There was no time to react; the first flight came in for its strafing run even as the alarm klaxon began to warble. He could hear the heavy dumpa-dumpa-dumpa of the 50mms, see the massive frames of the Rhinos shudder in the air with recoil. Crater lines stitched through the mud, meaty smacks as the tungsten-cored solid shot rammed into wet earth, then the heavy chunk as they struck his tanks, into the thinner side and deck armor. The lighter autocannon were a continuous orange flicker, stabbing into the soft-skinned transport. Something blew up with a muffled thump, a soft soughing noise and flash; petrol tanker, spraying burning liquid for meters in every direction. Vehicles were flaming all over the fields about the house, fuel and ammunition exploding, early-morning fireworks as tracer and incendiary rounds shot through the sky trailing smoke. The crews were pouring out of hutments, racing through the rain of metal to their tanks and carriers, and falling, their bodies jerking in the grotesque dance of human flesh caught in automatic-weapons fire. The attackers were past; then another wave, and the first returning, looping for a second pass.
“Totentanz,” he murmured. Dance of death. The telephone rang: he picked it up and began the ritual of questions and orders, because there was nothing else to do. And nothing of use to do; this was a quiet sector, and he had been stripped of most of his antiaircraft for the east, where the enemy still had some planes. The rest were flackpanzers, out there with the rest . . .
Engine rumble added to the din of blast and shouts; some of the Liebstandarte troopers were reaching their machines, and a percentage of crews were always on duty. A four-barreled 20mm opened up, one of the new self-propelled models. The ball turret traversed, hosing shells into the air, a Draka airplane took that across a belly whose skin was machined from armorplate, shrugged it off in a shower of sparks. Another was not so lucky, the canopy shattering as the gun caught it banking into a turn. Unguided, it cartwheeled into a barracks, building and wreck vanished in a huge, orange-black ball of flame as its load of destruction detonated. The blast blew the diamond-pane windows back on either side of him, shattering against the stone walls. He could feel the heat of it on his face, like a summer sun after too long at the swimming baths, when the skin has begun to burn, taut and prickling. Another Rhino wheeled and fired a salvo of rockets from its underwing racks into the flackpanzer that had killed its wingmate. Twisted metal burned when the cloud of powdered soil cleared, and now the others were dropping napalm, cannisters tumbling to leave trails of inextinguishable flame in their wake, yellow surf-walls that buried everything in their path . . .
Standartenführer Hoth had been a young fanatic a year ago. Only a year ago, but no man could be young again who had walked those long miles from Germany to the Kremlin; who had stood to break the death ride of the Siberian armor as it drove for encircled Moscow; who had survived the final nightmare battles through the burning streets, flushing NKVD holdout battalions from the prison-cellars of the Lubyanka . . . That year had taken his youth; his fanaticism it had honed, tempered with caution, sharpened with realism. His face was sweat-sheened, but it might have been carved from ivory as he held the field telephone in a white-fingered grip.
“Shut up. They are not attacking the barracks because they are at the limit of operational range and must concentrate on priority targets,” he said tonelessly. “Get me Schmidt.”
The line buzzed and clicked for a moment, but the switchboard in the basement was secure. Probably overloaded, to be sure, came a mordant thought. One part of his mind was raging, longing to run screaming into the open, firing his pistol at the black-gray vulture shapes. He could see the squadron markings as some of them flew by the manor at scarcely more than rooftop height; see the winged flame-lizard that was the enemy’s national emblem, with the symbolic sword of death and the slave-chain of mastery in its claws.
Fafnir, he thought. The reptile cunning, patience to wait until all the enemies are weakened . . .
And another part wished simply to weep, for grief of loss at the destruction of his work, his love, the beautiful and deadly instrument he had helped to forge . . .
“Sch-Schmidt here,” a voice at the other end of the line gasped. “Standartenführer, air raid—”
“And Stalin is dead, is this news?” he used the sarcasm deliberately, as a whip of ice.
“No—sir, Divisional HQ in Krasnodar, too, and, and—reports from the Gross Deutschland in Grozny, the Luftwaffe . . . ”
“Silence.” His voice was flat, but it produced a quiet that echoed. The sound of aircraft engines was fading; the raid was already history. One did not fight history, one used it. He looked south, to the pass.
“You will attempt to contact Hauptsturmfuhrer Keilig in the village. There will be no reply, but keep trying.”
“Ja wohl, Herr Standartenführer.”
“Call Division. Inform them that the Ossetian Military Highway is under attack by air-assault troops.”
“But, Standartenfürer, how—”
“Silence.” An instant. “You will find Hauptman Schtackel, or his immediate subordinate if he is dead or incapacitated. Tell him to prepare a reconnaissance squadron of Puma armored cars; also my command car, or a vehicle with equivalent communications equipment. By exactly—” he looked at the clock, still ticking serenely between its pink-cheeked plaster godlets “—0600 hours, I wish to be under way. He is also to begin formation of a Kampfgruppe of at least battalion size from intact formations, jump-off time to be no later than 1440 today. I will have returned and will be in command of the kampfgruppe. Should I fail to return, Obersturmbannfuhrer Keistmann is to exercise his discretion until orders arrive from HQ.” His voice lost its metronomic quality. “Is that clear?”
“Zum Befehl, Herr Standartenführer!”
He replaced the receiver with a soft click and turned from the scene of devastation his eyes had never left for an instant during the conversation. He saw that the girl, Tina. had returned. “Leave the tray, I will be finishing it,” he said. A soldier ate when he could, in the field. “Fetch my camouflage fatigues and kit. Have them ready here within ten minutes.”
He paused in the doorway, to give the fires smoking beyond one last glance. “My loyalty is my honor,” he quoted to himself the SS oath. “If nothing else, there is always that.”
Valentina Fedorova made very sure that the footsteps were not returning before she crossed to the folder and began to leaf through it with steady, systematic speed. Her fluent German she had learned in the Institute, almost as a hobby; she had a gift for languages. The memory that made a quick scan almost as effective as the impossible camera was a gift as well, one that had been very useful these past few months. Not that she had expected much besides a little, little revenge before she was inevitably found out, before the drum was beaten in the town square for another flogging to the death. She raised the lid of the coffeepot, worked her mouth, spat copiously. Then she crossed to the window, allowing herself the luxury of one long, joyous look before laying out the uniform. She smiled.
It was the first genuine smile in a long time.
“Burn,” she whispered. “Burn.”
Sofie’s eyes had widened. The muzzle of her machine pistol had come up, straight at him; time froze, the burst cracked past his ears, powder grains burnt his cheek. He wheeled to watch the Fritz tumble down the steps dropping his carbine, clutching at a belly ripped open by the soft-nosed 10mm slugs.