“Fair enough. Thanks.” After a beat, Daisy added, “I’m sorry I barked at you.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, let me have one for the road, will you?” McNulty set a couple of shillings on the bar. He waved away change and drained the pint at one long pull. Then he said, “See you around, kiddo. It was…interesting, anyway.” He tipped his cap and walked out into the night.
Only after he was gone did she understand that he wasn’t coming back. Wherever he did his drinking from now on, it wouldn’t be at the Owl and Unicorn. Well, damn, she thought as she drew another American a pint. She hadn’t meant to offend him. She’d just tried to get an answer for Wilf. Things spiraled out of control from there. He’d had no cause to get jealous. None. But why was she so sorry he was gone?
22
Somewhere out there, Russian tanks were prowling. Gustav Hozzel listened to the filling-shaking rumble of their big diesels. He could hear them, but he couldn’t see them.
He was as ready for them as he could be when he did see them. Half a dozen Molotov cocktails stood on the floor of the second-story Dortmund flat, under the shattered window. Gasoline and motor oil and some soap flakes, all stirred together, filled the bottles. Each one had a wick. And Gustav had a Zippo. He’d got it from an Ami for some extra grenades. He admired tools that worked all the time. The American lighter qualified.
He sneaked a look out the window. Still no T-54s in sight. The brick façade of the block of flats across the street had fallen down onto the sidewalk and into the street. He could see into all the apartments over there. That would have been more interesting if fire hadn’t gutted the building.
One or two 100mm rounds of HE would bring down the façade on this place, too. They might also bring down the rest of the building, and all the defenders in it. Just the same, he didn’t think the Ivans were enjoying themselves in Dortmund, or anywhere else in the Ruhr. Street fighting inside cities melted armies like fat in a hot frying pan. Hitler’d discovered that the hard way in Stalingrad. Now it was Stalin’s turn.
A heavy machine gun barked. It was a Russian gun, not an American M-2. Some T-54s mounted them on the turret as antiaircraft weapons. And just because they were billed like that didn’t mean they weren’t useful all kinds of other ways. The Soviet machine gun powered its mechanism by gas; the American, by the force of recoil. A soldier hit by a 12.7mm slug from either was unlikely to care about the difference-or anything else, ever again.
Gustav glanced out once more, just in time to watch a Red Army soldier duck into a doorway. Another Russian stuck his head up from behind a jeep that some explosion had flipped onto its back. He ducked down as Gustav was ducking back. Gustav didn’t think he’d been spotted.
“They’re coming!” he called. His fellow emergency militiamen swore. Whenever you thought you could relax for a little while, the damned Ivans started trying to kill you again.
Another quick look showed more Russians sliding forward. Gustav was sure men he couldn’t see were moving up with them. Russians disappeared into the woodwork like cockroaches if you gave them half a chance-even a quarter of a chance.
That diesel growl got louder and came closer, too. He nodded to himself. In the open, tanks trampled and smashed through enemy fieldworks so the foot soldiers could follow. But this wasn’t the open. Dortmund stood at the eastern edge of one of the most heavily built-up areas in the world. The rules changed when you fought in terrain like this.
Tanks clattering down the streets of Dortmund without infantry guards wouldn’t last five minutes. Somebody would shoot a bazooka round into the thin side armor or throw a grenade through an open hatch. Those Red Army foot sloggers were here to clear away the nasty somebodies so the armor could advance.
This particular tank took out the corner of a building when it turned on to the street where Gustav waited. The rest of the building fell down, not that the crew cared. The tank wasn’t a T-54 medium. It was a heavy, an IS-3 (the IS stood for Iosef Stalin). It was, in a word, a monster.
It had much thicker armor than a T-54, sloped even more radically. The damned thing carried a 122mm gun, a piece of artillery that wouldn’t have been out of place on a destroyer. No wonder even Tiger crews had treated Stalin tanks with respect in the last war. Stalins weren’t fast enough to keep up with T-54s in open country, but all that armor gave them extra protection in city fighting like this.
The commander stood up, head and shoulders out of the open cupola hatch. He wanted to be able to see what was going on. He was a good tank commander, a brave man. Gustav could have potted him with his submachine gun, but held his fire. He was after bigger game.
A Russian foot soldier craned his neck up at the block of flats across the street, the one with the missing front wall. He turned to look at the building Gustav was holed up in. If he and his buddies decided to search this one, the Germans on the ground floor would open up on them. Gustav’s chance would vanish.
If any of the men in here opened up on the Russians now…But these guys weren’t rookies. They’d all learned their business the last time around. They had fire discipline. They knew how to wait.
Here came the Stalin, right past the block of flats at a slow walk. Gustav picked up one of his wicked bottles. He flicked the Zippo. First time, every time. He lit the wick and chucked the Molotov cocktail out through the glassless window.
The hatch on top of the cupola wasn’t very wide. He needed to throw well enough to make a basketball player proud. The shot wasn’t easy, but, because he was so close, it was a long way from impossible. If he missed, he’d spill fire down the outside of the turret, and the Stalin would probably keep working. It would also probably hose down the second floor here with machine-gun bullets. Better not to miss, then.
And Gustav didn’t. The tank commander must have seen the bottle in the air. He ducked. Half a second later, he would have slammed the lid shut. In that half second, the Molotov cocktail followed him down the hatch and broke.
Smoke started pouring out of the turret. Tanks carried fire extinguishers inside, but would a startled crew have the presence of mind to grab one and use it? Even if it got used, would it kill the fire? Not just the gasoline-oil-and-soap mixture in the wine bottle would be burning in there. All kinds of things inside the fighting compartment could catch: paint, insulation, lubricating grease. Pretty soon, the ammunition in there would start cooking off.
But the Russian tank crew didn’t wait around for that. As soon as they saw the extinguisher wouldn’t stop the blaze, they bailed out. Two of them had their coveralls on fire. Gustav squeezed off a couple of short bursts at them as they rolled in the street trying to smother the flames.
He hit one man-he thought it was the tank commander. The other Ivan scrambled into shelter behind the Stalin. More and more smoke belched from the stricken tank. Machine-gun ammo went off with cheerful popping noises. Pretty soon, the massive shells the main armament flung would go off, too. All that steel, though, would keep the explosions on the inside from hurting the tankmen on the outside.
Foot soldiers started shooting into the room from which Gustav had done his dirty work. The only trouble with that was, he wasn’t in there any more. He knew they’d pock the back wall with as many bullet holes as they could. In their boots, he would have done the same thing. What else would you do, with a rifle or a PPD in your hand?
Some of the other Germans in the block of flats started shooting at the Russian infantry. The Russians gave back the fire. That didn’t worry Gustav, except in the limited sense that he always worried some about getting wounded or killed. The important thing was, the Red Army wouldn’t be bringing any more tanks up this street.