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Cade Curtis watched the distant plumes of black exhaust heading his way. Sure as hell, more T-34/85s had made it into Korea. Tanks with diesel engines had all kinds of advantages over ones powered by gas. They went farther on the same amount of fuel. They were easier to maintain. If hit by an AP round, they were far less likely to explode into flame.
But they didn’t run clean. You could see them coming if they moved by day. You could, and Cade did. He went down the trench to the radioman. “Let division know we’ve got half a dozen tanks coming toward us,” he said. “An air strike would be nice, or some artillery if they can’t do that.”
“Yes, sir,” the kid with the heavy backpack said. Some kid-he was likely a year or two older than Curtis. He hesitated, then asked, “What if they can’t do it?”
“Well, in that case we just have to figure out something else, don’t we?” Cade hoped he sounded more cheerful than he felt. They did have a couple of bazookas, but no foot soldier relished the prospect of taking on tanks without help.
“Right.” The radioman sure didn’t relish the prospect. He got on the horn with divisional headquarters. He did look happier when he took the earphones off his head. “They say they can give us some air, but they’ll need half an hour-maybe a whole hour.”
“Better than nothing, I guess.” Cade stuck his head up for another look at those oncoming smudges of diesel smoke. They weren’t going to wait an hour, or even thirty minutes. He tried for a nonchalant chuckle. Whether he succeeded, he wasn’t sure. “Well, we’ll just have to keep the Indians busy till the cavalry rides over the hill, that’s all.”
“Right,” the radioman said again. By his tone, whatever Cade had managed, nonchalant wasn’t it.
He had no time for another rehearsal. He hurried through the trenches, saying, “They’ll have infantry with them. If we can knock those guys over or make them take cover and not come forward with the tanks, we’ve got a better chance.” That mostly meant there wouldn’t be so many enemy foot soldiers to shoot at the American bazooka teams.
A bazooka round could kill a T-34/85 from a hundred yards, maybe from a hundred fifty. Past that, you’d probably miss. The tank could shell a bazooka team out of existence from better than half a mile if its crew knew where the men were.
Along with the bazooka tubes, Cade had a couple of machine guns, one with a bipod that could go anywhere and the other on a heavy tripod in a sandbagged nest. “Fire one burst, then take it off the tripod, get the hell out, and use it as a light gun,” he said.
“We have a lot more accuracy with the tripod, sir,” said the sergeant in charge of the gun. He was old enough to be Cade’s father, and spoke as if he expected Cade to take his advice.
Not this time. “Do what I tell you, O’Higgins,” Cade said sharply. “How long do you think this position will stand up to shelling?”
Bernie O’Higgins scowled. In spite of his name, he looked more like a dago than a mick. Thick black stubble rasped under his fingers when he rubbed his chin. “Awright, Lieutenant, you got a point,” he allowed. “We’ll play it your way.”
Lou Klein nodded when Cade said what he’d done about the machine-gun nest. “Good job, sir,” the staff sergeant said. Then he spoiled it by adding, “I woulda talked Bernie around if he kept giving you grief.”
No doubt he would have, too…which had nothing to do with anything. “It’s my company,” Curtis said. “I’m supposed to be in charge of it.”
“People are supposed to do all kindsa things they can’t always handle. Sometimes they need a little help-uh, sir.” Klein paused, eyeing the young officer. “You’ve seen more and done more’n most guys your age, ain’t you?” He paused again, this time for a smoke. “Tell you what. If we’re both alive a coupla hours from now, we can talk about it some more. How’s that sound?”
“Works for me,” Cade said.
Mortar bombs started whistling down. The Red Army had always been in love with them. It passed on its doctrine-and a bunch of tubes-to the North Koreans and Red Chinese. The company had an 81mm mortar, too. Cade also liked it. How could you not like portable artillery? It fired back. If he got very, very lucky, a bomb would come down on a T-34/85’s turret top, where the armor was thinnest, and brew it up. That kind of luck, he didn’t have. But the mortar rounds would maim some of the enemy troops and make others take cover. They could do that from longer range than machine guns.
As soon as O’Higgins’ gun started hammering away, the approaching tanks stopped. Their turrets swung toward the sandbagged nest. Taking out protected enemy machine guns was one reason tanks had been invented, half a lifetime ago now. After four or five hits, not much was left of the nest. Not much would have been left of the machine-gun crew, either, had they stuck around. But the gun, now on a bipod and much more portable, had already escaped.
Another reason tanks had been invented back during the First World War was to clear paths through the bramble patches of barbed wire both sides strewed about with such abandon in front of their lines. Less wire than Cade would have liked stood between him and the enemy. He wanted the T-34/85s to come flatten it, though. That would get them closer to his position, and give the bazooka men better shots at them.
Unfortunately, the tank commanders weren’t so dumb. They stayed back and lambasted the American trenches with shells and with bursts from their machine guns. Cade wondered if they were Russians. The Koreans who’d crewed tanks in the earlier days of the fighting wanted to get as close as they could to whatever they were attacking. They seemed to think squashing a foe flat was the best way to dispose of him.
A shell slammed into the dirt ten yards in front of Cade. Fragments whined overhead. He got mud in the face, harder than somebody would have thrown it at him. He spat and blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to clean the crud out of them.
Wounded soldiers yelled for corpsmen. Standing up on the fighting step and looking out to see what the enemy foot soldiers were up to was asking to get shot in the face. He knew the bastards were moving forward, but what could he do? Men popped up for a few seconds, fired half blindly, and ducked down again, with luck before they got hit themselves. The machine guns delivered quick bursts.
One of the bazooka men launched a rocket at a T-34/85. It fell well short. All the same, it warned them not to get too cute. And it made them send some heavy fire toward that part of the trench. By the time they did, the guy with the sheet-metal launcher had prudently vacated.
Cade stuck his head up to spray some bullets around with his PPSh. He was alarmed to see some Chinese soldiers-or maybe they were Koreans-close enough for him to hit. He fired a couple of short bursts. The PPSh pulled up and to the right like a son of a bitch if you just squeezed the trigger and let ’er rip. The enemy soldiers shrieked and went down. Maybe he’d hit them. Maybe he’d just scared the shit out of them. That would do.
A distant buzz in the sky swelled to a deep-throated roar. Four Navy Corsairs zoomed low over the little battle, ripple-firing rockets and blazing away with the.50-caliber machine guns in their wings. Cade whooped and waved. Those inverted gull wings were the most gorgeous things he’d ever seen. In Europe, they’d be obsolete. They held their own here. This was a long way from MiG Alley, and a Corsair stood a good chance against anybody’s prop job.
They made four passes in all. By the time they waggled their wings and rode off into the sunset, three tanks were on fire and the other three on the run. The foot soldiers who’d advanced with them decided they didn’t want this stretch of American line all that much, either. They fell back with the surviving T-34/85s.
Some of the dead in front of the trenches would have ammo Cade could feed to his Russian-speaking submachine gun. He’d go out and scrounge…eventually. Now he turned to Lou Klein and said, “Made it through another one.”