Red Army

Five

Kryshinin had never faced such a frustrating problem. As commander of the forward security element, it was his job to move fast, to locate the enemy and overrun him, if possible, or, otherwise, to fix the enemy until the advance guard came up, meanwhile searching for a bypass around the enemy position. Textbook stuff. Yet here the enemy had already pulled back. And his element was blocked by nothing more than a mined road crater and an unknown number of mines in the surrounding meadows.

He had no idea where the combat reconnaissance patrol had gone, or how they had gotten through. They should have warned him of this situation. Now Kryshinin was stuck. His engineers had become separated from his element in the confusion of initial contact and penetration of the enemy’s covering troops. He had no mine-clearing capability without them.

He judged that the advance guard was no more than twenty minutes behind, unless they had gotten bogged down in more fighting. Leading the Second Guards Tank Army attack, the division’s lead regiments had struck the thin enemy deployments so hard that it had been surprisingly easy to force a gap. Kryshinin had not lost a single vehicle in combat. He was only missing the wandering engineers. Until the lead infantry fighting vehicle attempted to work around the road crater. A mine had torn out its belly and butchered the crew.

Now Kryshinin’s element was static. Thirteen infantry fighting vehicles, three tanks, a battery of 122mm self-propelled guns, and over a dozen specialized vehicles with ground-to-air radios, artillery communications, antitank missiles, and light surface-to-air missiles were backed up along a single country road. It was a tough little combat package, well-suited to the mission and the terrain. But now, without engineers, it was helpless.

Kryshinin dismounted and began walking swiftly forward along the bunched column. But before he reached its head, he saw one of his lieutenants flush all of the soldiers out of their fighting vehicle. The lieutenant got into the driver’s compartment and, after a jerking start, edged slowly toward the blasted vehicle.

The lieutenant guided his vehicle behind the hulk and began pushing it. Kryshinin stood still for a moment in surprise. Then he began to shout at the motorized rifle troops who were standing around watching as casually as if this was a training demonstration. He came back to life now, as if awakening, stirred by his lieutenant’s example. He ordered the vehicles into a more tactical posture. He was suddenly ashamed of himself. He had allowed them all to back up on the road like perfect targets while he had waited for inspiration.

The lieutenant had not been able to push the destroyed vehicle in a straight line. Finally, he just edged it out of the way, crunching and grinding metal. The mine-struck vehicle had peeled off a track, and the hulk curled off to the left as its naked road wheels bit into the turf and sank.

The lieutenant drove slowly forward, seeking a safe path to the roadway on the far side of the crater. He was a new officer, and Kryshinin had had little sense of him. Another lieutenant. Now the boy had taken the lead when his superior had failed.

Kryshinin stood in the disheartening German rain, painfully conscious of his inadequacy. He regretted all of the opportunities he had let slip to better train himself and his officers, to get to know his lieutenants a little better.

The infantry fighting vehicle’s engine had a girlish sort of whine, even grinding forward in the lowest gear. Kryshinin watched, fists clenched, as the vehicle neared its destination.

The left side of the vehicle suddenly lifted into the air, lofted on a pillow of fire.

Kryshinin instinctively ducked against the nearest vehicle. When he looked up, the lieutenant’s vehicle stood in flames.

Without looking around, Kryshinin could feel the crushing disappointment in all of the soldiers. They had been united in their hopes for the lieutenant. Now expectation collapsed into a desolate emptiness.

As Kryshinin stood helplessly again a young sergeant ordered all of his soldiers out of their vehicle. And the sergeant drove slowly in the lieutenant’s traces until the prow of his track crunched against the flaming rear doors of the newly stricken vehicle. Then he applied power.

Before the sergeant finished working the burning vehicle out of the way, a tank pulled out of the column and carefully worked its way up along the shoulder of the road, ready to take its turn in case another probe vehicle was needed.

Kryshinin knew it was all right then. They would get through. He began to shout encouragement. Following his lead, his soldiers began to shout as well.

The flaming wreck veered out of the way, and the sergeant aimed at the roadway beyond the crater.

Kryshinin felt as though he could win the war with just a handful of men such as these. He was suddenly eager to get back on the move, to find the enemy.

