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  Langer's unit raced on, leaving the mopping up and taking of prisoners to the infantry. They had to advance regardless of risk. Their objective Oboyan. In one swift rush, despite the Soviet's preparation, the main defensive line was torn open and General Krishoven's mechanized corps thrown into panic as the Tigers and Panthers flanked them, firing accurate controlled shots into the sides and turrets of the T-34s and self-propelled assault guns.

  The 6th Guards Army, holding the perimeters facing the Germans, began to crumble with the loss of their armor and they knew there was nothing to stop the Fascists from overrunning them. They began to withdraw, trying to get back to the next defensive ring, only to be caught in the open by German artillery, which tore them to pieces and started the panic of a disorganized retreat. They dropped their guns and ran, every man for himself. Tanks raced after them, crushing them under the treads – they weren't worth wasting bullets on.

  Gus screamed in glee as Teacher took a T-34 with a single shot that blew the turret of the enemy tank in the air and left the body of the tank's commander hanging from it half in, half out as the turret landed upside down on him. Another Panther was hit and Langer pulled his alongside to give the crew cover until they could get to a trench. All he had time to see was one of the tankers smash the brains out of a Russian with a shovel, and then the radio crackled in his ears with orders from the command tank. "On, on. Don't stop for anything again. Go, go, they're breaking."

  Stefan began to hose the mustard-yellow uniforms in front of him, firing in short calculated bursts. He didn't want to burn up the machine gun. Coolly and carefully, Teacher sighted on a staff car and with a nod sent a screaming round into it, leaving only a smoking, burning frame. There was no trace of the Russians, they had just been atomized. To the right of them, the Panthers of GD were in trouble with a mine field and were stalled until the way could be cleared or another way out found.

  The surviving Russians ran breathlessly, eyes wide with fear, trying to reach Syrtsevo on the Pena River, the last stronghold before Oboyan.

  General Krivoshen hid in a gully, trying to assimilate what he could from a survivor of the 75th Motorized Battalion. He learned all were dead or taken prisoner and were already being hustled back to the holding pens in the rear of the German lines.

  Krishoven leaped from the gully and climbed on top of an armored car in time to see his own staff car disappear from the blast. Kicking the driver in the back of the head, he screamed for him to get out of the way and take the machine down a ravine, heading away from the killer tanks. He would organize a counterattack from Srytsevo.

  Langer's tank rumbled through the side of a peasant's hut, then stopped dead in its tracks inside the shack. Leaning down, Langer cursed Gus. "What the fuck are you doing, you moron? Get us out of here!"

  Gus grinned. "Don't get your ass in an uproar, Sarge." Showing one gold tooth, he swung open his escape hatch and jumped out, taking two giant steps to a table surprisingly still standing in the wreckage. Grabbing an item from it, he leaped back through the hatch and into his seat. Battening the steel cover down over him, he gunned the motor and the forty-five tons of steel broke through the other side of the shack and back into the open. Teacher kicked Gus on the shoulder. "What the hell was that all about, you maniac?"

  Reaching in his coat, Gus took out a bottle of vodka. "It might have gotten broken...."

  Teacher gave him a solid boot in the back: "You mean you stopped the whole fucking war for a bottle of vodka?"

  Wounded, Gus said in hurt tones, "Well, if that's the way you feel about it, you don't have to drink any.”

  Teacher shook his head wonderingly and yelled up to Langer. "He stopped for a bottle of vodka."

  Langer laughed. "What else? That dumb shit thinks that's the reason Hitler started this war – just for the vodka. He says it doesn't make sense to come to Russia for any other reason, so that's got to be it. Maybe he knows something we don't."

  The smell of diesel fumes and cordite left a sour taste in the mouth. SPAAAAANG. A Russian round bounced off the glacis shield in front and bounced off to explode elsewhere.

  "Where is he?" Langer swung the turret using the periscope.

  "Got him. Over by that field of trees. The bastard's dug in; just the turret showing. Looks like a KV-I. Can you take him, Teacher?"

