There was sufficient aggressive determination in the voice of November Squadron's Captain Harling of the US Black Horse Cavalry, to convince Master Sergeant Will Browning that the man was a homicidal megalomaniac and that he'd conceived some sadistic plan that would lead to the extermination of his whole squadron.
The captain's exaggerated Texan enthusiasm bordered on hysteria as he made a wild speech over the squadron net about pride, the need to sacrifice and the old-fashioned spunk of true-grit American fighting men when faced with some difficult, if not impossible, task. Harling intended it to make the men of his squadron forget they might be about to die – it had the opposite effect. Those who had not remade their wills in the past few days now regretted the omission; more than a couple of the nervous were reduced to mental wrecks of no fighting use whatsoever, and they needed long and real encouragement from their individual commanders to combat Harling's damage to their morale.
It had come only a short while after the end of a series of attacks on their positions, which November Squadron had successfully repulsed. The nerves of the survivors were already ragged; the earlier artillery bombardment had been fierce. The lull, when it came, had been welcome. Then the captain's lengthy bullshit pep-talk.
He had ended: 'I can't tell you not to think about KIA…but I tell you, men, when they do a body count out there, there are going to be one hell of a lot more Popskis than Johnstons.' That was great, mused Browning, one of the November drivers was a Mike Popski! 'We're going right back in. We held the head of their assault my, and beat 'em. Now we're going after them, into their flank.' Harling had suddenly remembered security and switched to code after a fit of coughing. 'H minus 1237 Shark Fin. You get…' The squadron network picked up a steady howling interference that drowned out Harling's voice. Browning didn't hurry to retune to a different wavelength. Shark Fin…counterattack…so that was what all the bull was about. H…that was the datum time, so H minus 1237 meant it would all begin to happen in around ten minutes.
'How come we held the head, and we're about to attack their flank?' began Podini, incredulously. 'The guy's a nut!'
The troop radio net interrupted him. 'Utah, Idaho, Oregon?' The troop lieutenant's voice, easy and relaxed. 'What you got left?' Will Browning heard the ammunition count and added his own. 'Thirty-nine rounds; mixed. Smoke unused. Machine gun ammo okay, out.'
'H minus 1233 we move, okay. They've got a bridgehead over the Ulster a kilometer north of Gunthers. Avoid the hundred meter strip near the river, it's heavily mined. There are some T-80s ahead of us, but according to information the captain's got, they're thin on the ground, and we believe they don't have much infantry support now. The rest of November will be on our right. We'll keep to the open ground to the west. Out.'
Six minutes? There were only five left now! Browning was trying to collect his memories of the past hours; the barrage spreading south until it had engulfed them and finally passed on. There had been no casualties then in the squadron, although the infantry and one of the artillery batteries had suffered. The squadron had moved forward a thousand meters to battle positions on lower ground, and fought the enemy massed on the shallow slopes on the far side of the river Ulster. It had been long-distance warfare at first, maximum range, indistinct targets hidden behind smoke as the Soviet assault force attempted to gain a foothold on the western bank. The river defences had been hard pressed, yet they had held…but not, it now seemed, everywhere. Browning had seen the temporary military bridges blown in the first few minutes of the initial attack, demolished by the charges of the US Division's Combat Engineers. There had been several attempts by the Soviet troops using BTR-50 amphibious troop carriers to cross the river, but these had all been foiled by the artillery on the western hill overlooking the valley, and steady mortaring and small-arms fire had wasted the enemy infantry. A renewed artillery barrage by Soviet long-range field artillery had again failed to displace the US Division, and full daylight provided the Army Air Corps' gunships and Thunderbolt Threes with a wealth of targets. The US Command's plans that their ground forces should always be able to fight under a canopy of air superiority was paying off in the sector. There had been no time so far, in the battle, when Browning and the men of November had found the sky clear of American aircraft of one type or another. It had been comforting.
Napalm had ignited much of the forest on the eastern side of the border territory, and the strengthening breeze from the south-east was sweeping the fires northwards across the Soviet supply routes, and forcing them continuously to move their close artillery support. The immediate effect had been to take the pressure off the northernmost flank of the American Armoured Division.
Mike Adams was gunning the motor like some twitchy racing driver at the start of a Grand Prix. Browning was about to tell him to cool it when he heard the lieutenant again. 'Okay Indians, let's roll.'
