back and spitting a smoky casing. No one turned to deal with him, his crew continued to load and move the main gun, idle the Tiger’s engine, wait for orders from him.
Yes, he thought, orders. He rubbed blood from under his split chin.
He rolled the crimson slick between the fingers and thumb of the right hand, his knife hand. He stood in the cupola. The Russian tank that fired at him was dead. Its crew leaped out. Luis’s hull gunner fired the Tiger’s machine-gun at them and missed.
Luis pressed a hand under his bleeding chin. The wound hurt. A new throb began in his jaw. He was puzzled, confused: Were the dead partisan and the bulls moving out of his hand and into his head, flowing upstream through the gash? Fucking Russians, he thought. He shook his head, dazed. A loose tooth rattled in his jaw. He flipped blood onto the hatch cover, on top of Thoma.
‘Captain.’
Balthasar’s voice was tinny over the intracom, another spike in Luis’s head. He blinked at the golden expanse below.
‘What? Yes.’
Across the valley, sir.’
The sunflowers seemed to be turning their million eyes to him now.
Luis winced to blot out their color and focus over their heads.
Pouring down the far slope, in a cataract of armor into the valley, came an entire army of Red tanks. Luis wondered if his vision was still blurred, there were so many.
* * * *
CHAPTER 27
July 12
0900 hours
two kilometers west of Prokhorovka
Dimitri propelled the General into a brown, swirling silt of soil and crushed weeds, flung into the air, then flung again like balls swatted by children. With his driver’s hatch secured, his eyes were reduced to the pinched rectangle of world visible through the vision block. Left, right, and straight ahead - all he could find through the dust were flashes of leaden treads spinning the steppe into the air, and bright slivers of gold.
He barreled down into the valley he’d watched for a night and a long morning. He had no idea how many tanks were rolling with him down the long slope. He didn’t even know which units were alongside his brigade. It didn’t matter, the number of tanks was astounding. He kept his forehead rammed against the padded periscope browpiece and shifted into third gear. The
No one said anything. Dimitri could only snare a fast glance at Sasha, the downhill driving was too demanding right now. The boy bounced in his seat and tried to hold on tight, he looked like he was on a runaway horse.
Valentin’s boots danced on Dimitri’s shoulders but that was from the rough ride. There was nowhere to turn. Charging T-34s were on all sides, at this pace a swerve would cause an accident in such a density of running tanks.
The blind, vaulting charge into the valley chased Dimitri’s hangover. He kept his eyes nailed to the padded vision block.
The dust lessened. The sunflower field filled the panorama of his sight. Dimitri watched a dozen T-34s dive into the yellow sea. Long green stalks whiplashed and golden heads snapped under the collision. The tanks chopped out paths crashing through the wall of plants, the flowers fell aside like the wake of horses flailing into a river. He gunned the
He closed on the great flowers, two hundred, one hundred, then fifty meters. The slope eased, the
In his vision block, sunflowers went down under his treads, clipped by his racing glacis plate. The flowers looked shocked to be hit like this, they flung out their leaves, turned their heads at the last moment, and fell, looking right into his eyes. We’re innocent, why do you do this? Crushed, we are crushed. Dimitri could make them no answer why. I have no answer for anything, he realized.
Valentin pressed his boot to the top of his soft helmet, a demand for more speed. Yes, alright, I have an answer for that. He mashed the clutch and shifted into fourth gear.
* * * *
CHAPTER 28
July 12
0905 hours
sunflower field
3 kilometers west of Prokhorovka
Luis watched blood drip into his palm. The dot pooled in his hand. He waited, and another drop landed inside it, deepening it.
Luis wiped the blood on his trousers. He brought the hand back to his waist, cupped the fingers, and waited again, a little gutter for his blood.
Balthasar announced another round was in the breech. Luis aligned his eyes with the long barrel, trying to guess which target the gunner had picked, an absentminded game. That Soviet assault had been cut down by a third but still they pushed through the corner of the field. Luis took only a small interest. Sixty-seven SS tanks stood on the high ground; only a few Mark IVs had even been nicked. The Reds shot on the move, sacrificing accuracy for speed. Luis did not duck inside the hatch before Balthasar’s next shell but kept his eyes down at his bloodstained palm. The cannon fired. Luis weathered the backwash of dirt and gases. The long gun whined to fix on another target among the closing Red tanks. Luis caught another drop in his palm.
He lifted his gaze to the far side of the valley, three kilometers away.
The first line of T-34s dove into the sunflowers, leaving a black wake for the next wave, and the next. Luis paid no attention to the number of enemy tanks. They were sufficient, whatever their number, for a grand battle in these sunflowers this morning, minutes from now. The ticking of those eclipsing minutes seemed to come in his hand, his knife hand catching his blood. The beat was the patter of his own blood dribbling, tapping.
Russian T-34s closed from the left, maybe twenty of them remained, running hard. The Reds were paying a flaming wage for getting close enough to enter their own effective range, but in moments their shells would start to take the toll on the stationary SS tanks arrayed across the slope. In the valley, what looked like two regiments of
