Marching Through Georgia
Page 27
Bad luck, he thought, rolling his head to take the impact on his skull rather than the more vulnerable face; he could hear knuckles pop as they broke. Fists landed on his jaw and cheek, jarring the white lights back before his eyes; he could feel the skin split over one cheekbone, but there was no more pain, only a cold prickling over his whole skin, as if he were trying to slough it as a snake does. One hand still fumbled at the SS officer's waist; it fell on the butt of a pistol; he made a supreme effort of concentration, drew it, pressed it to the other's tunic and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. Safety on, or perhaps his hand was just too weak. He could see the Fritz's face in the ruddy glow of burning petrol and lubricants and rubber: black smudged, bestial, wet running down the chin. The great peasant hands clamped on his throat. The light began to fade.
* * * *
Felix Hoth was kneeling in the mud behind his radio truck, and yet was not. In his mind the SS man was back in a cellar beneath the Lubyanka, strangling a NKVD holdout he had stalked through the labyrinth and found in a hidden room with a half-eaten German corpse. He did not even turn the first time Sofie rang the steel folding butt of her machine pistol off the back of his head; she could not fire, you do not aim an automatic weapon in the direction of someone you want to live.
Hoth did start to move when she kicked him up between the legs where he straddled the Centurion's body, very hard. That was too late; she planted herself and hacked downward with both hands on the weapon's forestock, as if she were pounding grain with a mortar and pestle. There was a hollow thock sound, and a shock that jarred her sturdy body right down to the bones in her lower back; the strip steel of the submachine gun's stock deformed slightly under the impact. If the butt had not had a rubber pad, the German's brains would have spattered; as it was, he slumped boneless across the Draka's body. With cold economy she booted the body off her commander's and raised her weapon to fire.
It was empty, the bolt back and the chamber gaping. Not worth the time to reload. The comtech kneeled by Eric's side, her hands moving across his body in an examination quick, expert, fearful. Blood, bruises, no open wounds, no obvious fractures poking bone-splinters through flesh… So hard to tell in the difficult light, no time… She reached forward to push back an eyelid and check for concussion. Eric's hand came up and caught her wrist, and the grey eyes opened, red and visibly bloodshot even in the uncertain, flickering light. The sound of firing was dying down.
"Stim," he said hoarsely.
"Sir—Eric—" she began.
"Stim, that's an order." His head fell back, and he muttered incoherently.
She hesitated, her hands snapping open the case at her belt and taking out the disposable hypodermic. It was filled with a compound of benzedrine and amphetamines, the last reserve against extremity even for a fit man in good condition; for use when a last half hour of energy could mean the difference. Eric was enormously fit, but not in good condition, not after that battering; there might be concussion, internal hemorrhage, anything.
The sound echoed around the bend of the road below: steel-squeal on metal and rock, treads. Armored vehicles, many of them; she would have heard them before but for the racket of combat and the muffling rain. Their headlights were already touching the tops of the trees below. She looked down. Eric was lying still, only the quick, labored pumping of his chest marking life; his eyes blinked into the rain that dimpled the mud around him and washed the blood in thin runnels from his nose and mouth.
"Oh shit!" Sofie blurted, and leaned forward to inject the drug into his neck. There, half dosage,
Wotan pop her eyes if she'd give him any more.
* * * *
The effect of the drug was almost instantaneous. The mists at the corners of his eyes receded, and he hurt. That was why pain-overload could send you into unconsciousness, the messages got redundant… He hurt a lot. Then the pain receded; it was still there, but somehow did not matter very much. Now he felt good, very good in fact; full of energy, as if he could bounce to his feet and sweep Sofie up in his arms and run all the way back to the village.
He fought down the euphoria and contented himself with coming to his feet, slowly, leaning an arm across Sofie's shoulders. The world swayed about him, then cleared to preternatural clarity. The dying flames of the burning trucks were living sculptures of orange and yellow, dancing fire maidens with black soot-hair and the hissing voices of rain on hot metal. The trees about him were a sea that rippled and shimmered, green-orange; the roasting-pork smell of burning bodies clawed at his empty stomach. Eric swallowed bile and blinked, absently thrusting the German pistol in his hand through a loop in the webbing.
