Atkins risked moving a hand to push Kat’s arm out of his face. “I can’t see a damn thing and now you people want to set off bombs in our shelter? Get out of the way!”
Kat tried crawling back over the windshield, only to smack her face on the hood as the Ratte jinked hard to the right. Atkins rammed the jeep beside them a split second before his bumper slid inside the giant treads. The demolitions sack in Darby’s outstretched arms missed the top of the tracks as he tumbled forward. One of his guys caught him by the belt and yanked the Captain back in the vehicle. All while the charge rebounded off the treads and fell harmlessly to the ground.
Dore set his satchel for the minimum ten-second delay and twisted the arming knob. Just as he looped the bomb on top of the tracks, Atkins jerked the wheel left in time with the super tank’s latest random maneuver. Instead of landing on top of the treads and riding ahead to explode well clear, the satchel hooked on a torsion bar and stayed put, just a foot from Atkins’s pale face.
On pure reflex, he hit the brakes, the other four jeeps followed suit. Despite the screeching pile up, the vehicles clung to the last strip of cover between the raging artillery in the open and the twenty pounds of plastic explosives at the far end of the Ratte.
“Maybe it’s a dud—”
Atkins hit the gas as the world ended. The spinning back two wheels of the 4x4 kept them in place as the front end kicked up, the fender scraping against the Ratte’s underbelly. Kat flopped head over heels into the jeep’s backseat as a man-sized chunk of treads flashed overhead.
Then caved in the face of the Ranger driving behind Darby’s jeep.
The Sergeant in the passenger seat snagged the wheel as their vehicle sideswiped Capson’s Willy inches away. He twisted the wheels back straight as the jeep bounced back.
He almost made it.
“Jump!” Kat stretched her hands out as the jeep’s back end grazed the inner treads. In a flash, half the vehicle disintegrated in the woodchipper, shards of aluminum and bone spraying Capson and Trufflefoot following right behind Kat.
Just as both side tires blew out of Capson’s ride, Private Murphy shoved Kat out of the way and raised his rifle. The grappling hook clanked off the busted machine gun mount, a Ranger Corporal catching it on the first bounce. He stood on the hooks and wrapped the rope around his wrists. The second Trufflefoot and Capson snagged the line and crouched on their seats, Dore ripped the free rope end out of Murphy’s hand and looped it behind his back.
“Go!” Kat and Murphy wrenched on the line. The flying rope scorched their hands as Dore leaned back, both his white-knuckled paws reeling in the line in one howling tug. All three men in the doomed jeep shot out of their seats as Atkins popped the clutch.
Capson’s abandoned rifle slipped off the gas pedal the moment he went airborne, sending their jeep t-boning into the damaged track on the left. The last jeep full of Rangers behind the shredding destruction rolled the dice and hit their brakes.
Kat cringed as a direct hit from a 122mm shell vaporized the jeep, two seconds after it slipped into the open. She focused on hauling Trufflefoot off the ground by his bloody elbows. He flopped in the jam-packed Willy’s cargo bed, wedging himself between Capson and the other surviving Ranger’s skinned knees.
Captain Darby cupped his hands from the only other jeep left and whooped without mirth. “You crazy bastards did it!”
With a stomach-churning rumble, a giant link in the bashed inner tread finally snapped off. The Ratte clanked to a standstill, twenty meters of track unraveling in its wake.
“Enough of this Scheiße!”
Kat pounced on top of the slack tread dangling over her head. While Dore and the rest scrambled to catch up, she slid over to the center track and scurried on all fours towards a sudden patch of light opening up. Five meters shy of the hatch, a pair of hooks dropped down and snagged the last undamaged track link. Another crane dragged a fresh two-meter wide track foot out. When a white hand flashed into view to straighten some chain, Kat whipped a frag grenade out of her stomach pouch and purred.
“Knock knock, anyone here order a pepperoni pizza?”
