Two Fronts (61 page)

“No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“You just kept your mouth shut about what you were up to,” Peggy said. That sounded like Herb, too.

“It’s not the same thing,” he insisted, a touch of stiffness in his voice. That might have been the lawyer in him talking. Or maybe he really believed it. Who the hell knew? How much did it matter now either way?

Peggy sharpened her tongue on another question: “Seen anything of Gladys since you got back into town?”

She had the satisfaction of watching him turn almost as red as the tomato sauce on his plate. But he shook his head again. “Nah,” he answered. “I told you before—that didn’t mean anything.”

“Yeah. You told me. And I told you. And we were both telling the truth. And here we are.” Peggy looked at the little strip of fishbelly-white skin on the fourth finger of her left hand, where her ring had lived for so long. Was honesty really the best policy? If they’d both just kept quiet, would they still be married? Would they still be happy enough with each other? Again, who the hell knew? She had trouble believing things could have turned out worse, though.

Herb also finished his sort-of chianti. What was left in the bottle splashed into their glasses without going very far. He waved to the waiter for reinforcements. “Thanks, George,” he said when the fresh bottle came.

“
Prego
,” George replied. Hey, it was a job.

“We’re not far from the house, but will you be able to drive back to your new place if you get crocked?” Peggy asked.

“I’ll do fine. Not enough traffic to worry about,” Herb said. That was true enough.

When he finished his spaghetti, he shoved the plate aside and lit a cigarette. Peggy wasn’t quite done, but she looked forward to hers, too. The one after dinner was the best of the day—even better than the one after sex, usually.

But she hadn’t fired it up when she said, “When I got all those papers, your note said you didn’t love me any more. Have you found somebody else? Not Gladys, but somebody?”

“Nope.” One more shake of the head. “Maybe I’ll go looking. Or maybe I’ll just decide I’m an old goat who’s only fit for his own company. I haven’t worked that one out yet.”

“Okay.” Peggy had no idea whether it was or not. She also had no idea what she’d do along those lines herself. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man who wasn’t Herb in her life. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure she could find one. She was … not so young any more. Herb had a couple of years on her, but so what? It was different with guys. A woman in her thirties wouldn’t see anything wrong with a man in his fifties. The other way around? She snorted quietly to herself. Good luck!

“I wish things didn’t work out the way they did,” Herb said.

Then why did you go to Reno?
But Peggy’s bitter question died unspoken. That wasn’t what he meant. He was talking about the things that led up to his going there. “We got stuck in the goddamn war,” she said. “It killed … us … the same way it killed all those soldiers.”

“It sure did,” Herb said. “We get to try and pick up the pieces, though. The poor guys they go and bury can’t even do that.”

Peggy wondered if they were the lucky ones. Everything was over for them, and they didn’t have to worry any more. But that was just self-pity talking. Any one of those poor damned kids would have traded places with her or Herb in a split second. She sighed and made herself nod. “Well,” she said, “you’re right.”

IN HIS SEAT
on the far side of the radio set from Theo Hossbach, Adi Stoss hit the Panzer IV’s starter button. The weather was warm. The panzer was new. The motor caught right away.

“I could get used to this!” Adi said. Before Theo could decide whether to chide him for that, he chided himself: “As soon as I do, the beast won’t start up like this any more.” Theo nodded; Adi had that straight.

“Let me know as soon as we’re warm enough to go, Adi, or even a little before that,” Hermann Witt said from the turret.

“Will do.” Adi watched the engine temperature and the oil pressure and the rest of the gauges on the instrument panel. All around them, the other panzers in the company were starting up and moving out, too. “We’re just about ready, Sergeant.”

“Then get rolling,” Witt said. “Sounds like we’re going to earn our pay the next little while.”

Adi put the Panzer IV in gear. Along with the others, it rolled north and east. The Russians had punched through the German line in front of Gorki, and an armored column was driving on the city. The panzer company was part of the southern jaw of the
Wehrmacht
’s counterattack. If the Germans could bite off the column, they could chew it up afterwards at their leisure.

