The tank gunner had fired a nonexplosive depleted-uranium armor-piercing round in his desperation. With an initial velocity of eight hundred meters per second, it turned the soldier’s upper body into a spray of gore upon impact. Kalina felt scraps of blood and meat strike her steel helmet, pitter-pattering. She opened her eyes. Just in front of her, at the edge of the crater, the private’s legs were two black tree stumps, soundlessly rolling their way to the bottom of the crater next to her feet. The shattered remains of the rest of his body had spattered a radial pattern of red speckles in the snow.

The rocket had struck the Abrams, the focused jet of the explosion cutting through its armor. Thick smoke billowed from the chassis. But the steel monster was still charging toward them, trailing smoke. It was within twenty meters of them before an explosion from within stopped it in its tracks, hurling the top of its turret sky-high.

The NATO tank line went past them immediately after, the ground trembling under the heavy impact of treads, but these tanks took no interest in their bomb crater. Once the first wave of tanks was past, the lieutenant grabbed Kalina’s hand and leapt from the crater, pulling her after him to the side of an already bullet-scarred jeep. Two hundred meters away, the second wave of armored assault was bearing down on them.

“Lie down and play dead!” the lieutenant said. So Kalina lay by the jeep’s wheel and closed her eyes. “It looks more realistic with your eyes open!” the lieutenant added, and smeared a handful of somebody’s blood on her face. He lay down, too, forming a right angle with Kalina, his head pressing against hers. His helmet had rolled to one side, and his coarse hair pricked at Kalina’s temple. She opened her eyes wide, looking at the sky almost swallowed by smoke.

Two or three minutes later, a half-track Bradley infantry fighting vehicle stopped ten or so meters from them. A few American soldiers in blue-and-white snowy terrain camouflage jumped from the convoy. The bulk of them leveled their guns and advanced in a skirmish line. Only one walked toward the jeep. Kalina saw two snow-speckled paratrooper boots step next to her face; she could clearly make out the insignia of the Eighty-second Airborne Division on the handle of the knife sheathed in his boot. The American crouched down to look at her. Their gazes met, and Kalina tried as hard as she could to make hers blank and lifeless across from that pair of startled blue eyes.