Red Army (52 page)

An engineer vehicle appeared to prepare defilade positions for his unit. Bezarin almost laughed. He was very much in favor of protected fighting positions, but he did not think they would be of much use unless he received some ammunition. In the light of day, his remaining tanks looked like wrecks that would hardly be accepted by a vehicle cannibalization point. Reactive armor had blown or torn away, and the thinner plates of metal twisted up to scratch the air. Little remained of the equipment racks and stowage boxes, and the snorkels, useless in the best of times, were hopelessly perforated by shell fragments. Bezarin roused his men and forced them to perform basic maintenance chores. He believed that, with ammunition and a bit more fuel, his unit could give a good account of itself in an emergency. But it seemed absurd to expect his tiny force to hold back any threat that could devour the unscathed new-model tanks that had passed in such great numbers to the west.

The bridgehead had taken on the character of a small military city. Air-defense systems crowned the surrounding hills. Supplementary bridges lay in the Weser at intervals of several hundred meters, emplaced to augment the highway bridge or replace it, should enemy aircraft finally succeed in their efforts to drop the prize span in the water. The canvas of administrative entities had already begun to appear, although many organizations preferred to exploit buildings on the edge of the smoldering town. Bad Oeynhausen was quickly turning into a forward command and control center. On the eastern bank, artillery batteries poked deadly fingers into the sky. And in the midst of it all, the traffic controllers from the commandant’s service waved their arms and shouted and argued, straining to sort out competing priorities on the roads.

Probably, Bezarin figured, his orders simply reflected caution. A systematic response to an enemy counterattack, aimed at preventing any Soviet forces from suffering the sort of surprise his tanks had inflicted on the enemy the day before. He set his face into his “I’m in command here” expression and marched down among his vehicles, guiding the efforts of the big engineer tractor and refining individual zones of fire. He felt a profound surge of pride in his dirty, knocked-about tanks and in the new brotherhood of men who crewed them. Come what may, they would do their duty.

Still, Bezarin thought, it would have been nice to have a bit of ammunition.

Shilko felt as though he had stumbled into a cache of hidden treasures, like the hero in a folk tale. Splendid farm instruments crowded the barn, a harrow and a shining plow, a seeder and a hay mower of a new type with which Shilko was not familiar. And this wonderful assortment of devices for bringing life out of the earth apparently belonged to one private farmer here in West Germany. It did not seem fair. Shilko thought about how such tools would ease the tasks of his little agricultural collective back in garrison, and how much more they could produce. He reveled in the mingled smells of hay and dust, breathing lustily until it made him sneeze. In his heart, he grudgingly suspected that the Germans did, indeed, have superior talents or values in some respects. He sat on a bale of hay, leaning over his belly to rest his elbows on his knees. He envied the absent German farmer. He envied all of the farmers of the world, and it came to him that he had wasted his life.

Shilko rarely wandered off by himself, always preferring the crowding and company of his battalion officers, his second family, unless he needed to rest or faced a particularly unpleasant writing task. He loved to be surrounded by other men. Refusing to be suspicious -- sensible, his wife called it -- he warmed to every man who gave him the opportunity. There would be plenty of time to spend alone in the grave. Life was meant to be enjoyed in the company of other human beings.

But now, west of the Weser River, perhaps a day’s journey from the fabled Rhine, riding the currents of victory, Shilko’s unruly thoughts had led him off for a few moments of solitude. He was not a man given to serious reflection, yet it seemed there were so many things that needed to be mulled over. Sitting in the rich twilight of the barn, with brilliant rays of light slicing through the amber gloom, he tried to sort things out. But he could not quite get a grip on any single train of thought. He wondered if he had ever understood anything about the world at all, or if he had merely gone through his life in a waking sleep. Whenever he thought of the face of the suffocating lieutenant, it seemed to him that that single moment of helplessness had revealed to him the failure of his entire life. Men were dying by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. But only the pathetic death of his lieutenant had made it real for him.