The treads under her knees kicked into gear, bashing her chin against a steel cleat as she fell. The grenade rattled off in the darkness, the tiny pop, just a background singer, to the steel raining outside. Kat flipped on her back as the Ratte growled in reverse, restringing the loose track in seconds.
All while she rode the conveyer belt speeding out to the killing field outside.
The gaping hatch flashed overhead in a blur of white light. She cut one of her stretched wrists on a dangling iron hook, managing to keep both hands up anyway.
“Ahhhh!” Her inhuman roar reverberated even over the artillery fire as her fingertips clenched around the maintenance door frame. Still howling into the chin-up, she hauled her head over the ledge while her feet bounced off the raging track.
A mechanic in black overalls blinked down at her, easily one-upping Kat’s sadistic grin. He stomped a jackboot into her left hand and ground his heel against the straining muscles. His leer vanished though as a third hairy arm swooshed in from nowhere and clutched his boot.
“Ya’ too impatient, Lassie.”
Dore monkeyed up the crane arm after tossing the human rag doll down and into the small gap between the tracks. The Kraut’s spine folded at an odd 90-degree angle and slipped away while Dore hauled her up.
“Show off. I had him right where I wanted him.” She stuck out her tongue and dropped flat, helping Dore fish out the few pitiful survivors of the Ranger team as they zipped down the conveyer belt of death.
“Hey, chuckleheads! Forget the jeeps. Let’s go!” Dore popped his head upside down through the hole as the last Ranger climbed in. Capson and Atkins, each driving their last rides, just shared a look. Capson dived out of the second jeep and into Atkins’s Willy. Atkins muttered something and took a breath. Capson tugged at his arm and started counting down on his fingers from three.
“Shit!” Atkins pried off Capson’s arm and shoved both their heads down as the little sunlight ahead disappeared.
Private Murphy slid to the ledge and uncoiled a rope. Dore pushed him back. “Too late.”
Dore punched the deck over and over as the Ratte plowed into a high sand berm. A tsunami of sand and rock washed the jeep and both his boys out the back of the land cruiser and into the maelstrom.
No one made a sound for a few seconds. Only the never-ending artillery thunder filling the maintenance cabin, that and a muffled German accent barking through the only door out of the compact room.
“Surrender the girl, and we’ll let you all live. You have five seconds before we fill this room with grenades. Four, three…”
Dore stomped over to the door, batting two Rangers out of the way with ease. He flung the hatch open without a word, exposing Kat to the German in the hall.
“I thought so—”
The Stormtrooper got a single shot off from his machine pistol at the paw swinging his way. The round tore clean through Dore’s hand, but didn’t even slow his open palm as he smashed the man’s nose out through his ears.
While Dore finished cracking the messy cantaloupe open with a piston-driven haymaker, Captain Darby shoved his Tommy gun in the doorway and emptied half the drum magazine. The gopher tunnel hallway made a submarine look spacious, especially after the .45 rounds shredded the three hapless SS men lined up behind the first.
Kat dashed along behind Dore, wrapping his hand in a bandage even as he stomped over the twitching bodies. “Keep your head, Wolfman!”
“I have been, and it cost me my boys. Now I want that bas’s head!” He charged headlong down the corridor, his shoulders scraping on both wa
lls while the team rushed to keep up — another steel door ten meters down led aft. Dore snagged a ladder in the middle of the hall. With his shoulder against the latch, he halted long enough to kick Kat’s clinging hands off his calf.
“Stick to the plan. Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain. Hit the engine room first and stop this thing. Then we’ll go after Pernass.”
Trufflefoot patted the Sergeant’s pants as well. “I loved them boys too, so don’t let their sacrifice be in vain, mate. We’ve lost two-thirds of the team, and there’s no telling what surprises they have waiting up there…”
The hatch ripped a quarter of the way open, three potato masher grenades squeezing through. Dore growled through the spoons flying off in his face and punched one bomb back through the gap before the hatch slammed shut. The other two clinked off the ladder and spun across the line of wide-eyed Rangers. Seven sets of hands in the packed hall tousled to catch the death sticks. The one guy without a weapon caught them both.
