From here in the center of the field the Tiger’s range extended to every corner of the valley. There was no T-34 he couldn’t reach.
* * * *
0920 hours
‘Go, go, Papa, go!’
Dimitri worked the gears. The General flattened out and ran like a thoroughbred over the ruts of the sunflower field.
Valentin had gotten them into a race with a Mark IV Dimitri didn’t know how far away the German ran beside them but he guessed it was ridiculously close; everything in this field was.
Valentin’s boots were not on Dimitri’s shoulders now.
‘Ease left!’ Valentin ordered. The Mark IV must have tried to shear off, quit the race, but Valya wasn’t relenting.
‘Straighten out.’
Valentin’s voice flipped between steely and excited. He’d already left one Mark IV burning in the first minutes of the battle. Valya had shot him from behind; Dimitri had never in his life been behind a German tank! Now this sprinting Mark IV was their second target. Valya was the commander and gunner. He handled both duties - each was enough for one man - with skill and a measure of cool, even in this deadly valley coiled with the SS.
Their two forces had rushed into a tank fight no one in either army could have trained for, never imagined would happen. Two hundred tanks inside four square kilometers, it was like a saloon brawl, but not with fists, with cannons! Dimitri wanted to be proud of his son, that would ease his fright at their situation, but he had his hands full flogging the General back and forth at Valentin’s snap orders, stopping to fire, cranking into gear, and accelerating to keep moving, keep alive. And suddenly this race to the death. For that’s what this was: Whoever pulled ahead could hit the brakes first. The other, still moving, would slide by, straight into the sights of the winner. This was an impromptu strategy, made up on the spot. What else could they do? Who knew how to fight like this? Cossacks on horseback, yes, but these weren’t horses.
Dimitri eased the General in line and felt the speed climb again. The German wasn’t getting away so easily.
The yellow field began to scorch and collapse under the great armored fracas. More and more the sunflowers were trampled, or burned by exploding fuel. Dimitri could only see straight ahead, flashing in and out of thinning green and gold patches, through drifts of gray smoke. He dodged other tanks that lurched in his way, tanks locked in their own confrontations; he avoided wrecks. The German was somewhere beside them. Dimitri did everything he could to be faster, to get his son the shot he needed.
He sped over the valley, searching through the whipping flowers for an advantage, anything. The Mark IV was a fleet enough tank to make this race dicey. Fifty meters ahead to the left, a thick column of smoke caught his eye. A T-34 and a Mark IV had rammed each other. The Mark IV had ridden up the Soviet tank’s front. They’d both burst into fireballs. Through the smoke Dimitri spotted their criss-crossed turrets.
Valentin thought of the move the same moment Dimitri did.
‘Come left.’
The smoking pylon of the two fused tanks was only seconds ahead.
Dimitri knew what his son intended: Valentin was going to shove the racing Mark IV, putting the two dead tanks right in his path. The German will have to swerve left - he won’t dodge right, closer to us - or stop. Either way, he’ll have to slow down. Valya will guess which way the German’s going to jump.
We’ll stop first and have our cannon waiting.
‘Everyone hang on. Papa, full stop!’
Dimitri crammed on the brakes. The General skidded, Dimitri corrected to keep the treads sliding straight. He downshifted fast.
The General tilted forward as though to pour them all out through their hatches but Dimitri had the tank at a dead stop in seconds. Valentin did not fire immediately. The turret whined and rotated degrees right. In his head Dimitri trailed the Mark IV running away, saw it avoid the burning mess in front of it; he imagined the SS commander losing sight of the T-34 that had been broadside for almost a kilometer; the German thought, Oh, no; he screamed at his driver to swerve, evasive turns, now, now!; behind him, not far enough, carefully adjusting, the faster, smarter T-34 commander stayed in his range finder, neither fooled nor hot, following the German with the long eye of his cannon; the German counted seconds, gaining distance; does he shout, Ha ha! that he has got away? Dimitri turned in his seat to watch his son; Valentin toed the firing pedal with an oddly ginger tap for what it set loose; the breech recoiled with a massive shrug; Pasha fed it another round, all one flowing action; Valentin made a small adjustment to his aim and fired again; Pasha never left his knees, never seemed to be without a shell in his arms; Valentin fired again; three smoking casings lay on the matting; did the German commander count the shells coming in when he was done counting seconds?
‘Let’s get going, Papa.’
For thirty minutes, the General wandered over the valley floor, looking for jousts like a medieval knight. The sunflower field lay in total ruin, flattened under so many tracks, so much wrath and murder. Shapes strayed in the smoke. Valentin fired only a dozen more times, reporting no hits.
Dimitri had no idea how the battle was going; who was winning? The tally of stilled Soviet tanks was greater than those of the Germans. This was no surprise to him; the Red force in these sunflowers had been held in reserve until Prokhorovka, they’d been untested in Kursk. These Germans were hardened SS. Dimitri felt hunted. He was always lost, reacting to shadows, boots stamped on his shoulders, he ran through stretches of sunflowers left standing that blinded him again, then emerged to no landmarks but more dead hulks. He saw tankers of both armies, out of their machines, scurrying to get away. Sasha took shots at them. He was never certain if the boy shot at SS or Russians, they all ran like any man would. He drove, in circles, straight, he stopped and started, he swerved. He stayed in a clench on the steering levers and waited, moving, never before so scared as he was now.
He drove past a beheaded T-34. The tank’s turret lay upside down ten meters from the chassis, pouring fumes. In seconds another ruined Red tank smoldered nearby. Valentin’s boot guided the General in a wide semicircle to the right, past four more destroyed T-34s, all of them arranged in a singed arc, a clock face of dead tanks.
‘Jesus,’ Valentin muttered.
‘What?’ Pasha demanded to know. He did not curb his impatience and Valya didn’t reprimand him. ‘What?’ the boy insisted.
‘Tiger,’ Valentin told them.
* * * *
0933 hours
Luis chose the targets.
Balthasar ruined them.
The air hung brackish with haze. After an hour of combat in the sunflower field, fifty tanks burned. Each black spire of smoke fed the haze.
Luis stood in his cupola to peer through the mists. High above, rain clouds threatened, dimming the day even more. The optics in the Tiger were excellent, but they could not pierce far enough into the swirling battle. The eyepieces did not draw out Luis’s instincts the way his raw eyes could. He remained half outside the tank, turning circles in the cupola, taking in the battle. He could not slake his hunger for the fight, keenly watching tanks of both sides dart through the shifting mists and thinning sunflowers. Packets of crackers stayed in his breast pocket, he let his body hunger like his heart. He followed one Red tank after another, even those thinly visible through the haze. When he knew what that tank would do, where it would turn, or when it would stop, he called Balthasar into the shot. Together, they rarely missed.