“Then I can only hope the shaman’s incantations can penetrate the armored hull of Red Vengeance with greater accuracy and effectiveness than the weapons at our disposal.”
“Don’t mock, Lieutenant,” Falkenstein said. “I will utilize both…weapons and magic.”
Khan’s spirit ride had come to an end. He collapsed on the ground and rolled about in a fit of ecstasy that bordered on obscene. After several minutes of these gyrations, he recovered and gathered knife, drum, and rib bone. He looked ghastly when he approached the scout car, the horse’s blood already caked on his face and hands, sweat foaming throughout his shaggy black hair, yet he seemed strangely invigorated. Falkenstein was waiting for him. “What have you learned?”
“There is much rain to come, Captain. Your journey will prove trying and slow.”
“This journey has been slow since the outset and tries me in every way! What else?”
Khan shook his head. “There is no more. Only rain. Black clouds filled with rain.”
“Is it an evil omen? What does it mean?”
“It means nothing. Only rain.”
Falkenstein nodded, but with abject disappointment. What he had hoped to hear from the shaman’s symbolic journey was some word of Red Vengeance or a sign that he was on the path that would eventually lead to success. Instead, he received an unsolicited weather forecast and an impression, as far as Voss and the crew were concerned, of the unsavory company he kept. Khan climbed aboard the scout car and disappeared down the turret, a jinn returned to its bottle. Falkenstein cast his one good eye skyward to an ocean of blue—not a cloud to be seen. He muttered a curse and gave the order to move out.
27
Reconnaissance Group Falkenstein had entered the Sixth Army zone of operations once south of Zaporozhye. The weakened corps, with little armored support, would have a difficult task defending the Wotan Line, which ran from the city and its great dam and hydroelectric works for one hundred forty kilometers, past Melitopol, to as far as the Sea of Azov. The line had been established to bolster the Crimea and prevent the Seventeenth Army from being cut off and isolated. Now, on the verge of the Nogay Steppe, the effect was not lost on the crew, especially Angst, Schmidt, and Braun. Their battalion—whatever was left of it, along with the other regiments and divisions that the Sixth comprised—was expected to hold back the armies of General Tolbukhin’s South Front in the boundless reaches of an arid, desolate wasteland. The Wotan Line consisted of no more than a hastily excavated ditch, which was to serve as an antitank trap with a series of trenches, foxholes, and dugouts positioned in front. There was no natural cover or high ground, and the artillery emplacements all stood exposed. This pathetic attempt at fortification was considered part of the vaunted “eastern wall,” and if some of the crew held any illusions about the protection offered by the defensive line, those illusions were irrevocably shattered. Angst no longer doubted that the Reconnaissance Group held out the better alternative.
The civilian exodus had thinned out considerably; there were only the stragglers from unnamed villages and kolkhozes further east, which were now under the control of the Red Army. Women plodded across the hot dirt tracks and dusty roads, their blouses and headscarves darkened by sweat, and urged their youngsters along as they tottered on wobbly legs. Among these mothers and children were the mill workers and dockhands, young boys and old men, from as far away as Mariupol, which had fallen to the enemy over a week earlier. An emaciated horse pulled a cart that had since become a hearse; furniture and baggage was jettisoned by a peasant couple to make room for the sick and elderly who had succumbed to the heat and rigors of the journey.
After maintaining close proximity to the Wotan Line, the vehicles began to veer back toward the east. At least Falkenstein, in the lead, did so; the Hanomag merely followed. Voss opened a map to get a fix on their location. They traveled along the Mololchnaya River, which was actually no more than a stream, the only natural barrier in this bleak territory. Infantry units were dug in behind the west bank of the river, still vulnerable and indefensible. The vehicles kicked up enormous clouds of dust, as the landscape was utterly barren, practically a desert. Voss wondered how far the captain was willing to take them. Blatantly obvious targets that they already were, to continue to drive this far to the east was to beg the enemy to spot them. Voss raised the command vehicle on the radio. “Two-Five-One to Sundial, come in, over.”
“This is Sundial. Go ahead, Two-Five-One.”
“Indication suggests a heading east by southeast of Wotan position. Will Sundial confirm this heading as actual, over?”
“Sundial confirms.” It was Falkenstein’s voice.
“Two-Five-One wishes to inquire as to eventual destination by this heading, over.”
There was a pause. The receiver crackled. “Smoke observed approximately ten kilometers due east and will investigate. Sundial out.”
The cause for the smoke, a thin gray coil that snaked its way into the sky, soon became apparent. A small motor column had come under an air attack. Staff cars and trucks littered the dirt road with blown-out tires and cracked engine blocks from the armor-piercing rounds of the Stormovik cannons. Charred bodies lay near the wrecks that still burned. A corpse remained upright in the driver’s seat of a truck, the blackened skeletal hands fused to the steering wheel. The few survivors milled about listlessly through the scattered debris, their mouths agape and uniforms torn and singed. They stared vacantly as the Reconnaissance Group pulled to a stop. They were file clerks and orderlies from a headquarter staff, one of the men explained. Out of the eight survivors, he seemed to have his wits about him still. The main combat arm of the division was not too far behind. Two of the staff members had suffered burns on their arms and hands. The lieutenant had Schmidt and Braun break out the first aid kits to salve and dress the wounds. The rest of the crew took up defensive positions and watched for the possible return of enemy ground assault aircraft. Every machine gun was brought into play, including the 20 mm cannon in the scout car turret. Khan adjusted the mounting so the weapon could be fired at a higher-angle trajectory. Vogel left the vehicle and, with fuel can and hose, siphoned the fuel from the vehicles that had not burned. The captain raised himself up in the turret and scanned the sky with binoculars. Sheaves of typewritten pages blew across the ground, causing Voss to suggest, to those who were not injured, that they retrieve the scattered files.
“There’s nothing important written on any of it,” said one of the clerks. “Nothing strategic, only copies of requests for supplies and inventory lists. Things we never received.”
“No matter,” Voss said, “the Russians could find something important.” The men needed a chore, a focus, to help rouse them out of their shock-induced torpor. Voss began by picking up the papers a page at a time, and the corporal he was speaking to started to help. Others followed as they chased the papers across the windswept ground.
“That’s it, clean the place up. You’ve kept these records for quite some time now, and it would seem a shame to let it go to nothing.” The captain had signaled for Voss to join him. He’d been questioning one of the survivors and dismissed him as the lieutenant approached the scout car. Falkenstein looked down from the turret, looking like a vulture in its nest. “You see that vehicle?” Falkenstein said, as he pointed to a smoldering heap, a staff car reduced to an unrecognizable mangled pile of metal. “The officers were in that, including a major from corps staff. He needed a ride, apparently.”