“Rock steady!” Master Sergeant Niels spun on his heels and dived back on the pile of German bodies. Both frag grenades snuggled tight in his chest.
Even five meters away, the funneled blast knocked Dore off the ladder. Kat landed on top of him, clutching at the migraines jackhammering her temples. Trufflefoot tried to stand. He collapsed at her feet, coughing through the smoky red haze. Captain Darby bellowed a Command and jumped over them to charge down the hall, Murphy and his three surviving Rangers on his tail.
Kat’s crossed eyes snapped back as muzzle flashes lit up the dark room at the end of the corridor. Trufflefoot sat up and smirked, cutting the last fog out of her mind. “These Americans are making you look soft, princess.”
Kat leaped to her feet and flitted after the Rangers. Darby shouted, “all clear,” but Kat had to read his lips over the eardrum crushing humming from the immense marine diesel engines on each side of them. He pulled out an incendiary grenade and studied a copper pipe feeding the 48 cylinders pumping in perfect rhythm. Kat seized his arm and pressed her lips to his ears.
“No, no. Use your imagination!” She clambered up a small ladder and squatted on top of the nearest engine block, patting two separate pipes. One scorching hot vent bigger than Kat led out the Ratte’s backside.
The other smaller, colder one ran deeper into the land ship.
Darby whistled. “You’re my type of sick.” He holstered the thermite grenade and tossed her a simple frag bomb and a roll of tape. While Kat stood on her tip-toes and fixed the grenade as high on the pipes and as far from the engines as possible, Darby pointed at two escape hatches in the roof. His Rangers scurried up the ladders, with Trufflefoot bellowing behind them as soon as the first hatch cracked open.
“You bloody wankers are going to be slaughtered…” Trufflefoot’s gaze locked with Kat’s blazing jade eyes and naughty grin, shutting him up. He shoved Dore’s shoulder and scurried up the ladder himself. “Something tells me it’s safer outside!”
When the last man’s boot slipped through the hatches, Kat yanked out the grenade’s spoon and tore off running across the rumbling engine. She took a flying leap at the end, crashing into the far rear wall and clutching the ladder with a handful of bloody knuckles.
“Seal those hatches!” She shot out onto the top deck seconds after a muffled pop filled the engine room in thick white smoke. Kat hacked up a lung and hyperventilated, sucking in as much fresh air as possible to force out the concentrated nitrogen oxide. She froze on her third breath though and gawked at the relative silence.
“Where the hell’s the artillery?” Kat gaped around the Ratte’s roof, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun that no longer struggled to peek through any high explosive clouds. The middle finger of God had swept clean all the smaller AAA guns and the last rear-mounted tank turret. Now with the tank at its most exposed, not a single shell came in.
Darby pointed at a line of green trucks in the distance, shooting away from their howitzers without bothering to hook them up. His words were drowned under the epic boom from one of the two surviving 11” guns ahead.
Dore hopped up and charged the mega turret, but only got five meters before a little armored cupola snapped open under his feet. Without even slowing, he dropkicked the face peeping through the white cloud gushing out. He fired a quick burst down the ladder with his carbine and slammed the hatch shut. Taking a load off on top of the cupola, he ignored the fists pounding the inside of the hatch and snickered at the Rangers.
“Come on, fellas. Haven’t you ever hunted moles?”
With a sadistic giggle, everyone fanned out and perched on one of the half dozen escape hatches flipping open. Even Trufflefoot laughed as he broke someone else’s nose for a change.
After a few moments, the thumps and cursing from inside faded. Soon, the entire Landkreuzer lurched to the right, tracing a lazy turn towards the beach.
“The fumes must have reached the driver’s compartment. We did it!” Murphy danced on top of his hatch, crashing to his butt when he slipped on a severed hand still clutching the outer ring.
Kat chuckled at the red-faced kid… her breath caught at the same time the mega turret cranked around 180 degrees. Captain Darby hollered and ran to the Ratte’s ledge.
