by Anton Myrer
“What about us?” Burgess said, indicating Jason. “Me and this other fellow here?”
“You both stay here and keep quiet. You’re no worse off than if we’d tried to get you south across that field. When we secure the place we’ll come get you. That’s a promise. And it won’t be long.”
He moved with infinite patience, his rifle held easily in the crooks of his elbows. The wheat was high, and darker than the wheat back home; their molasses-colored tassels bobbed gently above his head, bending down to him. He reached the ditch, waited for Raebyrne and Henderson, and then moved more rapidly, pausing every ten feet or so and listening. He encountered a German knapsack with broken straps, abandoned or blown from the back of some attacker, and a holed canteen. Insects hummed overhead, and far off, over the edge of the woods, an observation balloon hung like a fat silvery earthworm. He felt no fear at all. There was only the ditch and the blunt, dark tower of the farmhouse gliding along above the wheat halms. Twice he stopped and studied the tower, but could see nothing moving behind the louvers. Behind him he could hear Raebyrne crawling, a faint, slithering rustle.
He reached the edge of the wheat and raised his head cautiously. The view from the woods had foreshortened the distance: it was a good forty feet to the wall. A cart lay on its side, shattered, one wheel high in the air, its steel rim glinting in the sun. The apple trees, laden with small golden fruit, drooped in the still heat. He felt a tremendous thirst, and swallowed noisily. His watch said 11:48. Nine and a half minutes since they’d started. A lark danced high overhead, threw out a liquid burst of melody and fell away downwind, and with the sight of the bird he felt all at once immeasurably tired, assailed by fears. What if Devlin couldn’t make it to that hummock-like ledge? What if a German was watching him right now through those slanted shutters? If there were a gun or a few riflemen down on that vast ground floor of the barn they would all be dead in minutes—
Don’t think of that. The thing was to get in there, get over behind the wall. Eleven minutes. Time enough. He rose to one knee, lifted himself soundlessly and ran to the overturned cart and crouched there, breathing through his open mouth. He crept to the break in the wall, one hand on the dusty yellow mortar. So far so good. He turned back to signal Raebyrne—froze as he heard a short burst of machine gun fire. Tak-a-tak-a-tak-a. Maxim gun. They were up there. A rifle cracked, then another; he thought he heard a cry.
He put his head around the broken edge of wall, withdrew it. There was the cavernous opening. A wagon stood inside, a caisson—he could see the square green chest in the gloom. Nothing had moved.
It was at that moment that he heard the second machine gun, its clamor riding in over the first—and now beyond all doubt a series of high, yelping cries. Hit. Someone was hit. Oh, the bastards! He ducked through the break in the wall. A strand of barbed wire almost tore his helmet off, another snagged his right leg, crazy looping strands; he wrenched free in a series of frantic, tottering hops, hurdled over more wire and raced across the little courtyard under the clattering noise of the guns. The stone well with its little iron windlass, a scythe lying on the packed dirt with its broad scimitar blade and wooden cradle, half a dozen sacks full of grain, or dirt—his eyes found them all with a singular clarity, riveted on them; left them behind. He leaped over a high stone lintel, half-blinded by the sudden gloom, tripped on something and sprawled into a crate, banging his helmet against the wood, his breath singing in his lungs. He raised his head and looked right into a young, wild face, a shock of bright blond hair. A German, sitting propped up on a little platform. His tunic was open and his chest was heavily bandaged, and his right arm. Near him a body lay facedown, half-covered by a tarpaulin. Immediately above his head Damon heard the Maxim firing in long, even runs, muffled through the heavily timbered ceiling. For a brief, terrible moment he and the wounded German stared at each other. Then the machine gun stopped, the German opened his mouth to cry out in warning, and Damon bayoneted him through the throat. The boy fell over on his side. Blood spurted in swift dark jets over the white gauze.
No one. There was no one else. The caisson was loaded with some packs and boxes and that was all. He glanced back toward the doorway. He was alone. Ahead of him was a stairway of heavy timbers that turned twice on itself as it rose to the tower room. There might be a man on guard posted on the stairs, at one of the turns. No. There would be no one. Hurry. He had to hurry. If he only had grenades! He searched the two dead Germans in furious haste, found none on them, and straightened.
