Red Army (24 page)

He thought of Levin, the political officer. Levin didn’t have any experience. But he would have to use him, if it came down to it. Perhaps Levin on the eastern bank, while he took personal command in Karchenko’s area. Or wherever the action was the most intense. Gordunov hated the thought of relying on the political officer. But then he hated to rely on any man. He could only bear counting on Dukhonin because they had both come from the
Afgantsy
brotherhood.

In the darkness, Gordunov collided with a body rushing out of the shadows.

They both fell. The body called out in a foreign voice.

Gordunov shot him at point-blank range.

A return burst of fire from beyond the body sought him in the dark. Gordunov flattened and fired back over the body of the man he had just shot. When the body moved, Gordunov drew his assault knife and plunged it into the man’s throat.

There were several foreign voices now, calling to one another. Unfamiliar-sounding weapons began to fire around him.

Gordunov peeled a grenade from his harness, primed it, then lobbed it down toward the mouth of an alley.

As the fragmentation settled Gordunov crawled into a doorway. The door was locked.

“I’m shot ... I’m shot . . .”

Bronch. The radio.

Gordunov held still. His radioman lay sprawled in the street, his boots still up on the sidewalk. He repeated his complaint over and over, aching with the damage a foreign weapon had done to his body.

Gordunov watched the darkness. Waiting for them to come out. As if on cue, the radio crackled with unintelligible sounds. Then an electronically filtered voice called over the airwaves in Russian.

Come for it. Come on, Gordunov thought. You know you want it.

The radioman moaned, face down, his radio teasing the foreign soldiers.

Take the chance, Gordunov thought. Come on.

Movement caught his eye. And Gordunov was back in the hills of Afghanistan, brilliantly alive. He didn’t let the leading figure distract him. He watched the point of origin for the covering man. When he had him fixed, he put a burst of fire into him, then shifted his weapon to catch the forward man against the side of a building.

The point man returned fire. But it sprayed wildly.

Gordunov pushed up far enough to break in the door. Then he scrambled to drag the radioman inside.

His hands slicked with blood. It reminded him of dragging a wet rolled-up tent. The boy seemed to be falling apart as he dragged him. He had clearly caught a full burst. Amazingly, he still whimpered with life.

Gordunov peeled the radio from the boy’s shoulders, flicking the moisture off the mike.

“Falcon, this is Eagle.”

“This is Falcon. Are you all right? We thought we saw a firefight.”

“My radioman’s down. I’m about a block down from you, just off on one of the side streets. Can you get somebody down here?”

“We’re all ready to move out.”

“No!”
Gordunov screamed. He twisted his body around so that his weapon just cleared the wounded boy, and he held the trigger back until the weapon clicked empty. The approaching shadow danced backward as the rounds flashed into it, crashing against a wall. Gordunov hurriedly reloaded, then pulled out his penlight, careful to hold the point of light well away from his torso.

It was an old man. With a hunting rifle.

Stupid shit, Gordunov thought. The damned old fool.

But it had spooked him. For the first time in years, Gordunov knew he had been caught completely off guard.

The wounded boy was praying. It didn’t surprise Gordunov. Religious or not, he had known many a dying soldier to pray in Afghanistan. Even political officers, professional atheists, were not above appealing to a hoped-for god in their final moments. Gordunov forced himself back to business.

“Vulture, this is Eagle.”

“This is Vulture.”

“What’s your status?”

“We have the southern bridge. Intermittent fighting in the town on both sides of the river. The organization you requested is on the way.”

“Casualties?”

“Heavy. The British ambushed us the first time we went for the bridge. But we cleared them out.”

“How bad?”

“I’ve got about a hundred left.”

“With your company?”

“Including everybody. Never found the antitank platoon. They must have gone down. We have about twenty prisoners. About the same number of wounded.”

“All right. Just get in the buildings and hang on. Keep the wounded with you. I’ll send a doctor down from the hospital. Get the mortars to shoot in to support Falcon. Establish a layered defense on both sides of the river.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The radioman died. Gordunov could feel the difference in the room. When the radio went silent, it felt to Gordunov as though he were in a haunted place.

