Red Army (11 page)

The tracks slid and plumed mud high into the air behind the vehicle.

The immense roar of the artillery seemed part of another reality now, clearly divorced from anything that would happen in these woods.

Black vehicle shapes. Thirty meters through the trees.

Plinnikov dropped into the turret, not bothering to close the hatch behind himself. He took control of the turret, forehead pressed against his optics.

“See them? Fire,
damn you.
Fire.”

The automatic cannon began to recoil.

“There.
To the right.”

“I have him.”

“Driver, don’t stop. Go.”

The vehicle pulled level with a small clearing in the forest where two enemy command tracks stood positioned with their drop ramps facing each other. Two light command cars were parked to one side.

A third track that had been hidden from view began to move for the trail.

“Hit the mover,
hit the mover.”

The automatic cannon spit several bursts at the track, which stopped in a shower of sparks.

“Driver,
front to the enemy.”

Plinnikov swung the turret again.

The enemy fired back with small arms, although one man stood still, helmetless, in amazement, as though he had never in his life expected such a thing to happen.

The automatic cannon and the machine gun raked the sides of the enemy tracks. All good, clean flank shots, punching through the armor. The track that had made a run for the trail burned now. The driver’s hatch popped up, and Plinnikov cut the man across the shoulders with the on-board machine gun.

The man who had stood so long in such amazement slowly raised his hands. Plinnikov turned the machine gun on him.

Plinnikov was afraid he would miss one of the dismounted soldiers, and he left the on-board weaponry to Belonov, standing behind the shield of his hatch with his assault rifle.

Just in time, he saw an enemy soldier kneeling with a small tube on his shoulder. He emptied his entire magazine into the man, just as Belonov brought the machine gun around to catch him as well.

Plinnikov pulled a grenade from his harness, then another. As quickly as his shaking fingers allowed, he primed one and tossed it toward the enemy vehicles, then followed it with the second grenade. He dropped back inside of his vehicle.

The explosions sounded flat, almost inconsequential, after the artillery barrage. Plinnikov realized that his hearing was probably going.

“Sweep the vehicles one more time with the machine gun.
Driver.
To the rear, ten meters.”

“I can’t see.”

“Just back up, damn it.
Now.”

The gears crunched, and the vehicle’s tracks threw mud toward the dead and the dying.

“Driver, halt. Belonov, I’m going out. You cover me.”

He felt as though he would have given anything imaginable to have his authorized dismount scouts now. If there was a price to pay for the system’s failure, he’d have to pay it. The idea did not appeal to him. He felt as though he were going very, very fast, as though he had the energy to vault over trees, but his hand shook as he grasped the automatic rifle. He didn’t bother to unfold the stock. It was challenging enough to snap in a fresh magazine.

It felt as though it took an unusually long time to work his way out of the turret. He was conscious every second of how fully he was exposed. As soon as he could, he swung his legs high and to the side, sliding down over the side of the low turret, catching his rump sharply on the edge of the vehicle’s deck.

He hit the mud and crouched beside the vehicle. Great clots of earth hung from the track and road wheels.

He checked to his rear.

Nothing. Forest. The empty trail.

To his front, the little command cars blazed, one with a driver still behind the wheel, a shadow in the flames. Between his vehicle and the devastated enemy tracks, Plinnikov could see three enemy soldiers on the ground. One of them moved in little jerks and twists. None of them made any sounds. Another body lay sprawled face down on the ramp of one of the command tracks, while yet another -- the antitank grenadier -- had been kicked back against a tree by the machine gun. The grenadier hardly resembled a human being now.

The vehicle that had tried to escape burned with a searing glow on its metal. The type and markings made it Dutch. Plinnikov kept well away from it as he worked his way forward.

One of the command vehicles had its engine running. Both of the command tracks bore West German markings, and most of the uniforms were West German. Plinnikov skirted the front of the running vehicle, taking cover in the brush. As methodically as his nerves would permit, he maneuvered his way around to the enemy’s rear.

He halted along the wet metal sidewall of the running vehicle, feeling its vibrations. Above the idling engine, he could hear the razzle of a radio call in a strange language. He wondered if it was a call for the station that had just perished.

