said, ‘Yes, sir.’ The others made memorial faces. Luis changed his tone.
‘Now, Sergeant. We’ll leave for Sukho-Solotino as soon as possible.
Which is the driver?’
‘I am, sir.’
A teenager with a big gap in his front teeth spoke, a corporal. He lisped his name and Luis did not remember it a second after it was said.
‘Make certain she’s properly fueled. Any problems with the transmission, the engine, anything the mechanics should look at while we’re here?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I’ll rely on that.’ Luis dripped a hint of threat into this remark.
‘Radioman?’
Another of the four straightened. Luis asked again if all was well. He repeated this query with the loader, Are we fully armed, machine-guns and main battery? Luis listened to perfunctory replies, marking each man in his head by role and not by name or rank. Driver. Loader. Gunner. Radio.
There was no need for them to be men. They were tasks.
‘Gunner,’ he said to Balthasar. ‘Walk with me.’
Luis led the young man away from the tent. The sun climbed in the morning but it was not yet even eight o’clock. Luis spoke.
‘The crew,’ Luis said. ‘Tell me right now anything I need to know.’
‘They’re the best, Captain. Every one of them.’
‘Again, I’ll rely on that.’ Again the threat on the pallid lips. ‘You understand.’
The sergeant took this in. Luis saw and savored the impact.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The rest of the regiment is in Sukho-Solotino. What’s the condition of the other tanks?’
‘We’re down to thirty-one Mark IIIs, thirteen Mark IVs, and seven T-34s.’
‘What about the other Tigers?’
The sergeant hesitated.
‘You don’t know, sir?’
Luis was aware only of what the map and messages had told him, the progress and location of wooden block armies.
‘Know what?’
‘We’re the last Tiger.’
‘In the company?’
‘No, sir.’
The gunner drew himself up, like a schoolboy ready for punishment.
‘In the division.’
Luis went stock-still, to keep from the gunner how this rocked him. He was about to join an armored division that four days ago had thirteen Tigers.
Seconds stretched out while he stared at the sergeant. The wreckage of a dozen Mark Vis, invincible machines, would not play out in his head.
Something was wrong. Luis couldn’t believe it was the Tigers themselves but the hands that guided them, into minefields, into ambushes, into indefensible positions. Yes, the Tigers were slow, and certainly there were mechanical problems cropping up here and there. But to lose all but one to the Russians in four days? No. Luis could not blame the machines.
He looked back across the littered and busy ground to the repair tent, recalling the beating that brave tank had taken, the last Tiger in
‘Good,’ he said.
* * * *
July 8
0830 hours
Luchki
Luis was not in the tent when the mechanics lowered the Tiger. A lieutenant from Leibstandarte, alerted by Major Grimm, came to greet him with orders.
He was instructed to proceed in his Tiger immediately northwest to Sukho-Solotino. Leibstandarte was assigned along with Totenkopf to reorient away from the northeast, to mount an attack in the direction of the Oboyan road, then plunge directly at Kursk. The third SS division, Das Reich, was to hold down the right flank instead of Army Group Kempf, which had barely gotten out of the gate east of Belgorod and was continuing to lag. Receiving his orders, Luis cast his thoughts back to the map room, to fat Grimm and chain-smoking Breit pacing beside the board.
He saw the map and how these orders made sense. He thanked the lieutenant and jogged back to the repair tent, excited now, envisioning the long sticks pushing Leibstandarte into position at Sukho-Solotino and then the Oboyan road. One of the black blocks moving against the Red defense line across the road would be his.
Even before he saw it he heard his Tiger’s howling engine in the center of the village, bellowing for him. Beside his tank was a Mark IV that had also been repaired. The Tiger was almost twice the size, its revving engine
