Really, an assignment to Kushka was the stuff of which jokes were made — so long as you were not the assignee.
Kushka had been every bit as miserable as had been foretold, added to which the indigenous population was hostile to ethnic Russians — unless you had hard currency to spend or military goods to sell on the black market. But he had learned. How false so many of the teachings had been, how naive he had been himself. The locals felt far more kinship with their smuggling partners across the Afghan border in Toragundi, or with the not-so-distant Iranians. Even then, the lieutenant with the thin blond mustache had known that a change in borders, in formal allegiances, was inevitable. He had even told himself, "Let them have the godforsaken place." Yet, he had naturally hoped that the upheaval would not come when he was on duty, that it might somehow be delayed until it was no longer an immediate concern of his. Let the deluge wait until tomorrow, he thought sarcastically, sitting in his tank almost a decade later. It was the national attitude — may the disasters wait until someone else is on shift, until other shoulders bear the responsibility. He was ashamed of himself now. But there was nothing to be done.
Except to wait for the enemy. And to fight.
A sudden crackling in his earphones startled him out of an unwilling doze.
"Volga, this is Amur. Can you hear me?"
"I'm listening," Babryshkin said.
"I've got movement out to my front. Auto picked them up. I've got my main gun on fire-lock. But it wants to cut loose. Multiple targets. They're so bunched up I can't get visual separation on the screen. Over."
Good. That was how he wanted them. All shot out. Crowding. Unwary. Hungover with death and blood.
"How many?" Babryshkin demanded. "Give me a rough idea." He stared hard into the wasteland of his optics, but the enemy was still out of sight. He wished his on-board electronics were not broken. He wished he had had the determination and energy to transfer his command setup to a tank in better all-around condition.
"This is Amur. Looks like at least thirty heavies. Maybe more. They're moving like a pack of drunks. Nose to asshole. All jammed up."
"All right. Range?"
"Lead vehicles at seventy-five hundred.
Closer than Babryshkin had expected. "All stations, all stations. Anticipate engagement at five thousand meters.
He wanted them in close. Theoretically, he could begin engaging now, with both missiles and the swift, oversize guns. But he made up his mind to risk the further wait. The hull defilade positions were good. If the enemy was not very, very alert, they would detect nothing before they reached the deadly five-kilometer line. Once they were that close, none of them would get away. If his unit got off the first shots.
"This is Amur. I've got them under seven thousand. They're moving fast. It looks like their higher bit them on the ass."
"No sign of a combat deployment?" Babryshkin asked nervously.
"No. They just look like a mob.
Babryshkin pushed his brows hard against the optics, aching to see with his own eyes. But the darkness the range, and the long, long reverse slope prevented him from locating the longed-for tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.
"This is Amur. Six thousand meters. They don t even have flank guards out. No forward security."
It was too ideal. For a moment the thought flashed through Babryshkin's mind that it might be a trap.
No. He knew the rebels. He had gone to school with them, served with them, lived with them. And he knew that they had grown overconfident now.
Probably, he thought, the enemy had intercepted the directive to pull back to the north. Gurevich was likely correct — the message was genuine. And now this rebel unit glutted by a night of murder, had been ordered to get moving, to make up for lost time, to initiate a pursuit of the Soviet forces who were supposed to be pulling back.
Babryshkin grinned. The enemy had finally made a mistake. They had counted too heavily on the Russian tendency to obey orders, no matter what. They had forgotten that there would always be exceptions.
Now the bastards were going to pay for it.
"Volga, this is Amur. Fifty-five hundred meters. Like shooting pigeons."
"All stations, this is Volga. Hold your fire. Keep those auto-systems locked up. Let them come all the way in." Yes, there it was. He could just see the first slight movement in his telescoping optics. The manual system was inadequate to fire effectively at this range. Still he knew that he would fire. Wasting ammunition. He would allow himself that one indulgence. While the tank commanders who had better performed their maintenance or who had had better luck would gain the kills.
"Fifty-two hundred."
Babryshkin felt the tension gripping his men. Everyone wanted to feel the big guns going off. To destroy the other men rolling so clumsily, so unsuspectingly toward them.
"Fifty-one hundred meters."
At the Malinovsky Higher Tank Academy, Babryshkin had been assigned a Tadzhik study partner, along with orders to ensure that the central Asian passed the course, no matter what it took. The Tadzhik had clearly understood the system, and he had done as little work as possible. Babryshkin wrote papers for him and put together presentations, while the Tadzhik passed exams by cheating wildly. Anyway, there was a harder grading system for ethnic Europeans. Babryshkin had hated the system, hating the duplicity and dishonor of it all, the injustice…
Now he was glad the system had been the way it was. He only hoped his Tadzhik study partner was commanding the approaching detachment.
"Five thousand meters."
"Fire," Babryshkin called into the mike. "Free auto-systems. All others, engage at will." But his men heard nothing beyond the first word. They knew what to do. The huge, thumping sounds of the high-velocity guns penetrated the steel walls of his tank, the padding of his headset.
Explosions filled the lens of his optics. He tried to count the stricken targets in the distance. But they were bunched too closely. One tiny inferno blazed into the next. His headset buzzed with the mixture of elation and complaint he had come to know so well over the past weeks. It was the special sound of men at war now that they fought in separate machines, unable to look at, to touch, to smell each other, reassuring themselves that they were not alone. Babryshkin had come to the conclusion that, even if the radio were not required for communications on the modern battlefield, it would be psychologically necessary so that men locked in combat could reach out to one another. Tell me that my brothers are with me.
"Don, this is Volga," he called to the fire support commander. "Fire deep illumination now." He could not hear the response of the combination guns, which were deployed well behind the zigzag of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, but the sky above and just behind the enemy vehicles soon glared with a false dawn as the parachute flares ignited and began to drift.