Hero

by Joel Rosenberg

  And it's one-on-one, because there are six of them, and one of the Boche draws the longest mother fucker of a knife I've ever seen—wish my cock were half the size of the damn thing—and jumps me.

  I swear to the Virgin I don't remember what happened next, except next thing I remember, I'm sitting on his chest, pounding his face with my rifle butt. I think he was dead by then, but I wouldn't swear to it. I know he was dead a few seconds later, but I couldn't stop. I mean, the fucker's face is, like, a bloody paste, and I'm still pounding on his brains with my rifle butt.

  I had just about figgered out that killing a dead man is stupid when somebody jumps me from behind, and I think I'm cooked, sure as shit, and I scream even louder, but then he, like, shudders, and he screams, and lets me go. Then I hear another shot, and I realize that it's loud. A lot louder than a rifle. I can't see much because the somebody in front of me shoots something to the side of me, and the muzzle flash burns out my eyes for second.

  So I turn, and the captain's—no, not the capitano, the captain: Hanavi—he's standing there, that big motherfucker of a pistol in both hands, and his face is all lit up by the ilium rounds, and the fucker's smiling.

  He's got the first sergeant with him, and the exec, and both of them are just crouching there, looking at him.

  He says something like, "I guess a body will stop a hollow-point, eh?" and then he mutters something in that Jewtalk of his, and then he tells us all to reload—which we do, and quick.

  Now, by this time, not only do we have enough ilium floating in the air to light up a medium-sized country, but there's wire and lead flying around us in all directions. I guess that the Boche are as bad fuckups as our own quartermasters, 'cause one of them's firing off a lead autogun—not wire—that looks like it's all tracers. I think somebody nails him, 'cause it stops traversing, but it doesn't stop firing. Just sends out a solid stream—you know, in one direction? Really kind of pretty.

  I coulda stayed and watched it for hours.

  Like I say, I wasn't eager to leave—I mean, like, nobody was telling me to leave, you know? He doesn't do that. Giving an order would be too fucking easy for him—yeah, him: Captain Hanavi.

  He says, "We're not doing any good here, friends and cousins," and then he stands up and then I see him—I see him pull a grenade and toss it into the autogun's ammo box as he jumps over the sandbag wall.

  I can tell you that Enzo and Anna Rienzi's baby boy was out of there.

  Just as well, because right after his grenade goes off and the ammo box blows, something big hits the gunpit, blowing it to all hell. I got some sand driven hard into the back of my neck and my ears are still ringing. Yeah, both of them.

  "Just as well we left, eh, Rienzi?" he calls out as he runs for the town. The bastard was smiling.

  And the first sergeant, too—Matteotti was one step behind him, and he was laughing as he ran, I swear. I mean, first sergeant is a tough bastard, but I never knew he was crazy, too.

  The big surprise was Stuarti, the exec. I always thought of him as a lightweight, but he starts laughing, too, says something like, "Hey, a guy could get killed out here," and the three of them are laughing while they're running into town.

  Shit.

  No, I don't know anything about what happened later. But you can't get every sniper, you know. I heard they were still picking a few out three days later, when the company was on R&R, and I was up spending half my time and money in the bar and the rest in the whores.

  Nah. I don't know nothing. No, maybe I do know two things. First is that we took that town with only eleven KIA, when I thought we all were walking dead.

  The other thing I know is that the captain, he may be a crazy mother fucker, but if the crazy bastard ever wants a ride on my mother I'll hold her ankles, you hear me?

  Soldato Scelto Aldo Cartage:

  I very much hate crossing streets. You've got at least ten, fifteen meters with no cover, and everybody and his mate shooting at you. Or maybe there's nobody shooting at you until just before you reach the other side. I wish I was a better shot; I could have qualified to be a sniper instead of a sniper's target. Being a line infantryman is just pasting a big set of crosshairs on you.

