Last Citadel Read online

  Plokhoi jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his platoon. ‘They’ll be fine. Actually, they’ve got plenty to thank you for. We get a lot of supplies dropped to us by you Night Witches. By the way, were you in on bombing the station at Oktabrskaya last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, you’ll be glad to know your part of the mission went well. The station and the tracks were wrecked, and the German garrison was hit hard.’

  What did Plokhoi mean, ‘your part of the mission’? Then she understood. Plokhoi’s druzhiny must have been the partisan group assigned to work with the Night Witches to stop the German tank train.

  Something had gone wrong.

  ‘Last night,’ Plokhoi said, ‘I had seventy-two men. I sent fifty of them after the train. Today I’ve got thirty-one left. The Germans were ready for us. The train got through to the station. It’ll reach Belgorod by tonight after the rails are fixed. And I don’t have enough men to go after it again.’

  Katya rammed her thoughts through the crash, back to the mission over the Oktabrskaya train station. The night fighter had been waiting. As it had been three nights before that, at the sortie above the enemy supply depot. Again, the Germans had known the Night Witches were coming, where and when; the night fighter was there, too. Her Night Bomber squadron received its targets from intelligence gathered by the partisans. And what about last night’s attempt to rescue Leonid? A German patrol had been closing in at the same time Katya and Vera and the partisans reached him. Now Plokhoi said his partisans had been anticipated last night by the tank train. Their ambush was damned before it started.

  She said nothing to Plokhoi about these facts, or her sudden suspicion that there might be a traitor in their number. Plokhoi must be aware, if he himself was not the traitor. She didn’t know the man from a stranger before waking up to him five minutes ago. A cold feeling seeped down her spine, as though raindrops had dripped into her flight suit. She cast her eyes over the surviving partisans. Which one was it?

  Outside the copse of trees, the day was leaden. These partisans huddled like trolls from the daytime. The steppe must be a poor landscape for guerilla fighters, not like a mountain wood or a swamp, where it would be easier to hit and disappear. These men had not many places to hide in the Kursk region, a few dispersed villages, some small forests, but the rest was flat, ranging farmland. Secrecy was their survival. Katya knew in an instant it would be hers, as well.

  Plokhoi offered a cigarette. She shook her head.

  ‘We’ll get you out of here tonight,’ he said, looking up through the leaves, invoking darkness, the only time his cadre could move. ‘I’ll radio your Witches to come pick you up.’

  ‘No,’ Katya said.

  She didn’t trust this Colonel Bad and his radio. More important, she didn’t know Leonid’s fate. She and Vera had come looking for him, and she hadn’t yet found him. He might have been captured, but he might still be free and close by.

  And if there was a spy in this partisan cell, she had a debt to pay him. For the four dead Witches. For Vera. And maybe for Leonid.

  Besides, the partisans had horses. She said to Plokhoi, ‘I’m staying.’

  * * * *

  July 2

  1915 hours

  Plokhoi assigned the three who’d rescued Katya to stay with the Witch. He would not call her by her name or rank. Katya did not insist. She let it go - after all, she thought, this was a person who’d anointed himself Colonel Bad. She wondered what kind of man he’d been before the Germans invaded. A professor, perhaps, or a gentleman bandit. The dirt on him spoke of stamina and ruthlessness, this was not a man who led from behind. He was charismatic; the others nodded when he spoke and never broke their eyes from him. Colonel Bad reminded Katya of a quieter version of her father.

  The three partisans introduced themselves, then let her rest in the deepening shade for the whole of the afternoon. When she sat up, the rain had ended, leaving a spongy humidity under the trees. The thin one brought her water. His name was Daniel. The heavy one approached with a tin of dry biscuits. His name was Ivan. The older man, their squad leader, tossed a pair of men’s trousers, a wrinkled tunic, and a thin wool coat on the ground to replace her green flight suit. He walked off and sat near but with his back to them, gazing out through the trees. Josef was his name.