If. From everything Theo heard in his earphones over the radio net, the Ivans had shoved a lot of men and machines through there. They were trying to take their own bites out of the German holdings in the East, and they kept learning more and more about how to do such things.

The company hadn’t been on the move more than ten minutes before flights of Katyushas rained down on the panzers and on the infantry coming forward with them. Theo thought the screaming rockets’ roar was one of the most horrible things he’d ever heard, even through thick steel armor. Hermann Witt ducked down into the panzer and slammed the cupola lid shut. Blast shook the heavy machine. Fragments clanged off it.

“Fuck!” Adi Stoss’ mouth silently shaped the word. Theo nodded again. He couldn’t have put it better himself. Adi went on, “God help the poor
Frontschweine
out there.”

“
Ja
.” He got a word out of Theo. Katyushas slaughtered foot soldiers, and often panicked the survivors. A direct hit on the turret from one could brew up a panzer, too. He wished that hadn’t crossed his mind.

He peered out through his vision slit. They were coming to Indian country—land the Ivans held. If the Katyushas had scattered German infantry, he needed to be extra alert to keep anybody in a khaki uniform from getting close to the panzer.

Sure enough, the Indians soon came out of the bushes—or rather, fired out of the cover they gave. That big flash had to come from an antipanzer rifle. The damned things were useless against modern armor: the loud clang as the round ricocheted from the Panzer IV’s front plate showed as much. The Russians kept issuing them anyway. They could punch holes in armored cars and halftracks, but anybody who thought he could knock out a real panzer with one was only fooling himself.

It was the last mistake this Red Army soldier was likely to make. Theo hosed down the bushes with several bursts from the bow machine gun. He thought he saw somebody thrashing in there. He might have shot a nice fellow, a guy who liked dogs and mushrooms and harmless hobbies like woodcarving. Give the nice guy an antipanzer rifle, though, and he turned into someone who was doing his best to make sure Theo didn’t get home to Breslau. Theo wasn’t about to let that happen. No second shot came as the panzer rattled on.

A much bigger shell burst fifty meters in front of the Panzer IV. Dirt and fragments banged off the German machine. “Panzer halt!” Hermann Witt yelled. Adi halted the beast. An AP round clanged into the breech. The big 75mm gun traversed a little to the right, then roared. The shell casing clattered down onto the steel floor of the fighting compartment.

Theo didn’t see a T-34 going up in smoke. That meant they’d missed. So did the way Witt shouted for another round. Theo’s balls tried to crawl up into his belly, as if that would do him any good. They were reloading and aiming again inside the Russian panzer, too. If they fired first, if they fired straight …

But they didn’t. A T-34’s commander also had to aim and fire the gun. The German crew, with a specialist gunner, was faster and more efficient. They got in the second shot, and they made it count. The distant T-34 began to burn. The enemy diesel didn’t explode into flames the way a German gasoline engine would have, but panzers had plenty of things besides fuel to catch fire.

“Forward!” Witt called.

Forward they went. The
Wehrmacht
wasn’t having everything its own way—it hardly ever did in Russia. The Panzer IV rumbled past the blazing carcass of an assault gun—a cannon mounted in a panzer chassis without a turret. The cannon had only a very limited traverse, so the assault gun had to swing itself toward a target. On the other hand, it boasted a low silhouette that made it hard to spot. And assault guns were cheaper and easier to manufacture than panzers.

Somebody had sure spotted this one. Theo hoped the guys in the gray coveralls were able to escape when their mount got hit, but he wouldn’t have bet on it. In case they had, he fired some machine-gun rounds more or less at random to make the Russians in the neighborhood keep their heads down.

A couple of rifle rounds pinging off the panzer near the vision slit told him he hadn’t made all the Ivans duck. Even a sniper wasn’t likely to hit a vision slit on a moving panzer, but anyone who’d been in the field awhile knew unlikely didn’t mean impossible.

