Tank Sabotage

A novel about wartime—about the tangled fates of human beings and the risky service of nameless fighters who have joined the assault group of “Beria’s special forces.”

1942. The Soviet leadership is alarmed: on the front, the T-34 tanks increasingly fail, and the cause is defective armor. To find out why, a team led by Major Maxim Shelestov is sent to a factory in the Urals. The operatives quickly understand that during a standard inspection the defect cannot be detected—it only shows up under fire, in real combat. That means someone among the insiders is spoiling the technology and doing it on purpose. This is no longer an accident or gross negligence, but a carefully calculated act of sabotage. Shelestov sets a false rumor in motion that a secret batch of steel additives is being transported to the plant, counting on luring the traitor out using the bait. But the major does not yet suspect that the enemy has already prepared for him a deadly trap…

“ The strength of this series is that it accurately conveys the key idea: in Lavrenty Beria’s NKVD they knew how to trust people—because the people’s commissioner himself knew how to do it. The story of Major Shelestov’s group echoes a real case involving a major Abwehr agent, a former staff-captain of the Tsarist army named Nelyudov, who ended up on Lubyanka in September 1939. Against the backdrop of Nelyudov’s story, the adventures of Maxim Shelestov and his comrades, as depicted in the novel, look especially convincing.” — S. Kremlev

The total print run of A. Tamonikov’s books is over 10 million copies.