“Could it be a deception?” Trimenko said, asking the question more of himself than of his audience. He reached into the leather tobacco pouch in which he carried his pistachios. Eating them was a habit he had picked up during his years in the Transcaucasus Military District. In Germany, his staff went to great lengths to keep him supplied. Often, he hardly tasted the nuts, but he found that peeling away the shells had a soothing influence on him, draining away nervousness the way worry beads worked for a Muslim.

“The documents appear to be genuine,” the army’s deputy chief of staff for operations said. “They were reportedly taken from a command post that was completely destroyed.”

“Have you seen the documents? Has anyone here seen them?”

“They’re on their way up from the division. We only know what the chief of reconnaissance reported from his initial exploitation. But it makes sense,” the operations chief said, pointing at the map. “It puts their corps boundary here, not far from where we had assessed it.”

“Far enough, though,” Trimenko said. “It makes a difference. We need to execute the option shifting Malyshev’s division onto the central tactical direction with Khrenov. The combat power has to converge.” He slipped the bared pistachio between his lips.

“Comrade Army Commander, that may slow the seizure of Lueneburg.”

At the mention of Lueneburg, Trimenko’s temper quickened. But his facial expression gave no indication of any change. He still chafed at the thought of the Lueneburg operation. He had not been allowed to explain its purpose to anyone else; as far as his staff knew, it was a serious undertaking with a military purpose. But it irritated Trimenko that none of them seemed to question it. To him, it was obviously a stupid diversion of combat power. Yet his officers accepted it without a murmur. He looked at his operations chief. The man’s mind was too slow; he was always too ready to state the self-evident. Trimenko felt disgustedly that he could think at least twice as fast and several times more clearly than any of his subordinates. He reached for another pistachio.

“If we rupture their corps boundary,” Trimenko said in a voice that was clearly unwilling to accept further discussion, “we’ll turn Lueneburg from the south at our convenience.” He felt as though he were lecturing cadets at one of the second-rate academies. “I’m going to split them like a melon under a cleaver.” He turned to his chief of staff. “Babryshkin, order Malyshev and Khrenov to execute the center option. Adjust the boundary accordingly.” Suddenly, he stood up, unwilling to trust the staff to work incisively and swiftly enough to meet the demands of the situation. “Put the boundary here. Just offset from Route 71. Get Malyshev moving. If he hasn’t made his preparations properly, I’ll relieve him. Has Khrenov reported on the status of his crossing?”

“Comrade Army Commander, the divisional crossing operation is underway at this time.”

Trimenko sensed that his operations officer didn’t know any further details. He almost lashed out at the officer but managed to control himself. His fingernails worked at the pistachio shell. “All right. Everyone get started. Babryshkin, get me the front commander on the line. If he’s not available, I’ll talk to General Chibisov. And get my helicopter ready. I’m going forward. Make sure my pilot has a good fix on Khrenov’s forward command post. If Khrenov isn’t there, I’ll take over his division myself.”

Trimenko felt a familiar fury. He could not make them move at the pace he believed appropriate to the occasion. But he realized that if he drove them any harder now, they would only grow sloppy in their haste. He kept his hand on the throttle of the staff, striving for the maximum effective control of his officers, for the highest possible levels of performance and efficiency. And when he paused to reflect, he realized that his was a good staff, as staffs went. But the human animal was simply too slow, too inconsistent for him. You had to drive it with a lash, applying pain skillfully so that it spurred the animal onward but did not cause permanent injury. Occasionally an animal was too weak, and it failed and had to be destroyed. Other animals learned to respond to the very sound. But the requirement for the lash never disappeared, although the form taken by the instrument might change.

Trimenko was determined to fulfill the front plan so well that Malinsky would be forced to change it, cutting back Starukhin’s role. He believed he would have an ally in Chibisov, Malinsky’s clever little Jew, whom he took pains to cultivate. Trimenko regarded Starukhin as grossly overrated, a holdover from another, more slovenly era. Trimenko didn’t believe modern war was for Cossacks. Not at the operational level. Now it was for computers. And until they had better computers — computers that could replace the weaker type of men — war belonged to the men who were as much like computers as possible: exact, devoid of sentiment, and very, very fast.

