Red Army

The attack made the crest, and the vehicles continued down into the next valley. A radio set in the observation post squealed and coughed with requests for more illumination, even as another station reported that they had driven through the British position. A spontaneous cheer went up from the group of officers, clerks, and signalers assembled at the observation post. But Duzov surveyed the wastage in the valley and on the far slopes as the last flares sputtered into oblivion.

He turned to the regiment's commander.

"Don't stop. Drive them. The British will throw in everything they have now; they'll try to block you at all costs. But we have the initiative.

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The Three-thirty-first Tank Regiment will be up shortly after dawn. Do whatever else you must, but don't let anything stop your tanks."

Lieutenant General Trimenko closed his eyes to the false dawn that rimmed the horizon, resting as best he could in the shuddering helicopter seat. He knew he needed a few hours of real sleep. But he wanted to make just one more visit forward, to check up on the commander of the Sixteenth Guards Tank Division.

Trimenko felt a weary elation that kept him moving. He kneaded the pouch of pistachio nuts in his pocket, reflecting that he would have to fill it up as soon as he returned to the army command post. The night was going well, after all. It had been a near thing, and the situation still was not entirely under control. But the indicators were good. The German counterattack had been contained, after a few desperate hours, well south of the line of Highway 71. In the end, it appeared that the Germans had only loaded more of their forces deeper into Malinsky's trap. And the Dutch simply had not mustered enough punch to make a difference.

According to the last report he had received, the lead regiments of the Sixteenth Tank were loose in the German rear, amplifying the favorable situation created by the forward detachments and inexorably closing the clamp behind the German operational grouping. Trimenko saw clearly that the only hope for the West German corps at this point was a full-scale breakout attack to the rear, followed by an attempt to stabilize the situation on the Weser River line. But there were no indications that the Germans were even considering such an alternative, and Trimenko doubted that it would come to pass. The Germans were determined to trap themselves. In any case, he was convinced that his forces would be on the Weser in sufficient strength by noon the next day to create panic.

No, he corrected his weary brain. Today. Noon today. It's already today.

Trimenko slipped off his headset, sick of the pilots' blather. He settled lower behind his seat belt, thinking of Starukhin and how furious his rival would be to find that Trimenko had beaten him to the Weser, while Starukhin himself was still struggling to achieve his own breakthrough.

And why stop at the Weser? Trimenko felt confident now that he could beat Starukhin to the Rhine, as well. It was a matter of detailed calculation, of efficiency, of forcing men and events to conform to the rigorous science of war. Starukhin's reliance on ardor and native wit had brought the Third Shock Army commander up short. Starukhin had had better tank terrain, far better than the muck through which Trimenko had been forced to attack. And Starukhin had had more support from 190

RED ARMY

frontal assets. Really, he had enjoyed all of the advantages. But Starukhin w a s a n anachronism.

The pilots saw the tracer rounds rising toward the windshield. The senior pilot had made the decision to fly higher than usual, afraid of snagging power lines in the morbid German darkness. He had not expected any problems with air defenses so far behind Soviet lines.

But the tracers reached insistently toward the little aircraft, pulsing up toward the pilots with a peculiar slow-motion effect. The pilot-navigator shouted from the right-hand seat, and the senior pilot tried to bank the helicopter away from the staccato flashes.

The desperate maneuver of the aircraft woke Trimenko from his reverie. Over the shoulders of the pilots, the distant battlefield turned on end until it was a vertical band of light. Trimenko's maps and papers skittered off the seat, and he grasped for anything he could use to stabilize himself. Then the aircraft jolted several times in rapid succession, and a shock of white filled Trimenko's eyes as one of his own mobile air-defense guns blasted him out of the sky.

191

FIFTEEN