  The scholar sighted and corrected his azimuth readings a little.

  "Fire." The shell burst directly in front of the Russian tank. Teacher spat on the floor. Before Langer could say anything, he resighted, saying, "Don't get in a sweat. After all, I'm not used to this thing yet. Give me a little time."

  The next round took the KV-I right at the junction of the hull and turret, exploding the tank from the inside and turning the gunner and loader into shriveled cinders.

  A sense of urgency and panic drove them on. One by one, more of the group were knocked out by the Soviet Pakfronts, copied and improved from the German model. The use of up to ten antitank guns under one commander could bring tremendous firepower to bear on a single tank. The first indication you were facing one was usually when your neighbor blew up. That, and the technical problems with the new Panthers, gave Langer a lonesome feeling, as the crackle in his radio informed him he was alone with no infantry support. Upon realization of this, Gus locked the right tread and cut ass back to the rear about four miles, where he pulled into a ravine shared by a couple of Wespe self-propelled guns. The sight of their 105s gave them a feeling of security. Infantry from the GD were digging in for the night.

  Had it been that long? They had made six miles. A flight of Shtormoviks droned overhead, the Mikulin engines humming as the pilot and rear gunner looked for targets on the ground.

  Brush and branches were quickly thrown on top of the Panther to conceal her from the eyes above. Soon darkness would cover them. Hauptmann Heidemann called asking for his position. The remainder of the unit was digging in for the night with a bunch of Tiger Is of the 6th Company, 1st SS Panzer regiment commanded by Rudolf von Ribbentrop, son of the Reich's famed foreign minister. The crackle of Maxims on the Soviet side let them know Ivan was still there. Angling their tank into position where only the turret showed above the edge of the gully, they waited for the night. Ivan would come. He couldn't afford not to. The night was the time when their numbers gave them the greatest advantage.

  The Guards regiment they had mauled would even now be creeping out, grouping together in small knots of men, listening to the haranguing of the Kommissars whipping them into a fighting fervor to destroy the Fascist beasts who dared step on the soil of the mother Russia by the dozens and then the hundreds. These small pockets emerged, then began to join together, forming larger ones; thousands of Russians had been bypassed in the tank fight and now they would have to face them in the dark.

  Langer left Teacher in the turret with the binoculars and sent Gus off to scrounge some chow from the grenadiers. They had plenty on board, but if there was food to be had, they would save theirs. Young Ertl kept close to Langer, his lips still trembling from controlled fear, his face pale. Grunting, Carl lit a butt and stuck it between the boy's lips.

  "Take a drag. It will help. You did good today. Now find a place close to Gus when he gets back and stay with him. That ugly old bear may not be fit for the drawing rooms of Europe, but out here, he has a knack for surviving. Maybe some of it will rub off on you."

  Langer found the officer in charge of the grenadiers and hunched down beside him. The major was going over his charts, marking their position and noting where the other units of the assault force were digging in for the night. Darkness was closing in and in the distance, long columns of smoke from burning tanks showed the Luftwaffe was still at work. From the north came the long distant rumble of artillery barrages being laid.

  Turning to Langer, the major – his face dirty and uniform less than picture-book perfect – squinted at him through grime-laden lids.

  "You the one with the Mark V?"

  Carl nodded.

/>   "Good. We will need you before this night is done. The bastards knew we were going to hit them today. They knew when and where. I'm Kruger, major by the grace of our Fuhrer in this glorious social experiment. Fuck it. Where's your beast at?"

  Langer pointed down the ravine to the Panther.

  "Good enough. Leave it there. I'll send over a squad to give you cover for the night. After it gets dark, pull it back a little from the edge of the gully and face it down the ravine so you can use your hull MG. The turret gun will still be able to fire over the lip of the gully."

  Carl nodded agreement. The man knew his business.

  Lighting up a smoke for himself, he drew it deep into his lungs, holding a moment and then exhaling through his nostrils.

  "Where are we, Major? I can just get radio contact with my company leader but we've been weaving in and out of those damned antitank ditches for hours."

