“Lumber companies don’t have to do a darn thing,” Dropo replied. “But the people who run them, if they don’t want their neighbors smearing dog poop on their windshields or slashing their tires in the middle of the night, they’ve got to think about it, anyway.”
“That’s how it looked to me, too,” Marian said. “I’m glad you see it the same way.”
“Worth a try. If they ignore the whole thing, we’re no worse off than when we started-and maybe they will get their tires slashed. What the heck? I can probably find a knife or an ice pick myself.” Dale Dropo eyed her. “I know you and that Tabakman guy both came out of the camps by Seattle. This town may be lucky you decided to stop here.”
“Thank you. It’s a nice place,” Marian answered. “If we can make it a little better, well, good.”
“No guarantees,” Dropo warned.
“Oh, I know. When are there ever?” No guarantees your house doesn’t get blown up, Marian thought. No guarantee your husband comes home. No guarantees at all.
–
American 105s and 155s howled down on the Soviet positions. Ihor Shevchenko huddled in his foxhole, praying inexpertly but with great sincerity. The last time around, the Nazis hadn’t enjoyed this kind of artillery support. The Red Army was the one that lined up guns hub to hub and blasted its foes to jam and sausage meat.
Red Army gunners had done the same thing this time…till the A-bombs in far western Germany and along Soviet supply lines gave the edge back to the imperialists. The Hitlerites hadn’t had the atom bomb, either. A good thing, too, or Byelorussia, the Ukraine, and Russia at least to the Urals would have turned into a radioactive wasteland.
Well, here it was, only a few years after the Fascist beasts were ground into the dirt. Here it was, only a few years after fraternal socialist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe gave the USSR a giant glacis against any future invasion from out of the west. And…?
And Byelorussia, the Ukraine, and Russia at least to the Urals had turned into a radioactive wasteland. Hitler might have been more thoroughly, more savagely, destructive than Truman. But Truman was doing fine on his own.
Ihor dug the foxhole deeper. He flipped the dirt up onto the western side. When the shelling let up, he’d use bushes and branches to camouflage the foxhole’s lip. For now, that could wait. Sticking any part of himself above ground was asking to get that part mutilated.
Anya’d been lucky. Without her horrible cold, she would have gone into Kiev the day the Yankees visited fire upon it. Ihor had been lucky himself. If he hadn’t sat on that stupid broken bottle, he would have been at the front, not behind it, when more atomic fire fell from the sky.
His entrenching tool clanked against something. He dug more carefully than he needed for ordinary excavation. His amateur archaeology unearthed a sharp, curved chunk of rusty shell casing from the last war. Was it German or American? Or had the English dueled with the Nazis in this part of Germany? He didn’t know. Even if he had, it wouldn’t matter now.
After all, what did one more shell fragment prove? Only that this war wasn’t the first time people had tried to kill one another here. A musket ball would have shown him the same thing, in case he didn’t already know it. So would an arrowhead. So would a spear point, or an axe blade, or a club made from a stone fastened to a length of wood by sinews. People had been trying to kill one another here for as long as people had lived here.
Had he done some digging in the black soil of his collective farm outside Kiev, he would have come up with the same kind of lethal hardware going back to the dawn of time. People there had tried to kill one another for as long as people dwelt in those parts, too.
People everywhere had done their damnedest to kill one another for as long as they’d been around. The story of Cain and Abel distilled a lot of truth down into a teacup.
These days, though, the would-be murderers had better tools than they’d enjoyed in Biblical days. Even as Ihor dug to strengthen and deepen his hole, nearby shell bursts threatened to collapse it on him. Earth tortured by high explosives sprang into the air in anguish. Clods and pebbles came clattering down onto his helmet. He rubbed at his nose and wasn’t surprised to find it bloody. Had one of those 155s hit a little closer, blast might have killed him without leaving a visible mark on his carcass.
And, of course, everything didn’t turn to sunshine and roses the instant the shelling stopped. In case any of the men in the company were too stunned to remember that or too stupid to know it, Lieutenant Kosior called, “Be ready to fight! They’ll be coming now!”
Ihor heard him as if from five kilometers away. He wondered how far his ears would recover. He made sure he had a round chambered in his Kalashnikov. That wouldn’t help his hearing, either. It would help him stay alive, though, which also counted.
Or it might. The Americans knew how to play this game. They sent tanks forward with their foot soldiers. German panzers, all slabs of steel and sharp angles, looked more frightful than these beasts. But thick armor and a high-velocity 90mm gun were nothing to sneeze at. If that gun sneezed at you, there’d be nothing left.
Against the panzers, though, Russian foot soldiers hadn’t had any weapons but magnetic mines and Molotov cocktails. To use either, you had to sneak suicidally close to your target. If the bastards inside the panzer didn’t get you first, the infantry shepherding them would.
The game was different now. A Red Army man launched an RPG at an oncoming Pershing. The rocket fell short, and the tank fired two rounds of HE at his foxhole. Ihor hoped he stayed alive. Whether he did or not, though, that trail of fire would make all the Yankee tank crews who saw it thoughtful.
They came on anyway. Like their Soviet counterparts, they had their orders. They’d catch it if they didn’t follow them. And they paid the price for courage or obedience or whatever it was. Another Red Army man waited till the American tanks reached the forwardmost Soviet foxholes. Then he launched his RPG. It burned through a Pershing’s side armor and set off the shells inside the steel box.
Flame and smoke shot out of the turret. The tank stopped. It would never go again. The crew probably died fast. All the questions that had vexed philosophers and prophets since men wore skins? Whatever the answers were, those Americans had just discovered them.
Ihor squeezed off a quick burst in the direction of the advancing infantry. When he came up to shoot again, he wasn’t quite in the same place. A good thing, too, because a bullet cracked past his head. He ducked down again in a hurry.
A crashing clang told of an RPG deflecting off a tank it didn’t hit squarely. HE rounds from the tank’s cannon said that the man who’d loosed the rocket-propelled grenade was paying the price for failure.
Maybe he’d be able to talk it over with the crew from the incinerated Pershing. Or maybe there was just nothing. One way or the other, he knew now. Ihor didn’t. Nor was he anxious to find out, not in any final way.
Another American tank brewed up, and then another, both of them spectacularly. Soviet artillery woke up to the idea that the sons of bitches on the other side were attacking. Shells started falling among them-and short rounds started falling among the forward Red Army troops.
“You stupid cocksuckers!” Ihor screamed when a shell from his own side left him stunned and deafened. Your friends could kill you every bit as dead as the enemy could. He laughed as he tried to shake himself back to usefulness. Anatoly Prishvin might be telling the Yankee tank crew and the RPG man all about that right now.
Someone peered over the edge of the foxhole. Evidently all the artillery fire had chewed up the ground enough so the spoil Ihor had thrown out didn’t seem anything special. The shape of that helmet was wrong-too much dome, not enough brim. Ihor fired a burst at point-blank range. The American groaned and sagged. Barring Resurrection Day, he wouldn’t rise again. When things calmed down a bit, Ihor would rifle his pockets.