Satchel charges were almost entirely ineffectual by now, as the tanks were well secured, but there was no other option.
Koskela set out. Two men followed. The first tank stopped and then turned toward the side of the road. The drivers were already fairly sure that the Finns didn’t have any anti-tank equipment. Otherwise they would have started shooting it well before now. The tank advanced boldly. Bullets crackled in the pine branches and direct fire blasted into the roadside.
Straight ahead was a curve in the ditch, where it swerved around a boulder. If he could just make it there.
Koskela made it. He squatted down on his knees and waited. The tank seemed as though it was starting to hesitate, but kept approaching nonetheless, shooting continuously. Koskela tried to calm himself as much as possible. He knew from experience that this kind of situation called for presence of mind above all else. You couldn’t try from too far away, and you had to focus on the task and block out any distractions. You had to try to forget where this toss was happening. To do it without thinking about the danger or what it meant. As if you were just trying to hit the tank in some entirely calm, safe place. You also had to risk as much as you could stand to be sure that you wouldn’t miss.
‘And there’s my shot.’ Koskela pulled the igniter and rose to a crouch. He threw on an upwards curve, and the arc was beautiful, like a great toss in a ball game. The charge fell just beside the gun turret, rolled across it onto the fender and went off. The tread broke and the tank stopped, turning onto its side. Koskela couldn’t see it any more. He’d been shot by a submachine gun across the road just as the satchel charge left his hand. He tried once to rise up onto his elbows, but his limp body collapsed onto the floor of the ditch, and Quiet Koski was dead.
The other two tanks paused for a moment, but then drove boldly past the wrecked vehicle. When the men in the line saw that Koskela didn’t get up, and that the tanks were drawing nearer, they started to run. And everything unraveled from there.
Karjula hadn’t left Lammio’s command post. He had to block off the road in that direction, or else ‘the whole Combined Combat Unit Karjula would go thtraight to hell’. What was holding up that damn anti-tank gun? You’d think the Red Army itthelf wath manning the thing! The ground-attack planeth have nothing to do with the gun tranthport. The main road’th not an air-thtrip. The planeth are in the thky! Yeth, of courthe the main road ith open over there!
The phone rang. Positions lost. Koskela dead. Part of the Third Company in a panic.
Karjula left.
Lammio followed after him, but Karjula ordered him to remain and organize a blockade with the reserve units.
When Karjula reached the battalion, the retreat was in full swing. ‘You goddamn flock of thheep! Get into pothition! Not one more thtep! Anyone who keepth on running ith a dead man!’
Panicked men ran down the road, and somebody panted defensively, ‘What are we supposed to do? There’s no anti-tank guns! Koskela already went and got himself killed.’
‘Quiet! Who’th thtill mouthing off over there? Halt! Or I’ll thhoot.’
Karjula had a pistol in his hand. The men closest to him stopped hesitatingly and dropped to the ground, taking cover in the ditch. But the men further off just kept on running.
‘They’re coming, boys! Tanks!’
The shout further exacerbated the panic and even one of the men who had stopped at Karjula’s command now shot off again. The Lieutenant Colonel lost his last shred of self-control. The blatant disobedience made his body shake. A thick, blinding rage blurred his brain, in which there was nothing but a vague thought. ‘This is the moment. It should be put into action now. This is the situation it’s meant for.’
The groping thought was a sign that even he at least hesitated. That was why he formulated the thought: to defend himself against the pressing awareness that he was committing a crime. He spotted a man further off who was walking along unfazed by his shouting, a submachine gun over his shoulder.
‘Halt! What are you doing? Halt! For the latht time, halt.’
It was Viirilä. He pretended not to hear and just continued on his way. He wasn’t fleeing, he was just walking calmly onward – which was also why he hadn’t obeyed. He wasn’t actually being defiant, he was just scoffing at fear. The command didn’t concern him, because he hadn’t been running to begin with. He had abandoned his post just like all the others, but now, with his calm stride, he was demonstrating that he was not afraid, neither of the enemy nor of Karjula. His disobedience was a parody, enacted for the benefit of anyone who might mistake him for one bowing to fear, an emotion he felt not in the least.
‘Halt. Where are you going?’
‘To bang the wolves in Lapland,’ Viirilä blurted out in his signature, all-blaspheming voice. The only thing missing was the snorting guffaw that usually followed it. Karjula flew into a wild, bloodthirsty rage. This feeling that was constantly fermenting in his soul, making him a terrorizing presence to all around him – and he certainly was that – was now purified and distilled into exactly what it really was: a desire to kill and destroy. And this rage that dwelt within him, constantly seeking an outlet, now rose to the surface and all means of controlling it were powerless to hold it back. There he was. That huge-headed ape. Standing right there was the repulsive personification of everything that had turned the army into a flock of deserters. And the man was laughing.
Viirilä lowered his submachine gun into the crook of his elbow, a certainty descending upon him at the last moment that Karjula was going to shoot. The movement gave Karjula the last impetus he needed to turn desire into action. He shot into the middle of the chest. Viirilä fell to his knees, then doubled over and rolled to the ground. His body jerked for a little while, as the bullet didn’t kill him right away.
Karjula breathed heavily and pointlessly paced back and forth. Then he got his voice back and screamed hoarsely, ‘Men! Calling upon the Code of Military Juthtithe I have condemned thith traitor to death. Men, thith ith a quethtion of Finland. Right here… Right now. Thith event… ith not itholated, but related to every other ithue. The joking endth here. The thame fate awaitth anyone elthe who wantth to rebel.’
The men looked at one another in a state of shock. The silence was broken by Karjula’s hoarse screaming alone. He raved like a madman, destroying what little effect his act had had, which was already pathetically small compared to what it might have been, had he carried it out in a different mental state. The men didn’t know what to think, but they immediately sensed that Karjula hadn’t performed this act out of unavoidable necessity, but rather out of his own deranged fury. And to top it off, it was Viirilä, their Number One man.
Little by little the men’s bewilderment gave way to rage. Jaws clenched and fists squeezed tight around their gunstocks. One of the men further off even took aim at Karjula, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. Instead, someone else began to scream brokenly in a voice of shock, ‘Russians! Come here! Come on over! Come on, finish us off. We’re killing people over here! Come on!’
The man was screaming like he’d lost his mind. His screeching was like that of a frantic child, full of shock, hate and fear.
The screeching brought Karjula back to his senses. A beastly roar emerged from his throat. The situation being what it was, there was nothing he could do but continue. Just as a person terrified by the realization that he has done something irreparable inevitably proceeds to compound his error, Karjula flew into a renewed rage at the man’s cries. Viirilä was the second man he had shot. The screaming man would certainly have been the third, had the enemy’s tanks not come to his rescue. From behind a bend in the road came the whistle of a shell that came crashing down at Karjula’s feet, laying him flat on his back in the center of the road.