Last Citadel - [World War II 03] (70 page)

The loader got the idea. He set down the shell he cradled. He rose from his seat and leaned far across the breech to tap Balthasar on the back, saying something into the intracom. Balthasar was rapt and did not turn away from his eyepiece. There was a comic aspect to the loader’s calm, he was oblivious to their peril. Luis watched the slow drift of events, more seconds gone. The loader was a dead man. So was Balthasar. Luis did not bother to inform them.

By now the turret had spun a quarter way around to the left, exposing its entire side to the field. The waiting, aiming Russian gunner out there in his smoking tank with his live cannon must be amazed at his good fortune. Now he will shoot. He must.

Luis lifted his head out of his hatch, done with frenzy. He lay on his belly, facing the rear of the turret. The Russian driver had not let up for a moment, gnawing and jamming the starboard drive sprocket, holding the Tiger in place. The two tanks seemed to be mating, violent, the cramming of animals. Luis slid forward on his stomach to see better into the Russian hatch. The old man was there, leaning in to his gears and levers; he looked to be gripping the reins of his animal, galloping flat out, going nowhere.

The Russian looked up. His mouth was wide open. He was bellowing.

Luis used the last second to decide, after all, the old man was insane.

* * * *

1015 hours

Dimitri watched the Tiger’s cannon rotate away from his blocking barrel. The Tiger, the tank killer, was laying itself wide open.

With the turret revolving from him, Dimitri could back off. He could fly into reverse, spin around, hit the gas, and get out of there.

But if he freed the Tiger, the big tank would back away, too. Valentin’s aim would be thrown off. With just a flywheel, the boy might not be able to adjust his gun fast enough.

The Tiger’s turret turned, like a backward second hand, set to go off when it reached Valentin.

Dimitri had to stay, grappling the German to a standstill.

So be it, he thought.

He shouted, ‘Yah!’ to spur his T-34 faster.

Take the shot, Valya.

Dimitri shoved his T-34 deeper into the Tiger.

He charged one last time into the enemy. He had no sword to swing and he did not wear the flapping cape of his clan but he spurred his mount and he saw his foe’s face. It was a white face, taut and skull-like. It was daubed with blood. It was Death’s face, sure enough, looking down on him over the rim of the Tiger’s turning turret.

The game T-34 rumbled around him, lunging hard against the Tiger. The two corpses on the tier behind him had settled and gone silent in the last seconds; they were dead and terribly done, and they appreciated his vengeance. But they did not recruit Dimitri, they left all decisions to him.

The Tiger’s turret kept turning, ticking more seconds. Dimitri was not alone here. He had his connection to his daughter. He was inside her spirit more than he ever was in Valentin’s. He’d lived well in her heart, housed and respected there, he had no worry for Katya the flyer, the rider.

Take the shot, boy. Before the Tiger’s turret swivels around the other side. I’ll stay here. This is my last saddle, I’ll stay in it.

Do it now.

Is there any link left between us, Valya? Hear me. Damn it, hear me, don’t let this Tiger leave the valley! Show me you hear me!

The Tiger’s turret was full broadside to the sunflower field now. The German commander lay on top of his tank as if to save it, to beg for its life.

Beg all you want, bastard. A Cossack tells you this.

Dimitri closed his eyes. He leaned forward in his seat, pressing his weight, too, into the Tiger, everything he was. Everything.

He drew a deep breath, tasting diesel smoke, metal shavings, blood, the holy steppe, life, and screamed out for victory.

‘Take the shot! Take the shot, boy! Yah! Take the shot!’

* * * *

1015 hours

Luis had time in the air to look but too much pain to make sense of what he saw.

But he knew flame, that was heat. Red below him, black-veined, uncoiling. It reached for him, he sailed ahead of it. There was something else in the air with him, giant, a flipping tiddlywink, a great twisting lollipop.

Sound shut down and then there was no color. He was black but not so black that he was not light, flying in this body, all had slipped him, light and gravity.

He was black but fear welled out of it, congealed, a shadow deeper.

When the ground struck him he’d forgotten about the ground, so intimate was his soaring. He was shocked to stop, and lay aware only that he was still.

His senses stayed away, frightened off by his emptiness the way jackals avoid a fire. He lay with the fear only, because there was nothing else.

This was the hell he’d read about, he’d learned of in church. Fear, alone. It was horrible. Where was the door out, where was his death? He searched in his body for his death but that, too, eluded him. This was the second time looking for death and not finding it. Leningrad was the first, and now. Where? Here. Kursk.

Sound came back, his moan. Then light, fluttering, creeping back to him. He cracked open his eyes.

The blackness began to dispel. His fear did not leave right off but instead ran into his legs and arms, his chest, neck, and head, looking for reasons to stay, places to hide.

The Tiger burned in front of him. The T-34 jammed against it was also swallowed in gouts of fire and smoke; the two machines were catastrophic wrecks, melting together. The Tiger’s turret was gone, the hole where it had been was a volcano.

Heat from the blaze lapped at his cheeks. Luis rolled onto his back.

He looked up and did not see vastness, only the low, thick haze from rain and the battle still erupting. He listened and heard the lick of flames even louder than his heart. His body throbbed at him, almost rocking him in a sharpened cradle of pains, but the earth beneath him trembled even more with explosions and the heavy foot of war.

He lay alive, bleeding, broken in places. The battle had been taken from him, and that was all. He tried to be grateful, but that avoided him, as well.