Captain Kryshinin finally heard from the missing combat reconnaissance patrol. They had run into enemy opposition and had slipped off further to the south of Bad Bevensen. On Kryshinin’s map, the patrol had moved outside of the unit’s assigned boundary. But the good news was that they had seized a crossing site on the Elbe-Seiten Canal.

Kryshinin had gotten his forward security element on the move again, and the minefield and the lieutenant’s sacrifice lay several kilometers to the rear. Kryshinin felt as though he would need to perform very well now to make up for his earlier lapse. He wondered what his other officers thought of him now.

He tried to reach division on the radio, and, when that failed, he attempted to reach the advance guard that was somewhere on his trail. He needed someone in a position of authority to make a decision on further violation of the unit boundary. But his element’s route led through low ground now, and all he could hear was static and faint strains of music. He was not sure whether his radio was being jammed or if the nets had simply gotten out of control. Earlier, foreign-language voices had come up on his internal net, having a conversation.

Kryshinin desperately wanted to report the seizure of the crossing site. He suspected that, under the circumstances, division would order him to hurry to the support of the tiny patrol, despite the boundary problem.

The lieutenant who led the patrol reported that they had come up on an east-west underpass, wide enough for tanks, where the elevated canal passed over a farm road. The tunnel had been guarded only by a few Dutch soldiers with small arms, and the patrol surprised them. Now the lieutenant was crying out for support.

Kryshinin tried both stations again.

Nothing.

He halted his column, then called for his senior artillery officer and the air force forward air controller who had been detailed to accompany the forward element to meet him by the air force officer’s easily recognizable vehicle, a modified personnel carrier. The forward air controller was positioned closely behind Kryshinin, but the artilleryman was to the rear, leading the guns but prepared to come up to join the commander as soon as they were deployed. Kryshinin stood in the slow rain, waving for the artillery captain to hurry.

“Can either of you talk with your higher?”

The artillery captain shrugged. “I’m monitoring all right. I haven’t tried to talk.”

“I have a link back to division main and army central,” Captain Bylov, the air force officer, stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Listen,” Kryshinin said, “I want both of you to raise any stations you can. Then give my call sign and tell them my direct links aren’t working. Listen carefully.” Kryshinin unfolded his map, trying to protect it as much as possible against the fine drizzle that refused to come to an end. “We’re changing our route of advance. We’re going further south. To right there. The combat reconnaissance patrol has a crossing, but they won’t be able to hold it for five minutes once they get hit.”

The artillery captain, Likidze, looked at Kryshinin as though the element commander was crazy. “That’s out of our sector. I won’t be able to call up any fire support.”

“That’s what your battery’s for. Look, our mission is to find a passage to the west. We’ve gotten this far, and it seems as if the enemy’s covering plan has come apart. But the hardest part is getting across that damned canal. And now we have a crossing. I’m not going to pass it up just because it’s a few kilometers out of sector. But you have to call back and tell higher what we’re doing.”

“What you’re doing,” the artilleryman said. “You have no authorization to cross a sector boundary. That site may even be one of the targets scheduled in our neighbor’s fire plan.”

Kryshinin wanted to shake the artilleryman, who had articulated Kryshinin’s own doubts and fears. He realized that no one would share this responsibility with him. But he thought again of his earlier failure to act when confronted with the minefield, and of the lieutenant who had been so much braver and clearer-thinking than his commander. Now there was another lieutenant waiting for help who had managed to find a way across the canal. Kryshinin looked at the artilleryman in disgust, seeing himself and a hundred other officers he knew.

“Correct,” Kryshinin said. “It’s on my shoulders. Now let’s get moving.”

Time pressed harder on Kryshinin’s mind than it ever had before. The patrol commander reported incoming artillery on his position. Kryshinin realized that he might well get away with his decision as long as he proved successful in holding onto the crossing site. After all, that conformed to the essential mission. But if he had taken the wrong decision, and if the crossing site was lost and he had no results, he would pay.

He lost radio contact with the patrol.

