He'd lain there looking up and not even bleeding for a second, then it had all come out…
Hoth looked down at his right hand; half the little ringer was missing. He had been very lucky; jumping on the deck of a tank and ramming a grenade down the muzzle of its cannon was not something you did with any great hope of survival. Automatic, really; not thinking of living, or of the Knight's Cross and the promotion…
With a smile on his thick-boned, stolid face he strode to the window and pulled open the drapes. There they were, spread out in leaguer three stories below, across the tread-chewed lawns of what had once been a nobleman's park. Dawn was just breaking, reaching beams to gild the squat, grey-steel shapes, throw shadows from the hulls and long cannon. Tanks in the outer ring, then the assault guns, infantry carriers (praise Providence, all the motorized infantry on tracks at last!), soft transport. Russian designs, much of it. Improved, brought into line with German practice, pouring out of Kharkov and Stalingrad and Kirovy Rog, with technicians from Krupp and Daimler-Benz to organize, and overseers from the SS Totenkopf squads with stock-whips to see that the Russian workers did not flag at their eighteen-hour days.
Not really necessary to pull into hedgehog like this, but it was good practice and the partisans seemed damnably well informed.
Suicide parties with explosive charges had infiltrated more than once.
Perhaps more hostages
, he thought, turning to the east and taking a deep breath of fresh, crisp spring air with a pleasant undertang of diesel oil.
The aircraft were difficult to spot, coming in low out of the dawning sun. He squinted, his first thought that it was a training flight…
The smile slid slowly off his face. Too many, too fast, too low; at least 450 km, hedgehopping over poplars and orchards. Two engines, huge radials; low-wing monoplanes, their noses bristling with muzzles, long teardrop canopies…
One 50mm
auto-cannon, six 25mm
, the Luftwaffe intelligence report ran through his head.
Five tonnes of bombs, rockets, jellied petrol
…
Draka ground-attack aircraft, P-12 "Rhino" class. The nominal belligerence of the Domination had suddenly become very real.
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 50mm's, 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 auto-cannon 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.
"
Todentanz
," 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…
Standartenfuhrer 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-grey 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. "Standartenfuhrer, air raid—"
"And Stalin is dead, is this news?" he used the sarcasm deliberately, as a whip of ice.
"No—sir, Divisional H.Q. 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. You did not fight history, you 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 Standartenfuhrer."
"Call Division. Inform them that the Osserian Military Highway is under attack by air-assault troops."
"But, Standartenfuhrer, 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 hours today. I will have returned and will be in command of the kampfgruppe. Should I fail to return, Obersturmbannfuhrer Keist-mann is to exercise his discretion until orders arrive from H.Q." His voice lost its metronomic quality. '
Is
that clear
?"
"Zum Befehl, Herr Standartenfuhrer!"
He replaced the receiver with a soft click and turned from the scene of devastation; his eyes had never left it for an instant during the conversation. Turning, 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, murmuring: 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."
It was odd
, Eric thought, how it was easy to remember the mind's construct of a battle, the shape and direction of it, when the personal faded into a blur of shapes, sounds, smells, sharp bursts of emotion. Not what you might expect; after all, a
"battle" was a thing you made in your mind, while street fighting was continuous alertness, total focus, reflexes key-triggered for the death that waited around every corner and behind every door.
The men of the Liebstandarte had outnumbered the Draka, but they had been surprised, too shaken to establish a perimeter before the paratroops were in among them—
Sofie's eyes had widened. The muzzle of her machine pistol
had come up, straight at him; time froze, the burst cracked
past his ear, 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.
The wounded man's mouth worked. "Mutti," he whispered,
eyes staring disbelief at the life leaking out between his fingers.
"Mutti, hilfe, mutti
—"
A three-round burst from Eric's rifle hammered him back
into silence.
Eric looked up, met Sophie's eyes. She was smiling, but not the usual cocksure urchin grin; a softer expression, almost tremulous. Quickly, she glanced aside.
Well, well
, he thought. Then:
Oh, not now
. Aloud, he murmured, "Thanks; good thing you've got steady hands."
"Ya, ah, c'mon, let's get up those stairs, hey?" she muttered, leading the way with a smooth steady stride that took her up the board steps noiselessly, even under the heavy load of the backpack radio.
The resistance had been disorganized, split into pockets. But the pockets had held out, squads and sections and lone snipers fighting with a stolid determination to make their enemy pay a price for the victory, to cost him precious time that might have been used to consolidate against counterattack. The overwhelming firepower of the assault rifles and rocket guns had told, as Eric switched sticks of paratroopers back and forth in a fluid dance. Building local superiority against an opponent denied mobility by the Draka heavy weapons, which raked the streets with fire at the first sight of a German uniform.
The 15mm had hammered beside his ear; for a moment part of him wondered how much combat it would take to damage his hearing. This was worse than working in a drop-forging plant.
His mouth was dry, filled with a thick saliva no swallowing could clear; there was water in his canteen, but no time for it. The rifles of his lochos took it up, hammering at the narrow slit window twenty meters away, keeping the Fritz machine-gunner from manning his post. The light high-velocity 5mm rounds skittered off in spark-trails; heavy 15mm bullets chewed at the stone, tattering it with craters.
"Damn hovels are built like forts!" one of the troopers snarled, as the ammunition drum of his Holbars emptied and automatically ejected. He scrabbled at his belt for the last replacement, slapped the guide lips into the magazine well, and jacked the cocking lever.
"They
are
forts," McWhirter grunted. "Sand coons are treacherous. Don't sleep easy without bunkers and firing-slits
'tween them and the neighbors."
Serfdom was too easy on them, he thought viciously. It was the smells that brought it back—rancid mutton fat and spices, sweaty wool and kohl. You could never trust ragheads—Afghans or Circassians or Turks or whatever; they kept coming back at you. Better to herd them all into their mosque and turn the Ronsons on them. He remembered that, from the Panjir Valley in Afghanistan; reprisals for an ambush by the
badmash
, the guerillas.
The Draka had found the drivers of the burnt-out trucks with their testicles stuffed into their mouths… Ten villages for that; he'd pulled the plunger on the flamer himself. The women had tried to push their children out the slit windows when the roof caught, flaming bundles on hands dissolving into flame as he washed the jet of napalm across them, limestone subliming and burning in the heat. He saw that often, waking and asleep.
One hand snuggled the butt of his Holbars into his shoulder while the other held the pistol-grip; he was trying for deflection shots, aiming at the windowframe to bounce rounds inside.
Tracer flicked out; he clenched his teeth and tasted sweat running down the taut-trembling muscles of his face. "
Kill them
all
," he muttered, not conscious of the whisper. Figures writhed in his mind, Germans melting into burning villagers into shadowed figures in robes and turbans with long knives into prisoners sewn into raw pigskins and left in the desert sun. "Kill them all."