India Troop came out of the woodland in line abreast and for a few seconds Browning felt naked, then the other tanks of November squadron were with them, and Browning was happier. Christ, he thought, war's changed… even as I remember it! You no longer saw lines of weary infantrymen trudging their way up to the front and into battle. Now they travelled right to the battlefield in their armoured personnel carriers…they arrived fresh and unsullied. At least, that was the principle. The infantry were with them now, only a couple of hundred meters behind the leading tanks, well-protected in their XM723s, sufficiently weaponed to be capable of fighting their way forward with the main amour, each of the personnel carriers equipped with TOW missile launchers and 25mm cannon; inside, twelve infantrymen and the crew.
The appearance of the small village of Gunthers startled Browning. He had driven through it legs than thirty hours before. It had been tidy, neat and spotless; the houses with their steeply pitched roofs smartly painted, their verandahs and windows decked with carefully tended boxes of bright scarlet geraniums and ferns. The men had been hurrying about their business with the usual Teutonic dedication, as though their ignoring the increasing tension so close to their homes would encourage it to go away. The women had been at the shops, the children in school. Browning had slowed his vehicle to watch a group of boys, supervised by a tracksuited teacher, playing soccer. Browning didn't understand the rules too well, but it was increasing in popularity back home in the States, and it looked active enough to be interesting. Now, it was all an area of terrible desolation and smoke-blackened wreckage. Not a single building was left standing above its first level. They were a thousand meters to the east of it.
Hal Ginsborough said quietly, 'Will you take a look at that! God almighty!'
'Mother-fuckers…' It was Podini.
'Shut up,' snapped Browning. Who needed comments to emphasize the civilian horror? He couldn't see a living soul in the wreckage, though doubtless there'd be some. Somebody always survived, no matter how bad it looked; he'd seen it happen many times in Nam, but it was always hard to believe. Maybe some of the villagers would have left before the battle began, but he doubted if all would have quit their homes. Some did…but many didn't. They sat in the cellars and waited, praying desperately that the war would pass them by. He knew what the wreckage of the buildings would smell like; it would be worse in a few days. Someone, perhaps him, would eventually have to help dig out the bodies, hoping all the time they might find someone alive, some kid perhaps, protected by a beam of timber, a collapsed wall. The smell…the stink, and the flies. There would be rats…Jesus, why was it so many of them seemed to escape destruction? Lean, starving dogs; worse, cats that could sometimes look obscenely well-fed, licking themselves clean amongst the tumbled and bloodstained rubble! There were fires in the wreckage, and a heavy layer of smoke drifted above the remains of the village like a shroud.
The lieutenant's voice was on the troop net again: 'Best speed, Indians, but maintain your formation. Good luck, guys.'
Best speed! 'Step on it, Mike,' he ordered, and felt the Abrams surge forward, bucking over the uneven ground, as the roar of the engines increased. Sound was always relative to discomfort in a tank, he thought wryly. The only good thing was you didn't hear most of the noises of battle. It was still there, though; not far in front of him now. Five thousand meters…closer. Much closer!
He saw the explosion of a shell two hundred meters ahead. It looked like an error, or an optimistic ranging attempt by some distant gun crew. Mike Adams had seen it too, and he steered the Abrams in a series of sharp but uneven zigzags that shook Browning's head from side to side as the direction continuously changed; a few hundred meters of driving like this and he would begin to feel travel sick.
It was barely possible to distinguish the riverbank several hundred meters to their right. Like everywhere else the ground seemed to be on fire, the grass and trees smoking, hazy; wreckage, twisted and spewing Mack fumes. Far ahead were the remains of a small wood on a low hill, and a few scattered and blasted farm buildings at the foot of the rising ground.
The barrage began to increase in intensity. Where the hell was the American smoke, Browning wondered? It was madness charging straight into enemy guns; the only protection they were getting was from the smoke of the Soviet shell explosions. The horizon was blurred, but the advancing American tanks must be obvious targets to the enemy gunners. Browning couldn't pinpoint their positions, but had the ghastly feeling he was being driven into the heart of a maelstrom of artillery fire.
