Red Army

He placed his hand on the fender of a burned and blasted tank. A faint warmth lingered under the slick of the morning dew. He stared up calmly at the tank commander whose body had been caught halfway out of his hatch. In the fire, the body had shriveled so that it resembled a blackened monkey.

There was no point in trying to understand it all. The point was simply to win, to outlive the other bastard.

235

Ralph Peters

Gordunov limped back to the building near the northern bridge where a communications detachment had rigged an antenna. He sat down on the edge of a table, taking the weight off his hurt leg, and slowly worked out a coded message to send back to headquarters. "Bridges secured.

Forty-five percent strength. Holding."

He checked the code groups, then passed the message to a communications specialist he didn't recognize, but who had taken charge of the long-range set. If they couldn't communicate from this station, Gordunov was prepared to try again from Levin's east side of the river, where the remainder of the staff and communications platoon had set up headquarters.

"Make sure you do it right. Get an acknowledgment."

"Yes, Comrade Battalion Commander."

Gordunov stepped back out into the chilly dampness, restless. He felt exhausted, but unable to calm down. He worried that he had almost reached the point where men made bad decisions. Bad luck about the leg, he thought. The pain had taken a lot out of him. Then he heard the first ripple of organized fire.

The initial assault was coming against Levin's side of the river.

Gordunov had not expected that. The deep reserves should have been on the western bank. Perhaps the enemy was having difficulty organizing his assault in the west. Perhaps only ill-trained reservists remained, grandfathers and pot-bellied family men. Perhaps they had even lost their will to fight. Gordunov wondered how the rest of the war was going. Where was the Soviet armor? How long would it take to arrive?

He ducked back inside the communications station. Picking up a field telephone, he rang the circuit. As the answers came he told everyone but Levin to drop off.

"Can you assess your situation yet?"

"The enemy is at the outpost line," Levin said. His voice, too, sounded weary, its present excitement nothing but raw nerves. "No sign of them on the ring boulevard yet, but they'll be down here as soon as they realize how little we have out front. The damned problem is all the little alleys.

I'm afraid they'll infiltrate the defense. I have a few men up on the rooftops, spotting, but nobody in the sewers. If they come that way, we'll just have to fight them where they turn up."

"Just get one or two men down in the sewers. Establish listening posts, so you at least have a bit of warning. Otherwise, you've made the correct decision. You can't waste any firepower. The rooftops are more important."

Another station cut into the line.

236

RED ARMY

"Command, this is Outpost Four. There are vehicles moving in the treeline at the base of the hill."

Outpost Four lay on Gordunov's side of the river. The enemy would be coming from both sides.

Before Gordunov could respond, artillery rounds began to strike close by. Gordunov hit the floor, just before a blast smashed open the door.

The shocks continued, shaking the building and shattering the last surviving bits of glass. Between impacts, Gordunov could hear shouting.

The rounds were falling too close to the command post to be a random volley.

"Everybody out of here. Out the back."

The bastards had an observer in the town. It was the only possible explanation. Still, Gordunov was surprised at the intensity of the shelling. This was their town, these were their people.

The bridges, Gordunov thought. They must need them very badly.

He helped his men gather up the electronics while shock waves made the walls quiver and sifted plaster and dust from the ceiling.

"Come on. Move."

Gordunov grabbed the field phone and rang the net one last time. He tried to speak between blasts, waiting for the wires to go out at any second.

"This is the commander. I'm changing locations. The enemy has this site fixed. Each sector must be aware that there are enemy observers inside our perimeter. Men from the rearward positions are to sweep all buildings with good fields of observation. End."

Gordunov disconnected the phone and threw it to the last of the communications specialists to leave the building. Outside, the troops huddled together in the alley, cowering at each blast, waiting for instructions.

"Follow me," Gordunov commanded, although he was not completely certain where he was going. He did not want to move too far from the northern bridge, but there was a dangerous slice of open ground between the first buildings and the river. He led the men southward, attempting to work out from under the shell fire, rushing from one building to another.