Tilting the Balance

For the moment, standoff. Jager saw no point in firing from his present position. He’d just waste ammunition and announce to the Lizards where he was. About the only way he could hurt them from here would be to put one right down a cannon barrel. He laughed at that and muttered, “If I want a miracle, I’ll ask for it in church.”

The Lizards weren’t eager to swarm up the ridge any more, though, not when the two that had tried it didn’t come back. They weren’t used to armor fights where their foes had a decent chance of doing them in. Jager didn’t think they were afraid; he’d stopped underestimating enemies after his first couple of weeks in Russia. He did think he’d made the Lizards thoughtful.

He was about to order his reserves to try a flanking maneuver using the ridge for cover when a shell slammed into the side of the northernmost Lizard panzer. Another followed a few seconds later and set the armored vehicle ablaze. Jager was still trying to figure out who was doing the shooting when the Lizard crew bailed out of their panzer and ran for the brush. Machine-gun fire cut them down.

Jager whooped. “It’s that Panzer IV!” he yelled. “They should have chased it down and killed it, but they got busy with us and forgot all about it.” He’d forgotten all about it, too, but he didn’t have to admit that, even to himself.

The Lizards certainly had left it out of their plans. Its unexpected return to action did the same thing to them that the unexpected in combat often did to the Russians: it panicked them and sent them into a retreat they didn’t have to make. Jager fired a couple of rounds at them from the ridge line, just to remind them he was there, but didn’t pursue-coming out into the open against them was asking to get shot up.

Klaus Meinecke looked up from his gunsight, a grin stretched wide across his face. “By God, Colonel, they’re as sensitive about their flanks as any virgin I ever tried to lay,” he exclaimed.

“So they are.” Jager laughed, too, but under the coarse joke lay a grain of truth. He had seen the same thing fighting the Red Army. Come straight at them and they’d die in place by thousands sooner than yielding a meter of ground. Flank them out-or even threaten to flank them out-and they were liable to run like rabbits. Half to himself, he said, “They aren’t quick to adapt, not even a little.”

“No, sir,” the gunner agreed. “And they’ve paid for being slow, that they have.”

“You’re right.” Jager sounded wondering, even to himself. His men had killed at least five Lizard panzers-to say nothing of a helicopter-in this fight. They’d lost more than that-Tigers, Panthers, Panzer IVs-but they’d done the enemy some real damage. He wondered how long it had taken the Wehrmacht’s armor to kill five Lizard panzers last year. Weeks probably, maybe months. Panzer IIs, Panzer IIIs, Czech machines impressed into action, Panzer IVs with the stubby 75mm guns for infantry support-they were all toys, set against the Lizards’ tanks.

He must have said that aloud, for Meinecke answered, “That was last year. This is now. And who knows what they’ll come up with next? Maybe a Tiger with sloped armor and a really long-barreled 88. That’d make the Lizards sit up and think.”

It made Jager sit up and think, too. He liked the idea. Then he looked around again. Now he didn’t see smoke and flame and shattered flesh and metal. He saw that his comrades were still here and the Lizards had fled. “We held the position,” he exclaimed.

“We did, by God!” The gunner sounded as surprised-almost dazed-as Jager felt. “I’m not used to that.”

“Nor I,” Jager said. “I’ve been part of a partisan raid that stung them, but every time I went up against them in regular combat, I always ended up retreating… till now.” He started thinking about what needed to happen next. “Now we can bring some infantry forward, send ’em down the road to screen for us.”

“Infantry!” Meinecke spoke the word with a tanker’s ingrained scorn. “What’s infantry going to do against panzers?”

“Give us warning when they’re on the move, if nothing else,” Jager answered. “Snipers may pick off a commander or two; the Lizards come out of their cupolas when they think it’s safe, same as we do. Maybe even an unbuttoned driver. And I hear they’re going to get some sort of antipanzer rocket the Americans have passed on to us.”

“That’d be something, if it works,” the gunner said. “The Lizards have hurt us plenty with rockets.”

“I know. They’ve hurt us with their panzers, too, a lot worse than they did today.” Jager scratched his head. His hair was matted with greasy sweat. “I haven’t seen them foolish that way before-those couple that charged straight at us. They should have known better. I wonder why they didn’t.”

“don’tknow that, sir,” Meinecke said, “but I m not going to complain about it. You?”

“No,” Jager said.