Red Army

The shelling lifted. Gordunov could hear the heavy throb of armored vehicles beyond the perimeter.

Armored vehicles—the noise of their engines—had become the modern equivalent of war drums, Gordunov decided. The rumbling chilled your guts.

He pointed across the boulevard that connected the two bridges on the western bank, indicating the German post-office building. "Set up your 237

Ralph Peters

equipment in there. Report to Captain Karchenko, if you can locate his company command post. Try to get wired in again." He looked at their faces. Children. Not the sun-scarred faces of the men with whom he had survived Afghanistan. He had not seen the communications officer for hours. Another worthless bastard, he decided. He selected the least frightened-looking soldier. "You're in charge of the communications collective now. I'm appointing you to the rank of junior sergeant. Do your duty for the Soviet Union."

Gordunov left them. He limped across the boulevard to the west toward the sound of the enemy armor. The brace on his leg helped, but each step still jarred him with pain. He had selected the brace himself at the hospital, and he had worked it onto his foot and calf, unwilling to surrender himself to any other man's care.

The sound of small arms exchanges intensified behind his back, on Levin's side of the river. On his side, the sound of the armored vehicles changed.

They were moving.

Gordunov came up behind Lieutenant Svirkin's platoon. The lieutenant had a field phone that was still operational, and Gordunov called Levin.

A soldier answered. The comrade captain was up forward, in the fighting. But he had sent back the message that the attackers on the eastern bank were British regulars.

Levin would have his hands full, Gordunov thought.

Lieutenant Svirkin appeared confident, almost eager. He was new to the battalion, and Gordunov had not yet had a chance to take his measure.

"You understand? You must hold. There is no alternative. Our tanks are on the way."

"Yes, Comrade Commander."

Gordunov stumped off to check the next line platoon's defenses.

Firing erupted ahead of him. The sound of the enemy vehicles suddenly seemed impossibly close.

As Gordunov watched, a direct-fire round smashed into a corner building. A moment later, two soldiers stumbled out with their hands over their heads.

His men. Giving up. Gordunov shot them down with his assault rifle.

The lead enemy tank had already reached the Soviet positions.

Everything happened too swiftly to be managed. Gordunov watched in horror as the enormous vehicle, twice the size of a Soviet tank, rolled toward the bridge, spraying machine-gun fire to its flanks, apparently 238

RED ARMY

unstoppable. He rushed back toward the platoon he had just visited, going in short dashes on his hobbled leg. The enemy tank either did not see him or didn't care about the lone man's actions. Another tank appeared just behind the first, also heading for the key northern bridge.

Gordunov raged at the thought of the bridge falling back into enemy hands so easily. It seemed as though the air assault force defenses had simply melted away. No one returned the fire of the tanks.

Gordunov cut around the corner of a building, screaming orders at his men not to fire at him. Lieutenant Svirkin rose to meet him, his face blank.

"Where's the nearest antitank grenadier?" Gordunov demanded.

"Have you got anybody close by?"

Svirkin thought for a moment, infuriating Gordunov with his slowness. "I think . . . there's a launcher back down the street."

Gordunov seized the lieutenant's arm. "Where? Show me."

The lieutenant obediently led the way. Rushing across intersections, the two officers fired blindly in the direction of the tanks. Beyond a pair of dead civilians, they found two soldiers lying flat behind a wave of rubble. One of them had an antitank grenade launcher.

Gordunov could hear the tanks firing. It sounded as though they were very close to the bridge.

"Get up," he ordered the soldiers. "Come with me. You, too, Lieutenant."

He led them in a rush down behind the post-office building. Whatever Karchenko was doing in his company command post, it wasn't stopping tanks. Gordunov felt a sickening sense of collapse. His instincts told him that this section of the defense had gone wrong, that Karchenko simply had not had it in him as a company commander to handle the mission.

Gordunov regretted that he had not relieved him the night before when he had failed to bring back the body of the battalion chief of staff.

Gordunov waved them all down. The soldiers fell flat in the street, weapons ready. But no targets were visible.

"They're up around the next corner," Gordunov told them. The whirring and grinding of the tanks as they worked through the wreckage in the streets was unmistakable. Then a quick pair of explosions, followed by bursts of Soviet fire, signaled that somebody was fighting back.