there.'
Gus pointed at Yuri. 'What about him?'
'Him, too, but we'll bury him the way he would have liked, as chieftain of the high steppes.'
Gus wondered what the hell that meant, but didn't really give a damn, his mind already on the fresh pork. The dead, it does no good to feel any more for them. Their troubles were over, and right now he was still hungry.
Teacher had a suspicion of what Langer meant, but kept his own council. Gus found out what his sergeant meant when Carl laid the dead Russians at the feet of the Tatar, placing Yuri's head where it belonged on his shoulders, his butcher knife in his hand. He held the Cossack's head in his own hands, grasping it to his chest. Langer backed away after they had filled the ditch, and faced the four corners of the world all the time making a slow, upward sweeping motion of his hand and chanting low beneath his breath. Gus knew he was watching some kind of religious ceremony, but just what, he couldn't fathom.
'What is he doing. Teacher? You know everything, all those books you read.'
Responding, in a low voice in order not to interrupt the proceedings, he explained as best he could, for Gus's simple mind.
The ceremony completed, Langer looked at the wondering faces of Gus and Teacher. 'I'll tell you about it later. Right now let's get loaded and haul ass out of here.'
Once in the T-34, Gus took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls. 'It's just like a tractor, Sarge; no problem.'
'Teacher, you take the hull gun, I'll handle the turret and 76 mm.'
Gus squealed with pleasure. 'Look here, Sarge.' He held up one of the new Russian PPs 43 submachine guns and a bottle of vodka. 'We're loaded for bear now.' He cracked open the bottle and drained it. The pig's carcass rested right behind the driver's seat, close to him. He wasn't going to let anything happen to his dinner. If they had to bail out of the tank, it was even odds which he would take, the submachine gun or the pig. Langer gave odds mentally on the pig.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They spent the rest of the day in a wrecked bam, moving the tank straight through the side. They had been bypassed in the night; the rest of the German forces in the pocket were an hour's march to the west. Most of them would never make it to the new line outside Kaunas. Langer would wait for dark and move through the Russian lines right down the rail tracks after bypassing the German pocket of resistance. Once past that, they should have easy going until they reached the bridge at Nieman. They would have to be careful or the defenders, thinking they were Russians, would blow them away.
That night they fed on roast pig. Gus, gulping down chunks of half-raw meat and swigging vodka, reminded Langer of someone he had known long ago in another place.
The fuel gauges showed half a tank of gas, more than enough to reach the bridge crossing at Kaunas. On good roads the T-34 had a range of over 250 kilometers. At dusk they moved out, the clanking of the treads a familiar, friendly sound. As they swung through the fields, Carl put on a Russian tanker's leather helmet, put his head out of the turret and called out directions. They passed burned-out villages and hamlets, isolated farms and houses, which had all received the same treatment. This was the first of the enemy countries that had fallen to the Soviets. Twice, Langer had to forcibly restrain Gus when they passed a couple of farmhouses and saw the women of the farm nailed to the barn doors, their men and children lying in front of them. The women had obviously been raped. Gus wanted to head for the nearest Russian unit and run them down under the treads of their own tank.
The road leading to the frontiers of East Prussia were littered with burned-out transport and tanks; dead horses lay bloated all along the way, their legs stiff, the carts and guns they had been pulling turned over or burned and the contents looted. The bodies of men lay by the hundreds where Soviet armor had overrun the slower, horse-drawn wagons. Near them were neat, orderly ranks of men that had been lined up first and machine gunned down in rows.
The T-34 was passed by fast trucks filled with laughing Russians, the victors heading to the new line. They waved to their comrades in the tank and wished them well in continuing their slaughter. Langer himself had to force his mind elsewhere and resist the temptation to send a shell into them and blow the savages to pieces. Savages? What difference did it make who did the killing, they're no better or worse than the Nazis. The truth of the matter was, the Nazis were perhaps more horrible in that they were educated men who sometimes cried over something tragic in an opera, and then would order thousands of deaths in the concentration camps.
The Russians were brutal, but it was the mindless brutality of the hordes that had ravaged Europe centuries before. Fewer than one out of a hundred could write his own name, and fewer than that among those who came from Asian Russia. They were the ones most feared; they had the blood of the vanquished legions of Genghis Khan and the Huns in their veins and were now let loose on the world to do what their instincts told them they did best, kill.
Trucks were beginning to slow down; they were reaching the staging areas of the Soviets. Langer moved the tank off the road to the side and had to slow down carefully to avoid running over the milling infantry. He waved and laughed at jokes, and kept on going, ignoring offers to stop and drink, or eat. He called out orders and kept moving. To stop risked being found out and he had no desire to be sent to the slave camps in Siberia.
The flames of burning villages were small bright spots on the plains, the smell of smoke carried to them by a gentle northerly wind coming off the Baltic Sea. They were nearing the last Soviet positions as was evidenced by the freshly dug bunkers and position lines of cannon being pulled into position. The Russians believed in cannon just as Napoleon did; the more the better, and they had plenty more.
The German positions were marked by the impact of Russian rockets and artillery. The bridge still held. Continuous fire from concrete bunkers made it extremely hazardous for any Russian tank that tried to approach them. Already a half dozen lay on and off the tracks of the rail bridge, evidence of the German gunners' accuracy and tenacity. Russians waved the oncoming T-34 on, praising the courage of the crew riding into the face of almost certain death,
They had one hope of getting through; in front of them was a former German pillbox, now occupied by the elite guard troops of Marshal Chernyakhovsky. Leaping down to Gus and Teacher, Carl explained, 'All right, this is it. I'm going to take out the bunker, you just get this bastard over the bridge and when you reach the center un-ass it.'
'Teacher, you won't be needed on the MG when we stop. You bail out and toss a grenade in before you leave. That should blow this bastard to hell and let our guys know that we're on their side.
