Free Angel, Archangel by Nick Cook Page B

kilometres from their present position. But this was one armoured division that would never make it to the Prague-Berlin road, and Malenkoy smiled with satisfaction. General Nerchenko would be pleased with the progress. Who knows, maybe even Marshal Konev himself would hear of his handling of the maskirovka if the final manoeuvre proved a success. The major gazed down at his smartly pressed uniform and tried to imagine how the Order of Lenin would look amongst the other glittering medals that were pinned to his chest.
    There was plenty more work to be done before the prized Order was his, though. The engineers had been instructed to erect another hundred tanks from the rough scraps of wood that had been sent forward from Ostrava by special convoy and the major could also have done with another fifty engineers to ensure that he would finish the job on time. But judging by the speed with which his existing men had put together the first four hundred dummy vehicles, he estimated that he would be finished in a few days, easily within the deadline that had been set by Nerchenko.
    As the GAZ jeep wound along the muddy track that led towards Branodz, Malenkoy cast a quick glance skyward to see if there was any sign of aircraft in the vicinity. He was pleased that the thick pines that lined the road almost totally hid the track from the air. Only a crazy Nazi would take his plane low enough to see any enemy activity on that road.
    Nerchenko said that he had picked him for the maskirovka because Cadet Officer Kirill Malenkoy had passed out top in his year at the Red Army Academy at Smolensk and maskirovka, the general noted, was the part of the training course for which Malenkoy had shown a particular aptitude. Malenkoy had shrugged it off modestly at the time. As a peasant’s son, one who had spent his life in the forests and fields of Georgia, he had found the art of concealment, camouflage and simulation very easy. When maskirovka became adopted as a formalized tactic of the Red Army, Malenkoy saw an opportunity for him to shine in this uniquely Soviet technique of deception and disinformation. He was now something of a specialist in the field, having masterminded several similar operations in the early part of the “final offensive”.
    There were over one and a half thousand real T-34s hidden in the forests forty kilometres west of Chrudim at Branodz - the simple town also dubbed as Konev’s HQ -which could wipe the Wehrmacht in this sector off the face of the globe if they were to roll towards Berlin now. Even the SS offered little resistance, except for the maniac Waffen-SS terrorists who operated behind their lines.
    Trying to flush them out was a job that Stavka left to the Siberian divisions. Fight fire with fire, Nerchenko had told him.
    Maybe, but Siberians ... he was damned thankful that he didn’t have to work with them.
    Among the junior officers at HQ the topical horror story was the tale of the Siberians who had murdered their young platoon commander, recently arrived from the Academy only two weeks before. All fifteen of them had deserted and headed for the hills above the central Czechoslovak plain. The officer had pursued them across country and caught up with them after several hours. Picking up their tracks couldn’t have been difficult. The trail of rape victims, both male and female, had considerably narrowed the search. The commander’s attempts to bring them in had resulted in his death too, but only after he had been tied, tortured and screwed by each Easterner in turn. The officer had no choice but to find them, Malenkoy knew that. He had either to bring them back for trial or face the prospect of a bullet in the base of the skull for gross failure in the field.
    Malenkoy’s driver slammed his foot on the brakes and the jeep slewed across the road.
    The first bullet splintered the windscreen, the second tore a hole the size of a man’s fist in the petrol can that was strapped to the inside of the