He sensed Hubner behind him.
“All right, I think I did it,” said the man. “I think I got the right ones connected to the right things, whatever you call them.”
“Watch out. You don’t want to be behind this stovepipe when I light it off.”
“No sir.”
“Ready?”
“All set.”
“Quick, quick, quick,” universal German army speak (Hoppe, hoppe, hoppe) for do it now, and the two men rose, FG and STG on full auto, and barked off twenty and thirty rounds apiece of suppressive. As they completed their magazines, Karl rose behind them, peering through the small opening in the blast shield appended to the muzzle of the Panzerschreck to keep the rocketeers from frying their faces off in the drama of the launch, put the crude sight on the front armor plate of the tank, which had gotten too fucking close, and squeezed the firing gap, a trigger-like device on the rear grip, which did something to a magneto — no one was sure what — with the result that an electrical current zipped through the wires to the rocket engine and set it off.
The engine was still burning as it drove the 88mm rocket from the tube, trailing a noxious spray of exhaust and flame that dilated roaringly — hence the blast shield — obscuring clarity, but the rocket hit the tank dead-on, detonated, and in a split second something inside the tank co-detonated. The explosion was tremendous, and the tank shivered as it went all Mickey Mouse on them. That is, the interior blast was so percussive that it blew the twin oval hatches of the 34 into the open position, where they stuck, giving the turret the profile of the famous cartoon rodent’s circular ears. Smoke and tornadoes of flame gushed from the open orifices that Mickey’s ears had revealed. It was best not to consider what was happening to the Ivans in the guts of what had become a crematorium.
“Set to blow!” came a scream from behind them.
Karl dumped the Panzerschreck, not caring whether Hubner bothered to save it, and yelled, “Fall back, fall back!”
By commander’s obligation, he felt the need to be the last across, so as his men peeled back, headed over the arches of the bridge and past the primed and set chunks of explosive buried in the roadway, he stood and fired three round bursts at the clumps of Ivans he could see moving toward the bridge through the city streets. Some he dropped, some he persuaded to think up another solution. When he ran dry, he quickly switched magazines, pulling a fresh one from the shoulder-harnessed line of pouches, even as he was moving backward step by step, aware that death whistled by and around at jet speed, protected only by the belief that God favors pretty boys. He almost made it. In fact, he had made it when something hit his water bottle hard and the shock transferred through his body, corkscrewing him down. His head hit hard against the bridge stone, and steel football helmet or not, the shock reached his brain, too. Instant headache, brief moment of where-the-fuck-am-I? confusion, the sensation of hot, thick syrup pouring through his system, making him stupid and slow. He groped, found his FG-42, meant to pull it toward him, and saw that three Ivans had made it to the bridge, seen their opportunity, and now dashed to finish him with their tommy guns.
He struggled to arm himself for the close-up gunfight, but his dull fingers couldn’t find enough purchase on the FG, so he diverted to the thirteen-round Browning Grand Puissance he carried in his holster. Again the sluggish fingers wouldn’t get the hasp off the holster flap.
Then suddenly the three Ivans went down, knocked asprawl from behind by a burst of fast pistol fire, and who should come hustling out of the smoke of battle, face smeared with sweat and blood, Luger with toggle locked back signifying empty magazine, but long-lost orphan of the storm Dieter Schenker, who raced to him and pulled him to his feet.
“Dieter, what are you doing on that side of the bridge?”
“I couldn’t remember which side we were attacking from. I guess I got it wrong.”
“Remind me to get you two or three more medals.”
“Come on, Karl, we’ll discuss it later. Aren’t they going to blow this thing?”
“I believe so.”
The two men hobbled across the bridge, sheathed by smoke from the burning T-34 and the heavy suppressive fire from the parachutists on the far side, who hammered every living thing they could see and by simple luck, which seemed always to favor the brave in war, except when it did not. At the same time, it was quite a long thirty seconds, proving the relativity of time, because to Karl it seemed like thirty years, and he was only twenty-six.
At last, more or less unscathed but for the ringing in his ears and a variety of soon-to-sting scrapes, bruises, and contusions, he made it to the bridge’s end and rolled clumsily to the left with Schenker all twisted up against him, both of them screaming, “Blow it! Blow it!”
Explosive genius Deneker lit the one-second fuse to pop the No. 8 cap, which in turn set off the det cord, which exploded its way to the ten pounds of Cyclonite wadded into the center arch of the bridge, and the world yielded to a grand clap of chaos and energy. The charisma of the explosion once again asserted itself as all fell back before the titanic rupture in the atmosphere, since when energy changes form, it’s not a good thing to be too close.
The geyser speared 250 feet into the air, at the same time sending a hard surf roaring along the surface of the River Seret to shake the boats moored in oily serenity. There was a bridge at Chortkiv, and in the next nanosecond there was no bridge at all, only a sheer gap of thirty feet in the center stone arch, while all around clumps of rock and timber floated down out of the cloud that had been raised and was itself, after having reached apogee, beginning to collapse.
“Karl, Karl, are you all right?” someone was yelling into his ear. It was Wili Bober.
“Who are you?” Karl asked.
“He’s concussed,” somebody said.
“Well, drag him along to the truck,” said Wili, “and the rest of you, disable the ones we don’t take. We’ve got to get out of here before Ivan figures out what’s happening.”
Two men more or less pulled the daffy Karl along, though in his brain fog, he had a tendency to wander off. He started noticing things of no consequence, like some placid chickens in some peasant yards, unperturbed by the human drama ongoing before them, with no comment on life, death, honor, courage, whatever; a deserted tractor, actually red, a half-hoed garden plot, a barn. Most of the grass and shrubbery needed trimming, though in summer, growth went wild. All of this was of no use to the parachutists, who ran to the four trucks parked haphazardly along the roadside, their crews having disappeared somewhere out of the free-fire zone. With no one really telling them to do so, a couple of the Green Devils ran to three of the trucks and fired a three-round burst into the engine blocks, then put a single shot through the rear tires on such an angle that it would proceed under power of its high velocity to the other tire and puncture it as well.
Someone shoved Karl into the cab of the remaining truck while talented Wili Bober cracked the plastic dashboard with his rifle butt, pulled out a wad of wires, did some diddling, and the truck shivered to life.
“Everybody aboard?” he hollered, and the truck bounced on its springs as the boys climbed on. “Wave good-bye to the nice Russian fellows,” said Wili, and cranked through the gears as the vehicle accelerated down the dust road out of Chortkiv and hurtled along through wheat fields at forty-five miles an hour. They were miles behind enemy lines, but the truth of military operations was that no land is ever completely suffused with troops. Instead, units are like amoebas sprawled across the landscape, taking up positions, intensifying in density as they get closer to the battle zone and the importance of logistics becomes paramount, with all the auxiliary units clustered close to the combat troops, but for huge amounts of area, there’s really no military presence at all. The truck roared through quiet rural zones and copses of trees, once passing a Soviet truck whose driver merrily waved, causing Wili to wave back. Two things were immediately clear: Ivan wasn’t quick enough to get airplanes into the air, and the Russian communications efficiency left much to be desired.