Read Last Citadel - [World War II 03] for Free Online Page A

shoulder blades, the unspoken signal to halt. Often during combat, when there was too much noise or the intraphone was broken, Valentin rode with his feet on Dimitri’s shoulders, guiding him with pressure to turn left or right; a boot to the neck meant forward, to the top of the head was speed up, two feet on the shoulders was reverse. The boot in Dimitri’s back was gentle enough; when the blood was up in the fighting, there had been some kicks. Dimitri shifted to neutral and idled.
     
    Valentin stood in his place. Dimitri saw nothing but the rear of the tank in front of him, close and stinking of diesel exhaust. An officer walked along the line of tanks shouting orders up to the commanders. Valentin gave Dimitri the order to shut down.
     
    The tank shuddered to a hulking quiet. Dimitri rose out of his hatch, filling his lungs with his first clean breath in hours. He lifted the goggles from his eyes; sweat had caked with the dust against his skin. He stepped out of the tank and slid to the ground. His legs needed a second to firm.
     
    The dozen commanders in his company clustered around a captain. Dimitri walked away from the settling fumes and heat of the tanks, a little ways into the surrounding field.
     
    In the silvery light he made out dots on every hill, in all directions. Perhaps two hundred tanks had been shaken awake hours ago and force-marched in the night to this staging area. Dimitri’s 3rd Mechanized Brigade was one of several units arrayed in an east-west line. The noise of tanks moving up on all sides sounded like the rattling of giant chains, there was a metallic moan to the treads eating into the earth, a whine from the engines, and Dimitri imagined this was the clamor of gathering titans.
     
    One of the drivers walked beside Dimitri, offering a cigarette. The two men smoked while the commanders conferred and the tank engines cooled and knocked.
     
    The driver was a dairy farmer from the Caucasus, an older fellow named Andrei. ‘This is going to be one shit pile,’ Andrei said. ‘This is our battle right here.’
     
    The man swept a hand across the rippling southern plain, gray as gravestones.
     
    ‘That’s where the river runs, east-west. It isn’t much but the Germans have got to cross it. And that’s where the road branches. They’ll come right up from Tomarovka and Belgorod. And there,’ he swung the hand left, to the east, ‘is where the road splits off to Prokhorovka. We’ll meet them here, on the way to Kursk. Right fucking here, above the river. They’ve got to go around or through us.’
     
    ‘You and me, Andrushka,’ Dimitri said, patting the man’s back. ‘We’re the reason we’ll win. Hitler’s only brought his young pups.’
     
    Andrei laughed, and he looked younger behind his cigarette. This is God’s bargain during war, Dimitri thought. If you face Him, face death, you are rewarded with living - truly living - every second you have left.
     
    Andrei glanced back toward the tanks. The commanders were still confabbing.
     
    ‘How’s it going with your pup?’ he asked.
     
    Now Dimitri laughed. ‘I’ve finally got him pissing on the newspaper.’
     
    ‘Well, there’s hope, then!’
     
    Andrei dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. ‘Ride hard, Cossack.’
     
    ‘You, too, goatherder.’
     
    Andrei returned to his tank. Dimitri flicked away his cigarette. He put his hands on his hips and leaned his head back into the cascading moonlight. He knew how the rest of the night and morning would go. Andrei was right, this was going to be their main defense region. Their battalion, all fifty tanks, would dig ditches deep enough for them to roll the T-34s into, hull down, so only the turrets were exposed. They’d dig shelters for ammunition, later in the day the shells would be brought up and stacked. There would be practice in camouflage and target acquisition. They’d drive over the plain and mark march routes for wetlands and boggy patches, they’d ease