  Pointing a dirty fingernail, Kruger indicated a point on the map. "Here. Just north of Butovo." He looked at the shoulder tabs of the Panzer man. "You're with the 26th Pz, right?" Then, not waiting for an answer, "They're on the right flank about four kilometers behind and we are, my good friend and ally, the leading element of this action."

  A whining hum followed by the crack of a rifle shot made them slap the sides of the gully automatically. Langer spit the mangled butt out of his mouth where he had snuffed it out by pushing his face into the ground. Taking a bit of tobacco off his tongue with a dirty hand he said, "Sounds like a Tokarev. Probably a sniper with a scope. Do you have anyone here to take him out?"

  Kruger shook his head. "No, but I'll send a couple of boys out to get him when it gets dark. He's been taking pot shots for the last hour; hasn't hit anyone but it can ruin a man's digestion when he gets too close."

  Two Sanitätsmen carrying a stretcher with a wounded stabsfeldwebel on it passed, bent low. The man on the stretcher moaned, his hands holding his stomach. A battle dressing covered a hole in his gut.

  Kruger shook his head. "A good man. Shrapnel from a T-34 burst...." Langer looked closely at the wounded man's face as he passed. He had seen the look too many times before, that distant expression that even pain could not hide. A certain look to the eyes that meant he was dying.

  "He's a goner."

  Kruger nodded agreement. "All right, Sergeant, enough of this bullshit. Get back to your people and take care of them. If I can do anything for you, let me know." Kruger turned his back and moved off down the gully, talking to a man here and there, giving a pat on the back or kick in the ass as was needed.

  Approvingly Langer watched him. Good man. A spinning ricochet said their sniper was still out there – trying his best but to little avail.

  Gus joined him on the way back to the Panther, carrying five loaves of bread and an armful of ersatz sausage which everyone swore was made from the cadavers of diseased hyenas. Only Gus seemed to like them, but then he liked everything. He was a walking septic tank. Langer watched in amazement as a long link of sausages disappeared into the gaping orifice that served as a mouth for Gus. "A walking septic tank, that's what he is."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ilye Shimilov scanned the German positions through an artillery periscope. Holding the rank of captain, he still had the final authority over the commander of the guards battalion that would attack this night. He had proved his fitness time and again, and more than once he had personally shot laggards or those who failed to show the proper revolutionary spirit in the back of the neck with his Nagant revolver. He preferred it over the newer automatic Tokarev pistols. Revolvers were old-fashioned, but they seldom jammed. He was satisfied with what he saw. From the outposts he had received the strength and disposition of the Germans facing him.

  Two self-propelled guns and a single Panther, all told about eighty men in the gully which sat on a small rise. He had at his disposal seven T-34s and two KV-1s. That and the assault battalion of the 199th Guards would be more than enough to wipe out this small pocket of Fascists.

  There was about a half-hour of light left. Langer put his rations in the turret and strapped on a couple of extra pouches of magazines for the MP-40 submachine gun he took out of the tank. Stuffing his long Kar-98 bayonet into his belt, he tapped Teacher on the shoulder and said, "I'm going out for a look see." One thing he had learned over the years was to get a look at his position from the enemy's point of view, to see where the most likely spot was for them to come from and check for low points in which troops could mass unseen.

  Teacher nodded. “Be careful, my friend. We need you here. Don't let Ivan talk you into going to one of the rest camps beyond the Urals."

  Carl smiled, put a couple of egg grenades into his jacket pocket and slipped over the top of the gully and into the brush. His splinter camouflage blended well into the bushes. He crawled slowly and easily, instinctively staying in the lowest ground possible. No dip was too small not to serve as he worked his way out, crawling until his knees and elbows felt as if they were working their way through the canvaslike fabric of his jacket and trousers. Going out about three hundred meters, he hunched in a shell hole with the remains of an unidentifiable corpse. Not even a shred of uniform was left to show if he was German or Russian. Taking out his notebook, he quickly drew a sketch of the German positions from this viewpoint, making special notes of the small dips in which Ivan could rush them from no more than fifty meters. That distance in the dark could be covered in seconds.