"Back—" he began hoarsely, hawked, spat out phlegm mixed with blood. "Back to the woods, now."
McWhirter stepped up, and two of the satchelmen. The Senior Decurion was wiping the blade of his Jamieson on one thigh as he dropped an ear into the bag strapped to his leg. The lunatic clarity of the drug showed Eric a face younger than he recalled, smoother, without the knots of tension that the older man's face usually wore. McWhirter's expression was much like the relaxed, contented look that comes just after orgasm, and his mouth was wet with something that shone black in the firelight.
The Centurion dismissed the brief crawling of skin between his shoulder blades as they turned and ran for the woods. It was much easier than the trip out, there was plenty of light now; enough to pinpoint them easily for a single burst of automatic fire. The feeling of lightness did not last much beyond the first strides. After that each bootfall drove a spike of pain up the line of his spine and into his skull, like a dull brass knife ramming into his head over the left eye; breathing pushed his bruised ribs into efforts that made the darkness swim before his eyes. There was gunfire from ahead and upslope, muffled through the trees, and there a flare popping above the leaf canopy. He concentrated on blocking off the pain, forcing it into the sides of his mind. Relax the muscles… pain did not make you weak, it was just the body's way of forcing you to slow down and recover. Training could suppress it, make the organism function at potential…
If this is wanting to be alive, I'm not so sure I want to want it, he thought. Haven't been this afraid in years. They crashed through the screen of undergrowth and threw themselves down. The others were joining him, the survivors; more than half. The shock of falling brought another white explosion behind his eyes. Ignore it, reach for the handset. Sofie thrust it into his palm, and he was suddenly conscious of the wetness again, the rain falling in a silvery dazzle through the air lit by the burning Fritz vehicles. Beyond the clearing, beyond the ruined buildings by the road, the SS armor rumbled and clanked, metal sounding under the diesel growl, so different from the smooth silence of steam.
He clicked the handset. The first tank waddled around the buildings, accelerating as it came into the light. Then it braked, as the infantry riding on it leaped down to deploy; the hatches were open, and Eric could see the black silhouette of the commander as he stood in the turret, staring about in disbelief at the clearing. Wrecked trucks littered it, burning or abandoned; one was driving slowly in a circle with the driver's arm swaying limply out the window.
Bodies were scattered about—dozens of them: piles of two or three, there a huddle around a wrecked machine gun, there a squad caught by a burst as they ran through darkness to a meeting with death. Wounded lay moaning, or staggered clutching at their hurts; somewhere a man's voice was screaming in pulsing bursts as long as breaths. Thirty, fifty at least, Eric estimated as he spoke.
"Palm One to Fist, do y'read."
"Acknowledged, Palm One." The calm tones of the battery-commander were a shocking contrast to Eric's hoarseness. "Hope yo've got a target worth gettin' up this early for."
"Firefall!" Eric's voice sounded thin and reedy to his own ears. "Fire mission Tloshohene, firefall, do it now."
He lowered the handset, barked: "Neal!" to the troopers who had remained with the guide in the scrub at the edge of the woods.
The rocket gunner and her loader had been waiting with hunter's patience in a thicket near the trail, belly-down in the sodden leaf mold, with only their eyes showing between helmets and face paint. With smooth economy the dark-haired woman brought the projector up over the rock sill in front of her, resting the forward monopod on the stone. She fired; the backblast stripped wet leaves from the pistachio bushes and scattered them over her comrades. The vomiting-cat scream of the sustainer rocket drew a pencil of fire back to their position, and then the shell struck, high on the turret, just as it began to swing the long 88mm gun toward the woods. The bright flash left a light spot on Eric's retina, lingering as he turned away; the tank did not explode, but it froze in place. Almost at once bullets began hammering the wet earth below them, smack into mud, crack-whinning off stone. The rocket gun gave its deep whap once more, and there was a sound overhead.