“Panzer halt!” Witt ordered. Adi stamped on the brakes. The main armament thundered. Shouts from the turret told of another hit—and another kill. Yes, this machine could smash T-34s instead of just letting them know it was in the neighborhood.

But more and more Russian armor seemed to be in this neighborhood. The Ivans were guarding their flanks better than they often did. They must have realized what the
Wehrmacht
’s counterstroke against their thrust was likely to look like, and made their own plans to keep it from working.

The Panzer IV rolled past more burnt-out vehicles, some bearing the red star, others the white-edged black German cross. Some of the twisted bodies in the fields and meadows wore khaki; just about as many were in
Feldgrau
.

Clang! … Boom!
That was a Panzer IV taking a hit and brewing up not far away. Adi’s mouth twisted. “We just lost some guys we know,” he said. Theo nodded once more.

“Panzer halt!” Hermann Witt shouted again. Again, Kurt Poske slammed an AP round into the 75. Theo braced himself for another boom from the gun.

But he got a different kind of boom. Something slammed into the panzer. He felt as if he’d been clubbed.

“Get us out of here, Adi!” Witt said.

Adi tried. “Can’t, Sergeant,” he reported. “That one knocked off the right track.”

“
Scheisse!
” Witt said. “All right—everybody out! The next one hits us dead center. Good luck, friends!”

Theo remembered the first time he’d bailed out of a crippled panzer. He’d gained a wound badge and lost most of a finger on his left hand. Well, no help for it. The panzer commander was right. He’d end up with the next Russian shell in his lap.

He paused only to grab his Schmeisser—yes, he knew where it was. Then he opened his hatch and scrambled out of the Panzer IV as fast as he could. Bullets spanged off the armor plate. They struck sparks, but they didn’t strike him. Adi got out in one piece, too. They both scurried to the rear of the panzer, to put its bulk between them and, well, everything. The guys from the turret escaped through a hatch in its back.

“Welcome to the infantry!” Adi said with a sour grin. Theo cared nothing for the infantry. He didn’t feel like a foot soldier. He felt more like a snail suddenly torn from its nice, hard shell and transformed into a miserable, squishable slug. He also cared nothing for this attack, which was plainly bogging down. All he wanted was to live to see tomorrow.

BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE

The Guns of the South

THE WORLDWAR SAGA

Worldwar: In the Balance

Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance

Worldwar: Striking the Balance

Homeward Bound

THE VIDESSOS CYCLE

VOLUME ONE:

The Misplaced Legion

An Emperor for the Legion

VOLUME TWO:

The Legion of Videssos

Swords of the Legion

THE TALE OF KRISPOS

Krispos Rising

Krispos of Videssos

Krispos the Emperor

THE TIME OF TROUBLES SERIES

The Stolen Throne

Hammer and Anvil

The Thousand Cities

Videssos Besieged

A World of Difference

Departures

How Few Remain

THE GREAT WAR

The Great War: American Front

The Great War: Walk in Hell

The Great War: Breakthroughs

AMERICAN EMPIRE

American Empire: Blood & Iron

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

SETTLING ACCOUNTS

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement

Settling Accounts: Drive to the East

Settling Accounts: The Grapple

Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Every Inch a King

The Man with the Iron Heart

THE WAR THAT CAME EARLY

The War That Came Early: Hitler’s War

The War That Came Early: West and East

The War That Came Early: The Big Switch

The War That Came Early: Coup d’Etat

The War That Came Early: Two Fronts

About the Author

HARRY TURTLEDOVE
is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works
The Man with the Iron Heart; The Guns of the South; How Few Remain
(winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the War That Came Early novels:
West and East, Hitler’s War, The Big Switch
, and
Coup d’Etat;
the Worldwar Saga:
In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance
, and
Striking the Balance;
the Colonization books:
Second Contact, Down to Earth
, and
Aftershocks;
the Great War epics:
American Front, Walk in Hell
, and
Breakthroughs;
the American Empire novels:
Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold
, and
Victorious Opposition;
and the Settling Accounts series:
Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple
, and
In at the Death
. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.