“Because there are more Germans-and a lot more front-line Germans-than anybody else?” Davidov was a rational, sensible man. Except for being a hell of a good scout, he was wasted in the field. He should have gone back to Stavka and helped the generals decide how to move armies around.
Of course, rational and sensible didn’t necessarily mean right. Ivan laughed a nasty laugh. “No! Shit, no! That doesn’t have one single fuck to do with it. The NKVD cunts, they’ve got it in for us. They didn’t throw our sorry asses in a penal battalion after Vitya plugged the prick of a politruk. They didn’t bother. Keep sending us up against Hitler’s bitches for a while and we get used up any which way, know what I mean?”
Sasha Davidov rubbed his narrow, pointed chin. No, he didn’t look like a Russian. No wonder Jews got it in the neck all the goddamn time. All you had to do was see them to know them for outsiders. “I don’t like to think things work that way,” he said slowly.
“Well, how the fuck else are things gonna work?” Kuchkov asked in honest amazement.
The T-34s came up during the night. They’d been whitewashed, too, to make them harder to spot. Ivan would have been amazed if the Germans didn’t know they were there, though. Their diesel engines belched and farted as if they’d been gobbling beans and cabbage for the past hundred years. When daylight came, the exhaust pipes would throw up black smoke you could see for kilometers. Just being able to see them coming, though, didn’t mean the Nazis could stop them when they did.
At least it wasn’t one of those attacks where everybody linked arms and charged the Germans yelling Urra! Machine guns did horrible things to attacks like that. Sometimes even Russians broke before they got to their target. Sometimes, though, the men the MG-34s and MG-42s didn’t slaughter jumped down into the Fritzes’ foxholes and cleared the bitches out.
Here, the Red Army soldiers trotted through the misty dawn by ones and twos and in small groups. Yes, the T-34s spewed smoke through the mist. Yes, loping along behind them meant breathing all that smelly crap. Ivan didn’t care, even if he coughed. For one thing, he’d had his hundred grams of vodka, so he didn’t care about much of anything. For another, attacking with tanks beat the hell out of going in without them. They smashed things for you. And they drew fire that would be aimed at your miserable ass without them.
The Germans had sown mines in front of their positions. Signs with a skull and crossbones and the warning ACHTUNG! MINEN! made sure that was no secret. Kuchkov couldn’t have read the words even in Russian. He knew what they meant, though. They meant trouble, to say nothing of danger.
Either the tank commanders didn’t see the signs or they didn’t give a piss. Maybe they thought only antipersonnel mines lay under the snow, and they didn’t need to worry. They found out they were wrong when something went ba-blam! under the lead T-34. The tank slewed sideways and stopped, its left track blown off the road wheels. The crew bailed out on the side away from the Fritzes and huddled behind the crippled machine.
Ivan passed them with a certain sour sympathy. Pretty soon, some officer or NKVD man would see them and decide they could best serve the Soviet Union as infantrymen for a while. If they lived, maybe they’d get another tank. Or they might not. Nobody’d tried to put Ivan in another bomber after he bailed out of his burning SB-2.
A foot soldier tripped a different kind of mine. With a small boom, it kicked a package of shrapnel balls and more explosives up to about waist high. Then the package blew up in midair. The shrapnel balls tore the Russian almost in half. They didn’t kill him right away anyhow. He lay in the snow, thrashing and bleeding and screaming, till someone running by shot him to shut him up. Ivan nodded. That guy was doing the poor mutilated fucker a favor.
Trust the Fritzes to come up with a mine made to blow off your dick and your balls. Ivan wanted to cup his hands in front of his crotch as he ran through the minefield. It wouldn’t help, but he wanted to do it anyhow.
One of Hitler’s saws started spitting out death. The MG-42’s muzzle flashes came so close together, they made almost a continuous tongue of flame. Kuchkov threw himself down on his belly in the snow and crawled forward from then on out. Even so, some of the rounds cracked past just over his back.
A T-34 halted. Its cannon swung to bear on the machine-gun position. The Germans fired everything they had at it. Bullets sparked off its armor plating. But they didn’t seem to have any antitank guns in the neighborhood. The T-34’s gun boomed. The German machine gun fell silent.
“Urra!” the Red Army men yelled. Some of the ones who’d flattened out like Ivan got up and started running again.
“No, you stupid fucking dingleberries!” he screamed.
Too late. The MG-42 came back to malevolent life. Half a dozen Russian soldiers fell in the blink of an eye. The T-34 fired again, and then once more. The Nazis’ machine gun stayed quiet after that. Kuchkov kept crawling just the same.
By the time the Russians got to the German forward trenches, the Fritzes had pulled out of them. A dead man stared blindly up at the sky. Snowflakes grizzled the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. Ivan fumbled through his belt pouches for food and tobacco. The Hitlerite had a nice flint-and-steel cigarette lighter. Kuchkov stuck it in a pocket of his snow smock.
“Come on! Chase them harder!” Lieutenant Obolensky yelled.
The men obeyed … to a point. If the Germans were pulling back on their own, a sensible Red Army soldier didn’t want to stick his neck out too far. Like a careless turtle, he might lose his head. Yes, the Nazis could wind up in a stronger position that would have to get cleared out next week. But next week lay a million years away, and it could damn well take care of itself.
CHAPTER 13
The Block Island’s launch put-putted toward Tern Island. A strong swell was running down from the north. Pete McGill had always had a pretty strong stomach. He’d been seasick a couple of times, but only a couple. Now, gulping, he wondered whether this would make one more.
Another Marine from the escort carrier leaned over the gunwale and noisily fed the fish. That did nothing to calm Pete’s queasy insides. “Take it easy, boys,” said the potbellied CPO at the rudder. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” His cheeks were still bright pink. By the way he looked and sounded, he would have been happy as a clam if King Neptune and Davy Jones started playing ping-pong with the launch.
A stubby pier stuck out from the end of the runway the Seabees had built on Tern Island. The launch put in alongside it. Sailors helped the leathernecks scramble out of the launch and up onto the planking. The Marine who’d puked got down on his hands and knees and kissed the creosoted wood. Pete didn’t go that far, but he knew how the poor guy felt.
At the end of the runway, a flock of C-47s crouched under camouflage netting. More Gooney Birds circled overhead. They’d land for refueling as soon as the first bunch took off. More Marines would file into them. Then they’d get airborne again, too.
Pete ducked his head as he climbed into the plane to which a sailor with a clipboard beckoned him. He took his seat with his back against the C-47’s aluminum skin. He’d be fifth in the drop order. Good, he thought. Not long to wait once the jumping starts. Not long to think about anything.
Not long once the jumping started. But Tern Island was still two or three hours away from Midway. Till the jump light started going green, he’d have plenty of time to brood about this, that, and the other thing. He figured he’d come up with more ways for this operation to get fubar’d than the Japs ever could.