All right, then.
He snapped his rifle off safety, drew his pistol and ran a round into the chamber, hooked his little finger through the trigger guard. He crossed the room, went up ten steps and peered around the corner, swiftly ducking his head back in. No one. Good. The Maxim paused and started again, a long, yammering burst, and he went up the next flight two at a time, around the next turn, the next, and there they were—a vivid, quick tableau in the dim light coming in through the slits of the louvers: the gunner, bareheaded, hunched forward over his spade grips; his belt feeder easing the glittering belt of cartridges into the guides; the helper on his knees prying the cover from a box of belts; behind them an officer standing immaculate and erect, his field glasses to his eyes, on his face a squinting half-smile, like some count inspecting a rare and beautiful collection of lepidoptera—and on the far side of the gun, staring straight at him, a grenadier sitting on his hams with his back against the wall. But this man was unwounded and he had a Mauser rifle lying across his thighs.
Then everything happened at once. The grenadier raised his rifle, the helper too saw Damon and cried out, reaching for his Mauser. Damon, his knee on the third step from the top of the flight, fired; the grenadier doubled over himself without a sound; he shifted to the helper, who leaped up and then flopped out and down, slapping his hand against the floor. The officer swung toward Damon—in one motion flung the glasses at him and clutched at his pistol holster; the glasses struck Damon’s helmet, drove it down over his eyes. He flipped it back with his left hand, his head ringing, in time to see the belt feeder drop the belt and duck behind the gun while the gunner wrenched at the mount, trying desperately to swing the gun around—a frantic series of actions that seemed to contain whole eternities of dreamy nightmare possibility as Damon, still without shifting position, fired at the belt feeder and missed, then at the officer, whose pistol flew back out of his hand and hit the far wall with a sharp crack as he fell, then at the bareheaded gunner, who had realized his error and let go the gun, was grappling for his pistol: he gave a brief, choked cry and slumped over the barrel of the Maxim. Damon snapped the Colt into his hand. The belt feeder rose up suddenly, his arm shot up over his shoulder and a black truncheon floated over Damon’s head, struck the wall and clattered on down the stairs. Damon fired the Colt and the belt feeder slammed back into the wall, his helmet bouncing away; he snatched at another grenade and Damon hit him again and he went down. The first grenade burst beyond the bend in the stairs, a roar that shook the building. Then there was silence in the little room, broken only by the sound of the belt feeder’s helmet rolling around on the timbered floor.
Never taking his eyes off the five figures Damon clawed a fresh clip out of his belt, tapped the steel noses once against the stock of his rifle, and thumbed it into the Springfield’s magazine by feel. Not one of them had moved. He came up the last three steps cautiously, conscious of the other Maxim still firing. He glanced behind him down the stairway, where dust rose in a blinding white cloud. Crouching he checked the bodies; he had hit every man squarely between the eyes except the belt feeder, who was shot over the heart and in the belly, and who was plainly dying. He rolled the man over again, picked up his Springfield and moved to the louvers on the west side. One of them had been removed, and through the enlarged aperture he could look down on the other gun crew on the roof of the adjoining building, about fifty yards away. The roof had been hit by shellfire, and they were lying flat under the rough tim
ber frame, protected by a few dozen sandbags. A grenadier was firing his rifle below Damon’s right, behind the building. They had spotted Raebyrne or Henderson, then. For a second or two he studied the prone group, then, keeping his rifle barrel inside the louvers, fired from right to left: first the sergeant, then the grenadier, then the helper; moving toward the gun. The belt feeder, who saw the helper fall and must have realized what had happened, struck the gunner on the arm—then fell against him as Damon fired. The gunner leaped to his feet with astonishing speed, did a funny little dance in the center of the roof, catlike, bewildered—all at once threw up his hands and shouted something.
“All right,” Damon called back. “You—stay—there! Stay!” He reloaded his rifle and looked around. The silence was suddenly almost overpowering. He was breathing heavily and his mouth was dry; aside from that he felt perfectly calm. He went over and picked up the German officer’s field glasses and found to his surprise they weren’t even scratched. He flipped the strap over his neck and swept the fields to the east and north, along the edge of the trees. He could see no movement anywhere. He might have been in a tower on the Gobi desert.