His guns had done well, and he credited Romilinsky with much of that. His staff had been a wonderful support to him, a team. And his soldiers fought well. Shilko was determined to do his best by them, to fully shoulder his responsibility. But sitting in this German barn, surrounded by these life-giving tools made of the same steel as his precious guns, Shilko felt that all he really wanted to do was to grow things, to be a farmer, on whatever terms were offered. Surely, the peasant generations from which he had come had learned to hate war the hard way, just as they naturally loved the green shoots bursting up through the holy soil.

Perhaps, he thought, Pasha, his son, could help him. Perhaps the Party needed someone to help in the renewed agricultural effort. Surely the Party could make use of his talents, especially since he expected so little in return. A chance to muddy his boots in peace.

Shilko rose to return to his place of duty, accepting the inevitable. The control post had been erected in the farm courtyard, with Shilko barking like a friendly old dog to insure that his men did no unnecessary damage to the place. No sooner had the post gone operational than the airwaves crowded with reports of a German attempt at a breakout to their rear, and a linkup operation on the southern flank, with rumors of a massive American counterattack down in the Third Shock Army sector. In the haste of the moment, no one had bothered to send Shilko missions for his guns. But he knew that the missions would come when the time was right. He had turned over control to Romilinsky and strolled off. His men were enraptured by the war, intoxicated by victory. Even with the reports of trouble across the front, his men remained full of confidence. Shilko wondered why, after all of his years of preparation for this, he could not share their enthusiasm any longer. He laid his hand on the snout of a compact green tractor, petting it as though it were a draft animal. Reluctantly, he took his leave of the quiet stable of machines.

He wandered across the farmyard, past a low barn where imprisoned pigs snorted and stirred. The control post boiled with activity. Radios crackled, and grimy hands scrawled on clean sheets of paper. The chief of communications whined that every time he laid in wire to the guns, some bastards knocked it down or drove over it. Romilinsky worked at the situation map with the care of a surgeon. Here and there, men ate as they worked, making the most of the stores of food discovered in the farmhouse. The senior duty sergeant brought Shilko his tea.

“Any change?” Shilko asked Romilinsky.

The captain shook his head. “The situation is extremely confused. The number of missions assigned to the divisional guns remains low, but the regimental guns are firing up everything they have. It’s hot up front. There’s a great deal of intermingling of forces. I’m afraid the target acquisition program isn’t working very well.”

The sounds of battle were clearly audible from behind a low range of hills. But the valley in which the battalion had been ordered to halt and deploy remained at peace. Shilko hoped that the war would not come here to destroy the fine machines in the barn or the animals, or any of the other manifestations of the absent farmer’s good husbandry.

“Forward progress of the Americans?”

“The reporting from the flanking units is intermittent. I’ve been monitoring the division net,” Romilinsky said, eyebrows lowering in concern. “It sounds like a mess down south. But right now I’m more worried about the Germans up here. We even seem to have Dutch units counterattacking. Everybody thought they were knocked out of the war.”

“Desperation,” Shilko said matter-of-factly. “They’re fighting for their homes. It must be a terrible thing to be on the other side just now.”

Romilinsky looked at him in surprise. Then the crisp staff officer recovered, ignoring his commander’s musings. “All of our elements are in position. A total of eight operational guns, and we’re working to get Davidov’s number-three gun back up. Seems to be a hydraulic problem. And still no resupply of ammunition. But we have enough rounds left to make it hot for somebody, Comrade Commander.”

“And everyone is positioned so that they can engage in direct fire? If it should come to that?” The muddled reports on the artillery command net made it clear that it was time to expect the unexpected. Still, the idea of attempting to employ his heavy guns in a direct-fire competition with enemy tanks or infantry fighting vehicles seemed absurd and wasteful to him. Poor husbandry. But Shilko was, at bottom, a very stubborn man, and no matter what his personal feelings, he would fight to the last gun against any attacker.

“We’re positioned to sweep the main arteries with direct fire,” Romilinsky said. “Hopefully, we’ll have a bit of warning.”

“Just be ready. I don’t want to lose a single man because we were unprepared.”

