Red Vengeance — Peter Idone

“As long as I continue to draw breath, my task is to put down that steel beast, Red Vengeance. If I must give chase to as far as the arctic reaches of the Finnish Gulf or across the blazing steppes to the Sea of Azov, I will hunt it down. I will remain on this side of the Dniepr until its severed hydraulics bleed and black diesel fuel gushes from its mauled, smoking hull. This is what I have sworn! Are you with me, grenadiers?” With these words Captain Hans Falkenstein implores his small vulnerable unit of panzergrenadiers to swear an oath of retribution before embarking on a hellish personal mission of reckoning. As Army Group South retreats toward the safety of the west bank of the Dniepr River, putting everything in its path to the torch, the crushing weight of the Soviet Red Army snaps at its heels. And yet Falkenstein is determined to stay behind in an effort to destroy a mythic Soviet T-34 tank known to war weary German troops as Red Vengeance. As the Wehrmacht suffers defeat after imminent defeat, Red Vengeance is observed, lurking on the horizon like a predator ready to ambush and devour all those who cross its path. Falkenstein's mission is personal since Red Vengeance had annihilated his reconnaissance unit on the Kalmyk steppe over a year previously. Emerging from that hideous attack wounded, and quite possibly deranged, Falkenstein seeks revenge for the unwholesome, almost joyous slaughter of his men. He believes that Red Vengeance is no mere machine but a construct of evil operating under the control of an occult force. With the aid of his trusted bodyguard, Khan, an alleged shaman from eastern Siberia, Falkenstein endeavors to employ the shaman's magic as well as the weapons from his meager arsenal in order to destroy Red Vengeance and put an end to the myth of its invincibility.