КАК СТАРАЯ ТАКТИКА БРОНЕГРУПП 1945-ГО СПАСАЛА КОЛОННЫ ОТ ЗАСАД В ЗЕЛЕНКЕ

Midday hung over the valley like a hot iron plate. Mezhentsev squinted at the map spread out on the warm front plate and knew one thing: the regulations were killing here. A week ago, in this very corridor, the neighboring company had been burned to death, according to all the rules. Everything was according to the regulations—distances, patrols, marching order. Eight vehicles remained as black boxes in the vineyard, stretched across the entire corridor, and the wind still carried the smell of burnt rubber and things unspoken across the valley. The captain wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The cloth no longer absorbed it, only smearing salt across his eyebrows. Thirty-four years, twelve of them in uniform, and half of those years he had seen people buried for the mistakes of others, written in books in beautiful handwriting. The valley was hemmed in by two ridges. To the left and right, there was thick, vicious greenery, vines as tall as a man, and beyond them, clay walls. The road between them was a dusty, reddish pit. The perfect place to burn. One of those boxes was visible from here. About three hundred meters away, where the vines thinned, stood the skeleton of a tanker truck—a charred skeleton on its rims, and nearby lay the turret of a nearby infantry fighting vehicle, blown off by an explosion. No one had evacuated them. No one had, and no reason. So they stood there like an iron cross in the middle of the vineyard, reminding anyone who followed how things "as they should" end. The sun beat down through the grape leaves in jagged patches. There was a smell of dust, heated iron, and diesel fuel from canisters on the armor. Somewhere, a cicada chirped, alone and stubborn, as if the heat was unfazed. Mezhentsev pulled a book from his tablet. It was worn, its cover missing, its pages stained brown—either tea or the blood of its previous owner. An inheritance. A tanker's notes, written in '45: his grandfather had burned at Lake Balaton, but he treasured this book—either his own or that of his fallen commander—more than medals, and it had reached the captain, well-read. The captain read it at night by lantern light, when the company slept. One phrase stuck in his mind like a splinter. About how at Lake Balaton the crews formed not in a line but in a ring, and maintained a perimeter defense with their guns, covering their neighbors. "A carousel of fire," the tanker wrote. Everyone watches their neighbor's back, and your neighbor watches yours. His fingers found the right page. Mezhentsev read the line again, his lips moving silently. The tanker wrote about the field near Lake Balaton. Here, there's dust and vines. But there's only one iron, and only one death. Today, he'd test that phrase on living people. He'd either bring everyone home, or lie down next to them in this red dust. They don't give out a third in this valley. Someone spat behind him. Ensign Sych, forty-one years old, his face like tanned leather, stood leaning against the turret of the lead tank, looking at the captain with the tired amusement of a man who'd seen it all. "Reading your Bible again, Commander," he said. "Books aren't helping here." "Gather the tank commanders," Mezhentsev slammed his tablet shut. "Everyone to the map. I'm explaining the new movement order." Sych chuckled, but continued on. His boots sank ankle-deep in the hot dust.