Kryshinin spurred his element on as fast as it could go. He felt oddly lucky now that he had lost his engineers, since the big tank-launched bridge would never have been able to keep up with the increased speed of the march column. When one of his vehicles broke down, he left it for the advance guard to collect. The tanks set the pace, gripping the wet road with their whirring tracks.

At a crossroads, they raced by a bewildered enemy military policeman. The soldier emptied his machine pistol in the direction of the flying column, then ran for the trees. A bit further along, a medical clearing station had been set up in the courtyard of a farm, obviously intended to support the enemy’s covering troops. Kryshinin’s element left the site undisturbed in their muddy wake. Kryshinin sensed that the enemy had lost control of his forward battle now, and that his own location was not known to them. He wondered if, perhaps, his element had already penetrated the enemy’s main defenses. It was impossible to tell. Unlike the exercises to which Kryshinin was accustomed, where you knew generally how it was all laid out and usually received tip-off information so the unit would look good, real war seemed ridiculously confusing. Kryshinin had expected battle to have more formality to it, for combat to be more structured and to make better sense.

When an enemy field artillery battery appeared under drooping camouflage nets at the edge of an orchard, Kryshinin ordered his column to shoot it up from the march without deploying. He did not want to get bogged down. It was critical to maintain a single focus, and to act with speed.

The column crested a low hill, and Kryshinin saw the monumental line of the canal running north and south. He could not understand why the low ground had not been inundated. In a marvelous piece of engineering, the canal passed smoothly over a local farm trail, built up like a medieval fortress wall with a great open gate. Under the stout concrete tunnel, a single Soviet infantry fighting vehicle covered the near bank.

Kryshinin could not understand why the enemy had not blown the overpass immediately. He hastily got on his radio and ordered the artillery to deploy in the open hollow off to the left on the near bank. One platoon of motorized rifle troops would secure the near side of the crossing and protect the guns. Everyone else was to follow Kryshinin to the far side of the canal.

As he finished his transmissions the enemy artillery came again. The rounds exploded along the ridge on the far bank that paralleled the canal. The patrol’s vehicles had been well-concealed, and it appeared as though the enemy was simply delivering area fires, attempting to flush the Soviet scouts into the open. A stout, walled farm complex, just to the right of the road as it wove up onto the crest of the ridge, provided an obvious focus for the efforts of both sides.

Kryshinin pulled his vehicle out of the line and personally took the lead. He raced down into the low ground, skidding to a stop beside the guardian vehicle at the mouth of the tunnel. In the watery field beside the road, the bodies of four enemy soldiers had been laid in a row. A senior sergeant greeted Kryshinin, wincing at the still-distant artillery blasts.

“Comrade Captain,” he shouted, “the lieutenant’s up in those farm buildings.”

Kryshinin contracted back into his vehicle. “Move out,” he ordered the driver. “Up the road. To the farmyard.”

On the far side of the tunnel, a blasted enemy fighting vehicle lay like an animal carcass where it had been taken by surprise. Kryshinin spit into his mike. “Tank platoon to the treeline straddling the crest. Second rifle platoon, north of the road. Third platoon, cover the south side. Establish a hasty defense. Antitank platoon, disperse to cover the entire perimeter. All other vehicles shelter behind the farm buildings. Quickly. End.”

Through the random eruptions of incoming enemy artillery, Kryshinin could now see two fighting vehicles drawn up on a small plateau beside the farmyard walls. One had tucked in behind a fertilizer mound, and the other had found a sunken position between two apple trees.

Kryshinin told his driver to halt fifty meters to the rear of the vehicles, in a low section of the road. As he dismounted a soldier waved him into the cluster of buildings. Kryshinin ran, carrying his soggy map and his assault rifle. He could feel the wash of the artillery rounds as the enemy gunners reached toward the canal itself.

Inside the neat little courtyard, a rifleman lowered his weapon at Kryshinin, then suddenly pulled it away.

“In here, Comrade Captain. Up the stairs.”

Kryshinin vaulted through the doorway. The hallway of the house was littered with glass and smashed potted plants, the aftermath of the nearby artillery strikes. He jumped the stairs two at a time.

A lieutenant knelt low behind a broken-out window on a landing just below the second floor. He gazed through a pair of binoculars, man-packed radio at his side with the antenna angled out through the window frame. He looked around suddenly.