  Big Ivan settled next to her and took a few of the biscuits for himself. Daniel folded like a jack-knife, his long legs tucked under him.

  ‘I’m sorry for the men you lost last night,’ she told them. Both lowered their eyes. Ivan muttered that he was sorry they couldn’t get the body of the other Witch out of her plane.

  ‘The Germans,’ he explained. ‘No time.’

  What will happen to Vera? Katya wondered. The Germans will take her papers and maps and leave her body to rot. Villagers will come along to scavenge things from the wreck. They’ll bury her, and after the war there will be a memorial to Vera on the spot of the crash, a bust and a marble garden.

  Katya thought, too, about the members of this fighting group killed in last night’s raid against the train. More than half of this druzhiny, gone. She wanted to ask if there’d been any word about what happened to Leonid, but she put that away for now. This was not the time to ask any of these men to address her concerns.

  The mood under the trees was somber, even the horses stood still and dulled. So many lives taken all at once. The partisans sat without talking. Katya was tempted to warn the two young partisans who’d warmed up to her that their dead comrades might have been betrayed. She wanted to tell them how she, too, had lost friends to a possible traitor in their midst. She bit all this back. Daniel and Ivan carried the water and biscuit tin to Josef. He waved them off and kept his eyes on the patches of steppe showing through the wet branches.

  Until dark, Katya sat alone. She changed into the new baggy clothes. Then she let her body rest, let Vera’s death sink far enough beneath her surface so she could continue on. That was what these partisans seemed to be doing, burying their dead in their hearts, making themselves accustomed to a world that was suddenly without their comrades. Silent and grieving, she watched the partisans sharpen and clean their weapons.

  They were twelve miles from the front lines, but no enemy convoys or patrols came near their stand of trees. All daytime activity by the Germans seemed to have stopped. Plokhoi interpreted this to mean the battle would start soon.

  After full night fell, Plokhoi led the remains of his band out of the trees. Katya hoisted herself gingerly into her saddle. The moon was shunted deep behind dense clouds as they rode, a shrouded midnight.

  Katya rode in the thick of the pack, surrounded by Daniel, Josef, and Ivan. Her horse was sure-footed and strong, well fed. These partisans were obviously receiving supplies, with support and food from both the villages and the Night Witches’ air-drops. The men bristled with weapons and ammunition. Colonel Bad even had a radio, something very few partisan cells could boast. This must be a key group, and a good one, to operate right under the Germans’ noses like this. For them to fail so badly as they did against the tank train, something was rotten. Plokhoi must be aware of that.

  They rode west, away from Borisovka. Daniel whispered to Katya that they were going to the villages to recruit, to regain their strength.

  Somewhere in the night, Katya heard planes high up in the quilted clouds. Her spirit leaped for a moment, she closed her eyes to listen to the engines. These were not the popping motors of her night-bombing squadron on another mission. These were bigger planes, American-made Boston A-20s, and fighters, Yak-9S in escort.

  Katya and all the partisans reined in their horses to watch the restive black world around them. Colonel Plokhoi sidled up next to her, a wild look in his eyes. Then, no more than five miles behind them, around Borisovka, the night blistered into orange and yellow flashes. She kept a tight rein on her horse, but the animal did not flinch at the bomb blasts and firelights. The horse was used to this.

  Plokhoi wheeled
his mount around to see the Soviet air raid better. He shouted over the explosions, unconcerned he might be heard by any Germans in the area.

  Are you sure you don’t want to go home, Witch?’ He leaned closer to her. ‘I can smell it, you know, I can tell you!’

  The partisan leader raised one arm into the air and shook a grimy fist.

  ‘Goddamn!’ he bellowed. ‘Goddamn, here it comes!’