He heard the clump of boots on the stairs then, swung his rifle around. Raebyrne’s face popped into sight and out again.
“Come on, Reb,” he said.
They came up in a rush: Raebyrne, followed closely by Henderson and Devlin; then Brewster and Schilz. Once inside the room they stopped and stared at him and then at the dead Germans, the pools of blood seeping into the rough planks at their feet. Someone whistled softly.
“—You shot ’em all up, Sarge,” Raebyrne exclaimed, “—like a hawk in an old hen coop!”
Devlin said, “You all right, Sam?”
“Sure I’m all right. How’d you make out?”
“Not bad. We made it about twenty yards or so down that draw before they spotted us.”
“You got you a bleeding high orficer,” Raebyrne crowed, bending over. “Look at his shiny go-to-meeting boots!”
Devlin went on: “Poletti got up and ran at the first burst.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I know. I couldn’t hold him. He was pretty jumpy, Sam. And it looked an awful long way to that wall. I didn’t think myself we’d—” He broke off, said: “That Lujak stopped one in the arm.”
Damon scowled. Down to six effectives now. “Where is he?”
“Lying behind the wall,” Brewster volunteered. “He’s not feeling too well.”
Raebyrne cackled. “I imagine he’s feeling right dauncy, is Mister Lujak.” He wagged his head in wonder. “Old Sarge! He said he’d do it and he did it. The whole Pee-roossian army! Hot diggerty damn …”
Devlin was saying: “Sam, there’s another gun—”
“I know. I took care of it.”
They all fell silent again. Devlin blinked at him. “You mean you got them all, too?”
“All but one. They didn’t know I was up here. Now, look … ” He took Devlin’s arm and drew him over to the east louvers. “You see those sand—”
Except for the four dead, the roof was empty. “Son of a bitch! He’s decided to run for it—we can’t let that happen. He mustn’t get back. Dev, take two men—”
He stopped with a grunt; there he was, under the apple trees, running hard toward the distant patch of woods. He fired almost without aiming: the gunner staggered, stumbled and fell into a little pile of hay beside a tree. Damon put another round into him to make sure, heard Devlin’s rifle right beside him; the body jerked with the impact and was still.
“God damn fool,” he muttered. That was bad, a real lapse. He should have kept his eyes on him until they had him tied up—the whole plan could have been jeopardized … He shook his head as if to clear it, turned around again. They were all staring at him; they looked like drunks in the early stages—all eagerness and confusion. Get them going, the inner monitor said crisply. All of them. You’re wasting time. You may not have much of it.
“All right,” he said, “now let’s get going. We’re in here, and we’re going to stay here. Dev, go on over and check out that Maxim gun. Set it up facing the other way. Toward the embankment.”
“The other way?”
“Yes. Pile your sandbags at that end and pull out some planks at the gable. I’m going to turn this one around, too.”
“Why, Sam?”
“Just a hunch. I think they’re going to run up some reserves. I’ll send you Henderson and Schilz as soon as I can. On the double, now.”
“Check.”
“One more thing. Don’t fire until I do, no matter what.”
“Right, Sam.”
It was as if someone else were issuing orders—someone with a marvelously clear head, an eye for all contingencies. He sent Raebyrne with Henderson to get Jason and Burgess, he sent Brewster to fill all their canteens from the well in the courtyard, he had Schilz bring up ammunition from the floor below; he himself lifted out a couple of the louvered slats on the north face, and dragged the gun around so it commanded the long field behind them. Raebyrne found some black bread and sausage and a bucket of cold coffee that tasted like burned chestnuts; they bandaged Lujak, who had what appeared to be a flesh wound just above the elbow and who was by now thoroughly cowed; they carried the dead Germans downstairs and covered them all with the tarpaulin. Within twenty minutes Damon was sitting calmly in the tower room with Raebyrne and Brewster, chewing the dense black bread and sweeping the horizon with his new-found field glasses.
