The Contract

The snow had crept from the grass a bare fortnight earlier leaving the ground bleak and without lustre. Far away the forests ringed the great expanse of the test firing range outside the town of Padolsk. No sunshine could pierce the ceiling of cloud that crushed down on them and in the long distance the target tank was wreathed in mist and indistinct to the watchers on the raised, plank dais. The generals always came from the Defence Ministry for a first time test firing.

Otto Guttmann in his suit and overcoat tried to separate himself from the military but the size of the viewing platform made this an empty gesture. This was when he was nervous, when even an old man who had witnessed and taken part in these occasions many times would feel apprehensive. Uniforms around him, heavy trench coats of sand khaki, polished boots of dark brown, wide brimmed caps that sat high on Slav featured faces, and the tongue that he had coexisted alongside without fully mastering. He was jostled for a place on the front row of the platform. He could deal with these men in his office or when they came to the laboratory, could stall and baffle them with the science of his trade. Now the reckoning. It was the first time that the mechanism had been put to the test of field trials.

The binoculars were out. A hush and an excitement and a score of eyes latched on to the group of soldiers in field combat dress who assembled the equipment from the solid wooden crate in which it had travelled from the workshops. Guttmann shuffled in impatience, but the soldiers were right to be methodical and painstaking. The weapon was new to them, and he himself had instructed that procedures should be followed to the letter.

It was intended that combat should be simulated. The generals were anxious to see the weapon in active service conditions.

Far to the right a machine gun spattered through a belt of blank rounds.

Out in the middle distance between the soldiers and the derelict tank there were crisp detonations and the swirl of smoke rising from the ground. Guttmann saw the glint of buried ecstasy on the faces of the older officers who watched, those who remembered, those who treasured their youth and the great battles of Stalingrad and Smolensk and Kursk.

The thought was momentary, the distaste fast and quickly swallowed.

The soldiers had completed the assembly drill.

It was not to be a simple firing. First they must cross 200 metres of open ground through the crescendo of make- believe battle. They must weave and duck and crawl and take cover, above all else they must expose the equipment to the rough usage and tribulation of combat.

Guttmann winced as the soldier who carried the warhead threw himself into a prepared trench and even at that distance he seemed to hear the thudding impact of the metal casing on the granite, long frozen ground.

Through the smoke, faint amongst the firing, came the orders.

The line on the T34, flame blackened, the useless hull and turret, the impotent damaged gun, a battered veteran of the fight against the Panzers, hit many times, holed like a colander and of use now only as a punch bag for the sport of the generals. None of them looked at Guttmann, all ignored him, all peered through magnified vision at the tank, the target. Men who wait for the death of a cock, or a bull or a pig that is wounded and that is trailed by the dogs. He wanted to turn away, wanted to create a chasm between himself and the men pressing around him. The grinning faces of expectation were all about him. The soldiers had stopped near to the top of a short reverse slope to the tank.

The launcher barrel would be peeping lethally over the rim, aiming, lining.

The single bellowed command. 'Fire.'

The flash of light.

Blinding, brilliant on a dulled afternoon. A moment of festive illumination that caught the crouching figures behind the launcher.

The warhead was away, shooting like a tracer a dozen feet into the air.

Locking at that height for a fraction of time, the kestrel that needs for the last time to isolate the tuft of grass where the field mouse shelters, then is homing and scrambling for its prey.

Two kilometres it must travel. Striking low over the ground, beckoned to right and left, restored to target with the impulses transmitted by the aimer. A trail of light, and a rushing roar beating across the open range.

On course, on target.

Otto Guttmann blinked in pleasure, felt the dry smile creeping across his cheeks and then wiped it as surely as if he had ripped his hand across his mouth.