by Len Levinson
“Anything over there?” Mahoney asked.
“Only dead Krauts,” Cranepool answered.
“How many?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“About how many?”
“A few I guess.”
“Let’s go back.”
They walked back to the others and saw Private Gomez, Soulanges and Langeais halfway between them and the ones who’d been hit. Mahoney swallowed hard because he realized now for the first time that Bulldog Boynton had been one of the casualties. Grinding his teeth together, he walked in long strides to the morass of bodies lying in the muck. He found Boynton and pulled him out of the shit, laying him against the dry curve of the sewer wall. Blood oozed from three holes in Boynton’s chest, and a turd was in his hair. Mahoney pressed his ear to Boynton’s chest, but could hear no heartbeat.
“You poor son of a bitch,” Mahoney said, looking at the corpse of his former C.O. They’d been through a lot of war together, but now the war was over for Bulldog Boynton.
Mahoney wasn’t much of a Catholic anymore, but he crossed himself anyway. Then he realized that they’d all better get moving, because more SS men might be on the way. “We’d better get out of here,” he said. “Anybody know which way to go?”
The others shrugged and looked at each other with blank expressions on their faces.
“I think that way,” said Soulanges, pointing in one direction.
“No, this way,” said Langeais, pointing in a different direction.
“Assholes,” Mahoney mumbled.
He sloshed through the muck and bent over Carpentier’s body, picking it up and leaning it against the curved sewer wall. Reaching into Carpentier’s jacket pocket, he took out the sewer system map that they’d got at City Hall. It was wet on the outside but only damp inside, as Mahoney unfolded it. Carpentier had made a big X with a pencil at the location of the manhole cover where the bread truck was waiting. Mahoney studied the map and oriented himself in the sewer system. He figured out which way they were supposed to go.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
He picked up Bulldog Boynton and threw him over his shoulder. Cranepool lifted Sergeant Newell, and Soulanges and Langeais carried the bodies of Carpentier and Newell. They began to move in the direction of the SS men who had tried to ambush them.
“HALT!”
The voice came from behind them, and Mahoney knew that when somebody told you to halt, that was the time to take cover. “GET DOWN!” he shouted, dropping Bulldog Boynton’s body to the bottom of the sewer tunnel and getting behind it.
“SURRENDER — YOU DON’T HAVE A CHANCE!” screamed Colonel Feldheim, who had split his SS detachment into two squads, one to ambush the fleeing maquis, and the other to encircle them.
“FUCK YOU!” Mahoney hollered, ramming a bullet into the chamber of his submachine gun and opening fire.
A noisy firefight broke out in the sewer. Mahoney and his men poured submachine-gun fire at the SS, who huddled behind the walls of another sewer intersection, and returned the fire, their bullets ripping into the dead bodies in front of Mahoney, Cranepool, and the others.
Mahoney had no more hand grenades, and neither did anyone else. He realized that the longer they stayed there, the more likely that German reinforcements would arrive. He gritted his teeth and fired his submachine gun over the body of Bulldog Boynton as he tried to think of a plan. Langeais screamed and fell back, a bullet tearing off the top of his head. Mahoney realized he only had one hope and he’d better get it rolling right away.
“Cranepool,” he said, still firing his submachine gun at the Germans.
“Yeah, Sarge?”
“Take the map out of my pocket and lead the others to the truck. I’ll cover you.”
“But what about you, Sarge?” Cranepool asked, also firing nonstop at the Germans.
“Don’t worry about me. Get the map and get the fuck out of here. Go back to the cafe and call headquarters on the radio. Tell them that the German demolition system has been knocked out. Got all that?”
“But Sarge ...”
“I asked if you got that, Corporal!”
“Got it, Sarge.”
“Then get your fucking ass in gear.”
“Hup, Sarge.”
Cranepool took the map from inside Mahoney’s shirt while Mahoney continued to spray the tunnel with bullets. The others had heard what Mahoney said and huddled around Cranepool.
“Good luck, Sarge,” Cranepool said, touching his hand to Mahoney’s shoulder.
“I said get fucking going!”