Two heavy calibre shells bracketed the tank, forcing Adams to correct the steering. Hell seemed to open its doors ahead of them; shell-bursts as dense as forest trees were columns of fire leaping up from the ground. Was the squadron getting air support? Browning thought he caught a glimpse of a line of gunships above him. If it were imagination, it helped a little; he had lost sight of the other tanks. He was experiencing a growing sense of indecisiveness and terror. Should he order Adams to slow down…increase his speed? Should he tell him to swing the Abrams out of line, try to get away to the side where the barrage might be lighter? Get the hell out of here…that was important…chances of survival were nil…it was only a matter of time…seconds…and they'd be hit…this was crazy…madness…
The lieutenant was shouting on the troop net, static punctuating his words. 'Indians engaging…Indians engaging…'
Adams swerved the XM1 again as the burning hulk of a Russian T-80 loomed through the smoke. Someone, something, had hit it…visibility was little more than forty meters. The corpses of a Soviet mortar team were strewn across the path of the Abrams, their bodies blackened and twisted by napalm, still smouldering. The XM1's tracks churned them into the filthy earth.
Infantry. They would be around somewhere, hidden, waiting, as deadly as howitzers with their anti-tank rocket launchers. Was the barrage easing? Browning sprayed the area ahead with his machine gun…keep the bastards' heads down. Ginsborough was doing the same…and experiencing identical fears. Browning knew Podini would be seeking targets for the main gun, but there seemed to be none. There was a Soviet BTR-60 personnel carrier to the Abrams' right, but its wheels had been blown off and its tyres were burning. He saw movement beside the hulk and swung the.5 towards it, firing before he aimed, a line of heavy bullets ripping a deep seam across the ground. He concentrated a long burst on the rear of the carrier and saw green-suited figures stagger and fall. Ginsborough's 7.62 was chattering…short regular bursts that seemed to be timed to the pulse in Browning's temples.
Adams was yelling in the intercom: 'Jesus…oh Jesus…Jesus Christ…Jesus Christ!' He wound the Abrams through a field of craters, the wreckage of vehicles and men, its speed little more than jogging pace. The smoke was thinning, visibility increasing.
There was a heavy blow on the side of the XM1's turret which sent a violent shockwave through the fighting compartment and rang the metal of the hull as though it were a vast bell.
'Shit!' Ginsborough was swearing. In the gloom of the interior the side of the turret was glowing dull red where an armour-piercing shell had failed to penetrate as it glanced off the thick steel. The ground was rising more sharply, smashed woodland lay ahead, stumps of distorted trees, pitted earth, gaunt roots. A thin hedge ran diagonally across the landscape to the left, partly destroyed, the bushes torn and scattered. Browning saw another group of Soviet infantry eighty meters in front of the Abrams. There were the sounds of light machine gun rounds against the hull, pattering like hail on a barn roof and ho more effective. He brought the Abrams' Bushmaster Cannon on to the target by remote control, but before he could depress the firing button the Abrams' M68 gun roared and the infantrymen were lost in the burst of the 105mm shell only fifty meters ahead.
Browning was angry. 'Save your ammo, Podini…leave the infantry to me.'
'What infantry?' Podini sounded exasperated.
The Abrams had reached the rubble of a low wail where the main gun's shell had exploded. The tracks were grinding harshly, the hull bucking. A couple of meters to the right of the bodies of the Soviet infantrymen were the twisted remains of an ASU-57, its light alloy armour ripped and torn by the blast, its gun barrel buckled. 'Sorry, Podini…nice work.'
'Yeah, thanks!' Podini's sarcasm was lost on Browning.
ASU-57, an airborne assault gun, mobile and light. So that was how the bastards had got across the river! A quick airlift of men and light armour to establish the bridgehead and give the heavy tanks cover while they forded. God almighty, the thing had almost wiped them out. A few degrees' difference in the angle of impact and the Russian shell would have penetrated, and the Abrams and its crew been wasted. Only Podini's quick shot had prevented the Russian crew getting a second chance!
There'd be others…Jesus, where?
The Abrams was slithering, tracks churning. Much of the surface earth of the woods had been stripped from the stratas of damp limestone, greasy with shattered roots, branches and fallen leaves.
'Left, Podini, eleven o'clock on the ridge, for Christ's sake.'
