Horrified, Polinski let the field glasses fall down around his neck. He whirled and grabbed the corporal’s arm. “Come on!” he roared, tugging the young soldier toward the concrete-block building serving as the company’s command post. “Back to the CP!”
They raced down the street, running hard past blazing trucks and jeeps. Torn bodies, jagged, blast-warped shards of metal, and shredded truck tires littered the pavement in front of them.
Polinski threw himself through the post office door and took the stairs up two at a time. He skidded into the second-floor library room serving as his company headquarters unit. Maps and a longer-range radio sat on one of the reading tables. The sandbags, bookcases, and books piled across its windows offered a measure of protection against small-arms fire and shell fragments.
A worried-looking lieutenant, his second-in-command, looked up from the radio with evident relief. “Captain! Battalion’s on the line!”
The captain grabbed the headset. “Polinski here!”
“This is Major Korytzki, Captain. What the hell is happening over there?”
Polinski scowled. He loathed the major, and he knew the feeling was mutual. A born staff man, Zbigniew Korytzki had taken charge when the battalion’s old commander was killed near Poznan. Since then his combat troops and line officers had scarcely ever seen the man. He always seemed to lead from far to the rear, preferably from inside an armored command vehicle. “We’re being fired on by at least one company of enemy armor, Major! I request reinforcements.”
“Impossible,” Korytzki said crisply. “You have antitank weapons. I suggest you use them. In any event, you must hold your position until the engineers have completed their work. Remember your duty, Captain! And keep me informed. Korytzki, out.”
Polinski ripped the headset off and tossed it back to his executive officer. He mastered his temper with difficulty. “See if you can raise the CO of that tank outfit across the bridge. Tell him we need help to claw a few Leopards off our backs.”
The lieutenant nodded and turned to obey him.
“Sir!” The shout came from a sergeant watching out one of the windows. “Enemy infantry carriers approaching — many of them!”
Polinski peered out through a slit they’d left in their makeshift barricades. German Marder fighting vehicles were visible now, rolling down off the same low rise held by their own tanks. Twenty at least. Probably more. Wonderful. They were being hit by a battalion-plus of panzergrenadiers. He whirled toward his radioman. “All platoons! Open fire!”
The Marders roared closer, charging across the open fields. They fanned out while rolling forward. The captain swore out loud, suddenly realizing the Germans were deploying from column into line right in front of his face. Cocky bastards!
Three TOW missiles leapt toward the Marders. Two hit their targets and exploded. Further along the line, Polish BMP-Is opened up with 73mm cannon, pumping HEAT — high-explosive antitank — rounds out at the rate of eight per minute. More German troop carriers slewed sideways and began burning.
Retaliation came swiftly.
In quick succession, accurate fire from the overwatching Leopards and 25mm rounds spray-fired from the Marders fireballed two of C Company’s three TOW-Humvees and smashed a third of its BMPs into smoking ruin. More shells slammed into several of the houses on Rynarzewo’s outskirts. Rubble spilled out into the narrow village streets.
Polinski stared out through the firing slit, straining to see the enemy assault wave through all the smoke and dust. Were they going to try driving right through his defenses? No! The surviving Marders were stopping in whatever cover they could find — behind farmhouses and gentle knolls, inside orchards, and behind their own destroyed comrades. Soldiers tumbled out of each fighting vehicle. Now that most of the Germans were within four hundred meters of his line, they were continuing their attack dismounted.
The Polish captain’s eyes focused on the stretch of relatively open ground the enemy infantry would have to cover. He bared his teeth and turned to his second-in-command. “Contact the artillery, Jozef! Tell them we have a fire mission!”
Von Seelow hung on grimly as the Marder he was riding in swerved suddenly, dropped into a ditch, and bounced out — all without slowing down.
Whammm!
A near miss rocked the speeding vehicle. Fragments and pieces of shattered rock rattled against its side armor. Even with the Marder’s hatches closed, the noise was ear-shattering, almost maddening in its intensity.
Von Seelow spoke into the Marder’s intercom. “How much further, Gerd?” Another close explosion punctuated his query.
“Not far, Herr Oberstleutnant!” the vehicle’s commander shouted. “I’ve got Predator One in sight!”
“Good. Take us right up next to him.”
The Marder jolted through another drainage ditch, bumped over what felt like a low wall, and braked to a stop. Without the engine turning over at full power, the drumming roar of the Polish barrage was even louder and more menacing.
Moving rapidly now, von Seelow unbuckled his safety belt and got up, crouching to clear the low armored ceiling. He pulled a G3 assault rifle out of the clips beside his seat. Captain Meyer, one of his aides, and Private Neumann, his radioman, imitated him, checking their own gear and personal weapons. Both tugged at their Kevlar body armor, assuring themselves that the flak jackets were securely fastened.
Willi put his hand on the button that would drop the Marder’s rear ramp and took a last look around the troop compartment. “Ready, gentlemen?”
They nodded.
“All right. Remember, spread out right away, don’t bunch up. Then run like hell for von Olden’s vehicle! Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Despite the standard and expected response, Meyer sounded uncertain. Sweat beaded his high pale forehead. “But I must ask you once more to remain here… in relative safety. Let me bring Lieutenant Colonel von Olden to you instead.”
“No.” Willi shook his head firmly. There were times when a leader had to put himself at risk to get results. This was one of those times. He took several quick breaths and punched the release button. “Go!”
The ramp clanged open.
They were in a farmyard. Waist-high stone walls enclosed a dilapidated wooden barn and the wreckage of a small, wood-frame house blown apart by a Polish artillery shell. Flames danced eerily in the ruins, licking up the two walls still standing. Near the barn, an old tractor lay toppled on its side. A sow and her piglets lay dead inside a muddy sty.
Beyond the farmyard, gently rolling fields planted in oats and rye stretched toward Rynarzewo. Burning German vehicles dotted the fields. Hundreds of men wearing helmets and camouflage battle dress lay prone among the standing grain, cowering as shells rained down all around them. The Polish barrage had pinned the 192nd Panzergrenadier Battalion in place.
Klaus von Olden’s command Marder lay just a few meters away, partially veiled by the smoke, Willi headed in that direction, running flat out.
Another salvo arced out of the sky with a freight-train roar.
“Incoming!” Willi shouted. He threw himself flat next to von Olden’s vehicle.
Whammm! Whammm! Whammm!
The ground rocked, bounced, and rolled as shell after shell slammed to earth just outside the farmyard and exploded in a hail of flame and deadly steel splinters.
With his ears still ringing, Willi spat to clear the taste in his mouth and got to his feet. He used the butt of his rifle to hammer on the Marder’s armored flank. “Open up!”
The command vehicle’s ramp fell open, exposing an interior compartment already crowded with two fold-down map tables, a radio set, and three haggard-looking men — von Olden, his battalion operations chief, and a sergeant who manned their communications gear. Willi, Neumann, and Meyer ducked inside.