let the Americans rest and recover, even though his own resources were severely limited.
“Look,” someone yelled. “You can see them.”
Curious, Zhukov stepped outside and stared upward. He could just barely make out the reflection on the distant belly of the plane. “What kind of pictures can they possibly take from that altitude?”
Chuikov laughed. “I have no idea, comrade Marshal, but should we not smile and wave? Or better, I shall have our soldiers expose themselves.”
Zhukov smiled tolerantly at his protege. “Not now. And didn’t you say there were three planes? Where are the other two?”
A staff major was watching the sky with binoculars. “Two others peeled off a moment ago, sir. Oh, look, the bomber has dropped something.”
Chuikov was puzzled. It couldn’t be just one bomb, now could it? That made no sense at all.
Zhukov snatched the binoculars from the unprotesting major. He found the falling object fairly easily as it reflected light quite brightly. The plane was in a steep banking turn. Whatever the plane had dropped did look like it could be a bomb. But one bomb?
A feeling of sick dread seized him. What had he heard about the Americans and a secret weapon? A superbomb? The object seemed to grow as he watched it draw closer. He knew it was too late to flee.
At under two thousand feet in the sky, a second sun dawned with unprecedented fury. For many who saw it, whether they survived or not, it was the last thing their scorched eyes took in. Those farther away described it as a pink-white incandescent flare and an incredibly glowing orb. Almost immediately, there was a tremendous and deafening clap of thunder. It was followed by a howling, shrieking wind and a suffocating blast of heat.
Within a three-quarter-mile circle from the center of the explosion, everything died.
Outside the circle, the shock and heat destroyed structures and vehicles, started fires, and caused secondary explosions. The force took the debris it made and turned the most innocent of objects into lethal projectiles that seemed to seek out and penetrate screaming and terrified flesh. Above, the fireball turned into a churning black cloud that raised itself into the sky like a horrific, monstrous, living thing.
Almost two miles away, Suslov had been inside his tank, shifting supplies and ammunition. He shrieked when the light brilliantly illuminated him through the open hatches. Seconds later, he felt the tank lift up on its side as the shock wave slammed into it and flung him about helplessly inside. He felt something snap in his arm. With a crash, the tank righted itself and landed back down. Suslov screamed again as his shoulder smashed against the inside of the hull.
He waited a moment for the chaos to subside and for his breathing to become regular. What had happened? The most logical conclusion was that a bomb had landed nearby. Damn the spotters for letting a plane sneak in. And where the hell were Latsis and the others? And what on earth could be burning?
Cautiously nursing his broken arm, Suslov took several minutes to ease himself out the hatch and down onto the ground. The sights surrounding him were appalling. Bodies were everywhere, although some were twitching and trying to move or crawl. Despite the lack of fuel, many vehicles were on fire. A number of tanks were billowing black, greasy smoke, and ammunition was exploding everywhere. Worse and most frightening, he was in the shadow of a tower of flame and smoke that seemed to have engulfed everything in that direction. He froze where he stood, afraid to move.
“Latsis,” he finally managed to call. “Popov, Martynov, where are you?” They had been outside when the explosion occurred. He called again, finally getting a whimper of a reply. He moved as quickly as he could without jarring his arm. He found his crew just behind the tank, where what looked like Latsis was squatting on the ground, bent over two other figures.
Latsis looked up and gestured him over. There was a great brown-and-black burn on his face, and his shirt had been torn off showing other burns as well. “We are here, comrade. Come and look at us.”
Popov was clearly dead. A piece of wood had been driven through his skull. Young Martynov, if that was indeed him, was a horror. The skin had been burned entirely off his face and his teeth gleamed at them like a smiling horse. There were holes where his eyes should have been. Martynov kept trying to open and close his mouth as if he was trying to say something.
“Let me have your pistol,” Latsis said, and Suslov handed it over. He placed it against Martynov’s temple and pulled the trigger. “Goodbye, my friend,” Latsis muttered. The explosion was puny in comparison with what had caused the devastation about them and no one noticed, even though there were others walking about, most of them in an apparent daze.
“At least we don’t have to worry about Commissar Boris reporting us as malcontents,” Latsis said, waving feebly to his left. “He’s that smoking lump over there.”
Latsis helped put Suslov’s arm in a sling, but Suslov had nothing to help care for the other man’s terrible burns. The pain must have been agonizing. Even so, Latsis made it back into the tank and tried to start it. If they could, they might be able to drive it a few miles away from this awful field of death before they ran out of fuel. They were not in luck. It would not start. The shock wave had caused too much damage. For the first time, Suslov noticed that some of the tank’s paint had bubbled from the heat.
Latsis climbed out and shrugged. “I guess we walk.”
Suslov looked about him. “Can we make it back to Russia?”
They looked at the sky, which had darkened even more as what looked like rain clouds moved in. “No,” Latsis said. “And don’t even think about walking. We are much too weak. I guess we stay here and wait for our future, comrade.”
It began to rain. The drops were dirty, filled with specks of dark matter. Latsis said he felt dizzy and vomited.
Twenty miles to the west, Tolliver’s men had grumbled when they received the order to stay in their holes and keep their heads down for a period of almost an hour. Since the order was not accompanied by any explanation, rumors ran wild, as did a litany of complaints. The most logical rumor was that a Commie ammo dump was going to be blown and the soldiers might get hit by flying shells. The craziest was that Jesus was going to come down from heaven on a shaft of light while riding a white horse. Tolliver put his money on the ammo dump. He had long since decided that Jesus was nowhere near the front lines.
Tolliver was in his foxhole, squatting on his haunches and facing the rear as ordered when the area was bathed with an unholy brilliance. His first thought was that the rumor about Jesus had come true. Then he realized that there had been an enormous explosion somewhere in the Russian area. He waited a few seconds and stood.
“Unbelievable,” Tolliver muttered, and the soldiers nearby echoed him. The mushroom cloud was clearly visible as it formed and billowed on its way to the sky. Some of them actually saw the shock wave as it raced across the ground. Fortunately, by the time it hit them, it was a gust of air and virtually devoid of any power to injure. Even so, Tolliver called for a nose count to see if everyone was all right.
One GI was injured. The young PFC had caught a blast of light from a reflection off a mirror he’d had out to help him shave.
“I can’t see, Lieutenant.”
Tolliver and a medic checked the man over. “Can you see anything at all?” Tolliver asked as he looked in the boy’s eyes. There was no apparent damage, but his skin did look a little pink and flushed.
The boy blinked. “A little, sir, around the edges. But there’s a dark spot in the middle of my eye and I can’t see through it.”
The medic bandaged the boy’s eyes and guided him back to the rear. Tolliver looked into the distance at the cloud and wondered just what kinds of hell the Russians were enduring. He had no idea what had actually caused the explosion, but he was certain that it had been a bomb and not some kind of accident or natural event like a volcano. After all, wasn’t a bomb the best reason for the order to stay heads down?
Tolliver saw a vehicle about a mile away, in the Russian area. It looked like some kind of truck. From a distance, it seemed to move with exquisite slowness, but he realized it was going very quickly and was running all over the road as if the driver was in a panic. Or blind. Who the hell could blame him? Tolliver thought. The truck hit a rock and turned over.
For the first time, he felt a kind of sympathy for the Russians. What the hell was going on?
