Two Fronts (58 page)

“Best way we can practice with the new fire-control system is to go hunting Russians,” Kurt Poske said.

“The whole company will be doing that,” Witt said.

“I bet you’re right,” the loader answered. His own smile slipped. “I bet we find the fuckers, too.”

No one said anything after that for a little while. Poske was much too likely to be right. Even though it was spring, the Red Army still held the initiative in these parts. Too many German soldiers and panzers and planes had headed west to keep England and France from breaking into the
Reich
to let the
Wehrmacht
mount any major strikes against the Russians. Rolling with the punches seemed to be the order of the day.

If we can roll with them
, Theo thought. Of all the
Landsers
on the Eastern Front, he might have been the least likely to come out with that thought where a National Socialist Loyalty Officer could hear him. Of course, he might have been the
Landser
on the Eastern Front least likely to come out with any thought where anyone else could hear him.

His position in the right front corner of the Panzer IV’s hull
was
very much like the one he’d had in the older panzer, though the mounting brackets for his Schmeisser were in a different place. He’d have to practice reaching for it till he didn’t need to think about that. The leather on the radioman’s seat still smelled like leather, not like old sweat. Russian panzer crews sat on cast-iron seats. When the Ivans plundered wrecked German panzers, they cut off the leather and fashioned it into boots and belts. They were chronically short of everything—except soldiers and munitions and hate.

The Panzer IV’s engine sounded as if it was working harder than the Panzer III’s had. It wasn’t much bigger, and it had more weight to haul around. The Panzer IV with the big cannon had been uparmored as well as upgunned. Unlike a Tiger’s, even a new Panzer IV’s armor probably wouldn’t keep out a hit from a T-34. But the panzer’s long-barreled 75 could also pierce a T-34’s steel shell.

Adi Stoss thought along with Theo, as he did so often. “We can kill them, and they can kill us,” the driver observed. “Maybe both sides ought to be careful for a change.”

German panzer crews had been careful ever since they first met the T-34. If you weren’t careful around the Russian monsters, your folks got to decide whether your death notice should read
Died for
Führer
and
Vaterland or just
Died for the
Vaterland. Neither choice struck Theo as inspired.

Witt rode head and shoulders out of the cupola, the way he had in the Panzer III (and, for that matter, in the Panzer II before it). You could see so much more than you could through the periscopes in the cupola. Of course, you were also more likely to end up a casualty. Good panzer commanders from every army took the chance.

“Steer a little farther to the left, Adi,” Witt ordered. “Might be something behind that little swell of ground.”

“I’m doing it, Sergeant.” Stoss used his steering levers to slow one track and speed up the other. He was still learning how much force he needed with this new machine to get the amount of turn he wanted.

Then Witt barked, “Panzer halt!”

“Halting, Sergeant.” Adi stood on the brake.

The turret traversed with the smooth near-silence of hydraulics. Through his vision slit, Theo watched the long gun barrel stop at around ten o’clock. The barrel rose slightly. Theo couldn’t make out what it was aiming at, but he had only the slit, not the magnifying scope that was fitted into the precise new sights.

A shell clanged into the breech. The gun moved again, microscopically. Then it roared. God knew it sounded more authoritative than the old 37mm. Impressive flame belched from the muzzle—and out to either side through the openings in the muzzle brake. Theo wouldn’t have wanted to be standing to either side of the Panzer IV when the main armament went off. With all that fire and hot gas spat sideways by the muzzle brake, getting too close might prove a fatal blunder.

“Hit!” Witt and Eckhardt yelled the same jubilant word at the same time. They were the ones who could see it best. A moment later, a cloud of black smoke in the distance and a fireworks show of ammo cooking off left Theo sure they were right.

“We’re out more than a kilometer,” Adi said. “Can you imagine killing a T-34 at that range with the old beast?”

“No,” Theo answered, startled into using a word.

“Me, neither,” Adi said. “A good gun, good shooting—a kill. I wish we’d had these a year ago, or two. We would’ve done better, that’s for sure. The Ivans had T-34s two years ago, damn them.”

“
Ja
,” Theo agreed. That was one of the nastiest surprises the
Wehrmacht
had got during its Russian adventure. Too many good people had died of surprise then.