  It was toward dawn. We had a sniper in a big building, you know, the alley near J Street? It must have been an office building or something, back before the war. When we finally got inside, the fourth floor was filled with desks, maybe two hundred of them. I'm a country boy—my family are farmers along the southern branch of the Baby Dora—and I've never seen anything like it.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  There was this big building across the street, and we couldn't spot the sniper in it, see—although we pretty much knew he was on the fourth floor. There'd been two squads that had tried to rush it, one by one, and some of them had made it.

  We were pinned down behind a dumpster, over near the loading dock. We very much had to get across the street . . . do something.

  Now, we were hiding in the loading dock of a building that had been pretty badly chewed up. It was the alley, am I right? My sergente hadn't even gotten into the street when he got himself shot—and nailed good. Bullet went in his mouth and out his kidney. He'd forgotten that snipers use holes in the wall as aiming points; he'd been too busy moving us along to pay attention. You can get killed easy enough when you are paying attention; it's kind of silly to forget shit like that.

  We'd dragged the body back in, but you know how it is. You can't do anything for the dead, and I was more worried about the living. Every time somebody made a run for it, this sniper in the building opened up, or when he missed, then what's got to be at least three, fireteams in the building we're next to shoot at us.

  Then he showed up. The captain, I mean, and he's got the first sergente and the exec with him, along with that bodyguard of his, the one with the name like a bird in Basic. Yeah, Dove. Him. He doesn't look like a bird to me.

  So I explained the situation to the captain.

  "It's my turn, Ari," the exec said quietly. "I'll take it."

  "No, Paulo, this one's on me," the captain said. "Matt, you go back and hurry the First Platoon along. Tell Romano I want him to clear out this building," he said, slapping at the wall. "Just like you're undressing a girl—work from the top on down, then stick it in hard. We'll fuck 'em when they try to get out."

  The first sergente tried to argue with him, but the captain just smiled and said that he'd be fine, and sent the first on his way. Then he turned to me.

  "You tried to cross the street one at a time?"

  "Yeah," I said. "So that the rest of us could cover the guy who was running. You hear of covering fire on Metzada, Captain?"

  "Yeah, heard all about it," he said, and his eyes went a bit vague and distant and he looked, I don't know, about twenty years older. "Lesson time, chaverim: when you're crossing a street under fire, split your force in two. Bounding overwatch." His voice sounded kind of funny, a bit deeper and, I don't know, sort of gravelly. "Stationary group divides targets, then the moving half goes right across—fast, and all together—then covers the other group. And make sure the second group crosses from a different part of the street. Don't give them time to react, and don't give them any easy aiming points. You taking notes, soldier?"

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't. Figured it was safer.

  "Now," he said, "we've got a problem. Romano and Matteotti are going to be driving the ones in this building down and out. I figure that either they'll come out through the east archway or," he said, rapping on the steel door of the delivery dock, "out here, right on top of us. So we'd better get across the street and set up a position where we can do to them what that sniper's doing to you, eh?"

  Then he turned to Piscatore, and said to fire some RPGs into the fourth floor, near wherever he thought the sniper was.

  "You're not listening, Captain," Pisser said. "We haven't been able to pinpoint him—he keeps moving around. The bastard's a sniper. What d
o you want me to do, pop up and draw his fire so that you can pinpoint him?"

  "Fuck, no," he said. "The sergente will do it."

  I looked at him like he was crazy. The sergente was dead.

  He sent Pisser and his launcher around to the other side of the dock—telling him to keep low, not that Pisser needed the invitation—and then the captain muttered something to that Dove of his.

  "You ready, Piscatore?" the captain calls out.

  "Well, yeah."

  "Good man. Dov."

  Well, the big fucker picked up the sergente's body by the back of his shirt—and the sergente was a big man, too, easily a hundred kilos—and held it out like it was a hand puppet.

  The sniper put two holes through the sergente's body before the RPG launcher roared. The charge must not have gone off until it hit the back wall, because it took a long time.

  And then, whoom. I would have been watching, but I like to keep flying glass out of my eyes, you know?

  "Look at that. Mother of Christ, would you look at that," Pisser said. The sniper was lying in the street, a bit bloody, but with all the parts there, far as I could tell. The grenade had kicked him right out of the window, neat as you please.