'Got it…I see it…' The Abrams' turret was swinging. Fractionally above the brow of the hill, Browning could distinguish the domed turret of a T-62, badly camouflaged, its gun moving against the skyline. Its commander had chosen a poor position but it had been protected until now by the battlesmoke. 'Yeah…yeah…yeah' Podini fired and the T-62 burst into flames. 'Yaheee…'
Adams was having difficulty moving the XM1. She could climb an obstacle a meter high but facing him was a steep limestone shelf, its edges soft and crumbling. The Abrams was bucking like a mule, lurching as the driver reversed her and repeatedly charged the greasy slope. Browning tried the troop net. 'November India this is Utah…India this is Utah…come in India Leader…' he paused, waiting. There was no response. He repeated the request for contact but there was only silence. The XM1 was jerking, swaying, as Mike Adams kept butting the limestone like a demented steer. 'Cut it out, Mike…hold her where she is.' The tank settled and the engine roar decreased. Browning tried the troop network again.
There was a howl of electronic interference from a Soviet jamming station, and a voice, distorted, barely distinguishable. 'Utah…India…where the hell…' The pitch of the oscillations rose. 'Utah…read…Utah we don't…' Interference drowned the network completely. Browning tried the alternative wavelengths but the Soviet jamming covered the entire range. The artillery had stopped and he could see no movement on the hillside. He opened the hatch slowly. and stared around. There were no accompanying American APCs in sight…nothing moved within the mist of the battlefield, nor in the woods above.
He dropped back into the fighting compartment. 'Get us the hell out of here, Mike.'
'The Abrams rammed the shelf of rock again with a jolt that nearly dislocated Browning's spine. 'Backwards, you asshole; go out backwards!'
There was a scream of metal sheering metal, and the Abrams swung broadside to the limestone and stopped abruptly.
'Track.' Podini's and Ginsborough's voices shouted the word in unison.
'You creep, Adams…you stupid no good black son of a bitch…' It was Podini.
'Knock it off! Mike, try and ease her forward, see if you can get the track free.' Browning knew it was probably hopeless, but it was worth a try. The Abrams shuddered as the right-hand track brought her back a little. The Left stayed jammed. 'Hold everything.' He levered himself out on to the deck and jumped down. The left track was half-off the driving wheel at the rear. He put his hand on the links and swore. They were too hot to touch. He could see the upper run of the track, as taut as a steel bowstring between the front bogey and the drive-wheel.
Adams was leaning out of the driving hatch, his dark face streaked with sweat. His eyes asked the question.
'Utah's not going anywhere,' Browning told him. 'The track's off the drive.'
Ginsborough's head was above the deck. 'The networks are all jammed. How did they jam HF? Oh God!'
'Keep trying. We want a recovery vehicle.' There was gunfire some distance away, but the immediate area was quiet, the silence adding tension to the situation. The landscape was so shell-sculpted it had an artificial lunar quality. Wisps of smoke drifted through the broken woods or hung in the craters. The air stank of diesel fumes, burning rubber and explosive…alien.
It was the same feeling Will Browning had experienced as a child, closing his eyes and counting to a hundred before searching for his friends; discovering they had run away in the woods and left him alone. The impression was strong now, undeniable.
He was trying to think, to reason. Losing radio contact was one thing, but losing your entire squadron another. When they had all entered the smoke and the artillery barrage, Idaho, Oregon and the lieutenant's tank, Nevada, were all stationed to Utah's right. And beyond the troop had been the remainder of the squadron; behind them, Browning assumed, the mechanized infantry support. He had listened to the shouted conversations, the orders and comments on the troop and squadron radio networks as they had advanced. He had heard them right through until…until when? Until the noise of battle grew too loud, the jamming had begun, when everything was confusing and demanding his total attention, and all sound had become white and unintelligible. Had he heard them only in his mind?
'What the hell are we going to do?' Podini yelled from the fighting compartment. Podini always sounded as through he were on the verge of panic, but never quite got there. Browning accepted it as a characteristic of Podini's Latin background; the gunner made up for it in plenty of other ways.
'You want to start walking back, alone? No? Then dry up!' The smoke of the battlefield had thinned to the kind of watery mist that the master sergeant liked to associate with New England valleys on fall days, but this mist stank of war. In scattered places on the landscape fires burnt, spiralling dense and evil thunderheads in the warm afternoon air. Occasionally in the fires there would be small firecracker explosions, but the sounds of battle no longer surrounded them. The noises were still there, but for the time being they belonged to someone else.
