ДЕРЗКИЙ УГОН ЭШЕЛОНА С ТАНКАМИ ПРЯМО ИЗ-ПОД НОСА У ДИВИЗИИ СС

The boiler breathed out a strange heat, and I held my hand on the German locomotive's regulator as if it were an enemy's throat. Three in the morning. The searchlights cut through the steam, and in those white stripes, the platforms seemed alive. Their "Tigers" slept on them under tarpaulins. Eight of them. Ready to kill ours in the morning. Vlas spat out a coal dust. "Start it up, Zakhar." I knew there was no turning back. Only forward, to ram. I had nothing to lose at Orsha. And I pushed the lever. But that would come later. For now, we lay in the shadow of the water tower, soaking wet to the bone, counting the sentries. The drizzle fell steadily, without malice, as if from a sieve. The sky was black, starless. The brick of the water tower chilled my cheek, and there was the smell of iron rust, rotten wood, and fuel oil. Somewhere, water was dripping. A drip, drip, drip, dripped into the barrel under the chute, and the sound made me sleepy. It was impossible to sleep. I counted. One guard was standing by the office, under a lamp, warming his hands. Another was pacing along the platforms, back and forth, about forty paces each way. A third was standing by the locomotive's tender, smoking a cigarette with two others. I didn't see the fourth, but he was there. The enemy weren't idiots, and they wouldn't have left such a train at night without a secret by the filler neck. "Eight," Vlas breathed into my ear. "Eight boxes, Zakhar." I counted three times. "Me too." The tarpaulin on the nearest platform billowed in the wind, revealing for a moment the rolled steel, the narrow transport tracks, the heavy combat tracks piled nearby, and then fell back. The trucks were parked with their noses to the rear, to the west. In the morning, they'll be hooked up, yanked, and they'll go to where the guys who know nothing about these eight are sleeping in the trenches now. Vlas was young, twenty-four, a stoker. Bold, sharp-tongued, with a permanent coal streak across his cheekbone. He couldn't keep quiet for more than a minute, and this both infuriated and kept me going. A light flickered on the nearby platform. I pinned Vlas to the ground with my elbow. A German—not a sentry, taller, wearing a cap—was walking along the train with an electric flashlight, probing the attachment points with the beam. At the third platform, he stopped, pulled himself up with his arms, and climbed in. He threw back the tarpaulin with a businesslike air, as if he owned the place, and the beam slid across the armor. I saw. A cannon. Long, with a muzzle cover, it jutted out from the platform like a log, facing the length of the train—west, away from the front. The turret was angular, welded from heavy rolled slabs. On the side was a cross, black with a white border, wet and gleaming in the beam. The German tugged at the cables, tapped his boot on the track shoe, and was satisfied. He lowered the tarpaulin. He climbed down. Loaded. Secured. Fueled in the morning. All they had to do was wait for the tractor. "Inspector," Vlas exhaled. "They're feeling it out before we leave." "Listen," he whispered again. "What if we take off right now? Take out the guards, and…" "Lie down." The third of us lay on the other side, silent. Ostap Grechko, fifty years old, a coupler and switchman. He was taciturn, heavy, like an old rail. He wasn't looking at the Tigers. He was looking at the switchman's booth—small, crooked, right at the throat where the tracks converged. A crowbar stood against the wall, leaning against the jamb. Long, bent at the end, it gleamed wetly under the distant spotlight. Ostap stared at the crowbar for a long time. Then, quietly, in his own soft way, he chuckled: "Will do." "What?" "Nothing, Zakharko. Lie down." I didn't understand then. I remembered and then forgot. A man's head gets hung up on every little thing before he dies, and I decided Ostap was simply counting the iron with his accustomed eye. The old switchman sees the station differently than we do. We see danger. He sees the farm. The spotlight moved toward our side. I pressed myself against the brick, and Vlas stopped breathing next to me. A white streak crawled across the pumping station, across a puddle, across a pile of slag—and then it was gone. A whistle in the distance. The clank of buffers on the distant track—someone was being beckoned there, coupled. The station had its own nightlife, and this life both hindered and helped us. Near Orsha, I drove trains like these. Not like these—our own, familiar, black, heavy ones. The depot remembered my hands, and my hands remembered the depot. In '41, we burned locomotives to keep them out. I didn't burn mine—I didn't have time. I fled into encirclement on foot, with coal under my fingernails that still hadn't washed off. For two years, I hauled this coal through enemy lines, and here it is, my locomotive. Someone else's. With a square cab and a sign in Gothic letters on the side. There was nothing to lo...