Now that he had failed, everything averted itself from him. Destiny, God, even death.

Luis was again a pariah.

* * * *

CHAPTER 31

July 12

2110 hours

Monbijou Bridge Berlin

The air-raid sirens began their city-wide wail.

Abram Breit did not turn around on the bridge across the river Spree to run back to the hospital. He did not run anywhere, his ribs hurt too much and his hips were still sore from his wild gallop on the Russian steppe to escape the crazy partisans. Bruises lined the insides of his thighs and he had a tender spot on his crown from being thumped in the field after the crash. After two days of rest, he’d signed out of the hospital. He intended to make his way to his rooms in his boarding house near the Zoological Gardens in Charlottenburg. The sirens surprised him but would not dissuade him from getting back to his own bed after his Russian adventure. Limping, he ran a hand along the bridge railing, looking up.

He headed south toward the Brandenburg Gate and Unter den Linden. He decided he would not seek shelter during the raid but would walk home through the open spaces of the Tiergarten. He wasn’t afraid to do this, and knew in a familiar place inside that he ought to be. Breit considered his new self, and hoped courage would not also make him stupid.

Just over the river Berliners were drawn out of their buildings by the sirens and into the streets and alleys, then down into the warrens under the city, the shelters and subway tunnels where they were ordered to go when the alarm sounded. Only uniformed soldiers were allowed out during a raid, everyone else was required to be in a shelter or risk arrest. The people, mostly women and elderly, were orderly, even bland, carting babies and food baskets. Hitler and Goebbels bleated constantly about the bravery of the homefront, how Germans would not succumb to these Anglo assaults. Breit noted some weeping among the people flowing by. That’s fine, he thought, you can still cry and be brave. I have done it recently.

After ten minutes walking with the howling horns, the first searchlights came on. Nothing showed at the far tips of their pillars. The drone of British Mosquito bombers vibrated over Berlin like metal clouds coming to shower bolts and nuts. It was an eerie noise, rattling out of the night like that, invisible, it struck Breit’s memory of the partisans, who, too, worked in the night. There was something unfair about this type of fighting, also something terrifying and effective, coming and going when right people should be finishing dinner, readying for bed. As if war were not terrible enough, Breit thought, it is also the ultimate inconvenience.

He reached the Brandenburg Gate and passed under it. He crossed the wide boulevard and entered the great park in the heart of Berlin. His rib cage and legs complained when he stumbled over a curb, not watching where he walked, his head tilted up to the crossing searchlights. The streets were almost empty now, bearing only the hee-haws of ambulances and fire trucks scrambling into position throughout the city. The Tiergarten was unlit except for the beams. The lights swept to and fro, making the shadows of the trees in the park sway and crawl over the ground, making the whole park teeter. Breit hobbled to a broad plat of grass and sat.

The first bombers buzzed over the city The evening was clear, searchlights rid the sky of stars. A dozen planes in the first echelon took the stars’ places, snared in the beams; the lights stopped their dizzying reel whenever they snared the trophy of a bomber. Breit stared up and saw these planes drop not bombs but flares, green sizzling signals for the ones behind to mark where they should drop their loads. The British did not bomb only factories and military targets. Hitler did not do so when he visited the skies over London, so this was fair, Breit decided, an ugly tit for tat. The flares drifted down on little chutes into the city’s center, over the Adlon Hotel, the burned-out Reichstag, Hitler’s Chancellery, the dense streets of offices and neighborhoods, and the Tiergarten. It was odd watching their slow fall, the invasion of bad tidings with a touch of sparkles, like holiday lights. Several flares landed in the park around Breit but he did not move to put them out.

Anti-aircraft stations opened up, punching at the Anglo bombers seen and unseen. There were many 88 mm gun emplacements throughout the city. Cannons stood on top of buildings like the IG Farben headquarters in Pariserplatz, there was one at the Red-White Tennis Club. The inner-city’s air defense was principally handled by three huge flak towers with eight big guns each. The towers were designed by Albert Speer, built in 1941: at the Zoological Gardens behind the bear cages, in Humbolthain Park, and in Friederichshain Park. These were massive fortresses, intended by Speer to inspire faith among Berliners. They were gun batteries, as well as bunkers and communications towers, but also castles, almost medieval, meant to be the first of the new buildings for Germania, Hitler’s city of the future that would replace Berlin after the war. Breit listened to the three giant bastions open up, heard the woof of smaller guns around the city. Beneath the guns and the sirens was the piping of tumbling British bombs.

The initial barrages landed south of the park, on Wilmersdorf and Shoneberg, residential districts. The first bombs were incendiary, meant to start fires to light the way better for the waves of bombers following, the ones with the big payloads. Berlin was to be handed the butcher’s bill tonight for the Reich’s failure in Russia. The British wagged a finger in Hitler’s face. More fire bombs landed around the city, north and east of Breit, in Mitte over the administrative offices of the Reich, along the river Spree, perhaps on the hospital Breit had just left. The city tried to make itself dark, blast curtains hung over every window, every light was doused, even those of the emergency vehicles running crazy in the erupting streets, but the fire bombs did their work. Berlin burned for them, accommodating the bombers with wooden roofs, kindled ancient spires and domes, blown-open gas lines, flaming cars and trucks, scorching grass. An ignited wind crossed Breit’s nostrils, the smells of carbon and fuel. He wrapped his knees in his arms, the instinct was to be small.