Malinsky tried to keep it all in precise order in his head. But he could feel the effects of stress and sleeplessness beginning to tell on him. Small details had begun to elude him for long moments, and he wondered how much longer he could go on without becoming a menace to his men.
The helicopter started losing altitude. Malinsky saw discreet guide lights directing them onto the landing area. He was anxious to get out and hear the latest on the situation from Starukhin. And, he admitted to himself in a moment of weakness, he desperately wanted to know what was happening to his son’s brigade.
Major Barak enjoyed the clean feel of the night air on his face as his tank cruised down from the mountain. His battalion constituted the advance guard of the Third Brigade, and he had worried as his column approached the Teutoburg Forest, then began the climb along the tree-lined mountain road. It was inconceivable to him that such a perfect choke point would go undefended. But no one had fired a shot. Now it was an enormous relief to emerge from the narrow pass, running down through the tight corridor of a village and out onto an open highway. His tanks were headed west for the Ruhr, and for the Rhine beyond.
The rumble of the armored column penetrated the roar of his own vehicle, piercing the padded headset and filling Barak with a sense of irresistible power. If the Americans showed up, they would have the devil beaten out of them. And if they failed to appear, Barak intended to see the Rhine before sunset.
Barak enjoyed leading the way this time, despite the obvious risk. He worried about the brigade commander. Colonel Malinsky had been visibly ill at the hurried meeting a few hours before, and, when questioned, the brigade staff admitted that the colonel had a bad case of the shits. The situation made Barak uncomfortable. He did not care much for Malinsky, in any case. The colonel was far too remote, too self-involved for Barak, who liked noisier, more sociable commanders who did not mind sharing a drink with their subordinates. Drinking with his superiors had long been a successful practice for Barak, and he resented Malinsky’s aloofness, telling himself that the elegant young colonel had simply ridden on his father’s coattails.
Malinsky was too much of an intellectual, as well. Barak distrusted the bookish sort of officers, the ones who could always tell you what Gareyev or Reznichenko or some other theorist had to say about an issue. Barak was convinced that all of the restructuring nonsense was ruining the army. How could anybody who was afraid to knock back a few drinks be any good in a fight? Barak suspected that the deep thinkers were the ones who had almost ruined the army in Afghanistan. He doubted the brigade commander would be much of a fighter, even without the runs.
Distant points of light on the southern horizon caught Barak’s eye! It was an odd little display, and he could not determine what caused it. Then he saw more points of light. Some of them seemed to be moving. But the night beyond the roar of the column felt silent, dead.
Without further warning, Barak’s vehicles began to erupt. Instantaneous clangs and blasts underscored spurts and billows of fire. Dark shapes careened through the air as burning tanks spun off the highway into ditches and fields, fuel tanks blazing.
Barak dropped into his turret. He could not decide what to do. He ordered his driver to find a building, anything, to hide behind.
He could not remember the call sign for the air-defense troops. He had never spoken to them in the past, regarding them as second-class soldiers. He broke open the radio net.
“Air-defense commander, air-defense commander, this is the battalion commander. Do you hear me?”
No response.
A lurching motion smacked Barak against the inside of the turret. Attempting to steer the vehicle off the road, the driver had misjudged the angle of an embankment. The tank began to slide to its left.
Now that Barak had opened the net, everyone tried to speak at once.
“Everybody clear the net,” he shouted, as though raising his voice would empower the transmission. “Clear the net. Air-defense commander, where are you?”
“This is the air-defense commander.”
“Enemy helicopters. Why aren’t you firing? What good are you?”
“We are firing. The targets are out of range. We can’t even pick them up on radar.”
Barak clung to the inside of the turret. The driver fought the slide of the tank and seemed to have arrested it. Barak tried to understand how he could be attacked by something at which he could not strike back. How could the enemy be out of range, or invisible? What were the air-defense troops for, after all?
“They can’t be out of range,” Barak insisted. “Fire at them.”
Abruptly, the tank resumed its slide. The sickening motion felt tentative at first, then it gained in velocity. Barak stared wildly down into the hull. The tank stopped with a jerk that banged Barak down against the gunner. The big vehicle had come to rest at a forty-five-degree angle.
“We’re in the mud,” the driver said matter-of-factly, as though it were something to be routinely expected.
“Get it out,” Barak ordered. “I don’t care what you do, but get us out of here.” He switched from the intercom back onto the radio net. “All vehicles clear the road. Get in among buildings or trees. All vehicles take cover.”
Barak’s tank growled and shook, then powered back down. The driver tried again, filling the compartment with fumes. The efforts only seemed to grind them deeper into the mud. Barak knew from experience that they would need to be towed out.
He switched over to the long-range radio, calling brigade headquarters. Again, he received no response. The airwaves buzzed with static and surrealistic tones. The enemy were jamming everything. He sent his message anyway, hoping that someone would copy it, reporting that he was under heavy attack by enemy antitank helicopters. Finished with the transmission, he began to climb out of the tank, intending to take over a vehicle that remained mobile.
The sight of his battalion stopped him. Dozens of vehicles stood ablaze, marking the long trail of the battalion in the darkness. There were more fires than he could count, stretching down the road as far as he could see. It seemed impossible, a joke. It had been minutes, seconds. Here and there, an untouched vehicle moved against the fiery backdrop like a stray dog scavenging. One of the roaming vehicles exploded just as Barak turned his eyes to it. Then another went up. It was as if some godlike enemy were out there, patiently exterminating them all. Barak almost jumped to the ground and fled. But he took command of himself, unwilling to be a coward, no matter how hopeless the situation. He slipped back into the hold to order his crew to evacuate the helpless vehicle with him. A noise enormous beyond imagination stopped him.
The brigade’s senior officer of transportation troops watched helplessly as his supply column began to explode. He had pulled off the road on a hilltop, positioning his vehicle so that he could count the trucks of the materiel support battalion as they passed, wondering how many had fallen out. And without warning, the faint dawn blew up. Enemy tanks, sleek, with flat, angular turrets, emerged from the murk across the valley, bristling into small-unit formations as they rolled north. They used their main armaments sparingly, raking the column of trucks with machine-gun fire. The steel phantoms seemed to float over the terrain, enhancing the ghostly effect of their unexpected appearance east of the Teutoburg forest. The transportation officer’s concern with lone lost vehicles quickly disappeared.