“Comrade Captain, you’re here!”

The boy’s voice sounded as though he had just experienced the relief of Leningrad. Loaded with complex emotions and thoughts, Kryshinin sensed that his arrival, in the lieutenant’s mind, had meant salvation, an end to all troubles. Yet Kryshinin could only feel how little combat power he had brought to the scene. Now they would need to hold out until the advance guard of the division arrived. If they were coming.

“Look,” the lieutenant said. “You can see them across the valley, by those woods. Orient on the lone house. They’re getting ready to come at us.” He held the binoculars out to Kryshinin.

One quick look. Tanks. Big, modern, Western tanks. Approximately thirty-five hundred meters off.

The artillery came back, shaking the farmhouse.

“They spotted us maybe twenty minutes ago,” the lieutenant shouted. “They came marching up the road like they were on parade. We had to open up to keep them away from the tunnel. A few minutes after that, the artillery started.”

Kryshinin looked at the baby-faced lieutenant. Somebody’s sweetheart. He touched the boy on the shoulder. “Good work. Good work, Lieutenant. Now let me see what I can do about those tanks.”

The concussion of a nearby artillery blast almost knocked him off his feet. Someone screamed.

“In the barn,” the lieutenant said. “The Germans. The family. They were still here, hiding. I didn’t know what to do.”

It had never really come home to Kryshinin before that warfare could have such complex dimensions. He thought for a long moment. The screaming clearly came from a female throat.

“They can take care of themselves,” Kryshinin said, turning away to organize his battle.

Kryshinin called the artillery battery commander, ordering him to either come up and act as a forward observer the way he was supposed to, or send someone else. He was prepared for another argument, but the artillery officer’s attitude had undergone a distinct change. He was excited now, too. He had contacted division, reporting that Kryshinin’s element had reached the crossing site. The chief of missile troops and artillery had personally informed the division commander. He had approved Kryshinin’s decision, and the advance guard from Kryshinin’s regiment was on the way.

“How far back?” Kryshinin asked.

“Didn’t say.”

“Find out. We have enemy tanks coming for a visit. They want us out of here.” He passed the grid where the enemy tanks were forming up. Then he hastened to the air force officer’s control vehicle. The hatches were sealed, and Kryshinin had to bang on the metal with the stock of his assault rifle.

Bylov, the forward air controller, opened the hatch one-handed, holding an open rations tin in the other.

“Taking a break,” he told Kryshinin.

Kryshinin almost gave up. At the same time he realized, jealously, that he had eaten nothing since the previous night. But there would be time, he consoled himself. Later. If they were still alive.

“Have you informed your control post of our situation?” Kryshinin demanded.

The air force officer nodded, forking up a hunk of potted meat so strong-smelling that its aroma penetrated the garlic-and-onions stink of the artillery blasts.

“Listen,” Kryshinin said, “we’re going to need air support. If you want to be alive at suppertime, you’d better get some ground-attack boys or some gunships in here. The valley just beyond the ridge is filled with enemy tanks.”

Bylov finished chewing and swallowed. “I’ll see what I can do. But if they can’t give me something that’s going up now, it won’t help.”

“Try. And get out where you can see what’s going on. Up there by the apple trees. Anywhere.”

Kryshinin jumped back down off the vehicle, splashing in the mud. His camouflage uniform had been soaking wet since before dawn, and his trousers had been chafing his crotch. But the discomfort had disappeared in his current excitement. He raced for the tank platoon, instinctively running low, even though the enemy artillery had lifted for the moment.

The tank platoon had a problem. The platoon commander could not find any suitable firing positions along the ridgeline. In order to sufficiently decline their gun tubes to engage an approaching enemy, they would need to expose themselves to observation and fires.

“All right,” Kryshinin said. “I have a better idea. Pull back onto that low hill over there, just north of the road we took to come up here. There. See it? Hide where you can watch the approaches to the tunnel. Counterattack any enemy armor that gets through. Don’t wait for orders. Just hit them. We’ll try to hold around the farm buildings. Do your best.”

The lieutenant of tank troops saluted and immediately began talking into his microphone. The tanks belched into readiness.