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 10

  July 3

  0700 hours

  Vladimirovka

  beside the Oboyan road

  Valentin’s boot tapped on Dimitri’s left shoulder. Then the hard toe nudged the nape of his padded helmet. Dimitri hauled back on the left lever and shoved the right one forward. The tank spun into a left-hand turn, slipping slightly, Dimitri sensed the mud under his treads. He brought the tank out of the turn and stomped the clutch, jamming the shift knob into fourth, the T-34’s highest gear. The transmission grumbled. Dimitri leaned down for his hammer but the General did not like to be struck and complied, the gears meshed. Dimitri floored the accelerator and the tank bounded along the ridge at thirty miles an hour, top speed.

  All hatches were closed. Dimitri peered into a gash of gray-green and bouncing world through a small periscope. The designers of the T-34 didn’t put much stock in the discretion of the driver. His little, horizontal, mirrored view of the road made what bits he could see look like he was driving through a toy world. For the most part, the driver was forced to rely on his commander to tell him when and where to turn. Even the commander’s vision was limited; he sent his tank charging into a battle he, too, could barely observe. The commander peered through a periscope or a telescope, which provided him no more than a fourteen-degree-wide outlook, pressing his forehead and eyes against poor rubber pads that did little to keep light out of the optics. In addition he had one small armored port at shoulder height and a pistol port below that. Buttoned up like this, the T-34 was a collection of blind spots. Running this morning shut tight as a tin, the General’s insides were humid and smelly, piquant with perspiration and temper.

  Valentin rested his feet on Dimitri’s shoulders, guiding the tank with his heels and toes because he was busy using the intercom for other duty. He was yelling at the loader Pasha.

  ‘No, no, no, the other bin! The other bin! I want AP! AP, Private! Get three ready. Now, do it, go, go!’

  Dimitri kept the tank barreling ahead straight, listening to his son holler at the burly teenager while the boy scrambled for the ammunition. Pasha struggled on his knees, stripping back the neoprene matting that lay across the floor bins, digging down in them for the correct shells; this time Valya wanted solid-shot armor-piercing rounds. Somehow Pasha had managed to grapple from the floor the wrong ammo, a heat shell, a high-explosive anti-tank round. The T-34 carried seventy-seven rounds: nineteen of armor-piercing, fifty-three of high-explosive, and five of anti-personnel. Only nine of those rounds were easily accessible, on racks located left and right on the turret wall. Once those shells were expended, the loader had to root around under the floor mat into the eight storage bins beneath their feet. When the tank was moving at full speed, swaying and hopping the way it was now, the loader’s job was very difficult.

  Valentin’s foot crunched into the middle of Dimitri’s neck. This meant stop, fast. Dimitri down-shifted and hit the brakes. He brought the General to a skidding halt. No sense aggravating his testy son any more than he already was.

  Valya’s voice swelled in the intercom. ‘Load AP!’

  Behind and above Dimitri, Pasha rose from his knees to slam a shell into the breech. Valentin hit the electrical traverse and the turret began to whir and pivot. The turret walls, the dials, sights, and controls, the thick breech of the big main gun, all began to swing to the right. But Valentin’s and Pasha’s seats did not move. Valya’s feet left Dimitri’s shoulders, he had to stand and dance with the turret whenever he swung it around. This was a major design flaw in the T-34; the seats for the commander and loader were not mounted to the turret itself but to the ring of the chassis, so that the two had to skitter around with the swiveling breech and the firing controls whenever the turret was turned. Dimitri looked over his shoulder to watch his son. The boy contorted himself to keep his eye on his range telescope and at the same time twirl the elevation flywheel to raise the main gun to match his range to the target. At Valya’s feet, Pasha was folded again into the floor of the tank, he had the rubber mat in a shambles looking for two more AP rounds to satisfy his sergeant.

  Metal clanged and the big boy began to rise with a shell cradled in his arms. Valentin lifted his right boot and laid the foot in the middle of the boy’s spine, forcing him back inside the bin.

