Sergeant Karasev turned away, his eyes widening under a surge of adrenaline . . . until he saw the rest of his men, and closed his eyes. They too had started to bleed—all of them—out of their noses, from their mouths. “No!”
The roar of an engine alerted him now and he spun toward the sound. A T-34 tank veering wildly off course, throttle open. Its broad treads threw mud and blackened snow into the air. Several of Karasev’s men dove out of the way just before the war machine struck the side of the truck they’d been standing next to only a moment earlier. The tank toppled the lighter vehicle and without slowing, rode up and over the cab. In the time it took Karasev to snatch a single breath, the driver’s compartment was compressed, from roof to floor, into a space too small for anyone to fit even a hand. Within that space, the sergeant knew, the girl must have died even before she realized what was happening.
She was the lucky one.
In every direction, men were staggering and turning red, bleeding from every orifice. For many, their last voluntary movement was something they never dared do in public—their trembling fingers making the sign of the cross—forehead . . . lips . . . and breast.
Along a path five miles north and five miles south, wherever the scent of flowers had descended, snow was stealing heat from fresh-fallen blood, and melting. The field on which Sergeant Karasev stood smelled suddenly like the floor of a slaughterhouse.
Karasev’s oxygen-starved nervous system misfired, sending wave after wave of spasm through his body. The sergeant’s vascular system was degenerating into a maze of hemorrhage. Blood normally routed to the brain poured instead into his intestines, which swelled until the rising pressure blasted the hot liquid past an ineffectual muscular valve and into his stomach. He vomited an enormous quantity of blood onto his boots, then followed it down when his knees gave out.
As he lay weeping and groping at the mud, Karasev discovered that his vocal cords had slackened and that the musculature around his mouth was now numb and beyond conscious control.
My lips are dead and I must pray . . .
He surveyed the battlefield through a red filter, for his tears were blood. And his last conscious perception was the sound of ten thousand people dying.
CHAPTER 1
Who Goes There?
Let us not go over the old ground,
Let us rather prepare for what is to come.
—MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
Trinidad, West Indies
One month earlier
January 19, 1944
The wings of the great bird painted a shadow on the rainforest canopy. In the trees, a male capuchin monkey shrieked a warning and the members of his troop reacted instantly. While younger males mimicked the bitonal call, a dozen females knotted together and shielded their young. Juveniles that had lately begun to explore their arboreal habitat now clung shivering to their mothers’ hair with both hands and feet. The adults shifted position on the branches, craning their necks to see the jagged patches of sky that showed through holes in the ceiling of foliage. After reaching a terrifying pitch, the cries of the winged hunter faded quickly. The bird was moving off. There would be no attack. The juveniles braved a look upward, then scurried away from their parents, posturing and chattering to send a message that they hadn’t been frightened at all. The adults in the troop ignored them; they had already resumed their incessant search for fruits, nuts, and flowers.