  "Easy, Piscatore," the captain said. "Don't assume that's the only one. Fire another while we move out."

  Well, we crossed the street—in two groups, each group all together in a clump, the way the captain told us to—and set ourselves up.

  When Romano and most of First Platoon had driven the Boche in our building—I mean the one we'd been under for a good ten, fifteen minutes; shit, that's enough to feel right at home—we were set up in the office across the street.

  Cut the bastards to ribbons, we did. Then Lieutenant Stuarti and I went out and finished the job. He had a rifle in the crook of his arm, strolled around like a trapshooter, except instead of shooting skeet, he would just casually blow the backs of some dead men's heads off.

  Shooting the injured? Nah. I didn't see him shoot anybody who was just injured. They were dead. I've never seen anybody shoot anybody who was just injured. That's against the law, isn't it?

  I stripped them of grenades. We weren't short of grenades, not then, but the captain said to, and we did it. The Boche didn't need them anymore. You got a problem with that?

  No, I don't know anything about the snipers. I wasn't there, and I don't listen to gossip. Talk to the captain about it. Or Lieutenant Stuarti.

  Sototenente Luigi Romano:

  We didn't have any experience in city fighting, because we'd never made it into a town—we'd been pushing the Frei across the farmland and back for the past forty days. No, it wasn't covered in training, not in the eight weeks of Fundamentale, or the next eight weeks of officer training I signed up for, hoping that the war would be over by the time I got out.

  I thought it was crazy when he sent us in through the top. But he ran it down by the numbers, just like this was a classroom.

  "One," he said "the stats say that they will—ninety-five plus percent of the time—go out to the street if you drive them down. The stats say—ninety-nine percent of the time—that they'll fight like cornered rats if you don't give them a place to run. So we give them a place to run.

  "Two. You've been out in the country, so you're thinking rifle fire instead of grenades. Rifle fire is better in the open, but in any enclosed space, grenades do it—let the pressure wave do the work for you. Send one into a doorway or window before you go through, then follow the explosion in. When you get inside, throw a grenade into every room, every hall, every closet. Rifle's to clean up after grenades, just like the Sergeant says."

  I was going to ask him which sergeant he was talking about, but he just said, "Let's do it."

  So we did.

  Some of the houses were real pretty, with vines and trellises. I thought we were going to lose a couple of men to broken legs when trellises weren't as strong as they should be, but you know how they are—they always overbuild.

  One thing that happened was funny as all hell. We were working our way down a street, one squad on each side of the street. We were still having some trouble with supply—you wouldn't believe how many grenades and RPGs you can use up clearing a town.

  Now, the way you're supposed to do it is to throw a grenade in through each window as you go past. It doesn't quite secure the street—you've still got to go through each room later—but it does keep them busy.

  Now, if there are soldiers inside, they'll usually manage to beat the grenade out. Nobody likes sharing close quarters with a fragmentation grenade.

  So . . . we were working our way down the street, and I was busy doing a quick sum of windows and doorways versus grenades, and I calculated that we were about twenty percent short. I told him that.

  Ari started laughing. "So, you play a practical joke on them," he said. He pulled a Frei grenade out of his pocket and pulled the pin, then tossed it in through the nearest doorway.

  There were shouts, and two Frei soldiers crashed right through the window. I think they were going to surrender, but they didn't have their hands up—shut your hole, Martoni, or I'll shut it for you: I said they didn't have their fucking hands up—when Sbezzeguti, hot gunner, stitched right through the both of them, pinning one of them square up against the wall before he slipped to the ground, lying in his own blood and shit.

  I'd flattened myself against the wall, and I must have been flattened there for about ten seconds when I realized that the grenade hadn't gone off.

  There was a strange grin on Ari's face. "It's a dummy," he said. "I took a few tools and pulled the charge on a couple of grenades," he said, handing me another one. "Left the fuse."

  I showed him, though—I found an even better trick, which we needed when we ran out of dummies, but still were short of grenades. Remember, soldiers don't like seeing grenades come in the window, so one out of five times, I'd, well . . . it's easier to show you.