“Hup, Sarge.”
Mahoney lay behind Boynton’s mangled shoulder and fired his bucking, howling submachine gun as Cranepool led Gomez and Soulanges back to the intersection where the dead Germans were. Bullets whizzed around the sewer tunnel, ricocheting off the walls. When Cranepool was only a few feet from the intersection, one of the ricocheting bullets hit Gomez in the back, and the young Mexican-American stumbled and pitched forward onto his face. Cranepool and Soulanges ducked behind the intersection wall, and they were safe. Cranepool paused for a moment, not wanting to leave Mahoney alone, but orders were orders and he had to carry them out.
“This way,” he said to Soulanges, moving in the direction of the manhole where the truck was waiting. From behind, he could hear the rattle of submachine-gun bullets in the tunnel where Mahoney was holding off the Germans single-handedly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mahoney ejected an empty clip and slammed a new one into his submachine gun. He lifted it over Boynton’s bullet-riddled corpse and fired a burst toward the Germans, then reached out with his big right hand and lifted the body of Langeais, putting it on top of Boynton and providing a little more protection.
He raised his submachine gun again and fired at the Germans, as sweat poured from his face. The red bandana covering his nose and mouth had fallen down long ago. He believed with all his heart that he’d come to the end of his road.
Chewing his lips and firing his submachine gun, he thought it would be a helluva place to die, in a sewer with dead rats and shit floating by. German bullets zipped over his head and raked the bodies he huddled behind. He wondered if they knew he was all alone. They hadn’t shone any flashlights and he thought they weren’t very well equipped for what they were trying to do. Their tactics had been very bad. They must be a bunch of assholes. But they outnumbered him and more Germans might show up at any moment. What a fucking mess.
Suddenly the Germans stopped firing.
“SURRENDER!” screamed Colonel Feldheim, who was desperate to capture the men he believed were cowering behind their dead comrades down the tunnel.
Mahoney thought about taking him up on the offer, but he’d heard that POW camps were terrible places. They’d probably kill him anyway once they got him. They might even torture him a little, pull out his fingernails and twist his nose with a pair of pliers.
“FUCK YOU!” he yelled.
“THIS IS OUR LAST OFFER!”
“UP YOUR ASS WITH A TEN-INCH MEAT-HOOK!”
“GET HIM!” shrieked Feldheim.
The Germans charged from behind their cover and Mahoney caught a few of them with a burst from his submachine gun. They dropped into the shit, and the ones who hadn’t been hit ducked back behind the walls.
Something told Mahoney that his last chance had arrived. He leapt to his feet, running as fast as he could toward the intersection where Cranepool and Solanges had gone.
Feldheim heard the splashing of feet and realized his quarry was trying to get away. “AFTER HIM!”
The SS men came from behind their cover again, and Mahoney instinctively spun around, dropped to one knee, and gave them another burst. The bullets smacked into Feldheim’s chest and cut down two other SS men. The Germans still alive scurried for cover again and Mahoney was on his feet, running like a madman toward the intersection. He dived around it and landed on his stomach in the mush and crap, but he was safe. He sc
rambled to his feet and dashed to the next intersection, taking a left. Then he ran to the next intersection and took a right. Pausing, he listened and heard the Germans far away. He was loose in labyrinthine passageways of the Cherbourg sewer systems, and he knew that the Germans never would catch him now.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lieutenant General Lightning Joe Collins sat on his cot and untied his combat boots. It was ten o’clock in the evening and he liked to go to sleep early whenever he could, so that he could get up early in the morning and be ready for anything that might happen. He placed his eyeglasses on the map table near his cot, and rose to blow out the kerosene lamp, when Brigadier General Frank Knowland pushed aside the flap of the tent and entered.
“Sir,” said General Knowland, “we’ve just received word that the German demolition system in Cherbourg has been sabotaged by our Rangers and some of the maquis.”
Lightning Joe let that sink in for a few moments, then stood and put on his glasses. He looked at his watch and made some quick calculations in his mind. Then he looked at General Knowland, “Our full-scale assault on Cherbourg will begin at midnight. Notify the unit commanders right away.”
