The world before dawn was a study in gray and black, cold and still. A low-hanging mist clung to the churned earth of the Galician plains, muffling sound and swallowing the horizon. In the forward observation trench, the air smelled of damp soil, coal smoke, and the faint, sour tang of nervous sweat.
Koba's ten-man team was an island of tense readiness in a sea of German nonchalance. They stood out, their Russian greatcoats and mismatched equipment a stark contrast to the feldgrau uniforms of the German stormtroopers with whom they were embedded. Pavel stood like a stone monolith beside Koba, his face unreadable, his eyes fixed on the ghostly shapes of the Russian wire across no-man's-land. The defiance of the previous day had receded, replaced by the grim professionalism of a soldier with a job to do, but a quiet, cold distance remained between him and Koba.
A German lieutenant, a young man named von Preuss with a thin mustache and the arrogant bearing of a man who had never doubted his place in the world, approached them, a steaming mug of ersatz coffee in his hand. He looked Koba's team over with unconcealed disdain.
"Your men look nervous, Herr Schmidt," von Preuss said, a condescending smirk on his lips. "You should tell them to relax. The Russian guns are sleeping. We have another hour before the real fun begins." He gestured to his own NCOs, who were laughing and sharing a cigarette in the relative comfort of a deep dugout entrance nearby.
Koba didn't look at him. His gaze was fixed on his wristwatch, the secondhand sweeping with agonizing slowness. He was counting down, not to the start of the German bombardment, but to a random, statistically insignificant event that the history books had never recorded, but that the cold logic of war made inevitable.
"Thirty minutes," Koba said, his voice flat. He turned to Pavel. "In five minutes, get the men into the deepest part of the trench. Helmets on. Heads down."
Von Preuss laughed, a short, barking sound. "Paranoid, Herr Schmidt? This is the quietest sector on the entire front. You'll give my men the wrong idea."
Koba finally turned to face him, his eyes dark and empty. "Your ideas are of no concern to me, Lieutenant. Only your survival." He looked past him, at the laughing NCOs. "Tell your men to take cover. Now."
The sheer, cold certainty in Koba's voice gave von Preuss a moment's pause. He hesitated, then shrugged, the arrogance winning out. "As you wish. We will be in the command dugout. Try not to start the revolution without us." He turned and walked back to his men, who offered him a sarcastic cheer.
Koba watched them for another four minutes. Then he gave Pavel a sharp nod. "Do it."
Pavel moved down the line, his low commands in Russian sending their small team scrambling into the deepest section of the trench, a muddy sump near the communications line. They pressed themselves against the wet earth, the familiar metallic click of their helmet straps the only sound.
The German soldiers watched them with amusement. One of them cupped his hands and made a whistling sound, mimicking a falling shell, which drew a fresh round of laughter.
The laughter was cut short by a different whistle.
It was a high, thin, mournful scream that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. It was the sound of a single, stray Russian ranging shell, fired blind from miles away, arcing through the heavens on a trajectory of pure chance. For three seconds, the world held its breath. Then the shell landed, not with a crump in the mud of no-man's-land, but with a deafening, wet crack directly on the timbered roof of the German command dugout.
The world erupted in a spray of earth, splintered wood, and vaporized men. The shockwave hit them like a physical blow, and a shower of mud and debris rained down into their trench. When the ringing in their ears subsided, there was only silence. Where the dugout had been, there was now just a smoking, black-lipped crater. Lieutenant von Preuss and his entire command group had ceased to exist.
In the stunned aftermath, the surviving German stormtroopers slowly picked themselves up. They stared at the crater, then they turned and stared at Koba, who was calmly checking his watch. Their faces were masks of shock, awe, and a new, profound fear. In the space of five seconds, Koba had transformed from a suspicious Russian hanger-on into a prophet of death. His authority was now absolute and terrifying.
At precisely 06:00, as Koba knew it would, the real hurricane began. It started with a low, guttural roar from behind them that grew and grew until the air itself seemed to turn to solid thunder. A thousand German and Austrian guns, hub to hub for miles, opened fire in perfect unison. The sky was torn apart by the sound of invisible freight trains shrieking overhead.
The world dissolved into a cacophony of pure, industrial violence. The ground bucked and shuddered. The very air vibrated, making their teeth ache. For the German soldiers, it was chaos. For Koba, it was a performance he had already reviewed.
"Stay calm!" he yelled over the continuous, mind-numbing roar, his voice a point of sanity in the madness. "That sound, the crack-boom, is the 150s! They are hitting the wire! The ripping sound is the 210mm mortars! They are destroying the forward trenches! We are safe from those! Listen for the silk!"
His men, their faces pale and pressed into the mud, listened. They had no idea what he was talking about, but his unnatural calm was an anchor. A few minutes later, a new sound joined the symphony—a high-frequency, tearing noise, like a giant canvas being ripped in two.
"That's it!" Koba screamed. "Skoda 305s! Heavy siege howitzers! Those are the ones that will kill you even in here! If you hear one coming close, open your mouth! It will equalize the pressure! It might save your lungs!"
He saw a young German soldier, his eyes wide and vacant, his rifle shaking uncontrollably in his hands as he babbled a prayer. Koba pointed at him. "Pavel! Shell shock! Get his rifle before he shoots one of us!" Pavel moved with grim efficiency, disarming the catatonic soldier and pushing him into a corner. It was a 21st-century diagnosis applied with brutal, 20th-century pragmatism.
The bombardment went on for an eternity that lasted four hours. And then, as Koba knew it would, came the lull. At 09:50, the guns fell silent. The sudden, ringing quiet was almost as terrifying as the noise.
A few surviving German NCOs began to rally their men. "That's it! It's over! Prepare to advance!"
"Stay down!" Koba's roar cut through the stunned silence. He grabbed the nearest German sergeant by the tunic. "It's a false stop! They are adjusting for the creeping barrage! Stay down!"
The sergeant stared at him, his face a mixture of confusion and the newfound terror Koba inspired. He hesitated, then screamed at his men, "Down! Get down!"
Less than a minute later, the sky shrieked again. The bombardment resumed, but this time it was different. It was a moving wall of explosions, a curtain of steel that began to chew its way methodically across the remains of the Russian lines. The open ground where the Germans would have been assembling was scourged with fire and shrapnel.
When the final whistle blew ten minutes later, they went over the top. It was not a charge. It was a walk through a landscape from a nightmare. The sun, a pale disc in the smoky haze, illuminated a world that had been unmade. The Russian trenches were gone, erased, replaced by a chain of overlapping craters. The air was thick with smoke, cordite, and the coppery smell of blood.
They moved forward, Koba's team in the lead. They advanced in two fireteams, Pavel leading one, Koba directing the other, leapfrogging from crater to crater with a speed and efficiency that left the Germans behind. They were not fighting. They were processing a scene of destruction. The few Russian soldiers they found were either dead, dismembered, or wandering in a catatonic daze, their minds shattered by the four-hour cataclysm.
Koba felt nothing. The Jake inside him was locked in a deep, cold vault. This was not a human tragedy. It was a successful operation. His predictions had been flawless. His knowledge had kept his men alive. They moved through the remnants of the Russian Third Army like ghosts, grim reapers in a field that had already been scythed by a god of iron and fire. And he was the one who had told the god where to swing.