Kryshinin hurried back toward his own vehicle. But before he was halfway, the sounds of combat came back, changed.

His infantry fighting vehicles and wheeled antitank vehicles were engaging. The enemy was on the way.

Kryshinin looked back across the canal. Still no sign of movement. Kryshinin cursed the artillery officer, wondering what was keeping him. He needed someone to call fires. Otherwise, they would be overrun before the guns did any good.

His tank platoon rolled powerfully down across a saddle and veered toward their new position. Kryshinin felt confident that they would do their job. The lieutenant had had a crisp professionalism about him.

One of the antitank vehicles had profiled too high on the ridgeline. Now it caught a round in the bow and lifted over on its back, throwing scraps of metal upward and outward in a fountain. Kryshinin felt a sting on his shoulder, as though he had been bitten by an oversized insect. He almost tripped but managed to keep running.

The nearest platoon of motorized riflemen had dismounted, but their officer had not properly positioned them. They were simply lying in a close line with their machine guns, assault rifles, and antitank grenade launchers, protected only by the small irregularities of the ground.

Kryshinin shouted at the officer in charge. “Are you crazy? Get these men into the buildings. It’s too late to do anything else now. Hurry.”

The lieutenant stared at him as though he understood nothing at all. Suddenly, Kryshinin went cold inside at the thought of what the situation was probably like in the platoon that had lost its lieutenant in the minefield. He felt overwhelmed by the need to do everything himself. He ignored the lieutenant now, grabbing the first soldier he could reach, a machine gunner.

“You. Get inside the buildings. Take your pals. Fight from there.”

Kryshinin ran along the line. Where the lieutenant had positioned the men, they would have been not only hopelessly vulnerable, but useless. They had no fields of fire. Kryshinin could not believe he had failed so thoroughly to train his officers and soldiers. He had complied with every regulation, and his training sessions usually had gone well, with the company receiving mostly fours and fives. Now it all seemed meaningless, as though they had all merely been going through the motions, without really learning. And now it was too late. They would have to fight in the state in which war had found them.

“All of you. Get up,” he shouted, rasping to be heard above the chaotic battle noise. One of the machine gunners had opened fire, and firing began to spread along the line, although some soldiers simply lay still on the ground. “Stop it. Stop. They’re still out of range.” Even on his feet, Kryshinin could not see the enemy from the position of the firing soldiers. “Get into the buildings and get ready to fight. This isn’t a country outing. Stop your firing.”

Then he saw the helicopters. Approaching from the wrong side.

“Come on,” he shouted, voice already cracking. He ran for the cover of the buildings, with the motorized riflemen all around him. Behind them, an infantry fighting vehicle positioned in the orchard sent off an antitank guided missile.

“Where’s the air defense team?” Kryshinin wondered out loud.

The helicopters throbbed over the trees, ugly, bulbous creatures with dark weaponry on their mounts and German crosses on the fuselages. The markings confused Kryshinin, who was sure he was still in the Dutch sector. He stopped to fire his assault rifle at the aircraft, and a few others fired as well.

The helicopters, four of them, churned overhead without firing. Kryshinin felt relief at their passing. But a moment later, he heard the hiss of missiles coming off launch rails.

The artillery, Kryshinin remembered. The battery was sitting out in the open. Kryshinin watched helplessly as the enemy attack helicopters banked playfully above the landscape, teasing the desperate gunners on the ground, destroying the self-propelled pieces one after the other.

Why didn’t the air defense troops fire? Kryshinin wondered.

In less than a minute, the helicopters peeled off to the south, leaving the wrecked battery in a veil of smoke pierced now and then by the flash of secondary explosions.

Kryshinin made a hurried stop at his own vehicle. It had moved nearer to the crest, and its main gun fired into the distance. He leaned into the turret, grabbing the gunner by the sleeve, shouting to be heard.

“Back into the courtyard. Get her behind the walls. I need the radios.”

The gunner stared up at him. “Comrade Captain. You’re bleeding.” Kryshinin followed the gunner’s eyes down to his shoulder, then over his chest and sleeve. Much of the uniform was shockingly dark, much darker than the rain alone could have made it. At the sight, Kryshinin felt a momentary faintness.

