- and the attack stalled again. Luis grew grimmer in his commander’s seat, counting minutes, knowing that Hitler in Berlin counted minutes and the swelling number of Americans on the beaches in Sicily. Stukas were called in to cover the pioneers bridging the tank moat in front of the state farm.
Finally, at 1400 hours, the ditch was spanned. Every tank of Leibstandarte attacked at once. Ground was gained a meter at a time. Armored transports hauled a full regiment of panzer-grenadiers to the leading edge of the battle, Luis’s tanks provided cover and firepower, and together they plowed into the defenders of Oktyabrski. The Reds sent out a paltry rank of T-34s to deflect the assault; a dozen were shot out of their number in the first ten minutes. Balthasar got three of them. The Tiger gunner showed an uncanny hand now with the speed and agility of the Soviet tanks, they didn’t dodge him so well anymore. The state farm fell twenty minutes ago, and with it the last high ground before Prokhorovka, Hill 252.2. Leibstandarte claimed twenty-one Soviet tanks destroyed.
The division was called to a final halt for the day. Again the flanking forces had lagged, leaving Leibstandarte exposed in the middle. The attack on Prokhorovka was forced to wait until morning, to allow Das Reich and Totenkopf to pull alongside. Luis looked backward, at the seven more kilometers they’d captured, up from Komsomolets state farm. The land was darkened and shredded by fighting. Rear elements of the division crept over the plain in the late-afternoon light, bringing food and ammunition and bandages to the warriors walking under the drifting ash of the state farm. It seemed a mighty thing to have done, to have taken this ground back from the Russians. Luis wanted Hitler to stand here with him and see it, he would present Hitler with this present of a swath of Russia, and promise him more.
But the Americans. How can Hitler ignore them? They’re an unknown quantity, an industrial behemoth let loose now in the war in Europe. What kind of fighters will the Americans be? Luis knew the Yanks were in the Pacific tangling with the Japanese, but nothing else. He stared over the churned patch of Russia he’d conquered that day. Japan, America, Italy -
those nations were far away and without weight, they were not here in the smoke of killed tanks out on that plain and the burned state farm behind him. He could not conceive that what Grimm had told him would come true, that Hitler would lose his nerve and take this away from him. He did not believe that tomorrow the SS would fail to ram forward another seven kilometers and take Prokhorovka. What could the Reds throw at him tomorrow that they had not thrown today?
Luis raised a palm over the captured plain. His hand floated in the air above the crushed grasses and turned soil, some black smoke plumes.
This hand, frail and pale as chalk, did this to the land.
‘It seems like a lot, doesn’t it?’ he asked Balthasar.
‘Yes, sir. It does.’
Luis lowered his hand.
‘It’s not enough.’
Balthasar made no answer. Luis was not curious for what the gunner’s silence said about the man’s reasons for fighting. Probably he’s like the rest, Luis thought. He’s here because he believes in Germany more than he believes in himself. Luis couldn’t be more different. He didn’t want to stop the advance because Germany might get a bloody nose. He’d cover Germany in blood if he could. Russia, too. And Italy and America. Luis alone would know when there had been enough.
‘We can take Prokhorovka,’ he said. ‘Did you know I used to be a bullfighter?’
Balthasar showed nothing of the disdain the Nordic peoples held for the barbarism of bullfighting. The gunner was still a very young man, he’d likely never been far from his own town in Germany before the war swept him up, never known a Spaniard. Balthasar probably thought all Spaniards were bullfighters.
‘No, sir.’
‘I can read what a bull is thinking. I can tell which way he’s going to jump. My father taught me this. Having my life depend on it taught me, too.
And I can tell you, Balthasar, about the Russians. I can read them. We can beat them. They know it. All their attacks are from the flanks. They’re afraid to come right at us. They nibble at our sides. Every one of their direct assaults has been weak. They’re defensive. We’ve bled them, Balthasar, we’ve bled them almost to where they’ll fall. We’ve got to go forward.
We’ve got to push the blade in deeper.’
Luis and Balthasar looked west, at the depth the blade was already into the Russian heart. It was not enough.
‘Tomorrow,’ Luis promised.
This sun over the conquered western corridor went down in the time of Luis’s mind and came back up tomorrow, glowing red in the east, chasing stars, beginning the end. And there it was again, the partisan’s heart beating in his hand. And there were bulls’ hearts throbbing there, too.
But the sensation was different, not only the pump of one man’s stolen heart and the ended lives of animals but the pulse of all Russia, right in Luis’s fist. He held his hand up, cupped as though holding a real heart, and looked into his curled palm.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said again, ‘we’ll take Prokhorovka.’
* * * *
CHAPTER 25
July 12
0410 hours
with the 32nd Tank Brigade
2 kilometers west of Prokhorovka
The commissars surfaced at first light. They came with bottles of vodka.
The cartons in their grips rang with knocking glass. The boxes sounded to Dimitri like the bells of fishermen on the Black Sea, when the boats came home from a day’s haul and called all to the docks who wanted to buy fresh catch. The commissars spread out among the tank brigade, ringing the men awake in the charcoal morning. They wore the same mustard uniforms as infantrymen, but with many medals and ribbons pinned to their tunics, and with only a sidearm slapped on their belts. The politrooks set the cardboard cartons down at their feet. They began their own calls, fishermen themselves, baiting with the vodka.
Dimitri had been awake for hours, watching lightning ripple over the steppe. He’d listened to the night workers out on the battlefield, to the thumps of explosives as engineers blew up disabled T-34s too damaged to be towed away and repaired. Sappers crawled to the front to lay mines where German tanks were certain to come today. From the other direction came the logistics corps bringing up food and ammo, lubricants and diesel.