Last Citadel

field; the Russians got their tanks off this hill but there were too many dead to cart away.

Balthasar the gunner came to stand beside him, binoculars around his neck. The man smelled the worst of anyone in the crew. In days of intense fighting, Balthasar had worked the hardest, spinning the handwheel to elevate the giant gun, pressing his eyes to the padded browpieces to take aim, firing and finding another target. The others did their jobs, hoisting shells, working the radio and machine-gun, driving. But this one was the reaper. There is a God, Luis thought, and to undo His work there is a toll.

Balthasar showed that cost in his stink and in eyes that were barely able to focus after staring so long through magnifying optics, past cross-hatches and range numerals.

The young sergeant’s eyes blinked south over the reddening plain below the hill, where they had fought all that day. To the right, the battered Wehrmacht divisions of Grossdeutschland and 11th Panzer battled northward. Their infantry and armor swarmed along the Oboyan road to hold the gains of the day. Theirs was the heavy quiver in the earth because they were the only German forces moving up. Leftward spread the rest of Leibstandarte, holding its position, stretching five kilometers to the east and Sukho-Solotino.

Balthasar wanted something from the panorama below, he squinted to see deep into the ranks of Leibstandarte. Smoke filtered into the air from a dozen smoldering hulks, ruined and juxtaposed against the fifty tanks and twenty assault guns surviving in the division. A handful of shot-down airplanes littered the grassland too, bent propellers like dried daisies. Luis studied the young gunner beside him and for the first time wondered about him. So cool and competent, such a chill in his fighting, angular and Germanic in profile in the waning day. No wonder Hitler had been so confident to make his war, with a nation of these boys to do it.

Their uniforms were designed dark for a reason, to show off how white his soldiers were against them, how pure and potent they were. Not like the Soviets, in their yellow-brown khakis, earthen creatures, muddy. Balthasar stirred. He pointed.

‘There,’ the gunner said. ‘There they are.’

Luis followed the direction of the gunner’s dirty finger. Hunkering among the tanks and milling battalions of panzergrenadiers were three more Tigers, repaired at Luchki and put back into the field this evening.

Even at a distance, their great bulk was discernible among the Mark IIIs and IVs. Now Leibstandarte had four Tigers.

‘Just in time,’ Luis said.

Balthasar nodded. He turned away from the southern field and the long slope of Hill 260.8 they had taken. Six kilometers north lay the town of Novoselovka. Beyond the town, the river valley of the Psel ran wide and smooth. Luis could see deep into the plain, even through a gray haze of dusk and engine fumes. The Russians had retreated off this hill, into the town and that valley, girding their last hard defenses along the Oboyan road. Behind them, the Psel River was the final natural barrier to Oboyan, then on to Kursk. Grossdeutschland moved down the hill to form skirmish lines against the Reds in Novoselovka. The Soviet defenses could be cracked here, tonight, or tomorrow. Balthasar lifted his binoculars and spied across the steppe. Luis watched him, fascinated with the soldier’s blue eyes, opaline like Thoma’s. It takes a thousand years of solitude to make a blue- eyed people, Luis thought.

Luis put out his hand for the binoculars. Balthasar turned them over.

Through the glasses, beyond the Soviets’ spiny bunkers and trenches, rose the towers of Oboyan. The city was in sight, in reach.

‘In time for what?’ Balthasar asked.

Luis lowered the field glasses. In his breast pocket were four folded sheets, handed to him five minutes ago as company commander. The papers were Division Order No. 17, for II SS Panzer Corps.

Balthasar prodded. ‘We’re going to Oboyan, aren’t we?’

Luis turned west, away from the objective city and the precious road leading to it twenty kilometers over the steppe. Hill 260.8 stood as the deepest incursion into the Russian lines on the southern front. With one more strong heave, with Leibstandarte alongside 11th Panzer and Grossdeutschland, the Oboyan road would fall. But the forces guarding their right and left flanks were taking terrible hits from the Reds every day, and their northward pace continued to slog. Hill 260.8 was too far out in front and exposed to Red flank attacks. The drive on Oboyan was being thwarted not from the extended center but from the sides. So tonight, under the order in Luis’s pocket issued from General Hoth, the spear thrust of the German strike at Kursk was to be blunted and split into a trident. Eleventh Panzer had been ordered to pivot to the west, away from the Oboyan road, to clean up Soviet flank assaults north of Verkhopenye. Grossdeutschland would regroup here astride the road and relieve elements of Leibstandarte.

The three divisions of II SS Panzer Corps were directed to shift their advance away from Oboyan, to the northeast. The hope was that they would crush Soviet resistance there and unlock the gates for Kempf’s overdue army. The still-powerful SS divisions would encounter strong Russian reserves after wheeling to the east, but with enough Luftwaffe support, and the return of more repaired Tigers, Totenkopf, Leibstandarte, and Das Reich ought to smash open a new - though longer - route to Kursk.

‘No,’ said Luis, returning the field glasses to Balthasar, ‘we’re not going to Oboyan.’

He recalled the situation room in Belgorod. He envisioned the long paddles pushing the blocks of the II SS Panzer Corps off to the east, crawling past blue lines of steppe and forest and villages tonight and tomorrow, re- forming again into a lance. He thought of Breit and Grimm, smoking and sweating, the two of them, watching the grand collision take its shape, knowing that Luis Ruiz de Vega rode the first of the black blocks into the fight. He imagined the battle taking place just like that, a game of skittles, his lone block bowling the many red ones out of the way. He had no reason to believe it would happen any other way. He commanded the blue eyes of Balthasar, the blood of Thoma still riding on the Tiger, he had this hungry but tireless body, and a tank the Russians could do nothing to but pock and jostle. And now there were other Tigers returning to the fold, tomorrow and the next day would bring more. This change in direction to the east was fine with him. He didn’t care one way or another for the city of Oboyan or the road going to it. The Soviet forces in front of him had been sacrificed, they played their role and stopped the German advance on Oboyan. Good for them, they’d paid for it. But the II SS Panzer Corps remained unmauled and cohesive. It had been given a pivotal command by Hoth. The three divisions were going into battle alone this time, with no one to guard their flanks but each other. The fate of Citadel hung on him and the SS, like a medal, and this would showcase them as what Luis knew them to be: the finest fighting men and machines the world had ever witnessed.

There was still time. The Americans were not in Europe yet. He had in his grasp exactly what he wanted: The battle for Kursk had come down to him.

He laid his hand to Balthasar’s back. He did not feel spindly at all touching the broad muscles of the young soldier. Because he controlled them, they were his muscles, as well.