Undulations in the ground made it difficult for Browning to see far beyond the first three hundred meters. He climbed back on to the tank and swung himself down into the turret. 'Get your head out of the way Mike. Podini, bring the gun around.' He switched the lenses to full magnifications as the electric motors began humming and the turret moved. 'Slow, I want a real easy scan.' The lenses were concentrating the smoke mist and exaggerating the mirage effect of the sun's heat on the damp ground. The landscape was hazy, shimmering. 'Stop…hold it.'
There was wreckage.
'Russian T-60,' said Podini, dryly. He moved the turret a couple of degrees to bring the wrecked vehicle to the centre of the lens, then checked the range with the laser. 'Two thousand six hundred meters.'
'Okay, go on some more.'
The turret revolved slowly, then stopped. 'XM1…an Abrams.' There had been no change in the tone of Podini's voice; it was flat, mechanical. 'Two thousand nine hundred meters.'
'Confirmed.' The hull of the squadron's Abrams was torn open at the side, exposing the still-smoking fighting compartment.
'It's Idaho.' There was more emotion with Podini's recognition of the vehicle.
'How the hell can you know that?'
'It's Idaho…Acklin's wagon…you think I'm dumb?' Podini's voice level was rising.
'Okay, okay. Take it round again.'
In the next two minutes they identified nine more of the squadron's XM1s. There were other wrecks, too far away for either of them to be certain they belonged to friends or enemy. And no living thing moved on the battleground.
'He always has to be first,' Podini complained loudly and bitterly. 'Adams has to be first every time. Adams, why the hell you want to be first, always up-front? Why aren't you last sometime, like ordinary people?'
'Fuck off, Pino. I only drive to order.'
Browning knew that the squadron's counterattack had failed, destroyed by the power of the Russian barrage from across the river in East German territory, and from Soviet positions ahead of the US armour. What little smoke there had been was no protection against the BM21 rockets fired from behind the border where they had obviously been deployed in battalion groups capable of landing more than seven hundred missiles on a square kilometer of ground in twenty seconds. Coupled with conventional artillery fire, it had blanketed the area occupied by the XM1s and their support. Shell and rocket craters were so close together in places on the battlefield that they overlapped. Sometime, while Browning's XM1 had been grinding its way through the inferno, jinking the shell explosions with its crew deafened by the howls and shrieks of the missiles, the radio useless with interference and jamming, there must have been an order for the survivors to withdraw. He hadn't heard it.
'I guess we're up to our eyeballs in shit,' commented Hal Ginsborough.
Adams called up from the driving position, 'Well, at least we ain't dead!'
'But you tried, man, you sure tried,' taunted Podini.
The Podini versus Adams duelling didn't bother Browning; it was part of the two men's friendship. It worried outsiders who didn't understand that it was an essential feature of their communication process. Only a few days previously, Adams had rescued Podini from a bar fight that developed when a black artillery corporal had tried, uninvited, to defend Adams' dignity.
'I'm going outside to have a look around,' Browning told his crew. It seemed to him Utah was situated in the calm eye of a tornado, and at any minute it would be swirled back into the violence. The peace was surely artificial. There should be Soviet patrols pacifying the area, their battlefield police taking charge of prisoners, engineers recovering tanks and vehicles for' the workshops. He could only think the Soviet bridgehead had been far stronger than the intelligence information had led Divisional Command to believe, and that when the main thrust of Soviet armour across the river had remained undeflected by the abortive counterattack to its flank, then it had continued to follow their commander's original orders and attack route. Soviet tactics tended to be inflexible. He tried to guess at their objective; the city of Fulda and the multiple highway linkage were almost due west, and possibly their first Red. 'Mike, Hal, both of you stay inside here. Keep out of sight. Pino, get your sidearm and come with me.'
Browning didn't enjoy being outside his tank in combat zones. There was security in thick steel, even if the infantry referred to tanks as 'Ronsons' and swore they would rather fight as smaller and less inflammable targets out in the open. Now, as he began climbing the hill through the stumps of the torn woodland, he felt vulnerable and defenceless; the Remington automatic pistols which he and Podini came. were poor substitutes for Utah's powerful weapons.
Much of the low hill had been scalped by artillery fire, but there was some protection close beneath the limestone outcrops. Near the top he paused and looked back across the battlefield. The ridge of forested hills which had been the squadron's earlier position were eight kilometers to the south and were still hidden by smoke drifting above the ruins of Gunthers. It seemed impossible Utah could have survived the barrage which had destroyed many tanks. He counted thirty wrecked vehicles, and realized there would be more south of the village. It was no longer simply a question of repairing the XM1 to get her back to the regiment, but a matter of survival for the crew and himself…he couldn't see how they would make it.