Someone moaned, almost as if he was snoring. Then it was quiet again.

Plinnikov breathed in deeply. He felt terribly afraid. He could not understand why he was doing this. It seemed as though he was meant to be anyplace but here. He looked at the grenadier’s contorted remains. Somehow, it had all seemed a game, a daring game of driving through the artillery. And if he had been caught, he would have been removed from the game. But the man slopped against the tree was out of the game forever. For a length of time he could not measure, Plinnikov simply stared at the tiny black, red, and gold flag on the rear fender of the far vehicle, as if it could provide answers.

He took a last deep breath, fighting his stomach. He pulled his weapon in tight against his side and threw himself around the corner of the vehicle onto the drop ramp.

He had forgotten the dead man on the ramp. He tripped over the corpse, flopping over the body and smashing his elbow. He landed with his mouth close to the dead man’s ear, and, in an instant of paralysis, he felt the lifelike warmth of the body through the battle dress and sogging rain. The dead man had fine white hairs mixed in with the close-cropped black on the rear of his skull, and Plinnikov saw the red pores on the back of the man’s neck with superhuman clarity.

As soon as he could, Plinnikov pushed off of the corpse and twisted so that he could fire his weapon into the interior of the vehicle. But he knew that if anyone still had been capable of shooting, he would be dead already.

The running vehicle bore a stew of bodies in its belly. The accidents of dying had thrown several men together as though they had been dancing and had fallen drunkenly. The inside of the cluttered compartment was streaked and splashed with wetness, and uniforms had torn open to spill filth and splinters of bone. Plinnikov realized that some of the rounds that had penetrated the near side of the vehicle had not had the force to punch out the other side and had expended themselves in rattling back and forth inside the vehicle, chopping the occupants.

In the track parked opposite, a lone radio operator sat sprawled over his notepads, microphone hanging limply from a coil cord. On the radio, a foreign voice called the dead.

Plinnikov was sick. He tried to make it to the trees, out of some elementary human instinct, but he stumbled over the dead man on the ramp for a second time and vomited on the corpse’s back. As he looked down at his mess Plinnikov panicked to see blood smeared over his own chest before realizing that it had come from his embrace of the middle-aged corpse.

Plinnikov felt empty, his belly burning with acid and his heart vacantly sick. He stared at the slow progress of his vomit down the angled ramp. He wanted to be home, safe, and never to see war or anything military ever again.

He wiped the strands from his lips, wondering if his crew had watched his little performance. The taste in his mouth made him feel sick again. He realized, belatedly, that the amazed man with his hands up had been trying to surrender, and that it had been wrong to gun him down. But during the fighting, it had never occurred to him to do anything but shoot at everything in front of him.

The voice on the radio called again. Plinnikov imagined that he could detect a pleading tone.

Suddenly, he braced himself. He stared at the silver ornaments on the epaulets of the corpse on the ramp. This was a command post. There would be documents. Maps. Radio communications data.

Stomach twisting, Plinnikov turned to his task.

Senior Lieutenant Filov failed to grasp what was happening until it was too late. He brought his company of tanks on line behind the smokescreen, moving at combat speed toward the enemy, maintaining reasonable order despite his spiky nervousness. Then the tanks began to sink in what had appeared to be a normal field.

Reconnaissance had not reported any difficulties. Now his command tank stood mired to the deck, and none of his vehicles succeeded in backing out. Their efforts only worked them deeper into the marshy soil. His entire company had ground to a halt in a tattered cartoon of their battle formation.

Filov attempted to call back through the battalion for more smoke and for recovery vehicles. But the smokescreen began to dissipate noticeably before he could establish radio contact. The nets were cluttered with strange voices.

“Prepare to engage, prepare to engage,” he shouted into his microphone. When his platoon commanders failed to respond, he realized with a feeling of near-panic that he had been speaking only through the intercom. He switched channels, fingers clumsy on the control mechanism, and repeated his orders.

“Misha, I’m stuck,” one of his platoon commanders responded.

“We’re
all
stuck. Use your call sign. And mine. And use your head.”

Filov tried to raise battalion again. Without more smoke, they’d be dead. Filov was sure the enemy had trapped them, that this was a clever ambush, and that enemy antitank gunners were waiting to destroy them.