“Jump! The blast wave will collapse any lung within 50 yards!”
Kat skipped over to him, ripping his grenade purse off and throwing it over her shoulder. “Nah, we didn’t come all this way to leave without a bang.”
She bounded to the rear of the super panzer as the 15-meter-long muzzles ground closer. Scaling the cleaved-open ruins of the backup 128mm rear-mounted turret, she crouched and waited for the muzzles.
At least until something clanked about on the Ratte’s tail. She twisted around and glanced down as a small ramp opened below.
“Pernass!”
A lone BMW motorcycle shot out the mini cargo bay, an older gent in a pitch-black SS uniform hunched over the bars. Kat took her hands off the bomb bag and swung the Tommy gun around from her back. She had the weapon halfway to her shoulder when the first 280mm tube flashed a shadow overhead.
Dropping the gun with a howl, Kat sprang up and wrapped her arms around the end of the muzzle.
“Let’s just hope you’re not a premature shooter, big fella…” Hauling herself up, she straddled the barrel and fed thermite grenades down the open end. With the gun tilted up 10 degrees, the cannon swallowed each little canister, their clattering off the walls a pin drop compared to the giant breach at the end slamming shut.
As soon as the first spark lit up the barrel’s innards, Kat followed the Rangers swan diving off the six-meter-high deck. Dore winked and shoved Trufflefoot over the side the moment he spotted her diving too.
Kat was still whooping when her dangling rifle snagged on the crushed 128mm gun tube hanging off the land cruiser’s rear end. The gun slid over the top, the buttstock bending but holding.
“Oh, hell you don’t!”
Kat squirmed against the sling cutting off all the blood to her flailing arms. Giving up, she sagged and shook her middle finger at the motorcycle two hundred meters away. Oberführer Pernass spun his bike around and whipped a rifle from a side saddle sleeve. He balanced the Karabiner across his seat and snapped off three accurate shots without a word.
Kat shrieked “See you in Hell old man!” as the buttstock above her head broke apart, spilling her to the ground and barely out of the shockwave as the Ratte’s cannon belched. Smacking too hard on her bum, she stayed on the ground and rolled to the side with a chuckle.
“Ah, that sometimes happens to even the strongest guys.”
The battleship tube gushed only flame as the high explosive warhead inside detonated first, instead of the propellant. With a
final luxurious rupture, the epic rod snapped free of the turret. She caught a brief flash of a bleeding man trying to climb out the gaping hole from the missing breach, right before a second shell detonated inside the oversized turret.
The Ratte kept shaking from one earthquake after another as it rolled away. The two-foot thick turret peeled open, the volcano spewing molten steel and bodies even as it hit the surf. Dore and Trufflefoot shoveled through the sand cloud left in the Ratte’s wake, both collapsing next to Kat. “Christ, does anything stop that thing? It’ll probably beat us back to England.” Dore hung his head between his knees. “Sure wish the boys could have seen this.”
Kat managed to lift her head. That movement sent her stomach-churning. She turned away from the Landkreuzer slipping below the waves, the mammoth diesel engines still pushing the beast deeper underwater.
“Pernass went north. If we can find a ride, we’ll catch up fast. Let’s get that son of a…”
Darby and his handful of survivors jogged up, then threw themselves prone. Darby raised his carbine, his front sight bouncing along the mass of men marching out of the sandstorm. “Cover! The Vichies are counterattacking… has to be at least battalion strength. Maybe a full regiment.”
“No rest for the wicked.” Dore waved his sub-machine gun with his good hand, frowning at the bent barrel. He chucked it away and yanked out his K-bar.
Kat rolled her aching body on her butt, too weak to even take a knee. “I still have a grenade left. You want to do the honors? Assuming they even get close—”
A surprisingly young Vichy Officer skipped ahead of the force, waving a rifle over his head. “Bloody hell, I can’t believe you guys made it out!”
Dore crouched and raised his blade. “I’ve been in this desert too long. That frog sounds just like… What are you doing? Light ‘em up!”
Kat's Rats Page 19