He moved cautiously, avoiding the skyline and working his way past the blazing remains of the Soviet T-62 until he found better cover in a gorse thicket on the ridge.
Podini was staying so close that when Browning hesitated the gunner crawled into him. He signalled for him to wait while he slid himself on his belly for the last meter.
He caught his breath as he pushed aside the gorse. A regiment of Soviet armour had reformed on the farmland below him less than two thousand meters away. Thirty or forty tanks, T-80s and T-60s. Beyond, a battery of self-propelled guns; nearby, three rows of armoured personnel carriers. The tanks were moving, swinging away westward, the roar of their engines drowning out the sounds of battle. The river, six hundred meters to the right, had been bridged by a pair of GSP ferries, and field engineers were already constructing a second bridge fifty meters downstream, protected by two Quad self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicles and an SAM battery, lightly camouflaged near the riverbank. There was no doubt the Soviet commanders had anticipated their rapid advance, for there was already a queue of vehicles waiting to cross; heavy cargo carriers, pillow tanks loaded with fuel, artillery tractors and their guns.
How far had they advanced in the hour or two since the first dawn battle had started? Browning studied his watch, wondering for a moment if it had been damaged. It showed 16.30 hours. Noon had passed unnoticed…eleven hours since it had all begun! His mind was momentarily confused. They called it battle amnesia didn't they? The real and the unreal blended together, time compacted and loot, incidents jumbled. It was the reason pilots were debriefed the instant they landed; minutes law, as their minds relaxed after long, intense concentration, the memories were no longer accurate.
Ten hours; almost eleven. The Soviet spearhead could already be twenty kilometers into NATO territory, now they had penetrated the defences…perhaps even further. He remembered Captain Harling's words: 'We're about to counterattack their flank.' Flank! Had the captain lied? Was it an attempt by the squadron to break out of their encircled position…an attempt which had failed? The amount of materials the Russians were accumulating east of the river seemed to indicate they felt the bridgehead was secure, and for the first time that day Browning could see no NATO aircraft in the skies above.
Podini was waiting nervously, his Remington so tightly gripped in his hand the knuckles were white, his body pressed hard beneath the gorse.
'What did you see?'
'Half the Commie army. The best part of a full tank regiment, artillery and logistics. The whole darned lot down there in the fields…bridges, combat engineers.'
They returned to the Abrams by a more direct route down the cratered slope. The plain towards Gunthers where the carcasses of the squadron lay had the air of a bone-yard about it, reminding Browning of photographs he had seen of drought-sticken African deserts scattered with the dry skeletons of dead animals. For once Podini was silent, keeping his thoughts to himself as they scrambled down the hillside.
Adams and Ginsborough must have been watching through the lenses, for as the two men returned they climbed from the hull and waited for Browning to speak, their faces begging him to say something encouraging. Browning dropped his Remington back into its holster, squatted beside the Abrams and rested against the crippled track. The men stood looking down at him anxiously. He spoke slowly. 'Just over that hill is the end of the war for us. All we have to do is to walk slowly around there, with our hands up. No more shelling or bombing…no more rockets or napalm.' They remained silent. 'One thing I ought to tell you. The Russians took a lot of Germans prisoner in the '39-'45 war; the last ones they released didn't get home until '57. Some never made it at all…they used them as labourers in the Arctic Circle; maybe some of them are still alive, still up there. They'd be about sixty-five years old, could be even seventy.'
Adams said, 'We've got your point.'
'Maybe we could walk out, travel at night, try to reach the lines,' suggested Ginsborough.
'Could be,' agreed Browning. 'We might still have to try. Only the way I see it, we have a problem. The Russians could be advancing faster than we can walk. They do thirty kilo meters a day in their vehicles, we do ten every night on foot. The end of a week, and we're further behind the lines than when we started.'
'They'll be stopped somewhere, maybe at the Fulda river,' said Podini, hopefully.
'I guess we ought to get Utah mobile.' Adams ran his hand along the taut links of the track.' 'All I want is a gas cutter to get this sonovabitch back on the road. I ain't built for walking, and my idea of a vacation isn't ten years down some old salt mine.'