“Hurry up,” he said, almost gagging. “Get into the courtyard.” But he suddenly felt weaker, as if his realizing that he had been wounded had unleashed the wound’s effect. He remembered the little sting. It seemed impossible that it could have done this. He was not even aware of any pain.

He trotted beside his vehicle, guiding it through the gates as the direct-fire battle increased in intensity. But the forward air-control vehicle had blocked the courtyard, taking up more than its share of the space. Kryshinin ran to make the air force officer move out of the way just as the artillery came thumping back.

The barn roof collapsed. The concussion of the blast knocked several of the men in the courtyard to the ground. One soldier had blood draining from his ears, and Kryshinin felt deafened. But he still had enough hearing to recognize the sound of a tank gun closer than expected. In the misery of the courtyard, soldiers screamed for aid and choked on the dust of the smashed barn. Then the rain abruptly increased in intensity, as if the enemy controlled that, too.

“Everybody into the buildings,” Kryshinin shouted. “Don’t just stand around.” But the soldiers were hesitant. After watching the roof of the barn cave in, Kryshinin could hardly blame them. Nonetheless, the remaining buildings provided better protection than the open courtyard. And it was impossible for all of the men to fight effectively from the courtyard. “Move, damn you.”

But they were already scrambling to obey him. It was only that they had been stunned into a slowed reaction by the confusion that seemed to worsen with every minute. Now those who didn’t understand Kryshinin’s Russian simply followed their peers.

The sounds of moving tanks crowded in with the noises of missile back-blasts and automatic weapons. Kryshinin bounded back into the house and up the stairs, crunching glass underfoot. The lieutenant remained at his post. But he didn’t need his binoculars anymore.

“Those tanks,” he told Kryshinin, “at least a company. Working up along the treelines. We got two of them.”

A round smashed into the wall of the house, shaking it to its foundation. But the building was old and strong, built of masonry.

The lieutenant noticed Kryshinin’s bloody tunic.

Kryshinin held up his hand. “No real damage done,” he said, hoping he was correct. He couldn’t understand where the pain was hiding. The arm still worked, if stiffly.

“One of the officers went up on the roof with a radio,” the lieutenant said. “He looked like an air force guy.”

“Where is he?”

“On the roof. There’s an attic stairway back there. The roof has dormer windows.”

The enemy tanks had closed to within a thousand meters. Kryshinin watched them for a moment, catching a glimpse of dark metal now and then through the local smokescreens the enemy vehicles laid down with their smoke grenades. Their movement struck him as very clever, very disciplined, but slow. They seemed to move in cautious bounds. Kryshinin watched one of his own antitank missiles stream toward the enemy tanks, then spring out of control, soaring briefly into the empty sky, then plunging into a meadow. He turned away in disgust.

He followed the directions toward the attic. He felt unusually light, almost as though he were floating, yet it was a hard climb going up the narrow stairs. He began to feel as though his torso could fly but his feet were weighted down with irons. When he reached the attic, he found it cluttered with forgotten property, stinking with mildew. The trash of generations troubled his course, barring his feet with old framed pictures and antique household machinery, all strewn with ragged fabric.

The roof windows had been shattered. Kryshinin leaned out through the nearest, which opened toward the canal.

Bylov lay sprawled on his belly on the roof tiles, talking into a radio set, with a satchel of gear open beside him.

Kryshinin could not understand a single word the air force officer said. The level of noise was incredible, maddening. It seemed to give the air a tangible thickness, as though you could stir it with your hand.

Kryshinin tugged at Bylov’s leg.

The air force officer held up a finger. Wait. He rolled onto his back, scanning the gray sky.

Kryshinin followed Bylov’s line of sight but could see nothing.

Nonetheless, Bylov reached into his satchel, retrieving a flare pistol and two explosive canisters of colored smoke. He spoke once into his microphone, then rose to his knees on the slick tile, just high enough to peer over the roofbeam.

With a sure motion, Bylov threw a smoke canister to the right, then quickly hurled another to the left, marking the line of friendly troops. He fumbled briefly at the flare pistol, then fired two green flares in succession in the direction of the enemy.