“Eagle, this is Falcon.”

“Eagle.”

“We can’t find you. What’s your location?”

“Never mind,” Gordunov said. “I don’t need the help anymore. Just watch for me coming in.”

Gordunov sat in silence for a moment, marshaling his strength. There was no sound close in. Only the ebb and flow of firing up the street. In the bowl of almost-silence, the pain in his ankle seemed to amplify, as though someone were methodically turning up a volume dial wired to his limb.

Gordunov rose onto his knees. With a deep breath, he caught the radio on his shoulders. At the last moment, he remembered to go through the dead boy’s pockets for the communications technical data pads. The papers had sponged up the boy’s blood. He wiped the pads and his hands on an upholstered chair, slopping back and forth over the coarse material in the darkness. Then he climbed to his feet.

He toppled back down. His ankle would not accept the additional weight of the radio. As he fell the corner of a table jammed him in the small of his back.

Breathing deeply, trying to drown the pain in a flood of oxygen, Gordunov forced himself back onto his feet.

One step. Then another.

He stepped down into the street. No sign of Karchenko. Just as well, he thought. Up the road to the north, near what appeared to be a rail crossing, the buildings blazed, featuring the black hull of a ruptured tank in silhouette. There was firing down the first alleyway, as well.

The random bodies of the dead glistened and shone where eyes remained open or teeth caught the fluttering light. Gordunov felt no emotional response. The corpses were abstractions, possessed of no inherent meaning now. He walked upright and slowly. Each step under the weight of the radio jolted currents of pain up his leg. He pictured the pain as a green liquid fire, racing up his nerves. It was impossible to move with any tactical finesse now.

The growing fires lit the street more brightly than a full moon could have done. As Gordunov approached the network of unengaged positions by the bridgehead no one challenged him. Instead, Karchenko and another soldier rushed out to intercept him.

“Are you crazy? Get down,” Karchenko demanded. Belatedly, he added, “Comrade Battalion Commander.”

“Help me, Karchenko. I have a problem with my leg.”

Karchenko reached out, pausing only at the last moment before touching Gordunov. Then he closed in, and Gordunov put his arm around the company commander’s shoulders, easing his weight.

“It’s all right,” Gordunov said. “We have both the bridges.”

“Let me take the radio. Here. Massenikov, take the radio from the commander.”

“It’s all right,” Gordunov repeated. “Now we just hang on. I’ve been through this before.”

Chibisov watched the front commander eat, reckoning Malinsky’s mood by his mannerisms. The old man’s table manners were normally very precise. But now he absentmindedly forked up bits of cutlet and beans, simply fueling his body, as though it was just another piece of warmaking machinery. An aura of urgency had accompanied Malinsky back from his visits to the forward army commanders. Chibisov, however, remained unsure about how much of the front commander’s anxiety was genuine worry and how much arose from the need to personally accomplish an overwhelming number of practical tasks, despite the support of his staff. The complexity of the contemporary battlefield was enough to break any commander who paused too long to think about it. Overall, the situation appeared extraordinarily favorable, especially in the north, in Trimenko’s sector. But there were also potentially enormous difficulties, more of them each hour. Some of the difficulties had been adequately forecast, and the system had been designed with substantial tolerances. Other difficulties, such as the speed with which units on both sides essentially ceased to exist, and the tempo of movement, strained the troop control system at all levels to a dangerous point. While these difficulties had been argued theoretically in peacetime, virtually no one had internalized the practical considerations. While Chibisov himself had encountered few intellectual surprises, on a visceral level he found the reports from the formations engaged in combat almost unnerving.

As usual, Malinsky had declined to receive a full staff briefing. Although the Front Commander understood the value of ceremony and personal control, he also recognized the dangers of formalism. At the moment, continuity of effort was crucial. The staff was nearly swamped with requirements and demands, and a break in the pattern of work might have been inordinately costly. Malinsky had simply asked the chief of staff to brief him on key events and items of particular interest while he himself had a meal in his office.

