrate with fireworks. An appropriate metaphor for our own endeavors, eh, Captain?’

This proved to be the extent of Colonel Brett’s attempts at conversation. That was just as well for Luis, who’d awakened from his hard cot beneath a deserted millinery shop in a simmering mood. Breit set about his work at keeping the gargantuan map updated and fed, the thing changed and shifted like something hungry and restless. In the apartments and corridors of the building, radio operators and couriers collected the latest words from the front lines and ferried them to the map room. No grand strategies would be crafted here in Belgorod. The city was too close to the front; the German generals of Army Group South made their decisions at an airfield twenty miles south, in Prud’anka, where they could fly in and out and confer. Colonel Breit’s orders were to follow battlefield developments, study the configurations on the map, then wire the information to the command center at Prud’anka. He fretted over his paper landscape and lorded over those lesser deities than him in charge of helping him keep the map thriving.

The windows to the situation room remained opaque behind blackout curtains, and the morning grew stifling. The rains of the day before left a sultry residue in the air. Weather reports came in, Luis wrote their contents on a chalkboard: low cloud cover, threatening thunderstorms across the area, hot and steamy along the ground. Major Grimm entered the situation room soon after sunup and began his sweating, mopping ordeal. Colonel Breit would not let the major lean over the map for fear he would dribble on it. Colonel Breit did not comment but Luis was aware the officer took note of him standing bolt upright in his buttoned jacket beside the table, seemingly untouched by the rising heat and tension of the room.

Every communiqué transmitted to the building was to come through Luis. He arranged the reports for urgency, compared and vetted them for accuracy, then handed the reliable accounts to Colonel Breit, who translated the sheets into movements on the board. Their main task was to keep track of the three SS divisions in the middle of Army Group South and the opposing forces, the Soviets’ Voronezh Front. Major Grimm shuttled in and out of the map room, Luis heard him on the radio with his superiors advising them of SS actions. Luis had never observed the eve of battle like this, from the lofty perspective of a god. Here, detached voices whispered the intents and fates of two million soldiers. Each of the black blocks was five thousand or more men, clustering right now under ground sheets out in the drizzle, perspiring from heat and nerves, not a one of them with the vantage point of Luis, who looked down on the sheer weight of the red blocks across from their force, the Reds packed in, waiting, ready. This was the battle that history books would tell, the scope of this map would be recreated, embracing hundreds of miles of conflict and never the bloody personal skirmishes and the screaming seconds where one man killed an enemy or was killed. Luis knew he was not a coward, far from it, though he suspected the others dashing in and out of the room and those caressing the map were. He’d been a warrior not long ago but right now he was one of them, the message takers. The clean battle of wooden blocks was appealing, and Luis felt the tug of fighting this way, like gamesmen. But the map room was not the arena and bulls are not cut of wood.

The dawn warmed to morning, and the messages from the southern lines began to flurry in from 4th Panzer. Companies of sappers had spent the night removing mines in front of their positions; for six hours several hundred engineers dug up almost a mine a minute. Luis and Breit plotted the cleared areas. Major Grimm said something was up. The attack, Operation Citadel, was not supposed to start until 0300 hours tomorrow morning.

At noon, Luis began to receive messages from General Hoth’s headquarters. Papa Hoth had made the decision to move up into the no-man’s-land between his forces and the Reds’, to improve his position for the jump-off in the coming morning hours. They needed to eliminate enemy forward strongpoints and observation posts, and find the exact location of the Soviets’ first line of defenses. The black blocks of 4th Panzer began to tighten. At 1445 hours, couriers from the bowels of the building ferried in a burst of messages: An air raid had begun over the Russians around Butovo, near the center of Hoth’s line. The first thrust of Citadel had begun. One of the quiet stick-handlers around the table laid a small carved airplane over the Russian town.

Another ten minutes passed. Luis handled another page: An artillery barrage followed the planes, conventional artillery was joined by Nebelwerfer rocket batteries to pummel and unnerve the Soviet advance positions. Then the middle of Hoth’s line rushed forward at the Russian strongpoints of Gertsovka, Butovo, and Streletskoye. Luis watched one of the stick-boys shove the black blocks to the north.

When the attack was less than fifteen minutes old, the sky opened with a blinding rainstorm. The map room shuddered under the thunderclaps, barely muffled by the heavy curtains and thick brick walls. The messages kept up a steady stream into Luis’s hands and the pieces on the board made their way north, into the Russian defenses, slogging over the dry map. Luis knew the sounds of combat, he knew the suck and slip of mud under boots and wheels and treads. The whiz of a bullet is different when it slices through rain to get to you, you hear it coming sooner and you hear it pass longer. None of these were on the map with its charging black bits and the reeling red pieces, nor were they on the faces of Breit or Grimm or the stick-boys or messengers quick-stepping in with the news.

The sounds were only in Luis’s ears. He imagined himself standing in the turret of Erich Thoma’s Tiger, leading the assault, and it was bitter for him waiting for the blocks labeled Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to move ahead.

So far the three SS divisions had stayed out of the initial stages of the fray.

The afternoon hours passed, too, this way, quieter once the thunder rolled off, leaving the shuffle of feet and pages, the dry slide of wood pieces over paper. The attack was taking place fifteen miles west of Belgorod, stretching another ten miles to the west. Luis followed events with a tension in his chest he fought to hide. German forces struck the defenders between Berezov and Streletskoye, surrounding a Soviet battalion and driving off the rest. A fierce fight took place for control of Gertsovka. A German battalion commander was badly wounded and one-third of his men were hit, including the commander’s replacement. At 2100 hours Gertsovka was cleared but at a high price for both armies.