“High on the hog,” Raebyrne proclaimed. He had stuck the dead Lieutenant’s Luger into the waistband of his trousers and was pouring from hand to hand some of the buttons he’d cut from the officer’s tunic. “You know what they say, Sarge.”
“What’s that?”
“When times cain’t get worse, they got to get better.” He squinted shrewdly at the ceiling. “I knew all along you were making the correct move.”
“You didn’t sound very much like it back there in the woods,” Brewster rejoined.
“Well, that’s because I need time to come to a decision. I was just weighing the prodes and corns.”
“The what?”
“The prodes and corns. I knew we could do it all the while.”
“Did you,” Damon said. “What took you so long getting up here, by the way?”
Raebyrne made a quick, woeful grimace. “Little bit of bad luck, Sarge. I made it over to the wall in fine form, and saw you duck inside. So I took off through the wall like a catamount in rut—and I got myself hung up on that bantangled wire and down I went, ass over appetite. And when I got up I was like a puppy on a leash, pulling and hauling and not getting anywhere. And finally, just as I was about to give it all up as a bad job, I come loose and went helling on in. Trouble is, it was plumb mass dark after all that direct sunshine, and I couldn’t make out thing-one. By the time I found the stairs that grand old fusillade broke out up above. I said, ‘That’s old Sarge up there, doing battle,’ and away I went. And boom!—off went that hand bomb, and smoke and steel shavings all over creation, and back down I went again.” He grinned happily, and licked his lips. “So you can see, Sarge, it was bad luck that turned good. Because if I’d have been just a touch earlier, you’d have had to scratch old Reb. And there’d go your war …” He went off into his high-pitched cackle. “You get the two downstairs on the way by?”
Bent over the Maxim, studying it, Damon shook his head. “No.”
Raebyrne blinked. “But Sarge, one of ’em was bayoneted in the—”
“Shut up, Raebyrne,” the Sergeant said crossly. He had forgotten about the wounded man on the platform. Pumping the cocking handle he felt himself begin to tremble. The other two were silent, and he knew they were watching him. What the hell, he told himself fiercely, I had no choice. One yip out of him and we’d all be dead. But the tremor remained, and he rocked the gun up and down on its elevation bar. There is a price for everything, the thought came to him; a bleak solace. There are no fr
ee tickets to any land, and it doesn’t matter if—
“Sarge!” Raebyrne hissed from the slits. “Two of ’em—coming this way …”
Two soldiers were coming directly toward them across the field; slender, awkward figures wearing the little round gray fatigue caps with the red piping around the band. Each was carrying two rectangular green metal boxes, just like the boxes on the floor by his foot. They had their rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Ammunition,” he said briefly. “We can use it. Reb, you and Brewster go downstairs and keep out of sight. Let them come in and then cover them. Let them come in. No shooting, now.”
They left. Damon kept moving from side to side, studying the woods, the distant skyline with his glasses. It was hard to say. Maybe he’d guessed wrong. If he had, they were done for, and he had sacrificed ten men to not much purpose. Why was it so quiet? Only a distant muttering, like summer thunder; no rifle fire anywhere. Where had everybody gone? And yet the Germans apparently intended to support these guns …
They came up the stairs, after a few minutes—two rawboned kids, looking ludicrous in the heavy square-toed boots. They were surly with fear. Brewster said something to them in German, and the taller one smiled a quick, frightened smile and bowed.
“What’d you tell him?” Damon demanded.
Brewster looked at him steadily out of his blackened, swollen eyes. “Sarge, I told them they were prisoners of war and would not be harmed.”
He nodded. “Ask them if they are sending reinforcements to these buildings.”
Brewster questioned them for a while without much success. They were Army Service Corps kids, they had just had the surprise of their young lives, and they obviously knew nothing beyond the specific orders they’d been given.
“Tie them up,” he said.
“With what, Sarge?” Raebyrne asked.
“I don’t know—find some rope, use your belts—just tie them up,” he said irritably. He felt all at once unutterably tired; there seemed to be no end to this day of stealth and worry and decisions. He watched Raebyrne and Brewster fussing with the prisoners, glanced over at the roof of the other building, where Devlin and Henderson were shifting sandbags. He was weary from carrying the weight of their apathy, their fear, their unfocused resentment.