The Draka soldiers flinched. The Circassian guide glanced aside at them, then up at the deep whining rumble overhead, a note that lowered in pitch as it sank toward them. Then he bolted forward in terror as the first shellburst came, seeming to be almost on their heels. Eric hunched his head lower beneath the weight of the steel helmet; no real use in that, but it was psychological necessity. The Draka guns up the valley were firing over their heads at the Fritz: firing blind on the map coordinates he had supplied, at extreme range, using captured guns and ammunition of questionable standard. Only too possible that they would undershoot. Airburst in the branches overhead, shrapnel and wood fragments whirring through the night like circular saws…
The first shells burst out of sight, farther down the road and past the ruined buidlings, visible only as a wink-wink-wink-wink of light, before the noise and overpressure slapped at their faces. The last two of the six landed in the clearing, bright flashes and inverted fans of water and mud and rock, bodies and pieces of wrecked truck. He rose, controlling the dizziness.
"On target, on target, fire for effect," he shouted, and tossed the handset back to Sofie. "Burn boot, up the trail, move."
It was growing darker as they ran from the clearing, away from the steady metronomic whamwham-wham of shells falling among the Fritz column, as the fires burnt out and distance cut them off. A branch slapped him in the face; there was a prickling numbness on his skin that seemed to muffle it. The firefights up ahead were building; no fear of the SS shooting blind into the dark, with their comrades engaged up there. Although they might pursue on foot… no, probably not. Not at once, not with that slaughterhouse confusion back by the road, and shells pounding into it. Best leave them a calling card, for later.
"Stop," he gasped. Something oofed into him, and he grabbed at brush to keep himself upright. "Mine it," he continued.
Behind him, one of the satchelmen pulled a last burden out of her pack. Unfolding the tripod beneath the Broadsword mine, she adjusted it to point back the way they had come, downslope, northwards. Then she undipped a length of fine wire, looped one end through the detonator hook on the side and stepped forward. One step, two… around a handy branch, across the trail, tie it off…
"Good, can't see it mahself. Now, careful, careful," she muttered to herself as she stepped over the wire that now ran at shin height across the pathway and bent to brush her fingers on the unseen slickness of the mine's casing. The arming switch should be… there. She twisted it.
"Armed," she said. Now it was deadly, and very sensitive. Not enough for the pattering raindrops to set it off, she had left a little slack, but a brushing foot would detonate it for sure. The trail was lightless enough to register as black to her eyes, with only the lighter patches of hands and equipment catching enough of the reflected glow to hover as suggestions of sight. Still, she was sure she could detect a flinch at the words; mines were another of those things that most soldiers detested with a weary, hopeless hatred; you couldn't do anything much about them, except wait for them to kill you.
The sapper grinned in the dark. People who were nervous around explosives did not volunteer for her line of work; besides that, her training had included working on live munitions blindfolded. And Eddie had not made it back; Eddie had been a good friend of hers. Hope they-all come up the trail at a run, she thought vindictively, kissing a finger and touching it to the Broadsword.
* * * *
Eric stood with his face turned upward to the rain while the mine was set, letting the coolness run over his face and trickle between his lips with tastes of wood and greenness and sweat from his own skin; he had been moving too fast for chill to set in. The scent of the forest was overwhelming in contrast to the fecal-explosive-fire smells of the brief battle—resin and sap and the odd musky-spicy scents of weeds and herbs. Alive, he thought. Gunfire to the south, around the slope of the mountain and through the trees, confusing direction. A last salvo of shells dragged their rumble through the invisible sky. Sofie was beside him, an arm around his waist in support that was no less real for being mostly psychological.
"Burn boot, people," he said quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. "Let's go home."
They were nearly back to the village before he collapsed.
Chapter Sixteen
" …had spent the 1920's and 30's preparing for a war. but not necessarily the war that actually happened. The Soviet Union consolidated itself and began to industrialize far more rapidly than the Strategic Planning Board had anticipated, and the Draka conquests in western China enabled Japan to quickly overrun and occupy the seaboard provinces. With their vast manpower and mineral resources, the last constraints on the development of Imperial Japan's industrial-military potential were removed. And with the Domination entrenched in Thrace and Bulgaria, we now had a border with the Balkans—a chaotic power vacuum after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but a natural field of German expansion once the Reich had recovered from the Great War and thrown off the paper shackles of the Versailles Treaty. For most of the first post-War decade these threats remained only potentials, but the specter of a war on three fronts increasingly haunted the planners in Castle Tarleton. All that they could do was press ahead with preparations for the inevitable conflict; it was obvious that it would be a continental war of mass armies and airfieets.