  Crawling on, he heard a rustle in the high grass to his left. He froze. The sky was getting dark and shadows were long on the ground. Straining, he waited. Another rustling of bushes. Whoever it was, was near and coming his way. Slowly he took the bayonet out of his belt and held it near his face.

  Squirming slightly to face the sounds, he tensed, gathering his legs under him, ready to leap or run if there were too many. A shadow showed itself lengthwise to him between some brush and a patch of high grass. Drawing a long slow breath, he held it in a moment and then lunged, belly low to the ground, his blade ready to strike into the body of the intruder.

  The intruder turned just in time for Langer to see his face. He turned his blade away but still landed on the man with a thump.

  Major Kruger heaved a sigh of relief. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

  "The same thing you are, I imagine." He noted the small hand-drawn map in the major's hand.

  Somewhat testily Kruger reprimanded Langer. "Next time, Sergeant, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you kindly inform me of your plans before you cut my throat. And put that damned ugly blade away. It gives me the chills just thinking how close you came."

  The two conferred for a moment on what they had seen and made their way back separately to the ravine. Slithering on his belly, Langer slid down to the bottom as his crew gathered around.

  Gus was still stuffing food into his mouth between swallows of vodka, making the most atrocious feeding sounds he had ever heard, gulping, choking, grunting and farting – all at the same time. Unbelievable.

  "Where's those grenadiers the major said we could have?"

  Teacher gave a low whistle and an Obergefreiter joined them from the shadows. He was a dark wiry man, his belt stuffed with stick grenades and an MP on his chest. "Koch, Walther. I guess we're to work together tonight."

  Langer nodded. "Good enough. What do you have with you?"

  Koch pointed to the shadows in niches of the gully. "Seeing as how you're on the far end of this ditch, the major sent me with two MG-34s and ten riflemen. Where do you want us?"

  Moving to the side of the tank, Teacher handed them a flashlight; covering the glow, they went over the small notebook map Carl had made.

  "From out there, I could see two approaches they could take, one just to our left is low enough for infantry to get close enough without being seen; the other is a trench farther out. They could get to us from that and come down the ravine. We'll take care of the tank ourselves. I want you to place half your men and one MG on the ridge. Put t
he others and your remaining MG about forty meters down the gully from us. Place them on the far side. That way, if Ivan comes down, you let them get past you and we'll have them between your MG and the Panther's hull gun. I'll give you one minute after the first firing starts to get your men out of the way. You come back to us on the far side of the ridge and join us here. At that time, we'll cut loose with the seventy-five to finish off whatever's left of the Ivans in the gully."

  Koch nodded agreement. "Very good. I like it. They won't expect anyone to be on the far side of the gully. Should work out pretty good. Make sure you give me that minute before you cut loose with that cannon."

  Splitting his men up, he gave them their instructions and took the rest down the gully with him, disappearing into the shadows of the last light.

  Crackling in the distance, a Russian light machine gun answered by the rapid chatter of a German MG-42...

  General Oberst Hoth received the day's after action reports with a sense of foreboding. Reviewing the positions of his troops, uneasiness worried at the edge of his mind. Too slow. They had not reached their objectives. Ivan was ready for them. True, they had made five miles of penetration overall, but that did not mean that the Soviet lines were penetrated – not the way they had prepared their system of ring defenses. The day had started off badly enough when Lauchert's brigade of Panthers had stalled in an undetected mine field. It took hours for the pioneers to clear a lane. All the time, Russian artillery was having a field day on the immobilized tanks. The rains of the past days had served to turn the low ground near Beresvyy into a bog where one tank after another came to a stand-still with mud up to the skirts and covering the treads. The only success was the capture of Cherkakoye, where the flame throwers mounted on the Mark IIIs had used their flaming hoses to good effect in burning out the houses and bunkers. The hissing jets of fire had a range of almost eighty meters and turned the inside of the Soviet bunkers into flaming ovens designed for the cooking of human flesh.