Bylov threw his satchel at Kryshinin, knocking him back into the attic. The air force officer followed the bag, quick as a cat, dragging his radio after him. Without a look at Kryshinin, Bylov flattened onto the floor, hands over his ears.

Kryshinin swiftly imitated him.

A powerful rush of jet engines seemed to pass right through the room, shaking the floor even more powerfully than had the artillery blasts. The passage was closely followed by small blasts, then by enormous booms that seemed to tear several seconds out of their lives. The air itself drew tighter.

“Fuel air explosives,” Bylov shouted. “Great stuff.”

“Good work,” Kryshinin shouted back.

“Count on the air force,” Bylov told him. “We serve the Motherland and all that.”

“How did you get the sorties?”

Bylov looked at him in honest surprise. “We’ve got top priority. I’ve got more on the way.”

Bylov methodically began to gather his spilled tools, checking his radio, a technician of the sky. In his own little world of airplanes, Bylov had not noticed — or, at any rate, had said nothing about — Kryshinin’s wound. But Kryshinin felt changes coming over his body now. He was losing strength fast. He needed to have a look at the wound, yet he was afraid that the sight of his damaged flesh, of his own blood on his own skin, might paralyze him. And he was determined to hang on, no matter what happened.

Kryshinin slowly raised himself and worked his way back down the stairs to the lieutenant’s observation post. The lieutenant’s torso lay smashed against a wall, head and limbs twisted out of any skeletal sense, eyes bulging. From behind another wall, a machine gun fired.

Kryshinin peered out of the battered window frame. The valley had filled with black smoke.

Then he saw the first enemy tank in close. The airplanes had missed at least a platoon. Four enemy tanks came over the crest, one after another. One tank trailed fire off its deck, resembling a mythical dragon. They drove beside the farm complex, leaving Kryshinin’s field of vision.

He hurried back down the stairs to the accompaniment of blasts and rapid fires. Men shouted in a contest of complaints and commands.

From the doorway, the farmyard appeared chaotic. Kryshinin watched as his own vehicle attempted to pull off, only to explode in the entrance gateway. The heat of the blast reached into the foyer of the house, rinsing Kryshinin with a wave of unnatural warmth.

Above the billows of smoke, he saw two more helicopters appear. But these were from his side, “bumblebees,” loaded with weaponry. They flew an orientation pass. Kryshinin wanted to get into the fight, to insure that his tank platoon had moved to intercept the enemy tanks that had broken through. But flames blocked the gateway.

He searched hurriedly through the ground floor of the house, hunting for a side door. Nothing in the building seemed to be left whole. In the kitchen, he found two soldiers casually sitting against a cupboard, as though they were on an authorized rest period.

“Come with me,” Kryshinin shouted, heading for the open space where a door had been ripped from its hinges.

Outside, the black smoke covered the landscape between the farm buildings and the original positions of the enemy tanks. The amount of firing that continued seemed incredible, first because it seemed as though all of the ammunition should have been used up already, and, second, because it was hard to believe so many survivors remained. But Kryshinin felt reassured that so many of his men continued to engage the enemy.

He heard the beat of the Soviet gunships returning. And the battle noises clearly revealed a tank fight going on down toward the canal.

The two riflemen followed Kryshinin obediently, simply waiting for his instructions. Kryshinin hustled around a corner. One of his infantry fighting vehicles sat in perfect condition, scanning for targets, even as the battle had passed it by. Kryshinin let it stand as a sentinel. Growing weaker and dizzy almost to nausea, he worked along the wall of the ruined barn, weapon ready, seeking a view back toward the canal. He came up behind a rain barrel, and, taking a chance, he raised his head.

The finest, most welcome sight of his life awaited him. The twin ridgeline on the eastern side of the canal streamed with Soviet vehicles. Air-defense elements raced across the high fields to find correctly spaced positions, and self-propelled guns bristled their tubes at the sky. In the valley bottom, the enemy tanks that had penetrated Kryshinin’s thin line burned away like lamps to light the rainy day. Soviet tanks roared through the tunnel, blooming out into a long, beautiful line and heading straight for Kryshinin’s position. Kryshinin collapsed against the wall of the barn, letting go at last.