“Wonder what’ll happen to our old III,” Adi mused. “What do you want to bet we sell it to the Hungarians or Romanians so some of their guys can get killed in it instead of us?”

“No bet,” Theo answered. He wouldn’t touch that one. It struck him as much too likely, and as just the sort of thing the
Reich
would do. The really scary thing was, even that beat-up old Panzer III would be better than what Germany’s allies were using now.

WHEN THE SENTRY
brought the two officers into the encampment, he looked scared. When Ivan Kuchkov saw the blue arm-of-service color on the officers’ caps and collar tabs, he felt scared, too. He was damned if he’d show it, though. That wouldn’t do him any good, and might screw him.

One of the NKVD men was a major, the other a captain. “Ivan Ivanovich Kuchkov!” the captain said. “Vitaly Alexandrovich Ryakhovsky!”

“I serve the Soviet Union, Comrade Captain!” Vitya Ryakhovsky gulped.

“I serve the Soviet Union!” Ivan echoed. You couldn’t mess around with the Chekists. They got paid to give people grief. They commonly enjoyed it, too.

He was tempted to pick up his PPD and empty it into them. But if he did that he
would
have to run to the Nazis or to the Ukrainian nationalists. The nationalists were losers; he could see that. He thought the Nazis were also losers, at least in the Soviet Union. Besides, even if they weren’t, what was the
Gestapo
but the NKVD in a different uniform?

“We are here to investigate the death of Lieutenant Maxim Svyatoslavovich Zabelin, the company political officer,” the captain declared.

No shit
, Kuchkov thought.
And all the time I figured you’d come to the front to see if we had enough fucking belt buckles
.

“You killed the company political officer, Ryakhovsky?” the major asked ominously.

Gulping again, Vitya said, “I did, Comrade Major, after he would not give me the password. I had no way to know he was not a Ukrainian bandit trying to infiltrate our position.”

“So you say.” The major’s sneer announced he didn’t believe such nonsense for a minute. He rounded on Ivan. “You, Kuchkov, you were with him when he shot the political officer?” He used the full phrase every time. He might never even have heard the word
politruk
.

“Not me.” Ivan shook his head. “I was back by the campfire when the fucking shot went off.” He talked the way he talked. Even when he made a stab at standard Russian,
mat
crept in.

“What did you do then?” the major asked.

“I went to see what the fuck Vitya was shooting at,” Ivan answered. “When I got to where the political officer was at, he was one dead whore.” He did remember not to give forth with
politruk
himself.

“What did you do then?” the major asked. Hadn’t the dumb prick looked at Lieutenant Obolensky’s report? What was being able to read for, if not for seeing shit like that?

“I thought,
This poor cunt’s in trouble, and I bet I’m in trouble, too
,” Ivan answered.

“Why did you think that?” the captain asked. “Did you have a guilty conscience? Had you been undercutting the company political officer’s authority, as is much too common in underdisciplined front-line units?”

“Not me, Comrade Captain. You can ask the company commander. You can ask any of these assholes here, too. I don’t do shit like that,” Ivan said.
I’m not that motherfucking stupid
, was what he was thinking. You started badmouthing the
politruk
, somebody was bound to squeal on you. Then you were dogmeat waiting for a dog—or a pack.

What was interesting was that some front-line sergeants—maybe even officers—evidently did go around telling their men that
politruks
were dumb fucking blowhards. As if the men couldn’t see that for themselves! But what you could see mostly had nothing to do with what you could say.

“We have spoken to your company commander,” the major said.

“And?” Ivan pressed. He didn’t
think
Lieutenant Obolensky would sell him down the river, but you never could be sure what somebody would do when he was afraid his own nuts might wind up on the chopping block.

“His story largely matches yours,” the major said in grudging tones. “What this proves, however, is questionable at best. Front-line officers have an unfortunate tendency to preserve fighting strength irregardless of the cost in ideological purity.”

Ivan had trouble following that. He thought it meant
They’d rather stay alive than make good Communists
. He approved of staying alive. If you had to be dead to make a good Communist (for a while during the Great Terror, that seemed to be about what it took), wasn’t the price too high?

