‘Driver, port tracks! Full reverse!’
The left-hand treads spun. The Tiger began to peel away from the T-34.
The Russian would not allow this. He hit his gas and the gap closed instantly. The T-34 kept its weight butted against the starboard drive sprocket. With just one working track, the Tiger could only drag itself in a circle.
‘He’s not letting go!’ The driver cried out the obvious.
Balthasar shouted, ‘Captain!’
Luis did not need to hear Balthasar’s next words. He saw for himself the extent of what the
The T-34’s cannon had cut in front of the Tiger’s long gun, the two long barrels were crossed like fencing swords. Luis’s turret was stopped dead, the hydraulic traverse whined in frustration. As long as the tanks stayed jammed together, Balthasar could not rotate clockwise any farther, not the last few crucial degrees toward the shooter across the field.
Luis leaned forward in his cupola to peer down on the smashing T-34.
The smaller tank had both tracks stroking wildly, kicking up mud and bits of ruined flowers, as though racing over the valley instead of plunging only torturous centimeters. The two tanks spit billows of exhaust, their squalling engines pushed and pulled but without decision, they were fused as much by force as willpower. Luis leaned out to his right, to look down into the Russian’s open hatch. He caught a glimpse of matted gray hair. The face tilted up at him. It was sharp-nosed, grimy and determined. Luis wanted to ask, Is this how you wanted to end up, old man? Here, with me? He yearned to climb down and poke his head into the hatch, to tell the driver -
not such a lunatic, now, it seemed - to go away, that Luis didn’t want to end up here, either.
The driver bared his teeth up at Luis, either a smile or grim intent. The Tiger kept trying to disengage, bucking and humping backward, both tanks howled. The old man would not let loose. His partner the shooter was still out there, aiming at a Tiger that was being wrestled to a standstill. But the shooter’s tank was immobile, and the Tiger still had its thick frontal armor facing him.
Maybe he won’t shoot, Luis thought. The one out there. Maybe he’s waiting for reinforcements to come teeming after us. Or maybe he won’t shoot and risk killing this old man. This what… beloved commander, friend, uncle? Or father?
‘Yes,’ Luis said, and the word was buried, even he could not hear it through the clamor of the entangled machines.
Maybe the shooter would wait. But Luis could not.
He tore his cloth helmet from the intracom, leaving the cable looped over the back of his chair. He hoisted his legs out of the cupola and climbed onto the broad turret deck. He drew his Luger sidearm into a blood-crusted hand. The Tiger rollicked from the ramming Russian. Luis knelt to steady himself. He inched forward like a sailor in a tempest. He raised the Luger and snapped off a shot at the T-34’s open driver’s hatch.
The Russian’s head ducked, the round glanced off the armor.
Luis crept closer to the rim of the deck for a better look at the Russian. There was the old man’s chest, his gray coveralls.
Luis raised the Luger.
The gun wavered with the swaying deck. His bloodied finger tightened on the trigger.
The Tiger’s turret moved beneath him.
What? Luis muttered, ‘
He pulled his eye off the pistol to look down under his boots.
The turret was turning! The long .88 barrel pivoted counterclockwise, freed from the Russian’s blocking cannon.
Damn it! Balthasar couldn’t wait! Stupid! Without orders the gunner was traversing the turret the opposite direction, rotating all the way around to the left for a shot at the Red shooter.
Balthasar, the thousand-year Aryan, was turning the Tiger’s vulnerable side armor to the sunflower field!
Luis dropped the pistol. He dove backward for the commander’s hatch. The turret whined to the left, every second revealing more of its thinner side plating to the Soviet shooter. He rammed his head down into the hatch, past Thoma’s blood, and screamed, ‘No! Stop! Stop!’
Balthasar had his back turned, his attention was riveted into his optics.
Beside the gunner, on the far side of the immense breech, the loader looked up from his seat. Luis screamed at him, gesturing frantically at Balthasar, ‘Stop the turret! Stop him!’ The loader looked stunned, no idea what was going on. ‘Stop him!’ Luis screamed.
Beneath Luis the turret kept turning, the huge turret with the undefeatable cannon.
Luis fumbled for the cord to re-connect himself to the intracom. His fingers waggled at it, just out of reach. He’d have to clamber down to his seat to retrieve it, plug in, and scream into the microphone. That would be too late.
The loader got the idea. He set down the shell he cradled. He rose from his seat and leaned far across the breech to tap Balthasar on the back, saying something into the intracom. Balthasar was rapt and did not turn away from his eyepiece. There was a comic aspect to the loader’s calm, he was oblivious to their peril. Luis watched the slow drift of events, more seconds gone. The loader was a dead man. So was Balthasar. Luis did not bother to inform them.
By now the turret had spun a quarter way around to the left, exposing its entire side to the field. The waiting, aiming Russian gunner out there in his smoking tank with his live cannon must be amazed at his good fortune.
Now he will shoot. He must.
