Last, as he felt someone pulling on him, he heard the sound of someone else screaming in terror for his mother. As darkness overcame him, he recognized the voice as his.
Bazarian took the reports of the assault on Potsdam in stride. He had expected heavy casualties and he was not disappointed. While he had hoped that the Stalin tanks would penetrate the defenses of Potsdam, the fact that they had failed did not deter him. The sudden appearance of the American bombers had stopped the assault as the B-25s, flying at nearly treetop level, dropped their loads on the battle below. In some cases, they went so far as to bomb their own lines in order to stop the Red armor. It had worked. Almost all the Russian tanks had been destroyed, along with that obnoxious pig of a Russian who led them. Then, bombs gone, the bombers returned to strafe the Russian positions with their machine guns, again from absurdly low altitude.
However, it was the napalm that had really halted the attack. When the bombers departed, the fighters arrived in swarms and dropped scores of liquid-fire bombs that burned the Russian infantry and incinerated the crews of the remaining tanks. He had heard of the existence of the weapon, but had never expected to see it.
Even so, he was confident that the next attack would succeed. The Americans had nothing left with regard to physical defenses. They had all been blown to pieces by the combination of artillery, Russian tanks, and American bombs. He would use his infantry in waves to overwhelm what was left. By assiduously collecting stray units as he had done with the armor, he still had a force of nearly fifty thousand men. While many were inferior soldiers and virtually all were reluctant warriors, they would still go forward on his orders, which he had told their officers came directly from Moscow. Stalin wanted Potsdam eliminated. Would you deny that to Stalin? None would. Potsdam would fall.
Of more concern to him were the confused stories he was hearing about the battles to the west. While it was common knowledge that Zhukov had been stalled in his campaign to take Antwerp, some catastrophe had apparently befallen his armies. Some idiotic rumors even said that entire Soviet armies had been destroyed, wiped out, and that both Zhukov and Chuikov were missing. Impossible.
Yet something had definitely gone horribly, terribly wrong in that area by the Weser. Thus, it would be best if he eliminated the problem of Potsdam and prepared his army to assist in what was rapidly becoming a general retreat.
There was a knock on the door to the room he was using as an office. “Yes.”
A nervous orderly told him he had a visitor. A visitor? Bazarian paled when he saw that it was a captain from the NKVD, a short, stocky, swarthy man with an angry expression and a briefcase. Despite the difference in their ranks, Bazarian knew real fear. What did the NKVD want of him? He stood to greet his “visitor” while the orderly closed the door to give them privacy.
“Bazarian?” the man said. He had a strange accent and pronounced the name with difficulty.
“Da,” Bazarian responded. Yes.
The officer smiled and reached into the briefcase. When his hand emerged, there was a pistol in it and he fired twice at point-blank range. The bullets struck Bazarian in the chest, lifted him up and back over his chair. He crumpled on the floor and lay still.
The NKVD officer replaced his pistol and calmly walked out of the room. Outside, he ignored the looks of shock and dismay on the faces of Bazarian’s staff. What, they wondered, had their general done? Why had he been executed? Would they be next? As soon as he passed, they all bolted and ran away. Nobody checked on the general.
The stolen jeep with the Russian unit markings painted over with crude NKVD insignia waited a few yards away. Two uniformed Russian soldiers sat in the front. Tony the Toad climbed into the backseat and sat straight, looking forward. The driver started up and they drove down the road.
When they were out of sight, Tony began to shake. “Jesus Christ, Jesus, Jesus.”
“Quit praying,” said Vaslov. “Did you get him?”
“Twice in the chest. Jesus, I didn’t think I could do it. I don’t speak any fucking Russian. All I did was act like that shit who killed the Jew boys, and ask for Bazarian. I snapped my fingers, and they almost shit themselves showing me where he was. It was like I had the plague and they wanted to get rid of me.”
The late Joe Baker would have been proud. They had no idea what impact the shooting of Bazarian would have on the battle for Potsdam, but he had the feeling they had accomplished something really good.
“Enough,” said Anton. “Now let’s find a place to hide these uniforms.”
Tolliver’s first impression of the nightmare land was that it was some kind of hideous modern landscape painting by some psychotic artist in which everything was done in black. The trees were black, the grass was black, the vehicles were black, and worse, the bodies were all blackened and shriveled. Maybe it was more like some medieval painting of hell he’d seen in a college art class.
His jeep was the third in the column that drove slowly toward where the atomic bomb-they now knew its name-had been detonated. The first jeep contained a couple of scientists with a machine called a Geiger counter that supposedly told them it was safe to go on. Safe from what? Radiation, whatever the hell that was. The second jeep carried some mid-level brass from Ike’s headquarters, and Tolliver and his men in the following jeeps were along to provide security. He had been told that a number of other columns were going to try to penetrate the area and might need protection.
They didn’t. The only Russians remaining were vast numbers of the dead and the dying. Those who could still move and who hadn’t already surrendered had fled to the east, leaving behind a scene of catastrophe unparalleled in scope. Tolliver had never seen so many dead bodies and so many ruined vehicles in one area before. He now realized that it was true-an entire Russian army had indeed been destroyed by this atomic bomb. Someday, he might feel truly sorry for them, but not now. He thought of dead Holmes and so many others whose lives were wasted by a war that, in his opinion, hadn’t had to happen.
A scientist in the lead jeep signaled a right turn, and the column obediently followed. Tolliver saw that they were skirting the actual center of the blast, now referred to as “ground zero.” If the bodies strewn about were any measure of the danger they were avoiding by detouring around ground zero, it was okay by him. This was yet another sight he would never forget and never be able to describe. Black death, black fire, black earth, and now the black stench of ruined bodies rotting in the summer sun. He noticed that birds were eating the dead. What effect would radiation have on them?
Someone in the second jeep yelled out that Zhukov was probably in there, in the center of this mess. If he was, thought Tolliver, he wasn’t going to be found and he sure as hell wasn’t coming out.
As they slowly circled ground zero they began to encounter survivors. Many of those trapped between ground zero and the American lines had already surrendered, while these pitiful remnants had been trying to make it east to supposed safety. The only thing was, they weren’t going to make it. Their wounds and burns were ghastly. The flesh had been destroyed, and some of the things crawling on the ground could scarcely be recognized as human.
The column did find signs of attempted mercy. Some few Russian doctors had set up hospitals, which had been overrun by the numbers of wounded.
Tolliver saw a light colonel named Burke leave his jeep and talk to a Russian doctor. The colonel then got on the radio and delivered an emphatic message. Tolliver caught only a few words but he got the gist of it: send help fast. Tolliver also noted that this Burke looked quite shaken.