The big dull thumps in the distance sounded like a clan of giants beating the earth with clubs. The volume had increased noticeably, reaching Shilko’s ruined ears. Perhaps, he thought, the war would come to them after all. He tried to cheer himself by telling himself that his ears were so bad they played tricks, and that he was a very tired man, incapable of judging the situation with perfect objectivity.

“I want everyone in a fighting position,” Shilko said. “Every last cook. We’ve come too far to throw away success.”

Romilinsky moved sharply to act on the order. Shilko had decided that, whenever the war ended, he would recommend Romilinsky for honors and early promotion. And he intended to quietly do everything he could to secure the captain a better assignment where he would have more scope for advancement. Romilinsky deserved that.

Shilko listened intently to the hammering in the distance. Discontented, he put down his heavily sweetened cup of tea and stepped back outside, trying to hear more clearly. The traffic noise had diminished significantly, since all units had been ordered off the roads and into hasty defensive positions. The roads had been cleared for tank reserves.

But no tanks passed at the moment, and the area around the farmyard seemed deceptively peaceful, a rustic paradise. The signs of war were most obvious in the sky, where laces of jet exhaust adorned the blueness. Shilko tried to judge the distance to the nearest fighting by the reverberation of far-off guns, coaxing his ears to respond to his desires. He realized that his ancestors must have felt the same way, listening for hoofbeats or shots, or for the terrifying shouts that signaled the approach of a raid or an invading army, too late for any response but submission and hope that the massacre would not be complete, that enough food could be saved to feed the survivors through the winter and enough seed preserved to plant again in the spring.

As Shilko listened it seemed as though the sounds of battle diminished, responding to the wishes in his heart. The distance to the discharges and impacts did not recede, but the volume of fires slackened. After a few minutes, the difference was unmistakable even to Shilko’s career-damaged ears.

His pulse quickened. Perhaps the counterattack had been defeated. He had remained perfectly calm under the threat of an enemy breakthrough. But the possibility of some end to the fighting, however temporary and for whatever reason, made his heart race.

The sound of the guns stopped completely.

Romilinsky hurried out from under the canvas wall of the control post, visibly excited.

“Comrade Commander,” he shouted, absolutely exuberant, almost dancing out of his controlled staff-officer persona, “Comrade Commander, the West Germans have requested a cease-fire.”

Chibisov emerged from the bunker into the light of day. The sight of the splintered forest, with its ashen wounds, shocked him. Throughout the period of hostilities, he had heard and felt the impacts of the enemy’s weaponry hunting over the surface. Yet unseen was somehow unimagined. Beyond the pockmarked outer door, large bomb craters and black scars marked the landscape, and the acridity of explosives lingered in the air. Yet a blue sky blessed the living and the dead, and even this pungent air tasted gorgeously fresh after the staleness of the bunker.

Soon, he would need to visit a good doctor, perhaps even take a cure at the sanatorium. His breathing never came normally to him anymore, and despite his determination, Chibisov had begun to doubt that he could continue to shoulder serious responsibilities much longer.

Aircraft still cut the heavens, and vehicular traffic continued on the roads. But the volume, the noise of it all, was far less than it had been. The sounds of combat had stopped.

Shtein, the revolting creature from the General Staff with his little movies, had been right in the end, as had Dudorov. The Germans caved in. Chibisov remained unpersuaded that Shtein’s unpleasant films and broadcasts had played as grand a role as Shtein himself readily declared. Even the best propaganda had its limits. But there would be adequate time for the chroniclers to argue about whose contributions had been the most important. For Chibisov, it was all part of an indivisible whole in the end. Examined in detail, one saw appalling failures and incompetence. Yet the sum of the Soviet way of war had proved greater than its individual parts. Finally, the result was what mattered.

Assailed militarily, politically, emotionally ... the West German government had broken down over the issue of nuclear release. The Americans and British had demanded it, and the French made their own unilateral preparations. But the West Germans had experienced a failure of the will, of nerve. Paralyzed by the speed of their apparent collapse and the unanticipated level of destruction, they had refused to turn their country into a nuclear battlefield. The Germans had decreed NATO’s military policy in peacetime, and they reaped their harvest in war.