A combination of skill and sheer good fortune avoided that niahtmare. The border clashes with Jaoan in the late 1930's revealed that while determined and very tenacious, her ground forces had fallen behind the times. Japan's primary attention would now be turned south and east to the islands and archipelagoes of southeast Asia and the Pacific. Hitler's daring gamble against the Soviets succeeded, destroying an enemy which might have been a deadly threat if their efficiency had matched their sheer numbers and weight of metal, but it left National Socialist Germany critically overextended. The strategic opportunity this presented was too dazzling to be missed—a chance to destroy the only remaining Power in northern Eurasia, push the borders of the Domination to the North Atlantic, advance by a generation the great plan to fulfill the destiny of the Race. A possible dream, as well. Only the Domination had had the resources and determination needed to rearm in depth as well as breadth; the United States had the capacity, but chose to expend her industrial energies on washing machines and private autosteamers rather than turret-castings and artillery barrel forges. The power was there, if only it could be applied…
―Fire And Blood: The Eurasian War VI, The Gathering Thunder. 1930-1941, by Strategos Robert A. Jackson (ret), New Territories Press, Vienna. 1965
Ossetian Military Highway, Village One April 15, 1942: 0510 Hours
William Dreiser clicked off the tape recorder and patted the pebbled waterproof leather of the casing affectionately. It was the latest thing—only the size of a large suitcase, and much more rugged than the clumsy magnetic-wire models it had replaced—from Williams-Burroughs Electronics in Toronto. The Draka had been amazed at it; it was one field in which the United States was incontestably ahead. And it had been an effective piece: the ambush patrol setting out into the dark and the ra
in, faces grim and impassive; the others waiting, sleeping or at their posts, a stolid few playing endless games of solitaire. Then the eruption of noise in the dark, confusing, bewildering, giving almost no hint of direction. Imagination had had to fill in then, picturing the confused fighting in absolute darkness. Finally the survivors straggling in, hale and walking-wounded and others carried over their comrades' shoulders…
He looked up. The command cellar was the warmest place in the warren of basements, and several of the survivors had gathered, to strip and sit huddled in blankets while their uniforms and boots steamed beside the field stove. Some were bandaged, and others were rubbing each other down with an oil that had a sharp scent of pine and bitter herbs. The dim blue-lit air was heavy with it, and the smells of damp wool, blood, bandages, and fear-sweat under the brewing coffee. Eric was sitting in one corner, an unnoticed cigarette burning between his fingers and the blanket let fall to his waist, careless of the chill. The medic snapped off the pencil light he had been using to peer into the Centurion's eyes and nodded.
"Cuts, abrasions an' bruises," he said. "Ribs… better tape 'em. Mighta' been a concussion, but pretty mild. More damage from that Freya-damned stim. They shouldn't oughta issue it." He reached into the canvass-and-wire compartments of his carryall. "Get somethin' to eat, get some sleep, take two of these-here placebo's an' call me in the mornin'."
Eric's answering smile was perfunctory. He raised his arms obediently, bringing his torso into the light. Sofie knelt by his side and began slapping on lengths of the broad adhesive from the roll the medic had left. Dreiser sucked in his breath; he had been with the Draka long enough to ignore her casual nudity, even long enough that her body no longer seemed stocky and overmuscled, or her arms too thick and rippling-taut. But the sight of the officer's chest and back was shocking. His face was bad enough, bruises turning dark and lumpy, eyes dark circles where thin flesh had been beaten back against the bone and veins ruptured, dried blood streaking from ears and mouth and turning his mustache a dark-brown clump below a swollen nose blocked with clots. Still, you could see as bad in a Cook County stationhouse any Saturday night, and he had as a cub reporter on the police beat.