General Knowland smiled and saluted. “Yes, sir!”
“And have somebody wake up my driver and tell him to bring my jeep around.”
“Yes, sir! Anything else?”
“That will be all for now.”
General Knowland turned around and left the tent. Lightning Joe sat on his cot again and began lacing up his boots. He told himself that he must find out who the Rangers were, so he could give them some medals when the battle was over.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mahoney, covered from head to foot with dried muck, crept down the Rue Garonne, carrying his submachine gun and looking in all directions. He’d eluded the Germans, come up out of the sewer via a manhole cover on the Boulevard Saint-Denis, and now was on his way back to safety. Artillery barrages of greater intensity than usual were taking place in strategic parts of the city, and he figured that the main American attack probably would come soon.
He descended the three steps in front of the Fleur-de-Lis Cafe and opened the door. A handful of people were sipping wine at tables, and Lousteau was reading an old newspaper, having been told that Mahoney and all the others except Cranepool and Soulanges had been killed in the sewer system. Lousteau dropped the newspaper when he recognized Mahoney underneath all the filth. Lousteau jumped to his feet and ran to Mahoney. “It’s you!” he said, astonished.
“Who’d you expect?” Mahoney snarled.
Mahoney marched through the kitchen and went down the stairs to the basement corridor. The door to the meeting room was closed, and he opened it without knocking, stepping inside and slamming the door closed behind him.
Cranepool sat at the round table, a glass of wine in his hand. He didn’t drink much as a rule but had got drunk over grief about the fate of Bulldog Boynton, Sergeant Mahoney, Sergeant Newell, and Private Gomez, but especially Sergeant Mahoney, who’d been like a father and big brother combined to him. A few morose Frenchmen also sat at the table.
“Hey, asshole,” Mahoney said to Cranepool. “The message get through?”
Cranepool looked up, and his whole body jerked involuntarily, knocking over the glass of wine, when he saw Mahoney. Cranepool didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, shit, or go blind.
“I asked you if the message got through,” Mahoney repeated, irritation in his voice.
“The message?” Cranepool asked, wondering if he was seeing a ghost.
“Yeah the message. The one to Seventh Corps.”
“Um ... the message got through, Sarge.”
Mahoney nodded. “I’m going upstairs to take a bath. If anybody wants me for anything, that’s where I’ll be, got it?”
“Hup, Sarge,” Cranepool said weakly.
Mahoney hung his submachine gun on a peg, and walked out of the room. He climbed the stairs to the top floor, went into the apartment at the end of the hall, staggered to the bathroom, and turned the faucet in the tub. Brown rusty water came out, and after a few seconds it cleared. He put the plug in the hole and took off his clothes, throwing them in a corner. When the tub filled up, Mahoney got in and soaked for a while, then washed himself thoroughly. He pulled the plug and let the water run out of the tub, washed the filthy rings off the walls, and filled it up with water again, climbing in and washing once more.
When he was satisfied that not a speck of the sewer remained anywhere on his body, he left the tub again and looked for a towel to dry himself off with. There were no towels in the bathroom but in the kitchen he found a half pack of cigarettes in a cupboard and lit one with a match that had been lying on the stove. Puffing away, feeling clean and nice again, he went into the bedroom and tore the bedspread off the bed, wrapping himself in it and sitting on a chair near the window.
He felt numb in his mind and exhausted in his body. His eyelids drooped and he looked out the window; Cherbourg was aflame in the distance. He thought of Bulldog Boynton. Old Bulldog had fought in two wars, but finally the bullet had come with his name on it. He hadn’t even known what hit him. Probably it was best that way. Mahoney hoped that when the bullet came with his name on it, it would come quick and clean, too.
His eyes narrowed to slits and he thought he’d get some sleep. Stubbing out the cigarette on the floor, he staggered across the room and collapsed on the bed. He crawled up to the pillow and rested his stubbled cheek against it.
In moments he was fast asleep.
ALSO IN THE SERGEANT SERIES:
1: DEATH TRAIN
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