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"Make sure you maintain good communications with Malyshev as he comes up. Cooperate, and no nonsense. I want his division's tanks across the autobahn tonight. I expect you to ensure personally that all control measures for his forward passage have been worked out and fully agreed upon. There must be no pauses, no letting up. Hit them, Khrenov. Get them down on their backs, and drive your tanks and fighting vehicles 112

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right over them." Trimenko paused at the power of his mental vision.

"Let me know when the first vehicle crosses the autobahn line. That triggers the deep air assaults on the Weser crossing sites." Trimenko stared at Khrenov, measuring this man who had already accomplished so much this day. "You have the opportunity to do great things, my little major general. Great things. But first you need to stop building yourself a headquarters palace here. I find this sort of indulgence totally inappropriate. Commanders should be farther forward. I can hardly hear the guns from here," Trimenko exaggerated. "You need to get moving, Khrenov."

"What's your hurry, you little bastard? You're going the wrong way, anyway. You think this is a retreat?"

In response, Captain of Transport Troops Belinsky looked up fiercely at the tall major of motorized rifle troops. Around them, their vehicles—

Belinsky's cargo trucks and the major's battalion of combat vehicles—

had intermingled with smashed headlamps, shouts, curses, and confusion. No traffic controllers had been posted at the intersection. Now the combat troops were in a self-righteous rage, furious that a lowly transport unit had muddled their progress.

"First of all, Comrade Major," Belinsky said calmly, "you're on a support route. This is not a combat artery."

"You're the one who's on the wrong road, you snot. Now you can get those trucks off out of my way, or I'll drive right over them."

"Major, this is my road, and I'm carrying important cargo."

"To the rear?" The tall major laughed. He pawed his foot at the ground like a prancing stallion, head thrown back in mocking hilarity.

Belinsky glowered up into the other man's eyes. Bully's eyes, beneath a dripping helmet rim. Belinsky was already unhappy with his unexpected mission, but he was determined to carry it out.

"Come with me, Comrade Major. Just for a moment. You need to have a look at my cargo." And he turned his back on the man, drawing the motorized rifle officer along behind him by the magnetism of his insolence.

The major followed Belinsky down the crumbling, rain-slicked road, cursing as though the outcome of the war depended on his vulgarity.

Belinsky casually slipped off his glasses and dropped them into the pocket of his tunic. He felt no need to inspect his cargo in detail yet again.

The tall major did not even have to stretch to see into the bed of the first cargo truck. As Belinsky drew back the tarpaulin, admitting the smoky daylight, the sounds of raw human misery greeted the two officers.

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Belinsky watched the major's face change expression. And it kept changing, unable to settle on an appropriate mask.

Abruptly, the major slapped down the canvas and stalked off. Belinsky hurried along beside him. "This motorized rifle battalion," Belinsky said coldly, "is returning from the front, Comrade Major. The complement of ambulances was a bit short, as were the stretchers."

But the major wasn't listening. He simply shouted orders in multiple directions, telling his men to edge to the side of the road and let the damned trucks pass.

114

NINE

Guards Colonel Anton Mikhailovitch Malinsky sat in his command car, eyes lowered to his map, thinking about Chopin. His fingers tapped and touched delicately at the milky plastic map bag, forming chords and absentminded arpeggios across the routes and rivers, cities and towns of central Germany. Remembering a favorite passage, a quick flourish into melody, he closed his eyes, the better to hear the vibrating strings and wires of memory. He loved Chopin. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it was the Polish blood that had poured heatedly into the Malinsky lines back in the days of hussars with ornamental wings rising from their armored backs.

Anton regretted the war, although his formation had not even been introduced into combat as yet. He regretted his spectacular rise to the command of a premier maneuver brigade at a jealousy-inspiring age. He regretted all of the things his father had never been able to see clearly.

The old man made such a fuss about accepting no patronage for Malinskys. Yet, Anton thought, were it not for his position, it's unlikely I would be more than a middling major. Were it not for the name, the name and its iron burden of traditions, I would hardly be a soldier.

Colonel of the Guards. Guards colonel. It sounded marvelously romance, the stuff of operettas and oversized epaulets. Strauss might have had a 115

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