'It occurred to me when I was coming down the hill that there'd be everything we need in Gunthers. There'd be a garage there; I've seen one. The stuff we need could be in the wreckage.' Browning was deliberately avoiding giving the men orders. This was a difficult situation and it was going to get worse. It was essential he had a hundred per cent backing from the crew, and that would be more certain if they developed his ideas themselves.
Podini nodded. 'Maybe we could do it after dark.'
'Hole up until then,' added Ginsborough.
'They might send out patrols…pick us up.' Adams looked up at the hull of the XM1. 'Baby ain't easy to miss.'
'I think we've got a chance.' Browning pushed himself to his feet. 'The Russians' main concern is the front line. They'll use everything they've got up there, and do their tidying afterwards. I think we can make Utah look worse than she is…enough to fool a helicopter. Let's get to work. Gins, dismantle your machine gun and get yourself up on the ridge. Keep your head down, it's busy over there. Pino, you and Mike go and get a few bodies…'
'Bodies!' Podini looked stunned.
'Bodies the man said,' shrugged Adams. 'You made 'em, what you complaining about? I guess they're for decoration!'
Browning leant some of the broken tree branches against the hull of Utah, then lowered her gun until the barrel was fully depressed – it made her look forlorn. He opened all the hatches. There was a twisted sheet of metal a few meters away, part of the shield of some wrecked field-gun. He wedged it against the right track. There was already an abandoned look to the XM1.
Podini was examining the bodies of the men he had killed sixty meters to the right of the Abrams. They lay amongst the wreckage of their equipment, their bodies torn and mangled. It was the first time he had seen the effect of a shell burst on a human target at close quarters; it was horrifying. He wanted to throw up, but kept swallowing the acid bile that rose in his throat. Bodies, Browning had said. Jesus, there didn't seem to be one that was anywhere near complete! He'd seen his grandmother when she had died, but she had looked as though she were sleeping…a little yellow maybe, parchment-skinned, but only sleeping. These men, the bits of them, were wide-eyed, if they had any faces left at all; their mouths grinned through bloody smashed teeth and their bodies were grotesque, shattered, dismembered.
There was one partly covered by the loose stone of the wall. Podini could see both arms, its chest, head. He bent over it, biting his lip.
'Mike…Jesus Christ! Mike, over here.'
Adams was beside him, quickly. 'What the hell?'
'This guy ain't dead. I saw his eyes move. Feel his pulse will you…'
Adams knelt beside the man and stared at him for a few moments, then put the hard outside edge of his hand against the man's neck. He leant forward and pressed down with all his body weight.
'What are you doing, for God's sake?'
'Taking his pulse,' said Adams, coolly. The man's eyes flickered, then opened. Suddenly there was no more movement; muscles relaxed. 'I don't feel none. I'd say he was dead.'
'Mother of God, you killed him!'
'Me, or you, Pino? Take a good look at him. Look down there.' Adams rolled aside a large stone that was lying across the man's abdomen. Intestines were trailed across the rubble. A sharp splinter of white bone from the crushed pelvis stuck up through the bloody mess of cloth and flesh. 'There ain't no MASH here…wouldn't do him no good, anyway. I did him a favour. Now help me lift him.'
There were three bodies draped across the hull of the XM1, one obscenely dangling from the main hatch. Without close examination, their nationalities were unrecognizable. A fire of dry branches and the rubber-tyred wheel of a wrecked gun curled black smoke across her. It would smoulder for a long time, well into darkness. Utah looked no different from the other wrecks on the battlefield.
Browning, Podini and Ginsborough lay beneath the heavy trunk of a fallen chestnut, its branches a cave around them fifty meters to the left of the tank. Adams was hidden in the gorse on the ridge, with the machine gun.
That's what' we could be looking like, thought Browning, staring at the XM1 and its bloody corpses. It could be us there. It could be us in any of the hugs out there in the fields, twisted, broken. God almighty! There had been guys back home who thought he was crazy when he had joined the army; maybe he had been…maybe he still was.
Thirty-eight years old, and the only thing he could do well was kill. Some of the men he had been at school with were executives in companies now…owned their businesses, were married, with kids at college, mowed lawns in the evenings, watched television. Family? All he had was a sister somewhere, wedded to an insurance salesman. Last he heard of her was that she had gone to live in Detroit. He'd lost her address, and she hadn't written again. He couldn't remember her married name.