Butovo to the east was taken, the Soviet garrison was driven off, but not before Russian riflemen put up a seven-hour brawl that left all of their number dead. Their epitaph was a black block pushed into Butovo over their bodies.

The three blocks of the SS Panzer Divisions did not move throughout the day, while the rest of the German lines improved their positions. Luis wanted to ask Colonel Breit if he might go out to observe firsthand the situation, but instead bit his tongue and dealt with his task. Sometimes you have to go to the bull, but often enough it comes to you.

After midnight, at on 5 hours on the morning of July 5, Luis handed a message to Colonel Breit detailing the entry into battle of the three SS

Panzer Divisions. Within the next hour, these divisions destroyed half the forward outposts of the Russian 6th Guards Army and forced many others to withdraw. Luis himself slid the tank icon of his Leibstandarte comrades into the Red lines.

Luis was exhausted, he’d been at his station for twenty-three hours.

Colonel Breit slipped out of the situation room, Major Grimm was long gone. Luis was left in charge. He told the stick-boys he would be back in a minute.

Outside, rain pelted the street, peals of thunder pounced. Operation Citadel had begun in this, glimpses of the enemy came in split-second flashes from lightning, the explosions of shells were lost in Nature’s din.

The world had been torn open here around Kursk. Luis said a prayer aloud in Spanish. This was his father’s practice before the bulls and in the last five years Luis had made it his own custom against men. He asked for victory.

His words trudged out into the downpour like soldiers.

* * * *

THE STRONGEST FORTRESS

IN THE WORLD

The German Supreme Command was committing exactly the same error as in the previous year. Then we attacked the city of Stalingrad, now we were to attack the fortress of Kursk. In both cases the German Army threw away all its advantages in mobile tactics, and met the Russians on ground of their own choosing. Yet the campaigns of 1941 and 1942 had proved that our panzers were virtually invincible if they were allowed to maneuver freely across the great plains of Russia. Instead… the German Supreme Command could think of nothing better than to fling our magnificent panzer divisions against Kursk, which had now become the strongest fortress in the world.

Major General F. W. von Mellenthin

Panzer battles

* * * *

CHAPTER 12

July 5

0330 hours

Vladimirovka

Dimitri tugged the tarp tighter under his chin. He’d made a makeshift hood and poncho out of the oiled sheet and let the rain tumble over him. The heavy drops pattered over his covered shoulders and crown. Even with the chattering of the rain in his ears he could hear the explosions.

The German and Red armies traded blows in this hour before dawn, preparation and counter-preparation. A thousand artillery pieces on both sides lofted shells, one at the other, like arguing spouses, while the earth, a sick and sad child between them, shivered under Dimitri’s boots. He leaned against his tank, alone it seemed, under the rain, watching and listening to the beginnings of the battle. His son and crew were in their covered foxhole riding out the storm. The rest of the tankers in the brigade were buttoned up out of the rain, too, inside their two dozen tanks or holes. Dimitri was glad to be alone with the thunders of God and man for these final minutes before the war came back to him. He said a few prayers for himself and his children. He didn’t know where Katya was. He could help God protect Valentin, but the daughter was off on her own, up in the sky doing who knew what. Dimitri had never been in a plane, the highest his feet had ever risen from the ground was sitting on a seventeen-hand horse. He didn’t know what to pray for her protection, he had only poor images of her dangers. He prayed for Katya that she remember she was a Cossack, and figured that was protection enough.

Lightning coursed overhead. He lifted his eyes to it and caught rain on his face. In the next minutes the rain eased to a drizzle. He walked to the hole where his crew slept and peeled back their tarpaulin.

‘It’s started,’ he said.

The three had been lying on their sides curled in the dirt like piglets.

Pasha and Sasha had slept well, they yawned and slowly roused. Valentin was first to his feet. His eyes were rimmed, his mouth downturned.

‘Orders?’ he asked Dimitri.

‘Not yet. They’re coming, you can bet.’

Pasha and Sasha came up, the four of them in a row in their gray tanker’s coveralls. They faced south, checking the dripping sky. Then Dimitri heard not the boom of artillery but droning engines, higher than where the thunder had been. Soviet and German bombers and fighters were stepping into the fight, each side trying to pummel the other through the air before the clash of men on the ground. The four crewmen of General Platov leaned against their tank and gazed upward.

For thirty minutes a terrific dogfight took place over their heads. Even from three miles up, behind the thunder and lightning, the roars of German Me-109s streaked in twisted combat with Soviet bombers and Yak fighters.

The Red Air Force and the Luftwaffe were testing each other the way the artillery did with their opening salvos. He felt the hard tank at his seat, the shoulders of boys pressing against him on both sides, and he knew they were next.

A blazing plane plummeted out of the clouds, trailing flame like a comet, lighting up the mist; burning pieces of it broke off and fluttered beside it until it all rammed into the ground. The plane was too far off and too engulfed by flame to tell if it was German or Russian. But the looks on the faces of Pasha and Sasha revealed this was the first war death they had ever seen. Dimitri stared at the fire in the cratered plain, and said one more quiet prayer for his daughter.