No price was too high if you were a Chekist. Ivan understood that the way he understood he needed air to breathe. He said, “Comrade Major, it was a fuckup. That’s all it was. Vitya’s a pretty fair soldier. The political officer, maybe he was farting around and thought he was funny. Shit, I don’t know. But he didn’t say what he was fucking supposed to say, and he paid the price for that. If Vitya’d plugged a real Ukrainian bandit the same way, you’d be here to pin a big old whore of a medal on him right now. You wouldn’t be knocking pears out of trees with your dicks on account of this crap.”

The NKVD officers looked at each other. Did they even know the
mat
phrase for wasting time? Ivan decided they had to. They
were
Chekists. That meant they naturally had a lot to do with
zeks
. What were Chekists for but putting
zeks
into camps and dealing with them once they were in there? And all the good, juicy mat, the
mat
with some flavor to it, came from
zeks
.

“We have to make sure no anti-Soviet activity is involved, that this was a genuine accident and not crime or rebellion disguised as one,” the captain said.

Ivan wanted to tell him to fuck his own cunt with his little pine needle of a dick. He swallowed that, too. Pissing off the NKVD men would make them discover anti-Soviet activity whether it was there or not. Kuchkov didn’t have to be any kind of big brain to see that. He just had to know what Chekists were like.

They rounded on Ryakhovsky again, trying to get him to admit he’d fired at the
politruk
on purpose. Vitya blubbered like a four-year-old after a spanking, but he didn’t admit anything of the kind. No matter how scared he was, he understood he’d get the shaft but good if they could pin that on him.

“Easiest way to solve the whole thing would be to toss them both in a penal battalion,” the NKVD captain remarked to the major.

That made Kuchkov’s eyes slide toward the PPD again. Going to a penal battalion was a death sentence without a quick, neat bullet to the nape of the neck to get things over with in a hurry. If they aimed to do that, he had nothing left to lose. Neither the Ukrainian nationalists nor the Nazis could do anything worse to him than that.

But the major said, “Their CO does strongly vouch for them.”

“We could throw him in, too,” the captain said.

“We
could
,” the major allowed. “It’s a little more complicated with officers, though.” He talked about men’s fates the way a butcher talked about bacon and ham and chitterlings. All part of the day’s work to him. Would a butcher talk that way in front of swine who could understand him? Some might. They just wouldn’t care. This Chekist sure didn’t.

“I hate to leave these bastards alone,” the captain said. “Other fools will think they can get away with murder, too.”

“Could be worse. We’re pushing forward here. Chances are these cunts will get expended any which way.” Aside from the
mat
—which he wouldn’t have wasted on them—the major might have been talking about mortar bombs or belts of machine-gun ammunition, not human beings. He went on, “Besides, we don’t have to fill out as much paperwork this way as we would if we stuck them in one of those battalions.”

“Well, you’ve got something there.” The captain sighed. He couldn’t push his superior too hard. “All right, Comrade Major. We’ll do it like that.”

The major didn’t even waste time warning Ivan and Vitya to keep their noses clean from here on out. He just spat on the ground and walked away. The captain followed in his wake.

“Did I hear that right?” Vitya asked wonderingly. “They didn’t bother sending us to a penal battalion because … because …”

“Because filling out all the shitass forms’d be too fucking much trouble,” Ivan finished for him. He pulled his water bottle off his belt and drank. It was full of vodka, not water. Those lazy pricks! That was how Russia worked, all right. And it didn’t change one goddamn bit if you went and called it the Soviet Union instead.

“MOVE ALONG, YOU
stinking Jew!” shouted an angry-looking man in a black uniform with SS runes on his collar tabs.

Sarah Bruck ducked her head and scurried around a corner. Münster was full of men from the
Gestapo
and the SD and whatever other security agencies the
Reich
and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party boasted. They’d descended on the city the way vultures would spiral down toward a dead cow in a field. Münster had publicly protested against the regime and its policies not once but twice. Obviously, the local authorities couldn’t keep order—or keep the lid on, assuming there was a difference. So blackshirts from all over the country would take care of it for them.