“Trimenko’s doing splendidly,” Chibisov said, tapping the point at the deepening red arrows on the situation map. “The Dutch were too thin, and the Germans are too slow.”

“Trimenko tells me that Dalyev’s division is in a bad way,” Malinsky interjected. “Half of the division’s combat power is either gone or so disorganized it’s unusable.” But the tone of genuine worry wasn’t there yet. Malinsky ate another trimmed-off piece of meat.

“Too much frontage,” Chibisov said. “But we expected that. Dalyev had a thankless task. And the sacrifice appears to have paid off. Dalyev’s attacks focused the Germans’ attention. Overall, the Second Guards Tank Army is ahead of its timetable. Trimenko’s got one forward detachment battering it out in Soltau, and another’s running loose in the Dutch rear. He’s ready to introduce an independent tank regiment to break for the Weser. Malyshev’s division is up, and his lead regiments should be in contact in a few hours. The situation may not be clean enough for a demonstration exercise, but the key units are making it to their appointed places. Oh, and Korbatov has Lueneburg.”

“I know,” Malinsky said, dropping into his quieter personal voice. He shook his head, wearing a frankly baffled look. “Pavel Pavlovitch ... I still think that entire affair ...” Then he shrugged, switching his mind back to concerns within his area of decision. “Trimenko’s crisis is coming tonight. He knows it. But knowing may not help. The Germans are going to hit him. I’m surprised they haven’t hit him already. If they just wait a little longer, until the Sixteenth Tank Division completes its march and passes into commitment, we’ll be fine. At that point, the Germans could punch all the way up to the Elbe, and they’d only be caught in a trap by follow-on forces. But the Sixteenth Tank Division must break out. Trimenko’s extremely vulnerable as long as we’re muddling through the commitment of a fresh division. It’s a difficult function even in a peacetime exercise.”

“Trimenko has already reported local counterattacks from the south against the flank of the Twenty-first Division.”

“And I’ll be delighted, as will Trimenko, if the Germans and Dutch continue with their local counterattacks. Let them piecemeal their combat power away. As long as they feel they’re achieving little successes, it may blind them to the bigger picture.” Malinsky dropped his knife and fork from the ready position, making a slight clatter as they hit the tray. He stared up at the map as though his eyes were binoculars to be focused in as sharply as possible. “If I were the German corps commander,” he said, “I wouldn’t strike with anything less than a reinforced division -- preferably two. Local counterattacks are ultimately meaningless. It will take a powerful blow to stop Trimenko now.” Malinsky scanned the known locations of the enemy forces. “If that blow doesn’t arrive tonight, the Germans are fools. Or amateurs.” Malinsky stared past the map for a moment. “Perhaps, Pavel Pavlovitch, we’ve overestimated the Germans all these years.” Then his facial expression relaxed, a familiar signal to Chibisov to continue with the briefing.

“In the extreme south of the front’s sector, the Twentieth Guards Army is approximately six hours behind schedule,” Chibisov said. “The problem appears to be primarily terrain-associated. The Belgians have made very effective use of mines and obstacles along tactical directions that were already constricted. We’ve had to employ tactical air assaults in a leapfrog fashion to break defensive positions from behind. The situation is essentially under control, but we definitely underestimated the initial difficulties in the south. Perhaps our greatest ultimate advantage in that sector has been the experiences culled from Afghanistan in the employment of helicopter-borne infantry in mountainous terrain.”

“And the Belgian forces themselves?”

“Tenacious. Very determined local resistance. I don’t know what they’re fighting for, really. Their greatest weakness is insufficient firepower. Further, the terrain restricts their relocation of forces to the most threatened sectors and their resupply as badly as or worse than it hampers us. We’re moving forward, while they attempt to move laterally. Also, Dudorov’s intelligence-collection effort indicates the Belgians have logistics problems.”

“Similar to our own?” Malinsky asked.

“Some remarkable similarities, actually. Every one of our formations in contact is screaming for more tank main gun ammunition and more artillery rounds. The level of consumption seems almost impossible. It appears that we’ve even won several engagements by default. Nothing left for the tanks to do beyond ram each other or pull off.”

“Our transport?”