Podini. For Christ's sake, he would never lose a member of his family. There seemed to be dozens of them, scattered across the States from Jersey City to Los Angeles. 'You hear on the radio, Pino, some guy in Memphis killed eight cops in a raid on a gas station?' 'Memphis…gee, I got an aunt there.' Podini always had aunts, and uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins…family.
And what about Adams? Six kids! Pretty wife too. She was sixteen when they got married. Half Sioux, half black; the best of both. Was going to be a dancer, ended up a baby factory. Got a good lively sense of humour…you needed one with six kids in eight years, in military accommodation. They were back home in Fort Dix, waiting for Mike Adams to finish his tour of duty. He'd have been with them in another eight weeks. Eight weeks. Shit…eight weeks was no time.
Hal Ginsborough, twenty-one years old. A loader in every sense of the word. All he was interested in were girls, booze and craps; which meant he never had any money.
Three weeks ago…two…even one, there hadn't been a war. There hadn't been a war yesterday. Browning hadn't wanted one…perhaps no one in the whole world wanted a war, but here it was.
One week ago in Kohlhaus, the Edelweiss Bar. Gins drunk and Podini paying. Mike Adams back in camp writing a letter home; he did that three nights a week, at least. Fritz behind the bar, a German American accent 'There will be no war.' Germanic finality. 'We have fought two wars this century, that is two too many. Here we know what war is like.' Christ, hadn't they heard that the Yanks fought, too? And in Korea, and Vietnam. 'This is Communist bluff. All talk…big wind. Have more drink, enjoy yourselves. No war…this time there will be no war. In two weeks my wife and I go to Spain…close bar for one month. Take vacation and sit in sun and forget politics. Eat paella. Drink wine. Dance a little. There can be no war, Sergeant.' Fritz was wrong.
'Ulli, what time d'you finish? Like to come for supper some place?
Her place…afterwards. Ulli Waldeck, age somewhere around twenty-nine. Waitress in the Edelweiss. Divorced. Black curly hair, reasonable looker, a little on the plump side.
'You like to stay, Will?'
'Yes, sure.' Her arms around his neck, her lips soft.
Bed. Energetic, warm, damp and then comforting afterwards.
'Why you never married, Will?'
'Who knows? Never got around to it.'
'Sergeant Acklin's married.'
Del Acklin. He was out there now, in the wreckage of Idaho. Maybe he was still alive, lying there in the twisted steel and smoke, trapped, wounded. And he'd told him this morning maybe it wouldn't happen. No, Del Acklin was dead…Browning could sense it. Like Jones, Stromberg, Woolett, Hughes, Valori, Erikson, Scarsdale…Browning could name twenty more. Vietnam! Just names, rifles dug into mounds with helmets on the butts. Identity discs wedged between teeth…plastic sacks. All they'd found of Stromberg was a kneecap, and that could have belonged to someone else. They'd put it in a bag and sent it home in a coffin, just like a real body. Whoever carried the coffin to the grave must have thought Stromberg had starved to death; he weighed less than a kilo.
Harvey Kossof had been killed in the tank sheds, rolled along the wall by the hull of an XM1 only five weeks ago. Kossof had never even seen the war! He was just signalling a tank into the service bay and didn't leave himself enough room. He'd screamed until they gave him a heavy shot of morphine, and then died. Now he was a name, just like all the others. They promised you a stone in Arlington; the only bit of land most of the guys ever managed to own.
Podini was snoring, his thin face buried in the crook of one arm, his helmet cradled protectively like a kid's teddy bear in the other. Podini had a fiancée; Italian, very respectable. Her father ran a pizza bar in Jersey City, decorated with Chianti and Frascati bottles, so Podini said. He would marry her when he was Stateside again; a hundred guests, all in tuxedos or dark wedding suits. Then he'd quit the army, start work in his father-in-law's pizza bar, and get fat. If Browning ever dropped in there, Podini would beam a welcome. 'Hi, well I'm damned, Will, Jeez, great to see you. Heh, Momma, see who's here…you remember Will! Best table, Will…it's on the house, vino, anything. How are you? You look great! Remember how it was; you, me, Mike and Gins. Jeez, those were the days! How about that?'
The days? It was one of those days, today. They'd all forget how bad it had been…one day.