  Here, catch—hey, it's okay, it's okay. I didn't pull the pin now, either. Scared the hell out of them, just before we killed them.

  You don't think it's funny? Well, I guess you had to be there. You should have seen the expression on the face of this one Frei . . . well, like I say, I guess you had to be there.

  And yeah, I got there just after Ari and the rest had brought down the snipers. What the fuck do you expect? You want it to be safe in a combat zone?

  Capitano Paulo Stuarti:

  No, I don't know anything about anything. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a company to run, and I don't care if you're from Brigade, Divisione, or a messenger of God. First Sergente, get these assholes out of here.

  CHAPTER 18

  Warrior's Reflex

  General Shimon Bar-El came out to see them early in the morning, as they were clearing the last of the Freiheimers from the town. It was a family affair: he had brought Tetsuo back, as well as Elena and two more DF troopers.

  Ari had set up a command post in an old house at the edge of town, but he hadn't spent much time there. Mainly it was a place to assemble the Freiheimer prisoners; two dozen of them were held on the other side of the building, cuffed to each other on the dirt, casually covered by twin autoguns in a captured gunpit twenty meters away.

  He had taken time out for a very quick sponge bath in the Freiheimer commander's former quarters and a change into a fresh set of khakis. He wasn't sure whether that was for Shimon or Elena or himself.

  The hard part was over, thank God, although it was going to take at least the rest of the day, and probably most of the next two, to finish clearing out the town. Even when you're only up against a few snipers, street fighting is slow work if you want to do it with reasonable safety.

  Off in the distance, assault rifles hammered out three-shot groups, punctuated by the thump of grenades.

  "I heard you did it well, Ari," Shimon said. Tetsuo stood at his side, grinning like a fool. Elena stood next to Tetsuo, stifling a smile. It wouldn't do for an officer of il Distacamento de la
Fedeltà to giggle like a schoolgirl in front of the troopers.

  "It worked well, Shimon," Ari said. "Eleven dead, total. The Freiheimers panicked. As you knew somebody would, eh?"

  "Naughty, naughty, Ari," Tetsuo said. "A nasty trick to play on your men, though, calling in an enemy barrage on your own position, forcing your people to attack."

  "Oh," Ari said, "is that the way it's going down? Freeze it, Stuarti," he shouted. "I want to see another grenade in that house before you go in."

  The procedure for clearing a street is just a variant on the basic pill box technique: you move carefully down the street—one party on either side—trying to draw hasty fire, carefully checking out apparently unoccupied houses after tossing in a frag grenade or two. When you run into enemy fire, you pour your own fire at the window to suppress it, then bring up a grenadier, rocketeer or flame-thrower.

  Paulo Stuarti grinned back. "Hey, whatever you say, Ari," he shouted.

  He took out a grenade, held it so a private could snatch off the ring, and then carefully tossed it into the window of the nearest low stone house before taking cover. One of Stuarti's arms was in a dirty, bloodied sling, anesthetized by a medician's nerve-block and, Ari suspected, aided by his hip flask. It also gave him a place to stash a few extra grenades. Stuarti liked grenades.

  Flame roared out of the window, followed by silence.

  "See, Captain, I told you it was unoccupied." Ari remembered reading something to the effect that the old United States President Abraham Lincoln, when told by some snitch that U.S. Grant drank whiskey, ordered some of the same for the rest of his generals. Ari wasn't about to encourage drinking on duty, but if Stuarti could function as well as he did with a bit of liquid encouragement, the least Ari could do was pretend not to see it.

  Ari turned back to Shimon.

  The general was smiling at him. "Yes, Captain," Shimon Bar-El said, "that's the way it's going down. You seem to have thought your men were too . . . uninspired to attack, so you tried to inspire them. That's official." He shrugged. "High Colonel Giacometti is due out here any time to put his imprimateur on it, and a medal about, oh, there," he said, tapping Ari's chest. "Ari, a hero is just a coward who got cornered. The question is: what will you do the next time you're cornered?" He smiled genially. "I hope you do as well as you did this time."