Prohibition of Interference. Book 1. Макс Глебов

their machine gunners to keep our fighters off the embankment. To my surprise, the Germans never attempted a flanking movement. Apparently, they thought they could handle such a weak enemy without it. Now we'll see.

      After another close look at the German positions from above, I discovered where the mortar men had set up. They were doing the most damage to us now, and we should have started with them. Unfortunately, the distant Hanomag was blocking one of the mortar crews from me, but the other two mortars were visible quite well. Of course, I couldn't spot enemy positions by observing the Germans from here, but looking from orbit gave me a lot of advantages, and I was going to make the most of them.

      I fired the first three shots almost without pause, two at the crew of the mortar on my right, and one at the machine gunner of the Hanomag in front of me.

      The rifle's magazine was empty, and I silently held out my hand for the Sergeant's weapon. He was about to say something back, but he looked at the enemy soldier slumped behind the machine gun and handed me his rifle.

      The German infantry mortar crew consisted of two men, so three more of my shots silenced the second mortar and the last machine gunner on the rear armored personnel carrier. I tried not so much to kill enemy soldiers as to damage their weapons, so I aimed more at them. It's not hard to replace a dead machine gunner, but there's usually nothing to replace the machine gun during combat. The same can be said for a mortar, but it is harder to damage with a rifle bullet. In any case, the firewall, which had pressed our squad to the ground had weakened dramatically; all that remained was to silence the third mortar.

      “It's time to change positions, Comrade Sergeant. If we've been spotted, the mines will fly here.”

      I, of course, was exaggerating. The crew of the third mortar, greatly impressed by the almost instant deaths and wounds of their comrades, stopped firing and also decided to change position, which was only to our advantage. I hoped that the place where they would move would not be covered by the carcass of an armored personnel carrier.

      We ran to the right, went back down into the gully, and quickly climbed the next hill. This position was less convenient, but now I could see the crew of the enemy's third mortar. Pluzhnikov loaded my rifle and gave it to me, taking his rifle back. I fired two more quick shots, and the chain of German soldiers, which was approaching our position, was finally deprived of fire support.

      The First Lieutenant's men perked up and began firing at the enemy as intensely and accurately as they could with the means at their disposal, while the Germans, on the contrary, faltered somewhat because of the sudden change in the situation. I remembered that the enemy had at least one more machine gun on the third motorcycle, but I couldn't see where it was now, even using the satellite panorama. Around the bend in the road, three trucks stopped without coming under our fire. German infantrymen were now jumping out of two of them and, spurred on by commands from noncommissioned officers, were running straight through the woods to help their comrades.

      I fired a few more shots in an effort to add confusion to the enemy's battle lines.

      “Comrade Sergeant, we have to get the men out immediately before the Germans regroup and come to their senses. We have a lot of wounded. This is the best moment to pull back – we won't be able to break away later.”

      Pluzhnikov glanced at me and opened his mouth for another rebuke in the spirit of the earlier quotation from the army manual, but the reality of the brutal battle must have shifted something in his obviously intelligent head, and instead of another crackling phrase he muttered only, “I have to report to the Commander,” and started ducking down the hill.

      And then something happened that I tried not to believe, but which I was still afraid of somewhere inside. Below, at our positions, a discordant "Hurrah!" erupted, and about 50 Red Army men – all those who could still stand on their feet – rushed into a counterattack, led by the First Lieutenant. Less than half of them had rifles. Others clutched stones in their hands, and some simply ran toward the enemy with empty hands, aided only by a fierce shout.

      “Why?!!!” I just didn't have the words to express my indignation and incomprehension, but now I had no choice but to support this suicidal counterattack with fire.

      Machine guns started firing from the forest again, three at once. Apparently, the Germans from the trucks brought them with them. And I, naive as I was, thought how I could explain to Pluzhnikov and Fyodorov that even if we beat off the Germans now, in half an hour we would be flanked or destroyed by artillery fire, or rather both at the same time. But they won't outflank us, because none of us will be left alive.

      I fired as fast as I could with my rifle, and at the same time yelled at the Sergeant who had gone down, to come back and get ammunition, but Pluzhnikov didn't seem to hear me.

      After a minute my small ammunition ran out, and the Germans still had one machine gun, and a pair of 50-millimeter mortars started firing again. Of those who had risen in the counterattack, which almost instantly collapsed, only ten men were able to return under the cover of the embankment, but even there mines were already bursting, at least not very densely.

      Encouraged by their success, the Germans moved forward again. No one else fired at them from our side. That's when I saw the Sergeant. Pluzhnikov tried to stop the Red Army men running toward the gully, but the men no longer had any moral strength to keep fighting. The beating at an unfortunate position and the ensuing counterattack, completely ill-conceived and unprepared, broke their morale and will to resist.

      It was all over very quickly. The German soldiers reached the railroad, stopped, threw a dozen grenades across the tracks, waited for the explosions and jerked their way over the embankment. There didn't seem to be any survivors at our former squad position. Only those Red Army men who managed to run to the gully were able to escape.

      Chapter 5

      The Germans did not pursue us. Apparently, they had their orders, and their commander considered it inexpedient to be distracted from carrying them out. I went to catch up with the rest of our detachment going north, where we absolutely should not have moved, but the road to the south was cut off by the German column, and the west and east seemed to me no better than the north.

      It took me several hours to find the Sergeant, and that was only thanks to the data from the orbit. So far, I have been an absolutely untalented pathfinder. My entire practice of walking through the woods was reduced to a couple of weeks of trekking through the taiga, again with the help of satellite navigation. What I had in abundance was stamina and good coordination of movement, so that I could still move over rough terrain quite quickly.

      Pluzhnikov and three other fighters stopped for a halt in the middle of the forest – they evidently were afraid to go out into the open. The Sergeant and two Red Army men were sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree eating stew from a crumpled can, drinking water from the flasks and eating rye bread. The fourth fighter, in whom I recognized Boris with a joy that surprised me, stood at his post, gazing intently into the woods. He didn't try to take cover or even sit down, but he was turning his head with a zeal worthy of better use. As a result, I noticed him first, although, in theory, it should have been the other way around.

      “Boris!” I called softly to the sentry.

      The soldier twitched, grabbing his rifle, and I hastily added:

      “It's me, fighter Nagulin. I come out slowly and empty-handed.”

      I threw my rifle behind my back, and walked leisurely toward my comrades' camp.

      “Are you alone?” asked the Sergeant, who jumped up at the first sound of my voice and almost dropped the can of stew on the ground.

      “Alone,” I confirmed, “no one followed me, I seem to be the last one. What about the Commander?”

      “He was killed at the very beginning of the counterattack,” answered Pluzhnikov briefly looking me in the eyes, “he was shot down with the first burst.”

      “Comrade Sergeant, permission to ask you a question?”

      “No permission, Nagulin. We'll talk later, I'll call you myself,” the Sergeant cast an expressive glance at the Red Army men gathered around us. “Soldier Sintsov!”

      “That's