The smoke continued to thin.

Nothing on the battalion net. It was as though battalion had vanished from the earth. Filov’s gunner, a Muslim from Uzbekistan, was praying. Filov slapped him hard on the side of his headset.

“God won’t help, you bastard. Get on your gunsight.”

Flares popped hot bright through the last meager smoke. From the angle of their arc, Filov could tell that none of his people had fired them. In any case, the use of flares was inappropriate. Even with the rain and smoke, there was still plenty of light. Probably a distress signal, Filov thought. But he had no idea who could have fired.

He tried the battalion net again, begging the electronics to respond. The gun tube of his tank was so low to the ground that it barely cleared the wild grasses.

Filov wondered if they could dig themselves out. He knew how to recover tanks in a classroom, when the problem allowed nearby trees. But now they were stuck dead center in a meadow. He was about to order all of his vehicles to begin erecting their camouflage nets and to send one of his lieutenants back on foot to locate the rest of the battalion when the last smoke blew off.

The battlefield showed its secrets with painful clarity, the light rain and mist offering no real protection. Less than five hundred meters from his line of tanks, set at an angle, Filov saw five enemy tanks. The enemy vehicles were also bogged down almost to the turrets.

“Fire,”
Filov screamed, paying no attention to which channel he was riding, forgetting all fire discipline and procedures. His gunner dutifully sent off” a round in the general direction of the enemy. Filov tried to remember the proper sequence of fire commands. He began to turn the turret without making a decision on which enemy vehicle to engage.

The enemy fired back. Filov’s entire line fired, in booming disorder. Nobody seemed to hit anything.

Filov settled on a target. “Loading sabot. Range, four-fifty.”

The automatic loader slammed the round into the breech.

“Correct to four hundred.”

“Ready.”

“Fire.”

The round went wide, despite the ridiculously short distance to the target. But another one of the enemy vehicles disappeared in a bloom of sparks, flame, and smoke under the massed fires of Filov’s right flank platoon. Filov’s headset shrieked with broken transmissions.

“I’ve lost one. I’ve lost one.”

“Range, five hundred.”

“Wrong net, you sonofabitch.”

The enemy tanks fired as swiftly as they could, their rounds skimming through the marshy grasses. Filov could not understand why he could not hit his targets. He had always fired top scores on the range, perfect fives. He tried to slow down and behave as though he were back on a local gunnery range.

Filov’s gunner sent another round toward the enemy tank. This time it struck home.

The enemy tank failed to explode. After a bright flash, the big angular turret was still there, settling back down as though its sleep had been disturbed. But the vehicle’s crew began to clamber out through the hatches, clumsy in their haste.

Out of the corner of his field of vision, Filov saw the turret of one of his own tanks fly high into the air, as though it were no heavier than a soccer ball. Then another enemy tank flared up in a fuel-tank fire.

It was too much. Filov opened his hatch and scrambled out. This was insane. Murder. All of his visions collapsed inward. His headset jerked at his neck, and he tore it off. He stumbled down over the slippery deck of his tank, then abandoned his last caution and jumped for the grass. He saw other men running across the field in the distance.

It was senseless to stay. For what? They’d all die. Just shoot until they all killed each other. What would it accomplish?

The
whisk
and thunder of the tank battle continued behind him, punctuated occasionally by the metallic ring and blast of a round meeting its target. The sopping marshland clutched at Filov’s boots. In his panic, he began smashing at his legs, as if he could slap them into cooperation, as if he could beat the earth from underfoot. He ran without looking back.

Plinnikov stood up in his hatch, fumbling to ready the smoke grenade. He heard the helicopter before he saw it. The weather had an odd effect on the sound, diffusing it against the background of the artillery barrage, so that it was difficult to identify the exact azimuth of the aircraft’s approach. All at once, just offset from Plinnikov’s line of sight, the small helicopter emerged from the mist, a quick blur that swiftly grew larger and began to define itself. Plinnikov tossed the smoke canister so that the wind would lead the colored fog away from his vehicle. He could tell immediately that the pilot was one of the Afgantsy, a real veteran, by the way he came in fast and very low, despite the rain and reduced visibility.