had been in the middle of it all. Tkachenko had watched the Cubans go to pieces in Angola.
Perhaps there had been a few good ones, a few believers. But most of them had exploited the situation to their own advantage in every possible respect. Tkachenko himself had returned from Angola with a bad liver, a persistent skin disease, and a hatred for everything that was not Soviet from west of the Urals, everything that was not Greater Russian. In Luanda, Western businessmen had commanded more respect and courtesy than a Soviet officer. That wasn’t socialism. Africa was a swamp of insatiable greed and corruption. The corruption of the spirit and of the flesh. Tkachenko had come home convinced that the Soviet Union had nothing to gain in Africa.
Nearby blasts rocked the vehicle, snapping Tkachenko back to the present. The vehicle turned off the road and bumped across broken ground. Tkachenko gripped at a metal brace, holding on. He told himself again that he was getting too old for this.
The Estonian ripped off his headset and grabbed his helmet.
“We’re here.”
The bridgehead appeared hopelessly confused at first. A column of tanks had come up too soon, and the big truck-launched bridge sections had to be worked around them. Vehicles backed antitank guns toward temporary positions, and a ditcher bit at the muck, beginning to prepare bridgehead fortifications. Engineers and commandant service troops, whose mission it was to control traffic, waved arms and flags, and another wave of amphibious infantry fighting vehicles skidded down through blasted mud into the water of the canal. The vehicles began swimming awkwardly, struggling to gain control, like limbless ducks. As Tkachenko watched, one vehicle took a chance direct hit, exploding into the water, resurfacing in shreds, then sinking finally beneath the surface, carrying its occupants down with it. Another vehicle hit trouble at the far bank, unable to find enough purchase to haul itself out of the water.
A huge blast clubbed Tkachenko’s ears, and he threw himself on the ground. Only the presence of one of the misdirected tanks saved him from the flying debris. Men screamed in agony, or in the fear of agony, and other voices called for medical orderlies.
The Estonian battalion commander shouted orders and waved his arms, reminding Tkachenko of an old joke which insisted that whenever engineers were at a loss, they started waving their arms as though signaling something important.
Tkachenko reset his helmet and scraped the worst of the mud off the front of his uniform with his hands. He headed for the canal on foot, puffing resolutely along. At the edge, he took over the supervision of the first bridging column, irritated by the slowness now and secretly glad to be able to take charge. He even guided individual trucks as they angled back to release their cargoes of pontoons into the water.
Tkachenko didn’t mind the splashing. He was already soaked. When the first half dozen bridging sections were floating in the canal, he leapt out onto a bridge deck where engineer troops strained at stabilizing the sections and linking them to one another.
Tkachenko fell flat on the bobbing deck as a flight of jets tore overhead. Antiaircraft guns opened fire, and missiles hissed skyward. Then came the blast of the aircraft-delivered ordnance.
Down along the canal, more entry points underwent preparation, and more and more bridging sections slithered into the water from the backs of their trucks. The battalion commander had already gotten two tactical ferries into operation, and the first tanks crossed the water obstacle on their decks. Tkachenko, studying the engineering plans on the canal, had insisted adamantly that no tanks should attempt snorkeling. The banks were much too steep, and he doubted the tankers could find their points of egress once submerged. He suspected the tankers had been relieved by the recommendation.
Power boats half circled out into the canal. The engineers on the pontoons shoved the long bridge off from the bank with staves, allowing the boats to work in along the side. Shrapnel plunked in the dirty water like especially large raindrops. Tkachenko stood upright on the deck, wiping the broth of sweat and rain from his forehead.
The bridge slowly turned perpendicular to the near bank, buoying out into the waterway, reaching across the canal under the guidance of the power boats. Tkachenko watched more ferry sections maneuvering in the water, readying themselves for heavy cargo. The first ferries headed back to load more tanks.
Half an hour, Tkachenko thought. If they don’t counterattack hard with ground forces, with tanks, in half an hour, it’ll be too late. They’ll never close the bridgehead on us. He listened carefully to the dueling artillery. It sounded as though the Soviet guns dominated the exchange. Attacking the enemy batteries, and throwing a protective curtain of steel down between the bridgehead and the enemy.
The end of the pontoon bridge found the far bank, sending a shock along the deck and through Tkachenko’s knees. The ramp slapped into the mud. They were going to need matting, Tkachenko thought. And the guides had to go up. He began shouting again, happy as a child.
Leonid worried about drowning. It seemed absurd to him to be in the middle of a battle, trapped inside a bobbing steel box. The infantry fighting vehicle’s propulsion system seemed to have no thrust at all. Leonid felt as though they were trying to cross an ocean. His head ached from the exhaust fumes, and the view out of the troop periscopes along the side of the vehicle only confirmed that the water level was perilously close to the vehicle’s deck. More than anything, Leonid just wanted to push open the roof hatch and see the sky.
But he was afraid. Afraid of being punished. Afraid of swamping the vehicle. Afraid of the artillery fire. Driblets and thin trickles of water snaked through the vehicle’s seals. And when the gunner fired at some distant, unseen target, the vehicle rocked as though it was bound to capsize.
Leonid prayed. He did not know if he believed in a god or in much of anything. But his mother had never given up her little peasant shrine and her timid, warbling prayers. Leonid clutched his rifle tightly against himself and closed his eyes. He prayed as best he could, trying to imagine what kind of approach you would need to take to convince a neglected god you were really sincere at the moment. It seemed a little like coaxing a solemn, avoided teacher to believe that you had honestly intended to do your homework.
The vehicle thunked against something solid, knocking the crammed soldiers against one another. The engine whined and strained. The spinning of the tracks buzzed through the metal walls.
Suddenly, miraculously, the vehicle found enough traction to surge up onto the bank. The solid, jouncing throb of tracks on gravel seemed like a blessed event without precedent in Leonid’s life.
The vehicle leveled out and changed gears, rushing forward. Leonid could hear thundering noises around them now, and the main gun pumped out rounds, filling the poorly vented troop compartment with gases. The broken terrain tossed the soldiers about, smacking them against one another or drawing them toward the sharpest bits of metal in the vehicle’s structure. The soldiers complained and cursed one another, but it felt as though their souls were not present in the voices, as though every man had retreated into a private world of anticipation.
The order came to lay down suppressive fire through the firing ports. Leonid twisted around and did as he had been told, glad to have something to do, to occupy his hands. He couldn’t see any targets through the clouded periscope, but he quickly emptied magazine after magazine, adding to the acidic stink inside the troop compartment.
The vehicle jerked, almost stopped, then cruised forward slowly.
The vehicle’s rear doors swung open. The soldiers tumbled out in a clumsy imitation of their endlessly repeated drill. Leonid’s legs cramped, but he forced them to go. He banged his shoulder in his haste to exit the vehicle, and he stumbled, almost falling over Seryosha, catching a strong vinegar smell on the machine gunner. Seryosha didn’t appear to feel the impact, or to be aware of anything at all. He moved like a very fast sleepwalker.
“This way,
The air clotted gray and thick, twinkling with quick points of color, like red and yellow holiday lights. The noise engulfed Leonid’s body, a physical presence. He ran laterally through the rain, trying to find his position in the dismounted line.
Ali ran by him, screaming unintelligibly, wielding his antitank grenade launcher over his shoulder like a spear. There were no targets in sight, only a close line — much closer than in the rehearsed battle drills — of Soviet combat vehicles, peppering away into the smoke.