  Valentin had two foot pedals beneath his position, the left one for the 76.2 mm main gun, the right for the machine-gun mounted co-axially to the cannon. He kept his brow pressed against the padding above his telescope, his foot on Pasha’s squirming back. He turned the elevation wheel one more round, then stepped on the left pedal.

  The big gun fired. The tank jolted with the blast, Dimitri wasn’t ready for it and knocked his padded head. Inside the tank, the breech rammed backward in its recoil, the metal slab just missed smashing Pasha’s head into pulp. A scalding casing popped out of the breech and clanged on the exposed bins. Valentin pulled his boot off the boy’s back to let him up. The casing rolled near Pasha’s cheek and he yelped, dropping the AP shell he held, making him dig frantically back into the bin to retrieve it. Sulphurous smoke backwashed down the breech into the cabin. The General’s ventilation system sucked at the fumes but with all the hatches secured drew them outside too slowly. Everyone coughed a little; quiet Sasha, crammed beside Dimitri at his gunner’s position, gagged.

  The tank sat apprehensive, the diesel engine idled waiting for an order. Sasha kept his face at his own machine-gun vision block, a mirrored slit no bigger than Dimitri’s. Pasha sat up with the AP shell clutched to his chest, looking up at Valentin from bended knees. The turret traverse whined, spinning the main gun to face forward. Valentin glared tight-lipped through his optics to see if he’d hit his target, pirouetting with the green turret walls turning around him.

  Dimitri gripped the handle over his head. He turned it and shoved the heavy metal hatch up. Sodden air tumbled in on him like a wet dog. He stood into the drizzly morning.

  ‘I need a piss break. Anyone?’

  He laid his hands flat on the dripping armor and curled his feet up under him, to slide off the glacis plate to the trampled ground. The tank stank of exhaust, fumes from the fired AP shell still trickling out of its long muzzle, black diesel puffs issuing from its rear. Dimitri walked beside the T-34 and opened the fly on his coveralls. He waited for Valentin’s hatch to lift and a stream of abuse to fly at him. Instead, the floor escape hatch beneath the gunner’s position fell open and thin Sasha crawled from between the treads. The commander’s hatch rose. Valya climbed down the side of the tank and hopped off the treads. Round little Pasha followed. The four of them peed into the ground. The General, surrounded by its keepers, purred.

  Dimitri finished and kept his eyes out over the steppe. Craters and scorched spit-up ground dotted the crest of a low hill a mile off. This spot was where the tanks of his 3rd Mechanized Brigade came to calibrate their cannons and season their new recruits, their own Sashas and Pashas. All the land here on the southern shoulder of the Kursk bulge rose slightly to the north, favoring the Russian defense; here, the steppe was so flat that even a slight elevation was an immense advantage. The Germans will have to run uphill in their opening assault. Another tank on a nearby crest let loose with a shell, the thing whistled and struck, blasting into one of the holes already scarring the ground out there. Dimitri let his imagination create the coming battle on the field and hills below. The thunder and last pattering rain from the fading storm, plus the crash of gunnery from the other tanks in his company, made a grim and real fabric with his conjuration of havoc and punctu
red metal, screaming shells and geysers of metal and men.

  Valentin came beside him.

  ‘They’ll get us killed, Papa.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ Dimitri kidded. ‘I was afraid all you Communists put no value on your own lives.’

  Valentin ignored the jab. He fixed his eyes where Dimitri looked. Did Valya see the images? Did he perhaps see himself there, broken in the carnage?

  ‘I’m serious. These two got shit for training before they were sent here. They’ll get us killed.’

  Dimitri expelled a breath. He winced up into the falling rain to release the vision of the battle, the image of his son dead below. Pasha and Sasha walked up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant,’ the loader said glumly. The boy had his sleeves rolled up above husky forearms. His skin was scraped raw from digging into the jiggling bins, several nails were blue from getting pinched between the jostling shells.

  ‘The sergeant says you’re going to get us killed, Pasha. You’re a Cossack now. Would you do that?’