The Commissar Read Online Free PDF Page A

five-man crew tumble from the wreckage; they are living torches. The P-IV goes up into a huge fireball. Chunks of tracks and armour rain down on us.
    ‘Where the hell
is
that Commie bastard?’ comes Barcelona’s hysterical scream over the communicator.
    The Puma come whirling up over the hill and into cover behind the rubble of a former cannery. The rest of the section scatters in all directions. The KW-2 is slow-moving but its shells make scrap-iron of anything they hit.
    Porta is the first to grasp the situation clearly. There is reason behind the selection of the quickest-minded men in a tank company for the job of driver.
    ‘Back o’ that house,’ he shouts, speeding up his vehicle. ‘The shit’s down there. Jesus what a gun. A Cossack with a jack on could lie on his back in comfort in the muzzle of it!’
    ‘Yes, devil take me,’ cries the Old Man, in alarm. ‘There the beggar is. Standing there lookin’ at us. Gun round 70degrees. Pointblank at 80 yards. Turret five o’clock. Got it?
Move
man, damn you!’
    ‘Got him,’ I whisper, feeling a cold shiver run down my spine as I make out the giant, grey-white silhouette, with its bulldog-like gun sticking out of the huge turret.
    ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God!’ Barcelona’s voice comes over the radio. ‘Lookit that bastard there? If he gets us, with just one, our feet won’t touch till we hit the
Potsdammer Platz
in Berlin’n get scraped off it by the Eytie street sweepers.’
    I hold my breath anxiously as I sight in on the armoured monster. Its clumsy turret is beginning to turn slowly. There is no doubt it is us he is after.
    ‘Fire!’ I give myself the order.
    Before the muzzle-flash has died away our shell strikes the KW-2. It explodes on its armour in a shower of glowing splinters. Harmlessly! We have forgotten we were loaded with HE.
    ‘I give
up
,’ shouts the Old Man furiously, banging his fists on the turret ring. ‘That greenhorn trick’ll get you a court! I’ve no
time
for you lot any more!’
    ‘Oh, great!’ Porta bellows with laughter. ‘Hit ’im bang up the jacksey, an’ you’re loaded with HE, an’ don’t even tickle his piles up for ’im. Try hittin’ him with a marker this time, an’ splash some paint up his arse. He’d like that I reckon!’
    ‘Jesus’n Mary, what’s up then?’ asks Tiny, chewing violently at the butt of his dead cigar.
    ‘I’ve had it! I’ve bloody well
had
it!’ screams the Old Man, blue in the face with rage. ‘What’s
up
? You loaded with HE, you habitual criminal oaf, you! You mad-brained, illiterate, anti-social ape! HE he throws at the world’s biggest bloody tank! I
won’t
stand it any more!’
    ‘’Old up now Old Un’. You’ll ’ave a stroke an’ drop dead if you go on like that,’ says Tiny in a fatherly tone. ‘Anybody can make a mistake. Even in a world war small mistakes can ’appen. ’Ere’s an armour-piercin’ S-shell,
see
? We can get it off at ’im ’fore ’e’s woke up. The neighbours ain’t all thatquick off the mark where’eadwork’s concerned. We seen that plenty o’ times. It’s us Germans as ’as got it up top in this man’s war!’
    ‘I’ll get you a court-martial,’ the Old Man promises him, white with rage, ‘
and
I’ll take you to Germersheim personally, when they give you life!’
    ‘Arse’oles to that,’ grins Tiny, carelessly. ‘They’ll let me out anyway when Adolf’s lost the final victory.
An
’ they’ll probably make me
Bürgermeister
in some funny town somewhere or other.’
    ‘If that should come about I’d like to live in the town you get to
be Bürgermeister
in,’ grins Porta. ‘It’d be fantastic! An’ it’d certainly go down in history as the best practical joke ever played in Germany. Send him to Germersheim, Old Un’, so we can get to see a
Bürgermeister
nobody’s ever seen the like of before.’
    Barcelona and I fire together. Our S-shells strike the huge vehicle simultaneously, tearing the turret